Lullaby: Barcarole


                    Ke Huang
We like this story because:
It takes us through the twin issues of
relationship with the self and with
others. Also, it made Simon Million cry,
no mean feat...
B. night : morning

C. cradle : gondola

D. song : poem

E. carol : sonneteer

I knew I could say "barcarole" in my head as to recall a similar-sounding Portuguese term,
as the language's Latin roots came in handy when I tried to dissect obscure English words.
Instead, the students with pale, brown, black skin bubbling their answer sheets around me
turned to a blur and I only had eyes for the word "lullaby." I imagined I was a few months old,
still living in China among parents and relatives, maybe wearing a fleecy tiger suit to scare off
the bulging-eyed spirits. Grandmother would hold me in her arms, rocking me and chanting
out a soft off-tune chant for her little pearl.

I had a urge to drop the pen and the pencil with the dull tip, rise from the hard chair and
sprint out of the classroom of Grover Cleveland American School.

#

The amber streetlight shed a sparse gleam into the room, illuminating my hand-drawn poster
with a table of all the world flags accompanied by captions of their names and capitals. The
light even shaded the American flag with golden stars and its stripes resembled thin gold
ingots.

On a Saturday, my routine was to wake up at eight, breakfast with my parents and accompany
them to their clothing boutique in Restauradores. But that morning I had been awake since
four, trying to fall asleep, convinced that staring at my alarm would help. Finally, the alarm
turned "06:00." I read somewhere, or it could have been hearing from my brother, that
Americans never have their hours digit any number higher than twelve. After 12:59, their
watches changed to 1:00PM. As much as I wished to go to college in America and learn about
international diplomacy, I would never understand some of their customs. I knew that
planning ahead could lead to disappointment; if all the colleges rejected me, my goals of living
in New York City would vanish. Still, I imagined that if I were accepted to Columbia, I would
live by the sister of my second uncle and that could teach me to understand them. Adapting to
the States couldn't be as harsh cultural shock as when I came to Portugal from China -- all
these chestnut brown-haired folks speaking their bitter language, their habit of walking dogs
but not cleaning after, their obsession with red and green soccer teams. Little did I know that
once I did come to America, I would miss Lisbon's temperate climate, the candid locals,
intricate Manueline architecture and free public health care.

I heard a knock on the door. "Haizi." It irked me that ma still called me "child" when I would
turn eighteen in five months. I opened and saw her tousled boyish hair. She must have just
woken up. "Get ready while I make zaocan."

I didn't ask her if she needed help as my mission was to prepare for the SATs test site; it
would start in fewer than three hours.

Looking inside my corduroy backpack, I fixed my eyes on the stripped HB pencil. The
previous night, I crammed a leaf of a Continente ad with pencil lines to dull its dark grey tip;
all to save time when I had to fill in the bubble sheet. While the students with sharp pencils
colored their first bubble, as if filling a tank with a hose, my writing utensil poured out water
at the rate of a wave. In my gingham case, next to the blunt pencil, I kept a pen. Being
ambidextrous, I planned to hold it on my left hand and circle the question numbers I would
leave for later.

The humming of the oil in the kitchen reminded me how the events in the previous two
months enfolded opposite to what I expected. It wasn't ma who countered my plans to study
international relations in America. Now I know what she implied to when telling me about the
intentions of most of them, but at the time, all my frustration grew from how she would stop
me from being alone with an elder man, Chinese or Portuguese. Not only merchants in the
community, but even a male Portuguese sociology professor who accepted my application to
intern as a research assistant. So, I was surprised with dad's response: "You want to go to
America for college? You don't even know English."

"I always have twenties," the Portuguese equivalent to an A.

"Your brother's already there," he said driving ma and I to their shop facing the
Restauradores Square's pencil-shaped marble obelisk.

"That's why I'm applying too." It occurred to me that I would be different; I was their
daughter. As if it wasn't already unfair that he transferred Lanluo to Grover Cleveland
American School beginning seventh grade where he received an intensive English education
and I stayed at government-funded Nuno Golçalves (I could call myself lucky if my teachers
only missed ten times a trimester). Now dad wanted to bar me from applying to American
universities. As I needed his credit card to pay for college applications and admission tests, I
needed his approval. The next day, after ma finished her morning prayer in her shrine
gleaming with portly Buddhas and wired electric candles, I stopped by her and asked; but as I
spoke, I became more convinced she would refuse to help me. What if she punished me for
having the plan by sending me to a temple in China where I had to shave my head and take
the vow of Buddhist nunnery?

"You can only apply to universities in New York," she answered. That was the city where our
relative lived. I could tell her how it was unfair that Lanluo applied to schools around America
but I acquiesced.

"I'll talk to your ba later."

#

When I ran back to the shop from school that afternoon, I couldn't bother holding up the
flimsy Burberry-pattern fold-up umbrella and let the drizzle nudge me. But I only found ma
helping a customer with earrings the size of maple leaves.

"What did he say?" I asked, interrupting ma's pitch to the customer.

Like a traffic officer, she motioned for me to stop behind the counter. I complied and read the
pages of The Maias, the Portuguese Anna Karenina, but instead of following the life and
intrigues of the 19th century in Lisbon, I fretted about my life in the 21st.

As soon as the customer stepped out, I tried her again.

"Wait for dinner."

"If you think I shouldn't go, tell me."

"Don't be a sha haizi."

#

I waited for mother to take her seat while she stood by the sink and soaked her wok with
water and detergent, she cooked her rich salmon and tofu soup and multicolored fried rice.
When dad strode in and sat down, I was sure he knew. He glared at me and then turned to
mother.

"Why do you want her to be too smart? She'll already have too much education if she goes to
a university here."

"What do you mean 'too much education?' I won't spend a cêntimo of your precious money.
I'll go if I get a scholarship. Without the test, they'll never know if I'm good enough." Ma
tugged my sleeve as if pulling the blinds to shut my mouth. "It's not like I'm going to America
to become a wanton woman. I want to learn about international politics and stop all the wars."

"Of course you do. All those politicians are waiting for you right now. They're telling
themselves: 'Only if we have that daughter of those Chinese who own that shop in Portugal
with us, all the wars and racism in the world will stop.' Don't you think I wasn't like you at
your age? But there will always be shit in the world. Besides, you're a woman. No man wants
a wife smarter than him."

"I don't need you to worry about who I'll marry. We're in the 21st century."

We finished the meal in silence.

While I was in the kitchen washing the dishes, dad slid under my door a slip of paper where
he copied the numbers of his Visa card. The last time we talked was almost two months ago.
For the first few weeks, every time he opened his mouth, I expected him to give in. Ma knew
that she couldn't amend the fall out so she asked Lanluo.

"Apologize to ba," I heard him tell me as soon as mother pushed the phone handset to my ear.

"Hello to you too," the distance of the call made the phone echo my voice; it reminded me
how the rest of the world heard me.

"You know him. He doesn't like to lose," you must mean he doesn't mind losing with you, his
firstborn son.

Instead I said: "If there's nothing new with you, I have to go back and review some SAT
lexicon," I handed the handset to ma. As I galloped to my room, I couldn't help to think if the
feud between dad and I was only a contest. I wanted to hear him admit his mistake and be
recognized as the winner.

#

I did the dishes of the breakfast while she went to pray at her shrine. I did consider joining
her but since it'd be my debut prayer, I doubted it would work. If Guan Yin existed, She would
deem my act as duplicitous. Let's punish the girl praying from Lisbon and make her score an
800. I speculated that praying for my own interest could turn into a case of, as the Portuguese
say: o feitiço vira contra to feiticeiro, the curse turns against the wizard.

Heavy footsteps beat down the hall and kept soaping the bowl with the lemon-scented dish
detergent. He must have realized I was right all along. I knew that wishing him to apologize
would be like getting a 100 percentile, but at least he could be meeting me to wish me luck.
Maybe he had changed his mind and would agree to drive me to Lanluo's old school. He
stepped in and walked past me. I started to rinse the dishes. He must have opened the
washing machine behind the dining table. He only come in to stuff laundry? Only after he
marched off did I realize that I was letting the water burn my hands. I turned off the faucet
and noticed a blister on the side of my index finger; it glint like a rough diamond.

Ma hurried in: "Are you okay? That was his way of wishing you luck."

"If he really wanted to, he would have open his mouth and said it."

#

We descended the steep Angola street, passing buildings coated with twill and arabesque-
patterned tiles to head to Almirante Reis avenue to where we expected to find cabs. Ma never
learned to drive and I planned to start taking lessons that summer. After their liberal arts
education, I envied the Americans for living in a country where they could learn to drive at
the age of 16. Only talking to American friends my freshman year, did I learn that the price of
the low driving age were the fatal DUI accidents.

While waiting for the cab, ma forwarded me SAT words from the stack of cards I gave her. I
had been ruminating on the words for months but some definitions still bemused me.

Since ma didn't know how to pronounce them, she had to spell them out. After my answer,
she scrambled to decide if I was right; she would always end up pushing me the card.

A city beige taxi pulled in. I sat shogun because I would be directing the driver. Ma lived in
Portugal three years longer than me but my language skills still exceeded hers, but what I
topped her in Portuguese, she outdid me in Chinese. The worse was Lanluo, since he started
to learn more English, he sounded even more awkward in Mandarin. After our first year in
Portugal, when Lanluo and I spoke Chinese, we scattered a few words like simpático and
casaco; once he started going to GCAS, he'd be tempted to scatter English words when talking
to us, but as ma and ba didn't know the language, Lanluo'd have to stop the scattering and
end up stuttering like an elementary school child with glossophobia. The same fate awaited
me.

The cab radio played a sermon-sounding speech by the leader of the Popular Party. The
driver, heavy and with sand-colored protruding teeth turned down the sound. He told me in
Portuguese that ma and I were lucky because he was just about to end his shift. We offered
him a smile, the kind we gave to an annoying relative. After asking a few questions about our
trip and getting the clue we had no energy to make small talk, he turned up his radio.

Ma reached for her thin left wrist and removed her mahogany beaded Buddhist bracelet. I
gestured her to resume the last minute SAT words quiz. She pushed at me the amulet and
added: "It'll help you with the test."

I could have refused it and told her I believed in science, because religion limited free
thinking; all her and the Chinese ladies from the Buddhist group escaped from facing real
global inequalities by meeting every Sunday to chant lugubrious cryptic tunes.

Instead, I took the bracelet, wore it like a fancy wristwatch and thanked her.

#

When Lanluo was still a student, I had been to GCAS for a 4th of July barbecue. Dad drove us
there while ma watched the shop. So, as the cab approached the campus, it occurred to me
that it was her first time seeing the school.

"Lanluo never told me the buildings are only one-story tall."

Maybe she expected several high-tech edifices. The driver stopped the cab outside the school.
I climbed out. Ma and I said bye in a way the Portuguese and Americans would call cold.
Neither of us touched each other, but I felt ma's bracelet embracing my wrist.

"Call me when you finish," she said with a smiled hinting that she wished me to chenggong,
succeed.

I raced to GCAS' main building but heard her call out; she reminded me to take the vocab
cards. "You'll do well," she squeezed my hand like a chubby stress ball.

As I headed to the entrance, I flipped through the cards instinctively: "inchoate -- adj. in an
initial or early state;" "intransigent -- adj. stubborn; immovable; unwilling to change (n.
intransigence)..."

"Are you Leo's sister?" Those were the first English words I heard a human say after a couple
of weeks. The student referred to my brother by that alias because Lanluo named himself
after Leonardo DaVinci (though I joked that he was the Chinese Leonard DiCaprio, "I'm the
Emperor of the World!"). I lifted my head and saw a studious Portuguese boy of South Asian
descent. Even after spending months studying English, I hesitated answering him in the
language. I knew what "panegyric" and "perfidious" meant, but speaking it was another feat.

Aswayuja and I started talking and I learned that he knew Lanluo from playing soccer during
lunch breaks. Then, my English was a mix of Chinese, Portuguese, British and American
accents but I also knew self-consciouness was the biggest enemy of a language learner. Ma
and her temple friends always said it was easier for us youngsters to acquire languages, but I
believed that the main reason I picked up Portuguese and English was my confidence I would
chenggong.

"Your English is pretty good."

I blushed at the idea that he could be flirting with me, but thankfully a handful of his
classmates joined us. He introduced me to them but I had too many SAT words in my mind to
remember their names.

A stalky American, the proctor, joined us. Aswayuja told me that normally the man wearing
the blue shirt with a red C taught them P.E. I wanted to tell him that at Pedro Nunes the
administration saved money by cutting the subject from our curriculum but the proctor was
already requesting us to line outside the test room. He checked our passports and that was
my first time seeing one issued by the United States. Unlike my burgundy-covered document
bearing a seal of the Tiananmen Gate, five stars and a cheesy circular frame, the American
navy blue jacket had a golden zippo lighter censuring an eagle at the strategic spot.

I took a seat behind my new Indian friend. The proctor began to read the instructions. As I
already knew them like the history behind the five permanent members of the Security
Council, I zoned out to test myself on a few words, instead, I surveyed the room and got
distracted with trying to identify the portraits that hung around the walls. The only one I
recognized was thin-lipped George Washington. I couldn't take my eyes off a familiar-looking
younger man with puffy eyes and fleshy lips. I remember seeing him before but always with
his elegant small-faced wife who wore a pink suit and a hat shaped like a cake form.
Compared to the other men, he had to be the handsomest.

The proctor handed us the SAT packet and it must have taken us half an hour to fill its cover
sheet. It wasn't that I didn't understand him, but as he talked with his American accent, I
imagined that I was at home watching Sabrina, the Teenage Witch. Unlike the program on RTP
2, what he said wasn't accompanied by Portuguese subtitles. I had heard teachers speaking
the language before, but the English teachers at ESPN (Escola Secundária de Pedro Nunes,
that is) were trained in England, they always sounded surprised and never pronounced Ts as
Ds. As I bubbled L-A-N-... I became conscious I was locked in a room like that in an alien
universe. I asked what I was doing there. Which school would give me a scholarship? What if
all these months of studying left nothing in my head, like a balloon being popped by a sharp
pencil lead?

"You have 25 minutes for this section," he said a few more words but I couldn't decipher
them. It was as if an invisible tent surrounded me. I opened the booklet to the right page, only
to stare at the question. I told myself I had plenty of choices. I could guess or leave it blank
and return to it later, but staring at the question would only be a waste of time. With the dull
pencil pressed against my blister, I chided myself for not doing anything for my ticket to
America when I gave up hours of going out with friends to practice SAT questions. Every time
a neighboring student's watch ticked, I felt my score plummeting. Back in my head, I heard
dad's voice telling me that I shouldn't be sitting there. I would be wiser spending my time
applying to Portuguese universities. Stop being a monkey trying to grasp the moon! The
Chinese expression I heard in dad's voice told the story of a monkey that tried to reach the
moon reflected on a wells surface without realizing that it was only grasping for an illusion.

I scanned the students around me; even with their sharp pencil points, they sped down the
questions. Some flipped the page of the test book. I took a gander at the portraits along the
wall and remembered the name of the handsome and confident man. He guided American
astronauts to the moon. Maybe the destination the monkey pursued was an attainable goal.

Ba’s voice stopped. I looked down at the test, started it and only guessed blindly one question
for that section. The dull pencil came in handy and, as a full-blooded Chinese, I breezed
through the math section. For the break, the fellow test-takers and chatted and they found my
educational background intriguing. Maybe I would fit in with Americans after all. We then
compared some answers and I found I didn't make too many mistakes. Instead of blaming
myself for having blocked earlier, I commended myself for the questions I answered correctly.

The difficulty of the next sections increased but I only paused thrice. One even tested a word
ma had asked me earlier: "saturnine." Before I knew, the proctor called out time over. I meant
to call ma immediately but Aswayuja and I were talking again.

"Do you remember Leo's prom?" How couldn't I? It was all he talked about for a whole
trimester. Aswayuja and I headed toward the entrance. His classmates whispered among
themselves. I was only wearing jeans and a made in China nonsensical-phrased sweatshirt. He
couldn't have that in mind. "If you're not busy that night, I thought you may want to, you can
say no if you don't want to, you know, go with me. If you're not busy."

It took me a few seconds to understand what he said, but once I got it, I let out a chuckle and
nodded: "I'd love to!"

As we stepped out, we exchanged numbers. I didn't feel like a tramp because I told myself
that Aswayuja knew Lanluo and wasn't a stranger ma liked to warn me about.

We parted and he went to his parent's Volkswagen. I pressed my phone off the address book
and dialed for ma, I heard a vehicle honking. I recognized the Mercedes down the street and
rubbed my eyes to ensure that the driver I saw inside was who I secretly wished it was.

© Ke Huang


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If you liked this story don't go until you've checked out The Noh Mask, by Claire Snook, Mee
Vang's War, by JF Chavoor, or even Dancefloor in Outer Space, by Paul G Duke.  All these
stories explore the theme of cultural differences across time and continents.
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