Online Flip Book / Download   Back to our Information Page

The sunlight swept over the broad grassy square, across the street, and onto our living-room rug. In that bright, warm rectangle of light, I practiced my ballet. Ian, my little brother, giggled and dodged around me while I did my exercises.

A car stopped outside, and Ian rushed to the window. “She’s here! She’s here!” he shouted excitedly. “Paw-paw’s here!” Paw-paw is Chinese for grandmother — for “mother’s mother.”

I squeezed in beside Ian so I could look out the window, too. Dad’s head was just disappearing as he leaned into the trunk of the car. A pile of luggage and cardboard boxes wrapped in rope sat by the curb. “Is that all Grandmother’s?” I said. I didn’t see how it would fit into my old bedroom.

Mom laughed behind me. “We’re lucky she had to leave her furniture behind in Hong Kong.” Mom had been trying to get her mother to come to San Francisco for years. Grandmother had finally agreed, but only because the British were going to return the city to the Chinese Communists in 1997. Because Grandmother’s airfare and legal expenses had been so high, there wasn’t enough room in the family budget for Madame Oblomov’s ballet school. I’d had to stop my daily lessons.

The rear car door opened, and a pair of carved black canes poked out like sixshooters. “Wait, Paw-paw,” Dad said, and slammed the trunk shut. He looked sweaty and harassed.

Grandmother, however, was already using her canes to get to her feet. “I’m not helpless,” she insisted to Dad.

Ian was relieved. “She speaks English,” he said.

“She worked for a British family for years,” mom explained.

Turning, Ian ran toward the stairs. “I’ve got the door,” he cried. Mom and I caught up with him at the front door and made him wait on the porch.

“You don’t want to knock her over,” I said. For weeks, Mom had been rehearsing us for just this moment. Ian was supposed to wait, but in his excitement he began bowing to Grandmother as she struggled up the outside staircase.

Grandmother was a small woman in a padded silk jacket and black slacks. Her hair was pulled back into a bun behind her head. On her small feet she wore a pair of quilted cotton slippers shaped like boots, with furred tops that hid her ankles.

“What’s wrong with her feet?” I whispered to Mom.

“They’ve always been that way. And don’t mention it,” she said. “She’s sensitive about them.”

I was instantly curious. “But what happened to them?”

“Wise grandchildren wouldn’t ask,” Mom warned.

Mom bowed formally as Grandmother reached the porch. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said.

Grandmother gazed past us to the stairway leading up to our second-floor apartment.

“Why do you have to have so many steps?” she said.

Mom sounded as weak as a child. “I’m sorry, Mother,” she said.

Dad tried to change the subject. “That’s Stacy, and this little monster is Ian.”

“Joe sun, Paw-paw,” I said. “Good morning, Grandmother.” It was afternoon, but that was the only Chinese I knew, and I had been practicing it.

Mother had coached us on a proper Chinese greeting for the last two months, but I thought Grandmother also deserved an American-style bear hug. However, when I tried to put my arms around her and kiss her, she stiffened in surprise. “Nice children don’t drool on people,” she snapped at me.

To Ian, anything worth doing was worth repeating, so he bowed again. “Joe sun, Paw-paw.”

Grandmother brightened in an instant. “He has your eyes,” she said to Mom.

Mom bent and hefted Ian into her arms. “Let me show you our apartment. You’ll be in Stacy’s room.”

Grandmother didn’t even thank me. Instead, she stumped up the stairs after Mom, trying to coax a smile from Ian, who was staring at her over Mom’s shoulder.

Grandmother’s climb was long, slow, laborious. Thump, thump, thump. Her canes struck the boards as she slowly mounted the steps. It sounded like the slow, steady beat of a mechanical heart.

Mom had told us her mother’s story often enough. When Mom’s father died, Grandmother had strapped my mother to her back and walked across China to Hong Kong to escape the Communists who had taken over her country. I had always thought her trek was heroic, but it seemed even braver when I realized how wobbly she was on her feet.

I was going to follow Grandmother, but Dad waved me down to the sidewalk. “I need you to watch your grandmother’s things until I finish bringing them up,” he said. He took a suitcase in either hand and set off, catching up with Grandmother at the foot of the first staircase.

While I waited for him to come back, I inspected Grandmother’s pile of belongings. The boxes, webbed with tight cords, were covered with words in Chinese and English. I could almost smell their exotic scent, and in my imagination I pictured sunlit waters lapping at picturesque docks. Hong Kong was probably as exotic to me as America was to Grandmother. Almost without thinking, I began to dance.

Dad came back out, his face red from exertion. “I wish I had half your energy,” he said. Crouching, he used the cords to lift a box in each hand.

I pirouetted, and the world spun round and round. “Madame Oblomov said I should still practice every day.” I had waited for this day not only for Grandmother’s sake but for my own. “Now that Grandmother’s here, can I begin my ballet lessons again?” I asked.

Dad turned toward the house. “We’ll see, hon.”

Disappointment made me protest. “But you said I had to give up the lessons so we could bring her from Hong Kong,” I said. “Well, she’s here.”

Dad hesitated and then set the boxes down. “Try to understand, hon. We’ve got to set your grandmother up in her own apartment. That’s going to take even more money. Don’t you want your room back?”

Poor Dad. He looked tired and worried. I should have shut up, but I loved ballet almost as much as I loved him. “Madame put me in the fifth division even though I’m only eleven. If I’m absent much longer, she might make me start over again with the beginners.”

“It’ll be soon. I promise.” He looked guilty as he picked up the boxes and struggled toward the stairs.

*  *  *  *  *

Dad had taken away my one hope that kept me going during my exile from Madame. Suddenly I felt lost, and the following weeks only made me more confused. Mom started laying down all sorts of new rules. First, we couldn’t run around or make noise because Grandmother had to rest. Then we couldn’t watch our favorite TV shows because Grandmother couldn’t understand them. Instead, we had to watch Westerns on one of the cable stations because it was easier for her to figure out who was the good guy and who was the bad one.

Worst of all, Ian got all of her attention — and her candy and anything else she could bribe him with. It finally got to me on a warm Sunday afternoon a month after she had arrived. I’d just returned home from a long walk in the park with some friends. I was looking forward to something cool and sweet, when I found her giving Ian an ice cream bar I’d bought for myself. “But that was my ice cream bar,” I complained as he gulped it down.

“Big sisters need to share with little brothers,” Grandmother said, and she patted him on the head to encourage him to go on eating.

When I complained to Mom about how Grandmother was spoiling Ian, she only sighed. “He’s a boy, Stacy. Back in China, boys are everything.”

It wasn’t until I saw Grandmother and Ian together the next day that I thought I really understood why she treated him so much better. She was sitting on a kitchen chair with her head bent next to his. She had taught Ian enough Chinese so that they could hold short, simple conversations. With their faces so close, I could see how much alike they were.

Ian and I both have the same brown eyes, but his hair is black, while mine is brown, like Dad’s. In fact, everything about Ian looks more Chinese. Except for the shape of my eyes, I look as Caucasian as Dad. And yet people sometimes stare at me as if I were a freak. I’ve always told myself it’s because they’re ignorant and never learned manners, but it was really hard to have my own grandmother make me feel that way.

Even so, I kept telling myself: Grandmother is a hero. She saved my mother. She’ll like me just as much as she likes Ian once she gets to know me. And, I thought in a flash, the best way to know a person is to know what she loves. For me, that was the ballet.

*  *  *  *  *

Ever since Grandmother had arrived, I’d been practicing my ballet privately in the room I now shared with Ian. Now I got out the special box that held my satin toe shoes. I had been so proud when Madame said I was ready to use them. I was the youngest girl on pointe at Madame’s school. As I lifted them out, the satin ribbons fluttered down around my wrists as if in a welcoming caress. I slipped one of the shoes onto my foot, but when I tried to tie the ribbons around my ankles, the ribbons came off in my hands.

I could have asked Mom to help me reattach them, but then I remembered that at one time Grandmother had supported her family by being a seamstress.

Grandmother was sitting in the big recliner in the living room. She stared uneasily out the window as if she were gazing not upon the broad, green lawn of the square but upon a Martian desert.

“Paw-paw,” I said, “can you help me?”

Grandmother gave a start when she turned around and saw the ribbons dangling from my hand. Then she looked down at my bare feet, which were callused from the three years of daily lessons. When she looked back at the satin ribbons, it was with a hate and disgust that I had never seen before. “Give those to me.” She held out her hand.

I clutched the ribbons tightly against my stomach. “Why?”

“They’ll ruin your feet.” She lunged toward me and tried to snatch them away.

Angry and bewildered, I retreated a few steps and showed her the shoe. “No, they’re for dancing!”

All Grandmother could see, though, was the ribbons. She managed to totter to her feet without the canes and almost fell forward on her face. Somehow, she regained her balance. Arms reaching out, she stumbled clumsily after me. “Lies!” she said.

“It’s the truth!” I backed up so fast I bumped into Mom as she came running from the kitchen.

Mom immediately assumed it was my fault. “Stop yelling at your grandmother!” she said.

By this point, I was in tears. “She’s taken everything else. Now she wants my toeshoe ribbons.”

Grandmother panted as she leaned on Mom. “How could you do that to your own daughter?”

“It’s not like you think,” Mom tried to explain.

However, Grandmother was too upset to listen. “Take them away!”

Mom helped Grandmother back to her easy chair. “You don’t understand,” Mom said.

All Grandmother did was stare at the ribbons as she sat back down in the chair. “Take them away. Burn them. Bury them.” Mom sighed.

“Yes, Mother.”

As Mom came over to me, I stared at her in amazement. “Aren’t you going to stand up for me?”

But she acted as if she wanted to break any ties between us. “Can’t you see how worked up Paw-paw is?” she whispered. “She won’t listen to reason. Give her some time. Let her cool off.” She worked the ribbons away from my stunned fingers. Then she also took the shoe.

For the rest of the day, Grandmother turned away every time Mom and I tried to raise the subject. It was as if she didn’t want to even think about satin ribbons.

That evening, after the dozenth attempt, I finally said to Mom, “She’s so weird. What’s so bad about satin ribbons?”

“She associates them with something awful that happened to her,” Mom said.

That puzzled me even more. “What was that?”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry. She made me promise never to talk about it to anyone.”

The next morning, I decided that if Grandmother was going to be mean to me, then I would be mean to her. I began to ignore her. When she entered a room I was in, I would deliberately turn around and leave.

For the rest of the day, things got more and more tense. Then I happened to go into the bathroom early that evening. The door wasn’t locked, so I thought it was unoccupied, but Grandmother was sitting fully clothed on the edge of the bathtub. Her slacks were rolled up to her knees and she had her feet soaking in a pan of water.

“Don’t you know how to knock?” she snapped, and dropped a towel over her feet.

However, she wasn’t quick enough, because I saw her bare feet for the first time. Her feet were like taffy that someone had stretched out and twisted. Each foot bent downward in a way that feet were not meant to, and her toes stuck out at odd angles, more like lumps than toes. I didn’t think she had all ten of them, either.

“What happened to your feet?” I whispered in shock.

Looking ashamed, Grandmother flapped a hand in the air for me to go. “None of your business. Now get out.”

*  *  *  *  *

She must have said something to Mom, though, because that night Mom came in and sat on my bed. Ian was outside playing with Grandmother. “Your grandmother’s very upset, Stacy,” Mom said.

“I didn’t mean to look,” I said. “It was horrible.” Even when I closed my eyes, I could see her mangled feet.

I opened my eyes when I felt Mom’s hand on my shoulder. “She was so ashamed of them that she didn’t like even me to see them,” she said.

“What happened to them?” I wondered.

Mom’s forehead furrowed as if she wasn’t sure how to explain things. “There was a time back in China when people thought women’s feet had to be shaped a certain way to look beautiful. When a girl was about five, her mother would gradually bend her toes under the sole of her foot.”

“Ugh.” Just thinking about it made my own feet ache. “Her own mother did that to her?”

Mom smiled apologetically. “Her mother and father thought it would make their little girl attractive so she could marry a rich man. They were still doing it in some of the back areas of China long after it was outlawed in the rest of the country.”

I shook my head. “There’s nothing lovely about those feet.”

“I know. But they were usually bound up in silk ribbons.” Mom brushed some of the hair from my eyes. “Because they were a symbol of the old days. Paw-paw undid the ribbons as soon as we were free in Hong Kong — even though they kept back the pain.”

I was even more puzzled now. “How did the ribbons do that?”

Mom began to brush my hair with quick, light strokes. “The ribbons kept the blood from circulating freely and bringing more feeling to her feet. Once the ribbons were gone, her feet ached. They probably still do.”

I rubbed my own feet in sympathy. “But she doesn’t complain.”

“That’s how tough she is,” Mom said.

Finally the truth dawned on me. “And she mistook my toe-shoe ribbons for her old ones.”

Mom lowered the brush and nodded solemnly. “And she didn’t want you to go through the same pain she had.”

*  *  *  *  *

I guess Grandmother loved me in her own way. When she came into the bedroom with Ian later that evening, I didn’t leave. However, she tried to ignore me — as if I had become tainted by her secret.

When Ian demanded a story, I sighed. “All right. But only one.”

Naturally, Ian chose the fattest story he could, which was my old collection of fairy tales by Hans Christian Andersen. Years of reading had cracked the spine so that the book fell open automatically in his hands to the story that had been my favorite when I was small. It was the original story of “The Little Mermaid” — not the cartoon. The picture illustrating the tale showed the mermaid posed like a ballerina in the middle of the throne room.

“This one,” Ian said, and pointed to the picture of the Little Mermaid.

When Grandmother and Ian sat down on my bed, I began to read. However, when I got to the part where the Little Mermaid could walk on land, I stopped.

Ian was impatient. “Come on, read,” he ordered, patting the page.

“After that,” I went on, “each step hurt her as if she were walking on a knife.” I couldn’t help looking up at Grandmother.

This time she was the one to pat the page. “Go on. Tell me more about the mermaid.”

So I went on reading the story to the very end, where the Little Mermaid changes into sea foam. “That’s a dumb ending,” Ian said. “Who wants to be pollution?”

“Sea foam isn’t pollution. It’s just bubbles,” I explained. “The important thing was that she wanted to walk even though it hurt.”

“I would rather have gone on swimming,” Ian insisted.

“But maybe she wanted to see new places and people by going on the land,” Grandmother said softly. “If she had kept her tail, the land people would have thought she was odd. They might even have made fun of her.”

When she glanced at her own feet, I thought she might be talking about herself — so I seized my chance. “My satin ribbons aren’t like your old silk ones. I use them to tie my toe shoes on when I dance.” Setting the book down, I got out my other shoe. “Look.”

Grandmother fingered the dangling ribbons and then pointed at my bare feet. “But you already have calluses there.”

I began to dance before Grandmother could stop me. After a minute, I struck a pose on half-toe. “See? I can move fine.”

She took my hand and patted it clumsily. I think it was the first time she had showed me any sign of affection. “When I saw those ribbons, I didn’t want you feeling pain like I do.”

I covered her hands with mine. “I just wanted to show you what I love best — dancing.”

“And I love my children,” she said. I could hear the ache in her voice. “And my grandchildren. I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.”

Suddenly I felt as if there were an invisible ribbon binding us, tougher than silk and satin, stronger even than steel; and it joined her to Mom and Mom to me.

I wanted to hug her so badly that I just did. Though she was stiff at first, she gradually softened in my arms.

“Let me have my ribbons and my shoes,” I said in a low voice. “Let me dance.”

“Yes, yes,” she whispered fiercely.

I felt something on my cheek and realized she was crying, and then I began crying, too.

“So much to learn,” she said, and began hugging me back. “So much to learn.”