Chapter 5: The Rotten Egg My Parents Made

We came home from China a few days before, and it was the first time I felt jet lagged. That morning it rained. I watched the glass blur with streaks and wondered why the water didn’t look like drops anymore; just texture, like a film. I looked into the courtyard and noticed I could see motion in the air but no actual water. I could hear birds chirping too, but couldn’t find them. It was the first day of school. I didn’t know I was about to vanish too.

I was late to the first day of first grade. Perhaps it was because it was in a newer, portable building at the side of the school that my mom had trouble helping me locate the classroom. As I entered, I noticed the teacher was a short, younger, Chinese American teacher and I immediately liked her because she had a Chinese accent. I also noticed the class was exclusively Chinese American students. It felt strangely comforting to see faces like mine, at least for that first day, though later I would find I was the only Mandarin speaking child in a sea of Cantonese students. Looking back, I don’t know if my kindergarten teacher had finally realized I didn’t speak English the previous year and asked for me to be placed in an ESL class, or if my parents checked a box that said Chinese as my first language, or if this was a special bilingual class. 

When I walked in, Ms Chen was repeating “Eight o’ Clock. What time do you go to bed?” and the class answered “Eight o’ clock”, and I thought guiltily to myself that I had no idea what time I actually went to bed. A little while later, after I found my seat and sat down, Ms Chen went around the classroom and asked all the students who their “best friend” was. I didn’t know anyone in the room. I sat at the last desk, having been the last one in, and I waited with dread as every student pointed to someone they knew in class and grinned and laughed together. I scanned the room trying to find Leah but she wasn’t in this class. Finally Ms Chen called on me. I paused for a moment before saying, “my mom”. The entire class laughed. 

Eventually I made friends with a classmate named Gene Chou. He was the first kid I ever met who wore glasses. I still can’t remember what we talked about, how we played, or even how we became friends but I remember we ate lunch together and he made me feel safe. The kindergarten class had its own enclosed playground but first graders played in the large playground with the rest of the school and I found that safety was a feeling that was in short supply. As the weeks went by, I would often run into mean children. I’ve never had my lunch money stolen like in the movies, but they would do things like grab books or my backpack out of my arms and make me chase them before throwing them behind a trash can or over a fence. Not that I needed someone to steal my lunch money because I frequently would misplace it.

It was 1996 and I was five years old. I know things are different now, laws have been passed expressly preventing this type of thing from happening. But the 1990s was a different time and a different culture. During lunchtime, all the children were to line up and go to the cafeteria. And if you didn’t bring lunch money, since the school couldn’t let you just starve, they gave you an “alternative meal”. It came as a soft, chewy rectangular bar. Basically it was a graham cracker crust with PB&J inside. It was very sad looking and other children would stare at you as you ate your meal of shame.

A few months into the school year I must have already had problems sitting still because Ms Chen asked these two taller girls from the class to monitor me during lunchtime and recess to make sure I don’t get into too much trouble. As expected whenever you give children unchecked authority over another, they went full Lord of the Flies. When we would wait in the lunch line, these girls would grab me by the arms on both sides at all times, manhandling me as they reminded me that they were in charge. I didn’t protest too much until one day when I realized I had forgotten my lunch money in the classroom. Not wanting to eat another sad peanut butter bar, I tried to go and fetch it, but didn’t know how to explain that I had forgotten to bring money. They yanked me by my shirt, by the scruff of the neck, by whatever they could grab as I pulled and struggled and screamed, thrashing violently. I fought back, practically foaming at the mouth until other teachers intervened and called all three of us to the office.

Soon after, probably a few days later, I was pulled out of class to talk to a man with a soft voice in a small room filled with toys. The child therapist handed me a set of action figures and asked me to show him what my interactions with other children were like during lunchtime. I knew what had happened, but couldn’t find the words. They seemed to be stuck in a place beyond my power, between my tongue and the back of my throat. I wanted to tell him everything. That the girls had grabbed me. That I didn’t mean to scream like that. That I was hungry. That I just wanted to go back for my lunch money. But nothing came out. I half heartedly bumped a few dolls into one another and made a few non committed noises. This would often happen to me, even beyond first grade. I think as a child I never felt safe using words in either language, resorting to fidgeting, making jokes, throwing tantrums, or in the case of high school, profanity instead. My actual thoughts, I held back, hiding them in the deepest parts of my self. It would not be until well into college that I could begin actually saying what I meant, often overcorrecting by giving extremely long winded explanations and answers to questions.

My parents weren’t really poor at the time but certainly not rich either. They were extremely careful with money, saving every cent at the time to prepare enough funds for a down payment on a house we would eventually move into a year later. But our apartment on Fourth street at the time was definitely very small, and the furniture was old and worn, purchased here and there from thrift stores and yard sales. It must have made some kind of impression on Ms Chen when she visited us a week later. In hindsight, I think she must have come over to apologize for the lunchtime incident. She said hi to my parents and they made small talk, and then she left. A few days later, it was around Thanksgiving, and Ms Chen brought us boxes and boxes of food, canned items, I think even a turkey.

I had a hard time understanding Western food at that age. Most of the lunches I ate at school I never finished, only eating what I felt like I could stomach and throwing away the rest. It was also around that time that a very strong gag reflex appeared whenever I tried to drink milk or eat cheese by itself. Sometimes the school lunch would be Mexican food and it was on those days I would probably just eat the cookie that came with the meal. As a Californian adult, I consider Mexican cuisine to be some of the most delicious food there is, but as a Chinese child, I was not yet accustomed to these flavors that felt very different. It also didn’t help that my and my mom’s first time trying Mexican food was when we were waiting for my dad to pick us up, stuck out somewhere in El Monte and the only place in sight was a Taco Bell. My mom probably bought the most affordable thing she saw on the menu, which was a single beef soft taco. Together stood outside, waiting for my dad in the parking lot, and we gawked at this strange, shapeless thing with grease and cheese dripping out the sides. We took turns taking bites and making faces and my mom told me, let’s never eat this stuff again.

During that time I did begin to discover some foreign foods that I really liked, though. It was in the school cafeteria that I tried pizza for the first time. School pizza was one of those small rectangular things with the tiny sausages on it, heated still in its plastic wrapper, but I found it tasty nonetheless. “Pizza Day” was the last Thursday of every month. One month I was a little sad because I caught the flu around Pizza Day and had to stay home, slurping tasteless plain rice porridge and being force fed bitter tasting Chinese medicine. Liwei knocked on our door after he came home from school, pulling out a still warm pizza square from his backpack and offering it to me. I don’t remember if I hugged him or not. I don’t remember if I even thanked him. I didn’t know how to express all the warm feelings I felt. As usual, language failed me.

That year I continued to encounter bullies and get into schoolyard fights. Sometimes I hit back. Other times I yelled. But I never ran. One day, a mean kid kept hitting me and I decided to just laugh and blow kisses. As I did, he became more red and more furious and I laughed harder as I backed away, coming up against a fence. When I felt the fence behind me, I decided to climb. I turned back to face him as I got to the top and laughed as loudly and as hard as I could, showing him I wasn’t afraid. After recess, a playground supervisor followed me back to class. When all the students had settled down, she stood super straight, and slow walked to Ms Chen, holding a basketball at her side with her other hand on her hip, and pointed at me, telling Ms Chen what happened and how I not only fought but climbed a fence. This was the most furious Ms Chen ever got at me. After the white lady left, Ms Chen berated me in front of the entire class, and gave me lines to write. I don’t know how many she assigned but I do remember that I had to take them home to complete. 

I don’t know why one day Ms Chen asked me to monitor Gene the same way she asked those girls to watch me. Gene never really got into trouble, he was a very quiet kid who was well behaved. Maybe she wanted me to take responsibility. Or maybe she thought I looked lonely and wanted to improve our friendship. I don’t know why I did what I did. Maybe I had regressed, and like the year before, decided to copy and parrot the behaviors of other children. Or maybe I was just the cruel, bad kid everybody said I was and took out my frustrations on my friend. I yanked his clothes in the same manner and said “I’m in charge of you now”. Gene gave me a very hurt look and ran away. The next week Ms Chen gave us a worksheet to fill out to learn how to write about ourselves. There was a section asking us to describe our best friend. “Why aren’t you writing Gene’s name?” asked my mom. I did not answer. I felt like I didn’t deserve to be his friend anymore, and turned it in blank.

I kept getting into fights. But unlike the other children, I still couldn’t speak English well enough to explain myself. Eventually my dad and I got summoned to an expulsion hearing where I was to be interviewed by a group of administrators. My dad and I sat together at a table facing them as they discussed and dissected my behavior, at times looking over my dad’s forehead as if he wasn’t in the room. The room felt cold. I remember the hum of the fluorescent lights, and how my shoes didn’t touch the floor. I don’t remember the questions they asked us. I only remember finally blurting out “because they hit me first!”. After what felt like a long long time, my dad told them, “this is enough, my son is not a criminal”. They asked if I could stay for them to ask me questions alone, but my dad repeated “I’m taking him home.” I don’t know what happened after, but I was not expelled. 

In the spring there was some kind of school event and Ms Chen was telling us there will be vendors and food tricks, and she sounded very excited and I must have gotten excited too because I jumped out of my chair exclaiming yay and Ms Chen immediately snapped at me and said something along the lines of “it’s not free okay?”. I remember feeling so angry as I sat in my chair with my arms crossed, hot tears coming down my face, and thought to myself, my dad works so hard and makes a lot of money. 

Ms Chen was not a bad person. Looking back, she was probably very poorly trained, and being young and with a classroom of only Chinese students, probably under more pressure to simply teach English and keep order in a workplace that was still very white despite rapidly changing demographics. She was one of the very few Chinese speaking teachers in the school district at the time so, in hindsight, it was likely she felt she had to project extra strictness so colleagues wouldn’t label her class “soft.” But despite her meanness at times, I still felt much more comfortable with her than my kindergarten teacher from the previous year. I felt like she at least made an effort to understand and communicate with me. I remember a field trip to the zoo, she held my hand the entire day. At the end of the trip she said to me, privately, in Mandarin, “why can’t you be this well behaved all the time? You’re actually my favorite, you know that?”

That second half of the year in 1997, I think the school asked my dad to take me to a psychologist to be evaluated. Or, at the very least, there were conversations around the topic of “ADD”. I kept hearing this term often and I think it was likely my dad went to seminars or listened to programs explaining it. I think it was becoming clear to him at that point, from what people were telling him, there was something wrong with his son, and he wanted to find solutions. Eventually he took me to a psychologist. The psychologist spoke to me in Chinese for about half an hour, asking me questions about family life and listening to my stories about playing checkers with my grandmother and piano lessons with my mom. When my dad came back in, the doctor said “Your son doesn’t have ADD. He’s been sitting here calmly talking to me for the past half hour.” Can you imagine how crestfallen my dad probably felt as we drove home? He probably thought that there wasn’t an actual name or label for what I was, and that I was simply a bad kid and he should have been a better parent.

I was finally diagnosed with ADHD in 2021, at the age of 30, after ArtCenter, after a master’s from Carnegie Mellon, after designing in-car interfaces at GM. By then, I had long stopped asking why the birds could sing without being seen, why I could hear the rain but not name what it was doing to me.