"Maybe so. He wasn't like a professional robber. Probably he was scared too. I'm sure he was drunk."
Niyan put in, "Maybe we should keep a gun here."
"No, no, absolutely not!" Nan said. "If a robber shows up again, just give him what he wants. The most important thing is not to get yourself hurt. Understood?"
" Yes, sir," replied the waitress with a grin.
23
THOUGH Taotao read The Oxford American Dictionary from time to time, he refused to learn Chinese anymore. Whenever his parents urged him to write some characters, he'd claim his hand hurt so much that he was suffering from carpal tunnel syndrome. What was that? His parents had no clue. They believed the problem lay in his mind and it was his laziness that had caused the constant slippage with his Chinese writing. He could speak and understand Mandarin but could no longer read or write the words. Even when he spoke the language, he used it only in a rudimentary way. He was tired of his parents' litany of the advantages in being fully bilingual. One afternoon his father yelled at him in the storage room, demanding that the boy promise to work hard on the written characters, but Taotao wouldn't give him his word and instead complained about the use-lessness of Chinese in his life. Shubo happened to be present and tried to convince the boy of the necessity of keeping his mother tongue.
"It's too hard," Taotao said. "I've already spent so many years on it and can't even keep the words I had learned before I was six." Recently he had begun to resent the more difficult characters. Among those he could recognize, he hated the killer ideogram cang (hide) most, never able to remember the order and number of its strokes.
"You've never poot your heart into it. Of coss you have regressed so much," Nan said.
Shubo coaxed, "Taotao, don't give up. Stroke by stroke you can fell an oak."
"I don't want to cut down any tree!"
"I mean, no pains, no gains-if you keep to try, you will master Chinese."
"Fat chance," grunted the boy. "Yes, you still have a big chance." "I don't mean that."
His father broke in, "I know what you mean-'a very slim chance.' No matter what, you must continue to learn Chinese."
Unlike Nan, Pingping sympathized with their son and in private pointed out to Nan that Taotao would never learn enough of the language for taking the SAT II Chinese test. Her argument sank in, and for several days Nan left him alone.
Now it was time for the boy to decide what foreign language to study in middle and high schools. There were Sunday Chinese classes at Emory University, which many children attended, but on weekends Nan and Pingping had to work and couldn't drive their son into Atlanta. Moreover, Pingping didn't believe Taotao would benefit much from knowing Chinese. She felt English was much more expressive and more useful. Back in China she could hardly write anything, but here once she learned a little English, she had found herself able to write a lot, as if whatever she put on paper became interesting. Nan agreed with her. Compared with written Chinese, English was indeed a language of common people, despite being hard to master, its grammatical rules too loose and its idioms defying logic. Without question, their son should devote himself more to this alphabet.
So they stopped badgering him to inscribe the characters. If the boy didn't like Chinese, he would never master it by copying the words. Maybe someday they could send him to Pingping's parents during the summer; that way he could regain his fluency and literacy in his mother tongue. In his school Latin was very popular, and he applied for it but couldn't get into the class. It was said that some students had learned Latin so well that they kept diaries in the dead tongue so that their parents couldn't tell what they wrote. Nan knew that the knowledge of Latin would strengthen his son's English, so he was displeased that Taotao couldn't enroll in the class.
Later Pingping found out that besides English, most papers in science were published in three other languages: French, German, and Japanese. So it would be better if Taotao took up either German or French, both offered at his school. At the beginning of the next semester he chose to learn French, which turned out to be so easy for him that he soon excelled in the class.
Once he asked his parents, "Can I major in French in college?"
"You should study to be doctor," Pingping said. "What profession is better than save people's life?"
"I don't like medical science. How about art history or English? Can I major in art history?"
"Zen you will be a poor scholar for zer rest of your life," Nan said.
"I don't care."
"You don't care because we work night and day to make money for you," retorted his mother. "You act like rich kid who don't need profession."
Taotao turned to his father. "Didn't you tell me to follow my heart? You said, As long as you do something well, you won't starve.' "
"Sure, I said zat. But you should take your mozzer's opinion into account too."
"If I get a scholarship, can I study anything I want?"
His parents didn't answer, knowing there was no way to dissuade him. Nan knew Pingping would be happy if Taotao became a premed, but he believed they shouldn't force their son to do anything against his will. Yes, he wanted the boy to follow his own heart.
24
" SOMETHING good happened," Dick said to Nan when he stepped into the Gold Wok. There was a note of delight in his voice. He pulled his maroon scarf off his neck, his hair damp with rainwater and his cheeks steaming a little. It was still drizzling outside, and it had been a slow afternoon at the restaurant. "What happened?" asked Nan.
"My book won the National Book Critics Circle Award." Dick's eyes were sparkling and his face was so radiant that he seemed many years younger.
"How big is zis prize?"
"Almost like a Pulitzer."
"My goodness, congratulations!" Nan gave him a bear hug, patting his shoulder several times. "So now you're as famous as Edward Neary?"
"I'm getting close."
"You inspire me," Nan said in all sincerity. Indeed, just yesterday he hadn't thought of Dick as a significant poet; now overnight his friend had become a literary figure.
"Now my task is how to manage success," said Dick.
"How do you mean?" Nan was puzzled, unable to see how success was something to be managed.
"I must capitalize on the opportunity to promote myself and my work, also to raise my fee."
"What fee?"
"The fee for my readings and talks."
"Oh, you'll rake in zer kind of mahney like Edward Neary?" "You bet."
That surprised Nan, because Dick was talking like a businessman. Yet Nan said, "We must celebrate." "Yes, let's do that. Thank you."
Nan went into the kitchen to make Crabmeat Fu Rong and Scallops with Black Bean Sauce. Both dishes were easy to to cook, and the latter was one of Dick's favorites. Nan told Niyan to take two bottles of Tsingtao beer to Dick. He said to Pingping, "Dick just won a top prize for his poetry book. He's a star now."
"No fooling? What prize?"
"I forgot what it's called, similar to the Pulitzer."
"My, I should go and congratulate him."
"Tell him I'll be done in a few minutes."
Both Pingping and Niyan gave their congratulations to Dick, who was so wild with joy that he wouldn't use the glass on the table and drank the beer directly from the bottle and in long swigs. His eyes turned watery. He now smiled and now sighed, shaking his head as if bemused by such good fortune.
A few weeks later Dick told Nan that he had received a job offer from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and decided to accept it. Nan had heard of that place and knew this was a major development in his friend's career. At least Dick wouldn't have to worry about his tenure at Emory anymore. Nan felt upset that from now on he'd be entirely alone as a struggling poet. He had been writing poetry in English these days, though somewhat halfheartedly, and had been planning to show Dick a few of his poems about animals once he polished them. Now his friend was about to leave; it was almost like a blow to him.