Girl In Translation

Kim and her mother arrive in New York City from Hong Kong. Kim's Aunt Paula, Ma's older sister, sets them up with an apartment in a rundown neighborhood in Brooklyn. The apartment is in a building owned by Mr.N, for whom Aunt Paula works, and is uninhabited aside from Kim and Ma.Their apartment has a pest infestation, no windowpanes, and no central heat. It seems completely unlivable despite Aunt Paula's insistence that the previous tenants have only just moved out. Kim wonders how her mother, who wipes her chopsticks and cups at restaurants before using them, to make sure they are clean, will live in this place. She wants to go home.

Kim flashes back to their first week in America, when they are staying with Aunt Paula and her family on Staten Island. Aunt Paula has told Ma and Kim that they willbe living with she and Uncle Bob, taking care of their kids while they worked at the factory, but on their first morning, she informs them that she will not need their help due to Ma's recent bout of tuberculosis. Instead, Aunt Paula has gotten Ma a job working in the clothing factory she and Uncle Bob own. For the rest of the week, Ma is depressed, spending most of her time watching TV with Kim. Kim wishes her father, who died of a stroke when she was three, were still with them.

Ma and Kim spend the next few days cleaning their apartment. They seal the broken windows with garbage bags, which darkens the apartment. They move the kitchen stove so that it no longer faces the bathroom door, which is bad feng shui. After the cleanup, they go to a dumpy convenient store for ice cream, but end up buying strawberry yogurt because they can't decipher the English text. The store owner is impatient with Ma and charges her three times the sticker price for the yogurt. She notices, but does not complain.

Though they do their best to clean the apartment, cockroaches, mice, and rats continue their infestation. Kim and Ma are the only tenants in the building, and thus the only source of food for the vermin. At night, rats and mice crawl over Kim and Ma, who sleep on a mattress on the ground. As Buddhists, it is difficult for them to deal with the dead animals in the traps. They build five altars in their kitchen: for protection, compassion, sustenance, peace, and prosperity.

As the chapter ends, Ma reveals that although Kim will be attending school, she will also be needed to work in Aunt Paula and Uncle Bob's factory. Not only does Ma not want Kim home alone after school, she worries that she (Ma) won't be able to do her finishing work at the factory on her own. She explains that the woman who had her job before had two sons to help her work. Kim says that she will always help Ma.

Kim starts going to school. Aunt Paula tells her to give the school a different address than the one at which they live, though she doesn't give an explanation as to why. Ma walks Kim to the school building, which is some ways from their apartment.Kim arrives late to class, which makes her teacher, Mr.Bogart, cross with her.

During her first day, Kim struggles to adjust to the many changes in her school experience. Compared to students at her school in Hong Kong, the rambunctious American students conduct themselves with less decorum. At lunch, she doesn't recognize any of the food served in the cafeteria. Mr. Bogart issues a pop quiz on state capitals, and accuses Kim of cheating when she looks at her neighbor's paper to try to understand what to do. He gives her a zero on her quiz. Throughout the day, she uses what little English she knows to try to understand what's happening, and apologizes often.

After school, Ma meets Kim and shows her how to take the subway to the factory. It is located in Chinatown, whose vendors, wares, and customers remind Kim of Hong Kong. They arrive at the factory, a large warehouse filled with hundreds of workers bent over Singer sewing machines, wearing face masks. They run into Aunt Paula and Ma uses the opportunity to express her concerns about the safety of the apartment Paula chosen for them. Aunt Paula tells her not to worry, that she chose it because it was the only place Ma could afford at the time. She reassures her that more apartments will become available soon. She then walks Ma and Kim to their work station.

Kim and Ma work together sorting, hanging, and bagging clothes. Soon their skin is covered in dust from the fabric. Kim meets a boy her age, named Matt, who also works at the factory. He says he has been in America for five years, and offers her a bit of the pork bun he stole from Aunt Paula’s workstation. During her break, Kim hangs out with Matt and some of the other children who work in the factory. She understands that they are only there because their parents are there, and that they aren't officially employed. She goes back to work with Ma and they leave the factory at nine pm.

After her initial embarrassment on her first day, Kim decides to start skipping school. Ma's subway station is before Kim's, so instead of getting on the train, Kim just walks home. She spends the day in their apartment, cold and hungry, watching the old black-and-white television. Bored, she goes through Ma's things and finds a photograph of her family. She thinks about how Ma lost her parents during the Cultural Revolution, how she and Aunt Paula had to flee to Hong Kong, and how Pa died prematurely.

Winter arrives. Kim and Ma learn they don't have heat in their apartment, but Aunt Paula reassures them that their stay there is temporary. They sleep under their single blanket, piled with jackets and clothes to stay warm. They begin to keep the oven on whenever they're home, as a source of heat. Kim gets sick often, but still goes to school with a fever because it's too cold for her to stay in the apartment.

Kim continues to skip school for the rest of the week. When she comes to the factory at her normal time on Thanksgiving Day, Matt warns her that Ma knows it is a holiday with no schools in session. To avoid getting in trouble, Kim tells her mom that she spent the day at home, working on a project for school. Ma believes her, but warns her not to get too close to Matt, or any of the other kids in the factory. If she does, Ma says, Kim will end up just like them: "'working on sewing machines in the factory until you're worn'" (48).

Kim returns to school after the Thanksgiving holiday with a forged note explaining her absence. On her first day back, Mr. Bogart gives a math test, on which Kim does well. Annette, the "frizzy-haired girl" (51), who sits next to her, loans Kim an eraser and shows her a doodle she made mocking Mr. Bogart. She and Kim's friendship begins to form. As the year progresses, Kim does well in math and science, but struggles with English-language-related assignments. She wonders whether Mr. Bogart harbors a personal vendetta against her based on his assignments.

Annette asksKim what she does afterschool. Kim replies that she works in a factory. Annette tells her father this, and the next day reports to Kim that children don't work in factories. With this exchange, Kim learns that she must hide part of her life from others.