Girl in Translation

Mr. Bogart didn’t mind the white kids as much, and I might have thought he was simply a racist, had it not been for Tyrone Marshall, who was black. Tall and soft-spoken, Tyrone was incredibly smart. He had the highest test scores in every subject except math, where I beat him. He didn’t show off, but when he got called on, he was never wrong. One of his book reports, on which he’d gotten an A+, was hung on the wall. I memorized a line from it because it had impressed me, even though I couldn’t understand all of the words: “This book takes us into an arena of fierce controversy.” His skin was a matte dark brown, like chocolate dusted in cocoa, and he had thick lashes that curled violently away from his eyes. Mr. Bogart loved him and so did I.

When Mr. Bogart lectured about how wonderful Tyrone was, and by implication, what a sorry bunch of underachievers the rest of us were, Tyrone would sink ever lower in his seat.

“You were born in the get dough, were you not, Tyrone?” Mr. Bogart asked, pacing back and forth before the blackboard.

Tyrone nodded.

“Were your parents college graduates?”

Tyrone shook his head.

“What does your father do?”

His voice barely audible, Tyrone responded, “He’s in jail.”

“And your mother?”

“She’s a saleslady.” A dull red burning was visible through Tyrone’s skin, lighting it up from the inside. He was miserable. Much as I understood that feeling of embarrassment, I wanted to be in his place too.

“And YET…” Mr. Bogart addressed the rest of us dramatically. “And YET this boy has the highest national test scores this school has ever seen.”

Tyrone looked down.

“Tyrone, I know you are modern by nature but you must set an example.” Then Mr. Bogart continued his speech. “And YET Tyrone reads Langson Hughes and William Golden. I ask you-what is the difference between a Tyrone Marshall and the rest of you? DETERMINATION. DRIVE.” And so he went on.

All of this made Tyrone a complete outcast with the other kids. I wanted to tell him that I had been like him in Hong Kong, that I knew what it was to be admired and hated at the same time, that I knew it simply amounted to being alone. I wanted to tell him I thought he had beautiful eyes. Like so many things I wanted to say, I never did. What I did do was this: when A

Miss Kumar, the black teacher who taught the other sixth-grade class, had colorful posters and guinea pigs in her room, and when her door was closed, I would pause on the way to the girls’ room and hear her class laughing. She was tall and elegant, with her long hair always neatly coiled at the top of her head. Mr. Bogart’s classroom was barren. We didn’t have pets and there were only a few decorations in our room, mainly consisting of signs with block letters: REQUIREMENTS OF GOOD CITIZENSHIP. CHRISTMAS IS FOR CHARITY.

Mei Mei had been my friend in Hong Kong. She’d been both smart and very pretty, with black curly hair and pink cheeks. I was always ranked number one in all of our classes and she was number two. In Hong Kong, the students were seated in the order of their ranking, so Mei Mei sat right behind me every year. She lived in our apartment building as well and we played together often. I gave her little presents like stickers, and I thought she was my best friend. When I told her we were leaving for the U.S., however, I saw envy in her eyes but no sadness. In fact, she started spending time with another girl right away. I think she was happy that she would finally be number one.

My friendship with A

A

I learned that A

FOUR

We were assigned to work in pairs to build a diorama depicting “some of the basic skills of conflict resolution.” Of course, A

After school, A

“How do you do, Mrs. Avery?” I asked.

She twisted around and looked momentarily surprised, but then grasped my hand firmly. Her hands were extremely large for a woman’s, almost as big as a man’s, and they engulfed mine in warmth. She smiled, so I could see the wrinkles around her eyes deepen. “How do you do, Kimberly? It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

As I sat back in my seat, feeling satisfied that I had managed to get through at least one occasion according to the rules of etiquette we’d been taught back home, A

“Let me see that,” she said.

“Get your own,” he said, not looking up.

“Mom!” she said. “He’s not sharing!” She tried to pull the comic book from his hands, but her little brother wrenched it back and then scrunched his wiry body next to the window where A

“Stop fighting and let me drive,” said Mrs. Avery.

It went on like that until we turned onto a beautiful, tree-lined street. The ride hadn’t taken long and I’d never imagined that Brooklyn could look like this, especially such a short distance from the school. There was no graffiti anywhere, no housing projects or construction pits. The cobblestone street was lined with low, elegant houses and gardens. Mrs. Avery parked by a three-story house with some kind of stone structure in the front garden. It looked like a well. When I peered in, however, I saw that it was actually a fountain with water spouting from the center, filled with live goldfish and carp. Not long after that, I dreamed of Mrs. Avery giving me an extra goldfish from her fountain in a plastic bag, perhaps a baby that had just been born. I would take it home and keep it alive in one of our rice bowls. Surely, a goldfish couldn’t be too expensive to keep, since it didn’t eat much.