During her confrontation with the silent girl, Kingston's deep hatred of the girl lessens as she becomes more and more aware that she and the girl are alike: Both face similar fears inherent in assimilating into a new culture. Although Kingston resolves to make the silent girl speak, her inability to do so forces her to come to terms with her own fears associated with language and personal identity. At first, Kingston's voice is "steady and normal," but even after she physically hurts the silent girl by pulling her hair and pinching her skin and still the girl won't talk, Kingston begins losing control of her own emotions. She implores the girl to "Just say 'Stop,'" then screams "Talk" at the frightened girl, and then begs for any response: "Just say 'a' or 'the,' and I'll let you go. Come on. Please." Finally, desperate and scared, she attempts to bribe her nemesis. "Look. I'll give you something if you talk," she pleads. "I'll give you my pencil box. I'll buy you some candy." Ironically, Kingston's offering candy to the silent girl recalls Brave Orchid's demanding "reparation candy" from the drugstore.
Kingston's lack of confidence in speaking English continues into adulthood, although she admits that English is easier to speak as she gets older. However, it remains painful for her to ask a bus driver for directions, or even to say "hello" casually. "A telephone call makes my throat bleed and takes up that day's courage," she writes earlier in the chapter. Her difficulty in speaking English is mitigated by a feeling of shame about her Chinese culture and Chinese adults, who, from her Chinese-American perspective, appear unsophisticated — for example, her mother and her mother's generation still believe in ghosts and practice traditional Chinese customs.
Another reason for Kingston's anxiety about speaking English derives from her parents' mistrust of Americans, who, they suspect, will force them out of the country. Because of this deep-seated fear, Brave Orchid and her husband continually warn their children never to speak to American "ghosts": "There were secrets never to be said in front of the ghosts, immigration secrets whose telling could get us sent back to China." What Kingston's parents fail to recognize, however, is the precarious position in which they place their children, who are afraid to speak English for fear of entrapping their parents, but who are also mystified by the many secretive Chinese customs that Brave Orchid, who never explains her actions, performs. "Sometimes I hated the [American] ghosts for not letting us talk," Kingston writes; "sometimes I hated the secrecy of the Chinese. 'Don't tell,' said my parents, though we couldn't tell if we wanted to because we didn't know."
