“I’ll give you 15.”

“15? This is real silk! I won’t sell for less than 45 yuan.”

Raucous voices filled the tiny shop, just one of many crammed into the market’s crowded hallways. Shifting from leg to leg, I stared resolutely at a narrow shelf blanketed in dented plastic dolls, fragile keychain plushies that I knew from experience would tear apart soon after they were purchased, miniature models of Buddha carved out of unidentifiable maroon stone, and lurid novelty goods stacked haphazardly. The menagerie blurred as my eyes slowly unfocused. I buried my hands in my coat pockets and glanced toward the shop counter, hoping to convey my growing impatience. No such luck.

My mother was facing away from me, locked in the heat of battle. Her diminutive stature, a product of malnutrition and heavy labor, did not detract from her demanding demeanor. After all, bartering, her chosen art form, was dictated by only the wits and wiles of the combatants. She smoothly traded blows with the increasingly irritated shopkeeper, their voices swelling into a chaotic duet. Like a spark igniting into a flame, my mother’s normally precise Chinese became a rushing stream I could no longer comprehend.

To compare this articulation to her English would be to juxtapose an elegant heron with a waddling penguin. Here my mother commanded the ferocity of a tiger, words like coiling vipers ready to strike at weakness. She gestured violently at the shopkeeper, never pausing to take a breath. She sported this affectation only in China.

I kept several feet between us, though when in downtown Tianjin I usually stayed close enough to brush my fingertips against her coat sleeve, an assurance that we wouldn’t be separated in the crowds. I hardly spoke outside the compound in which we lived; when I did, I couldn’t have been more conspicuous if my hair was blond and my eyes blue.

It was the price I paid for laziness. My mother had tried to coax me into learning, offering one hour of TV for each hour of Chinese study. Stickers were exchanged for correct poem recitation, stars for exceptionally pretty characters. But my mother’s power over my Chinese education had been weak during the most essential years; America tuned my tongue to English only. This bitter realization came to me when, during my first meeting with my relatives, a cousin jeered and mocked, “Baichi.” I recognized that word, at least. “Idiot.”

China is a country of counterfeit, a place where fake pearls are abundant and green glass masquerades as jade; sellers are hungry wolves, using flimsy cloth fans and faux marble stamps to tear into the wallets of unsuspecting tourists. Yet even while standing among stacks of cheap statuettes, chipped pendants, and questionably manufactured scarves, I knew I was the greatest knockoff in the market. For as much as my mother had attempted to ingrain China into my being, to raise me as a tiger cub, America had embedded itself into my body the moment I was born on democratic soil.

It was a barter I didn’t know my mom had been willing to make, if she even knew she had made it when she followed my dad to America. She couldn’t have anticipated my discomfort with China’s brash criticism and necessary skepticism, the mahjong parlors and the disorderly shops. She couldn’t have foreseen my refusal to follow Chinese etiquette or use chopsticks. The moment she turned away, I became a mouse.

My mother stalked away from the counter, proud as a lioness with a fresh kill. She had paid only 20 yuan. Even in hindsight, the scarf was a good bargain. She would never wear it.