eight
chun jie
Lunar New Year is all wrong. Instead of spending it with Nai Nai, bundled in sweaters, and throwing firecrackers in the street,
we are in Illinois.
It’s a meaningless day here. Nobody goes home to their families. All the stores are still open. School is in session during
the week. My parents are working.
This is the first year we have spent Lunar New Year in America. I wanted to go back to China, but our parents insisted we
do it here as a real family. That was one reason; the other was that we didn’t have funds or vacation days to travel back.
We sit in the living room with the television on. Miracle on 34th Street is playing. It’s hard for me to understand sometimes, so I’m not really watching. Mama and Baba are making dumplings in the
kitchen.
You sit next to me, reading a chapter book in English.
“I’m bored,” I say, poking you in the shoulder. “Let’s play a game.”
It’s hard to do anything fun with just two people; it’s not like back in China, when all the kids were around. Since moving
here, we’ve gotten wolfish around each other, as you outgrow me. There is no cultural pressure here for the oldest to let
the youngest always have their way, like back home. And you’ve gotten bossy, which I hate.
But today, you acquiesce to my demands. Maybe because we can’t help but miss home on this holiday. To us, it’s a day for family.
You lead me to the doorway to the kitchen. Mama and Baba are standing around the counter, filling dumplings in wrappers and
lining them up neatly on sheet pans. They are on speaker with our aunt, Mama’s sister, who lives in Canada. They chatter away.
We are close to the ground. They are not looking at us.
“Here are the rules,” you say. “Try to get to the other end of the room without Mama or Baba seeing you. Pretend we’re on
a secret mission and they’re the enemies.”
I survey the space between where we are and the other side of the kitchen counter. We have a rectangular dining table in between.
I take note of the gap between two chairs where you can crawl underneath. Then there is about four feet of space between the
table and the countertop: the danger zone. Once you could get to the counter, you could hide under the ledge on one side and
sidle by behind their legs without either of them seeing.
“Me first or you first?” you ask.
“I’ll go first.” I crouch down as far as I can and peer ahead. I imagine that I really am a rabbit. Stealthy, small. I crawl
on my hands and knees. In the shadow of the table so I won’t be so obvious. Slowly, so the movement won’t catch the corners
of their eyes.
It is easy to pretend like they’re the enemy. We only knew Mama and Baba through pictures for years. When we saw them in person
at the airport in San Francisco, they were different from what I thought they would be. Shorter, I guess, and less attractive.
Maybe just because in my mind, they were ideas, and then when I saw them, they became real. And ideas are always better than
the real thing.
In real life, Baba is more impatient than I imagined. Mama is less interested in playing with us. Sometimes, when I lie awake
in my new bedroom on my new soft mattress and wool blankets, I wonder if there has been a mistake—if our real parents are
somewhere else and if they are looking for us.
I make it to the safety of the dining table and huddle underneath. From the doorway, where you peek out just beyond our parents’
view, you give me a thumbs-up.
Ahead, I scan the no-man’s-land of kitchen tile. The danger zone. I look up. Mama and Baba are still talking. Their heads
turn away from my direction whenever they go to spoon the pork and chive filling into a wrapper in their hands. I watch them,
waiting to time my escapade to when they are both occupied.
I pick the right moment and burst out from under the table.
I dart to the safety of the counter, low to the ground.
I press myself against the base. Baba’s legs are on one side of me; Mama’s on the other.
With soft hands and feet, I creep behind Mama so she can’t hear me and make it to the cabinets on the other side of the kitchen.
Behind me, you start your journey as well. But you’re bigger and louder than I am. Before you even make it to the counter,
I hear Baba say in confusion, “Son, why are you crawling on the floor like an animal?”
I giggle. Mama whips her head in my direction. “Aiya!” she exclaims. “How did you get over here?” Her hands are covered in
flour, but she reaches down and scoops me up to smack a kiss on my cheek. She smells sweet from her lemon-honey face lotion
as her hair brushes against my face. She looks at me like she has been waiting her whole life for me, luminous.
We sit at the counter and watch our parents make more dumplings. Baba pulls out a shiny new penny. He washes it in soap and
water and presses it carefully into the center of one dumpling. It disappears as he pinches the edges closed.
“Whoever gets the penny has a lucky year,” Baba says. “Eat carefully.”
Mama and Baba finish three full baking sheets of dumplings—way too many for four people. They let us stand on the counter
stools so we can watch the raw dumplings go into the big pasta pot of boiling water.
“San kai,” Mama explains, meaning the water has to come to a boil three times before the dumplings are cooked.
Each time it boils, she adds a cup of cold water and the water settles down again.
We wait for the dumplings to bobble up to the surface three times.
It feels like an eternity. The scent wafts up from the pot.
Baba holds my waist so I don’t lean too far over and fall in.
We sit around our dining table, the four of us, like one of those families in American commercials. We fill our bowls with
dipping sauces. The dumplings come out onto the platter steaming. I poke them with my chopsticks, as though I can discern
where the lucky penny is from the outside.
You start adding five, six, seven dumplings to your bowl. “You’re cheating,” I say, annoyed.
“I’m bigger,” you say imperiously. “I can eat more.”
“All right,” Baba says to you. “You eat all of those first. One at a time. That’s how the game works.”
We start eating. I take small bites so I don’t accidentally swallow the penny whole but eat as fast as I can so I can sample
more dumplings. I’m eyeing everyone around the table, alert to someone else getting the penny first. We go through one platter
without anybody finding it. We’re halfway through the second platter. I’m full to bursting. I’ve eaten fifteen dumplings—more
than I’ve ever had before, and still no penny.
“Maybe it’s disappeared,” you say.
I scan the plate for the remaining dumplings and push myself to take one more.
I pick the plumpest, roundest one. I bite off the corner.
Nothing. My heart sinks. But just as I’ve given up hope, I take a second bite, and I see a gleam.
There it is. I grab it with my thumb and forefinger and pull it out.
“I got it! I got it!” I shout, waving it above my head.
“Let me see!” you say, even though you can surely see it in my hand. I drop it triumphantly in the palm of yours. In the yellowed
light of the shabby chandelier overhead, it shines like gold.
Mama and Baba clap.
“Lucky girl,” Baba says. He squeezes my shoulder.
You’re sullen, but I don’t care, too pleased with my penny.
Later, we settle on the couch to watch the Chinese state-sponsored Lunar New Year program on the one Chinese channel we receive.
It airs every year, silly skits with heavy-handed moral messaging and patriotic songs, hosted by blandly smiling celebrities.
It’s easy to understand and feels familiar. We would watch each year with Nai Nai in China, after all the dishes had been
put away, waiting for midnight. We would fall asleep together with the TV on.
Our Christmas tree—something we didn’t have at Nai Nai’s house—still lingers in the corner of the living room. It’s plastic
with sparse, fake-looking branches. The ornaments we decorated it with are ugly and unmatching, not like the sophisticated
glass orbs I see at department stores. But when Baba turns off the lights and plugs in the tree, the twinkle lights make the
whole thing look beautiful anyway.
You and I sit squashed in the middle of our threadbare love seat, and our parents squeeze in on either side.
I clutch my lucky coin in my hand. Before I go to bed, I will put it in a special box in my nightstand with all my treasures: my jade rabbit necklace from Nai Nai, my eighteen-karat gold bracelet that was a gift from my aunt when I was born.
Mama caresses my hair. Baba hums along with the music from the show. I lean against your shoulder, full and sleepy. I feel
the beginning of a truth: the four of us coming together, maybe, forming a unit.
A chorus of children on TV begin singing the classic new year’s song, “Nan Wang Jin Xiao,” about how tonight is unforgettable.
And indeed, as my eyes close, I wish that every day could be like this: the softest part of a rabbit’s den, a golden penny.