Education for the Body
ZAFTIG CLOUDS REFLECTED orange rays while the blinding sun glared from afar. A slender aircraft, bearing a blue tail dotted with a saffron logo, bulled its way through a thick blanket.
The humming murmur went unnoticed as most of the black-haired passengers wore headphones. A suited tall blond male carried a grey tray filled with wrapped foods down the aisle, heading toward a busty young woman with a semblance of Jean Simmons and whose gleaming shaved head faced the protruding screen a few seats ahead of her.
Across the aisle, Yuanzhen and her sandy-haired kindergarten-aged Xiaohan played cards. His tray table had in its corner a pair of joker cards and was further specked with brightly-hued toys and stationery. Xiaohan watched the male flight attendant finishing his delivery and turning to go.
"Hallo!" Xiaohan called after in his flawless German and showing off the gap of his missing incisor, "Herr Flight Attendant."
Yuanzhen glared and shushed him but to no avail. The flight attendant halted by their seat and beamed. The mother apologized for her boy in broken German, explaining that it was her son’s first time taking such a long trip but the Aryan man’s face was frozen in a grin: "Your meals will be served soon," he enunciated his words for Yuanzhen’s benefit, "passenger on seat 32D made a special request."
"Did that lady pay extra?"
Yuanzhen imagined placing her hand over her son's mouth to shush him. "Let him go," she muttered to her boy in her lilting dialect.
"That is fine," the tall man answered, understanding from her tone what she said, "the Fräulein received a special meal because she does not eat animal products."
"Can I have that meal too?" Xiaohan yelped like he wanted to participate in a game of hide and seek.
It now annoyed Yuanzhen that the man refused to returned to his work. She would surely have reprimanded him if he were one of her waiters.
"I would be more than happy to provide it for you if we had any left, but that passenger called ahead of time for her request."
"You should know I love animals and won’t have a lunch made of anything dead. Bad enough Mutter and Vater sell poor little animals at their restaurant."
Yuanzhen felt her face burning like a tea kettle but reminded herself to stop blaming the flight attendant. It wasn't his fault that he did his job, the only one to blame was that shameless thing and her "special meal." Who did that thing think she was? Showing half of her breasts like they were for sale. It was as if the thing knew that ever since her Xiaohan had learned that meat really didn't come from factories it had become a feat every single meal to make him eat. How could a boy his age refuse rou? True that he turned out more like her family and was tall for his age but if he continued to say no to meat, he could grow stocky like his father, who was even shorter than an average Chinese.
"I will see what I can do," the German chirped still smiling at Xiaohan, "but I have to go back to Arbeit, little Herr."
At least the man was more caring than the cold Germans she met once she moved to their country. Back home, she could see friends and relatives whenever she wanted but in that vain foreign city, the only people she could talk to were her workers and her money-obsessed in-laws. Before you know it, you'll be home. She imagined her father waving at her and Xiaohan at the airport and wished that her three weeks there could prolong forever.
Xiaohan reexamined his cards. She reached for the denim sack under her seat, gripped a plastic-wrapped minced sausage bun and pushed it to him.
He held tighter to his cards and drew his hands to his chest: "If I eat now I'll be too full for the proper meal."
Yuanzhen assured herself that her son would learn to behave once he spent a few weeks home.
"STOP IT" SHE told him as she saw him holding on to his canine tooth and shaking it. “It will fall if you wait."
The plastic tray with their fish-course meal sat before them but the boy wouldn’t take his hand off his loose tooth.
"But it’ll fall out and I’ll swallow. That's what Hans D. did over Whitsun. A real ambulance took him to hospital and had his belly pumped. Who’s going to pump my belly up here? The tooth will rip my guts and I’ll die."
Yuanzhen opened her mouth to answer but she heard a soft voice in a slightly accented Mandarin: "I'm sorry." She turned and saw the bald foreigner with the deep cleavage holding up a plastic wrapped cookie. "Wo xiang wen nide haizi yao buyao wode cookie," she said the last word in her native language because even after four years of Chinese classes she couldn't recall the word.
The boy debouched his fingers wet with stringy drool and reached for the treat. The mother interceded like a fierce lioness.
The younger woman waved her hand: "I didn't touch it, see? Only my diet is what we call in America 'vegan.' No butter, no eggs."
"My son and I are fine." American, no wonder she was even stranger than Germans, she thought. And Yuanzhen knew only crazy American girls would shave off their perfectly good hair and crouch beside her boy displaying her breasts like a restaurant menu.
"Don't listen to mother," Xiaohan said in his most tongue-rolling Mandarin. Yuanzhen was taken aback with the accuracy of her son’s speech.
She enunciated to the girl: "Try another family. My son and I have enough to eat."
"But he said..."
"Thank you," Yuanzhen even waved her hand.
"Ma!" Xiaohan rocked his mother's forearm as he watched the American stand up, "How could you have done that? Have you gone verrückt? I hate you!"
Yuanzhen's cheeks turned the color of poinsettia petals.
Before she stepped off, the American girl added: "Wait until you are 18 and you’ll be a free adult."
Xiaohan knew better than to answer.
Yuanzhen forked her uncooked salad but it tasted as bitter as a yin herbal portion. Xiaohan huffed and clanked his silverware like a drummer of wild Western music. Yuanzhen could have explained to him why she was right but wondered if the boy would appreciate her effort. I did the right thing, she reassured herself, that crazy thing had no right to interrupt us. Yuanzhen's eyes rolled toward the middle of the aisle. The young woman wend down the aisle and watched both sides. He doesn't deserve a cookie after the way he yelled at me.
“Mama?” the boy petted the mother's arm and muttered a sorry, "I don't know what I was thinking." Yuanzhen's eyes met her son's. He simpered: "Will you forgive me?"
Her right hand squeezed his cheek and she said: “I haven’t forgiven you since the day the stork bought you.”
They chuckled and continued their meal. He's on his vacation. Why can't he enjoy himself? A cookie is nothing if you think how his grandpa and grandma spoil him. "Do you still want that binggan?" The mother didn't wait for the boy's answer before she unfastened her belt and wiggled out of her seat.
As Yuanzhen marched down the carpeted aisle and passed families who saw eating as the education for the body, her uncertainty that her son was becoming too foreign still lingered in her mind. It's his luck he can get along with them. See the world like his father’s side. The busty young woman stopped at a seat on the right side of the row. "Miss!" Yuanzhen called out, "we changed our minds." The mother was as winded as when she helped with waiting tables, "we would like it after all, please."
Pairs of almond-shaped eyes watched Yuanzhen and the busty girl. Yuanzhen reached for the cookie to get over the exchange for once.
The American waved her hands to block Yuanzhen: "First apologize."
The mother laughed but noticed that the American did not mean it as a joke.
"It is the least you can do after the way you treated your son and me," the sentence didn't sound as fluent in Mandarin but Yuanzhen got the gist of what the girl wanted to say.
The Chinese woman looked at the other passengers and her son. You're not really breaking a promise if you're talking to a mental. But what was a duibuqi worth in front of the people she hardly knew, what it mattered is that her son wanted a treat.
"So..." the American crossed her arms.
Yuanzhen grinned, shook her head, turned and headed toward her seat, passing semi-opened windows that trapped cotton clouds against a cerulean velvet.
As a Portuguese of Chinese descent, Ke Huang learned most of her English from watching Hollywood movies. She has a B.S. from Syracuse and M.F.A. in screenwriting from UCLA. Her writing consists of comedy, drama and horror stories about ethnic experiences.
ZAFTIG CLOUDS REFLECTED orange rays while the blinding sun glared from afar. A slender aircraft, bearing a blue tail dotted with a saffron logo, bulled its way through a thick blanket.
The humming murmur went unnoticed as most of the black-haired passengers wore headphones. A suited tall blond male carried a grey tray filled with wrapped foods down the aisle, heading toward a busty young woman with a semblance of Jean Simmons and whose gleaming shaved head faced the protruding screen a few seats ahead of her.
Across the aisle, Yuanzhen and her sandy-haired kindergarten-aged Xiaohan played cards. His tray table had in its corner a pair of joker cards and was further specked with brightly-hued toys and stationery. Xiaohan watched the male flight attendant finishing his delivery and turning to go.
"Hallo!" Xiaohan called after in his flawless German and showing off the gap of his missing incisor, "Herr Flight Attendant."
Yuanzhen glared and shushed him but to no avail. The flight attendant halted by their seat and beamed. The mother apologized for her boy in broken German, explaining that it was her son’s first time taking such a long trip but the Aryan man’s face was frozen in a grin: "Your meals will be served soon," he enunciated his words for Yuanzhen’s benefit, "passenger on seat 32D made a special request."
"Did that lady pay extra?"
Yuanzhen imagined placing her hand over her son's mouth to shush him. "Let him go," she muttered to her boy in her lilting dialect.
"That is fine," the tall man answered, understanding from her tone what she said, "the Fräulein received a special meal because she does not eat animal products."
"Can I have that meal too?" Xiaohan yelped like he wanted to participate in a game of hide and seek.
It now annoyed Yuanzhen that the man refused to returned to his work. She would surely have reprimanded him if he were one of her waiters.
"I would be more than happy to provide it for you if we had any left, but that passenger called ahead of time for her request."
"You should know I love animals and won’t have a lunch made of anything dead. Bad enough Mutter and Vater sell poor little animals at their restaurant."
Yuanzhen felt her face burning like a tea kettle but reminded herself to stop blaming the flight attendant. It wasn't his fault that he did his job, the only one to blame was that shameless thing and her "special meal." Who did that thing think she was? Showing half of her breasts like they were for sale. It was as if the thing knew that ever since her Xiaohan had learned that meat really didn't come from factories it had become a feat every single meal to make him eat. How could a boy his age refuse rou? True that he turned out more like her family and was tall for his age but if he continued to say no to meat, he could grow stocky like his father, who was even shorter than an average Chinese.
"I will see what I can do," the German chirped still smiling at Xiaohan, "but I have to go back to Arbeit, little Herr."
At least the man was more caring than the cold Germans she met once she moved to their country. Back home, she could see friends and relatives whenever she wanted but in that vain foreign city, the only people she could talk to were her workers and her money-obsessed in-laws. Before you know it, you'll be home. She imagined her father waving at her and Xiaohan at the airport and wished that her three weeks there could prolong forever.
Xiaohan reexamined his cards. She reached for the denim sack under her seat, gripped a plastic-wrapped minced sausage bun and pushed it to him.
He held tighter to his cards and drew his hands to his chest: "If I eat now I'll be too full for the proper meal."
Yuanzhen assured herself that her son would learn to behave once he spent a few weeks home.
"STOP IT" SHE told him as she saw him holding on to his canine tooth and shaking it. “It will fall if you wait."
The plastic tray with their fish-course meal sat before them but the boy wouldn’t take his hand off his loose tooth.
"But it’ll fall out and I’ll swallow. That's what Hans D. did over Whitsun. A real ambulance took him to hospital and had his belly pumped. Who’s going to pump my belly up here? The tooth will rip my guts and I’ll die."
Yuanzhen opened her mouth to answer but she heard a soft voice in a slightly accented Mandarin: "I'm sorry." She turned and saw the bald foreigner with the deep cleavage holding up a plastic wrapped cookie. "Wo xiang wen nide haizi yao buyao wode cookie," she said the last word in her native language because even after four years of Chinese classes she couldn't recall the word.
The boy debouched his fingers wet with stringy drool and reached for the treat. The mother interceded like a fierce lioness.
The younger woman waved her hand: "I didn't touch it, see? Only my diet is what we call in America 'vegan.' No butter, no eggs."
"My son and I are fine." American, no wonder she was even stranger than Germans, she thought. And Yuanzhen knew only crazy American girls would shave off their perfectly good hair and crouch beside her boy displaying her breasts like a restaurant menu.
"Don't listen to mother," Xiaohan said in his most tongue-rolling Mandarin. Yuanzhen was taken aback with the accuracy of her son’s speech.
She enunciated to the girl: "Try another family. My son and I have enough to eat."
"But he said..."
"Thank you," Yuanzhen even waved her hand.
"Ma!" Xiaohan rocked his mother's forearm as he watched the American stand up, "How could you have done that? Have you gone verrückt? I hate you!"
Yuanzhen's cheeks turned the color of poinsettia petals.
Before she stepped off, the American girl added: "Wait until you are 18 and you’ll be a free adult."
Xiaohan knew better than to answer.
Yuanzhen forked her uncooked salad but it tasted as bitter as a yin herbal portion. Xiaohan huffed and clanked his silverware like a drummer of wild Western music. Yuanzhen could have explained to him why she was right but wondered if the boy would appreciate her effort. I did the right thing, she reassured herself, that crazy thing had no right to interrupt us. Yuanzhen's eyes rolled toward the middle of the aisle. The young woman wend down the aisle and watched both sides. He doesn't deserve a cookie after the way he yelled at me.
“Mama?” the boy petted the mother's arm and muttered a sorry, "I don't know what I was thinking." Yuanzhen's eyes met her son's. He simpered: "Will you forgive me?"
Her right hand squeezed his cheek and she said: “I haven’t forgiven you since the day the stork bought you.”
They chuckled and continued their meal. He's on his vacation. Why can't he enjoy himself? A cookie is nothing if you think how his grandpa and grandma spoil him. "Do you still want that binggan?" The mother didn't wait for the boy's answer before she unfastened her belt and wiggled out of her seat.
As Yuanzhen marched down the carpeted aisle and passed families who saw eating as the education for the body, her uncertainty that her son was becoming too foreign still lingered in her mind. It's his luck he can get along with them. See the world like his father’s side. The busty young woman stopped at a seat on the right side of the row. "Miss!" Yuanzhen called out, "we changed our minds." The mother was as winded as when she helped with waiting tables, "we would like it after all, please."
Pairs of almond-shaped eyes watched Yuanzhen and the busty girl. Yuanzhen reached for the cookie to get over the exchange for once.
The American waved her hands to block Yuanzhen: "First apologize."
The mother laughed but noticed that the American did not mean it as a joke.
"It is the least you can do after the way you treated your son and me," the sentence didn't sound as fluent in Mandarin but Yuanzhen got the gist of what the girl wanted to say.
The Chinese woman looked at the other passengers and her son. You're not really breaking a promise if you're talking to a mental. But what was a duibuqi worth in front of the people she hardly knew, what it mattered is that her son wanted a treat.
"So..." the American crossed her arms.
Yuanzhen grinned, shook her head, turned and headed toward her seat, passing semi-opened windows that trapped cotton clouds against a cerulean velvet.
As a Portuguese of Chinese descent, Ke Huang learned most of her English from watching Hollywood movies. She has a B.S. from Syracuse and M.F.A. in screenwriting from UCLA. Her writing consists of comedy, drama and horror stories about ethnic experiences.
