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When my sister and I were growing up, we lived in a small town in the South. The air was clean and the landscape was crisp. We walked ten blocks or rode our bikes along one, long dirt road and then onto a long, paved road to the neighborhood bus stop two streets down. There was a bike rack for our red and black dirt bikes, which we got on sale at Sears, chained and locked with a simple, metal combination lock. We waited for activity along the lonely road, until finally the big, yellow bus made its way down. Everything seemed to move at a snails clip, until you got to school.
In our elementary school, there were exactly four asian kids: me, my sister, and Jason and Ester (brother and sister), whose family we knew. Our mothers were friends and belonged to the same geh at one point (geh=a circle of people who pool money to make private loans). I still have a picture of my sister and Jason dressed in costume; my sister in her Korean hanbok and Keds with her permed bangs pinned at the side and Jason in his tae-kwon-do uniform and Reeboks. They were standing side by side on a cement platform outside a classroom, looking sort of Korean and somewhat confused.
My sister had many friends and became a patrol. I had few friends, won awards (perhaps to make up for my lack of friends) and also became a patrol. Jason and Ester did their own thing. I’m not sure what they did (other than Jason putting his sister in a regular head lock), which shows we weren’t very close, yet I believe all four of us still shared something big and unforgettable–a common experience in our journey to fit in. There will be jesting, when children are involved, even racial. So, it was with great pains that we wore the trends of the day, Osh-Kosh and banana clips, got kinky, chemical perms and spoke with clear, enunciated English. We wrote papers that showed off our composition skills. Anything to show we were part of the dominant culture, like everyone else. I know I’ve come full circle, twenty years later, when I love to hear the sounds of heavily accented English spoken by my toddler niece.
“I laahk cake,” she says, after taking her first sugary bite of butter-cream frosted Publix goodness. Clapping her hands, she doles out kisses to whomever arrives at her pursed lips first. (My youngest uncle and I nearly always bump heads). The likes followed yesterday, when my sister and I were on the phone talking about an event we’re planning. When my niece finished off the last few gulps of her rice mixed with water, she said a throaty “ah,” and then “I lahk gook.” (Gook=soup). She resorts to her Korean-laden English when she’s upset too. When my niece is indignant because her mother reminds her to go number one after breakfast, followed by routine hygienic maintenance, she cries, “I neber,” and then “I mean ne-ber!” In case we didn’t get it the first time around.
After all those years I spent running from being culturally different, I don’t think it’s strange that now I celebrate the culture beyond almost anything else. Who knows how my niece will handle these things when she begins school in an overwhelmingly non-Asian student body, but one thing’s for sure, I will be waiting to hear the words that are music to my ears, “I laahk…”
squaw 