When I moved to US in Jr. High School, everything was so different: the language, the people, the culture and the food. When I was in the school, most of time I was quiet, because I didn’t understand much English. When each class was over, everyone would rush out of the classroom to go to their next class. At the end of day, everyone would again rush out of the school building to get on their school bus to go home. When I got home from the school, I stayed in my bedroom most of time. I lived in the suburb area of Pittsburgh; you couldn’t go anywhere without driving. I didn’t have a driver’s license because I wasn’t sixteen yet. One time my mom and I tried to walk to a nearby Seven-Eleven; it took us two and half hours to get there and come back home. So, many months went by, my English did not improve, and I didn’t make any new friends. My uncle decided to put me in his Baskin Robins Ice Cream store to work on the weekends. He said that by waiting on the customers, I would be forced to talk to people in English and would therefore pick up English faster. Soon I met my first American friend Maribeth Mulkerrin; the one who gave me the connection to the American culture and showed me all the fun she knew. Our friendship proved that two persons from two different countries, with completely different cultural back grounds, could become best friends.
Maribeth also worked at Baskin Robins after school. My uncle told me that the reason he hired her was because she was a 4.0 high school student. He said that school is very important, and that when a kid earns good grades in school, that means they study hard. He only hired good students. He said that students who get poor grades need to stay home and study. I was very excited to meet Maribeth and was wondering what she looked like: short or tall, red hair or brown hair, serious or funny. Every time someone walked into the store, I quickly looked up hoping that it was her.
As soon as Maribeth came into the store, my uncle Chin introduced her to me. He told her to teach me how to make cakes, and possibly teach me English. Maribeth smiled at me and said hi to me. Her voice was sound soft and melodious. While she was teaching me to make a cake, I started ask to her many questions: “What grade are you in? How old are you? Why do American children need to work after school? What’s your hobby? Why do American high school girls wear make up and high heels to school” She patiently answered all my questions and asked the same questions about me and Taiwan. Sometimes we disagreed with each other and started arguing, but it didn’t stop us from becoming very good friends.
To me, Maribeth looked very special. She had long curly blonde hair below shoulder length. She liked to pull her hair up and clipped it with a large gold hair clip. She also liked to use a lot of hairspray to keep her hair in shape. The bathroom at the back of store always had an extra bottle of hairspray kept in there in case she decided that her hair was not held up nicely enough. Honestly, no matter how much she sprayed, I couldn’t see any difference before and after. She always argued with me that it did. Maribeth was an artist. So she was very good with makeup. Her eyebrows were arched. She liked to use black colored eye liners to bring out the shine in her blue eyes. Her lips were always glossed with soft pink lipsticks. She was about five feet one inch tall and was about size ten. She said that since she wasn’t very tall, that made her look fat. However, her skin was very white and smooth. On top of it she was very smart. All of these qualities made her look beautiful, even though her body figure was not the ideal. Maribeth liked to wear denim mini skirts with V neck knit tops, and white fabric sneakers. She liked to wear gold color jewelry. She also liked to color her finger nails. She had to match the color of her fingernails to the color of the lipstick she was wearing. If her lipstick color and fingernail color did not match, she would not leave her house until they did.
I told her that in our county, no high school student was allowed to wear makeup, high heels or mini skirts to school. We were only allowed to wear uniforms. She told me that Chinese people are boring. I argued that it was because our school wanted us to focus on studying. When I told her that everyone there must have the same hair cut, straight and above shoulder with no hair band she would say to me, “How do you distinguish one another?”
“We had our names embroidered on our uniforms,” I said. “And I think your hair looks just fine without all that hairspray,” I teased her.
She would say in a harsh voice, “Shut up, Grace!” In the end, she was never mad at me.
One Saturday afternoon, there were a lot of customers in the store. Maribeth wasn’t working that day. I was alone in the working area at the back of the store making cakes. I looked towards the front of the store and saw my uncle talking to a girl. Her whole body was in black, the dress, the tight leggings, and the shoes. That made her skin looks pale white. Her black short hair stuck up in the air, and I thought she used a lot of gel to hold it up. She also outlined her eyes with black eyeliner and wore dark red lipstick, which made her look like she was from Egypt. I noted that she had silver color jewelry all over her body. After she left, my uncle told me that she was Maribeth’s younger sister and her name was Maureen. I was not able to believe that the girl was in fact Maribeth’s sister, because they were so different: the looks, their body figures, clothing styles, makeup, and jewelry.
“Oh my god! Uncle, are you sure they are sisters? If they are, are they from the same parents?” I asked.
“Yes, they are,” my uncle said.
Later on, Maureen started working with us in the ice cream store. Her grade average was 3.75, not as good as Maribeth. My uncle said that was good enough. Maureen was also a very nice girl, but she could be moody sometimes. That made it hard for me to communicate with her using my broken English. Although I was closer to Maribeth, the three of us still hung out together.
One day, Maribeth needed to work on her art history project; it was to write about the age of grave stones. She asked Maureen and me to go with her to the church cemetery. That was right next to the shopping center where Baskin Robins was. We were afraid that people were going to recognize us, because we all worked there and it was a small town. So we all wore black outfits and put on sun glasses, hoping that nobody would see us or recognize us. When we were walking up the hill, Maribeth started to ask me and Maureen to lift up one of the grave stones that was setting at the side for her to study the one at the bottom.
“No way, you didn’t tell me that I’ll need to lift and touch some dead person’s grave stone. You only asked me to come with you,” I said.
“But I can’t get my information unless I see the stone, and I need to see what year this person died in order to find out the age of the stone,” Maribeth said.
“But the ghost will follow me and haunt me; I told you I have that type of body!” I replied.
“Don’t worry, all these dead people were priests. You are in the church cemetery now. They will not come to haunt you. They are good ghosts!” she tried to calm me down.
Maureen and I then tried to lift the stone. No mater how hard we tried, the stone just wouldn’t move. “Maribeth, this is crazy! This stone is about two to three hundred pounds.” Maureen finally commented.
As she was saying that, people driving by started honking at us. “What a bad idea, of course people were going to see us. We all wore black clothes and I even had a bright purple sweater on. We should have worn something neutral, so it wouldn’t be so obvious for people to see us,” I said.
We hurried to leave that place. “Now everybody was going to know that we were over at the church’s cemetery because of you,” Maribeth yelled.
“Me?” I yelled back.
“Yeah! Because we forgot you are the only Chinese girl around this area, and you are wearing a bright purple sweater,” Maribeth said.
“I told you I didn’t want to come, and you made me come,” I replied.
After we went back to Maribeth and Maureen’s home, we started to laugh, and made fun of ourselves about it for many years after.
Even though Maribeth was a 4.0 student, she struggled with her math. One day she came in the store with a worried face. I asked her what happened, she told me that she was in trouble and needed to find someone to help with her Algebra. I told her that I could help her. She looked at me and said, “Girl, you are one grade younger than me. How can you help me? Algebra is very hard.”
I told her, “Hey, my English may be bad, but all Chinese are good at math. I am taking trigonometry. That is one level higher than Algebra. Do you want me to help you for the test or not?”
That weekend Maribeth came to my place, and showed me the part that she didn’t understand. I showed her a way different from the one in the book and a trick to do it. She finally understood. “Wow, that’s easy! Why didn’t I understand it in the first place?” She said. Before she went home, I told her to practice more at home. A few days later, she called to thank me for helping her to get an A on her final. I was very happy for her.
Although Maribeth and I were culturally different, because of our open minds and respect for each other, our friendship helped us broaden our views. Sometimes I cooked Chinese food for her. Other times she made hamburgers for me. I taught her some easy Chinese words and she helped me with my English. Twenty years went by, Maribeth and I are still good friends today. We had so many good times together. Now we are not living in the same state anymore. We don’t even call each other often because we have different priorities now. However, from time to time, we still send e-mails to each other to express how much we miss each other.
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