“…call me.”
You decide to go for a week without Mandarin, just to see if you can do it. At times, the transition feels seamless: so many of the people in the San Gabriel Valley are bilingual; you get by fine with only English. Your job as a librarian in the local public library is a little trickier, though; most of your patrons speak English, but a few do not.
You decide to shake your head and send the Mandarin-only speakers over to your coworker, who also speaks Mandarin. But when lunch time comes around, she sits beside you in the break room and gives you a curious look.
“为什么今天把顾客转给我?” she asks.
You figure that you might as well tell her the truth: “I want to sell my Mandarin. I’m seeing what it would be like without it.”
“卖你的普通话?” she responds, an incredulous look on her face. “神经病!”
You resent being called crazy, even if some part of you wonders if this is a foolish decision. Still, you soldier on for the rest of the week in English. Your coworker isn’t always there to cover for you when there are Mandarin-speaking patrons, and sometimes you break your vow and say a few quick sentences in Mandarin to them. But the rest of the time, you’re strict with yourself.
Conversation between you and Lillian flows smoothly, for the most part. Normally, you speak in a combination of English and Mandarin with her, and she responds mostly in English; when you switch to English-only, Lillian doesn’t seem to notice. On the occasions when she does speak to you in Mandarin, you hold back and respond in English, too, your roles reversed.
At ATMs, you choose English instead of Chinese. When you run errands, “thank you” replaces “谢谢.” It’s only until Friday rolls around and you’re grocery shopping with your mother that not speaking in Mandarin becomes an issue.
You’re in the supermarket doing your best to ignore the Chinese characters labeling the produce: so many things that you don’t know the word for in English. But you recognize them by sight, and that’s good enough; all you need is to be able to pick out what you need. If you look at things out of the corner of your eye, squint a little bit, you can pretend to be illiterate in Chinese, pretend to navigate things only by memory instead of language.
You can cheat with your mother a little bit: you know enough Cantonese to have a halting conversation with her, as she knows both Cantonese and Mandarin. But it’s frustrating, your pauses between words lengthy as you try to remember words and tones.
“干吗今天说广东话?” your mother asks in Mandarin. She’s pushing the shopping cart—she insists, even when you offer—and one of the wheels is squeaking. She hunches over the handle, but her eyes are bright.
“Ngo jiu syut Gwongdungwaa,” you reply in Cantonese. Except it’s not exactly that you want to speak Cantonese; you have to, for now. You don’t know how to capture the nuance of everything you’re going through in Cantonese, either, so you leave it at that. Your mother gives you a look, but she doesn’t bring it up again and indulges you, speaking Cantonese as the two of you go around the supermarket and pile the shopping cart high with produce, meat, and fish.
You load the car with the groceries and help your mother into the passenger seat. As you adjust the mirrors, your mother speaks again.
“你在担心什么?” she asks. Startled, you look over at her. She’s peering at you, scrutinizing you; you can never hide anything from her. Of course she can read the worry on your face, the tension in your posture; of course she knows something’s wrong.
“Ngo jau zou yat go han zungjiu dik kyutding,” you respond, trying to communicate the weight on your shoulders.
“什么决定?” Ma replies.
You can’t find the words to express the choice you have to make in Cantonese. Every time you grasp for the right syllables, they come back in Mandarin; frustrated, you switch back to Mandarin and reply,
“我要用我的普通话来赚钱去送Lillian上大学.”
You expect your mother to scold you, to tell you about the importance of your heritage and language—she’s always been proud of who she is, where she’s from; she’s always been the first to teach you about your own culture—but instead her expression softens, and she puts a hand over yours, her wrinkled skin warm against your skin.
“哎，嘉嘉，没有别的办法吗?”
Your nickname is so tender on her tongue. But you’ve thought through all other avenues: you don’t want Lillian to take out loans and be saddled with so much debt like your friends’ children; you don’t want her to bear such a burden her entire life, not while you’re still paying off debts, too. You can’t rely on Lillian’s father to provide for her, not after he left your family and took what little money you had. And although Lillian’s been doing her best to apply for scholarships, they’re not enough.
You shake your head.
The two of you sit in silence as you start the car and drive back to your mother’s place. The sun sets behind you, casting a brilliant glow over the earth, washing the sky from orange to blue. As you crest over a hill, the sparkling lights of the city below glitter in the darkness, showing you a million lives, a million dreams.
When you get to your mother’s house, you only have one question to ask her.
“如果你需要做同样的决定,” you say, “你也会这样做吗?”
You don’t know what it would have been like if you were in Lillian’s shoes, if your mother had to make the same decision as you. But as your mother smiles at you, sadness tinging the light in her eyes, the curve of her lips, you know she understands.
“当然,” she says.
Of course.
The waiting room is much starker than the consultation room you were in before: the seats are less comfortable, the temperature colder; you’re alone except for a single TV playing world news at a low volume.
You read the paperwork, doing your best to understand the details of the procedure—for all you pride yourself on your English, though, there are still many terms you don’t understand completely:
The Company’s (proprietary?) algorithms (iterate?) through near-infinite (permutations?) of sentences, extracting a neural map. The (cognitive?) load on the brain will cause the Applicant to experience a controlled stroke, and the Applicant’s memory of the Language will be erased. Common side effects include: temporary disorientation, nausea. Less common side effects include partial (aphasia?) of non-target languages and (retrograde?) amnesia. Applicant agrees to hold Company harmless…
You flip over to the Chinese version of the contract, and, while some of the terms raise concern in you, you’ve already made your decision and can’t back out now. You scan the rest of the agreement and sign your name at the bottom.
The lab is clinical, streamlined, with a large, complicated-looking machine taking up most of the room. An image of the brain appears on a black panel before you.
“Before we begin,” the technician says, “do you have any questions?”
You nod as you toy with your hospital gown. “Will I be able to learn Mandarin again?”
“Potentially, though it won’t be as natural or easy as the first time around. Learning languages is usually harder than losing them.”
You swallow your nervousness. Do it for Lillian. “Why can’t you make a copy of the language instead of erasing it?”
The technician smiles ruefully. “As our current technology stands, the imaging process has the unfortunate side effect of suppressing neurons as it replicates them…”
You can’t help but wonder cynically if the reason why the neurons have to be suppressed is to create artificial scarcity, to inflate demand in the face of limited supply. But if that scarcity is what allows you to put Lillian through college, you’ll accept it.