The Cooked Seed (6 page)

The surgery removed five sixths of my father’s stomach. Then he underwent chemotherapy. We took turns caring for him. I studied
English 900 Sentences
with a flashlight under his hospital bed. My mother had never been good at caring for her own illnesses, but now she had to learn
to care for her husband. My sisters and brother were in their twenties and worked as laborers in factories where their prospects for the future were dim. I worried that I would have to leave home soon. Traditionally, female children were not supposed to remain at home if there was only one room. Once my brother was married, I would have no place to go.

While my father’s discouragement brought me despair, my mother predicted that I would achieve my heart’s desire just by believing.

“How?” I yelled. “Don’t you think I am too old to be told a fairy tale?”

The government’s rule forced me to resign from my current job before I applied for a passport. My father was crushed after learning that I was jobless. He was sure that I had made a critical mistake and ruined my life. I wanted to cry when I looked at my father’s ghostly pale face. The chemotherapy had drained the life from him. He was hairless and bone thin. He looked at me with great fear in his eyes.

Never in my life had I been as terrified as I was the day I left for the US Consulate. I shook so hard that I was unable to say to my parents, “Wish me good luck!” My father and mother leaned on each other’s shoulders for support. They were in their early fifties and had lost most of their teeth. There was not a hint that my mother had once been a great beauty. Both of them watched me nervously and were unable to say a word.

“May I borrow your clothes?” I asked my mother.

“Why?” She was puzzled.

I wanted to tell her how scared I was.

“Why do you want to borrow an old lady’s clothes?” my mother asked. “My white cotton shirt has been washed so many times that it has turned brown. The fabric has frayed around the collar. My skirt is twenty-five years old. It’s got stains and moth holes. Are you sure?”

I put my mother’s clothes on and immediately felt better.

On the way to the consulate, I kept thinking about what I would do if I was rejected for the visa. I would not be able to get my old job back. The last thing I wanted was to become a burden to my family. The thought of suicide again entered my mind. I found myself unafraid. Life would not be worth living. Death would be an escape.

Before I got on the bus, I felt a sudden weakness. Doubt came over me. Was I being too foolish? Was I mad to push forward knowing that
I was not a Ph.D. candidate, knowing that I would be hitting a rock with an egg, knowing that the odds were stacked high against me?

I had no memory of how I got off the bus, walked several blocks, and arrived at the US Consulate. I had no memory of the crowd, the stool-renting lady, the food and water seller, the fan and umbrella seller, the aspirin seller, or the wise men and fortune-tellers. I also had no memory of how I presented my passport to the guards. What I did remember, in fact the only thing I remembered, was the sound of my own thumping heartbeat.

The image of the American consul standing behind the window was rather blurred. He was a man with pale skin and brown hair. He didn’t pay attention to the papers I pushed through the bottom of the window slot. He stared at me in silence.

I couldn’t breathe. My eyes wouldn’t focus. I knew my cue had arrived, but I was unable to deliver the performance. My body was not mine to command.
You can do it, Anchee. Jump off the cliff. Now!

The drill kicked in. The flow of English syllables poured out of my mouth like a waterfall. I had no idea where I was in terms of the speech.

The consul continued to stare at me.

My mind spun like a greased wheel. My mouth opened and closed on its own. I was the heroine who ran through the woods toward the enemy carrying a pack of explosives.

I made myself stare back at the consul. I imaged myself locked in hand-to-hand combat with an American soldier. I was ready to be a martyr.

The consul blinked. His expression turned soft and his face human again. He held up a finger as if to ask me a question.

Stop him from interrupting!
My tongue rolled faster. I was back in time, acting as a child reciting Mao’s quotations onstage. My hands rubbed against the fabric of my mother’s skirt. I was running out of air in my lungs.

Then I heard an “Okay!” I wondered if I was hallucinating. Did that
okay
come from the consul or was it just my imagination? I stopped and
started to panic. The consul spoke again, but I couldn’t understand a word he said.

With a pencil in one hand, the consul flipped through the papers that I had submitted. He checked something off on a page, then nodded.

I prepared for the worst.

“I am sorry to have bothered you,” I said in Chinese.

To my confusion, the man pulled down his curtain in my face. “Next!” I heard him yell.

Had I been rejected?

I heard my name called in Chinese by a female voice. It was from the next window. I collected myself and moved to the next window. I came face-to-face with a Chinese secretary, who sneered.

“You think you fooled the consul? You are just lucky.” She shoveled the papers around.

“May I know what you mean?” I asked.

“What do you mean, ‘What do I mean?’ ”

“Visa or no visa?”

“Did I just say that you were lucky?”

“Yes, but what does it mean?”

“It means that the American liked you. They like people with crazy determination.”

“But that doesn’t tell me … I mean … please … visa or no visa?”

“Visa!” She yelled, turning her head away in disgust.

Happiness enveloped me. My feet had never felt lighter as I climbed the stairs at home. My parents opened the door looking as if they had been waiting to console me after the bad news.

My father spread his feet apart as if he was ready to receive a blow. My mother held on to his arm. They didn’t have the courage to ask, “Did you get the visa?”

My tears came as I took out my passport. I showed my parents a slip notifying me that I was to pick up my visa in seven days.

My mother collapsed and pulled my father down to the floor with her. “I can’t see,” my mother said. “I can’t see!”

“I shall go to America!” I sang.

My mother let out a cry of joy.

My father smiled. A moment later, he was himself again. “You will be caught and deported when you arrive in America! You can’t change the fact that you don’t speak English.”

“No spoiling the moment, Father, I beg you!”

Humming a tune, I ran to the Shanghai Postal and Telegram Center. I sent a two-word telegram to my aunt in Singapore: GOT VISA. If those words had not already cost me a month’s salary, I would have added more to express my gratitude. After all, my mother had said, “Your aunt barely knows you.”

Mother made me promise to repay the debt I owed my aunt as soon as I became capable. The words “became capable” sounded abstract in that moment, but I was determined to honor my mother’s wish.

I wrote a letter to Joan Chen in Los Angeles. I thanked her for helping me. I told her that I’d be departing for Chicago in a month.

My health improved magically. Within a week, I stopped coughing blood. My stomach pain went away. I was able to consume tofu and eggs without getting diarrhea. The bitter Chinese herb soup I had been taking helped too. By the time I received Joan’s letter saying, “Congratulations. I’ll see you in America,” I was fully recovered.

I wrote thirty-three farewell letters to my friends, colleagues, and relatives. I didn’t mail them, because there was still a risk that I would get caught and be deported back to China. I told my sister to hold on to my letters until she received word from me in America saying that I had made it.

No one on the film set where I worked knew that I would be leaving the country. Things could go wrong at the last minute. The crew boss might get angry with me and report on me and ruin everything. I had lived long enough to know that I was only an ant everyone could step on. I kept my mouth shut and followed orders.
This will soon be behind me
, I thought triumphantly.

The day I departed for America, my family accompanied me to the Shanghai airport. My father’s worry was written all over his face. He
had been imagining my deportation and was so tense that he was unable to hug me or say good-bye. My mother quietly embraced me, as did my sisters and brother. I held a one-way ticket. I tried not to think about how long it would be before I could see my family again. I worried about my mother’s health and my father’s recovery from cancer.

The sound of the airplane taking off would remain a permanent memory. The noise was deafening, but it was great music to my ears. Before entering the departure building, I waved good-bye to my family for the last time.

I had been waiting almost an hour in the small brown room when the translator again appeared. She wore a solemn expression as she walked briskly toward me. I could now see clearly that she was not Chinese. Her hair was dark, but it was not black. She had deep-set eyes and a large mouth. I could feel my blood freezing in my veins. Whatever the translator conveyed would decide my fate. She carried a stack of documents. Among them must have been my passport and my I-20 papers.

“Miss Min, follow me, please,” she said in Chinese, as she opened the door.

I did my best not to collapse. The translator took me back to the officer who had sent me to the questioning room. I watched them exchange words. The translator pulled a page out of the stack of her papers and showed it to the officer. She pointed out something to him on the paper. The officer examined the spot and then nodded. They exchanged more words. The officer bent down and quickly wrote something on the page. They waved at each other as they parted. The translator returned to me.

“
Ni tai jin zhang la!
” she said to me in Chinese.

I understood. It meant “You’re too nervous!” But what did she mean?

She repeated the phrase, and I heard “You’re too nervous” again.

I begged her to explain, for I was too disoriented to understand.

“This means we have decided to let you go,” she smiled.

“Do you mean I get to go to Chicago? Is that what you just said? Am I understanding you correctly? Do you mean that there will be no deportation for me?”

She nodded. “No deportation, Miss Min. Congratulations.”

I choked with joy. I locked my arms with my hands so that I wouldn’t throw myself at the floor to kowtow to the lady.

I asked her what had happened. The translator let me know that she had found a clause in my papers that my school had a plan to place me in an intensive language program at the University of Illinois if upon arrival my English was found to be insufficient. I would be given six months to bring my English up to level and pass an entrance test. If I failed to improve, the school was responsible for reporting me to immigration, which meant my deportation.

Six months! I had only asked for three!

I had never met my cousin, my aunt’s son. I was told by my aunt that he would pick me up from the airport in Chicago. I held the paper with his name on it above my head as I exited the terminal. We met but were unable to communicate. I spoke Mandarin and he Cantonese. He was kind enough to allow me to temporarily stay at his student apartment. I promised my aunt that I’d leave as soon as possible.

The foreign-student adviser at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago was upset. I had lied about my “language skills” on the application form. In the “Please describe the level of your English” section, I had marked “Excellent.” I confessed that I was guilty, and that I was willing to accept the punishment.

I was sent to the intensive tutorial class held at the University of Illinois Circle Campus. The program cost five hundred dollars. I already felt the weight of my debt and regretted having to borrow more from my aunt. It was painful for me to pay for the university’s dormitory. I would have preferred to live on the streets.

I was given a tour of the school and the city of Chicago. I tried to read the street signs and memorize bus numbers and routes. But all I could hear was the soundtrack of a Chinese opera as I bent my head back to admire the Sears Tower.

When asked what type of roommate I’d prefer, I had replied, “Anyone who speaks English, and who doesn’t mind my silence.”

This was how I met Takisha, my first American friend.

The dorm room was way too luxurious for me. My first thought after entering the room was: I need to look elsewhere for a cheaper place to live.

Chicago’s winter was brutal, but the room was heated. It had a window facing a tree. The hallway was freshly painted, and the shared
bathrooms were spacious. That hot water was available twenty-four hours a day was incredible. I felt like a princess, because for the first time in my life I would get to sleep on a mattress. Each roommate had her own desk and closet. I was tormented by the amount I was paying for this. I found myself checking out the garbage Dumpster every time I walked by. I didn’t need a mattress. I’d be fine sleeping on concrete.

I heard laughter and a loud knock on the door followed by the sound of a key turning. The door opened and a dark-skinned person entered.

An African freedom fighter
, I thought. Takisha looked exactly like the girl I grew up seeing on a Communist propaganda poster calling for the Proletarians of the World to Unite.

Takisha enthralled me. She was a breathing sculpture with chocolate-colored skin and large, fig-shaped eyes. She had a wide nose and pink lips. She had the whitest teeth I had ever seen. Her hair was a ball of frizzy curls in the shape of a tall cake. She was about my height, five foot five.

I realized that Takisha was a cripple. She limped from side to side as she walked. It amazed me that she didn’t act like a handicapped person. In China cripples would act timid and scared because they would be subjected to disrespect and vicious bullying. Takisha laughed loudly and freely.