Pag. 15
SCHOOL
DAYS
Thinking back to those few years living on the Peak, I’d
have to say I was happy. I could have been content spending the rest of my life
in that house, helping my mom fold clothes, watching my dad curse as he chopped
vegetables, and explaining the world as I saw it to my friend the ambassador’s
daughter. Even the early morning workouts, as painful as they were, had a
beautiful side: as the sun rose up over the mountain, it painted the city and
the bay below in gold, like a giant chest of treasure.
So it came as a nasty surprise when my father told me
my days of innocence were coming to an end.
“School?” I shouted, stomping my foot in rage. School
was the place where the neighbors’ kids wasted all the best parts of the day.
It meant dressing up in sissy clothes, spending hours in a stifling classroom,
and learning things that were of no use to anyone. I could learn everything I
needed to right here at home. Probably more.
Of course, like other arguments I had with father,
this one was a complete waste of time, and so a few days later I found myself
taking my first bus ride down the Peak to the Nan Hua Elementary Academy. On my
way down, I ate my lunch, even though I’d just finished breakfast.
Nan Hua was a very good school, one of the best in the
area, and I was extremely lucky to have a chance to go there. The teachers were
patient, the classrooms were spacious and brightly lit, and the students were
all from well-bred families.
I hated it from the instant I walked through the
schoolyard gates.
Every minute I spent there was torture (except for
lunch hour, and occasionally, gym). Trapped in a classroom with nothing to do
but puzzle at the words in my texts or listen to the droning voice of the
teacher , I almost missed the aches and pains of my father’s morning regimen—a sore
body was better than a numb brain any day. The boredom forced me to find ways
of amusing myself. I’d make faces at other students, or thump rhythms on the
desk with my palms, or fall out my chair by accident…over and over again.
After a few noisy but enjoyable disruptions, the
teacher would usually drag me out into the hall.
“Chan Kong-sang, you’ll never amount to anything!” she’d tell me, her
Pag. 16
face stretched out in anger. It would be all I could
do to avoid breaking into laughter. (It really was a very funny expression.)
In those days, teachers could be creative with their
punishments. Usually I’d have to stand for the rest of the period holding a
desk over my head. Sometimes I’d have to wear a sign around my neck, explaining
the nature of my crime. Like, “This is a noisy, ill-behaved boy.” Or, “This boy
lost all of his books.” Or, “This boy has not done his homework.” Sometimes it
would just say, in a couple of characters, “Useless!” To be honest, I couldn’t
read very well back then, so I’d have to make my teacher’s word as to what they
said.
Standing out in the hall was peaceful, at least. And
if no one was looking, I’d gently put the desk down, lean against the wall, and
catch a few winks. Learning how to sleep standing up was probably the most
useful thing school ever taught me.
Actually, now I regret not having paid more attention
in school. You can’t ever go back again, and I’ll never know the pleasures of
the classics, or higher mathematics, or the great lessons of history. Once in a
while, I wonder what would have happened if had taken the other path, the one
that led to high school, and college, and a respectable career in business. Or
maybe law, or medicine.
I could have been the world’s most famous doctor.
Instead of the world’s most famous patient.
I never did get the hang of being a student. Each morning,
before I left, my mother would give me money for the bus ride home—not wanting
me to take the long hike up the Peak in the evening. Well, I’d usually use the
money to buy snacks, and then rely on the kindness of strangers to get a ride
home. It’s surprising how many strangers were willing to pick up a small,
ragged-looking Chinese boy walking up the side of a mountain.
If I had no luck hitchhiking, I’d walk home, which
would take hours. To save time, I’d usually take a shortcut the last couple of
hundred feet, a scramble up the side of a cliff that would put me in our
backyard. With any luck, I’d be able to sneak in the rear entrance and find my
mom before my dad found me.
When I wasn’t lucky, which was often enough, at the
top of the climb the first thing I’d see were my father’ s work shoes. Looking up, I’d see the rest of my dad, his
face rigid with rage. Without a word, he’d grab my arms and haul me up,
marching me into the house, down the hall, and into the garbage room, not even
letting me change out of my school clothes first.
Dad wasn’t the only obstacle I’d have to get past in
my daily trip back home. As I dragged myself up the cliff, sweaty and annoyed,
I’d hear braying laughter—Hyah ha hanh!
Like a pack of hyenas.
Cap. 17
“Hey, guy, look—there’re monkeys on this mountain!”
The neighborhood bullies who’d tormented my friend the
ambassador’s daughter were rich enough to have drivers take them up and down
the mountain. So by the time I’d gotten back home, they’d already be there—waiting
for me.
“What’s the matter, boy? Lose your bus money?”
“Or are you too
poor for the bus?”
“Hey, what do you expect? His parents are just
servants, anyway.”
I’d be tired, my shirttails hanging out, my face
smudged, but a second later, I’d be making the biggest of the bullies eat a
dirt sandwich.
Those fights weren’t like in the movies.
There isn’t anything pretty or graceful about a fight
between two young kids. Everything is arms and legs, poked eyes and ripped
clothing and sharp gravel stuck in awkward places. Even the winner ends up
looking like an avalanche survivor. And I wasn’t always the winner.
I remember one fight when this wealthy little brat I
was pounding on grabbed me by the legs and pulled me off balance. I went down,
and he went down on top of me. My body hit the hard ground. My head hit an even
harder rock. Everything went dark.
The boy I was fighting with was the son of another
ambassador—I don’t remember what country—and as soon as he saw me, stiff and
motionless on the ground, he ran to find his father. The other kids scattered.
When his dad came over, he turned white with horror.
If I died, there’d surely be a scandal. This was an international incident in
the making. (These days, maybe I would have sued them, but at the time, I
couldn’t do anything.)
Anyway, I woke up in my bed in dark, a huge bump on my
head, feeling nauseated. Little flashes of light, like tiny comets, seemed to
shoot through the blackness. And my entire skull hurt. I was floating in a bath
of pain.
The door opened and my father walked in. “Ah Pao,” he
said. “This is from your friend.” I lifted my head with effort and saw a parcel
in his arms—a large, fancy box of chocolates. I think they were French, even.
Dad brought it over and set it down next to the bed,
and quietly left to go cook dinner.
Even though I was sick to my stomach, I was also
hungry. Well, I was always hungry.
That box of chocolates, the entire box, didn’t even
last an hour. I crawled back into bed trying hard not to throw up—after all,
they were French chocolates, and I didn’t want to waste them. Getting hit in
the head had turned into the best thing that had happened to me in a long time.
That didn’t last long. When my father came back,
smelling of scallions and sesame oil, he saw the crumpled tissue paper
scattered around the bed and the sweet smear of chocolate around my month and
exploded.
Pag. 18
“You ate the whole box?” he shouted.
“Ooh…” I said, caramel rising in my throat.
Without another word, he pulled me out of bed and gave
me a sound spanking. If I was well enough to eat four dozen milk chocolates—some
with cherry liqueur centers—I was well enough to take my medicine.
If it wasn’t one thing, it was another. I never did
any homework. I’d tear my good school clothes in fights or in scrambles up my
special shortcut. I’d throw my books and schoolbag off the Peak, giving no
thought to the fact that my parents would only have to buy me new ones. Each
time, I’d face the music—lectures, spankings, a night in the trash room—with a shrug
and a smirk.
I ended up being told I’d have to repeat the first
year of primary school, and even if I wasn’t learning anything, my parents
were: they were beginning to realize that their son was not the scholarly type.
My parents pulled me out of school and I went back to
my old routine of following my mom around and getting under my dad’s skin.
And that was the end of my academic career.
I guess I thought I was pretty smart, getting out of
school that way. I’d watch the rich kids driving down the mountain to a fresh
day of hell, laughing to myself as I looked forward to another warm afternoon on
my own. The last laugh would be on me.
I imagine the conversation as having happened
something like this. My mother and my father ran into one another in the
corridor that dominated our world.
“Lee-lee, we have to talk about Ah Pao.”
My mother, afraid of what was coming next, remained
silent, but reluctantly nodded.
“That boy is out of control,” my father said. “He has
no direction, no self-respect.”
“He’s a good boy…” she said in my defense, sounding
tentative.
“He needs to learn how to be a man.”
Then they talked about the future and about the
painful subject of money. The post with the French ambassador had been a
lifesaver, but it was not allowing them to save anything else. My father’s
cooking and my mother’s housekeeping had impressed the ambassador’s friends to
no end. Other job offers had come. Some of them were too good to ignore. One of
them was too good to pass up: a job as head cook for the American embassy…in
Australia.
Not only would the job pay more money, it would also
give us the chance to get Australian residency, maybe even a chance someday to
move to the United States. Even back then, there was uncertainty about the
mainland, and my father had learned from personal experience that in
uncertainty lay danger.
Pag. 19
But taking the job in Australia would mean leaving the
family behind, at least for the time being. And while my mom was a strong
woman, I was too big now to be put in a washbasin and left to splash around.
Finally, Dad, a guy’s to the bone, went back to the
traditional source of advice for men all over the world: his drinking buddies.
They’d helped him decide to keep me, even lending my dad money to pay for my
mom’s operation. Now they suggested a way of getting rid of me—for my own good.
“It’s a hard life, but a good one.”
“He’ll get some discipline.”
“Maybe he’ll even become a star.”
And they all shared a hearty laugh. But the decision
was made. My dad would take me to the place that would become my home for the
next decade of my life:
Yu Jim-yuen’s China Drama Academy.
