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“What time is it?” she asked, testing what kinds of minds they had, raised away from civilization. She discovered they could tell time very well. And they knew the Chinese words for “thermometer” and “library.”

She saw them eat undercooked meat, and they smelled like cow’s milk. At first she thought they were so clumsy, they spilled it on their clothes. But soon she decided they themselves smelled of milk. They were big and smelled of milk; they were young and had white hair.

When Brave Orchid screamed at them to dress better, Moon Orchid defended them, sweet wild animals that they were. “But they enjoy looking like furry animals. That’s it, isn’t it? You enjoy looking like wild animals, don’t you?”

“I don’t look like a wild animal!” the child would yell like its mother.

“Like an Indian, then. Right?”

“No!”

Moon Orchid stroked their poor white hair. She tugged at their sleeves and poked their shoulders and stomachs. It was as if she were seeing how much it took to provoke a savage.

“Stop poking me!” they would roar, except for the girl with the cold hands and feet.

“Mm,” she mused. “Now the child is saying, ‘Stop poking me.’”

Brave Orchid put her sister to work cleaning and sewing and cooking. Moon Orchid was eager to work, roughing it in the wilderness. But Brave Orchid scolded her, “Can’t you go any faster than that?” It infuriated Brave Orchid that her sister held up each dish between thumb and forefinger, squirted detergent on the back and front, and ran water without plugging up the drain. Moon Orchid only laughed when Brave Orchid scolded, “Oh, stop that with the dishes. Here. Take this dress and hem it.” But Moon Orchid immediately got the thread tangled and laughed about that.

In the mornings Brave Orchid and her husband arose at 6 a.m. He drank a cup of coffee and walked downtown to open up the laundry. Brave Orchid made breakfast for the children who would take the first laundry shift; the ones going to summer school would take the afternoon and night shifts. She put her husband’s breakfast into the food container that she had bought in Chinatown, one dish in each tier of the stack. Some mornings Brave Orchid brought the food to the laundry, and other days she sent it with one of the children, but the children let the soup slosh out when they rode over bumps on their bikes. They dangled the tiers from one handlebar and the rice kettle from the other. They were too lazy to walk. Now that her sister and niece were visiting, Brave Orchid went to the laundry later. “Be sure you heat everything up before serving it to your father,” she yelled after her son. “And make him coffee after breakfast. And wash the dishes.” He would eat with his father and start work.

She walked her sister and niece to the laundry by way of Chinatown. Brave Orchid pointed out the red, green, and gold Chinese school. From the street they could hear children’s voices singing the lesson “I Am a Person of the Middle Nation.” In front of one of the benevolent associations, a literate man was chanting the Gold Mountain News, which was taped to the window. The listening crowd looked at the pictures and said, “Aiaa.”

“So this is the United States,” Moon Orchid said. “It certainly looks different from China. I’m glad to see the Americans talk like us.”

Brave Orchid was again startled at her sister’s denseness. “These aren’t the Americans. These are the overseas Chinese.”

By the time they got to the laundry, the boiler was screaming hot and the machines were ready. “Don’t touch or lean against any machine,” Brave Orchid warned her sister. “Your skin would fry and peel off.” In the midst of the presses stood the sleeve machine, looking like twin silver spaceships. Brave Orchid’s husband fitted the shirt sleeves over it with a karate chop between the shoulder blades. “You mustn’t back into that,” said Brave Orchid.

“You should start off with an easy job,” she said. But all the jobs seemed hard for Moon Orchid, who was wearing stockings and dress shoes and a suit. The buttons on the presses seemed too complicated for her to push