Non-Fiction

If you read that title in a mocking accent, then you may be guilty of this. Somewhere along the timeline of immigrants spilling into America, English became the landmark of culture and intelligence; accent a caricature for heathen and lazy. If you thought of that title with derision, then you might be unconsciously harboring society’s draconian eye.

It seems that English has grown into a necessary component of intellect. And while I have only had fourteen years of experience with this, I know that there are thousands more who have had lifetimes.

 

*

 

When I first came to America, I didn’t speak English. The few words I knew–“hello,” “goodbye,” “sorry”–came out in chopped bits, the words lurching on my tongue like clumsy rocks.

I flushed red with embarrassment when the teacher asked me to read passages aloud. My kindergarten classmates stared and whispered. Their English was perfect: smooth r‘s, quick l’s. When I sat with my friends at the round blue tables, they would ask me, “Why do you go to this school, anyway? You just came from China. English must be hard for you.”

They’d laugh like it was a joke, but I could sense the question simmering beneath their smiles.

I’d tuck a hand under my uniform skirt, picking at my Lunchable, and try to laugh back.

So I worked. I borrowed novels about time travelers and fairies from the library and took them home. In my free time, I’d thumb through them until they were so full of dog-ears that the librarian told me to just keep them. I’d whisper the words to myself until they felt like smooth pebbles. At home, my Mandarin came rapid-fire.

During the summers, we visited my father’s hometown in China, Zhijiang, where I had grown up, and I could be another Chinese girl picking at the roasted oranges that her aunt prepared for her. The dialect spoken there, zhijianghua, charged forward at twice the speed of Mandarin and rose in different cadences. I could converse freely in both Mandarin and zhijuanghua, interchange Mandarin and zhijianghua in sentences, and mesh the two dialects to create a hybrid that only my relatives and I understood. I came back from China each year with a mouth full of the language.

In America, most of my closest friends were Chinese. We wore our culture with pride on the sleeves of our red silk qi paos and laughed while our parents fought over the bills at cheap restaurants. And at school, I had finally smoothed out my English. Nobody snickered when I read passages out loud anymore. My best friends through my early life switched from being Japanese, Vietnamese, and then Indian—but none seemed to last, because they didn’t really understand. They ate their spaghetti with forks and watched football on the television.

By the end of elementary school, I had won a few small school-wide awards for my writing. My parents promptly encouraged me to apply to a private school in the area, and lo and behold, their middle school campus accepted me. But this was different from my public elementary. This school was intensive when it came to language arts; the grammar training was breakneck and ruthless, and the teachers treated essays with hawk-like, iron-fisted attention. In the first few months of school, I helplessly lagged behind. The only grammar I’d learned from my public school consisted of ‘noun’, ‘verb’, and ‘pronoun.’ I knew how to write with things like appositives, subordinate conjunctions, and dependent clauses, but I didn’t know how to name them.

Everybody at this school was white: in my eyes, they were big smiles and confidence and American flags flashing in their eyes. Subconsciously, I pushed myself twice as hard to catch up to everybody else, and I began to float to the top of the rankings every time we had a grammar test.

As we labored away on our expository essays, my thesaurus became my Bible. I could use words like undermine, insouciant, and apparatus. Nevertheless, I floundered helplessly when it came to words like dais, linebacker, and Kanye West. I realized that if I wanted to speak—not just write—like an American, I was going to have to be friends with more Americans. I watched my first football game and started using forks to eat my spaghetti. By the end of sixth grade, I published my first novel and won my first cash award for writing.

In the summers, I still visited Beijing, my mother’s hometown, and Zhi Jiang. My uncle spoke to me in zhijianghua. I asked him to slow down, please, and I forgot the taste of roasted oranges. Avoid stigma, earn respect: I traded my qi paos for Brandy Melville sweaters, my Chinese for my English, and it was—is—infinitely more painful than any cut or incision I have ever experienced. This is the price I am still paying to fit in at a white-majority school: dissect the Chinese parts of me and make them accessories rather than organs.

In eighth grade, I was awarded the prize for the best English in the grade, out of all my white classmates who were born and raised with it. People respected me—but the question was buried deep in their throats. I could feel it simmering under their skins again, even though they never spoke it out loud. There were big smiles and confidence and American flags flashing in their eyes. But they respected me, and that was all I wanted: to perfect my English so I could earn their admiration.   In the summer, I visited China, and I realized that it had been years since I could understand zhijianghua. When I started preparing for the AP Chinese exam, I found that now the rocks wobbling in my mouth were Mandarin.

 

*

 

Today, I have made a sort of turbulent peace with the split inside of me. It almost never comes out anymore, but in Chinese class and in Zhi Jiang, sometimes it’ll rear its ugly head.

At his farm in China, my great-uncle will ask me a question, beckon me to squat and feed the chickens in his pens, pluck the plums from the trees. My cousins with sun-hardened hands do this perfectly, and I struggle, because my fingers, suited for the cold metal of a pen, fumble with the pulpy pits of fruit.

There is always a moment of blank, white-hot panic—and shame, too.

My great-uncle will smile patiently and guide my fingers forward, but still, I would not wish this on anyone.

Now I’m a freshman at the same school, and a boy came this year. Just arrived from China. And when he introduced himself, I saw the words like heavy rocks on his tongue, lurching into each other. The class was silent, and after class, my friend snickered, “I couldn’t even understand him. Could you?”

In literature class, the teacher asked him to read a passage from The Odyssey, and I saw his face turn red. I saw myself. Slowly, he began to read, tripping over the Greek names and Homeric terms. The class was silent.

“My English not very good,” he had said afterward, face burning.

At the end of class, the girl next to him spoke.

“Hey,” she asked him curiously, “why do you go to this school? Why don’t you just go to a math school—or something? It would be lot easier for you.”

Because this school is too hard for you, was the unspoken end.

The bell rang. His eyes dropped to the ground. He put his copy of The Odyssey into his backpack and laughed back, but I saw myself. I saw every child with yellow skin and brown eyes who wanted big smiles, confidence, and American flags flashing in their eyes.

The boy is a genius at math and physics, and yet all people can see is his crude English—coming out in chopped bits, the words lurching on his tongue like clumsy rocks.

 

*

 

I try my best to help the boy. I cheer the loudest for him after he presents his literature project, even when the teacher sharply corrects his pronunciations of Telemachus and Ithaca. I laugh the quickest when he stumbles through a joke in English, and I always say hello to him when he walks into the classroom.

We are not close friends, and I can’t be sure if he’s thinking of shedding his skin or burrowing farther into it. But at a white-majority school, birds of a feather have to flock together sometimes. So when he lowers his literature book and says, “My English not good,” I tell him, “No. Your English is very good.”

*

Please. Don’t let English become a landmark of culture. I don’t want the boy at my school to have to do the same thing I did.

 

 

Sarah Feng is a freshman at Pinewood School (Los Altos, CA), where she is studying the chemical composition of words. Her works have been recognized by the regional Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, the California Coastal Commission, the Write the World Novel Writing Prize, and more, and are published or forthcoming in TAB: A Journal of Poetry & Poetics, Moledro Magazine, and Write the World Best of 2015 Anthology, among others. She reads prose for Glass Kite Anthology and reviews for Write the World.

 

I walked through the front doors of school on the first day and cringed as the smell of anxiety and B.O. smacked me right in the face. Excitement buzzed around the halls despite the odors that were drifting about. I made my way to first period, even though class started in over twenty minutes, and looked on at the groups of students huddled together. They looked as though they were eager for the new school year to begin, something I could not relate to.

I walked through the library and felt a pang of sadness when I noticed that the spot where my friends and I had once met every morning was now filled with new faces. I struggled with the thought that I no longer had a place where I fit in at school. Since my two best friends had switched schools, I felt like I was the new kid again. Still the gawky, wide-eyed seventh grader trying her best to copy down the notes on cell functions through her tears. My stomach clenched as I realized I would have to make new friends, something I was not good at. To be frank, it was something I sucked at.

As I walked into the classroom, I settled my things down in the back row. I laid my arm down on the desk and closed my eyes, pretending I was anywhere else. My eyes drifted shut and my mind wandered to things that were far more important, such as the nap I was already planning on having during math or the tweet I planned on posting after school.

My desk suddenly shook and an image of the world cracking open and sucking me into hell appeared in my head. Unfortunately, it was just my phone buzzing against the desk.

“Don’t be so melodramatic, Greta. I will not hit you with my car just to put you out of your misery. Stop asking. I’m sure you’ll have a great day at school. Stay positive!”

 

 

I scoffed so violently at the text from my best friend, Wanda, that the teacher sitting at the front of his room was disrupted from what he was doing and stopped to look at me with eyebrows raised. I could feel warmth spread to my face and I ducked my head down into my arms. Great day at school? As if there were such a thing.

The beat of my leg tapping up and down offered me mild relief, and the sound sparked a memory from the week before.

 

The breeze of late summer grazed my skin and caused me to shiver. We were all gathered around the fire in the backyard of a friend of a friend´s house. A new girl, named Emily, joined us that night and the boys fawned over her long legs and sophisticated British accent. I tapped my finger on the lawn chair as my friend, Wanda, moved around greeting each person present. Her ability to easily make friends was something I had always admired and hoped to replicate. Instead, I sat in the corner twiddling my thumbs and planning world destruction. Or something along those lines. My scowl deepened as I scolded myself for not being more outgoing because, obviously, it was my own fault that I had so few friends. If I could be a little more normal, maybe then I’d be more approachable, I thought to myself.

Once Wanda finally sat down, everyone quieted and a group discussion began. By group discussion, I do not mean that we chatted about the recent fall of the unemployment rate or our outrage with unpaid maternity leave the mothers in our country get, as I would have hoped. Instead, we talked about Spam sandwiches and what to put on them. Eventually, after learning a disturbing amount of Spam sandwich information, Wanda steered the conversation around to describe everyone´s title within the group to clue Emily into how everyone fit in. She labeled herself as the hot one in the group, to which many of the girls in the group rolled their eyes, me included. I waited in anticipation as she made her way around the circle, wondering how I would be labeled. Juanpa fired off finger guns as he was labeled the funny one. Clementine shrugged her shoulders and smiled as Wanda tagged her as mom of the group. Julias merely laughed as he embraced his label as the token minority.

Everybody shifted my way when Wanda finally got to me. They looked surprised, as if they genuinely hadn’t noticed me. The attention made me blush, and I could feel my insides shudder with anticipation.

“And that´s Greta. She´s the quiet one,” Wanda said as she lazily pointed her hand my way.

The quiet one. The words echoed in my head and tears blurred my vision. I     would’ve expected being described as quiet by others. I didn’t expect people to know who I am or try to make an effort to get to know me. It was true that I often kept to myself when at group outings, but that’s not my fault. The least they could do was be more interesting. I hung out with them solely out of loyalty to my friend, Wanda. Okay, and maybe a little bit was because my mom kept pressuring me to get out of the house instead of “sitting in my room in the dark all goddamn day.” But mostly because of Wanda.

If anyone else had labeled me as quiet I would have shrugged and written it off as them not knowing me. I would´ve gotten into Wanda´s car and complained about it, laughing and commenting on our shared hatred. To me, quiet is how you describe someone you don´t really know. Like when someone asks you to sign their yearbook at the end of the year and you write ¨you´re quiet but you seem really nice! Let´s totally hang sometime! HAGS! ¨ and then forget about them the following day. Quiet is what you wish your younger siblings would be when you´re trying to binge watch shows on Netflix. But quiet isn´t your best friend.

If the only thing my best friend could say about me was that I was quiet… Then maybe it was true. Maybe I just had to come to terms that I was just boring and didn’t have anything important to say. I forced myself to accept that I would be doomed to silence the rest of my life but for some reason it made me feel nauseous.

I had been expecting something more along the lines: ‘Greta? She´s the weird one. Flat out fucking strange,” or “Greta? She´s likely to become the most successful serial killer of our generation. ”

What I got was the equivalent to “Greta? Greta who? ”

 

“Greta Jones?” I sprang back into attention as the teacher droned off my name. I didn’t bother correcting him, figuring that he’d forget it the next day anyway.

“Here,” I replied halfheartedly. Thinking about the perspiration accumulating underneath my arms made me sweat even more. The image of the class being flooded with my sweat filled my head. I laughed as my classmates struggled to keep afloat as the salty rushing water raced through the school. “Year 3000” by the Jonas Brothers played in my head while the girl nearest me lost grip of her desk and sank beneath the sea.

“I’ve been to the year 3000. Not much has changed but they live under water…”

“You should really go to the doctor.” The girl in front of me whisper-yelled to her friend in front of me and snapped me back to reality.

“Why? They’re just going to give me medicine and I hate that syrupy stuff,” the platinum blonde responded earnestly. I noted the pale greenish sheen to her skin. She was clearly ill.

“But you puked in the hall!” The girl sounded concerned, as was I. I also wondered where the pile of barf was and whether it made the halls smell even worse.

“No, it doesn’t really count because I ate it.”

“You what?” her friend nearly shrieked in disbelief.

“ I was walking in the hall and barfed into my hand. I didn’t want anybody to see so I just put it back in my mouth.” Her eyes bulged from her head, afraid to hear her friend’s judgment.

I tried my best to contain my disgust but couldn’t help letting out an audible gasp. The two turned around and looked shocked, completely unaware of my presence. I sheepishly looked away from them and gazed out the window into the school parking lot to pretend I wasn’t listening.

 

I remembered driving to the school parking lot the previous weekend. When I arrived I haphazardly parked and walked over to where most of the group were gathered. I stood over by Wanda and stayed quiet as the gang prattled on about this and that. I prayed my silence was more brooding than timid, because that seemed way cooler.

As I joined them, Juanpa questioned, “What should we do now?”

“Oh, oh! Can we car surf? I haven´t tried it yet! “Wanda yelled and everyone voiced their approval. Juanpa agreed to be the driver and asked if anyone else would like to go with. I raised my hand and relished in the raised eyebrows I received from the group.

I set my foot down on the back of the bright red vehicle and hoisted myself on top. Wanda grabbed my outstretched hands and I fell backwards onto the car as I pulled her up with me. Once we were both up we positioned ourselves laying belly down and gripped onto the ridges of the top.

We yelled down to Juanpa that we were ready and as the car began to move Wanda let out a squeal filled with both terror and delight. I held my middle finger out towards the school as we made it around the parking lot and gazed at the barely visible stars. I felt like I was in one of those indie teen movies, the wind in my hair and the radio creating an almost atmospheric paradise.

Then I saw the cop car.

The cop car rushed into the school parking lot, lights flashing blue and red, and I immediately jumped from the moving car and landed skillfully on my feet. There was a moment after I landed where I stood hunched down, genuinely considering making a run for it. But the cop car was approaching too quickly so I stood frozen in my tracks, waiting for my impending doom. When he finally parked next to us, he gleefully hopped out of the car and pranced over to us. He looked all too happy to bring teenage fun to an end.

The next thing I knew I was in the backseat of Juanpa´s car, shifting around uncomfortably in a car seat because it was the only available spot. I moved around the small chair, trying to find a spot where the plastic arms wouldn’t dig into my ass. Tears dripped from Wanda’s eyes as the police officer lectured us about the dangers of riding on top of a car. I may be stupid enough to ride on top of a car, but I am not too stupid to know that it’s not dangerous. I rolled my eyes and sadly fixed my attention out the window.

Finally, after waiting an hour for him to call all of our parents, listening to him rattle off all the reasons why we shouldn’t have done that, and promising to never do it again, we were let free. We traipsed over to the rest of the group, who by now were very solemn, and inquired about what we’d be doing next.

Clementine shifted uncomfortably in her position on top of a car and said, “We should probably just go home now.”

The rest of the group looked around for other suggestions but none came. So I spoke up.

“Well, I may have a few things in my car…” I mentioned nervously, walking over to where my car was parked and opening up the trunk. Their faces lit up with surprise as they took the large stacks of toilet paper, cartons of eggs, and boxes upon boxes of plastic forks that filled my trunk.

“Why do you keep all this stuff in your car?” Juanpa asked.

I shrugged and smiled mischievously, “Why not?”

“What are the forks for?” Wanda asked.

I laughed and walked towards my car before stopping and looking over my shoulder.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said coolly, slamming my trunk shut. I flipped on my shades and glided to the driver’s side of my car as the camera (you know, the one in my indie teen movie) panned in on my face, then back onto the faces of my shocked acquaintances, then back onto me.

“Are you guys coming?”

They climbed into my car and my imagination took over as I drove away. My passengers gazed back at the school as I pressed a button and fire exploded from the parking lot. A kickass playlist started up in my head as we drove away to Mexico to hide from our crime.

“I never knew you were so cool, Greta,” they fawned.

It was time that I labeled myself, instead of letting what other people perceived me be what I become. I was a rebel, the troublemaker with the baby face. I wasn’t two people like I had thought. The one I saw myself as: strong, mischievous with a dash of psychotic, and the one others perceived me as: a mostly unremarkable wallflower. I reveled in the knowledge that I didn’t have to be stuck in the prison of who people thought I was. I could just be me, and damn to hell what everyone else thought.

“From now on, call me Yellow Belly Abacus,” I said through a smirk. I was relieved as I took control of my identity, the weight of everyone else’s assumptions suddenly gone.

 

I came back to awareness as the bell rang with the image still lingering in my mind. I felt a surge of reassurance as I picked up my bag and slung it over my shoulder. While walking out the door, I noticed the barf-eater next to me and cringed at her ghastly appearance from close up. I saw that she was already watching me, waiting for me to say something.

“You think in the future we’re going to have humans on display at the State Fair in the birthing centers too?” I watched the shock fill her eyes as she registered what I said.

Visibly relieved that I didn’t bring up the barf, she guffawed and started, “What the-?”

I extended my hand for her to shake, mentally reminding myself to wash it immediately after, and smiled as I introduced myself, “Hi, I’m Greta Jonas. But you can call me Yellow Belly Abacus.”

 

 

Greta is a senior in high school and besides writing; she enjoys matcha ice cream and Netflix originals. She plans on going abroad to Germany and once she comes back she will attend Hamline University. She is also not quite sure how to write a bio that isn’t for social media; darned millennials.

 

 

 

“Just text him, we’re almost there”

Joy grabbed my phone and closed her passenger side window. The phone screen buzzed, 2:43 PM. Only five hours late, Queen of Egyptian timing. Everyone else from church is probably in Florida by now, an hour or two away from the retreat center. I should text one of them to save us three dinners; I’m hungry. Thank God I threw snacks into the car last night, I wouldn’t have remembered today.

My car pulls into my usual spot at Starbucks. Shoot, my headlights are still on. The front of my car scrapes against the concrete block as I shift to park. Anthony squints back at me through the tall window, taking out his ear buds and closing tabs. Two empty coffee cups sit beside him. I wonder how long he’s been here waiting. He’s already up by the time I make it to the door, tripping over his Mac charger on the way over to me. Do his eyebrows always crease in the middle like that?

“Are you okay?”

 

The lady at the counter looks up as Anthony hugs me and out of the corner of my eye I see Joy darting into the bathroom with a bundle of clothes in her arms. Really? I’m the one who’s gonna be driving. I should have gotten first dibs for the bathroom. I just want to get out of these clothes. Put something, anything, other than black on.

“Yeah, I just need to get out of these clothes. Then we’ll go. Can you order my usual?”

“Okay. But listen, I’m driving”

A week’s worth of arguing disappears as he finally lets me out of his hug and rubs my arm up and down. My goose bumps scratch at his hands. I’m cold?

“Fine. Wait, get it hot, not iced.”

“Alright. Keys?”

I shuffle through my pile of clothes until they fall out, announcing that they have reached the tiled floors through a series of clattering sounds and stares from people behind screens. God why do they all have to be here. I just want to leave. He bends down to pick them up, kissing my forehead as he turns towards the car. A piece of my hair follows his lips. Winter always makes it staticky. As I gather it into some kind of ponytail, the bathroom door swings open. Joy comes out, transformed. Black isn’t really her color, it clashes with the brightness of her eyes. The yellow and gray sweats are a much better fit, and she snickers my way before meeting Anthony at the car.

“Dude. Mirror. You look like death”

She holds the door open for me as I gather my sweater into my arms and enter the bathroom, ready for a change of mood. Great move, Christine, wear make up to a funeral. Genius. The dampened toilet paper leaves crumbs around my eyes as I violently scrub away any evidence that I had cried. I shouldn’t have. Not for her. I mean, she’s the one that left us.

Someone knocks at the door.

“Ugh, someone’s in here”

“Yeah I know, I forgot my pants in there can you grab them?”

Only my sister could forget her pants in a Starbucks bathroom. I grab them and leave, looking down at the bright red sweater with Georgia printed boldly across it. Much better, and comfortable enough for a road trip.

“Hey, should I move…this…or?”

Anthony is standing by the open trunk, pointing at something. Shoot, I almost forgot about that thing. I don’t care what you do with it just don’t make me see it again. I never want to see it again.

“I don’t care. I just don’t want to see it.”

I turn the corner of the car. Creepy, I could swear the portrait sized funeral picture is laughing at me, almost saying Oh; you thought I couldn’t ruin anything more for you. You thought your mind could leave my memories behind. Watch me. I break eye contact with it long enough to finally see the picture I avoided looking at all morning. Huh, she left her hair the same all these years? Were there any new wrinkles that my childhood hadn’t memorized? No. This picture must be from before she left.

We bought a house just for her to move in with us after Grandpa passed, spending way outside our budget. She left her own daughter, my mother, to move in with an uncle who ended up dumping her into a nursing home. Why? Why. The question played on repeat in my mind for years until I answered it myself at the age of fourten, while other kids’ minds were on innocent crushes. I decided that the answer was simply “the world just does not make sense”. A simple epiphany, one I still think every day. One day she was there and the next she was packing her bags because her son “needed” her in New York. I need her here. He was always her favorite, and while my mom cared for three of us and worked daily, he gambled his family away. We cared for her; I remember her stories about the nuns at the schools she attended in Egypt. How she filed her nails every day, the scent of mink coats hung up in mothball filled closets. Our family was so estranged now that I couldn’t even let people know that the funeral today. If people came, they would have met my uncle, and my Mom didn’t want his crazy to affect my reputation. It’s over now; I never have to see him or her ever again. Couldn’t she have waited until after this retreat to…

“Christine?”

My stream of consciousness ends as Joy nudges me over and grabs the picture, throwing it face down and plopping Anthony’s bags over it. She is barely gentle enough to spare the stand that prods out the back. I wipe a single tear from the corner of my eye. The world just does not make sense.

Anthony doesn’t open my door. Ever. We both decided years ago that it was a waste of time and I’m at least strong enough to open a door. I guess the toilet paper make up wipes didn’t work as well as I thought they did.

Today, he opens my door.

“You will arrive at your destination at 10:53 PM. Fastest Route available.”

The GPS lady provides a much needed distraction from my own thoughts. We miss one lecture, dinner, and some icebreakers at the retreat. I hope no one there asks why I’m late. Please don’t ask. Please don’t. Not today.

“I’ll play your music, no worries”

Thank God. I’m not exactly in a Bon Jovi kind of mood.

“Shoot, my coffee”

“Oh man, I completely forgot. Want me to run back in?”

I see Joy in the rear view mirror. She is fumbling with something in the trunk as I feel my car take a slight jump. Anthony’s bag is now next to her, destined to become her pillow for the next 8 hours. I hear nails on glass and the frame scratch against my trunk bed; I can see the outline of the gray hair. She drops the picture after a moment and looks back towards the front; her eyes glisten as they lock with mine. Yeah, Joy. I miss her too. I turn slowly towards Anthony, who has been watching Joy struggle. He doesn’t say anything about his bag.

“No, let’s just leave.”

 

 

Christine Adamamy is a fourth year student at UGA. She hopes to be an Elementary school teacher and loves writing on the side whenever she can. Her hobbies include reading, Netflix binging, and all things dog related.