The Woman Warrior_ Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts - Maxine Hong Kingston [58]
“What are you doing?” Moon Orchid would ask. “What are you reading?”
“Nothing!” this girl would yell. “You’re breathing on me. Don’t breathe on me.”
It took Moon Orchid several weeks to figure out just how many children there were because some only visited and did not live at home. Some seemed to be married and had children of their own. The babies that spoke no Chinese at all, she decided, were the grandchildren.
None of Brave Orchid’s children was happy like the two real Chinese babies who died. Maybe what was wrong was that they had no Oldest Son and no Oldest Daughter to guide them. “I don’t see how any of them could support themselves,” Brave Orchid said. “I don’t see how anybody could want to marry them.” Yet, Moon Orchid noticed, some of them seemed to have a husband or a wife who found them bearable.
“They’ll never learn how to work,” Brave Orchid complained.
“Maybe they’re still playing,” said Moon Orchid, although they didn’t act playful.
“Say good morning to your aunt,” Brave Orchid would order, although some of them were adults. “Say good morning to your aunt,” she commanded every morning.
“Good morning, Aunt,” they said, turning to face her, staring directly into her face. Even the girls stared at her—like cat-headed birds. Moon Orchid jumped and squirmed when they did that. They looked directly into her eyes as if they were looking for lies. Rude. Accusing. They never lowered their gaze; they hardly blinked.
“Why didn’t you teach your girls to be demure?” she ventured.
“Demure!” Brave Orchid yelled. “They are demure. They’re so demure, they barely talk.”
It was true that the children made no conversation. Moon Orchid would try to draw them out. They must have many interesting savage things to say, raised as they’d been in the wilderness. They made rough movements, and their accents were not American exactly, but peasant like their mother’s, as if they had come from a village deep inside China. She never saw the girls wear the gowns she had given them. The young, raging one, growled in her sleep, “Leave me alone.” Sometimes when the girls were reading or watching television, she crept up behind them with a comb and tried to smooth their hair, but they shook their heads, and they turned and fixed her with those eyes. She wondered what they thought and what they saw when they looked at her like that. She liked coming upon them from the back to avoid being looked at. They were like animals the way they stared.
She hovered over a child who was reading, and she pointed at certain words. “What’s that?” she tapped at a section that somebody had underlined or annotated. If the child was being patient, he said, “That’s an important part.”
“Why is it important?”
“Because it tells the main idea here.”
“What’s the main idea?”
“I don’t know the Chinese words for it.”
“They’re so clever,” Moon Orchid would exclaim. “They’re so smart. Isn’t it wonderful they know things that can’t be said in Chinese?”
“Thank you,” the child said. When she complimented them, they agreed with her! Not once did she hear a child deny a compliment.
“You’re pretty,” she said.
“Thank you, Aunt,” they answered. How vain. She marveled at their vanity.
“You play the radio beautifully,” she teased, and sure enough, they gave one another puzzled looks. She tried all kinds of compliments, and they never said, “Oh, no, you’re too kind. I can’t play it at all. I’m stupid. I’m ugly.” They were capable children; they could do servants’ work. But they were not