Excerpt: My
Half of the Sky
Excerpt from uncorrected proof
Chapter Seven
A Simple Cutting
My head pounded from a day of drinking tea at Drink Happiness Tea Shop. I drank. Feng Gu talked. The only customer we'd had was Zi Mei. Certainly there to gloat.
I was tired and ready to go home. Instead I walked across the bridge. Past the hamburger shop with the lucky M. To the park.
A woman jostled against me with her plastic shopping bags. I passed a migrant worker hawking balloons shaped like cartoon characters--Mickey Mouse, the Monkey King, Hello Kitty. A man shouted on his cell phone. So many people. The tea shop was like a Buddhist monastery in comparison. Why did I feel so empty there?
I spotted the Palm Reader examining the hand of an old woman. Next to them sat Madame Paper Cutter. She pushed her glasses up on her nose, then returned to a piece of paper. She wasn't cutting. She was writing.
"Have you eaten?" I called to her.
"Li Hui," she said, grabbing onto my hand. "Where have you been all day?"
I knelt down and glanced at her characters. They were legible but lacked confidence.
"Don't forget the dash on this one," I said. "I got a job."
"How fortunate," Madame Paper Cutter held onto my hand. "I knew you'd find a job here. Who's the lucky student?"
"Well, I'm not exactly--" I started. "I work in the tea shop across from the bus depot. Drink Happiness."
Madame Paper Cutter let go of my hand. She took up her scissors and a red piece of paper. Would she show me a new cutting? In celebratory red, no less.
"It's not exactly what I hoped for--" I explained. "But the place is losing lots of money. Father says I can help turn it around."
"That's great." Her voice lacked conviction.
"Well, it's a job," I said. Mother would frown at my candid words. But, this was Madame Paper Cutter. "My boss isn't the most wonderful human being under the sky. All I did was drink tea and listen to her all day."
She replaced the red paper and took out a yellow piece. She cut a point. A bird's beak?
"I didn't show you how to do this one," Madame Paper Cutter said. With a snip here and snip there, she had cut up a simple outline of a bird in flight.
"That one I think I can do," I said. I took out my scissors and grabbed a fast-food pamphlet from the ground. Snip. Snip. "There," I showed her my bird. "That's a simple one."
"Exactly," Madame Paper Cutter said.
"I could have churned out hundreds of these by now," I said. "Instead I've been struggling all afternoon on that baby boy with the peach. Why didn't you show me this one earlier?"
"A true teacher needs a true challenge," she said, looking down at the sidewalk.
I caught her double meaning. But I didn't enjoy any challenges standing in the park with a sign. Then again, I did get to teach Madame Paper Cutter. She always surprised me with her questions. "How can you remember so many strokes?" Or, "How should I hold the pen best?" I had to dig into my brain to discover an answer for her every time.
"Don't worry about me," I said, putting the bird cutting down. "Father's only trying to help. Besides, this is not a long-term kind of thing."
"They never are," she said and looked across the park. Her office. Her home. "I've been here three years already."
What did Madame Paper Cutter expect me to do? We needed cooking oil and matches in our kitchen. Besides I'd never work for bitter Feng Gu for three years.
"Who knows?" I said. "Perhaps I'll be back here tomorrow."
"Tomorrow," she said. She wrote the two characters that made up the word on her paper. Her hand moved so slowly, I had time to focus on each character--first the one for "bright" and then the one for "day." I'd never really thought of the separate meanings that created the word. Would tomorrow bring brightness? Clarity?
"Tomorrow," she circled the characters. Then she pushed her glasses up on her nose and smiled at me. "I'll save your space."
Madame Paper Cutter, despite her youth, was so wise. Her gentle manner gave me comfort. I would be back here tomorrow.
© 2006 Jana McBurney-Lin, All Rights Reserved
TOP