The Struggle To Be An All-American Girl (By Elizabeth Wong)

It's still here ,the Chinese school on Yale Street where my brother and I used to go . Despite the new coat of paint and the high wire fence , the school I knew ten years ago remains remarkably , stoically ,the same .

  Every day at 5.pm , instead of playing with forth and fifth-grade friends of sneaking out to the empty lot to hunt ghosts and animal bones , my brother and I had to go to Chinese school . No amount of kicking , screaming ,or pleading could dissuade my mother , who was solidly determined to have us learn the language of our heritage . Forcibly , she walked us the seven long ,hilly blocks from our home to school ,depositing our defiant tearful faces before the stern principal . My only memory of him is that he swayed on his heels like a palm tree and he always clasped his impatient , twitching hands behind his back . I recognized his as a repressed maniacal child killer , and that if we ever saw his hands , we 'd be in big trouble .

  We all sat in little chairs in an empty auditorium . The rooms smelled like Chinese medicine , an imported faraway mustiness , like ancient mothballs or dirty closets . I hated that smell . I favored crisp new scents like the soft French perfume that my American teacher wore in public school . There was a stage far to the right , flanked by an American flag and the flag of the Nationalist Republic of China ,which was also red , white and blue but not as pretty .

  Although the emphasis at school was mainly language ---speaking ,reading and writing---the lessons always began with exercises in politeness . With the entrance of the teacher , the best student would tap a bell and everyone would get up , know tow , and chant ,"Sing sa ho," the phonetic for "How are you , teacher?"

  Being ten years old ,I had better things to learn than ideographs copied painstakingly in lines that ran right to left from the tip of a moc but , a real ink pen that had to be held in an awkward way if blotches were to be avoided . After all  I could do the multiplication tables , name the satellites of Mars , and write reports on Little Woman and Black Beauty ,Nancy Drew , my favorite heroine , never spoke Chinse .

  The language was a source of embarrassment . More times than not ,I had tried to dissociate myself from nagging loud voice that followed me wherever I wandered in the nearby American supermarket outside Chinatown . The voice belonged to my grandmother , a fragile woman in her seventies who could outshout the best of the street vendors . Her humor was raunchy , her Chinese rhythmless , patternless . It was quick , it was loud , it was unbeautiful . It was not like the quiet , lilting romance of French or the gentle refinement of the American South . Chinese sounded pedestrian  . Public .

  In Chinatown , the comings and goings of hundreds of Chinese on their daily tasks sounded chaotic and frenzied . I did not want to be thought of as mad , as talking gibberish . When I spoke English , people nodded at me , smiled sweetly , said encouraging words . Even the people in my culture would cluck  and say that I would do well in life . My ,doesn't she move her lips faster ," they would say , meaning that I 'd be able to keep up with the world outside Chinatown .

  My brother was even more fanatical than I about speaking English . He was especially hard on my mother , criticizing her , often cruelly ,for her pidgin speech "--smatterings of Chinese  scattered like chop suey in her conversation. " It 's not' What it is ,Mom," he'd say in exasperation . " It's "What is it ,what is it ,what it is .' "  Sometimes Mom might leave out an occasional "the" or "a",or perhaps a verb of being . He would stop her in mid-sentence : Say it again,Mom.Say it right."When he tripped over his own tongue ,he 'd blame on her :"See ,Mom ,it's all your fault . You set a bad example ."

  What infuriated my mother most was when my brother cornered her on her consonants ,especially "r" . My father had played a cruel joke on  Mom by assigning her an American name that her tomgue wouldn't allow her to say . No matter how hard she tried ,"Ruth" always ended up "Luth " or "Roof."

  After two years of writing with a moe but and reciting words with multiples of meanings. I was finally granted a cultural divorce . I was permitted to stop Chinese school .

  I thought of myself as multicultural  . I preferred tacos to egg rolls ; I enjoyed Cinco de Mayo more than Chinese New Year .

  At last , I was one of you ; I wasn't one of them.

  Sadly ,I still am .