Free Transparency by Frances Hwang Page B

you need to worry,”she said. “Helen will be fine.”
    “You think?” her uncle said, touching the corners of his mouth. June could make out only the faintest outline of his birthmark,
     a slight discoloration that reminded her of a territory with fading boundaries. Her uncle stroked the spot as if he could
     rub it gently away. There had been a time, June remembered, when she had actively disliked her uncle. Her bad feelings toward
     him arose one day when, in front of her parents, her uncle squeezed her leg, and said jokingly, “Fat is sexy.”She had been
     stunned and felt her cheeks turning red. She was only seven or eight, but she would never forget such a humiliation. Her mother
     said her uncle was brain-damaged and always making mistakes of this kind.
    Her uncle dropped her off at a car rental place on the way to making his rounds. As she said good-bye to him, he gave her
     one of his watches. It had a rectangular face lined with faux diamonds and a beige leather strap. June didn’t want to seem
     ungrateful, but she knew she would never wear it and tried to give it back to him. “I already have a watch, see?” she said,
     showing him the one on her wrist.
    “You don’t like?” her uncle said.
    “It’s nice. I just don’t think I’ll ever wear it. I don’t want it to go to waste.”
    Her uncle hissed through his teeth as he took the watch back. He got out of the van and opened the side door, rummaging inside
     for a while as June stood on the sidewalk. “How about this one? You like it better?” he said, emerging from the van and handing
     her a small burgundy box.
    A fake Cartier with a silver band was snuggled inside. June felt bad. No doubt it was more expensive than the previous watch
     he had given her. “You like?” he repeated.
    “I do, but—”
    “Cartier!” he said fiercely. “Cartier!”
    “It’s very nice,”she said. “I like it.”
    “You wear this one?”
    She nodded.
    Her uncle smiled at her. “You have good taste. That watch is better than the other one. So you will visit us again soon, right?”
    June took off her watch and put the new one on her wrist. She was surprised by how much she liked her uncle’s gift—she had
     never liked anything he’d given her before—and she moved the dial to the center of her wrist, gazing at it for a moment before
     smiling up at him.

REMEDIES
    Y our grandmother was a funny woman, my mother says. In the afternoons, she’d get into one of those rickshaws with a bicycle
     attached and ask the man to take her to the movie theater. She went to see the movies every day by herself. The theater wasn’t
     usually crowded, and you could hear the rats squeal when they got trapped in the seats. They were giant rats, as big as American
     house cats, and they crawled up and down the aisles, waiting for you to drop a piece of food on the floor. Everyone threw
     their chicken bones onto the ground, spat out litchi pits and the cracked shells of watermelon seeds, and there was always
     a rustling underfoot as people shifted in their seats and the rats glided between their legs.
    Your grandma really liked the movies. There was one movie in particular. A famous Chinese actress drowns herself in the Hangzhou
     lake. The day after she saw it, your grandma took a bus to the suburbs outside Taipei and jumped into the river. The water
     was too shallow, and she twisted her ankle on the rocks. A local fisherman picked her out of the water, all dripping and torn.
     She had worn bright yellow silk for the occasion.
    You have to understand that your grandma tried to cure herself many times. She would hear of some new remedy and be convinced
     this would make her well again. For a while, she visited the local hospital, collecting placentas. She cooked a soup with
     the bags because she thought the hormones would make her strong again. She also kept a container of crawling insects, not
     too large, like shiny beetles. She fed the insects a high-quality