The Great Wall of Lucy Wu

by Wendy Wan-Long Shang

  Dad grabbed the chair and flipped it around so he could rest his arms on the back. “So, your mother tells me that you don’t want to go to Chinese school, that you don’t want any extra school,” he said.

  I laid out my case. “Well, yeah. Not to mention the fact that I’d have to give up basketball. I feel like I’ve already given up a lot because Yi Po is staying in my room, and giving up basketball to go to some boring old Chinese school on top of that is just not fair.”

  “I think you are overlooking the long-term advantages of the situation here, Lucy.” Sometimes I think my dad goes on business trips for so long he forgets how to talk like a normal person. “This is an opportunity to improve your Chinese. China is becoming a very important country in our future, and knowing Chinese may help you get a great job.”

  “I can already speak Chinese, a little, and any job that doesn’t involve basketball isn’t a great job to me,” I pointed out.

  “Well, that’s another thing. What kind of future do you really think you have in basketball? I mean, really. You’re getting older now, Lucy. You need to start thinking about how you spend your time, and what activities are going to pay off for you in high school, college, or even beyond that.”

  My parents have never been enthusiastic about my basketball the way they have about Regina’s Chinese club or even Kenny’s supposed math abilities. Still, they showed up for my games and Dad put up a basketball hoop in the driveway so that I could practice. Now it all felt like a big lie.

  “What are you saying? That basketball is a waste of my time?” I tried to sound tough and businesslike, the way Dad did, but inside I was shaking.

  “If you could do both, fine,” Dad responded. “But we must make a choice now, and Chinese school is the smart choice. Can you name any Chinese-Americans making a living in basketball?” He added quickly, “Who aren’t over seven feet tall?”

  I couldn’t think of anyone. “I could be the first.”

  Dad shook his head. “I’m not saying this to be mean. I’m saying this because I want you to have as many options in the future as possible. Basketball doesn’t provide many options for you — as an adult, I can see that. Speaking Chinese brings many options. And now is the best time for you to work on your Chinese.”

  “Basketball is really good exercise.” It was a desperation play. The long heave-ho down the court at the buzzer. Even as I said that, a good kid argument to a parent, I hated myself for saying it. I didn’t play basketball for exercise.

  “If you’re worried about exercise, you can take up tennis, if you like. Mom says there’s talk of organizing some tennis classes on the courts after Chinese school.” Dad stood up and brushed his hands together, as if he had finished a job. Lucy goes to Chinese school, check. Next item. The words rolled out smoothly and lightly, as if Dad had been waiting to make that argument. I suddenly pictured Dad and Mom sitting together, plotting. Let’s cover every case for going to Chinese school and giving up that stupid, waste-of-time basketball. A hot river of lava began to burn in my chest.

  “Tennis is stupid,” I said. “And Chinese school is even more stupid.”

  Dad acted like he hadn’t heard me. “By the way, Mom said that we’re going to have snacks tonight and just have a chance to sit down with Yi Po. It would be a great chance for you to practice your Chinese. You can listen and ask questions. You could even learn some Shanghainese if you want.”

  “I can practice my Chinese with Yi Po? I can learn Shanghainese? Gee, thanks,” I said sarcastically. “What makes you think you can make me speak one more word to her?” Even though the words flew out faster than my brain could process them, at that moment I meant it.

  Dad threw up his hands. My dad has a long fuse, but when he gets mad, he’s really mad. “This discussion is over,” he thundered, his face turning red. “All I know is that you will be at Chinese school next week. Ten o’clock sharp!” Dad walked out of the room.

  “And I’ll hate every minute of it!” I screamed back at him. And I was going to make them hate it, too, if I could. Enough to force them to stop making me go.

  Even though Dad and I had been yelling at each other a few hours earlier, Dad acted like nothing was wrong when it was time for what he called “our family get-together.” Like we were some old-fashioned family on TV, gathering around the fireplace to make yarn or something.

  “C’mon, Lucy. We’ll have snacks in the family room,” said Dad.

  I glared at him, but only until I saw Mom walk by with a tray full of Chinese goodies, including one of my favorites, chen pi mei, candied plums. But I wasn’t going to be bought off that easily.

  “I have a project for school,” I told him, pulling out the trump card: school.

  Dad nodded, approving of my wise decision. “Maybe next week.”

  What I didn’t say was that my project for school was getting even for having to go to Chinese school. If Chinese school was going to ruin my life, it was going to ruin everybody’s life. I wrote out a plan.

  Ignore parents if they speak in Chinese. Force them to yell in English.

  Ask for non-Chinese food when we go out to Chinese restaurants. The more American, the better. While they’re having the ma po tofu, may I have a hamburger and French fries? Make mine medium well.

  Complain about going to Chinese school while going there.

  Complain about what happened in Chinese school on the way home.

  If forced, absolutely forced, to speak Chinese, insist on having really weird words translated. What’s the Chinese word for ambidextrous? homogenized? platypus? Possible sentence: I put my homogenized milk next to the ambidextrous platypus.

  Chinese school itself was a little trickier. I wasn’t sure I could go for all-out bad student, like Jamie Watkins who was always talking back to Ms. Phelps, or Paul Terry over in Mrs. Tibbs’s class, who was already famous for asking questions that eventually made the teacher contradict herself. Since I really wanted to minimize my talking time in Chinese school, neither of these boys seemed like a decent role model. I was starting to feel desperate, when I remembered someone else: Amelia Helprin.

  Amelia drifted into our class last year around Thanksgiving and stayed until spring break. She had white-blond hair and eyes so pale blue I had a hard time looking her in the eye. As far as I could tell, Amelia basically said two things: “I don’t know” and “I don’t want to.” Her voice was light and feathery, and she spoke with no emotion or expression.

  Amelia, would you like to read the next paragraph? I don’t want to.

  Amelia, would you please explain reducing fractions? I don’t know how.

  It was like trying to make a puddle of milk stand up. And the beauty of it all was that Ms. Pendergast usually ended up getting mad and tense, and Amelia stayed calm and cool.

  I could do that. I could pull an Amelia. All I had to do now was wait until Chinese school started.

  When I told Madison about Dad forcing me to go to Chinese school, she groaned.

  “What? You’re going to miss the whole season?” Her voice squeaked over the phone.

  “Yeah, can you believe it? For Chinese school. Ugh.”

  Madison made some more appropriately sympathetic sounds. Then she said, “But …”

  “But what? There is no but in this situation.”

  “I dunno. I mean, I’m totally bummed about basketball, but it is kind of cool that you’ll learn to speak Chinese.”

  “I speak Chinese! Well, some, anyway. Listen to this, I made this up this morning as part of my anti-Chinese school campaign.” I held the phone slightly away from my mouth as I sang.

  Yi, er, san, si, wu, liu, qi

  Who likes Chinese school?

  Not me!

  Not for me! Not for me!

  Chinese school is not for me!

  “What is that, the part you sing in the beginning?” asked Madison.

  “I’m counting. It’s a song from my Chinese Baby video,” I told her. I had already started singing it
around the house. Yi Po was probably wondering if I would ever make it to eight.

  “Wow,” said Madison.

  “Pretty good, huh?” I said proudly.

  “Actually,” said Madison, “your singing is really bad.”

  I tried not to act too bummed out about basketball around Madison — I didn’t want to make her feel bad for playing. Madison tried not to talk too much about basketball around me — even though I did catch her diagramming a play on the back of her math homework. “Sorry,” she said, crumpling up the paper. She looked guilty.

  “Don’t be,” I said. But it made me feel sad. Who was she going to run the play with? Bethany? Kelly? I guess it didn’t matter. The answer was: Not Me.

  If that wasn’t bad enough, I crossed the wall.

  I had been making it a point for me, and my stuff, not to cross over to Yi Po’s side of the room. I did this even though I was slowly discovering that the smaller space seemed to make everything squeeze and pop out of drawers and fall off the shelves. I did this even though Yi Po seemed to have plenty of space, and her side was always clean. The wall had a purpose, and so far, I had stayed on my side, and Yi Po had stayed on hers.

  This morning, though, I had an emergency.

  It started when I woke up and realized the clock said 7:47, which is bad, because I usually wake up at 7:05. The alarm hadn’t gone off! I had thirteen minutes to get dressed, find colored pencils for my South American map project, eat breakfast, and get to school on time. I hate being late — I feel like I’m never caught up for the rest of the day.

  Part of the problem was my dresser was on the opposite side of the room from my closet. It was the only place it would go with the wall in the middle of the room. So while my T-shirts, underwear, and socks were on one side of the room in the dresser, my jeans, hoodies, and shoes were on the other side in the closet. Going back and forth between these two places is not exactly easy, since I have to squeeze through the small space between my bed and my desk. My half of the room had become a small landfill with clothes, shoes, books, and an occasional basketball.

  So getting dressed went something like this: pick out shirt, hop hop to other side of room, find jeans, hop trip, go back for socks. I was about to get dressed when Yi Po walked in.

  Hop hop DIVE. I threw myself under the covers of the bed. I felt kind of weird about getting dressed in front of her.

  “Lucy!” Mom yelled from downstairs. “Shouldn’t you be leaving for school?”

  I stuck my head out from under the covers. “I’m almost ready!”

  Yi Po wandered back out of the bedroom, and I jumped out of bed and finished getting dressed. Well, okay, I jumped out of bed, got dressed, and almost sprained my ankle on the pile of math worksheets I’d left on the floor.

  As I bent down to rub my ankle, I spotted the colored pencils I needed under my desk. I reached under the desk and grabbed the box, being careful not to bang my head as I stood up.

  Unfortunately, I was not careful to pick up the box from the right side, and twelve pencils slid out onto the floor, rolling away from me onto Yi Po’s side. Grrrr. I decided that just this once, I would cross over to Yi Po’s side to pick up the pencils, and then cut through her side to leave, saving time by not going back through the Lucy Obstacle Course.

  I had taken about three steps through her side when, like a police car cutting off a fugitive running down an alleyway, Yi Po appeared, cutting off my access to the door. Busted.

  I stared at her. What was she going to say? What are you doing, running through my half of the room?

  “Mei Mei,” said Yi Po. She pointed to the window, and then pretended to shiver. “Tian qi hen leng.” It’s cold.

  I looked out the window and saw the trees moving slightly. It didn’t look that cold. I calculated how long it would take to convince her I would not be cold, versus just getting a sweatshirt. I ran back to my closet, grabbed a sweatshirt, and ran back across the room, this time on my side.

  Now she was in the doorway.

  Arrrgh. I bounced impatiently behind her, trying not to scream.

  This only made her turn around in the doorway.

  Yi Po reached out and patted my sweatshirt. “Hen ke ai!” she said. Cute. Then she moved around me to go back into the bedroom. Slowly.

  Argh! Why was she standing in the doorway if she wasn’t leaving? I was about to run down the stairs when I happened to catch a glance back toward the bedroom.

  She was cleaning up my clothes. Picking them up, shaking them out, folding them.

  “No!” I dropped my backpack and sweatshirt, and went back in. Now that I had been on her side of the room, Yi Po seemed to think she was allowed on my side. Plus if Mom caught her cleaning my side of the room I would be deader than dead meat. Not that I could explain all that, so instead, I said, “Bu hao yi si.”

  The words felt funny and dry in my mouth, even though it was a phrase I’d heard about a thousand times. Bu hao yi si covered a lot of ground between I’m sorry and I’m embarrassed and a polite version of You shouldn’t have done that, which was exactly what I needed. The literal translation was not good meaning, which I meant, too.

  “Mei guanxi,” replied Yi Po. It’s fine. She picked up a pair of jeans and folded them in half.

  I tugged on the jeans, trying to get her to let go of them. “Bu hao yi si,” I repeated.

  With my Chinese vocabulary used up for the morning, I made wide circling motions with my arms to indicate my half of the room. Then I patted my chest. I hoped my meaning was clear: I’ll do it myself.

  “Lucy, what’s going on here? You should have left for school by now.” Mom walked in and saw Yi Po holding my jeans. She put her hands on her hips. “Lucy Mengxue Wu! Is Yi Po cleaning your room?”

  “No, I …” But Mom wouldn’t let me explain.

  “This is terrible! Yi Po shouldn’t be cleaning your room. You need to clean up your room!” Then she turned to Yi Po and starting apologizing. I heard her say, “Bu hao yi si.”

  Hadn’t I just said that? Wasn’t I trying to get Yi Po to stop cleaning my room?

  I grabbed my stuff and headed down the stairs. It was so unfair — even when I tried to do the right thing, I managed to get in trouble when Yi Po was around.

  I slid into my seat with about a minute to spare. Ms. Phelps had an announcement.

  “I understand that there’s a rumor that we might have a sixth-grade dance this year.” Madison and I looked at each other, eyebrows raised. The school usually had some kind of community fund-raiser by the sixth grade, and a school dance had been mentioned as a possibility. I hadn’t even decided how I felt about a dance.

  “We may have a dance at the end of the year, but for now, we’ve decided to do something a little different to benefit our community,” she went on. “The week before Thanksgiving, we’re going to have a sixth grade versus faculty basketball game. Admission to the game will be a can of food, which will be donated to a food pantry.”

  Did she just say basketball?! I held my hand under the desk for a high five. Madison reached over and tickled my palm. We were still going to play together! This was way better than a dance. And those teachers didn’t know what they were in for.

  Ms. Phelps grinned. “And to make things even more interesting, we’re going to have a contest to see who will be the captain of the sixth graders. The winner will be chosen according to how many free throws you can make in a row.”

  Oscar said, “Then the captain will be Paul Terry.” Some other boys groaned in agreement. Paul Terry was a total show-off on the court, hogging the ball and screaming when he made a basket. Paul was tall enough now that he was getting close to dunking. There was a rumor that his dad had played for the Boston Celtics for a while, but I had never seen his dad. I had only seen his mom, who always looked a little worn out, possibly from having a kid like Paul.

  Madison pointed at me and mouthed you. When I looked around, Serena, Haley, and Lauren were turned around in their seats, nodding.r />
  I pointed back at Madison. “You should try out for captain, too,” I whispered.

  Madison shook her head. “No way.” She turned to the others and jerked her thumb at me. “She’s been practicing like crazy. Fifty free throws a day.” I couldn’t help grinning. Even if my parents wouldn’t let me go to basketball practice, they couldn’t stop me from playing basketball for school. It was practically homework! And I had noticed something about Paul Terry that Oscar and the other boys had not figured out. For all his showing off on the court and fancy moves, Paul stinks at free throws.

  This is it, I thought. I’m finally going to have the year I’ve been waiting for. I could see sixth graders gathered around me, with the score tied and seconds to go, and I call the critical play to win the game. My parents would meet me after the game and say, “Honey, we made a terrible mistake making you go to Chinese school instead of basketball practice.” Maybe even Harrison would say something.

  It all seemed perfect until Serena told me about Sloane Connors at lunch.

  Sloane Connors is in the other sixth grade class, Mrs. Tibbs’s class. Some people think she’s pretty, including Sloane, I’m sure, but to me, she always looks like she’s sneering, even when she smiles. Adults like Sloane because she volunteers to help and has good manners, at least around them. At school, though, the kids know not to cross Sloane. She’s the head of a little group that Madison and I secretly call the Amazons, and they can make your life miserable in about a thousand different ways. They’ll even go after one of their own. Two years ago, an Amazon named Kendra threw a birthday party at a hotel pool. Sloane wasn’t able to go because her family went out of town that weekend. Sloane thought Kendra had chosen that date on purpose, and suddenly, Kendra wasn’t invited to any more birthday parties and was sitting alone at lunch. Rumors started popping up everywhere: Kendra has head lice. Kendra was caught shoplifting. The next year, Kendra switched to a private school.

  “Guess who’s going to go for captain in Mrs. Tibbs’s class?” Serena bit into her tuna fish sandwich. “Sloane Connors.”