The paper menagerie
By Ken Liu
Read by Rajan Khanna
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Originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
All stories by Ken Liu
All stories read by Rajan Khanna
Rated 10 and up
The Paper Menagerie
by Ken Liu
One of my earliest memories starts with me sobbing. I refused to be soothed no
matter what Mom and Dad tried.
Dad gave up and left the bedroom, but Mom took me into the kitchen and sat me d
own at the breakfast table.
“Kan, kan,” she said, as she pulled a sheet of wrapping paper from on top of
the fridge. For years, Mom carefully sliced open the wrappings around Christmas
gifts and saved them on top of the fridge in a thick stack.
She set the paper down, plain side facing up, and began to fold it. I stopped c
rying and watched her, curious.
She turned the paper over and folded it again. She pleated, packed, tucked, rol
led, and twisted until the paper disappeared between her cupped hands. Then she
lifted the folded-up paper packet to her mouth and blew into it, like a balloo
n.
“Kan,” she said. “Laohu.” She put her hands down on the table and let go.
A little paper tiger stood on the table, the size of two fists placed together.
The skin of the tiger was the pattern on the wrapping paper, white background
with red candy canes and green Christmas trees.
I reached out to Mom’s creation. Its tail twitched, and it pounced playfully a
t my finger. “Rawrr-sa,” it growled, the sound somewhere between a cat and ru
stling newspapers.
I laughed, startled, and stroked its back with an index finger. The paper tiger
vibrated under my finger, purring.
“Zhe jiao zhezhi,” Mom said. This is called origami.
I didn’t know this at the time, but Mom’s kind was special. She breathed into
them so that they shared her breath, and thus moved with her life. This was he
r magic.
#
Dad had picked Mom out of a catalog.
One time, when I was in high school, I asked Dad about the details. He was tryi
ng to get me to speak to Mom again.
He had signed up for the introduction service back in the spring of 1973. Flipp
ing through the pages steadily, he had spent no more than a few seconds on each
page until he saw the picture of Mom.
I’ve never seen this picture. Dad described it: Mom was sitting in a chair, he
r side to the camera, wearing a tight green silk cheongsam. Her head was turned
to the camera so that her long black hair was draped artfully over her chest a
nd shoulder. She looked out at him with the eyes of a calm child.
“That was the last page of the catalog I saw,” he said.
The catalog said she was eighteen, loved to dance, and spoke good English becau
se she was from Hong Kong. None of these facts turned out to be true.
He wrote to her, and the company passed their messages back and forth. Finally,
he flew to Hong Kong to meet her.
“The people
at the company had been writing her responses. She didn’t know an
y English other than ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye.’”
What kind of woman puts herself into a catalog so that she can be bought? The h
igh school me thought I knew so much about everything. Contempt felt good, like
wine.
Instead of storming into the office to demand his money back, he paid a waitres
s at the hotel restaurant to translate for them.
“She would look at me, her eyes halfway between scared and hopeful, while I sp
oke. And when the girl began translating what I said, she’d start to smile slo
wly.”
He flew back to Connecticut and began to apply for the papers for her to come t
o him. I was born a year later, in the Year of the Tiger.
#
At my request, Mom also made a goat, a deer, and a water buffalo out of wrappin
g paper. They would run around the living room while Laohu chased after them, g
rowling. When he caught them he would press down until the air went out of them
and they became just flat, folded-up pieces of paper. I would then have to blo
w into them to re-inflate them so they could run around some more.
Sometimes, the animals got into trouble. Once, the water buffalo jumped into a
dish of soy sauce on the table at dinner. (He wanted to wallow, like a real wat
er buffalo.) I picked him out quickly but the capillary action had already pull
ed the dark liquid high up into his legs. The sauce-softened legs would not hol
d him up, and he collapsed onto the table. I dried him out in the sun, but his
legs became crooked after that, and he ran around with a limp. Mom eventually w
rapped his legs in saran wrap so that he could wallow to his heart’s content (
just not in soy sauce).
Also, Laohu liked to pounce at sparrows when he and I played in the backyard. B
ut one time, a cornered bird struck back in desperation and tore his ear. He wh
impered and winced as I held him and Mom patched his ear together with tape. He
avoided birds after that.
And then one day, I saw a TV documentary about sharks and asked Mom for one of
my own. She made the shark, but he flapped about on the table unhappily. I fill
ed the sink with water, and put him in. He swam around and around happily. Howe
ver, after a while he became soggy and translucent, and slowly sank to the bott
om, the folds coming undone. I reached in to rescue him, and all I ended up wit
h was a wet piece of paper.
Laohu put his front paws together at the edge of the sink and rested his head o
n them. Ears drooping, he made a low growl in his throat that made me feel guil
ty.
Mom made a new shark for me, this time out of tin foil. The shark lived happily
in a large goldfish bowl. Laohu and I liked to sit next to the bowl to watch t
he tin foil shark chasing the goldfish, Laohu sticking his face up against the
bowl on the other side so that I saw his eyes, magnified to the size of coffee
cups, staring at me from across t
he bowl.
#
When I was ten, we moved to a new house across town. Two of the women neighbors
came by to welcome us. Dad served them drinks and then apologized for having t
o run off to the utility company to straighten out the prior owner’s bills. “
Make yourselves at home. My wife doesn’t speak much English, so don’t think s
he’s being rude for not talking to you.”
While I read in the dining room, Mom unpacked in the kitchen. The neighbors con
versed in the living room, not trying to be particularly quiet.
“He seems like a normal enough man. Why did he do that?”
“Something about the mixing never seems right. The child looks unfinished. Sla
nty eyes, white face. A little monster.”
“Do you think he can speak English?”
The women hushed. After a while they came into the dining room.
“Hello there! What’s your name?”
“Jack,” I said.
“That doesn’t sound very Chinesey.”
Mom came into the dining room then. She smiled at the women. The three of them
stood in a triangle around me, smiling and nodding at each other, with nothing
to say, until Dad came back.
#
Mark, one of the neighborhood boys, came over with his Star Wars action figures
. Obi-Wan Kenobi’s lightsaber lit up and he could swing his arms and say, in a
tinny voice, “Use the Force!” I didn’t think the figure looked much like th
e real Obi-Wan at all.
Together, we watched him repeat this performance five times on the coffee table
. “Can he do anything else?” I asked.
Mark was annoyed by my question. “Look at all the details,” he said.
I looked at the details. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to say.
Mark was disappointed by my response. “Show me your toys.”
I didn’t have any toys except my paper menagerie. I brought Laohu out from my
bedroom. By then he was very worn, patched all over with tape and glue, evidenc
e of the years of repairs Mom and I had done on him. He was no longer as nimble
and sure-footed as before. I sat him down on the coffee table. I could hear th
e skittering steps of the other animals behind in the hallway, timidly peeking
into the living room.
“Xiao laohu,” I said, and stopped. I switched to English. “This is Tiger.”
Cautiously, Laohu strode up and purred at Mark, sniffing his hands.
Mark examined the Christmas-wrap pattern of Laohu’s skin. “That doesn’t look
like a tiger at all. Your Mom makes toys for you from trash?”
I had never thought of Laohu as trash. But looking at him now, he was really ju
st a piece of wrapping paper.
Mark pushed Obi-Wan’s head again. The lightsaber flashed; he moved his arms up
and down. “Use the Force!”
Laohu turned and pounced, knocking the plastic figure off the table. It hit the
floor and broke, and Obi-Wan’s head rolled under the couch. “Rawwww,” Laohu
laughed. I joined him.
Mark punched me, hard.
“This was very expensive! You can’t even find it in th
e stores now. It probably cost more than what your dad paid for your mom!”
I stumbled and fell to the floor. Laohu growled and leapt at Mark’s face.
Mark screamed, more out of fear and surprise than pain. Laohu was only made of
paper, after all.
Mark grabbed Laohu and his snarl was choked off as Mark crumpled him in his han
d and tore him in half. He balled up the two pieces of paper and threw them at
me. “Here’s your stupid cheap Chinese garbage.”
After Mark left, I spent a long time trying, without success, to tape together
the pieces, smooth out the paper, and follow the creases to refold Laohu. Slowl
y, the other animals came into the living room and gathered around us, me and t
he torn wrapping paper that used to be Laohu.
#
My fight with Mark didn’t end there. Mark was popular at school. I never want
to think again about the two weeks that followed.
I came home that Friday at the end of the two weeks. “Xuexiao hao ma?” Mom as
ked. I said nothing and went to the bathroom. I looked into the mirror. I look
nothing like her, nothing.
At dinner I asked Dad, “Do I have a chink face?”
Dad put down his chopsticks. Even though I had never told him what happened in
school, he seemed to understand. He closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of hi
s nose. “No, you don’t.”
Mom looked at Dad, not understanding. She looked back at me. “Sha jiao chink?”
“English,” I said. “Speak English.”
She tried. “What happen?”
I pushed the chopsticks and the bowl before me away: stir-fried green peppers w
ith five-spice beef. “We should eat American food.”
Dad tried to reason. “A lot of families cook Chinese sometimes.”
“We are not other families.” I looked at him. Other families don’t have moms
who don’t belong.
He looked away. And then he put a hand on Mom’s shoulder. “I’ll get you a co
okbook.”
Mom turned to me. “Bu haochi?”
“English,” I said, raising my voice. “Speak English.”
Mom reached out to touch my forehead, feeling for my temperature. “Fashao la?”
I brushed her hand away. “I’m fine. Speak English!” I was shouting.
“Speak English to him,” Dad said to Mom. “You knew this was going to happen
some day. What did you expect?”
Mom dropped her hands to her side. She sat, looking from Dad to me, and back to
Dad again. She tried to speak, stopped, and tried again, and stopped again.
“You have to,” Dad said. “I’ve been too easy on you. Jack needs to fit in.”
Mom looked at him. “If I say ‘love,’ I feel here.” She pointed to her lips.
“If I say ‘ai,‘ I feel here.” She put her hand over her heart.
Dad shook his head. “You are in America.”
Mom hunched down in her seat, looking like the water buffalo when Laohu used to
pounce on him
and squeeze the air of life out of him.
“And I want some real toys.”
#
Dad bought me a full set of Star Wars action figures. I gave the Obi-Wan Kenobi
to Mark.
I packed the paper menagerie in a large shoebox and put it under the bed.
The next morning, the animals had escaped and took over their old favorite spot
s in my room. I caught them all and put them back into the shoebox, taping the
lid shut. But the animals made so much noise in the box that I finally shoved i
t into the corner of the attic as far away from my room as possible.
If Mom spoke to me in Chinese, I refused to answer her. After a while, she trie
d to use more English. But her accent and broken sentences embarrassed me. I tr
ied to correct her. Eventually, she stopped speaking altogether if I were aroun
d.
cheongsamMom began to mime things if she needed to let me know something. She tried to h
ug me the way she saw American mothers did on TV. I thought her movements exagg
erated, uncertain, ridiculous, graceless. She saw that I was annoyed, and stopp
ed.
“You shouldn’t treat your mother that way,” Dad said. But he couldn’t look
me in the eyes as he said it. Deep in his heart, he must have realized that it
was a mistake to have tried to take a Chinese peasant girl and expect her to fi
t in the suburbs of Connecticut.
Mom learned to cook American style. I played video games and studied French.
Every once in a while, I would see her at the kitchen table studying the plain
side of a sheet of wrapping paper. Later a new paper animal would appear on my
nightstand and try to cuddle up to me. I caught them, squeezed them until the a
ir went out of them, and then stuffed them away in the box in the attic.
Mom finally stopped making the animals when I was in high school. By then her E
nglish was much better, but I was already at that age when I wasn’t interested
in what she had to say whatever language she used.
Sometimes, when I came home and saw her tiny body busily moving about in the ki
tchen, singing a song in Chinese to herself, it was hard for me to believe that
she gave birth to me. We had nothing in common. She might as well be from the
moon. I would hurry on to my room, where I could continue my all-American pursu
it of happiness.
#
Dad and I stood, one on each side of Mom, lying on the hospital bed. She was no
t yet even forty, but she looked much older.
For years she had refused to go to the doctor for the pain inside her that she
said was no big deal. By the time an ambulance finally carried her in, the canc
er had spread far beyond the limits of surgery.
My mind was not in the room. It was the middle of the on-campus recruiting seas
on, and I was focused on resumes, transcripts, and strategically constructed in
terview schedules. I schemed about how to lie to the corporate recruiters most
effectively so that they’ll offer to buy me. I understood inte
llectually that
it was terrible to think about this while your mother lay dying. But that under
standing didn’t mean I could change how I felt.
She was conscious. Dad held her left hand with both of his own. He leaned down
to kiss her forehead. He seemed weak and old in a way that startled me. I reali
zed that I knew almost as little about Dad as I did about Mom.
Mom smiled at him. “I’m fine.”
She turned to me, still smiling. “I know you have to go back to school.” Her
voice was very weak and it was difficult to hear her over the hum of the machin
es hooked up to her. “Go. Don’t worry about me. This is not a big deal. Just
do well in school.”
I reached out to touch her hand, because I thought that was what I was supposed
to do. I was relieved. I was already thinking about the flight back, and the b
right California sunshine.
She whispered something to Dad. He nodded and left the room.
“Jack, if—” she was caught up in a fit of coughing, and could not speak for
some time. “If I don’t make it, don’t be too sad and hurt your health. Focus
on your life. Just keep that box you have in the attic with you, and every yea
r, at Qingming, just take it out and think about me. I’ll be with you always.”
Qingming was the Chinese Festival for the Dead. When I was very young, Mom used
to write a letter onQingming to her dead parents back in China, telling them t
he good news about the past year of her life in America. She would read the let
ter out loud to me, and if I made a comment about something, she would write it
down in the letter too. Then she would fold the letter into a paper crane, and
release it, facing west. We would then watch, as the crane flapped its crisp w
ings on its long journey west, towards the Pacific, towards China, towards the
graves of Mom’s family.
It had been many years since I last did that with her.
“I don’t know anything about the Chinese calendar,” I said. “Just rest, Mom
. ”
“Just keep the box with you and open it once in a while. Just open—” she beg
an to cough again.
“It’s okay, Mom.” I stroked her arm awkwardly.
“Haizi, mama ai ni—” Her cough took over again. An image from years ago flas
hed into my memory: Mom saying ai and then putting her hand over her heart.
“Alright, Mom. Stop talking.”
Dad came back, and I said that I needed to get to the airport early because I d
idn’t want to miss my flight.
She died when my plane was somewhere over Nevada.
#
Dad aged rapidly after Mom died. The house was too big for him and had to be so
ld. My girlfriend Susan and I went to help him pack and clean the place.
Susan found the shoebox in the attic. The paper menagerie, hidden in the uninsu
lated darkness of the attic for so long, had become brittle and the bright wrap
ping paper patterns had faded.
“I’ve never seen origami like this,

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