Even in the Chinese school, not all of the Chinese girls manage to speak. Kingston tells the story of one Chinese girl who is always silent. When this silent girl reads aloud in the classroom, she whispers, and no one ever hears her talk outside of class, not even on the Chinese school's playground. In the eyes of the other children, there is little difference between Kingston and this girl, and Kingston resents this public perception of her as being the same as the silent girl. She also recognizes the unpopularity and non-conformity in the girl's demeanor and fears that the girl's public image implies her own unpopularity and non-conformity. Kingston hates this silent girl.
One day, finding herself alone with the silent girl in the Chinese school's bathroom, Kingston confronts her and tries to make her talk. Despite becoming violent and brutal to her, Kingston cannot force the girl to talk; however, she does make her cry, although that was not Kingston's intention in confronting the girl. Ironically, by the end of this scene, Kingston finds herself crying alongside the silent girl. She finally recognizes that the girl is trying to deal with fears similar to her own. They are not so different after all. Following this episode, Kingston falls sick and spends eighteen months in bed at home. Her "mysterious illness," she believes, is retribution for her cruelty to the girl.
Ironically, Kingston's bullying and cajoling the silent girl to speak is yet another example of how people "want to capture your voice for their own use," although at the time, Kingston would not be aware of the hypocrisy of her own actions toward the girl. This episode, one of the few talk-stories not to originate from Brave Orchid, mirrors earlier stories in the novel in which females, language, silence, and identity are wholly and inextricably intertwined: No Name Woman's family's refusing to honor the memory of their suicidal relative, and Brave Orchid's subsuming Moon Orchid's voice within her own when the two women confront Moon Orchid's husband. "If you don't talk," Kingston explains to the silent girl, whom she never names and thus denies an identity, much like No Name Woman's family denied her an identity, "you can't have a personality. . . . You've got to let people know you have a personality and a brain."
