Chapter 9: The Island

(Note: names have been changed)

We became friends in the fourth grade when we were both assigned to door monitor duty one week. Door monitor was a strange task, albeit one teachers gave to children to teach them responsibility. It was a simple thing to do: the two of us were to hold open and close the doors, at the beginning of every recess and lunchtime. Most of the job was simply opening and leaning your back on the door as you waited for the other children to line up and return to class. It was a very boring role to play, so having a partner was nice because you had someone to talk to. He was an American kid with blond hair in a bowl cut and soft features. I would often see him on the playground but never really spoke to him outside of playing kickball. As we both pressed against the glass doors, he introduced himself as Patrick. His full name stuck out to me because it was the first time I’ve heard of a last name that sounded like a first name. The name echoed twice, as if it introduced him at both ends.

Fourth grade began like a typical first day of school. The year was 1999, and I was 8 years old. The desks in the classroom were arranged in rows, with two chairs to each desk. On the first day, as I sat in the second row, I noticed a lone desk in the corner. This desk was smaller than the others, made for just one person instead of two. It was off to the side of the classroom, near the cubbies and storage boxes, looking quite sad. The next day my teacher, Ms Van Dyke, moved me to that little table in the corner. Perhaps Ms Chambers, my teacher from the previous year, had told Van Dyke that I was a problem child, or perhaps she simply thought I seemed different from the others. The desk was an island, and I was its castaway. Some children are given seats. Others are given corners.

Often I would see a Chinese classmate, Dennis, walked to school by his grandfather, just like me. Because of this I felt an inherent kinship and wanted to be friends. He seemed nice at first as we socialized a little the first week. But I noticed he had a little gang that followed him everywhere on the playground, three other boys, who were often quite mean to the other children. One day during recess, they surrounded me, teasing and running in circles around me. I tried to leave but whenever I attempted to escape they shoved me to and fro. I became desperate, fidgeting back and forth before aiming a high kick that connected with Dennis’ back. As the circle opened I ran away while the bell sounded. Back in class I noticed Dennis rubbing the spot on his back every now and then, often turning around to look at me. I felt bad for him, wondering if I had kicked too hard.

The next day I was called into the principal’s office. Dennis was waiting for me in one of the armchairs. I plodded in apprehensively and saw him sneak me a menacing smirk. He had told the principal I attacked him on the playground. I forgot how long I spent in the office that day as the principal questioned me, Dennis, and even the playground aide. I felt cold sweat on the inside of my shirt as I was grilled for what felt like hours. I kept insisting that he wouldn’t leave me alone. Eventually I was given a warning and told that this would be brought up at the next parent conference.

I was tired of being treated like the “retarded” kid the previous year, hating every second of feeling like the class dog. This year I made an effort to really be “smart”. Most of the time during recesses, instead of going outside to play, I stayed in the classroom flipping through whichever books caught my eye from the shelves. Ms Van Dyke had spent a month reading out loud to us Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, so upon discovering Superfudge in the class collection I borrowed it and spent many breaks engrossed in it, relating to the troubles of a protagonist who also seemed perpetually misunderstood. It was a story I enjoyed very much until one day another teacher told me she thought Judy Blume books were for girls. My cheeks turned red and I put the book back on the shelf, feeling the weight and heat of self consciousness. On the weekends, grandpa took me to the library and I would often check out books on space, nature, or geography, not actually understanding most of the words but hoping at least that I could absorb something. I often got high scores during class trivial and knowledge pursuit games that we played, Ms Van Dyke reading the questions from a set of tall cards hinged at the corner that spread like a fan. Still, isolated from the rest of the class, the other children looked at me as if I were stranded, something to point at from the shore.

One person who looked at me like a human being was Patrick. Despite it being my third year at Los Molinos, it was the first time another student had been willing to sit and eat lunch with me. Up to that point, for all my time in American public schools, I struggled with western foods, throwing away parts of my lunch that tasted strange to me. Patrick sat with me every day and explained foods that I was unfamiliar with. Gravy is a kind of soup that goes on mashed potatoes and it’s a tasty part of what people eat during Thanksgiving, he told me. The vegetables provided that I was not used to eating raw, they tasted better with the strange white sauce that came out of bucket shaped dispensers, he showed me. And hamburgers, he said with a grin, were better with fries hidden under the bun.

In Chinese culture, food is the greatest expression of love. Parents cut fruit for their children instead of saying I love you. Grandparents ask us if we have eaten as a way of showing care. Friends never let guests leave their homes unfed. Perhaps that was why I saw Patrick as my first real friend at school. Dana and Edwin were like cousins, always around on weekends. But Patrick was different. He was the first friend who wasn’t given to me, but chosen. And lifelong friends we did become, even though, for that year he didn’t seem too interested in playing with me on the playground very much. I tried to pester him at first, but after a while I stopped, opting instead to make a beeline for the classroom and its haven of books. Maybe I still carried the sting of previous years, my earlier mishaps with failed friendships.

I enjoyed weekends with Dana and Edwin immensely. We would often play pretend, tying bath towels around our necks and roleplaying Justice League, even though all we actually saw were episodes of the Superman or Batman animated series and Dana often roleplayed as Wonder Woman; we didn’t really know Wonder Woman’s powers so Dana would just make up random ones as we went along. The three of us spent those Saturdays playing just as much as we took Chinese lessons from my grandma, some of the best memories I had in childhood. Dana’s parents would often invite us to pool parties at their house, raucous affairs with my grandpa giving Dana occasional swim lessons while Edwin and I splashed each other as Dana’s dad grilled little hotdogs served with deli trays from Costco.

Unfortunately I began to develop a bad temper that year. Being so young, I never noticed that something inside of me was becoming very angry all the time. Looking back as an adult, it becomes quite obvious, the cycles of discrimination and exclusion. But as an 8 year old, I could not give names to the emotions. As a child I didn’t know the word for rage. All I could feel was heat in my chest.

The little monster inside began to show its face, first at family gatherings. I would often see Lars, Alfred, and Jade there, but they would exclude me, asking me to stay by the door and keep a lookout for our parents or smaller children like Jade’s younger brother Eric or Alfred’s younger brother Robert, as the three of them played computer games or watched grown up shows like South Park while our families played cards or mahjong downstairs. They were usually quite mean to me and I would get frustrated and yell at them, screaming whatever nasty words I could conjure from my limited vocabulary. Pretty soon I had the reputation as “the bad kid” in our family friend circle.

Maybe that is why Alfred’s mom chose not to invite me when the three of them went to see The Phantom Menace together. Weeks later as all four of us rode in the back of the Liang’s minivan, Alfred suddenly asked, whoever has seen the new Star Wars movie raise your hand, and I was the only one without a hand up while they sniggered. I kept sullen as Alfred’s mom took us to GameStop, which was called FuncoLand at the time, watching the other three play Crash Bandicoot with my hands in my pockets. Later that day when we played as our families had their picnic at Schabarum Park, every time I spoke either Lars, Alfred, or Jade would say “...was that the wind? Why is there a weird noise that sounds like talking?”, pretending that I didn’t exist. It drove me crazy and I spent another afternoon screeching and crying until my mom forcibly drove me home. I don’t remember actually naming the emotion as anger, only remember feeling the injustice of not being included. As I cried in the car, I heard echoes in my head of other children at school telling me that I didn’t have any friends.

The last week of school before winter break, I stood near the tether ball courts daydreaming. I zoned out watching the clouds move overhead when I felt a violent shove behind me, so rough that I fell forward almost to the ground. I turned and saw a girl named Cassie make eye contact with me, smiling before turning to run. To this day I don’t know why I reacted so angrily. Perhaps it was all the little humiliations I faced in those years. Or perhaps I was truly just a horrible little angry punk. I don’t remember thinking. I just remember chasing after her, my chest burning, my head empty. In front of her mom and the school principal, I hit her, knocking her bag off her shoulder saying, “that’s for pushing me!”. I was suspended for two days.

“He can’t go to school for two days”, my grandpa said as we returned home. He didn’t look at me. I remember feeling very sorry, knowing that I overreacted. After giving me many beatings with a belt, my mom asked me to explain what happened, but I just could not figure out how to tell her why I felt so mad. I became a little more quiet for the months after the incident. What scared me most wasn’t the suspension or the belt waiting at home. It was how quickly I had gone from daydreaming about clouds to striking someone. How thin that line was between being quiet and being furious. I did not have words for it then, but looking back, I think that was the first time I realized I could turn the same anger I carried against people who teased me, against the people I cared about too.

The school sent me to a weekly therapist after the incident. It was in a little room off to the side of the lunch area. It was strange leaving our classroom and walking through the empty, cavernous cafeteria, I thought to myself as I heard my footsteps echo off the walls. He introduced himself as Mr Sullivan, and told me I was there to relax. Over the course of a few weeks, we spent our hour playing Uno or Connect Four. We never really talked about why I was so angry, even though he sent home with me one day a book titled It’s OK to be Angry, so he must have picked up on something. At home, I read through it. It was filled with little vignettes of white kids getting mad because they had to do the dishes or feed the dog. It felt silly and trivial. Those things didn’t seem like things I would be angry about. But I couldn’t name what I was truly angry about either. I tossed the book in a corner to collect dust. Their anger was about chores. Mine lived somewhere deeper, where no book or person could reach.

Even though I often got in trouble for talking out of turn, I felt myself drawing inward that year. I spent more time with books, realizing I could remember details easily. But I was too afraid to call myself smart. That word belonged to children on TV, not to me. At best I hoped I wasn’t stupid. Still, I wondered if my teacher thought I was retarded too.

One month I was given a reading award at a school assembly. Ms. Van Dyke pulled me aside beforehand, nervous, reminding me to behave and not be disruptive. I felt cold as I walked onstage, the gift certificate in my hand. It seemed my teacher thought this was an accident. Why did it feel like I was in trouble for being recognized?

I wondered what Ms Van Dyke would have felt if Mr Sullivan had handed her the same useless book one day, as I was sent home yet again. Winter had become spring and 1999 had become 2000 in the second half of the school year, in a new millennium. That day I remarked in class that I had been sitting at the corner desk for too long, and that I “can’t put up with this anymore”, a phrase I heard Ms Van Dyke say all the time. By then it seemed to be one of her catchphrases, sounding almost funny because I couldn’t imagine what “putting up” physically meant. I did not realize it could be rude until she exploded at me in front of the entire class, yelling at me that I can’t talk to her that way, asking me to get out, go to the principal’s office right now. At home my dad yelled at me too, feeling afraid that this time might result in an expulsion, chewing me out in front of guests who had visited for the weekend. I pouted for the rest of the evening, indignantly feeling that I did nothing wrong, saying nothing until one of my dad’s friends offered to play ping pong with me in the backyard on an old table we bought from a friend.

When the dreaded parent teacher conference finally came, I sat in the back of the empty classroom as my dad sat at a large round table and spoke with not only Ms Van Dyke, but Ms Chambers, Mr Burns, and my therapist. I was a special case, they said. I pretended to pore over picture books as they described me like a mentally challenged mythical creature, a puzzle to be solved. Van Dyke commented that she thought my emotions seemed crude and unfiltered, saying that when I was happy I would laugh in a disruptive manner. She mimicked me laughing in an exaggerated, clown-like fashion. Mr Burns complained that he would often catch me zoning out during class, seeming consistently distracted. Though he remarked that he found it interesting how whenever he caught me flipping through a different part of the textbook, as he stops the class to ask me to tell him what he just said, I am able to repeat his own words verbatim back to him, showing him that somehow I had actually been listening. Ms Chambers still believed that I should have been held back and perhaps started school at too early an age, evidenced by my emotional immaturity. Mr Sullivan wondered out loud, is it possible the schoolwork may not be challenging enough? Some children may seem unproductive with classwork if it is too easy. All three teachers looked at one another for a moment and shook their heads in disbelief. “But he has a good memory”, they agreed, at the end of the conference.

I don’t know if I showed any markers of academic excellence other than my love of books, but at that point my dad perhaps began to think I was unusual. Or maybe it was because Alfred always had the best grades and was placed in a program for gifted students called “GATE” and his parents would often share stories of the things Alfred got to learn in those sessions outside of class. My dad never told me that he had privately asked Ms Van Dyke if I could be in GATE as well. One day in front of the entire class, Ms Van Dyke launched into a tirade about how disruptive and hard to teach I was, adding “and you even want to be in GATE?”. The words stung as I realized what my dad had done.

From then on, I kept my dreams in the same place as my anger, buried deep, on an island no one else could reach.