by Jean Fritz
The farther we went, the better mileage we made, so that by the middle of June we were almost to the West Virginia state line. My father said*we'd get to Washington, P.A., the day after the next, sometime in the afternoon. He called my grandmother on the phone, grinning because he knew how surprised she'd be. I stood close so I could hear her voice.
"Mother?" he said when she answered. "How about stirring up a batch of flannel cakes?"
"Arthur!" (She sounded just the way I knew she would.) "Well, land's sakes, Arthur, where are you?"
"About ready to cross into West Virginia."
My grandmother was so excited that her words fell over each other as she tried to relay the news to my grandfather and Aunt Margaret and talk over the phone at the same time.
The next day it poured rain and although that didn't slow us down, my mother started worrying. Shirls Avenue, my grandparents' street, apparently turned into a dirt road just before plunging down a steep hill to their house and farm. In wet weather the road became one big sea of mud which, according to my mother, would be "worth your life to drive through."
"If it looks bad," my mother suggested, "we can park at the top of the hill and walk down in our galoshes."
My father sighed. "Myrtle," he said, "we've driven across the Mohave Desert. We've been through thick and thin for over three thousand miles and here you are worrying about Shirls Avenue."
The next day the sun was out, but when we came to Shirls Avenue, I could see that the sun hadn't done a thing to dry up the hill. My father put the car into low, my mother closed her eyes, and down we went, sloshing up to our hubcaps, careening from one rut to another, while my father kept one hand down hard on the horn to announce our arrival.
By the time we were at the bottom of the hill and had parked beside the house, my grandmother, my grandfather, and Aunt Margaret were all outside, looking exactly the way they had fn the calendar picture. I ran right into my grandmother's arms as if I'd been doing this every day.
"Welcome home! Oh, welcome home!" my grandmother cried.
I hadn't known it but this was exactly what I'd wanted her to say. I needed to hear it said out loud. I was home.
WHEN AUNT MARGARET TOOK ME TO THE BACK of the house to show me around, I found everything so familiar I didn't need to be told what was what. "Here's the grape arbor," I said, and I ran through the long archway that led from the back door to what was once the stable but was now a garage for my grandfather's truck.
"Oh, and there's the pump!"
"We have running water now," Aunt Margaret explained, "so we don't use the pump much."
"But I can pump if I want to, can't I?"
"Sure you can."
Running up the hill on one side of the house was the cornfield. Running down the hill on the other side was the vegetable garden, the rhubarb plot, the dahlia beds. At the bottom of the hill was my grandfather's greenhouse.
"Where are the chickens?" I asked.
"Around the corner."
As we went to the other side of the house, a brown-and-white-speckled rooster came strutting to meet us.
"That's Josh," Aunt Margaret said. "He's such a serious-minded rooster, he can't stand to hear anyone laugh. He ruffles up his feathers and cusses his head off."
I squatted down and tried to force a laugh. "Ha ha-ha ha."
"No," Aunt Margaret said, "he knows you're just pretending."
Not far behind Josh was the chicken house with a big fenced-in yard around it. I ran over and looked at the hens, teetering like plump little ladies on spike heels.
"What are their names?" I asked.
"They don't have names."
"How come?"
"We don't want to become too fond of them."
I'd never heard anything so silly. If I was going to feed them, I ought to know their names. "Why not?" I asked.
"Well, Jean," Aunt Margaret explained, "you know that this is a farm. In the end we eat every one of those chickens."
I felt dumb not to have known. I decided that when I fed the chickens, I'd try not to even look them in the eye.
As we went inside, Aunt Margaret pointed to a pair of roller skates on the back porch. "I dug those out of the attic," she said. "I thought you'd like them." She looked at my legs. "But you can't roller-skate in silk stockings."
"That's O.K.," I grinned. "I have socks."
Of course I wanted to try the roller skates right away but my mother's family was due to arrive for a welcome-home party and all of us had to get dressed up.
"Are we going to have flannel cakes?" I asked.
Aunt Margaret laughed. "That was just a joke. We're going to have potato salad and smearcase and cold chicken and apple pie and lots of other good things. We've been cooking ever since your father called."
My mother's family arrived all at once: Aunt Blanche, Aunt Etta, Aunt Mary L., Aunt Sarah and Uncle Welsh, Uncle George and Aunt Edith, and my four cousins—Elizabeth and Jane who were much older and Katherine and Charlotte who were about three years younger. There were a couple of extra girls, but I couldn't figure out where they fit in. The family parked their cars at the top of the hill, stopped to pull on galoshes, and then picked their way down the grassy side of the road which was fairly dry. When my mother saw them, she ran up the hill, her arms out, and I watched one of her sisters run ahead of the others, her arms out too. I knew it must be Aunt Blanche. They stood beside the road, hugging, stepping back to make sure who they were, then hugging again. When the whole family got to the bottom of the hill where my father and I were waiting, everyone began crying and laughing and kissing and hugging at the same time. I never saw such carrying-on. Not just one kiss apiece, but kiss after kiss while I was still trying to figure out which aunt was which.
My youngest cousin, Charlotte, who was watching all this, suggested that we clear out until the excitement had died down. Those two other girls tagged along as we went to the back of the house where we all sat down on the platform surrounding the pump.
"I can't stand all that kissing business," Charlotte said. "Can you?"
"No," I agreed. "They wouldn't even let me get my breath."
"Let's make a pact," she suggested. "I'll never kiss you if you promise never to kiss me."
We shook on it. But I still wondered about those other two girls, so I whispered to Charlotte, asking if they were related. She said no, they were neighbor kids who had begged to come along because they wanted to see the girl from China. "This is Ruth and this is Marie," she said, but I could tell she wished they were someplace else.
Up to this time Ruth and Marie had just stared at me, but now Ruth nudged Marie and whispered, "You ask."
Marie giggled. "We want to know if you ate rats in China and what they tasted like."
"And if you ate their tails too," Ruth added.
Rats! "No one in China eats rats," I said stiffly.
"Oh, you don't need to pretend." Ruth was smuggling her laughter behind her hands. "Everyone knows that people in China eat queer things. Snakes, birds' nests . . ."
"They do not."
The girls were looking at me as if I were some kind of a freak in a circus. As if maybe I had two heads.
"Did you use sticks to eat with?" Marie asked.
"Chopsticks, you mean. Sometimes. Of course."
Both girls lay back on the platform, shrieking with laughter. Josh came tearing around the house, scolding, ruffling his feathers, and I didn't blame him. He wasn't any madder than I was.
"Quit it," I told the girls. "You're upsetting the rooster."
This only set them off again. When they finally got control of themselves, they asked if I could speak Chinese and I said yes, I certainly could.
I turned to Marie and said in Chinese, "Your mother is a big turtle." ("Nide muchin shr ega da wukwei.") Then I looked at Ruth and told her that her mother was a turtle too. I knew that in English it wouldn't sound so bad but in China this was an insult.
The girls were rolling all over the platform
in spasms of laughter while Josh croaked and flapped. "Oh, it sounds so funny, say it again," Ruth begged.
So I did. And I added that they were worthless daughters of baboons and they should never have been born.
"What does it mean?" they asked. "Tell us what it means."
"You wouldn't understand," I said coldly. "Come on, Charlotte, let's go back to the party."
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." 1 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, redbrick, 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 an
d 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' 1 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.
Miss Crofts, I said to myself, your mother is a turtle. A big fat turtle.
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 ~poke 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.