The Chinese School was an average High School taken over on Saturdays.
A steady stream of Toyota RAV4s, 4runners, Land Cruiser, Nissan, Honda...
Chinese School in Minnesota,
past the 35-W bridge over the Mississippi river
rushing waters of a miniature silicon valley in the 1970's brief and yet
enduring high tech manufacturing in the region.
3M duct tape! Double sided tape! safety neon! The land of 10,000 lakes!
Chinese School in St. Paul, Minnesota;
somewhere in the vicinity of St. Thomas University,
after you drive past Lake Calhoun.
The parents of the children in Chinese School
worked in high tech manufacturing,
at the University of Minnesota,
carried lunches of leftovers in plastic tupperwear in a plastic bag,
in khakis, button ups.
The children slid out the car doors at the Chinese School in St. Paul, Minnesota
like fish or eels one after the other out of transparent water filled plastic bag brought home from the pet store. They flop in the aquarium and rush out, eager to swim around real and fake algae, zen rocks, their new permanent miniature underwater home.
Not all of the children at the Chinese school were Chinese – some were Taiwanese. Some, in fact, the 56 minority tribes of the Chinese nation, popular on CCP propaganda websites.
The Taiwanese of the Chinese school would, several years later, separate, beginning their own rival Mandarin School.
Cockroaches crawled confidently on the ceiling and over the door frames.
Grandmothers walked the hallway regulating behavior. No bubble gum! No running! No swearing. No abnormal behavior of any kind.
It was best to start early eradicating unhealthy behaviors.
In a lifetime, you can lose everything, but the last thing you will lose is your health.
She was in the 4th grade.
Her friend David, this last week, had begun holding hands with another boy.
His name was Richard.
They were being a bundle of sticks together.
Richard had recently moved from Singapore with his parents, also graduated Graduate students, like Her parents.
Beginning two weekends ago, David and Richard were inseparable.
They walked down the hall skipping after the bell holding hands, talking.
About what? Probably Warcraft II, Command and Conquer, Sim Ant.
They both had bowl cuts and she had a bob.
She also played Warcraft II, Command and Conquer, and Sim Ant.
She clung to the doorframe, when the red metal class bell rang, a hydraulic system for interruption of thought.
The bob in her face, she sucked a strand of hair, it was dusty and salty. It had sweat, bits of yesterday’s dinner, and drool from when she sucked it last.
Spying Lah?
The two boys she was looking for walked up from behind her.
They poked her in the back
Richard still spoke Singaporean english. Singaporean English retained usage of Sentence-final particles common in east asian languages, including Cantonese, Japanese, Mandarin, and Hokkien.
David never felt comfortable holding her hand.
Because she was a girl – what did it mean to hold a girl's hand?
Holding hands,
walking down the hallway,
the grandmother walking around them, in front of them, in opposite directions,
patrolling
their little penises swung between them, like pendulums,
possibly in sync, in unity,
gravitational potential,
and afferent potential.
Perhaps, in the absence of the possibility of that synchronicity,
they felt uncertain
their small boyish minds drew a blank
not ultimately able to compute
What did one do with blanks outside of math problem sheets?
Kumon worksheets?
Dread, punishment, accomplishment -- swirl of mixed up feelings!
Why are you guys holding hands? She replied, LAH
Do you want to hold my hand, she wanted to ask. But would not.
It feels good, David replied. It’s fun. We’re friends. He added.
She put her left hand behind her back. Then her right hand.
Hold my hand then, she reached out.
They looked at her blankly, instead of direct refusal.
Girl-with-bob, though she would never admit it in the future, kept her hand extended for some time. She was hoping for a miracle, a gesture of radical difference on the part of her male friends.
After 30 seconds, or what seemed like an eternity –
Girl-with-bob spoke
do you want me to call your mother?
She asked the two boys, in a sweet tone of voice.
They stared at her blankly.
Why?
I am going to tell your mother you guys are F-A-G-G-O-T-S, she threatened.
Threats came easily to her.
My mother doesn't care about faggots, David replied.
His mother, a former doctor educated in post-reform China did not care about faggots. Same sex desire seemed a plausible intensification of what she had experienced personally in middle school and high school, part of the first generation of women to attend college in New China, studying together, holding hands, talking about the futures they would have in an altered China, or perhaps in Hong Kong, London, Sydney, or in the USA. For David she wanted the best whether it was with a man or a woman, a healthy or unhealthy person, just a place of felicity, patience, constructive feedback, generous but firm money management, shared good health. A good woman, David's mother, a good generous woman of felicity, patience, constructive feedback, generous but firm money management, and good health, she believed it was "hard enough to live a normal life."
Richard’s parents did not know the term faggot.
They had moved from Shanghai to Singapore to Sydney to Minneapolis, Minnesota in the span of 10 years in search of great wealth. They did not have time to learn slang.
Nor would they have cared if Richard was a queen or a twink or a bear – as long as he was Rich!
The other boy whose name was Richard
The girl-w-bob saw their faces,
their calm, boyish faces.
She had to think of another insult, a diversionary tactic. Jesus you guys are little PUss------
An old grandmother walked down the hallway in between classes.
She had in fact been circling these three,
sensing tension, discord, disagreement
She was a sexist, favoring boys over girls.
She was a realist, in favor of giving children a taste of the order of the symbolic and the real.
"the state of nature from which we have been forever severed by our entrance into language."
no running, no swearing, no hitting
no need to say what is easy to leave unsaid
"What did you say?" she said to the girl w bob.
In fact, the girl-w-bob and grandmother had much in common, bitter envy about exclusion from hand holding, homosociality and its real intimacy in childhood, two boys at the astroturf playground w giant practice net, one fore, one aft, one throwing, one ducking, fetching, one passive, one active, one wholly vulnerable in front of the other one putting his body in the path of pain, hurt, injury. One or two whose bodies embodied entwined, useful in the practice of sport, in the care of the self, which is sport, a social psychological enfirmament of the material manifestation of the soul.
this the woman, the girl, denied on account of her sex
what is sex? what does it mean to you ?
"I didn't say nothing" the girl replied, aware of her disadvantages.
"If you didn't say anything than why did I hear something?" the grandmother said
"Are you accusing me of losing my hearing?" she continued
"Are you saying that because I am old I do not know what is going on in the world," the grandmother kept going
"are you saying I am ugly and do not know what it's like to be young and desired by boys?"
"even boys who hold hands with each other?"
"Who may desire the innocence of a girl, or the reproductivity of a woman"
"no, no, no" the girl with bob muttered, knowing already that she has lost.
"Punishment," the grandmother declared, "Stand in the corner for 10 minutes." She raised a finger, "And I will tell your mother when she picks you up."
The girl-w-bob stood in the corner of the long hall way of the Chinese school, which was a normal high school rented out on the weekends for extra cash. She couldn't help but cry.
"Faggot," the two boys holding hands said to her. "Only faggots cry."
Lev Xue is a writer living in the red hook neighborhood of Brooklyn. He’s proud to be learning to skateboard, and volunteering at the community garden. Previously he’s been published in Fence, Jubilat, Keith LLC and other magazines. He lives with his border collie dog, poopy Xue.
High Horse 