Free Paper Daughter by Jeanette Ingold Page A

on back stairs and then see a curtain move and a girl
    slip into the shop. "May I help you?" she asks.
    I ask if I might see the herbalist.
    "
That is my father," she says. "He is away just now. But if what you want is something simple, I might be able to get it for you.
"
    Then the door opens, and a man who appears American steps inside. Excusing herself to me, the girl gives him a small, already prepared bundle and receives payment for it. I am impressed that she talks with him in his own language, and I would ask her how she learned, except it would be rude.
    So I only tell her I have come for medicine for Li Dewei, and I watch her open a ledger and run her finger down lines of handwritten words, looking, I realize, for his name. It surprises me. Reading is not a thing Sucheng or her friends at home ever learned.
    "
Here," the girl says. "Here is what my father gives him. I can get this for you. It will be eighty cents.
"
    She takes the dollar and gives me back two dimes in change.
    "
Twenty cents," I say, so she will know that I know.
    Then she pulls out one of the higher drawers and brings it to the counter along with a scale. She carefully weighs out a small quantity of dried leaves before saying, "I've never seen you before.
"
    I explain that my sister and I have come from China only some months earlier.
    "
And what is your name?" she asks. So forward she is, asking, but her voice is so soft and her face so smooth I do not hold it against her.
    "
Fai-yi Li," I answer. "And you are called?
"
    An Huang
"
    I have learned something about her, for she has not said
Huang An,
in the way of Chinese. But then I have not said
Li Fai-yi,
either. I hope she has noticed that, also.
    "
Do you always work here for your father?" I ask.
    "
Only sometimes, when he is very busy or away. I am still in school, and that takes most of my time.
"
    Another surprise!
A
girl old enough to be married—she looks to be fourteen, perhaps fifleen—not only reading, but going to school!
    She wraps the medicine in a square of paper. "I will tell my father when he returns that we now have a new customer." Then she smiles. "I hope you are happy that you have come to this country.
"
    "
Thank you," I tell her. "Yes.
"
    I go to the door then, wondering if perhaps one day there will be need for more ache medicine, so that I might have reason to return. I glance back and see her reaching to replace the herb drawer, and then...
    I am not sure what happens—-perhaps an edge catches—but in the next instant the drawer is falling. An Huang gives a little cry as dried leaves shower down. "Oh!" she says, sounding so distressed. "Oh, no!
"
    So I go back in, and for many minutes we work together, picking up leaves and gently blowing to clean them. Finally we sweep up all the leaf dust too fine to save.
    "
Now," I tell her, looking at the quantity we have returned to the drawer, "surely this is enough that your father will not beat you.
"
    "
Not beat—" She looks astonished. "Is that what you thought? That I would be punished for dropping the drawer?
"
    I nod. Yes, of course, that was what I thought. It was what happened to my sister, back in China, when she was clumsy in the kitchen. It was how you taught girls to be careful.
    But this An Huang says, "My father would never do that. I was only upset because I thought how hard it might be for him to replace what I had spilled. Sometimes American officials make getting Chinese medicines very difficult." Then she smiles again. "Thank you for helping me. Many boys might have run off rather than take a chance on staying and being blamed for any loss.
"
    "
I did not think of that," I tell her.
    "
I know," she says. "That is what I mean"—a comment that does not quite follow but makes me feelgood.
    I do leave then, saying goodbye in my best American.
    She might answer in my language, but she does not. She gives me the respect of answering also in American, so quickly that I must repeat the sounds over