The Cooked Seed by Anchee Min Page A

other. I felt like I was taking advantage of her generosity. One day I decided to bring up the subject. I told her that I was ready whenever she had the time. Stella smiled and said, “That’s okay.”
    Did that mean I owed her, or was she no longer interested? Given a choice, I’d never tell my story. The last thing I wanted to do was to relive my experience. I avoided memories. I preferred that they stayed buried. Yet it was in America, alone, that my memories haunted me. They would come to me in my dreams, or while I sat in a classroom or on a subway train. Anything could trigger them: For example, a snowflake made of foam in the Marshall Field’s window display would remind me of the days when the icy earth was too hard to break at the labor camp. A naked mannequin in a clothing store would remind me of the youthful bodies we used to have that were deprived from human contact. A Victoria’s Secret underwear ad would remind me of a flower embroidered by my former camp comrade, a long-dead girl who paid her life for love. When I saw an advertisement with milk ringed around a female mouth, I was reminded of a salt ring on the backs of my comrades as we carried buckets of manure. The white-colored ring was formed by sweat after hundreds of rounds.
    Stella wasn’t interested in my former life. I wanted to know if Imight ask her a few questions, and she said she would be happy to answer. “What do you think of Mao’s teaching that ‘American imperialism is a paper tiger’?” I asked.
    “Who cares!” was her reply.
    I was dumbfounded at first, and then awakened. I marveled that not one out of a billion Chinese would dare say what Stella had just said.
    “What’s your next question?” Stella asked.
    “Well,” I read from my notes. “How much money do you offer to your parents each month?”
    “Are you kidding me?” Stella laughed.
    “How much?”
    “Nothing!”
    Again I was dumbfounded. “Is that everybody, or just you?”
    “Everybody.”
    “You don’t support your parents? When I earn money, it is expected that one third of it will go to the care of my parents.”
    “This is America! Parents owe their children,” Stella said. “Children didn’t ask to be born. Besides, my parents don’t need my help. They own an airport.”
    “Own an airport?” I couldn’t believe what I heard.
    “Do you have another question?” Stella said as if she was in a hurry.
    “Well, I’d like to know what your goal is.”
    “What goal?”
    “A goal—for example, my goal is to become an American citizen.”
    “I don’t know. I am working on getting a pilot’s license.”
    I had to look in my dictionary for the word
pilot
. “Do you mean like a driver’s license for an airplane instead of a car?”
    “Yep!” Stella made a flying motion with her hands.
    I felt odd. Kind, warm, and generous as Stella was, we had nothing in common. I shared two classes with Stella. One was Poetry Writing, the other Art and Economics. I wouldn’t have signed up for either of these classes if they hadn’t been required for the degree. While Stella was the star of both, I could barely follow. I had never heard the word
economics
before, and I was unable to comprehend the concept. Stella told me that economics was the subject that her parents discussed overdinner while she was growing up. I had never heard of the words
demand
and
supply
. When I asked Stella’s advice on how to survive the class, she suggested that I negotiate an exchange with the professor.
    “You have something to offer, something we Americans don’t know about and would be interested in learning, and that’s China,” Stella said.
    It turned out to be great advice. Instead of turning in a paper on American economics, I presented a paper on “Chinese Communist Economics.” With Stella’s help, I reported on how socialism worked, and failed to work, in China. I earned a passing grade.
    I let Stella know that I needed to be with people who were on my own