Unpolished Gem: Part 2 Summary & Analysis

“Woe!” cries Huyen Thai. “Why do you smell like piss?” she asks Alice. Alice tells her she smells like urine because she has peed her pants. Alice’s grandmother asks why she didn’t just ask her teacher to use the bathroom. Alice doesn’t want to talk about school, but she knows that her grandmother will not tell her parents her secrets, so she figures it is safe to tell.

That day had been kindergarten picture day at school and Alice was, as usual, wearing a padded Mao suit. Despite the warm spring weather, Huyen Thai still worried that Alice would “freeze like the communist peasants from the Middle Kingdom.” The teachers wanted Alice to slide down a slide for the photo, but she worried that she would leave a “streak of incontinence,” and she refused. She spent the day indoors, standing at an art easel so she wouldn’t have to sit down in her wet suit. When the school pictures are developed and the only shots of Alice are at the easel, Kien and Kuan proudly proclaim, “We have an artist in the family!”

That night, in the queen-size bed they share, Huyen Thai asks Alice why she doesn’t tell the teacher she needs to use the bathroom. “Do you know how?” she asks. Alice confirms she does, and even though she tells her grandmother that she doesn’t know why she doesn’t ask, she knows that it is because she is afraid. Just as Alice thinks that her grandmother has fallen asleep, Huyen Thai begins to tell a story.

Huyen Thai tells Alice that when her own children were young, they had only one mattress. She slept on the mattress with her five sons, and each night she would be woken by wet clothes. She tells Alice that she is glad Alice doesn’t have a “night-time bladder,” but that she must learn to ask to use the bathroom if she wants to “be able to make some friends.”

School picture day is not the last time Alice “fills her pants,” and it happens again in the second grade. Alice’s class is learning about Australian History, and they are having a “colonial dress-up parade” the next day. She rummages through boxes of old clothes looking for an ankle-length dress, but she knows she will never find one in her home. So, of course, “the Mao suit comes out,” Alice says.

At school, the other children ask Alice why she is wearing pajamas, and when they line up for the parade, the teacher doesn’t give her an apron like the rest of the girls. “No, Alice, I don’t think you need one,” she says. Alice is distraught. She will be the only girl without an apron, and she wants it to cover her pajamas pants. “Excuse me, Miss Higgins,” Alice says to her teacher. “I need to go to the toilet.” Instead of friends, Alice thinks, “I bring home soiled washing.”

Sometime later, Alice goes to visit Chia Ngo Hung, Kien’s mother, whom Alice calls “Outside Ma,” and the two sit and pick lice from Alice’s head. She has come to Outside Ma’s because no one else wants her around because of the nits. Outside Ma never asks about school or friends, and Alice is thankful for her silence.

Both of Kien’s parents had come from Cambodia once their immigration papers were processed, and they arrived in Australia wearing brand new Mao suits. Chia Teng, Kien’s father, quickly turned his new backyard into a Chinese vegetable garden, and he wakes at six each morning to tend to his plants. Outside Ma still makes all their clothes, including their underwear, and they keep all their money buried in Nescafé jars in the backyard.

The next day, Kien applies lice treatment to Alice’s head that “smells like cat-piss.” It must be left on for twelve hours, and Alice is forced to go to school with the treatment still in her hair. The treatment doesn’t work, and Kien has no choice but to take her to a salon. She has the hairdresser give Alice a perm, hoping that it will kill the nits. Sitting in the car afterwards, Alice feels like a “Chinese Ronald McDonald, minus the Happy Times.”

When Kuan tells Huyen Thai that he is going to open an electronics store, she thinks he is crazy. An Asian grocery store is better, she says, but he is not convinced. He has no desire to sell soy sauce, so he buys a small shop with no bathroom and begins selling watches, batteries, and radios. Local gangs constantly harass him for money, and they frequently steal from him. “Just like in Cambodia,” he says.

A shop-to-shop supplier often stops by Kuan’s shop to sell cheap adaptor plugs. Kuan thinks the adaptors are too cheap and is leery about buying them. “How do you make a profit?” he asks. The supplier tells Kuan that he steals the adaptors from big stores, like Kmart, and then sells them cheap. Six months later, when Kuan becomes a Retravision franchise, he tells the supplier that he can no longer order from door-to-door suppliers.

Kien continues to work making jewelry in the Pungs’ garage. She fires up her kiln early in the morning and works late into the night. Kien pours gold into plaster molds and waits for it to harden, and then she polishes the jewelry by hand. Most customers order 24-carat gold, but why they would want to wear the pale metal is beyond Kien.

After making the jewelry, Kien delivers her products to the shops in Footscray and the surrounding areas. Occasionally, her customers cannot pay, or they owe her gold and don’t have it. She “relies only on their promises,” which she keeps written on scrap paper in her purse.

Kien “negotiates, supplies, markets, and chases up creditors,” all without speaking English, but she never considers herself a businesswoman. The representatives from Sony who come to sell televisions to Kuan are businesspeople, but she is a “housewife with a handbag filled with gold wrapped in McDonald’s napkins.”

Soon, Kien becomes pregnant again. This time she is constantly sick and swollen, yet Kien insists on continuing to work. Que decides that it will be easier if Huyen Thai comes to live with her, and Alice’s grandmother soon moves out of their house. Without Huyen Thai, Alice begins to look “disheveled,” with messy hair and clothing, and there is nobody to make her eggs in the morning.

The Pungs’ house turns dark and boring, and nobody comes to visit. During that year, Alice learns “to be alone” and realizes how unsocial her family is. She hardly ever goes outside, and one day while exploring a cupboard under the stairs, she finds human hair hidden in Huyen Thai’s old Buddha shrine.

When Huyen Thai stops by a few weeks later to gather more of her things, Alice asks her about the hair in the Buddha shrine. “Ah,” Huyen Thai says. “This hair is your Auntie Que’s.” She tells Alice that whenever she cut her daughter’s hair, she would keep a piece.

Back in Cambodia, Alice says, Huyen Thai’s first two babies, both girls, died when they were just young. After her grandmother gave birth to her first daughter, An Pung was “inconsolable.” Usually, in Chinese culture, when a baby turns one month old, they are considered one year old because the time in the womb is counted as well, but there was no celebration for this baby. Three months later, the baby fell ill and died quietly in the night. Huyen Thai cut a small piece of the baby’s hair before burying her.

Less than a year later, Huyen Thai was pregnant again. She gave birth to another girl and An thought for sure he was cursed. Huyen Thai named her MeiHuay, beautiful flower, but called her “Little Brother.” This new baby had “sturdy legs” and a “strong face,” and everyone soon began calling her Little Brother as well. An was angered by the name. “She’s built like a boy,” he said, “and now you’ve given her that terrible name. She’s going to grow up like a boy if you’re not careful, and then no one will want her.”

Little Brother was very mischievous, and Huyen Thai had a difficult time keeping her in line and out of trouble. “What a bad girl you are, Little Brother!” Alice’s grandmother would yell at her daughter. The child refused to wear dresses and she was constantly dirty. “Discipline that child!” An Pung would order his wife.

Huyen Thai soon gave birth to another child, a son this time, and An Pung threw a big celebration when the baby turned one month old. Before the party, Little Brother tried to take the lollipops that An had set aside for the guests, and he snatched them away, putting them up on a high shelf. Little Brother cried and fussed, throwing a tantrum over her lost lollipop.

After An left the room, Huyen Thai gave Little Brother a lollipop to calm her down and went back to preparing food for the party. Suddenly, she heard a loud crash from the other room. When she ran into the room, Huyen Thai saw the high shelf was no longer on the wall and there were lollipops and blood everywhere. “I told you not to give her those lollies on a stick!” An yelled at his wife.

For as long as Alice can remember, Huyen Thai has always warned her not to run with pens or pencils in her mouth. Alice’s grandmother claims there was a child in her neighborhood who fell from his chair with a chopstick in his mouth, which “poked right through to the back of his head.”

At nine years old, Alice spends most of her time caring for her baby sister, Alison. Kien continues to work in the garage making jewelry, and Alice has little time to play with her friend, Beatrice. Alice learns to prepare Alison’s formula and test the temperature on the inside of her wrist. Kien never tells Alice that she is a good sister or daughter.

 One day, as Alice is taking care of Alison, the baby rolls off the bed and onto the floor. Kien runs into the room, yelling and screaming, and tells Alice she is “doomed” if Alison is “brain-damaged” from the fall. Alice prays to Buddha to protect her sister and promises to never complain again, but then she realizes that if Buddha does exist, he wouldn’t “torment” her so.

When Kuan comes into the room, he “tut-tuts” his tongue at Alice. “Can’t even be responsible for anything, not even looking after your sister for a little while,” he says. Alice doesn’t tell him that she has been looking after the baby all day, and she watches as her parents rush Alison to the doctor.

With her parents and sister gone to the hospital, Alice figures that she is doomed anyway. She considers suicide, but she hates blood and is too short to effectively hang herself. She remembers about the white oleander in the backyard and thinks about poisoning herself. Later, Kien and Kuan return from the hospital. “You are lucky,” says Kien. Alice is so relieved that Alison is alright that she forgets to be thankful for not killing herself.

Meanwhile, Alice begins to sew to try to take her mind off her guilt for failing to take proper care of Alison. She learns embroidery as well, and she makes hats and stuffed animals. Kien has another baby, Alina, and Kuan buys Alice a sewing machine, which she uses to make clothing for Alina.

Other members of the family and friends begin dropping their own children off for Alice to watch as well, and she is soon drowning in childcare and housework. She complains to Kien that Alexander isn’t expected to do as much as she is, and Kien claims that he doesn’t know how to do housework because he is a boy. Alice is “more mature,” Kien says. “Girls only mature faster because they have to do more,” Alice says.

Alice drinks cups and cups coffee sweetened with condensed milk to keep herself energized and motivated. The caffeine gives her the shakes, but she doesn’t care. She does manage to escape her housework long enough to do her homework and even read a few books. Alice watches movies like Stand by Me and Dead Poets Society and thinks that coming of age for boys is much more exciting than girls. Alice isn’t given the same opportunities a boy, and all that matters is that she can “make a good pot of rice, has a pretty face, and is fertile.”

A couple of years later, one of Alice’s aunts asks her if Kien had a celebration when Alice’s “time came.” Alice is confused, and Kien says, “Don’t be ridiculous, no one does that anymore.” Alice realizes that girls come of age easily—they begin to bleed and are “certified women.” Kuan and Kien begin to warn their daughter about rapists. “You never know,” Kien says, “how dirty-minded men are.”

At fifteen, Alice wishes she had a boyfriend to talk to or go to the movies with, but Kuan tells her that she is too young for relationships. She must study hard, he says, because her “future is so important.” Alice becomes the “cover-up girl” for her friends when they want to go out with boys. They tell their parents that they are going to the library with Alice or working on a school project.

One day, a boy calls Alice on the phone and her mother hears his voice on the other end. Kien says boys and girls don’t “just chat,” and she is convinced that Alice is having an inappropriate relationship with the boy. They ground Alice during the school holiday, so she won’t be able to go out with any boys.

Alice stays locked in her room for two weeks, and her parents assume that her silence is an admission of guilt. Alice realizes that to raise a girl, “you need gallons of Social Conditioner with added Spirit Deflator. Rub onto every limb until limp, put the child into a chair and wait until she sets.” Once the arms and legs harden, “you have a perfect young woman—so still and silent and sedate.” Alice feels like a “geisha behind glass.”

Huyen Thai tells Alice to “love sensibly,” but Alice fails to see how passion can be experienced sensibly. When her grandmother was a young woman in China, she got into trouble with the government for speaking passionately about land rights and landlord abuses, and that surely wasn’t sensible. In fact, it was the reason why Huyen Thai had to leave China in the first place.

Shortly after Huyen Thai fled China, Alice says, she met An Pung. They were both teachers at the same school, and even though An was ten years older and married, Huyen Thai fell in love with him anyway. Huyen Thai and An were “diseased with love.” Alice does not see this as sensible either.

Later, Kien tells Alice about how she first met Kuan. Kien worked in the Pungs’ plastic bag factory back in Cambodia, and she still remembers the day that Kuan and Sokem became engaged. Then, Pol Pot’s regime took over and Kien’s family escaped to Vietnam while the Pungs were sent to the Killing Fields.

Five years later, Kien and Kuan met again in Saigon. Kien sensed that Kuan liked her but was too shy to say it. They went for walks together and Kuan even let Kien borrow his bicycle. One day, Kien went to the Pungs’ to return Kuan’s bicycle and found Sokem there as well. Sokem had lost her entire family in the Killing Fields, and she had returned to marry Kuan. Huyen Thai invited Kien into the house anyway.

Kien and Kuan were married in Vietnam, but they didn’t celebrate until after they arrived in Australia. Before Kuan asked Kien to marry him, he knew that he must have something to offer her. Of course, he had nothing, so he offered her what he did have— “a promise, something for her to picture in her imagination.” He planned their escape through a refugee camp in Thailand, and after one year in the camp, the couple was finally able to get out of Southeast Asia. They were given the choice to go to either Canada or Australia, and since no one wanted to live in the snow, they chose Australia.