Apple Pie

In the '80s, we were an Asian family living in the Midwest. Specifically, in Michigan, in a small town about forty-five minutes from Detroit, during the period when that city was incredulously suffering from international competition in automobile manufacturing. This was not always a good place to be if you're Asian.

Once, my fourth-grade teacher assigned us to write a self-description. She then collected them and read them aloud, asking the class to guess who had written each description. It didn't take them long to link me with mine: I was the only one in the class with black hair. I had also described myself as having a "big nose;" not understanding, at that age, that my nose was not big, only shaped the way Asian noses are shaped, unlike the high-bridged Caucasian noses of my classmates. I think that my teacher, who was black, understood what was going on, saw the buds of racial self-hatred starting to grow: she stopped reading my description at that point, looked right at me, and said, "Your nose is not big." At the time, I didn't know why she said that, but her look, her tone of voice, have stayed with me long after most of my other memories, both good and bad, have faded.

I have one other clear memory from that time period. I was the new kid, again; we had left one small town in Michigan for another small town, a better one, where the kids no longer tormented me at recess. (At my previous school, I had used to feign headaches so that the nurse would send me home, enabling me to escape my tormentors.) During my first gym period at the new school, we were going to play kickball. Captains were chosen. I steeled myself to once again be chosen last. But it was different this time. One of the captains was a boy named Andy, with a buzz cut and wire-rimmed glasses. He said to the boy he had just chosen for his team, "Let's take the new girl. We don't know how she plays yet. Maybe she's really good." It was pragmatic on his part rather than kind, but to me it was as though he had smiled at me in friendship: it was the first time I could remember that someone had given me a chance, instead of pre-judging me based on what I looked like.