by Loung Ung
In the morning, I awake alone in the cold apartment. Meng and Eang have been long gone to their jobs. Because he speaks Khmer, English, Mandarin, and Chiu Chow Chinese, Meng now works as an interpreter and support person for newly arrived refugees in Vermont. Meanwhile, Eang is employed in a nearby manufacturing company. With both of them working, Meng has been able to take our family off welfare and now we can buy our food without shame. I’m glad for that but still, sometimes, I miss waking up to Eang’s pots and pans clanging in the kitchen.
Today the stillness of the house does not dampen my spirit because it’s my first day of school! I have spent all summer watching TV and now know a few words and enough phrases that I hope will be enough to make me new friends. I’ve spent a lot of time with Li and Ahn, but at school, I want new friends who are not Asians, who aren’t “different.” Even though I pretend it doesn’t matter, I hate that whenever the three of us are together, people stare as if we are as rare a sight as a three-headed snake. My normal friends at school will have blond or brown hair and blue eyes, very much like the girls I see on TV. On the small screen, these white girls always seem so light and happy. I just know that if I’m friends with them, I’ll be normal and happy, too!
Before the alarm clock even rings, I crawl out of bed and walk into the living room to find the outfit Eang and I picked out for my first day of school. The new pink dress is spread out on the couch with my black-buckled shoes lined up below. At 6:55 A.M. Mrs. McNulty arrives to walk me to school. Mrs. McNulty teaches grade two and since I’m going to grade three, she has volunteered to deliver me to my class. On our short walk, I force my legs to be calm, keeping them from jumping and skipping. My pencils and crayons roll like miniature logs in my pink Barbie backpack. I fill my lungs with the cool fresh Vermont air and step over the dried-up earthworms on the sidewalks. When we get to the brown brick school building, I am nervous with excitement. In my mind, I picture myself holding hands with my new girlfriends as we go from one class to another.
At the wide glass double door, Mrs. McNulty enters and says hello to everyone young and old. I follow closely at her heels, my smile spreading widely across my face. Inside, the brown brick building is cool and has many doors on either side of its long hall. All around, swarms of girls and boys rush into these open doors, their new shoes clicking and clacking against the hard shiny floor. I imagine that they are all going to a party as the girls swish pass me in their new dresses and the boys saunter by in crisp new shirts and pants. I imagine their heads turning into balloons; yellow, brown, red, and black, the floating balloons make their way into rooms where parties await their arrival.
Then Mrs. McNulty takes me through one such door and instantly my balloons pop like bubbles, leaving behind the squints and frowns of curious faces gazing in my direction. I turn my eyes to the rainbow of butterflies hanging from the ceilings and cut-outs of alphabet letters on the walls. As Mrs. McNulty talks to the teacher, I clasp my fingers together in front of my stomach. Although it is the first day of school for all of us, the students gather in bunches to talk and laugh with the ease of kids who’ve gone to school together all of their lives. Because it’s rude to stare at people, I watch them out of the corners of my eyes. Except for me, they all look like the kids I see on TV!
“Loung.” Mrs. McNulty bends down and smiles into my face. “This is Mrs. Donaldson. She is your new teacher.”
“Hello.” Mrs. Donaldson greets me. Mrs. Donaldson is pretty like Mrs. Brady on The Brady Bunch with her light yellow hair and her nice big smile.
“Mrs. Donaldson will take good care of you. I teach another class, but I’m sure we’ll see a lot of each other soon.” I nod. Then she walks out the door.
“Class, we have a new student joining us this year.” Mrs. Donaldson stands me in front of the class and introduces me. The other students look at me but no one comes up to take my hand. Not knowing what to do, I cross my arms in front of my chest and wait for my next instruction. I feel my face color, my palms warm up and then begin to sweat, until Mrs. Donaldson sits me in a desk at the front of the class. When she returns to the blackboard, I spread my palms flat on the desk, letting the cool wood steady my hands.
As soon as I am in my seat, Mrs. Donaldson walks to the blackboard and writes down her name.
“My name is Mrs. Donaldson,” she tells us.
I repeat it in my head again and again. Then she takes a piece of paper off her desk and begins to call out each student’s name. Mrs. McNulty told me this would happen so I am ready. One by one, the students raise their hands and answer with a “present!” or “here!”
“Lu … onng Unng?” Mrs. Donaldson sounds confused and says my name like someone who is ott kroup tik, a person who’s born with not enough water. In Cambodia that’s what we call people who are born with something wrong in their head, so that they sometimes talk funny.
“Here!” I pronounce the word clearly and proudly because I’ve practiced it. As the word flies out of my mouth, my arm shoots straight up like a palm tree, my back stiff and tall.
“Good. You may put your hand down now,” Mrs. Donaldson tells me.
“Thank you, Mrs. Donaldson.” I smile and bow my head with respect. She returns my smile and begins to pass out thin square vanilla journals to all the students.
“Class, please take your pencil out and write in your journal what you did this summer. I will tell you when to stop writing. Begin.” Her words flood over me like rushing water, too fast for me to catch their meaning. All around me, the other students open their journal so I do the same. As the students begin to scribble onto the white pages, my knees begin to knock against each other. All summer I practiced English with Sarah and our sponsors, but I only learned to talk. I don’t know how to write. And I’m too embarrassed to tell Mrs. Donaldson. Next to me a girl who said her name is “Barp-raa” is scribbling big, blocky letters in her journal. I quietly edge my desk closer to her and begin to copy her letters. On the wall, the clock ticks away very slowly.
“All right, class, you may stop now,” Mrs. Donaldson announces after a while. “Please hand me your journals.” I follow the other students and give her my book with a big smile.
After Mrs. Donaldson finishes arranging the journals in a nice neat pile on her desk, she speaks rapidly to the class about something called a “health check.”
“Loo-unng, please come up here.” She suddenly calls on me. I walk up to her as all eyes follow me.
“Class, open your reading book to the first page and read quietly to yourselves. I will be back shortly.”
With Mrs. Donaldson leading, I trail a few paces behind her. As we walk the long, quiet hall, our steps click and clack against the hard tiled floor. This time the echoes sound lonely and scary.
“Please wait.” Mrs. Donaldson smiles and walks into a small room. From outside the door, I peek at her talking to a woman wearing a white shirt and skirt. “Looung, please come in,” she calls. I gingerly enter the sterile, alcohol-smelling room.
“This nice lady is the school nurse.” Mrs. Donaldson introduces us as Sarah’s flash card of a picture of a lady doctor pops into my head. “The nurse will give you a checkup,” and with that, Mrs. Donaldson leaves.
“Hello, Loung.” The nurse’s mouth opens to show her beautiful white teeth. “Please sit down.” She points to a chair in front of her. I sit down and glance up at her face, which is soft and pretty. While I swing my legs back and forth, she pulls out a wooden tong and lifts up my hair with it. The sticks move up and down my head, like a rigid finger; they part and unpart my hair, scratch my scalp, and tickle my neck. When she finishes, the nurse sends me home early with a note and a bottle of special shampoo.
“Lice!” Eang yells as her fingernails scrape my scalp.
I am sitting in a tub of warm, soapy water, naked except for my underwear. Meng sits in the living room reading the one Chinese book he brought with him from Thailand.
“Lice!” Eang exclaims again, her flaring eyes
and downturned mouth resembling the features of a stone garuda. “You have no lice. We washed you with lice shampoo many times already before we sent you to school!”
“Ooouuccchh!” I complain as my head begin to heat up. Furiously, Eang works on my scalp, her nails like tweezers as she pulls the dead eggs off strands of my hair.
“These are dried-up lice eggs in your hair! See, they’re only flat sacks.” Eang shows me a sack on a strand of hair she’s just pulled out. “If they were live eggs, they would be plump and shiny. These are flat and dull. If they were live eggs, we would be able to pop them between our thumb nails and they would burst.” She attempts to crush the egg between her nails. No pops. “These are dead and will not pop!”
“Ouch!” I scream. I know Eang’s right but I don’t have the words to explain it to the nurse.
“That nurse cannot tell the difference between a live egg and a dead egg.”
As Eang works, she talks to herself about how we are from a good family and that we know not to send our children to school with lice. Then she begins her familiar tirade about how we must save face and do things to not embarrass our family name. For the next hour, my scalp is washed, rinsed, and pulled, and then the process repeats again until Eang is satisfied.
After she is done with my head, Eang wraps a big white towel around me and sits me down at the kitchen table. Her face softens when she looks at me wince as I drag a comb through my knotted hair. Then she opens the refrigerator door, pulls out the container of Bryer’s ice cream, puts three scoops into a bowl, and hands it to me.
“Thank you,” I tell her.
Without a word, she takes the comb from my hand and untangles my hair while I eat.
The next morning I set off to school by myself. This time I walk with a little less bounce and a lot more heaviness in my steps. Once in the class, I sit in my desk with eyes downcast while Mrs. Donaldson returns the vanilla journals back to the students. Right away, the students open their journals to read Mrs. Donaldson’s comments on their work. I don’t receive mine, but I wouldn’t be able to read her comments anyway.
“Class, please open your book and read the first story.” My classmates put away their journals and open their story books.
“Loo-ung,” Mrs. Donaldson calls me. This time I raise my arm like a vine instead of a palm tree. “Please come here.” I walk up to her desk, my arms close to my side. She holds up the yellow book I wrote in yesterday. “This is what you did this summer?”
“Yes, Mrs. Donaldson.” I flash my teeth and nod my head to show her I understand her words.
“Hmm. Let’s read it together. ‘What I did this summer,’” she begins. I stare at the words and mouth the sounds she makes.
“‘I visited my grandmother and grandfather. It was fun. I love seeing them. We got a dog. I played with it a lot.’” She looks up at me. “Is that so?”
“Yes, Mrs. Donaldson.” My teeth feel less bright now but I do not want to disagree with the teacher. And I do not want to lose face in front of the other students.
“Do you understand the assignment?”
“Yes, Mrs. Donaldson.” My cheeks are pink.
“Do you know how to write?”
“Yes, teacher.” My face is now red.
“Can you write something for me?”
“Yes, Mrs. Donaldson.”
In the journal, I write A, B, C, D, E, F …
“That’s good, thank you.” At last she understands and asks me to gather my pencil and journal. “Class, please continue to read quietly. I’ll be right back.” From their seats, the other students lift their heads out of their books and watch me gather my belongings. Then I follow Mrs. Donaldson out of the class; my legs feel closer to the ground than ever.
The next thing I know, I am sitting in a private room learning English words with another teacher through flash cards and games such as Go Fish, just like Sarah would play with us in our apartment this summer. When I am not in my special lesson, I am being tutored by Mrs. McNulty in her class. I like being with Mrs. McNulty because I already know her and she is very nice. But sometimes I’m embarrassed to be there because at ten years old, I am two years older than all the other students.
I have been going to school for two weeks now but I have not made any American friends. In Cambodia, before the Khmer Rouge takeover, I had many friends and the kids thought I talked a lot and was very funny. But I don’t know how to be funny in America or in English. So when the other students gather at one another’s desks before class, I keep to myself and read my school books. When the bells ring for recess, I walk around the jungle gym by myself. Around me, other kids play and scream and run and swing. I find a bench to sit on while I eat Cheetos, my favorite junk food, which is as crunchy as fried crickets. The orange processed cheese that stains my hands reminds me of the monks’ orange robes in Cambodia. When I look up from my bag, I see the boy called Tommy watching me. The other kids think we look alike because we’re both Asians. Once a student asked if Tommy and I are brother and sister. She frowned when I told her Tommy is Vietnamese and I’m Cambodian. As I crunch on my Cheetos, Tommy stares at me hungrily, his tongue flickering in and out of his mouth.
For a brief moment, my heart aches for him but I turn my head and walk away. When I look back, I see Tommy picking up a Cheeto that I had dropped on the ground. Tommy purses his lips, blows on the chip a few times, and plops it in his mouth. My stomach growls at the memory of being so hungry that I would eat pieces of charcoal just to have something inside me. Looking at Tommy, I feel a wave of sadness crash over me, yet instead of sharing the remainder of my bag, I hoard it even more. Minutes later, all the Cheetos lie heavy in my stomach like a ball of bright orange shame.
A month into school, Tommy falls and hits his head while sliding down the school’s banister.
“He hurt his brain so much he’ll never be normal again!” the students whisper anxiously in the hall.
“I heard he split his head open and there was blood everywhere,” a girl tells a friend in a voice full of fear.
“I heard some students saw him fall!” another gasps, horrified.
“I heard he’s a retard now! Poor Tommy!”
As the days pass, more rumors circulate that Tommy will never walk, play ball, climb the monkey bars, read books, or have girlfriends. Like pecking chickens, the kids keep at the Tommy rumors and he never shows up to prove them wrong. By the end of the week, the word spreads that Tommy’s parents have moved him to a special school.
The stories about Tommy hit me hard right in my stomach. Even though Tommy and I rarely spoke, I felt tied to him in our Asian-ness. When everyone else would play together during recess, I could always count on him to stay near me. At first, Tommy and his stupid banister act made me angry. Then sadness settled like a coat of gray paint on my skin. Soon I saw Tommy’s sweet funny face. When I remembered his smile, my anger transformed into guilt, with its arrow piercing my skin and digging deep into my soul. It took me back to the times I stole rice from the mouths of my family members and, once, from a dying old woman. If only I could go back in time and share my Cheetos with Tommy.
With Tommy gone, I feel lost and alone in a field of pale skin and white faces. But after school, I escape to more familiar places and people when I meet up with Li and Ahn. Even though Li goes to another school, she still lives nearby. And while Ahn goes to a school for older kids, her house is only a thirty-minute walk from mine.
This Friday I rush home, drop off my books, and walk the mile to Li’s house. Li and her family live in a big house where I often stay for the entire weekend. After they get out of work, Meng and Eang frequently join me at the Chos’ house, and together we cook big Cambodian-Chinese dinners and listen to Cambodian music the Chos brought with them from Thailand. In one another’s company, the adults speak easily in Khmer, shed their shy and unsure refugee skins, and change into funny, confident, and vibrant individuals. While the adults stay indoors, Li and I head outside to play kickball
in her big front yard with her nephews Van and Chen. When we want to escape the boys, Li pedals me on the back of her small banana bike and together we race down the hills. Today, I’m on the back of her bike hoping to replace Tommy’s split head with the wind blowing in my hair as we speed down the hill.
“Come on, Lee. Let me pedal.” I pat her back at the bottom of the hill.
“No, you’re reckless so I’m not letting you pedal.” For a little person, Li possesses an iron will when her safety is in question.
Until last month, Li had allowed me to pedal while she sat in the back. Then one day I discovered speed. As Li sat with her arms wrapped around my waist, yelling for me to slow down, I pedaled faster and faster. When the road ended abruptly, I had to squeeze the break tight, sending the bike, Li, and myself tumbling to the ground. Now whenever we ride, Li always does the pedaling. Usually this is fine with me, but today Li’s skinny legs are taking us around much too slowly. Behind her, I begin to twitch and itch with boredom.
“I promise I won’t crash the bike again. Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye.”
“Your knee is still scabbing from your last fall. And it will scar ugly.”
“So?” I challenge, quite proud of all my scars. Li shakes her head softly.
If Ahn McNulty is my big sister, Li is my good twin. In Ahn, I see my strength and toughness. In Li, I see Chou with all her sweetness, friendliness, and generosity. Like Chou, Li is slender and petite in contrast to my sturdy and compact build. Next to Li’s prettiness and neatly brushed clean hair, I am unkempt and loud. Compared to Li, I have that orphaned-child look, the one featured in the commercials for the Christian Children’s Fund. Sometimes I wish I could be more like Li and Chou because everyone likes them.
“Stop picking your scabs. That’s gross!” Li admonishes me as she huffs and puffs.