Typical American by Gish Jen Page B

together, which looked like nothing so much as a triple-headed ghost. "The Mystery of the Trinity," Theresa would joke later. Yet at the time she admired it as politely as everyone else. It was a good likeness, she agreed, a fine family portrait.

    true. The one gnarl of her childhood was the knowledge that, if she did not die of one of her diseases, she would eventually have to marry and go live with in-laws. And then she'd probably wish she had died. How faint she felt, just listening to the stories other girls told — about a neighbor's daughter, for example, who walked all the way home from Hangzhou, only to be sent back. That was extreme, of course, but how about her friend's cousin who, married away into the countryside, was made to take baths in a big copper vat? Over a pit fire, as though she were a pork joint, in water that had already been used by her father-in-law, her husband, her husband's seven brothers, and her mother-in-law. Don't worry, Helen's parents reassured her, we'll find you someone nice, someone you like too. No one's going to beat you. But at best, Helen knew, she would be sent to scratch out some new, poor spot for herself, at the edge of a strange world, separated from everyone she loved as though by a violent, black ocean.
    Now, America. For the first few months, she could hardly sit without thinking how she might be wearing out her irreplaceable clothes. How careful she had to be! Theresa could traipse all over, searching out that elusive brother of hers; Helen walked as little and as lightly as she could, sparing her shoes, that they might last until the Nationalists saved the country and she could go home again. She studied the way she walked too, lightly — why should she struggle with English? She wrote her parents during class, every day hoping for an answer that never came. She went to Chinatown three times a week, thinking of it as one more foreign quarter of Shanghai, like the British concession, or the French. She learned to cook, so that she'd have Chinese food to eat. When she could not have Chinese food, she did not eat. Theresa (who would eat anything, even cheese and salad) of course thought her silly. "In Shanghai you ate foreign food," Theresa said (da cai, she called it — big vegetables). "Why shouldn't you eat it here?" Still, for a long time, Helen would not, which they both thought would make her sick.

    She was not at home enough, though, even to fall ill.
    This could not go on forever. Eventually, faith faltering, Helen studied harder, walked more, bought new clothes, wrote her parents less. She did continue to spend whole afternoons simply sitting still, staring, as though hoping to be visited by ghosts, or by a truly wasting disease; but she also developed a liking for American magazines, American newspapers. American radio — she kept her Philco in the corner of the living room nearest the bedroom, so she could listen nonstop. She sang along: "The corn is as high as an el-e-phant's eyyye..." She did not insist on folding all her clothes, but used the closet too. She began to say "red, white, and blue" instead of "blue, white, and red" and to distinguish "interest" from "interested" from "interesting." She caught a few colds. And she married Ralph, officially accepting what seemed already true — that she had indeed crossed a violent, black ocean; and that it was time to make herself as at home in her exile as she could.

    "I guess," said Ralph, uncertainly.
    Helen sighed. At home, room had always been made for her in the conversation; people paused before going on, and looked at her. Here, she had to launch herself into the talking, for instance during a lull, as now.
    "You know that saying about a wife's ankle?" she put in softly.
    "What?" said Ralph.
    "Don't interrupt," said Theresa. "She's talking."
    "I can't hear her"
    "That saying," Helen said louder. "Do you know that saying, about a wife's ankle? Being tied to her husband's?"
    "Of course," encouraged Theresa.