was a vicious dog! You were the one who let him off leash, and Kwan ended up paying the vet bill!’
‘What do you mean? The boxer’s owner paid.’
‘Oh no, he didn’t. Kwan just said that so you wouldn’t feel bad. I told you that, remember?’
Simon twisted his mouth to the side, a grimace of his that always preceded a statement of doubt. ‘I don’t remember that,’ he said.
‘Of course you don’t! You remember what you want to remember.’
Simon sneered. ‘Oh, and I suppose you don’t?’ Before I could respond, he held up his hand, palm out, to stop me. ‘I know, I know. You have an indelible memory! You can never forget a thing! Well, let me tell you, your recollection of every last detail has nothing to do with memory. It’s called holding a goddamn grudge.’
What Simon said has annoyed me all night long. Am I really the kind of person who hangs on to resentments? No, Simon was being defensive, throwing back barbs. Can I help it if I was born with a knack for remembering all sorts of things?
Aunt Betty was the first person to tell me I had a photographic memory; her comment made me believe I would grow up to be a photographer. She said this because I once corrected her in front of a bunch of people on her account of a movie we had all seen together. Now that I’ve been making my living behind the camera lens for the last fifteen years, I don’t know what people mean by photographic memory. How I remember the past isn’t like flipping through an indiscriminate pile of snapshots. It’s more selective than that.
If someone asked me what my address was when I was seven years old, the numbers wouldn’t flash before my eyes. I’d have to relive a specific moment: the heat of the day, the smell of the cut lawn, the slap-slap-slap of rubber thongs against my heels. Then once again I’d be walking up the two steps of the poured-concrete porch, reaching into the black mailbox, heart pounding, fingers grasping – Where is it? Where’s that stupid letter from Art Linkletter, inviting me to be on his show? But I wouldn’t give up hope. I’d think to myself, Maybe I’m at the wrong address. But no, there they are, the brass numbers above, 3–6–2–4, complete with tarnish and rust around the screws.
That’s what I remember most, not addresses but pain – that old lump-in-the-throat conviction that the world had fingered me for abuse and neglect. Is that the same as a grudge? I wanted so much to be a guest on ‘Kids Say the Darndest Things.’ It was the kiddie route to fame, and I wanted once again to prove to my mother that I was special, in spite of Kwan. I wanted to snub the neighborhood kids, to make them mad that I was having more fun than they would ever know. While riding my bicycle around and around the block, I’d plot what I’d say when I was finally invited to be on the show. I’d tell Mr. Linkletter about Kwan, just the funny stuff – like the time she said she loved the movie Southern Pacific. Mr. Linkletter would raise his eyebrows and round his mouth. ‘Olivia,’ he’d say, ‘doesn’t your sister mean South Pacific?’ Then people in the audience would slap their knees and roar with laughter, and I’d glow with childish wonder and a cute expression.
Old Art always figured kids were so sweet and naive they didn’t know they were saying embarrassing things. But all those kids on the show knew precisely what they were doing. Why else didn’t they ever mention the real secrets – how they played night-night nurse and dickie doctor, how they stole gum, gunpowder caps, and muscle magazines from the corner Mexican store. I knew kids who did those things. They were the same ones who once pinned down my arms and peed on me, laughing and shouting, ‘Olivia’s sister is a retard.’ They sat on me until I started crying, hating Kwan, hating myself.
To soothe me, Kwan took me to the Sweet Dreams Shoppe. We were sitting outside, licking cones of rocky road ice cream. Captain, the latest mutt my mother had rescued from the pound, whom Kwan had named, was lying at our feet, vigilantly waiting for drips.
‘Libby-ah,’ Kwan said, ‘what this word, lee-tahd?’
‘Reee-tard,’ I corrected, lingering over the word. I was still angry with Kwan and the neighbor kids. I took another tongue stab of ice cream, thinking of retarded things Kwan had done. ‘Retard means fantou,’ I said. ‘You know, a stupid person who doesn’t understand anything.’ She nodded. ‘Like saying the wrong things at the wrong time,’ I added. She nodded again. ‘When kids laugh at you and you don’t know why.’
Kwan was quiet for the longest time, and the inside of my chest began to feel tickly and uncomfortable. Finally she said in Chinese: ‘Libby-ah, you think this word is me, retard? Be honest.’
I kept licking the drips running down the side of my cone, avoiding her stare. I noticed that Captain was also watching me attentively. The tickly feeling grew, until I let out a huge sigh and grumbled, ‘Not really.’ Kwan grinned and patted my arm, which just about drove me crazy. ‘Captain,’ I shouted. ‘Bad dog! Stop begging!’ The dog cowered.
‘Oh, he not begging,’ Kwan said in a happy voice. ‘Only hoping.’ She petted his rump, then held her cone above the dog’s head. ‘Talk English!’ Captain sneezed a couple of times, then let go with a low wuff. She allowed him a lick. ‘Jang Zhongwen! Talk Chinese!’ Two highpitched yips followed. She gave him another lick, then another, sweet-talking him in Chinese. And it annoyed me to see this, how any dumb thing could make her and the dog instantly happy.
Later that same night Kwan asked me again about what those kids had said. She pestered me so much I thought she really was retarded.
Libby-ah, are you sleeping? Okay, sorry, sorry, go back to sleep, it’s not important … I only wanted to ask you again about this word, retard. Ah, but you’re sleeping now, maybe tomorrow, after you come home from school. …
Funny, I was thinking how I once thought Miss Banner was this way, retard. She didn’t understand anything. … Libby-ah, did you know I taught Miss Banner to talk? Libby-ah? Sorry, sorry, go back to sleep, then.
It’s true, though. I was her teacher. When I first met her, her speech was like a baby’s! Sometimes I laughed, I couldn’t help it. But she did not mind. The two of us had a good time saying the wrong things all the time. We were like two actors at a temple fair, using our hands, our eyebrows, the fast twist of our feet to show each other what we meant. That’s how she told me about her life before she came to China. What I thought she said was this:
She was born to a family who lived in a village far, far west of Thistle Mountain, across a tumbling sea. It was past the country where black people live, beyond the land of English soldiers and Portuguese sailors. Her family village was bigger than all these lands put together. Her father owned many ships that crossed this sea to other lands. In these lands, he gathered money that grew like flowers, and the smell of this money made many people happy.
When Miss Banner was five, her two little brothers chased a chicken into a dark hole. They fell all the way to the other side of the world. Naturally, the mother wanted to find them. Before the sun came up and after the sun came down, she puffed out her neck like a rooster and called for her lost sons. After many years, the mother found the same hole in the earth, climbed in, and then she too fell all the way to the other side of the world.
The father told Miss Banner, We must search for our lost family. So they sailed across the tumbling sea. First they stopped at a noisy island. Her father took her to live in a large palace ruled by tiny people who looked like Jesus. While her father was in the fields picking more flower-money, the little Jesuses threw stones at her and cut off her
