Calls Across the Pacific (5 page)

Nina was astonished. “Really?”

“I know what I'm talking about.” Jasmine unwrapped a fish cake, then picked it up with her fork and placed it into Nina's container. “Try it.”

Nina chewed the fish cake and nodded. “This tastes really good.”

“I made them myself,” Jasmine said. “Hey, aren't you in high school?” Before Nina could answer, Jasmine asked, “Can you find some math tests for my son? He'll be in grade ten in September. I think he should work on his math this summer.” Jasmine moved her head from left to right as though she were shaking something off. “It's no good if you don't have education. You can't get a job without education. And without a job, you can't survive in this world.”

“Sure! I'll find some tests for your son to practise on. He'll be fine if he practises. Martin Luther King, Jr. had a Ph.D. you know.”

“But he was murdered,” Jasmine said. “I wish he were still alive. God bless him,” Jasmine sighed, her hands closing her lunchbox. “Time for work.”

Nina followed her out of the lounge and back to the conveyer. After the foreman's hand flicked the switch, the assembly line moved again. Nina was now
close to picking out unwanted potatoes as fast as Jasmine could. At the end of the humming belt, the machine packed tons of bags of Humpty Dumpty potato chips. Nina pictured the smiling egg-shaped face on the pack, its hat off and hand waving. Then, she envisioned a group of students entering a two-storey building that looked like the one at Bowdoin College.

Could I be one of them?
she wondered.

5.
FRANKLIN'S FISH AND CHIPS

T
HE SUMMER DREW
to a close, and Nina resumed her high-school courses as a full-time student in September. In order to save money for college, she found a part-time job as a kitchen helper in Franklin's Fish and Chips restaurant.

She reached the establishment just before four-thirty p.m. A tall man her age was in the kitchen.
A young boss,
she thought. “Are you Mr. Franklin?”

“No,” the young man answered. “I'm his assistant. Call me Bob. Meet Reno.” Bob pointed to another young man who was bending over to pick out some sacks in a corner.
Piles of stuff,
Nina thought.
It's a busy restaurant.

“They're potatoes, carrots, and onions,” Bob said, “Your job is to peel and cut them. When you have nothing to do, you can help Reno wash dishes, okay?”

Reno pulled a couple of sacks to the floor and placed them between the cutting table and dishwasher. He raised his head and pointed at the kitchen utensils hanging on the wall hooks. “Get a peeler over there,” he said. “There are stools under the table.” He placed several large bowls on the table, and then added, “Let's do potatoes first. Once they are peeled, please put them in the bowls.” He sat on the stool that Nina had passed to him and said, “You can sit down, too.”

Nina gripped a vegetable peeler in her hand. She picked up yet another potato.
Boring!
She remembered the word Carol had used about the job at the potato chip plant.

As soon as they had filled one of the bowls with peeled potatoes, Reno began to slice them with a machine that was at the other end of the table. Nina continued with the carrots. An hour later, the boss, Kent Franklin, a rotund, middle-aged man, arrived and started to cook with Bob. Soon, the delicious aromas of fried fish and French fries spread throughout the kitchen.

Nina thought the bowls filled to the brim with potatoes and sliced carrots looked like blooming white-and-orange flowers. Meanwhile, dirty dishes and cutlery started piling up in a mound next to the dishwasher. Reno filled the dishwasher then switched it on. Nina took over his job of chopping the vegetables. The pungent smell of onion rings made her weep like a mourner at a grave surrounded by flowers.

The waitress placed order slips on the ledge of the kitchen window adjacent to the dining hall. Kent prepared the orders one after another, never missing a beat.
The boss works harder than us,
Nina thought.

Nina enjoyed her break and the bits of fish and chips that Kent handed to her and to Reno.
Who says there's no free meal? I'm getting one now!
She smiled at her thought.

“Fish and chips are much cheaper in my country,” Reno mumbled as he chewed the food. “How about in your country?” he asked Nina.

“I have never seen such a meal before,” Nina replied. “Which country do you come from?”

“Can you guess?” Reno grinned, a small piece of onion dropping from the corner of his mouth.

“Mexico?”

“You're wrong!” He seemed upset. “I am from Cuba!”

“Ha! Chairman Castro.”

“You know something.” With this thick eyebrows raised, he looked pleased. “You're Chinese, right? Mao Zedong.”

“Right, but I hate Mao and Castro.”

“What?” Reno pursed his lips. “Why?”

“Both are dictators.”

“Maybe Castro is better than Mao!” He raised his tone. “I love my country.”

“Then why did you come to America?”

“We're poor back home.” His voice lowered. “I want to make some money.”

Puzzled, Nina had not understood, or had never considered the idea that not everybody from a communist country hated a dictatorship the way she did.
Which is more attractive in the States?
she asked herself.
Freedom or money?

In the last hour of their shift, Reno shifted the stack of plates in and out of the dishwasher. Nina selected unclean ones and used a knife to scrape cheese bits off the plates. As she worked, the words of Karl Marx, which she had memorized in her grade ten Political Studies class, rang in her head: “The capitalist mode of production is
this
repetition of an ongoing process, which is the process of becoming itself.” Her teacher had said that workers, exploited by capitalists, had to work at simple and repetitive jobs.
Am I being exploited by Kent, who works even harder than I? If Karl Marx didn't work as a labourer, how did he make a living? Did he exploit others?
She was perplexed.

The kitchen closed at eleven p.m. Nina's hands ached from peeling vegetables and holding hot dishes. However, compared with the work she used to do on the military farm, this work was easy. According to Mao's article, “The Foolish Old Man Who Removed the Mountain,” everyone was supposed to work hard like the old man who wanted to move a mountain.
Once I worked like that old man moving a mountain from one place to another, she thought.

Many times, at the end of the day on the farm, after long hours of transplanting seedlings in the rice paddies, Nina had been unable to straighten her back. Her head would spin and her neck and back were stiff and sore. Sometimes after carrying bundles of wheat stalks with a shoulder pole, back and forth, between the field and the barn, she had felt as though she had become a sack of bones and flesh without a spine. Hunger and thirst had clung to her. It had seemed that in order to get rid of her hunger pangs, she would have to eat an entire pig and swallow all the water from the nearby pond.

Mao's hero was an old fogey, she smirked, and I was a young fool then.

Bob handled the knife playfully as if it were a toy. A round cabbage soon turned into a heap of shredded ingredients for coleslaw.

“Why don't you use this?” Nina pointed at the food processor.

“I need to keep myself busy. Besides, cutting is a kind of art form.” Bob extended his long arm around Kent's squat neck. “If you wish, I can shave your head with my knife,” Bob said to his boss jokingly.

Kent nodded with difficulty since he was in a clinch under Bob's arm. He giggled like a child. “Do what you wish, as long as you please my customers.”

Kent isn't only the boss, but also Bob's buddy
, Nina thought.

“Ha!” Reno joined in. “You Americans always say, ‘Customers are God.' Tomorrow, I'll be your God if I eat here. Right?”

“Yes,” Kent and Bob answered concurrently. “We have a saying that customers are always right,” Bob added.

“Do you like the president of your country?” Nina took the opportunity to ask a question that had been on her mind for a while.

“Nixon?” Bob asked, and his hand flicked out. “No, I don't like him.”

“Why?”

“I don't like the Vietnam War. He sent young men to be slaughtered there,” Bob replied, loosening his arm from Kent's shoulder. He turned to Reno. “What do you think?”

“I'm not interested in politics.”

“Me neither. Let's work to make money,” said Bob. “Tonight, my girlfriend and I are going to the movies. We are going to see
The Vampire Lovers
.”

“Sounds interesting. Nina, do you like going to the movies?” Reno asked eagerly.

“No, I'm too busy,” Nina replied, aware that Reno had hoped to ask her to join him.

The next evening, during their break, Bob grabbed three onions and juggled them, his face lighting up and shining under the lights. “Catch them!” Suddenly, he threw one to Kent who was resting in a chair. Kent ducked, but his hand caught the onion. But before Kent could stand up, Bob swung his long leg over Kent's outstretched arm as if he were jumping over a hurdle. Everybody laughed.

Nina visualized Bob throwing his knife bravely at a burglar. She could not help asking, “What would you do if a robber wanted your wallet?”

“Me?” Bob pointed his finger at his chest. “Of course, I'd give it away and run as fast as I can.”

“What?” Nina had expected that bold Bob would confront the thug. “You're a coward, then,” she said, stifling her laughter.

“Coward? Do you mean I should take a chance by resisting a mugger? No way. My life is worth more than my wallet.

Surprised by Bob's answer, Nina had nothing to say. In China, she had heard many stories in school about fearless youth fighting to protect public property whenever they encountered theft. The schoolchildren were asked to learn from such heroes who had sacrificed their health and lives. Ruminating on Bob's easy surrender, Nina realized life was much more significant than any property or heroism.
Money seems to be more important in the States than in China, but life is a priority over here,
Nina thought.

One afternoon, after writing out a cheque, Nina went to the living room where Eileen was reading various newspapers. “Do you have a minute?”

“Yes, sweetie. Do you need my help?” Eileen laid the paper aside.

“It's been a year since I came to live here. I'd like to pay rent from now on.” Nina put the cheque into Eileen's hand. “It's a hundred and fifty dollars.”

“I don't want to take this,” Eileen said, and withdrew her hand. “You can continue staying with us.” She patted the couch. “Come sit here. You need to save that money for college.”

“It's very kind of you,” Nina said. “I don't know what to do to pay you back for all your kindness,” she added, as she sat next to her. She wondered if she would be able to do the same for others one day.

“You remind me of my boy,” Eileen said, then told Nina that her son had worked in the evenings to save money for college, but then joined the army after high school. Admiring his father, a veteran from the Korean War, the boy had intended to go to battle for America. His sister had objected, but could do nothing to stop him as military service was compulsory at that time. “I've felt a little bit better about his death since I heard your story, Nina. He did something worthy. I think that he fought to stop communism from spreading all over the world, and that was important.”

“I should read about the Korean War,” Nina responded. As a schoolgirl, she had learned that the American imperialists had invaded Korea, so Mao had dispatched the Chinese army to resist the invaders.

“I should read some history books, too. One is never too old to learn.”

“When my father was persecuted, I started to doubt what I'd been told. After being dispatched to the military farm for re-education, I thought something was terribly wrong with Mao's regime.”

“It's good to learn from life. Come. I'll show you something.” Eileen stood and led Nina into her bedroom. She gestured to a framed picture on the wall. “This is our son.”

Nina gazed at the photograph. A young man in an army uniform smiled at her. “Handsome and admirable,” she whispered, remembering the yellowish, wallet-sized graduation photograph of her late father in his uniform taken at West Point twenty-three years earlier.

Every day, Nina repeated the same duties in the restaurant kitchen like a horse endlessly trotting to the promise of hay in the barn. She felt like she had a star lighting her path. At break, Reno reminisced about the halcyon days of his childhood and his absurd stories made everybody laugh. Sometimes, when Bob practised Spanish with him, Nina also caught a few words. Sometimes, if several orders came in simultaneously, Kent and Bob could not stop to take a break.

One afternoon, Kent led a middle-aged man into the kitchen and introduced him. “This is Bogdan, Reno's replacement.”

“What happened to Reno?” Nina asked.

“He returned home to tie the knot.”

Tie the knot?
Nina asked, “What kind of knot?”

“He's getting married,” Kent explained.

“Will he be back in three weeks?” Bogdan asked as he took an apron off a hook on the wall.

Kent patted him on the shoulder. “Maybe yes or maybe never. Who knows the policy in a communist country?” He turned to Nina. “Show him what he's supposed to do.”

“I will.” She pulled two sacks off the top of the pile in the corner, dragging them to their regular spot near the table, and asked Bogdan to get a pack of onions.

Is Reno happy now that he is back in his country?
Nina wondered. Then, she sat down on her stool and started peeling the next batch of potatoes. All she could think about was when she might have the chance to go back to her country and see her mother again.