Free The Cooked Seed by Anchee Min

morning.”
    I became excited. “Are you sure I wouldn’t be intruding? Will I upset your professor since I am not a student?”
    “Nobody will notice you,” Kate replied. “It’s a lecture. It takes place in a hall with hundreds of people.”
    “Lecture? Will I get caught for not speaking English?”
    “Well, pretend you do speak English.”
    I followed Kate to the cafeteria because I was curious about what kind of food she ate. She sat down with a plate of what she called “salad.” This was the first salad I’d seen that was not made of potatoes. To a mainland Chinese,
salad
meant Russian food, which was basically potato. Kate told me that Americans didn’t have a strict rule about what constituted a salad. “It could be a mix of lettuce with chopped cucumbers, carrots, onions and nuts, leafy greens, and, of course, potatoes. Basically, anything you want.”
    I couldn’t help but laugh when I watched Kate eat. She chewed like a rabbit as she ate the raw leaves. “Are there salads in Chinese food?” Kate asked.
    “No,” I replied. “In China it’s dangerous to eat raw greens. One can get diseases like malaria.”
    “So you cook everything?”
    “Yes, mostly.”
    “Here, please share my salad.” Kate gave me a fork. “This will be your first American experience. I insist.”
    In order to speed up learning English, I bought a used nine-inch TV set. The only shows I could follow were
Sesame Street
and
Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood
. I had never seen anything like them in China. I fell in love with the gentle Mr. Rogers. Every day I would learn new phrases from him; for example, he would say “Good to go” as he finished tying his shoes. TV commercials became my lessons, too. My favorites were McDonald’s and 1-800-Empire Carpet. Later I would get sick of them. I found myself improving so much so quickly that I decided to withdraw from the English tutorial class to save money.
    An hour hanging out with Kate proved to be the most effective. I felt like I was walking out of the darkness and into the light. I began to understand bits of people’s conversations. I also found myself less afraid.I saw a young man by the elevator. I remembered that he was Kate’s friend Steve. When I returned to Kate, I told her, “I saw Steve in the refrigerator.”
    It took Kate a moment to realize what I meant. “Oh, you mean you saw Steve in the elevator?” The similar ending sounds
-rator
and
-vator
confused me. When Steve came to visit the next time, Kate joked, “Hey, Steve, what were you doing in the refrigerator? My friend Anchee saw you there. Yep, she saw you in the refrigerator. What do you mean, no? Wait, hey, Anchee, is this the guy you saw in the refrigerator?”
    I didn’t realize the trouble I’d created until I heard a loud banging on the door. I was with Kate in her room. Kate got up and opened her door. It was Takisha, and she was visibly upset. She refused to step in when Kate invited her. Takisha leaned against the door frame and said to me, “What are you doing here, Miss Anchee? Let me remind you that you have your own room and your own roommate.”
    I smiled and said, “I am hanging out with Kate.”
    “I can see that,” Takisha said.
    “I am practicing English,” I told Takisha.
    “It’s time to return to your own room,” Takisha responded.
    I said good-bye to Kate and followed Takisha back to our room. Locking the door, Takisha motioned for me to sit down on my bed. “We have to talk,” she said. She went to sit on her bed facing me.
    “Thank you for coming back with me,” Takisha began.
    “You are welcome.”
    “May I have your attention?” Takisha asked. “Full attention, understand? I want you to listen.”
    “Attention, yes. You talk, me listen.”
    “I am going to share with you a piece of American history, which I don’t think you are aware of,” Takisha said. “Know what I mean?”
    I nodded. “Know what you mean.”
    Takisha wrote down the word
slave
for me to