As he looked down at his sixth-grade yearbook, he remembered everything he had hated and loved about school. Strange faces played in his thoughts, over and over, like an old newsreel. The unkind glances of school-yard enemies, a harsh contrast to the smiling innocence of their yearbook pictures. In the column next to the giant class photo was a list of names--those "not pictured." Henry found his name on the list; he was indeed absent from the rows and rows of smiling children. But he'd been there that day. All day.
I Am Chinese
(1942)
Young Henry Lee stopped talking to his parents when he was twelve years old. Not because of some silly childhood tantrum, but because they asked him to.
That was how it felt anyway. They asked--no, told--him to stop speaking their native Chinese. It was 1942, and they were desperate for him to learn English. Which only made Henry more confused when his father pinned a button to his school shirt that read, "I am Chinese." The contrast seemed absurd. This makes no sense, he thought. My father's pride has finally got the better of him.
"M-ming bak?" Henry asked in perfect Cantonese. "I don't understand."
His father slapped his face. More of a light tap really, just something to get his attention. "No more. Only speak you American." The words came out in Chinglish.
"I don't understand," Henry said in English.
"Hah?" his father asked.
"If I'm not supposed to speak Chinese, why do I need to wear this button?"
"Hah, you say?" His father turned to his mother, who was peeking out from the kitchen. She gave a look of confusion and simply shrugged, going back to her cooking, sweet water chestnut cake from the smell of it. His father turned to Henry again, giving him a backhanded wave, shooing him off to school.
Since Henry couldn't ask in Cantonese and his parents barely understood English, he dropped the matter, grabbed his lunch and book bag, and headed down the stairs and out into the salty, fishy air of Seattle's Chinatown.
The entire city came alive in the morning. Men in fish-stained T-shirts hauled crates of rock cod, and buckets of geoduck clams, half-buried in ice. Henry walked by, listening to the men bark at each other in a Chinese dialect even he didn't understand.
He continued west on Jackson Street, past a flower cart and a fortuneteller selling lucky lottery numbers, instead of going east in the direction of the Chinese school, which was only three blocks from the second-floor apartment he shared with his parents. His morning routine, walking upstream, brought him headlong into dozens of other kids his age, all of them going the opposite way.
"Baak gwai! Baak gwai!" they shouted. Though some just pointed and laughed. It meant "white devil"--a term usually reserved for Caucasians, and then only if they really deserved the verbal abuse. A few kids took pity on him, though, those being his former classmates and onetime friends. Kids he'd known since first grade, like Francis Lung and Harold Chew. They just called him Casper, after the Friendly Ghost. At least it wasn't Herman and Katnip.
Maybe that's what this is for, Henry thought, looking at the ridiculous button that read "I am Chinese." Thanks, Dad, why not just put a sign on my back that says "Kick me" while you're at it?
Henry walked faster, finally rounding the corner and heading north. At the halfway point of his walk to school, he always stopped at the arched iron gateway at South King Street, where he gave his lunch to Sheldon, a sax player twice Henry's age who worked the street corner, playing for the tourists' pleasure and pocket change.
Despite the booming activity at Boeing Field, prosperity didn't seem to reach locals like Sheldon. He was a polished jazz player, whose poverty had less to do with his musical ability and more to do with his color. Henry had liked him immediately. Not because they both were outcasts, although if he really thought about it, that might have had a ring of truth to it--no, he liked him because of his music. Henry didn't know what jazz was, he knew only that it was something his parents didn't listen to, and that made him like it even more.
"Nice button, young man," said Sheldon, as he was setting out his case for his morning performances. "That's a darn good idea, what with Pearl Harbor and all."
Henry looked down at the button on his shirt; he had already forgotten it. "My father's idea," he mumbled. His father hated the Japanese. Not because they sank the USS
Arizona--he hated them because they'd been bombing Chongqing, nonstop, for the last four years. Henry's father had never even been there, but he knew that the provisional capital of Chiang Kai-shek had already become the most-bombed city in history.
Sheldon nodded approvingly and tapped the metal tin hanging from Henry's book bag. "What's for lunch today?"
Henry handed over his lunch box. "Same as always." An egg-olive sandwich, carrot straws, and an apple pear. At least his mother was kind enough to pack him an American lunch.
Sheldon smiled, showing a large gold-capped tooth. "Thank you, sir, you have a fine day now."
Ever since Henry's second day at Rainier Elementary, he'd been giving his lunch to Sheldon. It was safer that way. Henry's father had been visibly excited when his son was accepted at the all-white school at the far end of Yesler Way. It was a proud moment for Henry's parents. They wouldn't stop talking about it to friends on the street, in the market, and at the Bing Kung Benevolent Association, where they went to play bingo and mah-jongg on Saturdays. "They take him scholarshipping," was all he ever heard his parents say in English.
But what Henry felt was far from pride. His emotions had gone sprinting past fear to that point of simply struggling for survival. Which was why, after getting beat up by Chaz Preston for his lunch on the first day of school, he'd learned to give it to Sheldon.
Plus, he made a tidy profit on the transaction, fishing a nickel from the bottom of Sheldon's case on the way home each day. Henry bought his mother a starfire lily, her favorite flower, once a week with his newfound lunch money-- feeling a little guilty for not eating what she lovingly prepared, but always making up for it with the flower.
"How you buy flower?" she'd ask in Chinese.
"Everythingwasonsaletodayspecialoffer." He'd make up some excuse in English, trying to explain it--and the extra change he always seemed to bring home from his errands to the market. Saying it fast, fairly sure she wouldn't catch on. Her look of confusion would coalesce into satisfied acceptance as she'd nod and put the change in her purse. She understood little English, but Henry could see she appreciated his apparent bargaining skills.
If only his problems at school were solved so easily.
For
Henry,
scholarshipping had very little to do with academics and everything to do with work. Luckily, he learned to work fast. He had to. Especially on his assignments right before lunch--since he was always dismissed ten minutes early. Just long enough to find his way to the cafeteria, where he'd don a starched white apron that covered his knees and serve lunch to the other kids.