Part 6 (2/2)
”You can't remember him,” said her mother ”You were an infant when he left He never writes letters; he only sends money orders”
Moon Orchid hoped that the summer would wear ahile her sister talked, that Brave Orchid would then find autu She found it so nauseating that she was still recovering from the trip to San Francisco Many of the children were houre out which one hich Brave Orchid had written about them in her letters, and Moon Orchid tried to match theirl as absent-minded and messy She had an American name that sounded like ”Ink” in Chinese ”Ink!” Moon Orchid called out; sure enough, a girl smeared with ink said, ”Yes?” Then Brave Orchid worried over a daughter who had the irl with an upper lip as curled as Brigitte Bardot's Moon Orchid rubbed this niece's hands and cold feet There was a boy Brave Orchid said was thick headed She had written that when he crawled as a baby his head was so heavy he kept dropping it on the floor Moon Orchid did indeed see a boy whose head was big, his curls enlarging it, his eyebrows thick and slanted like an opera warrior's Moon Orchid could not tell whether he was any less quick than the others None of them were articulate or friendly Brave Orchid had written about a boy whose oddity it was to stick pencil stubs in his ears Moon Orchid sneaked up on the boys and lifted their hair to look for pencil stubs ”He hangs upside down from the furniture like a bat,” his mother wrote ”And he doesn't obey” Moon Orchid didn't find a boy who looked like a bat, and no stubs, so decided that that boy must be the one in Vietnam And the nepheith the round face and round eyes was the ”inaccessible cliff” She i billows” ”Stop followingover ?” Moon Orchid would ask ”What are you reading?”
”Nothing!” this girl would yell ”You're breathing on me Don't breathe on ure out just how many children there were because some only visited and did not live at home Some seemed to be married and had children of their own The babies that spoke no Chinese at all, she decided, were the grandchildren
None of Brave Orchid's children was happy like the two real Chinese babies who died Maybe rong was that they had no Oldest Son and no Oldest Daughter to guide them ”I don't see how any of them could support themselves,” Brave Orchid said ”I don't see how anybody could want to marry them” Yet, Moon Orchid noticed, some of them seemed to have a husband or a ho found them bearable
”They'll never learn hoork,” Brave Orchid co,” said Moon Orchid, although they didn't act playful
”Say good h so to your aunt,” she co, Aunt,” they said, turning to face her, staring directly into her face Even the girls stared at her-like cat-headed birds Moon Orchid jumped and squirmed when they did that They looked directly into her eyes as if they were looking for lies Rude Accusing They never lowered their gaze; they hardly blinked
”Why didn't you teach your girls to be demure?” she ventured
”Demure!” Brave Orchid yelled ”They are are demure They're so demure, they barely talk” demure They're so demure, they barely talk”
It was true that the children made no conversation Moon Orchid would try to draw thes to say, raised as they'd been in the wilderness They h movements, and their accents were not American exactly, but peasant like their e deep inside China She never saw the girls wear the gowns she had given therowled in her sleep, ”Leavetelevision, she crept up behind them with a comb and tried to smooth their hair, but they shook their heads, and they turned and fixed her with those eyes She wondered what they thought and what they sahen they looked at her like that She liked co looked at They were like animals the way they stared
She hovered over a child as reading, and she pointed at certain words ”What's that?” she tapped at a section that so patient, he said, ”That's an important part”
”Why is it important?”
”Because it tells the main idea here”
”What's the main idea?”
”I don't know the Chinese words for it”
”They're so clever,” Moon Orchid would exclais that can't be said in Chinese?”
”Thank you,” the child said When she coreed with her! Not once did she hear a child deny a compliment
”You're pretty,” she said
”Thank you, Aunt,” they answered How vain She marveled at their vanity
”You play the radio beautifully,” she teased, and sure enough, they gave one another puzzled looks She tried all kinds of compliments, and they never said, ”Oh, no, you're too kind I can't play it at all I'ly” They were capable children; they could do servants' work But they were notwhat kinds of minds they had, raised away from civilization She discovered they could tell time very well And they knew the Chinese words for ”thermometer” and ”library”
She saw them eat undercooked ht they were so clumsy, they spilled it on their clothes But soon she decided they the and s and had white hair
When Brave Orchid screamed at them to dress better, Moon Orchid defended the like furry ani like wild animals, don't you?”
”I don't look like a wild animal!” the child would yell like its ht?”
”No!”
Moon Orchid stroked their poor white hair She tugged at their sleeves and poked their shoulders and sto howirl with the cold hands and feet
”Mand sewing and cooking Moon Orchid was eager to work, roughing it in the wilderness But Brave Orchid scolded her, ”Can't you go any faster than that?” It infuriated Brave Orchid that her sister held up each dish between thuent on the back and front, and ran water without plugging up the drain Moon Orchid only laughed when Brave Orchid scolded, ”Oh, stop that with the dishes Here Take this dress and heled and laughed about that
In the s Brave Orchid and her husband arose at 6 am He drank a cup of coffee and walked don to open up the laundry Brave Orchid made breakfast for the children ould take the first laundry shi+ft; the ones going to suht shi+fts She put her husband's breakfast into the food container that she had bought in Chinatown, one dish in each tier of the stack Soht the food to the laundry, and other days she sent it with one of the children, but the children let the soup slosh out when they rode over buled the tiers from one handlebar and the rice kettle from the other They were too lazy to walk Now that her sister and niece were visiting, Brave Orchid went to the laundry later ”Be sure you heat everything up before serving it to your father,” she yelled after her son ”And make him coffee after breakfast And wash the dishes” He would eat with his father and start work
She walked her sister and niece to the laundry by way of Chinatown Brave Orchid pointed out the red, green, and gold Chinese school Fro the lesson ”I Am a Person of the Middle Nation” In front of one of the benevolent associations, a literatethe Gold Mountain News Gold Mountain Nehich was taped to theThe listening crowd looked at the pictures and said, ”Aiaa”
”So this is the United States,” Moon Orchid said ”It certainly looks different frolad to see the Aain startled at her sister's denseness ”These aren't the Americans These are the overseas Chinese”
By the ti hot and the ainst any machine,” Brave Orchid warned her sister ”Your skin would fry and peel off” In thelike twin silver spaceshi+ps Brave Orchid's husband fitted the shi+rt sleeves over it with a karate chop between the shoulder blades ”You mustn't back into that,” said Brave Orchid
”You should start off with an easy job,” she said But all the jobs sees and dress shoes and a suit The buttons on the presses seeht her hands or her head inside a press? She was already playing with the water jets dancing on springs fro She could fold towels, Brave Orchid decided, and handkerchiefs, but there would be no clean dry clothes until afternoon Already the te up
”Can you iron?” Brave Orchid asked Perhaps her sister could do the hand-finishi+ng on the shi+rts when they came off the machines This was usually Brave Orchid's husband's job He had such graceful fingers, so good for folding shi+rts to fit the cardboard patterns that he had cut fro posters He finished the shi+rts with a blue band around each
”Oh, I'd love to try that,” Moon Orchid said Brave Orchid gave her sister her husband's shi+rts to practice on She showed her how faraph ”h its center Moon Orchid tugged at the first shi+rt for half an hour, and she folded it crooked, the buttonholes not lined up with the buttons at all When a custo table next to the little stand with the tickets, she did not say ”hello” but giggled, leaving the iron on the shi+rt until it turned yellow and had to be whitened with peroxide Then she said it was so hot she couldn't breathe
”Go take a walk,” Brave Orchid said, exasperated Even the children could work Both girls and boys could sew ”Free Mending and buttons,” said the lettering on theThe children could work all of the machines, even when they were little and had to stand on apple crates to reach theo out into Gold Mountain myself,” Moon Orchid said
”Walk back toward Chinatown,” suggested Brave Orchid
”Oh, come with me, please,” Moon Orchid said
”I have to work,” said her sister Brave Orchid placed an apple crate on the sidewalk in front of the laundry ”You sit out here in the cool air until I have a little time” She hooked the steel pole to the screw that unrolled the awning ”Just keep turning until the shadow covers the crate” It took Moon Orchid another half-hour to do this She rested after every turn and left the pole hanging
At noon, when the terees, Brave Orchid went out to the sidewalk and said, ”Let's eat” She had heated the leftovers from breakfast on the little stove at the back of the laundry In back there was also a bedroo too tired to walk hoether So tables, and the small children slept on the shelves The shades would be pulled over the display s and the door The laundry would becoht footsteps, the traffic, the city outside The boiler would rest, and no ghost would know there were Chinese asleep in their laundry When the children were sick and had to stay home from school, they slept in that bedroom so that Brave Orchid could doctor the up and down, bursting stea out the bottom, matched their dreams when they had a fever