Homesick (16 page)

That night after everyone had left, I told my mother and father about the crazy questions Ruth and Marie had asked.

“Well, Jean,” my father said, “some people in Washington don't know any better. China seems so far away they imagine strange things.”

I told myself that only little kids like Ruth and Marie could be so ignorant. Eighth graders would surely know better.

But for a while I didn't worry about eighth grade. I spent the summer doing the things I had dreamed about. Charlotte and I roller-skated, and although it didn't take me long to learn, my knees were skinned most of the time. I didn't care. I was proud of every one of my scabs; they showed that I was having a good time. And there were so many ways to have a good time—so many flavors of ice cream to try, so many treasures to choose at the five-and-ten, so many trees to climb, so many books to borrow from the library, so many relatives willing to stop for a game of dominoes or checkers. My grandfather and I played horseshoes, and although I never beat him, he said I was every bit as good as my father had been at my age.

And I helped my grandmother. Sometimes I spent the whole day working beside her: shelling peas, kneading bread dough, turning the handle of the wringer after she'd washed clothes, feeding the chickens, sweeping the porch. In China I'd had nothing to do with the work of the house. It just went on automatically around me as if it could have been anyone's house, but now suddenly I was a part of what went on. I had a place. For instance. My grandmother might ask me if we had enough sugar in the house or should she get some, and likely as not, I would know.

“The sugar bin is getting low,” I would say. “Maybe you should buy another bag.”

Then my grandmother would add “sugar” to her shopping list and she'd say she didn't know how she'd ever got along without me. I loved to hear her say that even though I knew she'd done fine without me. But I did have a lot of new accomplishments. I wrote to Lin Nai-Nai and described them to her. I could even do coolie work, I told her. I could mow grass. I could mop floors.

Still, I thought about school. I'd always supposed I knew exactly what an American school would be like, but as the time came near, I wasn't sure. Suppose I didn't fit in? Suppose I wasn't the same as everyone else, after all? Suppose I turned out to be another Vera Sebastian? Suppose eighth graders thought I was a rat eater?

I couldn't forget the first Sunday I'd gone to church in Washington. The other kids in church had poked each other when I'd walked in. “There's the girl from China.” I knew by their faces that's what they were thinking. The woman who sat behind me had made no bones about it. I overheard her whispering to her husband. “You can tell she wasn't born in this country,” she said. How could she tell? I wondered. If just looking at me made people stare, what would happen when they heard me talk? Suppose I said something silly? I remembered the rainy afternoon at my grandmother's when we were all sitting around reading and I had come to a word that I didn't know.

“What's a silo?” I asked.

The way everyone looked up so surprised, it was as if they were saying, “How on earth did she live this long without knowing what a silo is?” Of course when my father explained, I realized I'd seen silos all over the country; I just hadn't known what they were called. But suppose I had asked that question in school!

I kept pestering Aunt Margaret to tell me if there was anything about eighth grade that I should know and didn't.

“It doesn't matter,” she would say. “Not everyone in eighth grade is going to know exactly the same things.”

Aunt Margaret had a new beau and I suspected that she wasn't giving my eighth-grade problems enough serious thought, but one day she did ask me if I knew the Pledge of Allegiance.

“What Pledge of Allegiance?”

So she explained that every morning we'd start off by pledging allegiance to the flag and she taught me how to say it, my hand over my heart. After that, I practiced every day while I was feeding the chickens. I'd clap my hand over my heart and tell them about “one nation indivisible.” It gave me courage. Surely if the whole class felt strongly about the American flag, I'd fit in all right.

My mother and father would be away when school started. Toward the end of the summer they had begun to give lectures in order to raise money for the Y.M.C.A. and now they were going to Canada for two weeks. Before they left, my mother called the school principal to notify him that I'd be entering eighth grade. She gave Aunt Margaret money to buy me a new dress for school. When she kissed me good-bye, she smoothed out my eyebrows.

“Be good,” she whispered.

I stiffened. I wondered if she'd ever forget goodness. Probably the last thing she'd say to me before I walked up the aisle to be married was “Be good.”

The next day Aunt Margaret took me to Caldwell's store on Main Street and bought me a red-and-black-plaid gingham dress with a white collar and narrow black patent leather belt that went around my hips. She took me to a beauty parlor and I had my hair shingled.

When I got home, I tried on my dress. “How do I look?” I asked my grandmother.

“As if you'd just stepped out of a bandbox.”

I wasn't sure that was the look I was aiming for. “But do I look like a regular eighth grader?”

“As regular as they come,” she assured me.

The day before school started, I laid out my new dress and stockings and shoes so I'd be ready. I put aside the loose-leaf notebook Aunt Margaret had given me. I pledged allegiance to the chickens and then I sat down on the back steps next to my grandmother who was shelling peas. I reached into her lap, took a bunch of peas, and began shelling into the pan.

“I wish my name were Marjorie,” I said. “I'd feel better starting to school with the name Marjorie.”

My grandmother split a pea pod with her thumbnail and sent the peas plummeting into the pan.

“Do you like the name Marjorie?” I asked.

“Not much. It sounds common.”

“But that's the idea!” I said. “It would make me fit in with everyone else.”

“I thought you were going to be a writer.”

“I am.”

“Well, my stars! Writers do more than just fit in. Sometimes they don't fit in at all.” My grandmother quit shelling and looked straight at me. “You know why I like the name
Jean
?
”
she asked.

“Why?”

“It's short and to the point; it doesn't fool around. Like my name—Isa. They're both good, strong Scottish names. Spunky.”

I'd never known my name was Scottish. I surely had never thought of it as strong.

“Grandma,” I said, “do you worry about whether I'm good or not?”

My grandmother threw back her head and hooted. “Never. It hasn't crossed my mind.” She gave my knee a slap. “I love you just the way you are.”

I leaned against her, wanting to say “thank you” but thinking that this wasn't the kind of thing that you said “thank you” for.

The next morning my grandmother and grandfather watched me start up Shirls Avenue in my new outfit, my notebook under my arm.

“Good luck!” they called. I held up my hand with my fingers crossed.

The school was about four blocks away—a big, red-brick, square building that took care of all grades, kindergarten through the eighth. So, of course, there were all ages milling about, but I looked for the older ones. When I'd spotted some—separate groups of girls and boys laughing and talking—I decided that I didn't look any different, so I went into the building, asked in the office where the eighth grade was, and went upstairs to the first room on the right.

Others were going into the room, and when I saw that they seemed to sit wherever they wanted, I picked a desk about halfway up the row next to the window. I slipped my notebook into the open slot for books and then looked at the teacher who was standing, her back to us, writing on the blackboard. She had a thick, straight-up, corseted figure and gray hair that had been marcelled into such stiff, even waves I wondered if she dared put her head down on a pillow at night.

“My name is Miss Crofts,” she had written.

She didn't smile or say “Good Morning” or “Welcome to eighth grade” or “Did you have a nice summer?” She just looked at the clock on the wall and when it was exactly nine o‘clock, she tinkled a bell that was like the one my mother used to call the servants.

“The class will come to order,” she said. “I will call the roll.” As she sat down and opened the attendance book, she raised her right index finger to her head and very carefully she scratched so she wouldn't disturb the waves. Then she began the roll:

Margaret Bride
(Here).
Donald Burch
(Here),
Andrew Carr
(Present).
Betty Donahue
(Here).

I knew the G's would be coming pretty soon.

John Goodman
(Here),
Jean Guttery.

Here,
I said. Miss Crofts looked up from her book. “Jean Guttery is new to our school,” she said. “She has come all the way from China where she lived beside the Yangs-Ta-Zee River. Isn't that right, Jean?”

“It's pronounced
Yang-see,”
I corrected. “There are just two syllables.”

Miss Crofts looked at me coldly. “In America,” she said, “we say Yangs-Ta-Zee.”

I wanted to suggest that we look it up in the dictionary, but Miss Crofts was going right on through the roll. She didn't care about being correct or about the Yangtse River or about me and how I felt.

I was working myself up, madder by the minute, when I heard Andrew Carr, the boy behind me, shifting his feet on the floor. I guess he must have hunched across his desk, because all at once I heard him whisper over my shoulder:

“Chink, Chink Chinaman

Sitting on a fence,

Trying to make a dollar

Out of fifteen cents.”

I forgot all about where I was. I jumped to my feet, whirled around, and spoke out loud as if there were no Miss Crofts, as if I'd never been in a classroom before, as if I knew nothing about classroom behavior.

“You don't call them Chinamen or Chinks,” I cried. “You call them
Chinese.
Even in America you call them
Chinese.”

The class fell absolutely silent, all eyes on me, and for the first time I really looked at Andrew Carr. I think I had expected another Ian Forbes, but he was just a freckle-faced kid who had turned beet-red. He was slouched down in his seat as if he wished he could disappear.

Miss Crofts stood up. “Will someone please explain to me what all this is about?”

The girl beside me spoke up. “Andrew called Jean a Chinaman.”

“Well, you don't need to get exercised, Jean,” she said. “We all know that you are American.”

“But that's not the
point
!
”
Before I could explain that it was an insult to call Chinese people
Chinamen,
Miss Crofts had tapped her desk with a ruler.

“That will be enough,” she said. “All eyes front.” Obediently the students stopped staring and turned their attention to Miss Crofts. All but one boy across the room. He caught my eye, grinned, and put his thumb up, the way my father did when he thought I'd done well. I couldn't help it; I grinned back. He looked nice, I thought.

“We will stand now and pledge allegiance,” Miss Crofts announced. Even though I still felt shaky, I leaped to attention. I wasn't going to let anything spoil my first official pledge. As I placed my hand on my heart, I glanced around. The girl next to me had her hand on her stomach.

“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.” The class mumbled, but maybe that was because of the flag. It was the saddest-looking flag I'd ever seen, standing in the corner, its stars and stripes drooping down as if they had never known a proud moment. So as I pledged, I pictured the American flag on the Bund, waving as if it were telling the world that America was the land of the free and the home of the brave. Maybe I made my pledge too loud, because when I sat down, the boy across the room raised his thumb again. I hoped he wasn't making fun of me but he seemed friendly so I smiled back.

When I looked at Miss Crofts, she had her finger in her hair and she was daintily working her way through another wave.

After the commotion I had already made in the class, I decided to be as meek as I possibly could the rest of the morning. Since this was the first day at school, we would be dismissed at noon, and surely things would improve by then.