Made in China by Anna Qu

Made in China by Anna Qu

Author:Anna Qu [Qu, Anna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781646220359
Published: 2021-05-07T00:00:00+00:00


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A week after I stopped working at the factory, a bilingual social worker arrived at our house. Her name was Mary and she gave us the option of seeing her together or separately. My mother and I each chose to see her alone.

Mary didn’t take sides and liked to remain neutral. She came and sat with me in our living room, on the end of the leather couch that I always waxed extra to get it to shine like the rest of the cushions. I didn’t find her sympathetic like Mrs. V., she didn’t seem to care all that much about how awful things were, how I was feeling or how I was dealing with all the change. We only talked about achieving goals. She talked to me about volunteering and how I could find a part-time job through the school now that I was not working at the factory. Local businesses often posted on job boards in high schools. Did I know where to go to find that information at my high school? Following her advice, I went for an interview and walked out of a dentist’s office with my first real part-time job.

Mary was able to convince my mother it would be a good thing to let me out of the house, and earn my own way. She talked her into letting me keep the money I earned as a dental assistant and see friends when I wasn’t working. Up until then, I was never allowed out with friends or to keep the money I earned. Other changes were immediately noticeable, too. My mother was still cold and angry, but she no longer criticized me every time she saw me. She stopped commenting on my weight, my face, my hair, my posture, my clothes, my existence. She no longer saw a child she could remold or a child that was sent to punish her. Now, with Mary’s help, I was just a person that she needed to put up with for a while longer. What I truly wanted—to be a part of the new family my mother had created—was impossible, but fixing our family was not Mary’s goal, less conflict was.

A month after I started working at the dentist’s office, Mary convinced my mother to take me to open a bank account. I met her in front of the Q16 terminus in Flushing. She got out of a black Jin Ma, and I followed the echoes of her heels down the sidewalk, past McDonald’s to the Queens County Savings Bank.

Flushing was always bustling with commuters, peddlers, and trinket sellers on street corners. She didn’t look around or make eye contact with anyone, there was just the focus on her destination. As usual, she weaved quickly through the crowd, and I half-ran to keep up with her.

Creating an account at our local community bank took less than ten minutes. I spoke to the teller in clear English and my mother passed over her license and my birth certificate. The



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