The Dissident

by Nell Freudenberger

  “Be honest,” the principal said. “Do they seem to have a command of their materials?”

  “Perhaps some are at a lower level than others.”

  “If you think they’re at a lower level in art, you should sit in on some of the math classes.” The principal, to my amazement, laughed. “But we’re working on it.”

  “Art and math require discipline. Perhaps Chinese students are more disciplined.” At this moment, as if to illustrate my point, the bell rang; all along the open walkway, which ran on two levels around the rectangular building, doors shot open; students swarmed around us.

  “I’m interested that you compare art and math in terms of discipline,” she continued, raising her voice above the commotion in the hallway. (I didn’t remind her that it was she who had compared art to math. I was glad we weren’t talking about what I planned to teach my students, or whether I had any previous experience disciplining untalented seventeen-year-old girls.) “Did you see this article, by any chance, about creativity and the Chinese language?”

  I explained that I preferred to watch the news on television, in order to perfect my accent.

  “Shoot! Now I can’t remember where I saw it. It was fascinating, actually. They’ve done a study about how the language we think in influences to what extent we’re creative.” Principal McCoy peered at me in a bright, squirrel-eyed way. “I think it is just ridiculous,” she said. “The idea that whole nations would be somehow more or less creative than others. This is the kind of cultural relativism that we thought we’d banished in the eighties; and now here it’s back again, in disguise.”

  I nodded politely. Of course I knew the type of theory she was talking about, if not this particular study: in China there is a great deal of concern about what foreigners, particularly foreign “experts,” think of the Chinese. Talking to a certain kind of official functionary, you would think that foreigners spent all their time mulling over the examination scores of our students, the flaws in our national character, and the ways they might take advantage of our economy’s tremendous potential. (The latter is certainly the most likely.) They bemoan the fact that so many of our contemporary artists, our writers, composers, and choreographers, even our cutting-edge fashion designers and international star architects, live and work abroad. The foreign experts notice these anxieties, observe our schools, and develop theories. I appreciated Ms. McCoy’s good faith, but I’m not sure the conclusions of these experts are wrong. It’s their emphasis on language as the reason for our failure that is ludicrous: they see a mental inflexibility in our students, and decide to place the blame on Chinese—the language of the Tang poets and Cao Xueqin—as opposed to examining our four thousand years of history.

  In the hallway with Ms. McCoy, girls were looking at me curiously. Although they had listened to my talk that morning in All-School Assembly, this was the first time they were seeing the visiting scholar up close. My talk had been called “Believe in the Future,” after the well-known poem by Guo Lusheng, and it had been given for the first time by the photographer Zhang Tianming, informally, in our friend Cash’s small East Village courtyard, where we had congregated every Wednesday during the winter of 1993–94, to eat a meal and talk about art. Before I left for California, I had gathered several articles and speeches related to human rights in China, particularly the ones that dealt with Tiananmen. “Americans love June Fourth,” my cousin had advised me. “Just tell them that was you,” he deadpanned, miming the posture of the man in the famous photo, his arms at his sides in front of the line of tanks.

  By now I’ve seen that photo, but at the time I didn’t know what my cousin was talking about. In any case, I was in no mood for jokes. I had been having nightmares about immigration for months. In the most memorable dream, a health inspector in a white coat appeared just as I was preparing to board the plane, and asked me to open my bag. When I complied, unzipping my suitcase on a card table in front of which a large crowd had gathered, I found that it was full of bright-colored women’s pan ties.

  “We’ve given you the advanced students—AP Studio Art—if that suits you? I’m afraid the others won’t be equipped to appreciate what you have to offer.”

  “Thank you,” I told the principal.

  “It’s only four classes a week,” Ms. McCoy added. “Mrs. Travers cautioned us about leaving you enough time for your work. Excuse me a sec,” she said, and bent to take a drink from the fountain.

  Although I wasn’t thirsty, I drank after Principal McCoy. The water in those fountains always tasted artificially sweet to me, as if they added saccharine in the pipes. Principal McCoy was thanking me (it should’ve been the other way around) and telling me she hoped I would be able to stay for the entire school year. I began the speech I had prepared about how grateful I was to have a chance to participate in the mission of St. Anselm’s: “To educate young women, and to prepare them to confront the intellectual, physical, and ethical challenges of the future with dignity, honesty, and rigor.” But Principal McCoy was distracted by her colleague, Laurel Diller, who was disciplining a student at the bottom of the stairwell. Vice Principal Diller had been waiting for me at the gate when I arrived that morning. She was wearing a bright red suit with a large gold starfish pin—evidence, I would learn, of a particular passion. More often than not, if you looked closely, Vice Principal Diller was wearing something of crustacean inspiration: a piece of iridescent abalone on a chain around her neck, a pair of silver sea snail earrings, or a silk scarf celebrating the hermit crab, secret-keeper of the sea.

  Principal McCoy excused herself before I could finish telling her how my presence could help guide and shape the burgeoning ethical sense of the St. Anselm’s student body. I was relieved that she hadn’t asked me more difficult questions, and I went down to see Mrs. Travers, who, in her role as intern coordinator, had a temporary office in the corner of the library. I wanted to tell my hostess that everything was settled: I would be teaching Advanced Placement Studio Art, hopefully for the entire year.

  “Olivia’s class!” Cece said. “This is wonderful.” And then she looked at me in a way she had, which sometimes made me think of my mother (although Cece was ten years younger than my mother, and looked even more so), and ventured: “I just hope they won’t disappoint you. High school girls are so often preoccupied.”

  “I understand.”

  “Or take too much time away from your project,” Cece said, which illustrates one of the lovely things about her. She would not contradict you, or point out the fact that you were making a ridiculous and counterintuitive decision. Her own suggestions were always couched in terms of your needs.

  “I have found that when I have more time, I do less work.”

  “I know exactly what you mean,” Cece said.

  What Cece didn’t know, and I unfortunately couldn’t explain to her, was that I had been effectively “quarantined” from the university by Professor Harry Lin. I didn’t understand why the professor was making everything so easy for me, or why no one but my hostess had questioned the decision to spend my precious time in Los Angeles at a girls’ high school, when I might have been “crossing borders and challenging my thinking”—not to mention making my name.

  35.

  OF COURSE, I DID NOT START OUT EXPECTING TO TEACH THE ST. ANSELM’S girls to paint lobsters. Shrimp, maybe—eventually. I imagined we would spend a semester on bamboo first. Bamboo is good practice. The student must learn to roll the brush from side to side to make the segments. The joints between the segments nicely illustrate the concept of negative space. I imagined the concentrated expression on their faces as they labored to reproduce the striated tubes of wood; I envisioned their happiness, the day their leaves attained the quality of translucence possible only with water-based ink. I went confidently into my first day of teaching at an American school, and failed to consider that the St. Anselm’s girls might have other ideas.

  As at a Chinese school, the St. Anselm’s girls wore uniforms—but what u
niforms! Short dresses in pastel colors, pink, white, yellow, and violet, with a curly SA embroidered on the right sleeve. They wore heavy black-and-white saddle shoes, a design I had never seen (and never did see, outside the white-brick perimeter of the St. Anselm’s campus). To my surprise, the students also wore men’s undershorts in bright stripes and plaids, hanging out from underneath their skirts. It took me very little time to see that this allowed them to sit in class with their knees apart, gazing out the windows of the art studio, scratching one leg at a time with the opposite shoe.

  I will tell you: I was angry. All of that space and all of those fine materials to girls who could not even keep their legs together, as a gesture of respect, in front of a visiting teacher. And their bamboo! It was enough to make you cry. They overloaded the brush with ink, so that it was impossible to get any variation in the stalks—more like the bars of a cage than any living thing—and left soft spots that bled through and sometimes even tore the fine paper.

  “Oops,” they said when this happened, and giggled; of course there was always more paper.

  I had nine students in Advanced Placement Studio Art, including Olivia Travers, none of whom were especially advanced. They were putting together “portfolios.” Each portfolio was supposed to demonstrate the students’ progress in three specific areas—Drawing, Sculpture, Color and Design—as well as a selection of work on an “Individual Theme.” The themes, which they chose themselves, were as follows:

  Emily

  The seasons

  Olivia

  The ocean

  Jenna

  The mountains

  Courtenay

  Time travel

  Lizzie

  Time

  Holly

  Outer space

  Katie

  France

  Kate

  France

  Catherine

  Love

  “Love?” I asked Catherine. I didn’t mean to be discouraging; in fact my plan was to be as accommodating as possible, so that the students would have no reason to complain. The problem was that I often forgot my plan, and imagined that I was an actual teacher with a responsibility to correct my students’ errors and guide their progress. “Do you think love is too abstract?”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “Too broad?”

  “It’s not as broad as Outer Space,” Catherine said, shooting a glance at Holly, who looked mutely to Emily for support.

  “I think Love is très sympa,” Emily said. “Outer Space is kind of weird—”

  Catherine smiled and tossed her hair.

  “But deep,” Emily finished. “Very deep.” Holly looked relieved. As our semester progressed, I would learn that Emily was the final arbiter of all disputes, the judge of who was acting “psycho” or “paranoid,” and what was at that moment “sympa,” “adorable,” or “super.” Along with Emily and Olivia, several of the girls had just returned from St. Anselm’s Summer Abroad program in France. France was truly super that year.

  “Should two of you have the same theme?” I asked Kate and Katie.

  “They have the same name,” Emily said. Others nodded at the truth of this observation.

  “I only wonder what will happen when we send our portfolios to the AP board of judges.”

  “I could make mine, ‘French things,’” Kate suggested. “OK Mr. Jow?”

  I had tried to correct their misconception of my name; I had little hope of Yuan Laoshi, but Teacher Yuan or even Mr. Zhao would have been fine. However, once Emily had christened me, I was Mr. Jow for good.

  Without her connection to Emily, it might have been difficult for Olivia to surmount what in China would’ve once been called a problematic family background: a Chinese art teacher living at her house, and a mother who volunteered as an intern coordinator right downstairs in the library. It was Cece who came upstairs one day to pin to my bulletin board the announcement of a contest: a ceremonial centerpiece for the celebration of St. Anselm’s sesquicentennial.

  “The winner’s design will decorate the Malmstead Courtyard during the ceremony,” Cece told the class. “The vice principal would like you girls to consider the long history of our school in your designs. And we’ve collected some resources for you in the library, if you’d like to do research.”

  At this there were some titters, to my mind, inexplicable. I had found in my own schooling that the announcement of a contest was always greeted with great enthusiasm. Perhaps these American girls had gotten too accustomed to the frequent opportunities to prove themselves, and to be rewarded.

  “But I’m sure the most important thing is just to be creative,” Cece said, smiling at me.

  “And think about the dimensions of the courtyard,” I added, but no one seemed to be paying attention.

  Olivia looked nervous as her mother left the room, her heels clicking on the gray linoleum, but Mrs. Travers was, if not supercool, then at least perfectly correct, with her silk twinset and very large diamond earrings.

  “You have an adorable mom,” Emily told her, loud enough for the class to hear. “Mine is such a bitch.”

  Instead of reprimanding Emily for her language, I shared Olivia’s relief. I am ashamed to admit that on this and other occasions I made use of the Travers glamour, which clung even to me, temporarily, like sweet-smelling rubber cement. At least at the beginning, I coasted through AP Studio Art on a combination of adopted pedigree and novelty value.

  Then, one morning in October, we got our tenth student.

  This was the same morning that Olivia, working from a model I had taped up on the blackboard, decided to paint a lobster.

  “Like this?” she asked. “Mr. Jow?”

  Her lobster had fifteen tail segments, like a dragon. It had very short antennae, a cluster of them streaming back behind each eye, as if it were standing in a strong breeze.

  “The antennae must move forward,” I told her. “The lobster uses them to make his way. He can’t see well from his eyes, you know.”

  “Those aren’t antennae.”

  I confess, I was relieved. “What are they?”

  “They’re eyelashes.”

  Emily said: “Comme c’est vraiment adorable.”

  It is possible to accept a position, as a teacher, say, at a high school for young women, intending to do and say nothing that will antagonize anyone, to accept even the strangest customs (why dress adolescent girls in outmoded children’s clothing, for example?), but I have found that it’s difficult to maintain that posture over weeks and months. It’s hard to remember how you planned to act; it’s very hard to pretend anything for a long period of time.

  “Lobsters do not have eyelashes!” I said, perhaps more forcefully than I had intended. The other girls looked with concern at Olivia, who was hiding her face in her hair.

  “I was trying to make it unique,” she said softly. “I was just trying to express myself.”

  “You do not need to express yourself,” I told her excitedly. “You need to express a lobster.”

  Olivia was crestfallen. I felt sorry. “Pardon me,” I said. “May I borrow your chair?”

  All of the girls looked at me with surprise. Since I’d arrived, they’d been asking me to paint something like the bold, candy-colored abstraction on the poster Principal McCoy had hung (to my embarrassment) outside my classroom door. The poster was from DNA-ture, the 1991 show at TFAM in Taipei—the same paintings that would be shown at UCLA’s Fowler Museum in just a few months. Although they were now more than ten years old, my cousin and I had decided that the attention the paintings would get in America was worth the risk of shipping them. Truthfully, X had been more convinced of this than I was; as someone whose greatest artistic influence was a man obsessed with the damage that air and light inflict on ink and paper, I have never been sure that attention is good for paintings.

  The paintings I began to make that year in California, ink sketches of lobsters and bamboo, rocks, clouds, trees, and finally mountain
s, were not what the faculty was expecting. Mrs. Travers and Principal McCoy in particular were perplexed, but as they were Yuan Zhao originals, they were accepted gratefully and hung in the Marian Caldwell Memorial Gallery, where they naturally faded into their environment, becoming as unremarkable as the orange carpet or the plant-filled atrium. Only occasionally you might see a young woman, collapsed on the floor with a textbook, raise her eyes to what I now realize were sketches for my project-in-exile: poor copies of the Tiantai Mountains, where Cangyun Shanren had once wandered, gathering herbs and dreaming of the passage to an immortal realm.

  My class was eager to see me paint. Even Olivia seemed to have forgotten her lobster. She stepped back and offered me her easel; you could see she was proud that I would be using her tablet. I admit that I wanted to impress them. Vanity, X used to say, is the downfall of the artist. (He would say this with a wink, swinging his shiny hair.) It was vanity that led me to paint a very large lobster, very fast, in Olivia’s Caran D’Ache watercolor tablet. I didn’t recognize that at first; I told myself that I was contributing to Olivia’s theme of the sea.

  I instructed as I painted:

  “A light touch on the head.”

  “The eye is the only time I will ask you to dip your brush directly in the ink.”

  “The wrist is loose, but controlled.”

  “Am I going to get to keep this?” Olivia asked.

  “Remember, as you make the body, to press the brush, like a stamp. The right amount of ink will leave a mottled texture on the shell. Three segments for an ordinary lobster; four for a big one.” I had been watching some television lately, paying particular attention to the commercials. I found them beautiful and reassuring. “Let’s make a big lobster,” I said now. “Let’s supersize it.”