Girl in Reverse (9781442497368) (3 page)

I check the clock. Thirty minutes to go. Now what? Clean up or don't clean up? I straighten the stools around the blocky wooden tables and empty a coffee can into the
rust-stained sink. A greasy swirl slides down the drain. “That was turpentine. You don't dump turpentine down a
sink
,” Master Elliot says.

Too late now.

“And you can't rinse oil paints with water,” he says.

What else can I mess up?

He blows on his ink drawing of our head football coach blasting a whistle. It took him all of four minutes, maybe less. Elliot turns. “So . . . what
did
you do for the detention?”

“I walked out of social studies in the middle of class.”

“Because . . . ?”

“. . . of a cartoon, a political cartoon this guy brought for current events. . . . Kinda dumb, but anyway . . .”

“Cartoons aren't dumb. What was it?”

“Uh, well, these creepy Chinese soldiers in an army tank are killing United Nations kids in a crosswalk, and this guy coughed ‘commie' at me because I'm, you know, Chinese, so he wouldn't touch the picture after I
contaminated
it, and it got worse and I finally walked out.”

Elliot looks up at me, curls his lip. “
That
was stupid.” His face shifts. He glances at the clock, says, “Damn,” stands, slides his drawings into a folder, and in another whoosh of freezing air bolts out the door.

It bangs hard against the frame. The self-portraits flutter. I pace between the tables, telling my audience of zombies,
“So he thinks
I
was stupid for walking out. Well, that's perfect. An eighth hour plus insults!”

I whip Elliot's scarf off the floor, stuff it in the trash can, grab my books, and walk out on my own detention.

*  *  *

Sleet taps the bus windows. We wheel past the Country Club Plaza—the World's First and Finest Shopping Center, my father's
baby.
Every day my real estate developer father tramps between the restaurants, construction cranes, fountains, and cement mixers in his hard hat, yakking into his walkie-talkie. By the time I get home I have decided to tell my parents that I am volunteering in the art room after school. They won't like it. It's not Future Homemakers of America Club or Pep Squad. They are allergic to anything arty.

When I walk into the front hall they are talking in the kitchen—voices hushed. Dad comes out still wearing his overcoat and carrying a highball glass full of ice. He motions me into the living room.

Surging panic.
I perch on the edge of the couch.

He removes his hat and smooths the hair on the sides of his head. The flesh of his neck bunches when he loosens his tie and undoes his top button. He steps to the bar and pours a generous jigger of bourbon over the ice and then water.

Mother enters with a tortured expression and a letter that she hands to him. I recognize the Wilson High School
letterhead. My father holds it at reading distance. His gaze bounces across the page. He reads aloud the section reporting my truancy and detention.

“Is this a mistake?” Mother asks.

Dad lights a cigarette, takes a deep drag and a deeper gulp of bourbon. He clears his throat, looks longingly at the evening paper on his footstool.

“
No
,” I say. Next comes a prolonged pause where the question “Why?” should be. Their bewildered silence nudges me on. “Do you want to know
why
?”

My father nods.

“Because the guy sitting next to me in social studies called me a commie and other kids sneezed ‘chink.' And Miss Arth just sat there and did
nothing
to stop them. She acted like I didn't exist!”

“You walked out of school because of a sneeze?” Mother turns to my father, palms up. “A
sneeze
?”

“
I
did not sneeze, Mother.”

“I
know
that.” She shakes her head. “Yours was an extreme reaction, Lillian.”

My mother's words are tacks in me. I turn to Dad, search his face. “What your mother is saying is that the class's conduct did not warrant you getting yourself in trouble, Lily.”

How would you know that?

Dad rubs his eyes. I'm glad he's not wearing earrings he can fiddle with. I poke my parents with a slow and overly
elementary explanation. “They did this because I'm Chinese and we are currently fighting the Red Chinese Communists in Korea.”

Mother fixes me with a look, shakes her head. “You are not the same girl you used to be, Lillian.”

Thank you for noticing.

My father turns to my mother with a slight smile. “Well, the world isn't the same place it used to be either, Vivian. Our Lily hasn't changed.”
I haven't?
“The world has—the Germans and the Japs, the Cold War, Korea, the Communist takeover in Red China . . .”

Mother holds up a hand. Her eyes shift between my father and me. “Why should all that concern Lily?”

I look right at her. My eyes fill up. “I am not talking about the war
over there
in Korea. This happens to
me
at my school every day. Who else's concern
would
it be? Miss Arth and the vice principal were horrible. Everyone was.”

I wipe my face, expecting her to get back to asking about the consequences of my detention, but instead she says, “Who knows about this, Lillian?”

I count on my fingers. “Miss Arth, Mr. Thorp, the janitor who was changing a lightbulb in the room at the time, all the people in my class, the art teacher . . .” I do not mention Ralph deflecting Mr. Thorp's phone call. “I've tried to tell you lots of times before that I got teased and insulted. Even at Our Lady of Sorrows. How was I supposed to understand
it?” I turn to Dad. “You always said it was just goofy kids' stuff. Don't let it bother me.”

My mother's mouth turns down. “We were trying to help you get along, protect you.”

“From what? Myself? All that did was make it my problem.” I stare at my lap. “My face is Chinese and it's not going away!” I do not look at her. Can't. We fall into our ocean of silence where hurts old and new crash against each other.

Why in the world did you adopt me?

I take a long breath and another, and explain about my punishment cleaning the art room. My mother looks as if she has swallowed turpentine. She glares at Dad and heads to the front hall. She stops a moment, turns back, and holds her hand palm facing out, as though bestowing a blessing. “Never forget. You are an American, Lillian. You are a
Firestone
.”

I watch her climb the stairs, imagining the sentence she doesn't say—
So act like one.
I listen to her creak across the floorboards in the upstairs landing. My father leans in, filling the emptiness she left, and says in a confidential tone, “Your mother is scared for you, Lily. The world situation has everybody terrified. She wants you to adjust, fit in. She has tried to put her own hardships behind her and she wants you to do the same.”

I nod, but I don't mean it.

Dad opens the newspaper. My parents' bedroom door
clicks shut. I sink back into the sofa, squeeze my fists thinking that this is exactly how she always operates. She hears something and she
owns
it.
She
determines if it counts, if it matters in the world. And I have let her determine if
I
count, if I matter exactly the way I am.

I cannot stand her.

This is why we should never try to talk. This is exactly why.

“Hey,” Ralph says, tapping on my bedroom door after the house has calmed down. He tilts his head toward our parents' shut door. “What gives?”

I shake my head. “They got a letter from school. God. I'm so sick of everything. I can't talk about it anymore.”

“Okay.” He waves his hand. “Then just come look at this. It's different.”

“No.”

“Please!” He pulls me into his bedroom and opens the door by his closet that accesses the attic steps. He turns on the light. Displayed on the step right under his candy collection, which is mostly empty Bit-O-Honey and Necco wrappers, is his Boy Scout collection. He painted the attic stairs bright blue, something our mother allowed during the period right before now when she believed
he could do no wrong. Before Ralph turned eleven he could have painted his carpet blue or built a campfire in the bathtub without a peep from her. He is still a master at working around her. Much better than I am. He plays smart, then dumb, he tiptoes, has tantrums—whatever works. Dad knows it too. “Crazy like a fox,” our father calls his protégé.

Displayed on the stair is a scraggly strip of fur, an old stick of polished wood, the chunk of swirly rock he threw at me the other night, and the cap to a bourbon bottle.

We kneel on the floor. “It's not finished, yet,” Ralph says. “I'm looking for more stuff.”

“Ralph,
normal
Boy Scouts collect coins or stamps, or how about matchbooks?”

“Well, this was easier than Hog and Pork Production or Bugling or writing a report on the dangers of laxatives or bandaging my own finger.”

I point at the fur. “Where's the rest of the squirrel?”

Ralph slashes a flat hand across his neck.

I shiver. “Ick.” I sit back on my heels and rub the stick. It's about a foot long, wider than a ruler, with one flat side and another that's curved, like a wooden cylinder cut in half lengthwise. “What
is
this?”

Ralph shrugs. “Don't know. I thought you might.”

“Why not collect things that go together, have a theme?”

“Oh, I
am
.” He raises three fingers. “Scout's honor.” He
puts the stick back, organizes his measly junk, and glances up into the dusky rafters. “I've found lots of strange stuff up there.”

*  *  *

Saturday night.

My parents are out. So is Ralph. If I joined the Boy Scouts I'd at least have an indoor campout tonight instead of sitting here with a stale popcorn ball stalking myself in last year's yearbook. I guess it's better than reading our Bible, although lots of people at school think the yearbook
is
the Bible. The freshman pictures look like God dealt a bad deck of miniature face cards:
I giveth you pimples. To you I bestow a hooked nose. You shall look like a turtle. But ye, oh blessed one, can have a smooth, sculpted white face and blond hair.
Actually, every single face is white, cover to cover, except mine. Mine's grayish. My mouth is a dull dash mark, my eyes black pinpricks, and my hair flat. No wonder I never look at myself.

The yearbook makes school seem shiny and organized, all of us packed between the padded silver covers. Everybody is lined up, achieving great things—winner after winner. Yearbooks don't include the taunts and discrimination and cliques. There is not a group picture of the Students Prejudiced Against Chinese People, because the members are secret, or they used to be, until Korea. Now prejudice is free to eat in the lunchroom, ride the bus, join
fraternities, sneeze, cough, speak up. Prejudice is
big
at Wilson High School.

Also
unpictured
are the sorority girls, because sororities and fraternities aren't school sponsored. They're social clubs outside high school. Patty and Anita are dying to become cupcakes despite our old oath of allegiance.

And there's no picture of the gang of greasy guys who grab their chests on the bus and whisper, “Hau ru, Tea Cups?” as if I wouldn't comprehend what “cups” of mine they're talking about.

A bus is a battleground if you look like the enemy.

What would Mother say if I asked her for advice?
Go quietly to the bathtub, Lillian, and soak in bleach water.

Dad's advice?
Make a joke of it.

Ralph's?
Be a hero.

My advice to myself?
Carry Kleenex.

When I walked out of social studies, it looked like running away, but it wasn't—it was the first Chinese thing I have ever done. But what now? Fight back every time somebody says something? Walk out? Drop out? Gone Mom must have felt tested living here with illegitimate me. Or maybe she was really a spy or a tramp or she was sick or broke. Who knows why she left me in Missouri and sailed away?

I flip more pages.

Elliot's caricatures are everywhere. He drew the Future
Homemakers of America Club as hobos. The ROTC rifle team holds boomerangs. The Typing Club president is all thumbs—slightly funny, but not very. I see his drawing of himself in the Brush and Pencil Club—thick glasses on a lanky stick figure with paintbrushes for fingers.

I see my tiny face peeking out of the Red Cross Club group picture. Ugh. I shut the yearbook, look away, close my eyes. I won't be in this year's photo because I quit going. I'm too
Red
for the Red Cross now.

*  *  *

On Wednesday Elliot James says, “Thank you so much for throwing my clothes away.” He flips the fringe of his scarf. “I dug it out of the trash.”

Thanks for calling me stupid.
I tilt my head, shrug, neither admit nor deny it.

Mrs. Van Zant, the art teacher and yearbook sponsor, walks through the door carrying a thick folder. She steps around me, makes a beeline for Elliot, because they are getting an early start on the yearbook. They consult about page layouts and his drawing of the front of the school building. “My vote is a double spread for the title page.
The Sentinel 1951
. You will make Wilson High look regal.” She moves her hands together in prayer point and bows to Elliot.

They talk about the theme this year, “Patriotism,” and the Student Council's vote last fall to eliminate homecoming because of the Korean War.
Boo hoo hoo.
Not
everybody liked it, but I guess patriotism was more popular than popularity.