The Cooked Seed: A Memoir

  A blue paper blanket was put over my lower body and the surgery began.

  I clenched my teeth as the pain came.

  The counselor spoke to me softly and told me to relax.

  I couldn’t relax with her holding my hand. I needed to deal with this by myself. I didn’t want to be rude and tell her to go away.

  The doctor and his assistant were working their way into my body. I felt the pull inside. The pain was overwhelming.

  The counselor wouldn’t let go of my hand. She mumbled something about sharing my pain.

  By the time the surgery was over, I was about to pass out. I was in so much pain that I forgot to thank the doctor.

  I was wheeled to the recovery room, where a sturdy-looking nurse received me. She spoke with a Hispanic accent. She asked me if I wanted a “chicken ball.”

  I told her I didn’t want any chicken ball. She said, “Everybody has chicken ball after the surgery. It will make you feel better. Think about it, please, take your time.”

  Would I have time? I had to be at work at the student gallery by four o’clock. Missing work might give my boss a reason to fire me. I worried that I wouldn’t have enough time to walk to the gallery.

  “I’d like some chicken ball, please,” I said.

  The “chicken ball” turned out to be “chicken broth.”

  It was my first time tasting chicken broth. Like the nurse said, it made me feel instantly better. From then on, I associated chicken broth with the abortion.

  In the middle of my walk through downtown Chicago, I started to bleed heavily. By the time I reached State and Adam streets, blood was dribbling down my legs despite the diaper the hospital had given me. I leaned against a newspaper stand and then sat down on the curb.

  I felt dizzy and feared that I might pass out. The school was only a block away. I could see the two stone lions in front of the museum.

  I made it to the school and changed before going to the gallery. The diaper was true to its Super Pamper name—the blood must have weighed over two pounds, yet the Pamper had not fallen apart.

  The gallery boss was glad that I was on time. “There is a list of things I need to talk to you about before tonight’s opening,” she said. “By the way, would you be able to stay a little longer to help with the cleanup afterward?”

  My head was spinning. The boss now had two heads and four hands.

  “Sure,” I managed to say.

  Part Three

  { Chapter 16 }

  In the summer of 1987, I returned to China for the first time in three years. I had anticipated the trip for so long that I almost couldn’t believe that I was finally going. I wished that there had been a way to secure a return visa before my departure, but it was impossible. I had to first exit America and then apply for a reentry visa. There was always the possibility that I could be denied. I assumed that the visa officer would understand that, after three years, I needed to see my family. Refusing my reentry visa would mean denying me the opportunity of completing my degree. I would argue: Why bother issuing me a visa in the first place?

  What gave me the courage was that now I spoke English. I would fight like an American. I’d let the consul know that I knew my rights.

  My motion sickness didn’t seem to bother me on the long flight. When the plane touched down, my emotion spilled over into tears. The moment I saw my parents standing among the crowd at the Shanghai airport, I ran toward them. Age had taken its toll on both of them, especially my mother. She had lost all her teeth and looked frail. My father told me that she had begun to show signs of dementia. I was yet to know how rapidly the disease would progress. It pained me to see her in such a state. She needed my father’s help just to stay upright.

  I hugged my parents in the American style. My affection took my mother by surprise, and her dentures fell from her mouth.

  I was sad to see that my father had become bald, due to chemotherapy. He had once been so handsome that people often mistook him for my brother.

  At home I reunited with my siblings. Our family still lived on the same crowded lane in the same place—one room with an enclosed porch. The building had deteriorated so much that the floor had begun to sink. The wooden staircase slanted toward the right side. The dark hallway was piled with dusty bamboo baskets and old window frames wrapped in plastic sheets. I told my father that I would help remove the junk to make room for walking. My father shook his head and whispered that the neighbors might claim the space for their own storage.

  Our family conversation at dinner was warm. None of us anticipated that it would turn unpleasant. It began with me talking about America. About how advanced and wonderful the country was, and what it was like to be treated with dignity, respect, and kindness. I described how much I enjoyed my life as an international student, and what China should learn from America.

  I regretted my words in retrospect. I wasn’t aware of how Americanized I had become. I was bragging about my full belly in front of people who were starving. I was neither sensitive nor careful about what I was saying. I didn’t pay attention to their open wounds, the fact that two of my siblings had been rejected for US visas and now my younger sister was too afraid to even apply.

  I had thought that the best gift I could offer my family was to share my honest thoughts. I said that the greatest thing I had discovered in America was who I was. My journey hadn’t been a smooth one, especially on the job-hunting front, but the key was that I was no longer afraid. I wouldn’t let my life be defined by anything, not even a green card. I had confidence that I could make it elsewhere if I failed in America. I’d go where I would be appreciated, and that included China. Part of my purpose in returning home was to explore my options.

  My family was quiet as they listened. I could see confusion, uneasiness, and disapproval on their faces. I went on, certain that they would understand and support me. I told them that I was inspired by a newspaper clipping Father had sent me. It was the story of rural China, a village principal, and the only teacher, who was dying of cancer. He summoned his daughter to take over his teaching position. The fourteen-year-old daughter sacrificed her middle school education in order to help her father.

  “I’d like to help promote public education in China!” I said. I told my family that I could see myself as a teacher. I would make use of my degree in visual art. I would also introduce American pop music: It would be good to hear Chinese people say “I love you.” Love would be a great new theme to explore. One could learn a great deal about democracy and individualism through pop music and art.

  I waited for my family’s response, but none came.

  Finally my father broke the silence.

  “Anchee, have you forgotten that you once denounced your teacher as an American spy?” My father was unable to hide the disappointment in his voice. “What makes you believe that you wouldn’t be denounced as an American spy and suffer the same fate?”

  I rebuffed, “Father, it is people like you, who live in fear, that have kept China backward!”

  “You talk like you didn’t grow up in China,” my sister said.

  “Is there something wrong?” my father looked at me suspiciously. “Are you okay? Why are you speaking about promoting public education in China, instead of America? Are you afraid that you are not able to make it in America? You don’t have the luxury to speak like this, my daughter, let me remind you. Our family has a long way to go in terms of paying off our debt and meeting our basic needs.”

  I was supposed to rescue the family. How could I have forgotten that? So far I had done nothing but harm—ruining everybody else’s chances of obtaining American visas.

  My mother said she had trouble understanding what we were talking about.

  My siblings did their best not to voice their disapproval.

  As I continued to explain myself, my elder sister and younger brother removed themselves from the dinner table and began to clean the dishes.

  I raised my voice as I quoted Mr. Rogers: “The
best gift you can offer to anybody is your honest self.”

  It was at this point my younger sister burst into tears. “Who are you trying to fool?” she said to me. “Since when have you lost touch with reality? Help promote public education in China? How can you forget that all of us have been waiting for you to help us to escape misery? We received rejections one after another from the US Consulate. You were the only one who succeeded. The only one who jumped over the dragon’s gate! You escaped! You took the spot! And you don’t bother to look back or to check how low we fell, how hard we hit the ground, and if we were bleeding inside or dying.

  “You were blessed with luck, strength, and smarts. You owe this family. What have you done for us? Other people who have gone to America have rescued their family members. The Wong brother from the next lane who went to America helped his sister get there too. The elder son of the Wei family in the next street helped to immigrate his entire family to America.

  “You’re my only hope. I had to go to the labor camp because you got picked by Madame Mao. I had to take your place. I work as a laborer at the electric-switch factory for a few dollars a day. I am twenty-eight years old. I have been waiting for your rescue. I trusted that you would do what you are supposed to do as an elder sister. But you told me that you couldn’t help me unless I produced a TOEFL score of five hundred. I do not speak English, and I am not allowed to take time from work to take lessons. You do not mean to help me. You are watching me drown and refusing to offer your hand.

  “What have you done in the past three years? You studied art! You enjoyed being treated with respect and kindness. You do not care if we suffer in China. You do not care that I do not have a life here, and that my hair is turning white as I wait for your call. You are nothing but a hypocrite! I hate you! I hate you!”

  Although filled with guilt, I didn’t feel that I deserved the accusation. I could not accept my younger sister calling me a selfish, cruel, and heartless bloodsucker.

  I shot back, “I have tried my best in America! You don’t know what I have gone through!”

  I turned to my father and proposed that I give up my visa so that my sister would have a chance to go to America to try on her own.

  My father rejected my proposal. He said, “I would consider it if your returning would guarantee your sister or brother a visa to America. But it would not. You might end up sacrificing your own opportunity for nothing. Our family might end up losing both the hen and the egg.”

  I wanted to run away from my family. I located my best friend from the labor camp, Yan, the former commander. I went to her old house only to discover that the entire neighborhood had been turned into a construction zone. I left messages with a mutual friend asking for her. A few days later I received Yan’s letter. She instructed me to quit looking for her.

  “I don’t want to show my face to anyone,” she wrote. “I don’t want to see anyone. I appreciate your thoughts. I know you will remember me, and that is enough to comfort me.” As for her life, she said that she had developed chronic headaches, which crippled her ability to study for college. After the Cultural Revolution, she became a teacher at the labor camp’s elementary school. In 1986 the labor camp was closed. “A businessman from Taiwan bought the land. He turned it into a chicken farm—a supplier of Shanghai’s Kentucky Fried Chicken.”

  Yan revealed that she was now making a living as a fruit vendor. She also sold home-cooked baby food. Occasionally, she exported hand-embroidered clothes to foreign countries. She ended her letter by saying, “I would like you to remember me the way I was, not the way I am.”

  In my return letter, I begged for a chance to see her again. I mailed the letter enclosed with a check for four hundred dollars. Yan returned the check uncashed and left me with no word.

  I went to the US Consulate in Shanghai to apply for my reentry visa. The crowd reminded me of how fortunate I had been. Inside, the visa officer asked me what I would do after graduation. I said that I didn’t know, but I was in Shanghai seeking a future job position. The officer granted me the visa without further questioning.

  Two weeks later, I bade good-bye to my family.

  Upon returning to Chicago, I responded to a listing for a tiny storage room on 4311 South Halstead Street next to a parking lot. Its only window was a foot-square glass pane that couldn’t be opened. There wasn’t enough space for a twin-size bed, so I slept on a little two-foot-wide sofa that took up half the room. Although there was no kitchen counter or stove, the landlord had installed a makeshift shower, a minisink, and a toilet. The rent was $150 a month including heat and utilities. It was the cheapest place I could find in Chicago.

  I was thrilled with the privacy. For the first time in my life, I might have a place that I wouldn’t have to share, a place of my own. I had to beg the landlord to rent it to me because he was concerned about my safety. He had intended to rent the space to a single man who would use it only for sleeping. I convinced the landlord that I was no weakling. I told him that I had been riding the subway at night for years. I showed him my “scissor hand”—how I would hold each key on my key ring between my clenched fingers and punch if attacked.

  The landlord warned me not to be frightened of the man next door who wore orange clothes. He was a retarded man named Nick whom the landlord looked after.

  “Nick is harmless,” the landlord promised.

  It took me a while to get used to Nick’s strange habits. Besides the orange hat and clothing, he talked loudly at night, perhaps to himself. I wasn’t prepared to deal with his stink, either. I hadn’t noticed until I moved in that the dividing wall between Nick and me was not fully closed. The two feet from the ceiling between Nick’s toilet room and my room was open. I had assumed that it was sealed with glass.

  When I complained, the landlord said, “This is why the rent is cheap. It is a storage space.”

  Lying awake at night, I asked myself the question, “Who are you, Anchee Min?” If I ever had a chance to learn what it meant to “stay positive,” it was now. I did not yet know the American I was becoming, but I was sure that I was no longer the same An-Qi from China. I, who was defeated, was refusing to accept the defeat. I was broken yet standing determinedly erect. I could be crushed, but I would not be conquered. And that, I concluded, was who I truly was. Who I would be.

  { Chapter 17 }

  I knew practically nothing about her, but from the first I was desperate for her friendship. Beneath our differences, I sensed that we had something in common. Margaret was her name. She caught my eye because she stood out from the crowd. She was a graduate student, an interior designer who owned her own business. She was shy and her face blushed as she spoke. When I asked her why she was taking the class, she said that she was “searching to explore and to rediscover.”

  Unlike me, she didn’t seem self-conscious about being older. Most people in the class were half her age; being older was something that I was burdened by. I felt inadequate and embarrassed among all the young students. I knew too much and yet nothing at all.

  In her late thirties, Margaret was a beautiful woman who had Elizabeth Taylor’s eyes, a lovely figure, and a gentle voice. She was good-natured and easygoing. She laughed like a child and made those around her feel comfortable and invited.

  Looking back, I was amazed that I approached her so boldly. The class where we met and became friends was American Design Since 1945. She would usually arrive late, having come directly from work. Still dressed in her elegant work clothes, she would apologize for disturbing the class and slip into the seat I had saved for her. It was a convenient way to show my enthusiasm. By the time she had driven through downtown Chicago, parked her Volvo, entered the building, and reached our classroom, the slide show had already begun and all the good seats were taken.

  Although I didn’t want to bother her, the professor’s vocabulary was beyond me. I spent most of my time looking up words in my dictionary. I asked Margaret for help when I missed the professor’s comment on a slide.


  “Margaret, what does ‘eerie foreboding’ mean?”

  Margaret turned and whispered into my ear.

  But I still couldn’t spell it. I opened my dictionary and was unable to locate eerie. The struggle exhausted me.

  I failed the midterm exam, while Margaret received an A. She was sympathetic. She asked why I would take a course that was beyond my reach. “Aren’t you here like the rest of the kids to express yourself?”

  I told Margaret that I wished that I was here to express myself. I was miserable because my days in America were numbered. “I am fighting for my survival.”

  She looked at me for a long moment, then turned her head back to the professor. From that moment on, without my asking, she would write down the words that she felt I would have trouble spelling into my notebook. I was able to focus on looking up the words in my dictionary and follow the class. Occasionally Margaret would also lean over my shoulder and explain the meaning of a difficult phrase the professor had just spoken.

  I improved quickly. To negotiate with the professor for a passing grade, I produced a paper with illustrations entitled “Chinese Communist Design Since 1949,” for which I received an A minus. Margaret was happy for me.

  One day we left school together after class. It was dark outside and I accompanied Margaret to where she parked her car in an underground parking lot. She was grateful and asked if I’d like a ride home. She looked alarmed when I told her my address. “South side at that number? You know how rough the area is?”

  “The rent is very cheap.” I smiled.

  Margaret shook her head as she started the car. I suggested that she drop me off at the Halstead bus stop. “Seven blocks down.”

  “Why seven blocks down?” she said. “How about at the nearest downtown stop?”