The Other Sister

The shops on Bedford Avenue glowed in the afternoon sunlight, as the hipsters emerged from the shadows of cafés to smoke their cigarettes in the abiding heat of summer. Business was slow, but we had just opened two weeks ago and were now competing with the myriad of nail salons that seemed to pop up overnight on our street.

As far as I could tell, during my first six months in the country, Asian immigrants dominated three local industries: restaurants, dry cleaners and nail salons. It didn’t matter if you were Chinese, Japanese, or Korean, you would inevitably end up at one of these places. I was here with six other girls from the mainland. We were all working under the watchful eye of Mae, a dough-faced, middle-aged woman from Shanghai whose husband owned the business, though she was the one who kept the books and managed the storefront.

Mae had a large black mole on her right eyebrow with hairs growing on it, which she claimed was a sign of prosperity and wealth. I watched her now as she counted the green dollar bills in the cash register, sucking her teeth and inadvertently reaching up now and then to rub that hideous mole of hers, as if it were the fat golden belly of the Buddha making all her money dreams come true.

I looked out the window again to stare at the leggy American girls in their skintight jeans and ripped stockings. They seemed to glide languidly down the sun-drenched avenue, until I lowered my gaze upon their enormous feet. Any illusion of grace and beauty shattered in an instant. Those legs that seemed to stretch on to the heavens were cut off abruptly by the sight of large flip flops, slapping against the pavement like clown shoes or diving flippers. Up close and bare, the feet were even uglier; long and bony with toes that curled under like claws and chipped polish that barely concealed the dirt and grime buried beneath the nails.

A young woman in her early twenties like me walked into the salon. I pointed to the display case of OPI bottles of polish, and then scrutinized her face as she spent a century deciding on a color. In my broken English, I tried to push “Pink-ing of You” on her, but she settled on “Cha-Ching Cherry” – a bright red polish that in my opinion looked cheap and a color only loose women would wear back home. She was Chinese. I could tell by her striking features, though she was one of those wealthy second-generation types who were born in the U.S. and grew up drinking Coca-Cola and watching American sitcoms.

I clipped her toenails and she gave me the smile you give if you’re the type of person who feels embarrassed by the fact that you’re paying a stranger to touch your feet. I asked her if she spoke Mandarin, then watched her face shift from embarrassment to fear to pity, after which she said, “Yes I do, and where are you from?” As if to say, I really do care about my sisters from across the pacific, with a lingering element of we are not the same but I can’t erase you from my consciousness, and I said, I’m from Suzhou and my name is Shirley Wong.