In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson

by Bette Bao Lord

  Mrs. Rappaport was the first to notice that Shirley was no longer smiling, and immediately clapped for order. When at last the room was still, she spoke. “Thank you for a most remarkable performance. It must have taken hours and hours to mimic each syllable just right. At first, I thought my ears were deceiving me. How is it possible? Right here in our classroom—the fabulous Donald Duck, Chip and Dale, and Mickey Mouse!”

  Despite these efforts to soothe her feelings, Shirley felt humiliated. From then on, she hardly spoke, not even in Chinese to her mother. For whenever she complained, Mother would say, “Always be worthy, my daughter, of your good fortune. Born to an illustrious clan from the ancient civilization of China, you now live in the land of plenty and opportunity. By your conduct show that you deserve to enjoy the best of both worlds.”

  This hoary tidbit found its way to the dinner table almost as frequently as the odious glass of milk.

  One night, Mother announced a plan to cheer Shirley up. When she was Shirley’s age, she had pleaded with her father for permission to take piano lessons. “What?” boomed the old-fashioned scholar, who barely approved of teaching females to read and write. “What? My daughter, a singsong girl? Never!” Now she assumed that her own daughter would be overjoyed to do something she herself had never been permitted to do. She had arranged for Shirley to have piano lessons. Tomorrow after school she would go downstairs to the basement, where Señora Rodriguez, the landlady, doubled as a music teacher.

  The next day, after a gentle knock, Shirley waited nervously. She had never met the Señora before, but had often seen a sinister shadow rocking back and forth behind billowing lace curtains, back and forth into the night. The door opened. There stood the Señora, short and stout, wrapped in layer upon layer of black woolen shawls. Her skin was like crinkled tissue paper; her eyes sunken and dark as well water. She smiled ever so fleetingly, as if pained by the exercise.

  “Hello, how you do? I’m Shirley, and—and my mother . . .” She eked out the words as if squeezing dregs from a squashed tube of stale toothpaste. The response was less than reassuring—just a twitch of a stubby finger to follow.

  She obeyed, her gaze fixed on the golden wedgies that slapped the bottom of the woman’s bulging feet as she led the way through a curtain of colored beads to the piano. It, too, was covered with shawls. With a pat on the wooden bench, she invited Shirley to sit beside her. It was not going to be easy. The Señora occupied all but the tiniest sliver of the seat. Only by locking her foot around a leg of the bench did Shirley manage to stay perched.

  Carefully, she twisted to face her teacher. Without a word, the Señora grimaced and out came a set of upper and lower teeth, which she then casually set on the music stand. Stuck between the molars, something green. String beans or broccoli? Shirley tried not to look, but the teeth were exactly at eye level.

  Grinning like a newborn, the Señora now took Shirley’s hands in hers. They felt surprisingly soft and warm, like a pair of mittens. When she finally spoke, her low, accented voice resembled the moaning of Grandmother’s favorite fortune-teller, frightening and fascinating all at once.

  “I weel teach these hands to make mewsic. Mewsic, the language of angels. Angels who geeve happiness to all living tings. Tings like leetle girls. Si?”

  “I see.”

  “Bueno. We begin.” Placing Shirley’s thumb on a key, the Señora pressed it down to summon a note. “Do. This is do.” Pushing her index finger, she said, “Re. This is re.” And so it went, until Shirley learned to name the white keys.

  At least a hundred years seemed to have passed before Shirley could bend and unbend her stubborn fingers well enough to hit each of the eight notes of the scale without disturbing its neighbor. By then, her head ached. Her fingers ached. Her foot ached. This was not the language of angels, but the curse of demons. Did Mother not realize what she had been spared?

  Just when Shirley thought the ordeal was ended, Señora Rodriguez left the room and returned with a green bird in a cage. “A leetle surprise.”

  The Señora set the bird on top of the piano. At once it began to squawk. “Re! Re! Re! Re!”

  “Play the right note for Toscanini,” the Señora suggested hurriedly.

  Looking about, Shirley wondered who was to play. And who was Toscanini?

  “Re! Re! Re!” The bird was flapping its wings now. “Re! Re! Re!”

  Pointing to the correct key, the Señora said, “Play, leetle girl, before the birdie makes us loco.”

  Shirley did.

  There was a glorious silence . . . but not for long.

  “Fa! Fa! Fa! Fa!”

  Frantically Shirley searched for fa, then played it. Relief. Then, “Mi! Mi! Mi!” And so it went, until at last a single squawk produced the desired response.

  Toscanini was not impressed. On and on he squawked while she poked at the keys. On and on until her fingers acquired a will of their own. On and on until the notes blended into a melody, a melody so compelling that Shirley and the Señora began to sway from side to side and sing along.

  So enchanted were they by their duet that the miracle, at first, went unnoticed. Amitabha! Toscanini was speechless. Content now to perch silently on his swing, the bird kept an eye on the proceedings with an occasional three-hundred-sixty-degree flip of the head.

  With the last note still in the air, Señora Rodriguez popped her teeth back inside her mouth. The lesson was over.

  But the next week, Shirley’s fingers seemed as clumsy as ever and now there were lessons on the piano in addition to the lessons at school. Hour after hour, day after day, week after week, study, more study, and yet again study. None of this would have truly mattered if she had had someone to walk down the long corridors at P.S. 8 with, someone to complain to about being the only Chinese in the school and the only one who had to take piano lessons, someone who cared if there was a Shirley Temple Wong in this world.

  But that someone did not exist.

  On the last day of school before spring vacation, she spotted a new student entering another classroom, an older Chinese girl with pigtails just like herself. Shirley hurried to greet her, but just when she was within shouting distance, the bell rang and the door closed.

  All that morning, she sat at her desk unable to concentrate on what Mrs. Rappaport was teaching. She eyed the clock. Soon it would be lunchtime, she thought. Soon they would meet in the cafeteria. For once, she could speak fluently, not like an idiot. This time others, not Shirley, would feel left out.

  She smiled, imagining the fun of talking about things the others, not Shirley, knew little about—things like the New Year’s Parade with the dragon that flew on tall poles, the lion that pounced to the beat of the drums, the acrobats that whirled through the air, the monkeys dressed in gay costumes, and yes, of course, naturally, the blind storyteller.

  When the lunch bell sounded, Shirley raced to be the first in line and waited impatiently for the new girl. Today, she did not mind when no one spoke to her.

  At last, the girl came into view. Shirley rushed to her side. “Ni hao? Wo Jiao Shirley. Wo yeh shr Chung Kuo lai de. . . .”

  The girl looked puzzled, then shook her head, giggling. “I don’t speak Chinese. I come from Chattanooga.”

  Laughter sped up and down the line. Shirley slunk back to her classroom. She wasn’t hungry anymore.

  The clansmen were right after all. America was foreign, so foreign.

  During the spring recess, Shirley had nothing to do, not even homework.

  “Why don’t you go out and play?” suggested her mother.

  “I don’t feel like it.”

  “Would you like a cupcake?”

  “I don’t feel like it.”

  “Well, what do you feel like?”

  Shirley shrugged.

  At night, when she was supposedly asleep, Shirley again heard Mother whispering about her. This time Father said nothing about engines. He merely listened. Occasionally, he sighed.

  On Tuesday just a
s Shirley and her mother were about to wash the lunch dishes, Father suddenly burst into the apartment. In his hand, a package. On his face, that smile.

  “What are you doing home so early, my husband?”

  “I can’t stay, but I have something here for Shirley.”

  “For me?”

  He nodded, handing her the box.

  Shirley tore it open. Inside was a pair of shiny roller skates! Before she could even give him a hug, he said, “Now, go out and play.”

  Out in the sunlight the air was balmy, and through skies of palest sapphire sailed clouds of gossamer silk.

  As she sat on the stoop putting on her skates, Shirley dreamed of the day when she would be able to race, sashay backward and spin on one foot. Then and only then would she strap the skates together, sling them over her shoulder, and march off to join the skaters at school. They would not ignore her then, not when she could do something they could do, not when she could skate just like an American.

  Skates on, she stood up. Off to the right slid one foot. Off to the left slid the other. She crashed to the sidewalk. What matter a bruise or two? Without hesitation, but only after numerous false starts, she finally succeeded in scrambling back to an upright position.

  There!

  Arms atwirl, she teetered forward. She tottered back. The wicked skates refused to obey and dumped her on the ground once more.

  By suppertime, Shirley looked like the beggars who waited by the servants’ gate for scraps from the clan table. Her clothes were torn and dirty. Her knees and elbows were bleeding. And she was no closer to becoming a skater than when she had started. Never mind. She couldn’t wait for tomorrow.

  Mother, however, did not share her enthusiasm. “I had no idea skating was so dangerous. You could have broken a leg, fallen unconscious, been run over by a car. Give the skates to me. Now!”

  This was the droplet that broke the dam. Tears fell as Shirley handed over the skates.

  “Are they so important to you?” Mother asked.

  Shirley nodded.

  Mother pretended to busy herself with the skates. “Well,” she said gently, “perhaps when your bruises are healed and your father’s not busy, he can go skating with you.”

  But that would not be the same.

  May

  Two Black Eyes and Wispy Whiskers

  One sunny afternoon, Shirley leaned out the third-story window of P.S. 8 slapping the chalk from the class erasers. It made her cough, but she didn’t mind. Doing chores was one way of thanking Mrs. Rappaport for giving her extra help after school.

  The good deed and the height made her feel superior to the boys and girls playing stickball in the yard. All that effort just to hit and catch a silly little ball. All that hurrying just to step on a bookbag. One thing for sure, she told herself, even if the entire team fell upon their knees and knocked their heads at her feet in three reverent kow-tows, she would refuse to join them. Grandmother had the right attitude. The first and last time she went to see the cousins play the foreign game of basketball, the Matriarch had been horrified. “How uncivilized! How shameful! Children of Chungking’s most honored clans fighting like thieves over a ball. Take me to the principal. With all that we pay, it is a disgrace that the school does not supply each student with a ball of his own to bounce.”

  “Shirley?” Mrs. Rappaport called, waving a paper. “Another perfect score. This time not in arithmetic, but in spelling. I am proud of you.”

  Shirley blushed. She could not get used to the American custom of receiving compliments with a simple thank you. It seemed so . . . impolite. But the Chinese way only confused people. Ever since Father had returned the compliment of the widow downstairs by insisting his wife was not in the least lovely, and in truth was only an old rag, the widow had stopped greeting him. Now she lay in wait to regale Mother with her own misfortunes at the hands of unappreciative men. Poor Mother! To avoid the woman she had to tiptoe down the hall like a mouse trying to escape the hungriest of cats.

  Escape was the only route for Shirley, too. So she quickly put away the erasers and ran for the door.

  Outside, she decided to cross the school yard like an emperor. It was time the others stepped aside for the Chinese. But then, not looking to the right or left, she did not see the runner stealing home base. They collided and fell. The catcher tagged the runner, shouting victory.

  “Who the ***** do you think you are? You *********” Words Shirley had never heard before came spewing out. Words she was sure would never appear on Mrs. Rappaport’s English list. This was big trouble. By the time Shirley and the angry one had gotten to their feet, all the other players had fled the scene.

  Shirley stood her ground, but it took all her courage not to run, too. Mabel was a formidable sight. She was the tallest and the strongest and the scariest girl in all of the fifth grade.

  “You *********. Why don’t you ***********”

  Shirley replied with a similar suggestion, in Chinese. Mabel did not hesitate a moment. She drew back her fist and punched Shirley square in the eye.

  It hurt terribly, but not enough to make Shirley stupid. To trade punches with Mabel would be to box lightning. A most unequal match. So she borrowed a few more choice words from sayings coined by rickshaw pullers to insult riders who gave no tips.

  Mabel was not intimidated.

  “So you want more, you **********” A second blow, this time to the other eye.

  Shirley considered fleeing. But emperors do not flee, and had a teacher not stepped through the school door exactly at that moment, one puny Chinese surely would have died right there and crossed over the Yellow Springs to greet her ancestors. But he did. As he started toward them, Mabel ran off in one direction, Shirley in another, as fast as she could go.

  Safely home, but with two black eyes, Shirley knocked at the door.

  When Mother opened it, she screamed. “What happened?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing important.” She tried to slip into the bathroom.

  “Oh no, you don’t. Tell me exactly what happened.”

  Shirley bit her lips, but said not a word.

  “Then, you just sit right there until your father comes home. He will find out what this nothing is all about.”

  Mother disappeared into the kitchen. She only returned when Father opened the door.

  He did not scream. But he asked, very sternly, “What happened?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing important.”

  Mother tugged at his sleeve. “You must make her tell us everything.”

  “I shall.”

  But an hour later nothing was still nothing. To tell would be to tattle, and Shirley refused to tattle even on that giant of a no-friend of hers.

  Finally Father stood up and announced that they were all going out.

  “Where to, my husband?”

  “To the police station.”

  Shirley could barely breathe. She had never spoken to an American policeman before. Not even to ask directions. What would they do to her? Lock her up? Refuse her water? Maybe even pull her fingernails out?

  Walking slowly behind her parents, she reconsidered her stand. What had she done so wrong? Nothing but walk and say a few words in Chinese. It was Mabel who should be going to the police station.

  Mabel was!

  Out of the corner of one battered eye, Shirley spotted the enemy stalking them. The look on her face was far from friendly, and Shirley did not need a lesson in reading faces to interpret its meaning.

  “Squeal, your skin will peel.

  Tattle, your bones will rattle.”

  Shirley caught up fast to her parents, then shuffled silently off to prison.

  Just as they were about to enter, Father said, “This is your last chance to tell us what happened.”

  What should she do? On all sides, there was trouble. Mother stood to her right, Father to her left. Behind her, Mabel sa
t on a garbage can, watching her every move. In front of her, the monster of a building with iron bars.

  Shirley opened her mouth then quickly thought better of speaking, and just shook her head. No matter how long the sentence, on the day of her release Mabel, as surely as tigers devour flesh, would still be around. Around to get revenge if Shirley Temple Wong dropped even the tiniest hint of what had happened that afternoon.

  When the Wongs finally stepped inside the police station, Shirley gave thanks to the Goddess Kwan Yin. For there would be no nosy crowd to witness her trial. The station was empty except for a friendly policeman at the desk, who smiled and scratched his head throughout Father’s explanation. After a few feeble attempts to interrogate her, he handed her a lollipop and sent the family home.

  It was dark now and Mabel was nowhere to be seen.

  Shirley refused to go to school for the next two days. Her mother thought it was because her eyes were almost swollen shut. Not so. Not so. Shirley needed the time for Mabel to realize that the Chinese had not squealed, and therefore her skin and bones deserved to stay intact.

  The third morning, it rained. As Shirley opened her umbrella, she saw Mabel standing across the street underneath a tree, getting soaked. Oh no! The war was not over. Shirley started to run. But the tallest and the strongest and the scariest girl in all of the fifth grade was also the fastest, and easily caught up.

  Shirley quaked.

  “Hey, you okay?” Mabel’s voice actually seemed rather friendly. The rainwater dripping down her black face looked like tears.

  Could it be that Mabel was there to make peace? Shirley stepped back and replied uncertainly. “Okay. Okay.”

  “That’s swell.” Mabel clapped her hands and did something fancy with her feet. “Hey, okay if I walk with you to school?”

  Shirley nodded, and hoisted the umbrella to cover Mabel’s head.

  When school was over, the skies had cleared and the walks were dry. Only the leaves, shined to a tender green, gave a clue to the shower that had passed over Brooklyn.