Assistant Editor Toni Judnitch: In Amy Chen’s essay “Knowing,” innocence and family secrets come together to create a profound change in the speaker and her understanding of her world. What is described in the beginning as an innocent prank becomes something much more complicated. In so few words, Chen constructs a powerful and emotionally compelling turn.
To hear Amy read her essay, click here:
Knowing
One summer years ago in Taipei, my sister and I decided to place prank calls to pass the time on a hot and humid Saturday afternoon in the home we shared with Gong Gong and Abu. Gong Gong had stepped out to run errands, and Abu was taking a nap.
“What do you want to do?” Irene asked me.
“Let’s make prank calls!” It was one of our preferred ways to entertain ourselves. We could stay indoors in the air-conditioned home and act devious without being caught. “Let’s look in the phone book and see if we can find Shiao Gee Gee’s phone number. We can say we are running a special on coffins, buy one get one free!”
Shiao Gee Gee was the nickname we’d given Gong Gong’s mistress. It means “small privates,” the cruelest nickname Irene and I could come up with for this horrible woman. Even as children, we knew we hated her. Chang Mei-li was the mistress’s real name, and mei-li means “beautiful” in Chinese. But Irene and I thought “Shiao Gee Gee” was a more appropriate name for her.
We picked up the heavy volume of the phone book and looked for the surname “Chang,” then narrowed our search down to the characters of “Mei-li” for the given names. Finally, we reduced it to six Chang Mei-li’s.
“How do we know which one is her?” Irene asked.
“I guess we just start with the first one and go down the list. We can still pitch the sale on the coffins; it will be funny even if it’s not her.”
“Are you making the calls? What if Shiao Gee Gee answers and knows we are calling her?” Irene looked at me with knitted brows.
“How can Shiao Gee Gee know it’s us?” I rolled my eyes even though I was scared of getting caught myself.
I dialed the first phone number. There was no answer. The second and third ones didn’t answer either. I dialed the fourth number, and finally a man said “Wei?”
“Sir, how are you? We are running a sale today on coffins. Buy one get one free, are you interested?”
“What the hell? Goddamn you!” the man yelled into my ear, then hung up.
Irene and I fell on the ground, holding our bellies, laughing until we couldn’t breathe. Eventually, I got up and started dialing the next number on the list. Again, a man picked up the phone.
“Wei?”
It was Gong Gong’s voice on the other end of the line. Shocked, I gasped a quick breath before slamming down the receiver.
That afternoon when I saw Abu coming out of the bedroom after her nap, I couldn’t even look her in the eye. When she went into the living room and sat down by herself, I stared at her lone silhouette against the amber afternoon light and felt a small crack settle permanently in my heart.
Amy Chen got her master’s degree in architecture and manages capital, planning, design, and construction projects at San Francisco State University. She is also an MFA candidate in nonfiction at SFSU. Her prose and photography have appeared in Ursa Minor, and an essay and poetry are forthcoming in Transfer Magazine.
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