The old woman remembered a swan she had bought many years ago in Shanghai for a foolish sum. This bird, boasted the market vendor, was once a duck that stretched its ne hopes of being a goose, and now look!—it is too beautiful to eat.
Then the woman and the swan sailed across an o many thousands of li wide, stretg their necks toward America. On her journey she cooed to the swan: "In America I will have a daughter just like me. But over there nobody will say her worth is measured by the loudness of her husbands belch. Over there nobody will look down on her, because I will make her speak only perfect Ameri English. And over there she will always be too full to swallow any sorrow! She will know my meaning, because I will give her this swan—a creature that became more than what was hoped for."
But when she arrived in the new try, the immigration officials pulled her swan away from her, leaving the woman fluttering her arms and with only one swaher for a memory. And then she had to fill out so many forms she fot why she had e and what she had left behind.
Now the woman was old. And she had a daughter who grew up speaking only English and swallowing more Coca-Cola than sorrow. For a long time now the woman had wao give her daughter the single swaher and tell her, "This feather may look worthless, but it es from afar and carries with it all my good iions." And she waited, year after year, for the day she could tell her daughter this in perfect Ameri English.