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American-born Chinese to graduate from Cal that year—as a dentist. Now the only job he can get is as a chauffeur for a woman who lives in Pacific Heights.”
    A look passed between Ruby and Grace. College? An engineer? A dentist? I bet the chauffeur part sounded pretty good to them too, but I didn’t see it that way.
    “Baba makes plenty of sweat money in this country, but he says this isn’t our real home and that we shouldn’t live where we aren’t welcome. If one of my brothers gets upset because someone on the street taunted him, calling ‘chink, chink, chink,’ then Baba says, ‘See? I told you so. Go look in the mirror. Your eyes automatically tell you this is not your home.’ ”
    Ruby opened her mouth to speak, but I rolled right over her. “Baba complains that my brothers are too Americanized. He says, ‘You might be Americanized, but you’ll never be accepted as Americans, even though you were born here.’ After that, he criticizes them for not being Chinese enough, because they were born here. We all were.”
    Look who was cheung hay now!
    “But you can’t argue with my baba,” I continued, unable to stop myself. “It wouldn’t be right. He said he wanted my brothers and meto learn proper Chinese for when we went back to China for good. For months, he went around to the laundries that he supplies. He asked for their old rags, clothes that hadn’t been collected, worn-out shoes, hardware, and junk—”
    “I had to wear unclaimed laundry too,” Grace cut in. “In elementary school, the girls taunted me when they recognized their castoffs. Once the kids caught me wearing Freddie Thompson’s old shirt under my jumper—”
    “I bet they made fun of you then,” Ruby said.
    “I’ll say. I went in the girls’ room, took off the shirt, and tried to give it back to Freddie, but he tossed it in the dirt, saying he didn’t want to touch anything that had been on a girl.”
    “That’s what he said. He probably didn’t want to touch anything worn by an Oriental,” Ruby assessed shrewdly.
    Grace nodded. “The boys spent the rest of recess throwing the shirt back and forth, teasing me, but teasing Freddie even worse. Freddie was a tough customer even when he was eight. He fought back.”
    Grace was trying hard to fit in to the conversation—and Ruby was doing a good job making her feel comfortable—but I had to set them both straight. “I told you, we don’t have a laundry. I’ve never worn people’s leftovers, or anyone’s hand-me-downs for that matter. My baba packed all that trash in trunks, and we took it to China to give to our relatives.”
    “Why would you do that?” Grace asked, sounding as unpolished as a servant—one brought in from the rice paddies to work in the landowner’s house: dumb, without an ounce of knowledge of how real people lived. But she’d been so nice to me and so open that I liked her despite her country innocence.
    “The more trunks we had, the richer we looked,” I explained. “The more we gave away, the more important my father appeared. But fortune like that can be won and lost very quickly.” I turned and spoke directly to Ruby. “We were only there a year and a half beforethe Japanese invaded. Baba said it was better for us to come back here and be poor than stay there and be dead. President Roosevelt says times are getting better, but they still aren’t that good around here.”
    “Not where I’m from either,” Grace said.
    “Or me either,” Ruby allowed, the corner of her lip twitching. “That’s one of the reasons my parents wanted to move to Hawaii. They could live cheaply, and they’d be closer to getting home—”
    “Baba wants all of us to work,” I interrupted, and Ruby went back to her noodles. “My other brothers and I are all supposed to chip in for Monroe’s tuition, but there aren’t a lot of jobs for girls like me. Baba says that no matter how bad off we are, he’ll never let me work in a garment factory. Being a