Panda Gifts Chapter 1, Part 5

From Taipei to Queens to Mt. Vernon

Not long after the disastrous swinging lesson, Dad hit me because I looked him directly in the eye. Mom and Dad told me I was doing this thing that was very bad: I had given Dad “dengyian.” I had stared him down. I thought I was behaving normally, but I had never been forbidden to look at adults I had never been humiliated. I had never been forced to look at the floor when some one spoke to me.  After Dad hit me. I ran into Puopuo’s room and jumped into her bed again. Mom came into the room and told me it was my fault that Dad had hit me. She said, “Nibudongshi.” “You don’t understand the way things are.” Or “You are not an obedient child.” I didn't care what Mom said or what she thought of me. Puopuo loved me. Puopuo still thought I was a good child. Puopuo would take care of me; her love would protect me from these crazy people. At that point, I hated Mom and Dad both, but I didn't need them because Puopuo was still the most important adult in my life and she and I could depend on each other. They could do anything they wanted to me, but they could never take her love away from me. I learned to look down at the floor when Dad talked to me. I didn’t look him in the face in case I ended up staring at his face with an uncontrollable expression. I avoided looking at him at all. For the next fifteen years even though we lived in the same house, I hardly knew what he looked like because I averted my eyes when he came into the room. I talked to him, but I didn’t look at him.

In 1968, I started kindergarten at P.S. 121. I didn't understand or speak a word of English. I used hand gestures to communicate with my teachers and classmates. Every day after I came home from school, I tried to teach Puopuo the English words I learned so she could keep up with my progress in the world. I was fascinated by my strange, pale and brown classmates and I was very interested in every strange thing we had to do. We sang songs about blackbirds baked in a pie. A king in his cellar counting money. We learned about a little old lady who lived in a shoe. There were books in the classrooms that I got to look at when there was nothing else to do. There was very little reading material in our house, so I would page through picture books in the school library over and over again, staring at all the drawings – a little blond boy jumping over a candlestick, a little blond girl sitting on a mushroom, a giant who lived in a castle in the air. Tw blond children called Jack and Jill, rolling down a hill. During classroom activities,  I did whatever everyone else was doing and I watched everyone’s gestures and reactions with an eagle eye. A few months into the school year, my teacher told Mom that even though I didn't speak English, I managed to be very talkative. At Easter, Mom walked me to school and Americans stopped us on the street to compliment us on our spring dresses.