“Grasshoppers” by O Thiam Chin

I have always enjoyed being alone. Unlike boys my age who play football or fight video‐game
monsters, I prefer to do things by myself. One of my favourite pastimes is catching grasshoppers,
which are quite easy to trap if you have the patience. I can spend hours searching for them in the
large grassy field near the kopitiam, the coffee shop where my mother works. A food hawker, she has
to be up by six o’clock every day to buy ingredients from the wet market. I like to wake up at the
same time she does and watch her prepare for the day. She moves around the flat with light
footsteps, hardly making any noise, and when she’s ready to leave she always reminds me to behave
while she’s away. As soon as the front door closes, I jump up from the sofa, peep through the
window facing the corridor and watch her limp towards the lift lobby.

When she returns from the wet market, she’ll call for me, telling me to come have breakfast before
it’s cold. She always remembers to buy my favourite fishball mee‐hoon, and it’ll still be piping hot
when I dig in. My mother is a woman with quiet, simple ways. She grew up in a kampong and often
tells me stories about her childhood. That was back in the early 70s, when there were still kampongs
throughout Singapore – clusters of single‐storey, zinc‐roofed houses nestled closely together – where
people tended small fruit‐and‐vegetable fields, and reared chickens, ducks and pigs. One thing she
never mentions in front of me is my father, and because I know it’s something that upsets her I never
ask about him. He has become the invisible person who exists between us.

We have lived in Ang Mo Kio, in the heart of Singapore, for as long as I can remember, though my
mother tells me I was born in a kampong in Choa Chu Kang, in the north‐western part of the island.
She says I was in such a rush to enter the world that she didn’t make it to the hospital in time, and I
was born in the very house where she started life thirty‐five years earlier. She says I’m a kampong
boy through and through, even though I now live in a housing estate among towering blocks of flats.

I’m only twelve but my mother tells me I behave like a person thrice my age. I don’t know what she
means, though I can sense her pleasure in saying this so I just nod. Last year she declared I was old
enough to take on adult responsibilities and gave me the keys to the flat.

Some days, when she’s at the wet market, I wander around our neighbourhood. I like the mornings,
when the air is crisp and the estate is slowly rousing from sleep.

During my secret jaunts I often come across an old couple who like to stroll around a small hibiscus
and bougainvillea garden near the estate. They move slowly, in step with each other, looking at the
flowers, sometimes pausing to touch them. The old man holds on to the woman’s arm with a fierce
grip, afraid of tumbling, but it takes only a glance at the woman’s face to know that she would never
let him fall. When they bend their heads in unison, in close conversation, their white hair looks like a
soufflé of clouds hovering above their faces. I often wonder what they are saying, what they have
been saying all these years, and imagine what it’s like to be with someone for so long. Then they
notice me and smile, and I walk away, embarrassed by my thoughts.

Occasionally I see the dirty man who sleeps on a wooden bench and mutters in his sleep. I know he
lives nearby, in a block where the old folk stay, and spends his days roaming the neighbourhood,
cursing to nobody in particular, jabbing his fingers in the air. I have seen him before at the kopitiam
where my mother gives him food or a few dollars, out of pity. She told me his children had
abandoned him when they moved to a better housing estate. I look at his crusty heels, embedded
with jagged lines of dirt, and think about the ground he has to cover each day to expend his anger.

I rarely stray from my world: a few blocks of flats, a garden, my school, the wet market and the
kopitiam. She says there are dangers everywhere, even though we can’t see them, and we have to be
alert at all times. I try to look out for these dangers, not knowing what they are and, so far, the only
threatening thing I have encountered has been a mangy, agitated dog. When I have stayed out long
enough, I head home, change into my sleep clothes and wait for my mother to return.

My mother refuses to tell me why she limps, saying only that she had an accident a long time ago. It
was from not being aware of dangers, she once warned. I look at her uneven legs, the ungainly up‐
and‐down movement of her body when she walks, and know there is more to her story than she is
willing to reveal.

At the kopitiam my mother sells popiah, spring rolls, a trade she picked up from her father, my late
grandfather, something she’s been doing since I can remember. I help at her stall after school and on
weekends; when it’s quiet I like to play in the field, catching handfuls of grasshoppers with the
transparent plastic bags my mother uses for takeaways. Their bulbous eyes, angular faces and
compact, segmented bodies fascinate me. When I shake the bag they’re in and bring it to my ear, I
can feel the insistent thumping of the grasshoppers, like fast, tiny heartbeats.

Auntie Siew Bee works as a server at the drinks stall next to my mother’s, and gives me canned
drinks when her boss is not around. During the long lull between lunch and dinner, when there are
few customers, she and my mother talk in the kopitiam while separating sticky popiah skins or
plucking black seed coats from the heads of bean sprouts. They let me listen in on their
conversations but if the topic becomes personal my mother will ask me to play in the field or run an
errand.

Once, when my mother was busy at the stall, Auntie Siew Bee sat beside me and put her hand on my
back, her eyes sad but knowing.

‘Your mother has had a hard life,’ she said. ‘It could have been better, if not for your scoundrel father.’
My ears latched on to her words, eager to hear what she had to tell me. She hesitated, but
continued. ‘Your father treated her badly for many years, and your mother couldn’t do a thing
because she had you to think about. He beat her up when he was angry or drunk, and one time he
hurt her so badly she had to be hospitalised for a week. That’s why she limps.’ Auntie Siew Bee
suddenly drew back, caught off‐guard by her own words. ‘Maybe you were too young to remember.’
Then she rose to clear the empty plates and beer glasses from a nearby table, leaving me even more
curious about my parents’ past.

Sometimes after spending an afternoon chasing and catching grasshoppers, I lie on my back in the
grassy field and marvel at the changing moods above. I try to take in the whole sky, stretching my
vision as wide as possible, aware that there are parts beyond my scope. The never‐endingness of the
world makes it impossible to take everything in or comprehend it all at once. I gaze at my
grasshoppers and wonder what the world looks like through their eyes. When I show my mother the
grasshoppers I’ve caught, she tells me to release them. She says insects are like humans, just smaller,
and that they too have a life.

When I open the bag and wait for the grasshoppers to jump out, the strongest with thin, sharp‐
angled hind legs, leap out first, propelling themselves forward, landing on the flat blades of grass. It
sometimes amazes me to see how high and far they can hop, given their tiny bodies. In school,
during physical education tests, I often fail my standing broad jump by a few centimetres, no matter
how hard I try.

To force the smaller grasshoppers to flee, I give the bag a few rough shakes but there’s usually one
left. I reach in and slowly bring it out, holding it gently in my fist and feeling it ticking with life. When I
open my hand the grasshopper doesn’t move, then in the next beat springs away, disappearing into
the dense grass.

***

The kopitiam where my mother works has several stalls that sell other kinds of food, like duck rice,
fish soup, rojak, fried carrot cake and zi‐char. It draws its customers from the surrounding blocks of
flats, where people come for their daily meals, or a snack. When my mother is too busy or tired to
cook, I eat there, although my mother frowns at this and says the dishes are unhealthy, oily or lacking
in proper nutrients. But when the stall owners give me meals free of charge my mother never tells
me to say no, instead reminding me to thank them. When I’m at the kopitiam, these stall‐owners talk
to me, ruffle my hair and give me money for snacks.

Among the stall‐owners, I especially like Uncle Ben, who sells duck rice and wears an apron stained
with dark gravy. He owned a farm when he was much younger. Then the government came along and
offered him a large sum of money to close his business and move into a housing estate. He didn’t
have a choice so he took the money, slaughtered the animals and invited his kampong friends for a
feast that lasted three long days. At the end, there was so much food left he had to ask his guests to
take home doggie bags weighing more than five kilograms each. ‘Can you imagine how much food
we had and how much was left,’ he said, stretching out his hefty arms in a proud gesture. ‘If you had
been there, I’d have fed you till you were as plump as a piglet, not like now, so skinny.’ Then he
tickled my sides with his greasy fingers until I broke out in giggles.

He once told me he knew my father way before I was born. In fact, he had hired him as an assistant
cook and that was how my parents met. I must have looked surprised because the expression on his
face shifted ever so slightly as he leaned in and told me this was our secret. From him, I found out
how my father had a quick temper and drank beyond his limits. ‘I told him to stop his drinking but he
refused to listen,’ Uncle Ben said. ‘Even when your mother was pregnant he drank like a fish,
spending your mother’s money and his on alcohol. In the end I had to fire him.’

When I asked about my father’s whereabouts he said he could be dead for all he knew; that he had
not seen him since he disappeared eight years ago, after the loan sharks started hounding him.

‘He really landed your mother in deep shit,’ Uncle Ben said. ‘I’m sorry to say it but your father was
good for nothing. Bastard! Luckily I had some savings I could lend your mother. If not, I can’t imagine
what would have happened to you or her.’ Sensing he might have crossed the line, he softened his
tone and changed the topic. After this I couldn’t picture my father without feeling shame and
repulsion.

Sometimes, when he was in the mood to talk, Uncle Ben told me stories about his childhood. When
he was my age he kept crickets in small glass bottles and trained them to fight. Tiger, his favourite,
won against all its opponents and helped earn him extra pocket money. But one day he was playing
with it and, when he wasn’t looking, a stray cat crept up and ate Tiger, leaving behind only a severed
brown leg. Uncle Ben buried it under a rambutan tree beside his kampong house and gave up cricket‐
fighting.

***

A few days before my mother’s birthday, her thirty‐sixth, I planned a surprise. From my daily pocket
money and the change the stall owners gave me, I saved ten dollars, which I hoped was enough to
buy a small cake and a gift. A few months earlier I had discovered her date of birth from her
identification card, which she kept in a plastic case in her wardrobe. She looks very different in the
photograph on the card, with long, dark hair tucked behind her ears and a bright, lively spark in her
eyes. I stared at the picture, trying to find my mother behind the smiling young girl. My mother
doesn’t like me going through her things so I had to take great care to put everything back in place.
Once, she caught me rummaging through the drawer of her dresser, where she keeps jewellery,
letters and wedding photographs, and caned me. She told me it was wrong to look through other
people’s belongings and that she didn’t raise me to be a thief. When I asked her who the man in the
photograph was, she brought the cane down on my thighs again, crying hard even as she left long
streaks all over my legs.
On her birthday I headed to the neighbourhood bakery, where I realised I could afford only a slice
and not a whole cake. I deliberated for some time before choosing her favourite flavour: pandan. I
also bought a photo frame with a border of plastic flowers and inserted a photograph of us taken
during my birthday trip to Sentosa the year before. In it, she had her arm across my tanned shoulders
and was holding a hand above her eyes, shielding them from the sun. I put the cake in the fridge and
hid the frame under her pillow.

Then I went to the kopitiam and waited for my mother to finish work. It was dinner time and the
place was packed with customers eating while watching the news on a TV hanging on the wall. The
sticky smell of deep frying and cigarette smoke permeated the air, suffusing the kopitiam with an
oppressive warmth. Drink orders flew through the air as servers moved from table to table, clearing
cups and relaying requests. From a table of beer drinkers, a man burst out laughing, inciting another
with ‘Bottoms up!’. A short queue had formed in front of Uncle Ben’s stall, where he was busy
chopping up glistening roasted ducks. My mother saw me and pushed out two orders of popiah,
indicating with a nod where to take the plates. I served the food and dropped the payment into a
large tin can in which my mother kept her money. There was a constant stream of customers, and I
had to double up, serving the popiah and washing plates and chopsticks. For the next hour or so I
forgot why I was there in the first place.

When the dinner crowd started to dwindle, and the ingredients ran out, my mother called it a day. I
offered to help with the dishes but she shoved a two dollar note in my hand and told me to buy what
I wanted. I put the money in my pocket and walked to the edge of the dark field. The sky was the
colour of a bruise and speckled with stars. I turned and looked back into the brightness of the
kopitiam, at my mother busy behind her stall, cleaning and putting away the cooking utensils. I liked
to observe my mother when she’s unconscious of her movements, the rhythms of her body in
motion. When she looked around for me, I could feel my body moving in response, taking a step
forward, towards her. When she was finally done, and the lights above the stall were switched off, I
returned to the kopitiam and we walked home together.

We sauntered through the neighbourhood in the cool breeze, cutting through the outdoor carpark. A
black cat lying on the hood of a Honda Civic stirred and jumped off as we approached. Near our block
of flats, the smelly man came up to us, bare‐foot and swearing under his breath. He held out his dirt‐
streaked hand and stopped us in our tracks. He looked frightened, frightening. My mother dug
around in her pocket and dropped a few coins into his hand. The man trundled on, his hand still
extended, and resumed his tirade. My mother stared at his retreating shape and sighed.

‘Do you know what today is?’ I asked, hoping to change the mood.

‘Today? It’s a Thursday, right?’ she said, turning to look at me. Then she continued walking, her limp
more pronounced, heavier than usual.
‘Guess, guess. It’s a special day, don’t you remember?’

‘All I know is it’s been a long, tiring day and I can’t wait to have a shower and relax. Then we can have
our dinner.’

When we arrived home, I dragged her to the refrigerator. She found the cake and with a finger
scraped the whipped cream off the top and tasted it. It’s delicious, she remarked, holding her smile.

‘Now you can have the rest,’ she said, passing the slice to me.

Then I took her to her bedroom and told her to search for the second surprise. She laughed, lifted my
head, kissed it and went to find her present. She tore off the wrapping, studied the photograph in
the frame and put it on her bedside table. Her features dissolved into a softness I hadn’t seen in a
long time.

‘Happy birthday, mum,’ I said. She hugged me and announced that we were going out for a big
dinner to celebrate.

Walking towards Ang Mo Kio Central, my mother held my hand. It was slightly past nine and the
streetlights created overlapping ovals of deep yellow on the ground. Horns blasted while traffic
streamed past us on the street. High above, among the dark branches of tall trees, flocks of birds
cackled as they settled in for the night. Amid the nocturnal cacophony, we could hear the insistent
chirping of the crickets coming from the thick shrubs that lined the street.

‘Do you know that it is only the male cricket that chirps? It makes the sound by rubbing its wings
together,’ I said, having picked this up from a science book I borrowed from the school library.

‘Really?’

‘Yup. And do you know that Uncle Ben used to keep crickets and put them in fights to earn extra
pocket money?’

‘He told you that?’

‘Yes, but he gave it up when his favourite cricket was eaten by a cat.’ My mother nodded in
amusement.
‘Now my turn. Do you know the grasshopper only jumps forwards, never backwards?’ my mother
said. I looked at her, astonished.

‘How did you know?’ I asked.

‘I used to catch grasshoppers too when I was your age. With my bare hands, not with a plastic bag.
Next time, before you catch them, try to observe how they move. You’ll see I’m right.’

‘I will,’ I said.

‘It’s important to be like the grasshopper,’ my mother added, ‘to keep moving forward, especially
when times are bad.’ She stared straight ahead, keeping her stride, and tightening her hold on me. It
was hard to read the expression on her face, backlit by streetlights. Then she turned to me, smiled,
and said: ‘Remember this, my son.’

As I walked beside her, I remembered the tiny grasshopper beating in my loose fist and the first leap
it took as it jumped out of my hand into a new world, one far from where it came. I tried to imagine
myself as the grasshopper – always jumping forward towards the unknown, never once turning back
– and wondered how it was possible to face the new without fear. At the back of my mind, I sensed
something – a knowledge budding, taking root, spreading. I’d soon have to leave behind my
childhood, my entire history of twelve years. The thought scared me, like a freshly discovered fear,
and filled me with fretful anticipation.

As Ang Mo Kio Central loomed, I set my sights on the bright dazzling lights, hoping that one day, like
the grasshopper, I’d reach the place I was meant to be. I slipped my hand out of my mother’s, and
stretched my fingers.

‘We’re almost there,’ my mother said.

‘Yes, we are,’ I replied.

“Rules of The Game” by Amy Tan

I was six when my mother taught me the art of invisible strength. It was a strategy for winning
arguments, respect from others, and eventually, though neither of us knew it at the time, chess
games.

"Bite back your tongue," scolded my mother when I cried loudly, yanking her hand toward the store
that sold bags of salted plums. At home, she said, "Wise guy, he not go against wind. In Chinese we
say, Come from South, blow with wind--poom!--North will follow. Strongest wind cannot be seen."

The next week I bit back my tongue as we entered the store with the forbidden candies. When my
mother finished her shopping, she quietly plucked a small bag of plums from the rack and put it on
the counter with the rest of the items.

My mother imparted her daily truths so she could help my older brothers and me rise above our
circumstances. We lived in San Francisco's Chinatown. Like most of the other Chinese children who
played in the back alleys of restaurants and curio shops, I didn't think we were poor. My bowl was
always full, three five-course meals every day, beginning with a soup of mysterious things I didn't
want to know the names of.

We lived on Waverly Place, in a warm, clean, two-bedroom flat that sat above a small Chinese bakery
specializing in steamed pastries and dim sum. In the early morning, when the alley was still quiet, I
could smell fragrant red beans as they were cooked down to a pasty sweetness. By daybreak, our flat
was heavy with the odor of fried sesame balls and sweet curried chicken crescents. From my bed, I
would listen as my father got ready for work, then locked the door behind him, one-two-three clicks.

At the end of our two-block alley was a small sandlot playground with swings and slides well-shined
down the middle with use. The play area was bordered by wood-slat benches where old-country
people sat cracking roasted watermelon seeds with their golden teeth and scattering the husks to an
impatient gathering of gurgling pigeons. The best playground, however, was the dark alley itself. It
was crammed with daily mysteries and adventures. My brothers and I would peer into the medicinal
herb shop, watching old Li dole out onto a stiff sheet of white paper the right amount of insect shells,
saffron-colored seeds, and pungent leaves for his ailing customers. It was said that he once cured a
woman dying of an ancestral curse that had eluded the best of American doctors. Next to the
pharmacy was a printer who specialized in gold-embossed wedding invitations and festive red
banners.
Farther down the street was Ping Yuen Fish Market. The front window displayed a tank crowded with
doomed fish and turtles struggling to gain footing on the slimy green-tiled sides. A hand-written sign
informed tourists, “Within this store, is all for food, not for pet.” Inside, the butchers with their
bloodstained white smocks deftly gutted the fish while customers cried out their orders and shouted,
"Give me your freshest," to which the butchers always protested, "All are freshest." On less crowded
market days, we would inspect the crates of live frogs and crabs which we were warned not to poke,
boxes of dried cuttlefish, and row upon row of iced prawns, squid, and slippery fish. The sanddabs
made me shiver each time; their eyes lay on one flattened side and reminded me of my mother's
story of a careless girl who ran into a crowded street and was crushed by a cab. "Was smash flat,"
reported my mother.

At the corner of the alley was Hong Sing's, a four-table cafe with a recessed stairwell in front that led
to a door marked "Tradesmen." My brothers and I believed the bad people emerged from this door
at night. Tourists never went to Hong Sing's, since the menu was printed only in Chinese. A Caucasian
man with a big camera once posed me and my playmates in front of the restaurant. He had us move
to the side of the picture window so the photo would capture the roasted duck with its head
dangling from a juice-covered rope. After he took the picture, I told him he should go into Hong
Sing's and eat dinner. When he smiled and asked me what they served, I shouted, "Guts and duck's
feet and octopus gizzards!" Then I ran off with my friends, shrieking with laughter as we scampered
across the alley and hid in the entryway grotto of the China Gem Company, my heart pounding with
hope that he would chase us.

My mother named me after the street that we lived on: Waverly Place Jong, my official name for
important American documents. But my family called me Meimei, "Little Sister." I was the youngest,
the only daughter. Each morning before school, my mother would twist and yank on my thick black
hair until she had formed two tightly wound pigtails. One day, as she struggled to weave a hard-
toothed comb through my disobedient hair, I had a sly thought.

I asked her, "Ma, what is Chinese torture?" My mother shook her head. A bobby pin was wedged
between her lips. She wetted her palm and smoothed the hair above my ear, then pushed the pin in
so that it nicked sharply against my scalp.

“Who say this word?" she asked without a trace of knowing how wicked I was being. I shrugged my
shoulders and said, "Some boy in my class said Chinese people do Chinese torture."

"Chinese people do many things," she said simply. "Chinese people do business, do medicine, do
painting. Not lazy like American people. We do torture. Best torture."

*
My older brother Vincent was the one who actually got the chess set. We had gone to the annual
Christmas party held at the First Chinese Baptist Church at the end of the alley. The missionary ladies
had put together a Santa bag of gifts donated by members of another church. None of the gifts had
names on them. There were separate sacks for boys and girls of different ages.

One of the Chinese parishioners had donned a Santa Claus costume and a stiff paper beard with
cotton balls glued to it. I think the only children who thought he was the real thing were too young to
know that Santa Claus was not Chinese. When my turn came up, the Santa man asked me how old I
was. I thought it was a trick question; I was seven according to the American formula and eight by
the Chinese calendar. I said I was born on March 17, 1951. That seemed to satisfy him. He then
solemnly asked if I had been a very, very good girl this year and did I believe in Jesus Christ and obey
my parents. I knew the only answer to that. I nodded back with equal solemnity.

Having watched the older children opening their gifts, I already knew that the big gifts were not
necessarily the nicest ones. One girl my age got a large coloring book of biblical characters, while a
less greedy girl who selected a smaller box received a glass vial of lavender toilet water. The sound of
the box was also important. A ten-year-old boy had chosen a box that jangled when he shook it. It
was a tin globe of the world with a slit for inserting money. He must have thought it was full of dimes
and nickels, because when he saw that it had just ten pennies, his face fell with such undisguised
disappointment that his mother slapped the side of his head and led him out of the church hall,
apologizing to the crowd for her son who had such bad manners he couldn't appreciate such a fine
gift.

As I peered into the sack, I quickly fingered the remaining presents, testing their weight, imagining
what they contained. I chose a heavy, compact one that was wrapped in shiny silver foil and a red
satin ribbon. It was a twelve-pack of Life Savers and I spent the rest of the party arranging and
rearranging the candy tubes in the order of my favorites. My brother Winston chose wisely as well.
His present turned out to be a box of intricate plastic parts; the instructions on the box proclaimed
that when they were properly assembled he would have an authentic miniature replica of a World
War II submarine.

Vincent got the chess set, which would have been a very decent present to get at a church Christmas
party, except it was obviously used and, as we discovered later, it was missing a black pawn and a
white knight. My mother graciously thanked the unknown benefactor, saying, "Too good. Cost too
much." At which point, an old lady with fine white, wispy hair nodded toward our family and said
with a whistling whisper, "Merry, merry Christmas."

When we got home, my mother told Vincent to throw the chess set away. "She not want it. We not
want it." she said, tossing her head stiffly to the side with a tight, proud smile. My brothers had deaf
ears. They were already lining up the chess pieces and reading from the dog-eared instruction book.
*

I watched Vincent and Winston play during Christmas week. The chessboard seemed to hold
elaborate secrets waiting to be untangled. The chessmen were more powerful than old Li's magic
herbs that cured ancestral curses. And my brothers wore such serious faces that I was sure
something was at stake that was greater than avoiding the tradesmen's door to Hong Sing's.

"Let me! Let me!" I begged between games when one brother or the other would sit back with a
deep sigh of relief and victory, the other annoyed, unable to let go of the outcome. Vincent at first
refused to let me play, but when I offered my Life Savers as replacements for the buttons that filled in
for the missing pieces, he relented. He chose the flavors: wild cherry for the black pawn and
peppermint for the white knight. Winner could eat both.

As our mother sprinkled flour and rolled out small doughy circles for the steamed dumplings that
would be our dinner that night, Vincent explained the rules, pointing to each piece. "You have
sixteen pieces and so do I. One king and queen, two bishops, two knights, two castles, and eight
pawns. The pawns can only move forward one step, except on the first move. Then they can move
two. But they can only take men by moving crossways like this, except in the beginning, when you
can move ahead and take another pawn."

"Why?" I asked as I moved my pawn. "Why can't they move more steps?"

"Because they're pawns," he said.

"But why do they go crossways to take other men? Why aren't there any women and children?"

"Why is the sky blue? Why must you always ask stupid questions?" asked Vincent. "This is a game.
These are the rules. I didn't make them up. See. Here in the book." He jabbed a page with a pawn in
his hand. "Pawn. P-A-W-N. Pawn. Read it yourself."

My mother patted the flour off her hands. "Let me see book," she said quietly. She scanned the
pages quickly, not reading the foreign English symbols, seeming to search deliberately for nothing in
particular.

"This American rules," she concluded at last. "Every time people come out from foreign country,
must know rules. You not know, judge say, Too bad, go back. They not telling you why so you can use
their way go forward. They say, Don't know why, you find out yourself. But they knowing all the time.
Better you take it, find out why yourself." She tossed her head back with a satisfied smile.
I found out about all the whys later. I read the rules and looked up all the big words in a dictionary. I
borrowed books from the Chinatown library. I studied each chess piece, trying to absorb the power
each contained.

I learned about opening moves and why it's important to control the center early on; the shortest
distance between two points is straight down the middle. I learned about the middle game and why
tactics between two adversaries are like clashing ideas; the one who plays better has the clearest
plans for both attacking and getting out of traps. I learned why it is essential in the endgame to have
foresight, a mathematical understanding of all possible moves, and patience; all weaknesses and
advantages become evident to a strong adversary and are obscured to a tiring opponent. I
discovered that for the whole game one must gather invisible strengths and see the endgame before
the game begins.

I also found out why I should never reveal "why" to others. A little knowledge withheld is a great
advantage one should store for future use. That is the power of chess. It is a game of secrets in which
one must show and never tell.

I loved the secrets I found within the sixty-four black and white squares. I carefully drew a handmade
chessboard and pinned it to the wall next to my bed, where I would stare for hours at imaginary
battles. Soon I no longer lost any games or Life Savers, but I lost my adversaries. Winston and Vincent
decided they were more interested in roaming the streets after school in their Hopalong Cassidy
cowboy hats.

On a cold spring afternoon, while walking home from school, I detoured through the playground at
the end of our alley. I saw a group of old men, two seated across a folding table playing a game of
chess, others smoking pipes, eating peanuts, and watching. I ran home and grabbed Vincent's chess
set, which was bound in a cardboard box with rubber bands. I also carefully selected two prized rolls
of Life Savers. I came back to the park and approached a man who was observing the game.

"Want to play?" I asked him. His face widened with surprise and he grinned as he looked at the box
under my arm.

"Little sister, been a long time since I play with dolls," he said, smiling benevolently. I quickly put the
box down next to him on the bench and displayed my retort.

Lau Po, as he allowed me to call him, turned out to be a much better player than my brothers. I lost
many games and many Life Savers. But over the weeks, with each diminishing roll of candies, I added
new secrets. Lau Po gave me the names. The Double Attack from the East and West Shores. Throwing
Stones on the Drowning Man. The Sudden Meeting of the Clan. The Surprise from the Sleeping
Guard. The Humble Servant Who Kills the King. Sand in the Eyes of Advancing Forces. A Double Killing
Without Blood.

There were also the fine points of chess etiquette. Keep captured men in neat rows, as well-tended
prisoners. Never announce "Check" with vanity, lest someone with an unseen sword slit your throat.
Never hurl pieces into the sandbox after you have lost a game, because then you must find them
again, by yourself, after apologizing to all around you. By the end of the summer, Lau Po had taught
me all he knew, and I had become a better chess player.

A small weekend crowd of Chinese people and tourists would gather as I played and defeated my
opponents one by one. My mother would join the crowds during these outdoor exhibition games.
She sat proudly on the bench, telling my admirers with proper Chinese humility, "Is luck."

A man who watched me play in the park suggested that my mother allow me to play in local chess
tournaments. My mother smiled graciously, an answer that meant nothing. I desperately wanted to
go, but I bit back my tongue. I knew she would not let me play among strangers. So as we walked
home I said in a small voice that I didn't want to play in the local tournament. They would have
American rules. If I lost, I would bring shame on my family.

"Is shame you fall down nobody push you," said my mother.

During my first tournament, my mother sat with me in the front row as I waited for my turn. I
frequently bounced my legs to unstick them from the cold metal seat of the folding chair. When my
name was called, I leapt up. My mother unwrapped something in her lap. It was her chang, a small
tablet of red jade which held the sun's fire. "Is luck," she whispered, and tucked it into my dress
pocket. I turned to my opponent, a fifteen-year-old boy from Oakland. He looked at me, wrinkling his
nose.

As I began to play, the boy disappeared, the color ran out of the room, and I saw only my white
pieces and his black ones waiting on the other side. A light wind began blowing past my ears. It
whispered secrets only I could hear.

"Blow from the South," it murmured. "The wind leaves no trail." I saw a clear path, the traps to
avoid. The crowd rustled. "Shhh! Shhh!" said the corners of the room. The wind blew stronger.
"Throw sand from the East to distract him." The knight came forward ready for the sacrifice. The
wind hissed, louder and louder. "Blow, blow, blow. He cannot see. He is blind now. Make him lean
away from the wind so he is easier to knock down."
"Check," I said, as the wind roared with laughter. The wind died down to little puffs, my own breath.

My mother placed my first trophy next to a new plastic chess set that the neighborhood Tao society
had given to me. As she wiped each piece with a soft cloth, she said, "Next time win more, lose less."

"Ma, it's not how many pieces you lose," I said. "Sometimes you need to lose pieces to get ahead."

"Better to lose less, see if you really need."

At the next tournament, I won again, but it was my mother who wore the triumphant grin.

"Lost eight piece this time. Last time was eleven. What I tell you? Better off lose less!" I was annoyed,
but I couldn't say anything.

I attended more tournaments, each one farther away from home. I won all games, in all divisions.
The Chinese bakery downstairs from our flat displayed my growing collection of trophies in its
window, amidst the dust-covered cakes that were never picked up. The day after I won an important
regional tournament, the window encased a fresh sheet cake with whipped-cream frosting and red
script saying "Congratulations, Waverly Jong, Chinatown Chess Champion." Soon after that, a flower
shop, headstone engraver, and funeral parlor offered to sponsor me in national tournaments. That's
when my mother decided I no longer had to do the dishes. Winston and Vincent had to do my
chores.

"Why does she get to play and we do all the work," complained Vincent. "Is new American rules,"
said my mother. "Meimei play, squeeze all her brains out for win chess. You play, worth squeeze
towel."

By my ninth birthday, I was a national chess champion. I was still some 429 points away from grand-
master status, but I was touted as the Great American Hope, a child prodigy and a girl to boot. They
ran a photo of me in Life magazine next to a quote in which Bobby Fischer said, "There will never be
a woman grand master." "Your move, Bobby," said the caption.

The day they took the magazine picture I wore neatly plaited braids clipped with plastic barrettes
trimmed with rhinestones. I was playing in a large high school auditorium that echoed with phlegmy
coughs and the squeaky rubber knobs of chair legs sliding across freshly waxed wooden floors.
Seated across from me was an American man, about the same age as Lau Po, maybe fifty. I
remember that his sweaty brow seemed to weep at my every move. He wore a dark, malodorous
suit. One of his pockets was stuffed with a great white kerchief on which he wiped his palm before
sweeping his hand over the chosen chess piece with great flourish.

In my crisp pink-and-white dress with scratchy lace at the neck, one of two my mother had sewn for
these special occasions, I would clasp my hands under my chin, the delicate points of my elbows
poised lightly on the table in the manner my mother had shown me for posing for the press. I would
swing my patent leather shoes back and forth like an impatient child riding on a school bus. Then I
would pause, suck in my lips, twirl my chosen piece in midair as if undecided, and then firmly plant it
in its new threatening place, with a triumphant smile thrown back at my opponent for good
measure.

I no longer played in the alley of Waverly Place. I never visited the playground where the pigeons and
old men gathered. I went to school, then directly home to learn new chess secrets, cleverly
concealed advantages, more escape routes.

But I found it difficult to concentrate at home. My mother had a habit of standing over me while I
plotted out my games. I think she thought of herself as my protective ally. Her lips would be sealed
tight, and after each move I made, a soft "Hmmmmph" would escape from her nose.

"Ma, I can't practice when you stand there like that," I said one day. She retreated to the kitchen and
made loud noises with the pots and pans. When the crashing stopped, I could see out of the corner
of my eye that she was standing in the doorway. "Hmmmmph!" Only this one came out of her tight
throat.

My parents made many concessions to allow me to practice. One time I complained that the
bedroom I shared was so noisy that I couldn't think. Thereafter, my brothers slept in a bed in the
living room facing the street. I said I couldn't finish my rice; my head didn't work right when my
stomach was too full. I left the table with half-finished bowls and nobody complained. But there was
one duty I couldn't avoid. I had to accompany my mother on Saturday market days when I had no
tournament to play. My mother would proudly walk with me, visiting many shops, buying very little.
"This my daughter Wave-ly Jong," she said to whoever looked her way.

One day after we left a shop I said under my breath, "I wish you wouldn't do that, telling everybody
I'm your daughter." My mother stopped walking.
Crowds of people with heavy bags pushed past us on the sidewalk, bumping into first one shoulder,
then another.

"Aii-ya. So shame be with mother?" She grasped my hand even tighter as she glared at me.

I looked down. "It's not that, it's just so obvious. It's just so embarrassing."

"Embarrass you be my daughter?" Her voice was cracking with anger.

"That's not what I meant. That's not what I said."

"What you say?"

I knew it was a mistake to say anything more, but I heard my voice speaking, "Why do you have to
use me to show off? If you want to show off, then why don't you learn to play chess?"

My mother's eyes turned into dangerous black slits. She had no words for me, just sharp silence.

I felt the wind rushing around my hot ears. I jerked my hand out of my mother's tight grasp and spun
around, knocking into an old woman. Her bag of groceries spilled to the ground.

"Aii-ya! Stupid girl!" my mother and the woman cried. Oranges and tin cans careened down the
sidewalk. As my mother stooped to help the old woman pick up the escaping food, I took off.

I raced down the street, dashing between people, not looking back as my mother screamed shrilly,
"Meimei! Meimei!" I fled down an alley, past dark, curtained shops and merchants washing the
grime off their windows. I sped into the sunlight, into a large street crowded with tourists examining
trinkets and souvenirs. I ducked into another dark alley, down another street, up another alley. I ran
until it hurt and I realized I had nowhere to go, that I was not running from anything. The alleys
contained no escape routes.

My breath came out like angry smoke. It was cold. I sat down on an upturned plastic pail next to a
stack of empty boxes, cupping my chin with my hands, thinking hard. I imagined my mother, first
walking briskly down one street or another looking for me, then giving up and returning home to
await my arrival. After two hours, I stood up on creaking legs and slowly walked home.

The alley was quiet and I could see the yellow lights shining from our flat like two tiger's eyes in the
night. I climbed the sixteen steps to the door, advancing quietly up each so as not to make any
warning sounds. I turned the knob; the door was locked. I heard a chair moving, quick steps, the
locks turning-click! click! click!-and then the door opened.

"About time you got home," said Vincent. "Boy, are you in trouble."

He slid back to the dinner table. On a platter were the remains of a large fish, its fleshy head still
connected to bones swimming upstream in vain escape. Standing there waiting for my punishment, I
heard my mother speak in a dry voice.

"We not concerning this girl. This girl not have concerning for us."

Nobody looked at me. Bone chopsticks clinked against the inside of bowls being emptied into hungry
mouths.

I walked into my room, closed the door, and lay down on my bed. The room was dark, the ceiling
filled with shadows from the dinnertime lights of neighboring flats.

In my head, I saw a chessboard with sixty-four black and white squares. Opposite me was my
opponent, two angry black slits. She wore a triumphant smile. "Strongest wind cannot be seen," she
said.

Her black men advanced across the plane, slowly marching to each successive level as a single unit.
My white pieces screamed as they scurried and fell off the board one by one. As her men drew closer
to my edge, I felt myself growing light. I rose up into the air and flew out the window. Higher and
higher, above the alley, over the tops of tiled roofs, where I was gathered up by the wind and pushed
up toward the night sky until everything below me disappeared and I was alone.

I closed my eyes and pondered my next move

“The Paper Menagerie” by Ken Liu

One of my earliest memories starts with me sobbing. I refused to be soothed no matter what Mom
and Dad tried.

Dad gave up and left the bedroom, but Mom took me into the kitchen and sat me down at the
breakfast table.

"Kan, kan," she said, as she pulled a sheet of wrapping paper from on top of the fridge. For years,
Mom carefully sliced open the wrappings around Christmas gifts and saved them on top of the fridge
in a thick stack.

She set the paper down, plain side facing up, and began to fold it. I stopped crying and watched her,
curious.

She turned the paper over and folded it again. She pleated, packed, tucked, rolled, and twisted until
the paper disappeared between her cupped hands. Then she lifted the folded-up paper packet to her
mouth and blew into it, like a balloon.

"Kan," she said. "Laohu." She put her hands down on the table and let go.

A little paper tiger stood on the table, the size of two fists placed together. The skin of the tiger was
the pattern on the wrapping paper, white background with red candy canes and green Christmas
trees.

I reached out to Mom's creation. Its tail twitched, and it pounced playfully at my finger.
"Rawrr-sa," it growled, the sound somewhere between a cat and rustling newspapers.

I laughed, startled, and stroked its back with an index finger. The paper tiger vibrated under my
finger, purring.

"Zhe jiao zhezhi," Mom said. This is called origami.

I didn't know this at the time, but Mom's kind was special. She breathed into them so that they
shared her breath, and thus moved with her life. This was her magic.

Dad had picked Mom out of a catalog.

One time, when I was in high school, I asked Dad about the details. He was trying to get me to speak
to Mom again.

He had signed up for the introduction service back in the spring of 1973. Flipping through the pages
steadily, he had spent no more than a few seconds on each page until he saw the picture of Mom.

I've never seen this picture. Dad described it: Mom was sitting in a chair, her side to the camera,
wearing a tight green silk cheongsam. Her head was turned to the camera so that her long black hair
was draped artfully over her chest and shoulder. She looked out at him with the eyes of a calm child.
"That was the last page of the catalog I saw," he said.

The catalog said she was eighteen, loved to dance, and spoke good English because she was from
Hong Kong. None of these facts turned out to be true.

He wrote to her, and the company passed their messages back and forth. Finally, he flew to Hong
Kong to meet her.

"The people at the company had been writing her responses. She didn't know any English other than
'hello' and 'goodbye.'"

What kind of woman puts herself into a catalog so that she can be bought? The high school me
thought I knew so much about everything. Contempt felt good, like wine.

Instead of storming into the office to demand his money back, he paid a waitress at the hotel
restaurant to translate for them.

"She would look at me, her eyes halfway between scared and hopeful, while I spoke. And when the
girl began translating what I said, she'd start to smile slowly."

He flew back to Connecticut and began to apply for the papers for her to come to him. I was born a
year later, in the Year of the Tiger.

#
At my request, Mom also made a goat, a deer, and a water buffalo out of wrapping paper. They
would run around the living room while Laohu chased after them, growling. When he caught them
he would press down until the air went out of them and they became just flat, folded-up pieces of
paper. I would then have to blow into them to re-inflate them so they could run around some more.

Sometimes, the animals got into trouble. Once, the water buffalo jumped into a dish of soy sauce on
the table at dinner. (He wanted to wallow, like a real water buffalo.) I picked him out quickly but the
capillary action had already pulled the dark liquid high up into his legs. The sauce-softened legs
would not hold him up, and he collapsed onto the table. I dried him out in the sun, but his legs
became crooked after that, and he ran around with a limp. Mom eventually wrapped his legs in saran
wrap so that he could wallow to his heart's content (just not in soy sauce).

Also, Laohu liked to pounce at sparrows when he and I played in the backyard. But one time, a
cornered bird struck back in desperation and tore his ear. He whimpered and winced as I held him
and Mom patched his ear together with tape. He avoided birds after that.

And then one day, I saw a TV documentary about sharks and asked Mom for one of my own. She
made the shark, but he flapped about on the table unhappily. I filled the sink with water, and put him
in. He swam around and around happily. However, after a while he became soggy and translucent,
and slowly sank to the bottom, the folds coming undone. I reached in to rescue him, and all I ended
up with was a wet piece of paper.

Laohu put his front paws together at the edge of the sink and rested his head on them. Ears
drooping, he made a low growl in his throat that made me feel guilty.

Mom made a new shark for me, this time out of tin foil. The shark lived happily in a large goldfish
bowl. Laohu and I liked to sit next to the bowl to watch the tin foil shark chasing the goldfish, Laohu
sticking his face up against the bowl on the other side so that I saw his eyes, magnified to the size of
coffee cups, staring at me from across the bowl.
#

When I was ten, we moved to a new house across town. Two of the women neighbors came by to
welcome us. Dad served them drinks and then apologized for having to run off to the utility company
to straighten out the prior owner's bills. "Make yourselves at home. My wife doesn't speak much
English, so don't think she's being rude for not talking to you."

While I read in the dining room, Mom unpacked in the kitchen. The neighbors conversed in the living
room, not trying to be particularly quiet.

"He seems like a normal enough man. Why did he do that?"

"Something about the mixing never seems right. The child looks unfinished. Slanty eyes, white face.
A little monster."

"Do you think he can speak English?"

The women hushed. After a while they came into the dining room.

"Hello there! What's your name?"

"Jack," I said.
"That doesn't sound very Chinesey."

Mom came into the dining room then. She smiled at the women. The three of them stood in a
triangle around me, smiling and nodding at each other, with nothing to say, until Dad came back.

Mark, one of the neighborhood boys, came over with his Star Wars action figures. Obi-Wan Kenobi's
lightsaber lit up and he could swing his arms and say, in a tinny voice, "Use the Force!" I didn't think
the figure looked much like the real Obi-Wan at all.

Together, we watched him repeat this performance five times on the coffee table. "Can he do
anything else?" I asked.

Mark was annoyed by my question. "Look at all the details," he said.

I looked at the details. I wasn't sure what I was supposed to say.

Mark was disappointed by my response. "Show me your toys."

I didn't have any toys except my paper menagerie. I brought Laohu out from my bedroom. By then he
was very worn, patched all over with tape and glue, evidence of the years of repairs Mom and I had
done on him. He was no longer as nimble and sure-footed as before. I sat him down on the coffee
table. I could hear the skittering steps of the other animals behind in the hallway, timidly peeking
into the living room.
"Xiao laohu," I said, and stopped. I switched to English. "This is Tiger." Cautiously, Laohu strode up
and purred at Mark, sniffing his hands.

Mark examined the Christmas-wrap pattern of Laohu's skin. "That doesn't look like a tiger at all. Your
Mom makes toys for you from trash?"

I had never thought of Laohu as trash. But looking at him now, he was really just a piece of wrapping
paper.

Mark pushed Obi-Wan's head again. The lightsaber flashed; he moved his arms up and down. "Use
the Force!"

Laohu turned and pounced, knocking the plastic figure off the table. It hit the floor and broke, and
Obi-Wan's head rolled under the couch. "Rawwww," Laohu laughed. I joined him.

Mark punched me, hard. "This was very expensive! You can't even find it in the stores now. It
probably cost more than what your dad paid for your mom!"

I stumbled and fell to the floor. Laohu growled and leapt at Mark's face.

Mark screamed, more out of fear and surprise than pain. Laohu was only made of paper, after all.

Mark grabbed Laohu and his snarl was choked off as Mark crumpled him in his hand and tore him in
half. He balled up the two pieces of paper and threw them at me. "Here's your stupid cheap Chinese
garbage."
After Mark left, I spent a long time trying, without success, to tape together the pieces, smooth out
the paper, and follow the creases to refold Laohu. Slowly, the other animals came into the living
room and gathered around us, me and the torn wrapping paper that used to be Laohu.

My fight with Mark didn't end there. Mark was popular at school. I never want to think again about
the two weeks that followed.

I came home that Friday at the end of the two weeks. "Xuexiao hao ma?" Mom asked. I said nothing
and went to the bathroom. I looked into the mirror. I look nothing like her, nothing.

At dinner I asked Dad, "Do I have a chink face?"

Dad put down his chopsticks. Even though I had never told him what happened in school, he seemed
to understand. He closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "No, you don't."

Mom looked at Dad, not understanding. She looked back at me. "Sha jiao chink?"

"English," I said. "Speak English."

She tried. "What happen?"

I pushed the chopsticks and the bowl before me away: stir-fried green peppers with five-spice beef.
"We should eat American food."

Dad tried to reason. "A lot of families cook Chinese sometimes."

"We are not other families." I looked at him. Other families don't have moms who don't belong.

He looked away. And then he put a hand on Mom's shoulder. "I'll get you a cookbook."

Mom turned to me. "Bu haochi?"

"English," I said, raising my voice. "Speak English."

Mom reached out to touch my forehead, feeling for my temperature. "Fashaola?"

I brushed her hand away. "I'm fine. Speak English!" I was shouting.

"Speak English to him," Dad said to Mom. "You knew this was going to happen some day. What did
you expect?"

Mom dropped her hands to her side. She sat, looking from Dad to me, and back to Dad again. She
tried to speak, stopped, and tried again, and stopped again.
"You have to," Dad said. "I've been too easy on you. Jack needs to fit in."

Mom looked at him. "If I say 'love,' I feel here." She pointed to her lips. "If I say 'ai,' I feel here." She
put her hand over her heart.

Dad shook his head. "You are in America."

Mom hunched down in her seat, looking like the water buffalo when Laohu used to pounce on him
and squeeze the air of life out of him.

"And I want some real toys."

Dad bought me a full set of Star Wars action figures. I gave the Obi-Wan Kenobi to Mark.

I packed the paper menagerie in a large shoebox and put it under the bed.

The next morning, the animals had escaped and took over their old favorite spots in my room. I
caught them all and put them back into the shoebox, taping the lid shut. But the animals made so
much noise in the box that I finally shoved it into the corner of the attic as far away from my room as
possible.
If Mom spoke to me in Chinese, I refused to answer her. After a while, she tried to use more English.
But her accent and broken sentences embarrassed me. I tried to correct her.

Eventually, she stopped speaking altogether if I were around.

Mom began to mime things if she needed to let me know something. She tried to hug me the way
she saw American mothers did on TV. I thought her movements exaggerated, uncertain, ridiculous,
graceless. She saw that I was annoyed, and stopped.

"You shouldn't treat your mother that way," Dad said. But he couldn't look me in the eyes as he said
it. Deep in his heart, he must have realized that it was a mistake to have tried to take a Chinese
peasant girl and expect her to fit in the suburbs of Connecticut.

Mom learned to cook American style. I played video games and studied French.

Every once in a while, I would see her at the kitchen table studying the plain side of a sheet of
wrapping paper. Later a new paper animal would appear on my nightstand and try to cuddle up to
me. I caught them, squeezed them until the air went out of them, and then stuffed them away in the
box in the attic.

Mom finally stopped making the animals when I was in high school. By then her English was much
better, but I was already at that age when I wasn't interested in what she had to say whatever
language she used.

Sometimes, when I came home and saw her tiny body busily moving about in the kitchen, singing a
song in Chinese to herself, it was hard for me to believe that she gave birth to me. We had nothing in
common. She might as well be from the moon. I would hurry on to my room, where I could continue
my all-American pursuit of happiness.
#

Dad and I stood, one on each side of Mom, lying on the hospital bed. She was not yet even forty, but
she looked much older.

For years she had refused to go to the doctor for the pain inside her that she said was no big deal. By
the time an ambulance finally carried her in, the cancer had spread far beyond the limits of surgery.

My mind was not in the room. It was the middle of the on-campus recruiting season, and I was
focused on resumes, transcripts, and strategically constructed interview schedules. I schemed about
how to lie to the corporate recruiters most effectively so that they'll offer to buy me. I understood
intellectually that it was terrible to think about this while your mother lay dying. But that
understanding didn't mean I could change how I felt.

She was conscious. Dad held her left hand with both of his own. He leaned down to kiss her
forehead. He seemed weak and old in a way that startled me. I realized that I knew almost as little
about Dad as I did about Mom.

Mom smiled at him. "I'm fine."

She turned to me, still smiling. "I know you have to go back to school." Her voice was very weak and
it was difficult to hear her over the hum of the machines hooked up to her. "Go. Don't worry about
me. This is not a big deal. Just do well in school."

I reached out to touch her hand, because I thought that was what I was supposed to do. I was
relieved. I was already thinking about the flight back, and the bright California sunshine.
She whispered something to Dad. He nodded and left the room.

"Jack, if — " she was caught up in a fit of coughing, and could not speak for some time. "If I don't
make it, don't be too sad and hurt your health. Focus on your life. Just keep that box you have in the
attic with you, and every year, at Qingming, just take it out and think about me. I'll be with you
always."

Qingming was the Chinese Festival for the Dead. When I was very young, Mom used to write a letter
on Qingming to her dead parents back in China, telling them the good news about the past year of
her life in America. She would read the letter out loud to me, and if I made a comment about
something, she would write it down in the letter too. Then she would fold the letter into a paper
crane, and release it, facing west. We would then watch, as the crane flapped its crisp wings on its
long journey west, towards the Pacific, towards China, towards the graves of Mom's family.

It had been many years since I last did that with her.

"I don't know anything about the Chinese calendar," I said. "Just rest, Mom. "

"Just keep the box with you and open it once in a while. Just open — " she began to cough again.

"It's okay, Mom." I stroked her arm awkwardly.

"Haizi, mama ai ni — " Her cough took over again. An image from years ago flashed into my memory:
Mom saying ai and then putting her hand over her heart.

"Alright, Mom. Stop talking."

Dad came back, and I said that I needed to get to the airport early because I didn't want to miss my
flight.

She died when my plane was somewhere over Nevada.

Dad aged rapidly after Mom died. The house was too big for him and had to be sold. My girlfriend
Susan and I went to help him pack and clean the place.

Susan found the shoebox in the attic. The paper menagerie, hidden in the uninsulated darkness of
the attic for so long, had become brittle and the bright wrapping paper patterns had faded.

"I've never seen origami like this," Susan said. "Your Mom was an amazing artist."

The paper animals did not move. Perhaps whatever magic had animated them stopped when Mom
died. Or perhaps I had only imagined that these paper constructions were once alive. The memory of
children could not be trusted.

It was the first weekend in April, two years after Mom's death. Susan was out of town on one of her
endless trips as a management consultant and I was home, lazily flipping through the TV channels.
I paused at a documentary about sharks. Suddenly I saw, in my mind, Mom's hands, as they folded
and refolded tin foil to make a shark for me, while Laohu and I watched.

A rustle. I looked up and saw that a ball of wrapping paper and torn tape was on the floor next to the
bookshelf. I walked over to pick it up for the trash.

The ball of paper shifted, unfurled itself, and I saw that it was Laohu, who I hadn't thought about in a
very long time. "Rawrr-sa." Mom must have put him back together after I had given up.

He was smaller than I remembered. Or maybe it was just that back then my fists were smaller.

Susan had put the paper animals around our apartment as decoration. She probably left Laohu in a
pretty hidden corner because he looked so shabby.

I sat down on the floor, and reached out a finger. Laohu's tail twitched, and he pounced playfully. I
laughed, stroking his back. Laohu purred under my hand.

"How've you been, old buddy?"

Laohu stopped playing. He got up, jumped with feline grace into my lap, and proceeded to unfold
himself.
In my lap was a square of creased wrapping paper, the plain side up. It was filled with dense Chinese
characters. I had never learned to read Chinese, but I knew the characters for son, and they were at
the top, where you'd expect them in a letter addressed to you, written in Mom's awkward, childish
handwriting.

I went to the computer to check the Internet. Today was Qingming.

I took the letter with me downtown, where I knew the Chinese tour buses stopped. I stopped every
tourist, asking, "Nin hui du zhongwen ma?" Can you read Chinese? I hadn't spoken Chinese in so long
that I wasn't sure if they understood.

A young woman agreed to help. We sat down on a bench together, and she read the letter to me
aloud. The language that I had tried to forget for years came back, and I felt the words sinking into
me, through my skin, through my bones, until they squeezed tight around my heart.

Son,

We haven't talked in a long time. You are so angry when I try to touch you that I'm afraid. And I think
maybe this pain I feel all the time now is something serious.

So I decided to write to you. I'm going to write in the paper animals I made for you that you used to
like so much.
The animals will stop moving when I stop breathing. But if I write to you with all my heart, I'll leave a
little of myself behind on this paper, in these words. Then, if you think of me on Qingming, when the
spirits of the departed are allowed to visit their families, you'll make the parts of myself I leave
behind come alive too. The creatures I made for you will again leap and run and pounce, and maybe
you'll get to see these words then.

Because I have to write with all my heart, I need to write to you in Chinese.

All this time I still haven't told you the story of my life. When you were little, I always thought I'd tell
you the story when you were older, so you could understand. But somehow that chance never came
up.

I was born in 1957, in Sigulu Village, Hebei Province. Your grandparents were both from very poor
peasant families with few relatives. Only a few years after I was born, the Great Famines struck
China, during which thirty million people died. The first memory I have was waking up to see my
mother eating dirt so that she could fill her belly and leave the last bit of flour for me.

Things got better after that. Sigulu is famous for its zhezhi papercraft, and my mother taught me how
to make paper animals and give them life. This was practical magic in the life of the village. We made
paper birds to chase grasshoppers away from the fields, and paper tigers to keep away the mice. For
Chinese New Year my friends and I made red paper dragons. I'll never forget the sight of all those
little dragons zooming across the sky overhead, holding up strings of exploding firecrackers to scare
away all the bad memories of the past year. You would have loved it.

Then came the Cultural Revolution in 1966. Neighbor turned on neighbor, and brother against
brother. Someone remembered that my mother's brother, my uncle, had left for Hong Kong back in
1946, and became a merchant there. Having a relative in Hong Kong meant we were spies and
enemies of the people, and we had to be struggled against in every way. Your poor grandmother —
she couldn't take the abuse and threw herself down a well. Then some boys with hunting muskets
dragged your grandfather away one day into the woods, and he never came back.
There I was, a ten-year-old orphan. The only relative I had in the world was my uncle in Hong Kong. I
snuck away one night and climbed onto a freight train going south.

Down in Guangdong Province a few days later, some men caught me stealing food from a field. When
they heard that I was trying to get to Hong Kong, they laughed. "It's your lucky day. Our trade is to
bring girls to Hong Kong."

They hid me in the bottom of a truck along with other girls, and smuggled us across the border.

We were taken to a basement and told to stand up and look healthy and intelligent for the buyers.
Families paid the warehouse a fee and came by to look us over and select one of us to "adopt."

The Chin family picked me to take care of their two boys. I got up every morning at four to prepare
breakfast. I fed and bathed the boys. I shopped for food. I did the laundry and swept the floors. I
followed the boys around and did their bidding. At night I was locked into a cupboard in the kitchen
to sleep. If I was slow or did anything wrong I was beaten. If the boys did anything wrong I was
beaten. If I was caught trying to learn English I was beaten.

"Why do you want to learn English?" Mr. Chin asked. "You want to go to the police? We'll tell the
police that you are a mainlander illegally in Hong Kong. They'd love to have you in their prison."

Six years I lived like this. One day, an old woman who sold fish to me in the morning market pulled
me aside.

"I know girls like you. How old are you now, sixteen? One day, the man who owns you will get drunk,
and he'll look at you and pull you to him and you can't stop him. The wife will find out, and then you
will think you really have gone to hell. You have to get out of this life. I know someone who can
help."
She told me about American men who wanted Asian wives. If I can cook, clean, and take care of my
American husband, he'll give me a good life. It was the only hope I had. And that was how I got into
the catalog with all those lies and met your father. It is not a very romantic story, but it is my story.

In the suburbs of Connecticut, I was lonely. Your father was kind and gentle with me, and I was very
grateful to him. But no one understood me, and I understood nothing.

But then you were born! I was so happy when I looked into your face and saw shades of my mother,
my father, and myself. I had lost my entire family, all of Sigulu, everything I ever knew and loved. But
there you were, and your face was proof that they were real. I hadn't made them up.

Now I had someone to talk to. I would teach you my language, and we could together remake a small
piece of everything that I loved and lost. When you said your first words to me, in Chinese that had
the same accent as my mother and me, I cried for hours. When I made the first zhezhi animals for
you, and you laughed, I felt there were no worries in the world.

You grew up a little, and now you could even help your father and I talk to each other. I was really at
home now. I finally found a good life. I wished my parents could be here, so that I could cook for
them, and give them a good life too. But my parents were no longer around. You know what the
Chinese think is the saddest feeling in the world? It's for a child to finally grow the desire to take care
of his parents, only to realize that they were long gone.

Son, I know that you do not like your Chinese eyes, which are my eyes. I know that you do not like
your Chinese hair, which is my hair. But can you understand how much joy your very existence
brought to me? And can you understand how it felt when you stopped talking to me and won't let
me talk to you in Chinese? I felt I was losing everything all over again.

Why won't you talk to me, son? The pain makes it hard to write.
#

The young woman handed the paper back to me. I could not bear to look into her face.

Without looking up, I asked for her help in tracing out the character for ai on the paper below Mom's
letter. I wrote the character again and again on the paper, intertwining my pen strokes with her
words.

The young woman reached out and put a hand on my shoulder. Then she got up and left, leaving me
alone with my mother.

Following the creases, I refolded the paper back into Laohu. I cradled him in the crook of my arm,
and as he purred, we began the walk home.

“Sredni Vashtar” by Saki

Conradin was ten years old, and the doctor had pronounced his professional opinion that the boy
would not live another five years. The doctor was silky and effete, and counted for little, but his
opinion was endorsed by Mrs. De Ropp, who counted for nearly everything. Mrs. De Ropp was
Conradin's cousin and guardian, and in his eyes she represented those three-fifths of the world that
are necessary and disagreeable and real; the other two-fifths, in perpetual antagonism to the
foregoing, were summed up in himself and his imagination. One of these days Conradin supposed he
would succumb to the mastering pressure of wearisome necessary things--such as illnesses and
coddling restrictions and drawn-out dullness. Without his imagination, which was rampant under the
spur of loneliness, he would have succumbed long ago.

Mrs. De Ropp would never, in her honestest moments, have confessed to herself that she disliked
Conradin, though she might have been dimly aware that thwarting him “for his good” was a duty
which she did not find particularly irksome. Conradin hated her with a desperate sincerity which he
was perfectly able to mask. Such few pleasures as he could contrive for himself gained an added
relish from the likelihood that they would be displeasing to his guardian, and from the realm of his
imagination she was locked out--an unclean thing, which should find no entrance.

In the dull, cheerless garden, overlooked by so many windows that were ready to open with a
message not to do this or that, or a reminder that medicines were due, he found little attraction. The
few fruit-trees that it contained were set jealously apart from his plucking, as though they were rare
specimens of their kind blooming in an arid waste; it would probably have been difficult to find a
market-gardener who would have offered ten shillings for their entire yearly produce. In a forgotten
corner, however, almost hidden behind a dismal shrubbery, was a disused tool-shed of respectable
proportions, and within its walls Conradin found a haven, something that took on the varying aspects
of a playroom and a cathedral. He had peopled it with a legion of familiar phantoms, evoked partly
from fragments of history and partly from his own brain, but it also boasted two inmates of flesh and
blood. In one corner lived a ragged-plumaged Houdan hen, on which the boy lavished an affection
that had scarcely another outlet. Further back in the gloom stood a large hutch, divided into two
compartments, one of which was fronted with close iron bars. This was the abode of a large polecat-
ferret, which a friendly butcher-boy had once smuggled, cage and all, into its present quarters, in
exchange for a long-secreted hoard of small silver. Conradin was dreadfully afraid of the lithe, sharp-
fanged beast, but it was his most treasured possession. Its very presence in the tool-shed was a
secret and fearful joy, to be kept scrupulously from the knowledge of the Woman, as he privately
dubbed his cousin. And one day, out of Heaven knows what material, he spun the beast a wonderful
name, and from that moment it grew into a god and a religion. The Woman indulged in religion once
a week at a church near by, and took Conradin with her, but to him the church service was an alien
rite in the House of Rimmon. Every Thursday, in the dim and musty silence of the tool-shed, he
worshipped with mystic and elaborate ceremonial before the wooden hutch where dwelt Sredni
Vashtar, the great ferret. Red flowers in their season and scarlet berries in the winter-time were
offered at his shrine, for he was a god who laid some special stress on the fierce impatient side of
things, as opposed to the Woman's religion, which, as far as Conradin could observe, went to great
lengths in the contrary direction. And on great festivals powdered nutmeg was strewn in front of his
hutch, an important feature of the offering being that the nutmeg had to be stolen. These festivals
were of irregular occurrence, and were chiefly appointed to celebrate some passing event. On one
occasion, when Mrs. De Ropp suffered from acute toothache for three days, Conradin kept up the
festival during the entire three days, and almost succeeded in persuading himself that Sredni Vashtar
was personally responsible for the toothache. If the malady had lasted for another day the supply of
nutmeg would have given out.

The Houdan hen was never drawn into the cult of Sredni Vashtar. Conradin had long ago settled that
she was an Anabaptist. He did not pretend to have the remotest knowledge as to what an Anabaptist
was, but he privately hoped that it was dashing and not very respectable. Mrs. De Ropp was the
ground plan on which he based and detested all respectability.

After a while Conradin's absorption in the tool-shed began to attract the notice of his guardian. “It is
not good for him to be pottering down there in all weathers,” she promptly decided, and at breakfast
one morning she announced that the Houdan hen had been sold and taken away overnight. With her
short-sighted eyes she peered at Conradin, waiting for an outbreak of rage and sorrow, which she
was ready to rebuke with a flow of excellent precepts and reasoning. But Conradin said nothing:
there was nothing to be said. Something perhaps in his white set face gave her a momentary qualm,
for at tea that afternoon there was toast on the table, a delicacy which she usually banned on the
ground that it was bad for him; also because the making of it “gave trouble,” a deadly offence in the
middle-class feminine eye.

“I thought you liked toast,” she exclaimed, with an injured air, observing that he did not touch it.

“Sometimes,” said Conradin.

In the shed that evening there was an innovation in the worship of the hutch-god. Conradin had
been wont to chant his praises, tonight he asked a boon.
“Do one thing for me, Sredni Vashtar.”

The thing was not specified. As Sredni Vashtar was a god he must be supposed to know. And choking
back a sob as he looked at that other empty comer, Conradin went back to the world he so hated.

And every night, in the welcome darkness of his bedroom, and every evening in the dusk of the tool-
shed, Conradin's bitter litany went up: “Do one thing for me, Sredni Vashtar.”

Mrs. De Ropp noticed that the visits to the shed did not cease, and one day she made a further
journey of inspection.

“What are you keeping in that locked hutch?” she asked. “I believe it's guinea-pigs. I'll have them all
cleared away.”

Conradin shut his lips tight, but the Woman ransacked his bedroom till she found the carefully
hidden key, and forthwith marched down to the shed to complete her discovery. It was a cold
afternoon, and Conradin had been bidden to keep to the house. From the furthest window of the
dining-room the door of the shed could just be seen beyond the corner of the shrubbery, and there
Conradin stationed himself. He saw the Woman enter, and then he imagined her opening the door of
the sacred hutch and peering down with her short-sighted eyes into the thick straw bed where his
god lay hidden. Perhaps she would prod at the straw in her clumsy impatience. And Conradin
fervently breathed his prayer for the last time. But he knew as he prayed that he did not believe. He
knew that the Woman would come out presently with that pursed smile he loathed so well on her
face, and that in an hour or two the gardener would carry away his wonderful god, a god no longer,
but a simple brown ferret in a hutch. And he knew that the Woman would triumph always as she
triumphed now, and that he would grow ever more sickly under her pestering and domineering and
superior wisdom, till one day nothing would matter much more with him, and the doctor would be
proved right. And in the sting and misery of his defeat, he began to chant loudly and defiantly the
hymn of his threatened idol:

Sredni Vashtar went forth,

His thoughts were red thoughts and his teeth were white.

His enemies called for peace, but he brought them death.

Sredni Vashtar the Beautiful.

And then of a sudden he stopped his chanting and drew closer to the window-pane. The door of the
shed still stood ajar as it had been left, and the minutes were slipping by. They were long minutes,
but they slipped by nevertheless. He watched the starlings running and flying in little parties across
the lawn; he counted them over and over again, with one eye always on that swinging door. A sour-
faced maid came in to lay the table for tea, and still Conradin stood and waited and watched. Hope
had crept by inches into his heart, and now a look of triumph began to blaze in his eyes that had only
known the wistful patience of defeat. Under his breath, with a furtive exultation, he began once
again the pæan of victory and devastation. And presently his eyes were rewarded: out through that
doorway came a long, low, yellow-and-brown beast, with eyes a-blink at the waning daylight, and
dark wet stains around the fur of jaws and throat. Conradin dropped on his knees. The great polecat-
ferret made its way down to a small brook at the foot of the garden, drank for a moment, then
crossed a little plank bridge and was lost to sight in the bushes. Such was the passing of Sredni
Vashtar.
“Tea is ready,” said the sour-faced maid; “where is the mistress?” “She went down to the shed some
time ago,” said Conradin. And while the maid went to summon her mistress to tea, Conradin fished a
toasting-fork out of the sideboard drawer and proceeded to toast himself a piece of bread. And
during the toasting of it and the buttering of it with much butter and the slow enjoyment of eating it,
Conradin listened to the noises and silences which fell in quick spasms beyond the dining-room door.
The loud foolish screaming of the maid, the answering chorus of wondering ejaculations from the
kitchen region, the scuttering footsteps and hurried embassies for outside help, and then, after a lull,
the scared sobbings and the shuffling tread of those who bore a heavy burden into the house.

“Whoever will break it to the poor child? I couldn't for the life of me!” exclaimed a shrill voice. And
while they debated the matter among themselves, Conradin made himself another piece of toast.