An Ocean Apart, a World Away by Lensey Namioka

Author:Lensey Namioka
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780307433091
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2007-12-18T05:00:00+00:00

The exercise gave me an appetite, and I ate Mrs. Harte’s hearty lunch of macaroni and cheese. Cheese was something I usually avoided when it was served aboard the ship or the train. Like most Chinese, I didn’t care much for milk. Cheese, made from fermented milk, sounded even worse. The dish Mrs. Harte served consisted of a big mound of chopped-up noodles cooked in a sticky, yellowish sauce. I didn’t find out until afterward that the sauce was made of cheese. It wasn’t all that bad.

Woozy with fatigue and heavy food, I lay down on my bed and fell asleep. I had intended to catch a brief nap, but when I woke up and looked at my bedside clock, I discovered that it was nearly four.

I got up, still a little dizzy. The room was warm, and my clothes felt sticky. Suddenly, I hated my heavy Western clothes and longed for a loose tunic made of silk. My blouse was badly wrinkled, and the woolen skirt smelled from being worn continually for weeks. I decided to look for the laundry Mrs. Harte had mentioned earlier.

She showed me on the map where the laundry was, and I set out with my bundle of dirty clothes. I had to go downhill, and my heart sank at the prospect of having to climb back up again.

Fortunately the laundry was not far away. Compared to Nanjing and Shanghai, the only two cities I really knew, Ithaca was small and compact. I got lost only twice before I found the place. Several times, when I stopped to consult my map, passersby asked me if I needed help. I was not used to having strangers speak to me—my experience in the Shanghai alley didn’t help—so I just shook my head and backed nervously away. It was several weeks before I realized that kindness to strangers was an American trait.

Finally, I found the laundry. What drew my attention to the place was not the sign in English, but the two big Chinese characters meaning “flowery stream.” My eyes fastened hungrily on them the way a starving man stares at a bowl of steaming rice. I hadn’t seen Chinese writing since stepping off the boat in Seattle, and that seemed like many years ago.

I took a deep breath and entered the laundry. It was a small place and had a pleasant smell of soap. A tiny Chinese man came out. Then I realized that he was not really tiny but was actually a bit taller than I was. After so many days of seeing hefty Westerners, he only seemed small.

I put my bundle of clothes on the counter and asked him if he could wash them for me. He just stared at me. Thinking he was hard of hearing, I repeated my question, speaking slowly and distinctly. Finally he said something, and I discovered that I couldn’t understand him at all.

That was when I realized that I had spoken in Mandarin and he had answered in Cantonese. The two dialects were mutually incomprehensible.

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