| Featured Book |
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| Just West of Famous |
| Charles Baxter doesn't pull any punches when he answers Lisa Coutant's questions in this month's author interview.
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| In this issue: |
An encore poem from Gol McAdam
Claire Litton's amazing Authenticity Leads
A collection of poetry from Craig Kirchner
New fiction from Maria Pollack and Josh Stewart
Plus great poetry from Corie Feiner, Gary Wilkins, and Sherry Pasquerello |
| Coming Next Month |
Anne Frasier has some fresh ideas about how to boost her book sales,
Ron Hogan is the ultimate literary insider - and next month he's going to take the Picolata Review into his world for an exclusive look around.
Plus:More great poetry, short fiction, and features. Enough great writing to satisfy any literary palate.
Want to submit to The Picolata Review? Send your submissions and queries to submissions@picolatareview.org
Complete guidelines can be found here. |
| The Picolata Review |
Managing Editor Mark Pettus is a full time journalist in St. Augustine, Florida, and author of the novel, Transit Gloria
Features Editor Lisa Coutant is a consultant, former writer for the Philadelphia Theatre Review, and a fiction writer. She is also Vice President of the professional writing group, Pennwriters.
Poetry Editor Andy H-H., is a poet who lives in the beautiful countryside of West Yorkshire
with his partner and a menagerie of pets (a sheep occasionally stares in through the kitchen window), in a home surrounded by literary history. Ted Hughes was born there, Sylvia Plath is buried nearby, and first Emily Bronte, then Kate
Bush, made a certain stretch of desolate land five minutes' walk away very famous indeed.
Fiction Editor Serenity Banks's day job is as an industry magazine editor. She also writes an online sex-advice column, and is trying to find an agent for her latest horror novel.
The Picolata Review is a monthly online publication, and a place to find emerging writers and poets. We welcome you, and hope we'll see you again. If you forget our address, look for us just a little west of famous. |
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| Volume 1, Number 2 August, 2006 |
| I am Chinese, by Jamie Ford |
My father was a nationalist. Still in his early teens, he raised money in 1915 to fight the Manchus when Dr. Sun Yat-Sen visited Seattle's Chinatown. Now he was busy raising thousands of dollars to fight the Japanese back home. His home. I was born here.
So when he pinned a button to my school shirt that read "I am Chinese," and told me to never remove it, I was convinced this was further evidence of how much my parents hated me. After all, instead of the local Chinese academy for boys, they sent me all the way across Yesler Avenue to Roosevelt Elementary, a public school for Western children.
My father insisted I learn English. Which at the time made very little sense to me. In my neighborhood, you'd catch a beating for speaking English in the home. But at our house it was the opposite.
"They take you." My father spoke several dialects of Chinese, but English was still a struggle. "They take you scholarshipping."
"Wo bu dong?" I asked in Mandarin. I don't understand.
He slapped me on the cheek and pointed at my lips. Not a violent slap, just something to get my attention. "No more. Now only English. Understand?"
My mother poked her head out of the kitchen with a stoic nod.
"Okay," I said. "But I still don't understand?"
"Hah?" My father asked me. "Hah, you say?" He couldn't explain it in English, and I was now forbidden to ask it in Chinese so I just dropped it and went to school.
He had arranged for what I later found out was a partial scholarship. But the term scholarship had nothing to do with academics. It meant work - to prove that I could benefit the school in some productive way.
So for every mid-day exam, while my classmates had 30 minutes to complete their papers, I was given 20. After rushing through my test I was excused to the cafeteria where I would put on a starched apron so big it covered my knees, and serve lunch to the other kids. Once the last child was served, I would eat alone in the storage closet where giant cans of peaches and tomato sauce towered over me.
There was never time for recess, which was fine by me, since I was the only Chinese kid in school. If I was lucky, I was ignored. If I wasn't, well, I don't like to talk about that. And now I had to wear a button proclaiming the obvious. He might as well have pinned a sign on me that read, "please steal my milk money."
**********
As I passed beneath the black arches of the Chinatown gate on my way to school, I removed the pin and buried it in my pocket. I am Chinese, but I'm not stupid.
I divided fractions in my head and practiced my spellings words in anticipation of whatever rushed pop-quiz awaited - then I noticed someone following me. Maybe not following me, but at least going where I was going.
A little slip of a girl with a fruit sack for a book bag and plucked hair that hung sharply over her face. She had been keeping pace a half-block behind me. She'd followed me across 13th Avenue all the way to Yesler.
She looked about twelve. My age.
When I turned the corner out of sight, I ran to the nearest alley and hid behind a stack of empty milk crates. She walked by, in dirty black patent leather shoes. I watched as she ascended the stairs like a ghost and disappeared inside Theodore Roosevelt Elementary.
Whenever I left the comfort of my own neighborhood, I hung a backward glance on every step, especially at school. She was either very brave or just didn't know better. It turns out she was scholarshipping, just like me.
**********
We formally met as we both donned our aprons - introduced by Mrs. Beatty, a flatulent, chain-smoking, hair-net festooning, living definition of the word broad. She cooked by the vat, measuring cupfuls of ingredients by hand, literally. But like a kenneled dog that won't do his business in the same place he sleeps, she never ate her own handiwork. Instead she brought a lunch-pail.
"Henry," she cackled, "this is Keiko. She's from your side of town. Heck you two are probably related aintcha?" Mrs. Beatty fished out a Zippo and lit a cigarette one-handed, then wandered off with her lunch. "Call me when you're done."
"I'm Henry Lee. From South King." I did my best to seem disinterested, but was secretly elated to have a friendly face in the cafeteria.
"I'm Keiko."
"What kind of name is Kay-Ko?"
There was a pause. Then the bell rang. We could hear doors slamming down the hall and the feet of hungry white kids coming. She looked past long bangs of silky black hair, nervous for the first time.
"Keiko Okabe."
I was dumbfounded. As she pulled her hair back and clipped it, I could see it clearly. She was Japanese. She looked embarrassed. The sum total of all my Japanese friends was a number that rhymed with hero. My father wouldn't allow it. The bombing of Pearl Harbor just months ago had been terrible and unexpected, but was nothing compared to the indiscriminate bombing of Shanghai or the sacking of Nanjing - in his mind anyway. Me, on the other hand, I couldn't even find Nanjing on a map.
"I'm American," she offered in defense.
I didn't know what to say really.
"We'd better get busy."
As we took the lids off the steamer trays we both recoiled at the smell, looking at each other in disgust. It was brown and spaghetti-like. We dished it up with ice-cream scoops as freckled boys in crew cuts, even the ones younger than us, said things like "look, the chink brought his girlfriend" or "more chop-suey please".
We just looked at each other, exchanging smiles, as we dished up extra large helpings of Mrs. Beatty's rat-scrabble cuisine to the boys that insulted us the most. Or the red-haired girls that pulled at the corners of their eyes and made buck-toothed faces.
"Look, they don't even speak English!" a fat girl squealed.
We kept smiling, then ate our lunch of canned pears in the storage room.
**********
After school we cleaned chalkboards, pounded erasers and emptied all the wastebaskets. I didn't mind. It gave the other kids a chance to get on their bikes or their busses and be on their way, which minimized the chance of a scuffle in the parking lot. And besides, I had help, so the work was cut in half - even if she was Japanese.
When we walked home together, I listened to her voice. It was cooler, and more tenuous than the Chinese girls I knew. But her English was far better.
"Have you always gone to Roosevelt?"
I shook my head. "Just since last September. My parents want me to have a Western education - to go to a university, instead of going back to Canton for my Chinese schooling - like all the other kids".
"Why?"
I thought about how to say it gently, but couldn't find a way. "Because of people like you." I glanced out of the corner of my eye and saw her undo the clip that held her long hair back. It fell over her face again. "Because the Japanese have invaded the Northeastern territories. Canton is far away from the fighting, but they still won't let me go." I didn't know what else to say.
"So you weren't born in China?"
I shook my head. "I was born right up there," I pointed to Beacon Hill where Columbus Hospital stood on the outskirts of Chinatown.
She smiled. "That's where I was born too. I'm Japanese. But I'm American first."
"Your parents teach you to say that?" As the words came out I was embarrassed by how much sarcasm came with it.
"Yes. They did. My Grandfather came over right after the great fire in '89. I'm second generation."
"Is that why they send you to Roosevelt?"
We had walked past the black iron arches of Chinatown, all the way to the edge of Nihonmachi, Japantown. I lived seven streets over, but had only been here once. When my father had to meet someone for lunch at the Northern Pacific Hotel, at the edge of the Japanese marketplace. Even then, we left before our meal arrived when he found out that Niroku "Frank" nutsamae, a local Japanese businessman, had built it.
"No," she stopped and looked around, "this is why they send me."
Everywhere I looked I saw an American flag. In every shop window and hanging from every door. Still, many more shops had broken windows and a few were boarded up completely. In front of us was an orange Public Works lift-truck. A bearded man in the bucket was taking down the sign for Mikado Street and replacing it with one that read Dearborn Avenue.
For some reason I remembered the button my father had given me. I fished it out of my pocket and pinned it to my shirt.
For the first time all day, Keiko looked afraid.
**********
The following Saturday I met Keiko outside the Panama Hotel on 6th - a fixture between our worlds, built in 1910 by the famous Japanese architect, Saburo Ozasa.
Now it was a run down shell of its former glory. Immigrants and fisherman who weren't allowed to bring their families with them from the Old Country now used it as a bachelor hotel. I'd always wanted to see the two marble bathhouses in the basement, but was too scared to go inside.
Almost as scared as I was to tell my parents about Keiko.
I'd hinted to my mother about having a Japanese friend, and she gave me her stink-eye - a look of shock so profound you'd think I'd gone whoring in an opium den.
Most parents were indifferent to the Japanese, or the Filipinos who were arriving daily. Some harbored ill feelings, but most simply kept to themselves. Mine pinned an "I am Chinese" button to me every time I walked out the door and expected me to act that way. They each started wearing one as well. My family's nationalistic pride kept swelling - despite their orders to speak my American, as often as I could.
Keiko's family on the other hand, knew all about me.
"Henry!" Keiko was sitting on the front step waving. She gave me a hug and teased me about my pin. "My family is shopping in the market, we'll meet them at the American Garden restaurant.
It was springtime, 1942, and cherry blossoms were beginning to bloom - the streets, lined in pink and white flowers, finally smelled of something other than seaweed, salty fish and low-tide. She raced me through the Japanese market to the restaurant. I let her win. A courteous gesture my father would have expected of me. Plus, I didn't know where we were going. I followed her to the lobby of a Japanese noodle-shop - recently renamed.
"Henry, so good to see you again," Mr. Okabe always wore old gray flannel pants and a hat that made him look like Cary Grant. He spoke beautiful English. "Thank you for walking Keiko home every day. We appreciate you being such a conscientious friend."
I didn't know what conscientious meant, but as he said it he poured me a cup of green tea, so at least I knew it was a compliment. I took the cup with both hands, a sign of respect and offered to pour his tea in return, as I'd been taught, but he had already filled his own cup. "Thank you for inviting me," was all I could think to say, suddenly wishing I'd paid more attention during English lessons.
"That's an interesting button you have on Henry." Keiko's mother spoke in a sweet grandmotherly way. "Where did you get it?"
I covered it with my hand, having forgotten to take it off on the way over. "My father gave it to me. He says I'm supposed to wear it all the time - it's embarrassing."
"You shouldn't be ashamed of who you are." Mr. Okabe added.
I looked at Keiko, wondering what she was thinking about this current discussion. She smiled, obviously feeling more comfortable here than in our grade school cafeteria.
"It's easy to be who you are here, but it's harder at school. At Roosevelt, I mean." Mr. Okabe sipped his tea. "I knew going there was going to be hard on Keiko, but we tell her - be who you are, no matter what. They may never like you, they might even hate you, but eventually, they will respect you."
I liked where the conversation was going. And felt guilty for wishing my own father had explained it that way. He was a member of the Bing Kung Benevolent Association - a group dedicated to preserving Chinese culture. Maybe that was why he struggled to adapt to Western ways.
"There's a free jazz concert on Jackson Street tonight - Oscar Holden will be playing," Keiko's mother asked, "Why don't you invite your family to join us?"
My head split and projected the scene like a horror matinee at the Kokusai Theatre. A dark tragedy came to life as I pictured myself, not only confessing that I had tea with a Japanese family, but that they'd invited us to a jazz concert.
Before I could fake a polite answer, the bottle of shoyu on the table began skipping across the tablecloth. I grabbed it and felt the ground tremble.
Outside a large deuce and a half army truck, the kind I'd only seen in newsreels, belched diesel fumes and rattled shop windows as it rumbled into the square. Gas brakes screeched. Shoppers scattered. Soldiers with rifles began canvassing the neighborhood, nailing Presidential Order 9066 to doors, storefronts and telephone poles.
People on the street fled.
Those indoors came out to meet the soldiers. We stepped out of the restaurant onto the sidewalk as soldiers walked past. Everyone was handed copies of the proclamation, which was written in English and Japanese. Everyone but me.
I could speak English, but had difficulty reading it. The pamphlet was a mystery to me, but it wasn't to Keiko's family. Her mother immediately began crying. Her father was upset but remained calm. Keiko touched her heart with her finger then pointed at me.
Over my heart was the button my family wore. I am Chinese.
Jamie Ford grew up near Seattle's Chinatown and is busy querying his first novel, Surefire. He hangs out at www.jamieford.com and has been known to eat jellyfish, sea cucumber and chicken feet on occasion. |
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