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Authors: Camilla Trinchieri
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sweet girl done to you?”
Dad walked out.That’s when it hit me that Dad might be jealous.
An-ling had the strangest mouth. Most of us have a dip in the middle of the top lip.Hers was an arc, with no break. It was kinda cool. Her hair was yellow at first, the color of the legal pads Dad keeps on his desk. She hated her hair because it was thick and stiff.When she didn’t have any money, she used to cut her own hair off to make paint brushes.That’s what she said, but I think she made that one up too. It looked much prettier when Mom dyed it back to black.
Sometimes, when I was little, I’d dream that Mom wasn’t my real mother, that Dad had an affair and I was the result.
That my real mother was killed by a drunk driver, or Dad wouldn’t let her keep me. Sometimes she died giving birth to me. I hated those dreams, but they kept coming.
The time I got my first drum set—that was Mom’s doing. I’d wanted it forever, but Dad kept bringing up the oboe, what a rich sound it had, how easy it was to carry around. I stopped asking after a while. Then on my tenth birthday, when I came home from school, sitting on top of my bed was a Tama Rockstar drum kit. “From Mom and Dad,” the card said, but from the look on Dad’s face, I knew it was all Mom’s doing. Before An-ling came along, that was the best moment in my life.
I can help Mom. I want to help. I really do, but it’s too hard.
Emma
It was late June.We had both taken the day off from work and ridden the ferry to visit Staten Island’s botanical gardens.
“We are as close to ancient intellectual China as we can be in this country,” An-ling said as I followed her to the Chinese Scholar’s Garden. She was wearing a flowered cotton sundress and soft black Chinese slippers that reminded me of Mary Janes. Her dyed yellow hair was loose, thick against her cheeks.
“The scholar was on top of the heap in ancient China,” she said.“A very big deal.”
We walked up a few steps and stopped just inside the entrance in front of a large mahogany screen which hid the view beyond.“Steps stop the evil spirits.”An-ling’s face was serious, concentrated, filled with pride. Our roles reversed here, I was the foreigner, her student.
“Also the screen stops them.You will see.The garden path we follow waves like the tail of a tiger because evil spirits can only go in a straight line.The scholars had great good fortune, but if their performance was poor, ooh,”—she grimaced in mock pain—“very bad things happen to them.”
We walked to the right, beyond the screen.To my surprise the garden was set up like a living space, a winding walled structure made up of enclosed rooms, pavilions and small courtyards surrounding a long pond.
“There were lotus blossoms once, but they died.” Clusters of limestone and granite rocks, what the Chinese think of as the bones of the earth, rose out of the water like miniature mountains.
“Everything comes from China.Artisans and artists came over from Suzhou to build it.”An-ling seemed to know this place by heart. She showed me the Tea House of Hearing Pines.“No glue, no nails.The wood is joined like this.” She slipped her fingers into each other, held her crossed hands in front of her face. The beads of her bracelets caught the sun.“Like lovers.”
The analogy embarrassed me. I have never thought of myself as a prude and yet I refused the picture of An-ling’s legs wrapped around a man’s hips.
“What does this mean?” I asked, pointing to the door handles, hoping there was no sexual connotation to their double curved shape.
“They are made to look like bats.They bring good luck.
The word for bat sounds like fu , the word for good fortune.”
An-ling took my hand and led me outside, through the Wandering in Bamboo Courtyard, half hidden behind walls with banana-leaf-shaped openings.
“A place to meditate,” she said. A stand of bamboo blocked out the sun and bathed the courtyard in a yellow-green
Dad walked out.That’s when it hit me that Dad might be jealous.
An-ling had the strangest mouth. Most of us have a dip in the middle of the top lip.Hers was an arc, with no break. It was kinda cool. Her hair was yellow at first, the color of the legal pads Dad keeps on his desk. She hated her hair because it was thick and stiff.When she didn’t have any money, she used to cut her own hair off to make paint brushes.That’s what she said, but I think she made that one up too. It looked much prettier when Mom dyed it back to black.
Sometimes, when I was little, I’d dream that Mom wasn’t my real mother, that Dad had an affair and I was the result.
That my real mother was killed by a drunk driver, or Dad wouldn’t let her keep me. Sometimes she died giving birth to me. I hated those dreams, but they kept coming.
The time I got my first drum set—that was Mom’s doing. I’d wanted it forever, but Dad kept bringing up the oboe, what a rich sound it had, how easy it was to carry around. I stopped asking after a while. Then on my tenth birthday, when I came home from school, sitting on top of my bed was a Tama Rockstar drum kit. “From Mom and Dad,” the card said, but from the look on Dad’s face, I knew it was all Mom’s doing. Before An-ling came along, that was the best moment in my life.
I can help Mom. I want to help. I really do, but it’s too hard.
Emma
It was late June.We had both taken the day off from work and ridden the ferry to visit Staten Island’s botanical gardens.
“We are as close to ancient intellectual China as we can be in this country,” An-ling said as I followed her to the Chinese Scholar’s Garden. She was wearing a flowered cotton sundress and soft black Chinese slippers that reminded me of Mary Janes. Her dyed yellow hair was loose, thick against her cheeks.
“The scholar was on top of the heap in ancient China,” she said.“A very big deal.”
We walked up a few steps and stopped just inside the entrance in front of a large mahogany screen which hid the view beyond.“Steps stop the evil spirits.”An-ling’s face was serious, concentrated, filled with pride. Our roles reversed here, I was the foreigner, her student.
“Also the screen stops them.You will see.The garden path we follow waves like the tail of a tiger because evil spirits can only go in a straight line.The scholars had great good fortune, but if their performance was poor, ooh,”—she grimaced in mock pain—“very bad things happen to them.”
We walked to the right, beyond the screen.To my surprise the garden was set up like a living space, a winding walled structure made up of enclosed rooms, pavilions and small courtyards surrounding a long pond.
“There were lotus blossoms once, but they died.” Clusters of limestone and granite rocks, what the Chinese think of as the bones of the earth, rose out of the water like miniature mountains.
“Everything comes from China.Artisans and artists came over from Suzhou to build it.”An-ling seemed to know this place by heart. She showed me the Tea House of Hearing Pines.“No glue, no nails.The wood is joined like this.” She slipped her fingers into each other, held her crossed hands in front of her face. The beads of her bracelets caught the sun.“Like lovers.”
The analogy embarrassed me. I have never thought of myself as a prude and yet I refused the picture of An-ling’s legs wrapped around a man’s hips.
“What does this mean?” I asked, pointing to the door handles, hoping there was no sexual connotation to their double curved shape.
“They are made to look like bats.They bring good luck.
The word for bat sounds like fu , the word for good fortune.”
An-ling took my hand and led me outside, through the Wandering in Bamboo Courtyard, half hidden behind walls with banana-leaf-shaped openings.
“A place to meditate,” she said. A stand of bamboo blocked out the sun and bathed the courtyard in a yellow-green
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