Becoming Who We Are Ch. 02

Becoming Who We Are: Chapter Two

Thank you for joining me in Chapter Two!

Copyright © 2021 to the author.

**

As the week wore on, Luke relaxed. He didn't see Jeff again, and Luke hoped he had forgotten all about him.

Pre-calculus had already turned into a nightmare. His teacher held him after class Wednesday and asked if he felt comfortable with the material.

"Uh, it's okay," he said.

Mrs. Shuman peered over her glasses at him.

"Are you sure? You seem a little lost already, and we're still reviewing. It may be that your school in New York did not prepare you adequately for this level. I can assure you, the work will only become more difficult."

Luke felt torn. His teacher had offered an excuse that would allow him to save face if he transferred to an easier class. Still, he knew dropping pre-cal would anger his mother. She would accuse him of being lazy and not trying hard enough.

"There's no shame in transferring to another class, Luke," Mrs. Shuman said, her tone gentler.

"Um, I guess I want to keep trying here."

The woman cocked an eyebrow as Luke wiped a few beads of perspiration from his forehead.

"Oh. Well, why don't we give you another week, and I'll work with you after school each day to see how you do. If after that time, I don't believe you have the foundation necessary to succeed in this class, I will transfer you to advanced algebra and trigonometry and notify your parents."

"They wouldn't understand."

"Your parents might understand more than you think," Mrs. Shuman said, giving him a sympathetic smile. "But I see you don't want to upset them, so let's try some one-on-one work and see if that helps."

"Thanks," Luke said gratefully.

"Not at all. Come back after school today and we'll begin. Now I guess you'll need a pass for your next class."

The woman returned to her desk and wrote quickly on a slip of paper, handing it to Luke.

"The bell's about to ring. You'd better get going."

Luke dashed down the hallway and out of the teacher's sight.

Poor kid, she thought, shaking her head and returning to her classroom.

The day's tutoring session did not go well. Luke seemed unable to absorb Mrs. Shuman's patient explanations. After twenty-five minutes of mutual frustration, she stopped the lesson. From a desk drawer, she produced a worn textbook.

"Here. I want you to take this home and look through it tonight. Tomorrow, we'll see how much of it you understand. It's one of my old algebra texts, and most of the material ought to be familiar to you. It's less advanced than what we're doing in class, but it should give us both a better idea of where you stand in your mathematical studies."

Her words struck Luke as ominous. Mrs. Shuman's face held no expression -- did she ever play poker? he wondered absently -- but her words seemed to indicate he had better think of a way to tell his parents he would have to switch out of pre-cal.

As the days passed, he found chemistry less baffling than he had expected. His teacher, an amateur magician, coupled showmanship with a flair for explaining concepts so that a small child could grasp them. A few students complained Mr. Porter treated them like sixth-graders, but Luke appreciated it.

His lab partner turned out to be the beautiful blonde from homeroom, Darcy. Although she had initially deferred to him -- he guessed she figured a Chinese guy would have to have the periodic table memorized -- she quickly realized his talents, if any, did not lie in the sciences. In her quietly pleasant way, she did most of the work on their first experiment and allowed him to record the results. That arrangement suited him fine.

Luke looked forward to Honors English every day. Mrs. Garcia had a rather severe, formal air, but Luke guessed she behaved that way to compensate for her lack of height. She stood about four-foot-ten, the same as his grandmother. The first day, she had passed out a syllabus, told them sternly not to lose them, then directed the class to use the rest of the period to write an essay on what they hoped to be doing ten years from now. A few kids grumbled in surprise, but Mrs. Garcia quelled them with a look. Luke didn't know where he wanted to be when he was twenty-seven, so he wrote about where he did not want to be: Working for a restaurant. Leading an aerobics class. Doing statistics for an insurance company. Living in New Jersey. He handed his essay forward with the rest of the class, wondering anxiously if Mrs. Garcia had a sense of humor. He hoped so, but if she was the dour type, the time to learn that was on an ungraded essay.

She had returned their papers the next day. Luke turned his over cautiously to see what she had written across the top. "Delightful. Now write me another, this time following directions."

He glanced quickly at her. She gave him a hint of a smile, and he felt better. That night, he rewrote the essay, saying he'd like to live in England and have written a best-selling novel at age twenty-seven, just like Ken Follett.

"Nice job," she wrote on this attempt. "If I were grading, this would receive an 'A.' Why go to all the way to England to write, though? What is there that is not here?"

He didn't tell her the real reason for his choice: It would put an ocean between his parents and him.

Much as he enjoyed English, Honors History was quickly becoming his favorite subject. Mrs. Cowden had a knack for making it all seem alive and important -- but perhaps he should have expected as much from anyone who would call a course "Alternative U.S. History: Forgotten and Misplaced Americans." The class, she promised on the first day, would change the way they viewed the country their ancestors had built. The first assignment involved learning their family histories, especially getting any details on when and why their ancestors had come to the United States. Luke had no need to ask his parents about that; his grandmother had told all the children about the family, going back hundreds of years. He knew his mother had been born in the United States, but that her parents had died when she was a baby. A white couple had adopted her and reared her in upstate New York. Adoption records were sealed, so he had no way of learning more. His father had escaped from China to Hong Kong, and then to the United States twenty years ago. After he had married Luke's mother, he had smuggled his own mother out of China and brought her to live with him and his young family.

"During war with Japanese, my husband was Kuomintang," his father's mother had said. "He was nobody of importance. He even deserted Kuomintang for Communist army, but after war, the party said he had 'rightist' thoughts. They put him to hard labor, pulling carts loaded with bricks and stones. Later, they sent him to labor camp. During Cultural Revolution, they took him away forever. Part of my heart died, but I still had my two sons. Then my oldest son joined Red Guards. 'Father is close, mother is close, but neither is as close as Chairman Mao,' he told me. More of my heart died, but my younger son, your father, never failed me. He grew strong and smart, and when he was just nineteen, Nixon came to China. After that, the party let people travel more. Your father got a pass to visit his uncle in Hong Kong. Of course, he never came back. That was our plan. A few years passed, but I knew he would not forget me. Then he sent word to visit Old Uncle in Hong Kong. My heart came alive! I knew that meant to come to America."

"Don't you miss China?" young Luke had asked the first time he heard this story.

"Of course," his grandmother had replied. "America confuses me -- so many choices; so different. But my life is here now."

The next day, Mrs. Cowden had posted a large United States map, and her students used pins and little pieces of paper to mark their birthplaces and the areas where their ancestors had settled. Luke was the only one born in New York City.

"I thought you were Chinese or Japanese or something," one girl said.

"My grandparents came from China," he said, surprised that he needed to explain, "but I'm a native-born American."

Mrs. Cowden moved smoothly into the exchange.

"And where did your ancestors come from, Bethany?"

"Dad said his family was Scots-Irish, and Mom said she thinks her people came from Germany, but she wasn't sure."

"How about you, Eve?" the teacher asked a girl standing next to Luke.

"I'm African on both sides, and Pop said his grandmother was an American Indian. Cherokee."

Mrs. Cowden looked pleased.

"That's four continents among the three of you. This group is practically a United Nations committee meeting, but better behaved."

The following day, a world map appeared next to the U.S. map. Several countries had been colored in with a fluorescent marker.

"These highlighted countries show all the areas the ancestors of everyone in this class came from. As you can see, Australia and Antarctica are the only continents that have not contributed to our gene pool, unless someone has penguin blood and didn't mention it to me. This map should give you a feeling for how diverse your class is, and remind you that every American came here from somewhere else. Even Native Americans crossed the land bridge from Asia thousands of years ago.

"A lot of what this class is about has to do with why your forefathers, and foremothers, came to this country, what they found once they arrived, and how they lived in America once they settled here. I encourage you to keep asking your relatives what they know about the family history, because the more you learn about your ancestors, the more you know about yourselves. Yes, Bethany?"

"What could I possibly learn about myself from finding out my grandfather sold insurance? Who cares what he did? He's dead, and I'm here now."

"Excellent question, Bethany. You're on the softball team, right?"

The girl nodded.

"Well, suppose you find out your stodgy old granddad was an ace ball player and even played in the minor leagues before he met your grandmother and settled down to sell insurance? Maybe you've always wondered where your talent comes from when no one else in your family can swing a bat. I think knowing that sort of thing is important, don't you?"

Bethany shrugged, unconvinced.

"Or maybe you'll dig up an old family scandal. Maybe your granddad sold insurance because it was a great way to meet women? Or perhaps he had an affair with Bette Davis?"

The girl brightened at those ideas, so Mrs. Cowden felt it safe to move on.

"Anyway, this isn't a course about dates and treaties so much as it is about us, and why what our ancestors did is still affecting the way we live and treat each other today."

Luke leaned forward, intrigued. He had never considered history as anything beyond a bunch of white guys issuing proclamations and signing the Treaty of Ghent.

On Friday, the school library stayed open until five, so Luke spent his afternoon there, getting to know it. He tried to get through some of the textbook Mrs. Shuman had lent him, but it might as well have been written in Arabic for all the sense he could make of it. Giving up on algebra, he moved on to a novel chosen at random from the shelves and lost himself in its pages.

He emerged from the building and crossed the street to the park, thinking about the book. He didn't notice the tinges of yellow and orange in some trees' leaves, the sound of brass and drums echoing from the field, or the blond boy in the shadows.

"Hey!" The harsh voice jolted Luke out of his reverie. When he saw the boy's smile, Luke's heart sank. Jeff had not forgotten him after all.

Despite his fear, Luke kept walking, hoping to avoid a confrontation. Jeff closed the distance between them in three quick strides. He grabbed Luke's shoulder and wrenched the smaller boy around to face him. His left hand clutched Luke's shirt just under the boy's throat.

"Where do you think you're going, chink?"

Luke said nothing. His mind raced with all the possible fates he could meet here; his mouth felt dry as a chalk-filled eraser. He tried to swallow. This close, Jeff towered over him. Luke fixed his eyes on the larger boy's thick neck. The part of his brain not rigid with fear noted the beads of sweat and the throbbing artery beside his Adam's apple. His collar looked damp; the acrid odor of perspiration hung heavily in Luke's nostrils.

"Answer me, you fuckin' gook!"

Even in his panic, Luke realized Jeff didn't really want an answer. No matter what he said, Jeff would twist it to his own purposes. Luke needed to think of something Jeff couldn't distort, but his mind refused to cooperate. The only thing that came to him was a scream from his soul: GET OUT!

As his heart pounded out the seconds, Luke's saw Jeff's face grow redder and angrier, until he looked just like the descriptions of Satan Luke had heard in Sunday school as a child.

"Why are you doing this?" he finally whispered.

Something changed in Jeff's face, and he pulled Luke closer. His cold blue eyes bored into Luke's gentle brown ones.

"You killed my grandfather," he rasped.

"But -- but I don't even know your grandfather."

Almost as if he were in a trance, Jeff continued.

"And you almost killed my dad. When he got back from Nam, he wasn't the same. You did it. It's your fault."

His words sounded rehearsed, even to Luke's terrified ears. How many times had he said them, and to whom?

Jeff's face moved closer, close enough to kiss his victim.

"I hate you," he said softly. "I hate you all."

"I -- I didn't do anything to your father," Luke squeaked. "I'm American."

Jeff rolled his right shoulder and slammed his fist into Luke's belly, just below the ribcage. Luke's breath whooshed from his body. Jeff let go of his shirt and Luke dropped to the ground, curling into a protective ball.

"You're not American," Jeff spat. "You're a goddam chink."

Jeff sauntered away, leaving Luke writhing on the warm grass. The cheerful notes of the school song drifted over him as he rocked in agony.

**

Melina tried, but she could not rid of the idea that she had joined the Fighting Santas Marching Band. She supposed the uniforms' designers had pictured a dignified squad of British redcoats. The actual effect of sixty-eight kids in ill-fitting cherry-red suits trimmed with white conjured images of a militant department-store Santa union demonstration. She managed not to laugh only by concentrating on the music and marching, and by glancing anywhere but at the kid in front of her, who had pale hair and a generous waistline.

Ms. Shaffer had already formed the lines by the time Melina joined the band, so the director put her at the end of one row, next to the saxophones and behind the other trumpets.

"You're a solid enough player to hold your own there, Melissa, and your presence will give the saxes a taste of melody. Normally, they don't get to hear much other than percussion and other rhythm lines. Terribly dull for them, but the melody has to go out front."

Melina marched next to the first-chair tenor sax player, a pretty girl who apparently had no other redeeming traits. Suzanne ignored Melina's polite hellos, speaking only to criticize the other students' performances. After a couple of days, Melina stopped trying to be friendly.

On Suzanne's other side stood Mark. He didn't like his stand partner any more than Melina did, so the two quickly developed a rapport. He always had a smile or a funny expression to punctuate Suzanne's petulant remarks, which Melina returned when Suzanne wasn't looking. By Friday, Mark and Melina had fallen into a routine of pre- and post-practice chats, usually walking together to and from the field.

The Rose Warriors would play their first game Saturday. On Friday, Ms. Shaffer called for a dress rehearsal, "so you can get the feel of marching in wool in ninety-degree heat and I can see how you look. And hear how you sound, of course."

The band director sat in the stands as the drum major led the band onto the field and through the three-song pre-game show on which Ms. Shaffer had settled. One thing about being on the end of a line, Melina thought as they executed a turn, you had to take either enormous strides or baby steps all the time, depending on whether you were a pivot or the end of a gate. Either way, she liked it. Straight marching was okay, but after a while she got bored with the twenty-two-and-a-half-inch regulation steps with which Ms. Shaffer seemed so obsessed. And trying to get any kind of decent tone out of her trumpet while taking giant steps made it all much more challenging.

The drum major, a gymnast named Kathy, checked the lines for sagging and wasn't shy about shouting the names of those who had drifted out of alignment. Every few measures, Melina would check her own line, which had curved somewhat in the middle during the march onto the field. She made sure her own right foot nailed the yardlines.

Ms. Shaffer had a point about the uniforms and the heat; they made a potent combination. Still, this felt no worse than the humid Maryland summer she had just come from. Her uniform flapped as she marched, allowing air to circulate, so she didn't think she had grounds for complaint. The others did not share her feelings. During the breaks between songs, most seemed to gripe about the heat, especially Suzanne.

"Cut the complaining," Kathy shouted, cool in her tight shorts and T-shirt. "It'll be winter soon enough, and then you'll be glad the uniforms are wool."

Kathy, Melina thought, would make a great drill sergeant some day.

Ms. Shaffer picked her way down the stands after they had completed the pre-game show. She spoke briefly to Kathy, then took a few steps toward the band.

"You sound good," she bellowed, "but I'm worried about the way the lines look as you march. Every one of them sags in the middle. So we're going to spend the next half hour marching up and down the field until you get it right."

A chorus of groans and complaints met this announcement.

"Get it right and you can leave sooner," the director said. "For this drill, you won't be playing, but you will hold your instruments in position. Any questions? Good. Let's go. I want a cold drink too."

They spent the next minutes marching to a snare and bass-drum cadence as Kathy and Ms. Shaffer moved among them, offering praise and criticism as warranted.

"Good job, Bill. Keep it up."

"A little faster, Tiffany. You're dragging. Hit the yard line on every eighth step. Good! Much better. Keep that pace."

Melina, Suzanne and Mark received no remarks at all. Kathy fell into step beside Melina and craned her head to check where their line began to sag. She frowned and stalked down the line, matching her steps to those of a girl a few people beyond Mark. Melina couldn't hear what she said to the girl, but she did see Kathy push her forward slightly. She did the same to the next several people. Kathy's performance reminded Melina of a border collie nosing sheep into formation. She stifled a giggle.

Even Melina had worked up a sweat by the time Ms. Shaffer decided more practice would not help the group and dismissed them. Melina and Mark walked together, passing the band director on their way back to the building. Melina made a show of wiping her brow.

"So I guess this is why marching band qualifies as a phys-ed credit, huh?"

Ms. Shaffer smiled.

"You bet. By the way, you looked good out there, Melissa."

"It's Melina, ma'am."

The director smacked her forehead with her hand. "Melina. Sorry. I'll have it right by December, I promise."

The child had a lovely smile, Ms. Shaffer thought, and seemed to have a personality to match. She struck the woman as rather shy; it really was a shame she had gotten stuck next to Ron Barnes, as annoying a brat as Ms. Shaffer had come across in a while. But she had apparently hit it off with the new sax player, what was his name? Mike or Mark? She had no idea. A freckled redhead walked up to her then and asked when he needed to show up tomorrow. Ms. Shaffer sighed. She had only told them twice that day and written it on the board. She put aside her thoughts of -- yes, it was definitely Mike and Melissa -- as she spoke to the trombone player.