Under the Christmas Star

by Amanda Tru

  Well, I promised to tell you more about Mom and Dad in this email, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Only this time I’m not going to let myself get so distracted. Mom says that’s probably why I have trouble in school. At first she thought it was just because the Korean schools are so different from the American ones that I was really behind when I got to Medford. And of course I was trying to learn English too, and I had people like Chuckie Mansfield teasing me and saying I spoke Chinese and calling me Slanty Eyes. I’m actually really glad that first year is over.

  I did some homeschool after that, which was all right, I guess, but Mom says I need to be around kids my own age, and I agree. So I’m really glad to be at Medford Middle School now, especially since Becky Linklater and I have so many classes together, but the learning parts are still pretty boring. Mom says my trouble is not being able to focus as much as I should, but Dad says that’s because schools want you to sit for eight hours at a time and that’s just not the way God created boys to grow up. Don’t tell my mom, but I get in trouble with my teachers sometimes for goofing off, and every morning Mom reminds me to be on my best behavior and to remember that I might be the only Bible the other kids in my class ever read (whatever that means).

  The good news is I have one teacher who doesn’t really mind if I’m not on perfect behavior, Mr. Sheen. He teaches my social studies class. In fact, he’s the one who made me write that research paper about Martin Luther King Jr. I did earlier. And do you know what, Miss Sheldon? He gave me a B+ on it, which is the best grade I’ve gotten all year. Mom was really proud and took a picture on her phone to send to my big brothers and sisters, even the one I told you about who’s a real author. It made me feel really good. Dad told me I should go back and ask Mr. Sheen what I can do next time to get an A, but Mom said that’s just the way Dad is.

  He did really well in school. My dad did, I mean. That’s why even now places like that Bible college I told you about earlier are giving him fancy papers. Dad says the reason he learned to study so hard was because when he was growing up, black students weren’t ever expected to be as smart as the white students. There were all kinds of unfair things going on back then, like the black kids had to go to separate schools than the white ones, and when they did try to mix them up, people got really mad. And not just the kids either. Dad showed me this news article from back when he was little, and they had moms throwing rocks at a school bus because they didn’t want the black kids in the same classes as their white ones.

  I asked Dad what would happen back then to the folks like my big brothers and sister who are half black and half white, and Dad explained life was especially hard for them. But he also said it was less common for black people and white people to get married back then like it is now. In fact he and Mom were the first couple who did it that either of them knew about.

  Dad grew up in the South. Both my parents did, and he was a kid before Martin Luther King Jr. came and changed everything. In fact Mr. Sheen, my social studies teacher I was just telling you about, invited Dad to come speak to our class about civil rights because he got to live through it. Some of the things Dad told the class I’ve heard about a million times. Like did you know my dad was there when Martin Luther King Jr. gave that famous speech of his about those dreams he kept having? About every two or three months or so, Dad will go onto YouTube and find a recording of that speech even though he’s got the entire thing memorized. He said that becoming a Christian and then listening to Martin Luther talking were the two most important days of his life before he met my mom.

  But he told our class a whole bunch of new things I’d never even known. Like have you ever heard about the teenagers who went marching, and the police were so mean they actually made their dogs bite them? And some of the police even turned on the water hoses and put kids in jail just for trying to walk down a street. I’d read about those water hoses in my social studies book, but I had no idea my dad was actually in one of those marches. Can you believe he even got arrested once? He was doing one of those things ... I forget what it’s called just now, but it’s that thing where people would go to a restaurant that didn’t normally allow black people, and they’d just sit there. My dad did that, and he had to spend the night in jail. Just for sitting at a table at a restaurant, and I never knew that until he told my class.

  He said something else too that really surprised me. He said that things were so bad when he was younger that he actually started hating white folks. And I know you’ve never met my dad, but if you had, you’d be just as surprised as I was. Not just because he’s a pastor, either, because did you know not all pastors are nice? Like my dad has this friend named Elder Tom who is kind of like a pastor except at his church they don’t use the word pastor, so that’s why everyone calls him Elder Tom. But he’s basically a pastor (even though they don’t call him that), except he’s really mean.

  Mom says the only reason Dad’s friends with him now is because they were such good pals when they went to Bible school together, but now they’re nothing alike. Here’s what I mean. If you do something Elder Tom doesn’t like, he’ll tell you right then and there that you’re going to hell. Sometimes it’s not even things about the Bible, either. It’s things like if you baptize a baby, that means you’re going to hell because God never tells people to baptize babies. Which makes me wonder if you’ve ever been baptized, Miss Sheldon, because that’s a pretty important thing to do if you’re a Christian (even though you can’t go to hell for doing it a different way no matter what Elder Tom thinks).

  All that to say I was really surprised when Dad admitted that he hated white people in the olden days. He wasn’t a Christian yet, by the way. That didn’t happen until he finished college and became a football player. Did you know my dad used to be a real football player? He never got famous or anything, and his team never made it to any of the Super Bowls or stuff and nonsense like that, but I still think it’s pretty cool, don’t you?

  Well, when we were studying the civil rights in social studies, Mr. Sheen talked to us some about groups like the Black Panthers and people like that. Because some black folks followed Martin Luther King Jr. (he was also called Dr. King, by the way, which is a lot shorter to write out) and wanted to make everything peaceful. But other people were really angry and wanted to hurt white people the same way they were hurting black people. And it really surprised me to hear my dad say he used to be one of the angry ones. He told our class that it was Dr. King who convinced him to be one of the peaceful kinds of protestors though, not the other kind. And when I say it was Dr. King who taught my dad that, I don’t mean my dad heard one of his speeches and then changed his mind to become less violent. I mean Dr. King actually talked to my dad face to face. And can you believe that he’s been my dad all these years, and he never even told me he’d met someone as famous as that, let alone talked to him?

  Well, Dr. King died the year my dad started college, and there was a whole bunch of fighting. That was something Mr. Sheen didn’t tell us and the social studies book never said either (at least in the parts that I can remember). Dad went to one of the black colleges at the time, and he said their whole school had to go on lockdown, kind of like what we have to do in class when we do drills so we know what to do in case a shooter comes into the school. He made it sound really scary. After Dr. King died, Dad got angry again, and it was really hard for him to keep on fighting for civil rights but doing it in the right way where you don’t hurt people or let yourself get to the point where you’re hating on other folks.

  It caused some pretty big problems in his family too. His mom didn’t like him doing any of that sort of protesting because a cousin of hers actually got himself killed by this certain group. I forget their name just now, but maybe you’ve heard of them. It’s that gang of white men who wear sheets over their faces (Dad says they do it that way because deep down they’re cowards and don’t want anyone to know their identities), but like I was saying, one of my dad’s uncles or some othe
r relation kind of like that got killed by these folks. So his mom didn’t like Dad doing any kind of protesting, even the peaceful kind like Dr. King wanted.

  But Dad had a brother who protested too except he did it the mean and angry way, and he went to jail not because he was the kind of person to sit at a whites-only counter at a restaurant but because he got into a really bad fight and believe it or not, he literally killed a white man. He says he was just defending himself, and Dad says that really is what he thinks happened, but the jury decided my uncle had to go to jail for a long time. He’s still alive, but Dad says I won’t ever meet him. Once he got out of jail, this uncle of mine was even more angry and violent than he’d been when he first went in, and that’s how come we don’t spend any time together, even though sometimes Dad calls him on the phone to say hello.

  So there was a lot of fighting in Dad’s home back then. His mom didn’t want either of her boys getting in trouble with the white sheet gang, so she was mad at them a bunch. And Dad’s brother was mad because he wanted Dad to protest violently, and Dad was mad at his brother because he wanted his brother to protest peacefully, and for quite a few years Dad says they didn’t even talk to each other. That’s how bad it got.

  I can’t imagine not talking to someone for that long. Once, Becky Linklater got mad at me, but that was back when I was still learning English and I said a bad word that hurt her feelings. It was Chuckie Mansfield who told me to do it, by the way. He said it was the word you call a girl in America when you think she’s pretty, and Mom and Dad don’t ever use bad words, so back then I didn’t even know what the bad ones were. And this one was really awful, and Chuckie tricked me into calling Becky it even though she was my best friend by then. She told me she wouldn’t talk to me ever again after that, but then by lunchtime I had explained what happened, and she forgave me. So I have a hard time picturing what it would be like to go years without talking to someone like Dad did, especially someone in my own family.

  Except maybe that’s not quite true because I had a sister back in Korea. We fought all the time, but then one day there was a flood in our village, and we got separated, and I never saw her after that. For a long time I figured she must be drowned, although now I wonder if maybe she is alive because sometimes I feel like I’ve had this dream where I’ve seen her. Except I’m not sure if it’s the kind of dream you have where your brain’s just thinking through all the stuff you’ve got on your mind (Mom says she has those kinds all the time) or if it’s the kind of dream you have where God’s actually talking to you. (Dad doesn’t have that kind of dream, but I asked him about it once, and he said that God used to talk to people that way in Bible times, so there’s no reason why he couldn’t do the same thing today.)

  I wonder what kind of dreams mine are. Like what if my sister really is alive, and the same nights I’m dreaming about her, she’s actually dreaming about me too? Maybe it’s God’s way of telling us to start looking for each other except I wouldn’t even know how to go about doing that, do you?

  Well, that’s all the time I have to write today, but I’m going to leave myself a note that when I get my computer time tomorrow, I’ll tell you more. And then we can talk about Christmas ornaments too. Like I was thinking that since Mom and Dad have two different skin colors, maybe you could find something like that, something pretty made out of two different colors. I don’t know. It’s just an idea.

  Oh, and have a good time at that Christmas party you mentioned. It sounds pretty fun, especially if you do one of those white elephant gift exchanges. Do you know what those are? And since you don’t like crowds, I’ll give you a tip my friend Kennedy taught me. Always carry some of that hand lotion. I forget what it’s called just now, but it’s really good at killing germs and stuff and nonsense like that. She’s always using it because she doesn’t like crowds either on account of her thinking she’ll catch somebody else’s sicknesses. Let me know if that trick helps. Talk to you later!

  Woong

  P.S. That’s pretty cool you get to go to a party with a real police chief. Is he your boyfriend? You’ll have to remember to write back and tell me.

  Hi, Miss Sheldon.

  I didn’t hear back from you, so I don’t know how your Christmas party went with that police chief, but I hope it was fun. How’s the ornament making business? I started thinking last night before I went to bed, and I got to wondering who will make you an ornament for Christmas when you’re so busy making ornaments for other folks? I hope that maybe you take time to make something pretty just for you too. Or maybe you have a friend who’ll do it for you (maybe that police guy?). I think you deserve something nice like that.

  Anyway, it’s time for me to tell you about the way Mom and Dad met because I think once you know their story, you’ll have a better time coming up with ideas for ornaments. Because it doesn’t have to be something with two colors like I mentioned earlier, you know. There are lots of other things that could work just as well. My mom’s favorite colors, I should mention, are violet and light yellow. She’s into flowers and pretty things. She also likes those paintings that have Bible verses on them in real fancy letters and stuff and nonsense like that. We have a lot of those around the house.

  Dad didn’t become a Christian until he was an adult, but Mom grew up in a Christian home. At least her whole family went to church, but like Dad likes to say, just because you’re in a garage, that doesn’t make you a car. He uses that in his sermons to mean it takes more to become a Christian than just walking inside a church. If you want more information about that, you can ask my mom or dad. They both really like talking about those sorts of things.

  Mom grew up in a really big mansion. It’s actually a museum now. Can you believe that? I’ve never gone to see it. Mom says she’s too busy to go traveling, and if she did go traveling, she doesn’t really want to go back to the South anyway. Which after you hear her story you’ll probably understand why.

  Dad says that Mom was what you’d call a southern belle. That means she had a lot of boys who liked her, and her family was really rich. The town she lived in was actually named after her great-grandpa or something like that, and her uncle was the mayor for a long time. In a way it sounds kind of nice, the mansion she grew up in, I mean. She said there were secret passages, and you could climb into this little shelf that was like an elevator (I forget what it’s called just now), and it sounds like a great kind of place for hide and seek, don’t you think?

  But she didn’t seem to like it all that much. You know how I told you that it’s really important for me as the pastor’s son to remember good manners? It was like that for Mom too, being the daughter of such an important family. And the rules of good manners back then were a lot different than they are now. Like when her mom had ladies over for fancy treats and whatnot, Mom couldn’t say anything. Not a single word. And she had to wear gloves and all kinds of extra layers under her skirt she said were really itchy. And she wasn’t allowed to climb trees either.

  Mom’s not nearly old enough to remember slavery or anything like that, but did you know that when she was a little girl, white families could actually have black servants to work for them? It wasn’t called slavery, but the rich families still did it, and Mom says some of the servants weren’t treated any better than slaves would have been.

  When Mom was growing up, her dad was busy working as some kind of lawyer, and her mom was the president of a bunch of different groups for ladies, so Mom had a black nanny to take care of her when she was little. Her name was Jemma, and Mom still has a picture of Jemma on her nightstand because she said they were as close as a mother and daughter could have been.

  Jemma had a little girl of her own who was Mom’s age, but did you know that while Jemma was being paid to take care of Mom, her own daughter had to live with someone else? And the house Mom grew up in was really far away from the other parts of town, so during the week Jemma slept there in the servant bedroom, and she only got to see her daughter on weekends.
r />   But sometimes when my grandpa was away for work, Jemma got special permission to bring her little girl, Missy, over to Mom’s house, and they were best friends, Mom and Missy were, I mean. In a way it kind of reminds me of how me and Becky Linklater became best friends because it was at a time when so many kids were being mean to me on account of me not knowing English yet and being called Slanty Eyes, but Becky was different from the others, and that’s how we became friends.

  It was like that with Mom and Missy, I think, because Mom’s always been a Christian, and she’s always been nice to everybody. She was a little bit bigger than Missy, so when she outgrew her clothes, she got to give them to her friend, and they were really pretty clothes on account of Mom coming from such a rich family that had their own mansion with separate rooms for the servants to sleep and whatnot.

  Mom still tells me about Missy sometimes and what good friends they were. But then something really bad happened, and Missy had to move away. I don’t know the whole story. Mom said once I’m too little to understand, but I heard her talking to my big sister Blessing. I suppose what happened was Missy got beat up by some white boys, and she got so hurt by them and so scared that she had to move away, and her mom went with her. And did you know those white boys never got in trouble for what they did even though everybody knew it was them who hurt Missy so bad?