Free Re Jane by Patricia Park

He’d tell me to show her who’s boss
—
    But a burst of laughter escaped from my lips. Then another. I could not maintain my stern front. I let go. We had both erupted into peals of laughter.
    I’d like to think that with that moment something shifted for us; it brought us closer together. Without anticipating it Devon and I had formed a new alliance. Or maybe it was simply that we became friends.
    Devon’s Chinese school occupied the top floor of a squat building on Elizabeth Street. Below the school was a Chinese herbal-medicine doctor, and at first it reminded me of John Hong’s father’s herbal-medicine practice down the block from Food. Both had the bitter aroma of burning herbs, but Mr. Hong’s place smelled spicier and sweeter. This one gave off a muskier, staler odor.
    Some of the children were dropped off by their parents: women in mismatched, bright-colored synthetic clothes and men in white button-downs and black polyester pants. Both wore the same thick-rubber-soled shoes. Other children were accompanied by their grandmothers. But a surprising number of students would file in unaccompanied—pint-size Chinese children with enormous schoolbags strapped to their backs. They reminded me of baby turtles, toddling their way to the ocean.
    The grannies and I sat in the waiting room. One pointed to Devon as she slipped into her class. She asked me something in Mandarin or Cantonese or some other dialect I didn’t know. When I told her I wasn’t Chinese, she switched into English, in a heavy, almost unintelligible accent. “Sister?”
    I shook my head and answered, in overenunciated English, “Baby-sitter.”
    Devon had taught me the Chinese character for “Korean,” so I scribbled it on the back of a receipt and handed it to one of the old ladies. (I did not know the word for
honhyol.
)
    The granny shook her head and smiled, waving a hand away from the receipt. I figured my character strokes were too messy for her to understand. But another granny took the paper from her and studied the character. She nodded. Then she said something to the other grannies. They all nodded and smiled, and I nodded and smiled back.
    Then the first granny held out a greased paper bag filled with some kind of herbal candy. She smiled again and shook the bag at me, offering me one. I bowed my thanks, figuring that the gesture was some kind of universal one between our two cultures. The candy tasted of bitter ginger; we sat there chewing in comfortable silence.
    When the students filed out of the classroom and into the lobby, their grandmothers rushed at them, smoothing down their mussed-up hair, their rumpled clothes. There was something so sweet about these fussy gestures. When Devon emerged, she frantically scanned around the room. “Devon! Over here!” I called. Her eyes alighted on me, flooding with relief. She hurried toward me. The air was filled with excited chatter. Devon and I were the only ones not speaking Chinese.
    We met Beth on the 7 platform as planned and boarded the subway. The other passengers were slouched in their seats, with their bags placed in their laps or carefully suspended between their ankles, so as not to touch the floor. But not Beth. Beth sat with the straight posture of a yogi, one hand clutching Devon’s, the other the straps of her WNYC tote bag. She let her load spill carelessly into the empty seat next to her despite the standing passengers. Either they were too polite or they lacked the English to shout,
Hey lady, move your stuff!
The only sounds were the rickety racket of the train grating against its tracks and Beth’s chatter.
    The row of old Chinese ladies across the aisle looked from Devon’s face to her mother’s and back again. They looked like the grannies in the school lobby. Between us Devon squirmed under their gaze, but Beth remained oblivious, prattling pronouncements to me over her daughter’s