叶子 (思华)

 我记得那个美丽而有力的声音 -那是奶奶的声音，一个穿透黑暗的声音。那个声音在告诉我该数叶子了。

“数叶子？” 我问道。
“数叶子，一片一片地数， 这样你就能睡得着。”
“我已经在数羊头了，” “难到数叶子比数羊头更好？”我疑惑地用耳语嘟囔着。
“不要数羊头， 数叶子吧！ 你试一试， 连一百片叶子数不到你就得睡着。”

我倾听着耳旁的声音 - 那亲切，甜蜜，老人般的，充满着肯定和自信的声音，永远萦绕着我的耳边，轻柔的赞许声。那声音在告诉我一切安好。我 一片片地数着叶子。那些叶子从我梦里的那棵树上，一片接着一片，缓缓地落向大地。我轻声地数着：一，二， 三 ...九十九， 一百--”数着我的叶子，我渐渐地进入了梦乡。

叶子，一种数叶子而不数羊只的神奇文化的象征；叶子， 一根把奶奶，奶奶的声音和我的过去联结在一起的锚链； 叶子，那根把我和现实生活链接在一起的锚链。

我的中文很糟糕， 可我还得使用它-如果我今天不用它， 那它就会死去， 而我也会因此而感到悲哀。要是我的中文死了的话，我会感到悲哀。要是我的中文死了，我真的会--

“爷爷，你就要死了， 你知道吗？如果你继续抽烟的话，你会受到很重的伤害，你会死的。” 我说着，但不知道自己的这种直截了当的诅咒究竟想要表达什么。我究竟想要说什么？我想说，爷爷，请不要抽烟， 因为我的老师说抽烟会得肺癌，肺癌是一件很不好的东西。请不要抽烟。 我知道在中国，人们抽烟，他们抽呀，抽呀。可是， 这是在美国。这里的人不抽烟。 爷爷，请不要抽烟。请不要死。“你就要死了，”我吞吞吐吐地结束了蹩脚的讲演。 我既不能和爷爷分享我刚学到的科技新知，在他身旁，又跟不上他那无限大的步子；他一只手扯着我，另一只手里夹着一根香烟。他认真地看着我。目光从雪白而又浓密的眉毛下凝视着我的小脸。他太苍老了， 我心里有点害怕。爷爷是黑眉毛， 黑胡子，黑头发，可身边的这个人却不是。我害怕了。

“我以后不抽烟了。”“什么？”“从今以后我戒烟了，莫娜，我永远不抽烟了。”

他不抽烟了。三十年了， 那黑色的烟雾一直笼罩在他的子孙们的生活里 - 可是现在， 一个四岁孩童口中支离破碎的字语所表达的科学发现以及死亡威胁，使抽烟这个奇怪的链条就此终止。它终止于爷爷的一个承诺。爷爷手里现在握的不再是香烟，而是我的手。 爷爷给了我一个承诺， 一个直到永远的承诺。

然而， 我在中文这种棘手的语言上的成功没能延续多久。我知道， 从某种程度上， 我一直被幼稚无知那把无形的伞保护着。 包括象我的爷爷，父亲和母亲在内的人们屈尊地，深情地拥抱着我的头 - 他们说我才四岁， 四岁是一个无知可以被人们接受的年龄。不能用中文恰当的交流正是我的可爱和招人喜欢之处。不会区分“两”和“二” 这两个字的意思也不值得惭愧 - “二 ” 和 “两” 是两个不同的汉字，以差别很大的写法和发音，同时表达同一个数字。四岁的孩子更不该因为不会说象“肺癌”那样的术语而感到丢脸。可是， 我并没有永远生活在这种保护之下。我能吗？

岁月把我的那把保护伞无情地吹走了，我长大了，到了一个不得不面对无知所带来的羞愧的年龄。 七岁的我成了一个可抨击的对象。 当我用中文说“兔子也是人！”的时候， 我的爷爷哈哈大笑之后，训诫我，并仔细地解释为什么兔子无论如何也不可能是人，为什么兔子和人不一样。可我在想，“人”有不同的， 更美丽的含义 - 对我来说，“人”是一个字，它捕捉了所有有生命的，能呼吸的，看得见，摸得着的东西，而不是只看它有没有毛，或者是在解剖学上是不是称作人类。 然而， 对父母，爷爷奶奶而言，“人”只能是人。这种排他性定义，限制和遏杀了我对世界的看法。“人”只能是人 - 人类， 男人， 女人，成人， 大人。没有我想像中的“人”；没有生活的群落，友爱和情感以及生命 - 只有人。我强忍著愤怒的泪水， 但憋不出愤怒的词句。我无语， 无论是中文还是英文。我的字典里的词汇贫乏得可怜， 那些词汇不属于我，我不知道它们的表达方式，它们如何为人所知，被人吟唱， 被人理解。没有五个额外的“R”， 我不能发出“WORLD WAR II”的音来， 我只能避免那些涉及“WAR”， “WHIRLPOOLS ”或者“WISTERIAS”字 的发音。到了晚上， 我猛烈地，无休止地数着我的叶子， 从一百， 一百零一，数到 五百七十二，五。。。

我瞪大双眼，望着漆黑的天花板，耳边倾听着奶奶和爷爷那柔和的酣睡声，我思忖着他们是否也是人。突然间， 我意识到-在某个时候， 在我无意之中，我的这棵树变成了孤山顶上的一棵独木，树上的叶子象泪滴一样飘落进了一个一眼看不见底的峡谷里。我不再数叶子了；因为，当叶子飘落的时候，我也和它们一起飘落。

我渐渐长大了。 我的亲人们不再对我讲中文了。我的叔叔,用他那缓慢而又谨慎的英语询问我的主修课程是什么；我的婶婶，用她纯正的， 准确无误的英语同我交谈，这使我第一次体会到涌来的嫉妒和羞愧所带来的痛苦。我的亲人们对我体贴入微。 我爱他们，他们也爱我。但是， 他们每个人对我的无知和词汇贫乏，以及对中国文化传统的缺乏， 抱有一种经过掩饰的 (或者说掩饰得不那么完美的) 不以为然。然而此时，我学会了微笑。在每年一度的感恩节的晚餐结束时，我对每一位和我的家人们共度晚餐的亲朋好友们绽开了笑容。当我不理解时我笑；当我理解时我也笑；可是，我笑的时候，真想从人们眼前溜走，消逝。可就在此时， 父亲插话了：“什么事那么好笑？”笑容是我对未知事物的一贯反应。这笑容只不过是一种伪装的理解和事实上的无知的表现。父亲这个不经意地，简单明了，居高临下的问话， 残酷无情地掠走了我用以逃避现实的最后的角落。“不， 我不知道，” 我回答道， 仍然微笑着。“你听不懂更多的中文真是丢人。”

我长大了， 到了一个知道数叶子不单单是数数的年龄。奶奶要我数叶子-那是数数。 “一二三四五，”- 可是现在， 每当到了难以入眠的夜晚，我的脑海里便重复地浮现出“芝麻街”里的那个叫抓酷拉的数数玩偶节目中的滑稽模仿秀。嘲弄人的大方块积木上的数字漂浮在我视野的四周， 取代了脑海中的那些落叶的甜蜜的记忆。“一一一，”那又尖又细，友善的轻声细语。“二二二，”那声音仍在继续。 “今天， 二 - 把你带进芝麻街。”

他是中国人吗？ 你会讲中文吗？你从哪里来？中国？ 台湾？广州？母亲在电视上一看到东方女演员便立刻会把注意力集中到她们身上；父亲在大街上一见到外貌长相看上去象中国男人的人便会悄悄地跟上他，兴高采烈地，从某种意义上说， 有点不顾一切地走上去和他攀谈。是的，乍一看，我父母的对陌生人的这种不顾一切的行为带有某种奇异和绝望的色彩。这些陌生人有着与我们相同的黑头发， 黄皮肤， 或者种族遗传。当你想到你能见到另一个“我们” 也生活，呼吸， 生存在这片新奇的土地上的时候，你真的会有一种奇妙无比，被诱惑的感觉。从五颜六色的海洋里钻出的那一张张熟悉而又陌生的黄面孔， 至少证明给人们这样一个事实，那就是，树根向上生长的树也能在异国他乡的土壤里生存。透过那些面孔， 我们可以发现一点点的自我， 那些因环境微细差异的折射而变得扭曲的自我。

环顾四周，我所见到的都是财富的遗产： 费思鲁道夫门， 南福可纳大道，思卓斯默文理学院和斯坦福大学，卡内基音乐厅和卡内基-麦伦学院。 我的父母们并没有这种奢侈的遗产。在这里，他们既没有历史也没有任何真正属于自己的美国的联系。这里没有张氏大道， 张氏图书馆，也没有张氏艺术中心。 这里没有李氏， 杨氏或者陈氏音乐大厅；更没有单氏，许氏，高氏大学。不，这些名字不会出现在那些显著耀眼的建筑物和地方-它们在那里没有立锥之地。 因为在那些地方， 历史早已被那些来自远古的某个移民的大手笔所创造。只有在那些医生诊所门前的灰蒙蒙的门牌上，在脏兮兮，褪了色的实验室的白大褂上， 在中国餐馆黑色的大门上，你才能见到这些名字。我的父母是以张博士和李博士，一位 药理学家和一位康复医师， 一位哲学博士和一位医学博士的方式存在的 - 他们不是某某某的兄弟或姐妹或邻居，某某市的市长， 某个企业家或外交官。 在这里，我父母并不具备赖以获得迅速成功的先决条件的根。他们有时会把“雾”读成“青蛙；” 他们在“老海军商场”里讨价还价；他们自以为有了一个在普林斯顿念书的女儿就会立刻被人们所尊重。他们用只有在中国才用得着的价值观- 用人民币的“元”而不是“美元”计价算账。我父亲来美国时，破旧的工作衣袋里面只有二十四美元，可不知为什么，我一直相信他身上的钱一定比这个数目要少。或许， 这就是为什么他们寄希望于下一代的原因 - 失去了自己的根，他们不可能在一个新的国度里获得成功。在母国，他们可以成为市长和企业家。在这里，他们所能做到的只是为自己的孩子们打下一个赖以成长的物质基础， 使孩子们能在这个阳光缺乏的未知世界里寻找到更多的阳光。

我终于认识到，可能这就是为什么我的父母那么害怕他们的孩子们失去属于自己的语言的真正原因。因为，在这样一个无根的国度里， 孩子们没有归宿。于是， 他们只能朝着阳光，向外延伸， 延伸， 寻找着自己的方向。直到有一天，他们有能力不再回首眷恋身后的祖辈们。不管这些孩子们如何鄙视，恐惧和怨恨他们的祖辈，那些祖辈们还是会不停地小声地嘱咐他们，教诲孩子一种无形的，不可或缺的智慧。他们的声音一直存在着，而且还会长久地萦绕在孩子们的耳边。

在孤山上，我那棵孤树的地方， 我听到了祖辈们的那些声音。我还看见了许多树丛 - 那些树丛长在我的身旁，那是一片似黄非黄的， 数也数不清的树丛的海洋。我吸气，从一数到七。然后， 我呼气，从七数到一。一二三四五六七， 七六五四三二一。我的每次呼吸把一种微弱的声音送入这间黑暗的屋子里，那声音从一个小孩子的小嘴里轻柔地吹出， 吹进这小小世界里。此时此刻， 我真的不晓得在这个世界上，除了呼吸之外， 我还能再做些别的什么 - 那些比数五四三二一那些数字更美丽，更美妙的事情。这里的人们叫我“思华，”意思是“思念中华。”

我九岁了。 那年， 我第一次去了中国-那是一个陌生，无爱的地方，一个记忆和期盼中从未触及到的国度。那里， 放眼望去， 到处是黑头发和黄皮肤的人们。突然之间， 你身边的每一个人都成了你过去生活中的兄弟，姊妹和朋友。我中有你，你中有我。 我刚想开口，可那张脸就变了模样，我又看不见了兄弟，姊妹和朋友。我看到的是一个个的陌生人，一个个有着陌生面孔和陌生习语表达方式的人， 甚至一个个有着更陌生的语言的人们。仅靠注视他们的面孔，我无论如何也不会了解他们。他们的每一个姿势，都有着更深一层的涵意，有着我这个九岁的孩子眼中难以理解的涵意。

在湖南， 我见到了我的表哥，李程。 李程哥哥把我抱起来在空中旋转， 他笑着，猜我有多重 - 他猜我有四十五公斤重， 我们一边笑着，一边把数字翻译成中文和英文 (当我意识到四十五公斤大大超出我的体重时， 我们大家都笑了)。 李德馨妹妹拿出了三只黄色，毛绒绒的小鸭子给我看，她把每只小鸭放进盛满水的水桶里， 尖声叫着：“鸭鸭， 快游，鸭鸭， 快游！”李程带我们去了一个布罩着的， 黑暗的，拱廊的通道。母亲带我去了一个庙宇， 在一个无名的，不知是谁的墓前， 我们向一个不知出处的神灵祈祷。母亲告诉我那是我的曾外婆的墓。我相信她说的话， 因为当她告诉我这一切时， 她哭了。母亲还告诉我她自己的故事，尽管我连故事的一半也没有听懂。第二天， 母亲带着我们去了一个野生动物园。和一群摇摇摆摆的人们一起，我们登上了一辆摇摇晃晃的旅游车。靠近旅游车的前座旁， 有一个破旧的摇摇晃晃的金属笼， 笼子里的那些芦花母鸡们在格格地叫着。在我们乘坐的旅游车和车外的狮子之间没有栅栏，有人一把从笼子里抓起一只母鸡，拎起它的脖子，把它扔到车窗外。瞬间， 母鸡不见了， 一团鸡毛飞舞在空中。窗外的狮子们看上去很得意，它们的嘴上沾满了芦花母鸡的羽毛。“他们不能这样，”哥哥说着， 眼睛瞪得溜圆。黑头发的头汇成的黑色的海洋转向我们。那些黑色海洋里的目光， 一半带着恐惧，一半带着赞赏。 或许， 在哥哥与我谈论芦花鸡和狮子那一幕时，哥哥流利的英语使他们感到惊讶。然而， 那些投过来的目光里，不只是好奇和惊讶， 还有恐惧。 我和哥哥是真正的狮子 - 我们是中国文化真正的危险所在。因为，我们代表着一族失去了中国语言， 失去了华夏大地悠久历史中最美丽的一切的人们。我们是坐在旅游车里的狮子，吞噬着中文， 嘴上沾满了支离破碎的汉字。

这是我们在中国的最后一天。 我们泛舟在颐和园的昆明湖上。我闭上了眼睛。 “这是我们在这里的最后的一天，”我轻声对自己说。我们的最后一天， 过了今天，我在这个父母称之为家的国度里便什么都没有了。然而，对我而言，我想这里曾经会是我的一个家。 我在这个家里遇到了许多人都可能是我的兄弟和姐妹的人们，假如我曾经在这里生活过的话。 我们的龙舟穿过了那座古老的十七拱玉带桥。我慢慢地， 仔细地数着每一个桥拱， 这样，我会让自己记住石桥的每一块石头，每一个桥拱和每一个瞬间。

龙舟切割着晶莹的湖面， 红色光滑的船体在水中闪闪发光。突然，一种莫名的恐惧向我袭来，我害怕。我害怕这里的波浪会消失，“莫娜”会在中国消失， 而中国会在我自己的生活里消逝。为了挣脱这突如其来的， 非理性的恐惧， 我拽下了一缕黑发 - 它包涵着部分的我和我的遗产- 我把它抛进了波光粼粼的湖水里，一直望着它， 直到它沉入深深的湖底， 在我的视线中消逝。

这是我们的最后的一天， 我轻声地对自己说。中国， 我会永远思念你。我希望，中国也会永远记着我。

落叶纷纷，越落越频繁。无论是在梦里， 还是在普林斯顿的校园， 这里都是秋天。 一个红黄橙色般无限美妙的秋天， 一个蓝色般的无限美妙的秋天。飘落，树叶不停地飘落，飘落得让人目不应暇， 数不胜数。树叶飘落在看不见的风中，落叶斑斓的色彩点缀着蓝色的天幕。在我从前的梦里， 我从未见到过如此幽蓝的天空。天空蓝得令人陶醉而难以理解， 蓝得难以形容。十月的早晨， 天下着雨，坐在厨房的饭桌旁， 我听爷爷讲他自己的故事。 此刻，我意识到，不管我能否听得懂爷爷讲的每个字， 或者每两个字， 或者所有的字，这些都无关紧要。从他那断断续续的沉默中， 我听到了他那不为人知的生活片段 - 曾经每天吃发霉的馒头；有个从未见过面的弟弟 - 从一种未知的语言中，我朦朦胧胧地听见了他痛苦和成功，以及工作的艰辛。我还听见了一种未被听到的声音的那种绝望：那是 一种没有人听到， 也不屑于被人听到的声音；一种不可打破的沉默，一种对共同文化和语言的沉默和不了解。爷爷告诉我，他不知道自己的母亲是谁 - 突然间， 我意识到，尽管过去的日子里，父亲的奚落和嘲弄曾给我带来过许多痛苦和屈辱， 但与爷爷的相比，我知道爷爷失去了更深更多的东西。他失去的不仅仅是受过创伤的骄傲，而是更重要的东西。他失去的是他的根和他的全部， 他象是流落在一片无名土地上的一根浮木，失去了属于自己的所有的希望， 除了那片他精心耕耘的，整齐，干净， 充满绿色的美丽菜园之外 - 那菜园真美，里面长满了黄瓜， 豆角，薄荷 和西红柿；长长的瓜藤懒洋洋地缠绕着棚架， 美妙地环绕着整个菜园；菜园被小型的绿色尖头栅栏围著， 象哨兵，静静地望着我家的另类居民-那只非常美丽，而又很失望的土拨鼠。

象很久以前他拉着我的手那样，我拉着爷爷的手。 此刻， 我听着他的故事。我不理解他在说什么， 可是，我在听， 我听到了。从他的声音里，我听到了自己的声音。 我知道他是我的爷爷， 现在是，直到永远。

秋天， 普林斯顿的秋天。秋，秋天 - 无论我用何种语言来描述秋天，秋天依旧是秋天。但是，不知为何，我觉得，我生命里的秋天仿佛已经过去。每当我回想起我童年的树， 在那一刻，我依旧会数叶子。但是， 我已经不再需要那些树了。在这里， 在接纳我的这个美妙的桔黄色的气泡中， 一种升腾的归属感 - 以及持续性睡眠不足，每个夜晚 都能成功地把我送入甜蜜的梦乡。我记得， 在黯淡的火车站旁边，我握着母亲和父亲的手，笑着，手舞足蹈，身心荡漾，身体疯狂地扭来扭去，变换着不同的姿势。这是另一类飘落 - 一年前那次飘落 - 我拆开了一封大学录取信函， 那封信来自我在今后的四年生活中将把它称之为家的地方。在我的记忆里，我用一种混合的中-英文，一种自发的，混合了各种生活经历和思想的语言说： - “是的， 你们是我的根， 我们的枝干现在终于可以伸到这儿， 这儿，还有这儿。。。。”

即使在今天， 我们的思绪依然沉浸在过去那些日子里的牺牲，悲伤和屈辱的认知里。现在一切都成了过去。父母亲移民的艰辛终于结出了果实 - 那是一种坚实，纯真，实实在在的成果- 他们能够把这个消息带给远在中国的家乡的亲人们。在离开家乡十八年以后， 我的父母需要重新肯定自己的人生目的；他们需要认证他们的这种奋斗和牺牲是值得的 - 过去的一切一下子变得值得了， 还有现在的一切。 过去的 一切都结束了。他们可以安心了，因为他们知道， 在这个未知的世界里，他们的孩子们能够生存 - 甚至还能够生活 - 有吃， 有住， 甚至还有一点点欢乐。

但是， 这一切并没有结束。我的生活仍在继续， 我从未奢望一切会有一个完美的结局。因为在这里， 在普林斯顿， 我仍然能够感受到一种无可名状的， 现实中的失落 - 或许， 是一种失去了语言的失落， 或许， 是失去了某种更多的什么的失落。或许，我一开始就忘记了我究竟失去的是什么。这里是一个很容易一下子忘记父母，爷爷和奶奶的地方； 他们的声音， 那熟悉而又亲切，微弱而又遥远的声音，在阅读和写作的重负所笼罩下的无眠之夜，消逝得无影无踪。

中秋节的夜晚， 我给家里打了电话。 我几乎完全忘记了这个节日。中秋节是爷爷奶奶的一个重要的节日。对我而言，这个节日无关紧要。我从来就没能理解为什么圆月意味着家园。可是， 当我从电话里听到那游丝般的声音时，我突然奇异地感到那广袤的无涯，突然想知道这是否就是天各一方，海角天涯的感觉 - 这是爷爷和他的妹妹的那种感觉；是爷爷和他的亲朋好友的那种感觉；这是一种非常痛苦的，生离死别的距离， 一种当亲人过世时，在电话里听得到， 而在现实中却不能见到，甚至不能在床榻前触摸和拥抱一下亲人的那种距离感。此刻，我听到了奶奶那快乐，有力，美丽的声音。 我记起她说过的话，“数叶子吧， 乖乖。。。”

深夜，我漫无边际地在富比士学院游荡，在那个几乎被人遗忘的娱乐室的角落里，我听到一些不熟悉的声音们在讲着一种熟悉的语言 - “你好。 你好。 再见。 再见” - 这使我感到无比的惊奇， 这里的人们在讲中文，在热切地希望讲中文。 我闭上眼睛，一动不动地坐在那里， 倾听着每一个说话人所说的每一个字的音调，这使我想起了我的父母， 我的家， 我的文化遗产。我坐在那里， 想到了我为什么在这里；想到了我是如何到了这里； 我记起了父母共同的希望和对我的耽心， 他们希望我超越他们，但又害怕我会离他们越来越远。 我希望，我也害怕， 因为我已经超越了他们。

普林斯顿有个吴氏餐厅。在它的身后， 有一条枫林大道。 十月初的早晨，我漫步于这条枫林大道，望着那一片又一片的金黄-血染般的枫叶，我默默地数着。。。我终于认识到，即便我的那些叶子并不是现实中真正的叶子，那也有过许多奇迹发生：它们 能够让我热爱一种未知语言 - 拥抱一下属于自己的一种解释。只是把一种迥永而美丽的语言当作模板和起点，便创造出了属于我自己的人生意义。

至今， 我依然默默地数着叶子。

I remember a strong and beautiful voice—my grandma’s voice, I suddenly realize—reaching out through the darkness, telling me to shu ye zi. To count leaves.
 “Count leaves?” I ask.
 “Count them, one by one by one, and eventually you’ll be able to fall asleep.”
 “I already tried sheep,” I whisper doubtfully. “What makes leaves any better?”
 “Sheep? Pah. Try ye zi, and you’ll see. You won’t even be able to get to a hundred.”
 So I listen to that voice—that sweet alto of reassurance and honey and elderliness that always wraps around me and whispers that yes, everything is going to be okay—and I count leaves, one by one by one, as they fall from a slowly materializing tree that exists only in the sleepiness of my mind. Disembodied leaf after disembodied leaf falls to the ground, and I whisper to myself, “One, two, three…ninety-nine, a hundre—”
 I fall asleep, counting my ye zi – ye zi, the symbol of the magical culture that counts leaves instead of sheep, the anchor to my grandmother and her voice and my past; my anchor to reality.

  My Chinese is horrid, but I have to say it—if not now, he would die, and I would be sad, and he would die and I would be sad and he would die-and-I—
  “You’re going to die, you know, ye ye, you’re going to die if you keep smoking and you’ll get very hurt,” I say, unable to express what I really mean in this inflexible, cursed language. But what do I actually want to say? Don’t smoke, because my teacher says you’ll get lung cancer, and lung cancer is a Very Bad Thing. Please don’t smoke. I know that People in China smoke and smoke and smoke, but this is America and People in America do not smoke. Please don’t smoke. Please don’t die.
  “You’re going to die,” I end my speech lamely, haltingly, unable to share my newly-gained knowledge, unable to reach my grandpa, who walks beside me with his impossibly long stride, holding a cigarette in one hand and my hand in the other.
  He looks at me intensely, scrutinizing my tiny face from underneath his bushy and whitening eyebrows. He is aging far too fast, and I am afraid. My grandpa has black hair, but this person beside me does not, and I am afraid.
  “I’ll stop.”
  “What?”
  “I’ll stop smoking, Muo na, now and forever.”
  And he does. For thirty years now, the blackened, Chinese legacy of smoke and cigarettes has overflowed into the lives of his children and his grandchildren – but now, with a few broken words, scientific discoveries, and death-threats by a four-year old, this strange chain of chain-smoking ends with a single promise. My ye ye no longer holds the cigarette; he holds my hand now, and holds to this promise, now and forever.
  But my early triumphs over this intractable language do not last. I know that I am protected, in a way, by the invisible umbrella of childish ignorance that others like my grandpa and father and mother all condescendingly and lovingly hold over my head – I am four, they say, sweet and unfailingly charming in my inability to communicate properly. It is nothing shameful, in these years of accepted ignorance, to be unable to distinguish between liang and er—two (liang) vastly different words used to mean “two” (er), in two vastly different ways – or to be incapable of saying something as advanced as “lung cancer.” But I do not stay under this umbrella forever. How can I? The inexorable passage of Time whisks away my umbrella now, leaving me to face the shame of being an ignorant, slightly-older child.
  I become fair game by the age of seven. Now, when I say that “Bunnies are people, too!” in Chinese, my grandparents laugh and laugh and laugh, before admonishing me and carefully explaining that rabbits cannot possibly be human beings, the way that human beings are. But “people,” I think to myself, has a different, more beautiful meaning – “people,” to me, is a word that captures what it means to live and breathe and be, not just the presence or absence of fur, or the anatomy of some entity called Homo sapiens. But “people,” to my parents and grandparents, takes on an exclusivity that encircles and chokes my vision of the world; “people” can now only mean ren – human being, man, person, adult, grown-up. There is no “people” of my imagination; there is no community of living, loving and feeling beings – there is only ren. I choke back angry tears, but cannot choke back angry words. I have none. In English, too, I have no words. I do not own words; I do not possess them in the way that they deserve to be possessed, known, sung, understood. I cannot pronounce “World War II” without five extra R’s, and I avoid conversations involving war, whirlpools, or wisterias.
  So in the middle of the night, I count my leaves furiously, unceasingly, counting to one-hundred, one-hundred one, five-hundred seventy-two and five… I stare into the darkness of the ceiling above me, listening to the soft snores of my grandfather and my grandmother and wondering if they are people, too. And suddenly, I realize – some time or another, when I wasn’t paying attention, this tree of mine became a lonely tree on a lonely hilltop, shedding leaves like tears into an unseen valley. I can no longer count the leaves; and as they fall, I fall with them.

  When I am older, my extended family stops speaking to me in Chinese. My uncle, uses a slow and careful English drawl to ask me what my major is,and he laughs while translating a joke solely for my benefit; my aunt  holds conversations with me in pure, unstilted English, making me feel the first bitter pangs of jealousy and shame. My relatives are considerate people. I love them, and they love me, but each holds a hidden (or not so hidden) scorn for my muteness, my ignorance, my lack of heritage.
  I have learned to smile instead. In the empty Thanksgiving dinners we hold every year, I smile at the single relative that has found the time to join our family. I smile when I don’t understand; I smile when I do understand; I smile when I’m secretly willing myself to disappear into who-knows-where.
  But then, my father interjects, “Do you even understand why that’s funny?”
  My smile, a generic response to an unknown situation, has been revealed for what it really is – feigned understanding, real ignorance. My father – he is an unintentionally cruel man, sometimes. He steals my last escape with a single, well-spoken and patronizing sentence.
 “No, I don’t,” I say, smiling still.
 “It’s a shame you don’t know more Chinese.”

   It is around this time when I learn, for the first time, that shu ye zi does not mean to count leaves. My grandmother meant for me to count ye zi—numbers. “一二三四五,” one, two, three, four, five – and now, in the sleeplessness of night, a vicious parody of Count Dracula’s portion of Sesame Street plays on repeat in my mind. Mocking blocks of numbers float into the periphery of my vision, and replace any memories I have of my sweetly falling leaves. “Ooneeee,” whispers a high-pitched, friendly voice. “Twooooo,” it adds. “Today’s Sesame Street is brought to you by the number twooooo!”

  Is he a Chinese? Do you speak Chinese? Where you are from? China? Taiwan? Guangzhou? My mother sees an oriental actress on the television and immediately pays attention to the screen; my father sees a vaguely-looking Chinese man on the street and slinks after him, waving him down happily and furiously and, in a sense, desperately.
  Yes, there is a strange sort of desperation in the glances that my mother and father fling at complete strangers, who only happen to share our hair color, skin tone, and perhaps racial heritage. Something is just too fascinating, too alluring about the thought of seeing another one of “us,” living and breathing and surviving in this strange new land. Each familiar-yet-unfamiliar yellow face stares out from a sea of colors, proof that a newly uprooted tree can still survive in foreign soil. And within each face, we see a little bit of ourselves, in a reflection distorted by only minor differences in circumstance.
  I look around me, and see everywhere the wealth of legacy: Fitzrandolph Gate and Faulkner’s South, Strathmore and Stanford, Carnegie Hall and Carnegie-Mellon. But my parents do not have the luxury of legacy; they have neither the history nor connections to truly belong to the United States. There is no Zhang Street, no Zhang Library, no Zhang Center for the Arts. There is no Li, Yang, or Chen Hall; there is no Shan, Xu, or Gao University. No, these names simply do not have a place among these distinguished buildings or places – they have no place here, where history has already been made by those from a time far removed from the interfering interjections of an immigrant. The name Zhang hangs instead on the dusty plaques of doctors’ offices, on lightly burnished nametags of stained lab coats, and on the darkened store-fronts of faux-Chinese restaurants. My parents exist as Dr. Zhang and Dr. Li, pharmacologist and physiatrist, Ph.D. and M.D. – they do not exist as sisters or brothers, neighbors or mayors, entrepreneurs or diplomats.
  My parents do not have the pre-requisite roots for immediate success. They mispronounce “fog” as “frog”; they haggle in Old Navy; they assume that a daughter in Princeton demands immediate respect. They operate on a strange currency of values only applicable in China – they use the yuan and not the dollar, and suffer for it. My father came here with only twenty-four dollars in his tattered lab pockets, but somehow, I can’t help but believe that he came with much less.
  Perhaps this is why they push all their hopes onto the next generation – without roots of their own, they cannot achieve the same level of success possible in a country where they could have once been mayors or entrepreneurs. They can only establish a material basis, setting the foundation for their children to grow in their place and seek the sunlight of a world that seems unintelligibly sunless.
  And, I finally realize, maybe that’s why my mother and father fear the loss of language within their only children. In such an un-rooted world, children have no place to return to, and so they stretch onward and onward into the sunlight, the Icaruses of the Orient, until they can no longer spare a glance for those ancestors behind them, who continue whispering an intangible and indispensable wisdom despite all the disdain and fear and hatred shown towards them. But those voices are there, and will always be there.
  I hear those voices, and in place of my lonely tree on a lonely hilltop, I now see a grove of trees – trees of those who have lived alongside me, in this sea of yellow-not-yellow, of those who have mistaken their one-two-threes for trees.

  I breathe in seven, out seven. One-two-three-four…seven-six-five…one. Every breath sounds faintly into the darkened room, soft exhalations of a small mouth and a small child, in a small room and a small world. Back then, I didn’t know that I could do something other than breathe – that there were more beautiful, more wonderful things to count than numbers. Five, four, three, two…

  People here call me Si Hua, or “remember China.” I am nine years old now, and visiting China—an unknown, unloved country, untouched by any memories or expectation—for the first time. There are black-haired, yellow-skinned people everywhere you look, and suddenly everyone is a brother, a sister, a friend from a past life. I am you and you are me, I want to say, but then each face contorts and I do not see a brother, sister, or friend. I see a stranger, with strange facial and idiomatic expressions and an even stranger language. I cannot understand the people here merely by peering into their faces; there is something deeper in every gesture, something not easily understood by my nine-year-old eyes.
 When I visit my cousins in Hunan, Li Cheng ge ge picks me up and whirls me around, laughing and wondering how much I weigh—he guesses forty-five kilograms, and we laugh as we translate numbers between cultures (that is, we laugh until I realize that forty-five kilograms grossly overestimates my weight)—and Li Dexin mei mei shows me her three, fuzzy yellow ducklings, dunking each into a bucket of water and screeching, “Swim, duckies, swim!” Li Cheng brings us to the dark, cloth-covered doorways of arcades; my mother brings me to a shrine, and we pray to an unknown god in front of an unknown name on an unknown tombstone, who my mother tells me is my great-grandmother. I believe her, though, because she cries when she says this, and then she tells me her story, even though I understand a little less than half of it.
  The next day, my mother brings us to a safari. We ride a rickety bus with rickety people, and a poor, speckled chicken sits clucking in a rickety old metal cage near the front of the bus. There are no fences between our bus and the lions outside, and someone grabs the chicken by the scruff of the neck and throws it out the window. It disappears in a whirl of feathers, and the lions outside look satisfied, feathers adorning their jaws.
  “They can’t do that,” my brother says, wide-eyed.
  A sea of black-haired heads turn towards us, perhaps wondering at the fluent English pouring forth from my brother’s mouth as he chatters, half in horror and half in admiration, of the chicken incident. But some of these glances are not inquisitive or wondering; some are fearful. We are the real lions, my brother and I – we are the real danger to the Chinese people, because we represent the loss of language and the loss of all that is beautiful in the history of this ancient land. We are the lions who sit inside the bus, devouring language and leaving feathers of broken Chinese around our jaws.

  It is our last day here, and we are peddling across the lake in Yi He Yuan. I close my eyes. It is our last day, I whisper to myself. Our last day, and then nothing will be left of me in this country that my mother and father call home. It has been a home, I think, even to me, and I have met the many brothers and sisters that could-have-been if I had lived here.
  We pass through seventeen arches of ancient white stone, and I count each one, slowly, carefully, so that I might remember each stone and each arch and each moment. Our dragon boat, red and sleek and glistening in the water, cuts through the crystallized surface of the lake, leaving dying ripples in its wake. Suddenly, I am very afraid. There will be no more ripples now, no more Muo na in China now; and there will be no more China in my own life. Gripped by this sudden and irrational fear, I pull at a strand of my black hair—the hair that contains a bit of me and my heritage both—and drop it into the shimmering lake. I watch until it recedes into the unseen depths.
  It is our last day, I whisper to myself, but I will remember China, and China, I hope, will remember me.
  

  The leaves are falling now, faster and faster. It is autumn here both in Princeton and in my sleep, and it is a wondrous autumn of reds and yellows and oranges and, most wondrously of all, of blues. The leaves fall and fall and fall and I can barely count them all as they skim across invisible currents in the air, a flurry of colors against a blue backdrop. I have never seen this blue in my dreams before, but it is a sweetness that I can hardly understand, and can hardly even begin to describe.
  I am sitting down at a kitchen table with my grandparents on a rainy October morning, listening to my grandfather’s story. I’ve come to realize that it doesn’t matter whether I understand every word, or every other word, or even no words at all. Through the fragmented silence, I hear the unspoken moments of his life—of eating moldy mantou every month, of his little brother whom I have never met, of his days as a political commissar—and I can hear the pain and the triumph and the bitterness of hard work through the haze of an unknown language. I also hear the desperation of an unheard voice: a voice that no one hears or cares to hear; a voice suppressed by an unbreakable silence of mutual cultural and linguistic ignorance.
  He tells me now, of his father and mother that he never knew – and suddenly, despite all the pain and humiliation of suffering years of ridicule from my own father, I know that my grandfather lost something deeper, something more significant than just wounded pride. He lost his roots and his entirety; he is a piece of driftwood in an unknown land, with no hopes for himself except for the little vegetable garden that he keeps meticulously neat and clean and green and beautiful—so very beautiful, with its cucumbers and mint and tomatoes; with its trailing vines wrapped lazily and wonderfully around home-made trellises; with its miniature green-picketed fence standing silent sentinel to our resident possum—so very beautiful, and so very sad.
  I hold his hand, as he did long ago for me. I listen, now, to his story, not understanding, but listening, and hearing. I hear my own voice within his, and know that he is my ye ye, now and forever.
  
  It is fall, here in Princeton. Fall, autumn, qiu tian—autumn is autumn is autumn is autumn, no matter what language I use to describe it—but somehow it seems as if the autumn of my life has already passed. I still count leaves sometimes, when I recall, suddenly, the trees of my childhood. But I no longer need those trees. Here, in this marvelously accepting orange bubble, a heightened sense of belonging—that, and the perpetual lack of sleep—sends me into a blissful hibernation every night, without fail.
  I remember standing on the edge of a darkened metro station, holding a hand from my mother, my father, laughing and gesturing wildly and sporadically with hands and arms and legs and feet and mind and body. This is a different fall—a fall of one year ago—as I open an acceptance letter from the place I would call home for the next four years of my life. I am speaking, in this memory, in a frenzied Chinglish, a language of spontaneity and life and effusion of ideas – “Yes, ni men liang ge shi wo de roots, and xian zai wo men ke yi finally put out our branches here, and here, and here—”
  Even now, we are still reeling from the realization of all these years of sacrifice and sorrow and shame. It is finally over. My parents’ hardships as immigrants have finally yielded results—solid, pure, tangible results—that they can bring home to their friends and family in China. After abandoning their home for eighteen years, my mother and father needed reassurance of their purpose; they needed proof that the struggle was worth the sacrifice – and suddenly, it was. It is. It is over, now, and they can rest knowing that their children can survive—and maybe even live—in this unknown world, with food, shelter, and even a little bit of happiness.
  But it isn’t over. It doesn’t stop with happily-ever-after, and I don’t suspect it ever will. Here, in Princeton, there is a certain, vague sense of loss that I cannot name – perhaps it is a loss of language, or perhaps it is a loss of something more. Perhaps I’ve forgotten what exactly I’ve lost in the first place. It is far too easy to forget parents and grandparents here; their voices, faint and distant and lovely in their familiarity, have disappeared under the weight of sleepless nights spent reading and writing papers.
  I call home during the Moon Festival, barely remembering that this is an important holiday to my grandparents and parents, even though it means very little to me. I have never understood why exactly the roundness of the moon means home, but when I hear disembodied voices on the phone, I suddenly feel oddly far away and wonder if this is what it feels like to be oceans apart—this is what my grandmother and her sister felt; this is what my grandfather and his closest friend felt; this is the distance that was so very painful when loved ones died over the phone and not in reality, not in a bed where you could at least touch and embrace them. I hear my grandmother’s voice, happy and strong and beautiful, and I remember her words, “Shu ye zi ba, guai guai...”
  Wandering around here in Forbes College, I can hear unfamiliar voices speaking familiar words in the nearly deserted lounge—“Ni hao. Ni hao. Zai jian. Zai jian”—it surprises me, to no end, how many people speak—and ardently wish to speak—Chinese. Sometimes, I sit very still and close my eyes, and listen to the intonations of every word that remind me of my parents and my home and my heritage. I sit, and I remember why I am here; I remember how I have gotten here; I remember my parents’ simultaneous hopes and fears that I would leave them far behind. I hope, and fear, that I have already.
 There is a Wu Dining Hall here. Behind that, there is an avenue of trees. On early October mornings, I walk through the row, watching and counting golden-red leaf after leaf after leaf… and I’ve finally realized that even if my ye zi, my leaves, weren’t actually leaves, there were wonders in being able to love a language I didn’t even understand – in embracing an interpretation of my own, and creating my own meaning using an old and beautiful language as only the template, and only the beginning.
  Even now, I still count leaves to myself.