Not Your All-American Girl

by Wendy Wan-Long Shang

I let go of the shirt, and Blake catapulted into his dad, then turned to face me, his breathing sharp and raw.

  “He screamed at me.” My voice sounded like it was coming from somewhere else.

  “I just said the name of that guy from the movie,” whined Blake.

  “Aw, he was just fooling around,” said the man.

  “I am not Long Duk Dong,” I said to him. “I am not the Donger. You don’t go around shouting random names at people you don’t know.” Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the girls staring at me. I didn’t care.

  “It was a joke,” said the man.

  “He didn’t say it like a joke,” I said.

  I took a step toward Blake and leaned closer to his level. “What made you think we would find this funny?” I asked him the question like a scientist, like how my dad told us to ask at the seder. What made you think it was going to rain? Why did the apple fall down instead of up? The boy looked at me, his gray eyes wide, and didn’t say anything.

  A crowd had started to form around us. If my mom were here, she would probably want to kill me for grabbing a kid I didn’t know, for talking back to an adult. “I thought Orientals raised their kids to be respectful,” said Blake’s dad.

  The truth was, I had been raised to be respectful, but I was too mad to care. “Why don’t you raise yours that way, too?” I said.

  The man stared at me for a second, too, and then gave me the finger. Then he stalked off, barely letting his son’s feet touch the ground.

  I sat back down at the table, not looking at anyone. I tried to take a sip of Coke, but my hands were shaking so much that the ice rattled.

  “What,” said Cheryl. “Just happened.”

  “Are you okay?” asked Tara. There was no question who the you was.

  I nodded. I didn’t want to ruin Cheryl’s birthday. “Sorry,” I said.

  The table fell silent. I tried to take a bite of pizza, but my throat was too tight to swallow, so I just ended up chewing a tiny bite until nothing was left.

  Jennifer said, “I’m sorry you’re upset, but I think that kid was just trying to be funny. You didn’t have to grab him.”

  There were some murmured noises of agreement. But Hallelujah, who was sitting next to me, said, “That was not the face of someone trying to be funny. I’ve seen that face.”

  Lila said, “Weren’t you so scared that the dad was going to do something?”

  I waited to hear Tara say something else. Anything to show that we were more connected than anyone at the table.

  When she didn’t, I reached into my purse and handed Cheryl’s present to her. “I have to go meet my mom,” I said. “Happy birthday.”

  I wandered around Sears in a daze. I started in the hardware department and then found myself in women’s bras. I got out of there and went over to the toy department. When I was younger, this was my favorite place. I used to pretend that I was on a shopping spree, and would pick out what I would get with my money. The Barbie Dreamhouse was always high on the list. I also wanted one of those heads with makeup and hair you could style, but Mom said I was too young to think about makeup.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a familiar tan jacket over in the housewares section, and I started running. My legs couldn’t go fast enough. I ran past the display of bath towels and a barbecue. Mom saw me just in time to open her arms and catch me as I fell into her.

  I was safe. I was finally safe.

  “What,” she murmured, stroking my hair the way she did when I was little. “What happened? Tell me.” She used to sing a lullaby for me when she stroked my hair, waiting for me to fall asleep. Like a lot of lullabies, it was a little weird. It’s about a stranger, calling to a little rabbit to let the stranger in.

  Xiao tu zi guai guai

  Good little rabbit

  Ba men kai kai

  Open the door

  Bu kai bu kai jiu bu kai

  Not opening the door

  Mama hui lai wo cai kai.

  I’ll open the door when Mom comes back.

  MAYBE BEING MAD MADE ME braver. Or maybe I was ready this time. We sat in the car in the parking lot, and I told Mom everything. Not just the movie and Blake. I told her about the audition and Mrs. Tyndall and Pleasant Valley and Tara. I told her about how Mrs. Tyndall had seemed so reasonable, but now it didn’t seem right, even if I couldn’t say why.

  “She said she wanted the audience to be transported to Pleasant Valley, but they wouldn’t be able to do that if I was Brenda Sue,” I explained. “It would be ‘confusing.’ ”

  “Because Brenda Sue is supposed to look a certain way,” said Mom.

  “Right. And not like me,” I said. “Like Tara.”

  “I bet that makes it twice as hard,” said Mom. “When it’s your best friend.”

  “You have no idea.”

  Mom put her arm around me and didn’t say anything. It felt good. Sometimes you don’t need a reaction; you just need someone to be with you while the terribleness happens.

  “I should just be happy for Tara, right? And I should be happy that we’re in the play together. I should be happy I made the ensemble. I’m lucky. Lots of people tried out and didn’t make the play at all. I’ve made some really good friends in the ensemble. It was a good thing. But …”

  But.

  “You’re human,” said Mom. “And you’re not always going to get the part you want. But when you lose, you want it to be for the right reasons. I don’t think the reason Mrs. Tyndall gave you was a right reason.”

  “Maybe it was,” I said. “I mean, that movie. Maybe people would think of me the same way. A joke. Maybe Mrs. Tyndall is doing me a favor.”

  “That’s not how you fix things,” said Mom. “By hiding yourself. By letting people see less of you. Those men in Detroit, they didn’t see Vincent Chin as a real person. He was a symbol. And that judge didn’t value Vincent’s life like a real person’s, either.”

  Thinking about Vincent Chin used to make me feel scared. I wanted to have reasons to be separate from him. But now I felt differently.

  “Is Vincent Chin why you want to go to law school?” I asked.

  “He’s one reason,” she said. “But I have two other very good reasons. David. And you.”

  “DO YOU HAVE A PICTURE OF VINCENT Chin?” I asked Mom.

  On the way home, we stopped at her office. I hadn’t been there in a long time, though it was pretty much as I had remembered. Her desk was very orderly, and she had put up pictures of David’s bar mitzvah, including one of our whole family. Mom pulled out a manila folder from a drawer; it had clippings of newspapers about Vincent’s case. A couple of the articles had his picture.

  He had the kind of hair that David wanted, thick and parted in the middle. He was older than me and David, but younger than my parents. He looked friendly.

  My mom turned on the Xerox machine to make me a copy of the newspaper article. “We’re allowed to make copies for personal use,” she told me. “As long we don’t get carried away.” She made extra copies, just in case.

  When we got home, I pulled out my button-making kit and got it right the first try. Vincent’s smiling face looked back at me from the center of the button.

  At lunch on Monday, Duncan came up to me and said, “Why are you wearing a picture of your brother?”

  I looked down at the button and then back up at Duncan. “That’s not David.”

  Duncan took a step toward me and peered at the button. “You’re right,” he said.

  “Duh,” I said.

  “Jordy said David ran away from home and you were wearing his picture in his honor. Or that maybe he needed a kidney.”

  “That’s insane! David was on the bus this morning. And he has B lunch.”

  “You could have B lunch and still need a kidney,” he said. “That’s good, though. I was wondering who else Mrs. Tyndall could get to be hoop wrangler.”

  I debated taking the button off, but then Duncan said, “So who is it? Is that a Chi
nese movie star?”

  I shook my head and looked down at the button. I told Duncan about Vincent Chin. I tried to remember all the details that my mom told me, about how the guys who murdered Vincent hadn’t served a day in prison.

  “My uncle says stuff about the Japanese,” Duncan said. “But Vincent Chin was Chinese.”

  That’s what I had said, when my mom had first told me the story. But now I understood what the point was. “Vincent was an American,” I said. “He deserved justice.”

  “Yeah,” said Duncan. He wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his rugby shirt. I think he was nervous.

  Duncan took a step toward me, and for a moment, I thought he was going to try to put his arm around me or something, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. But he was taking a closer look at Vincent.

  “He looks happy,” Duncan said. “I used to think I could tell that people were dead from how they looked in their photos, but then I realized that it was just because they were old people in black-and-white photos, and chances were, they were dead.”

  “That’s weird, Dunk,” I said.

  “Little kids have weird thoughts.”

  “I used to think that it was impossible to stay up until midnight. Like, it was physically impossible,” I said.

  “I used to worry about getting sucked down the drain at the end of my bath. My mom would always yell at me for jumping out of the tub before she was ready with my towel.”

  “I always wanted my mom to put me in the dryer at the end of my bath. I would get so mad that she wouldn’t do it! I kept thinking that if she would just do it once, she’d see I was a genius.”

  Duncan started laughing. When he laughed, his face turned red, and he doubled over from laughing so hard. It was impossible not to join in. Other kids started turning around and staring at us. I waited for him to stop.

  “The thing is,” I said, “my mom says now that I know, I can’t let things stay the same.”

  “So … the button.”

  “The button that no one noticed but you.”

  “Maybe you could make one for me. Maybe that would help.”

  “Maybe people will think you’ve joined the search party looking for David,” I said.

  “But if they ask about it,” he said, “I can tell them about Vincent. I’ll tell them he also belonged in an American town.” Duncan was making a reference to the song from the musical. “You do, too, you know.”

  “Not to Mrs. Tyndall.”

  “But her opinion isn’t the only one that matters, right?”

  “Right.” I wouldn’t ever be Mrs. Tyndall’s all-American girl, but maybe I’d just be my own.

  “Okay, ensemble,” Mrs. Tyndall said, “I don’t think I need to remind you that we are two weeks out. You should be getting better. Not worse. From the top.”

  She clapped her hands and told us to get out our hoops. “Ensemble hoopers on stage left should start their hoops counterclockwise. Ensemble hoopers on stage right should start their hoops clockwise.”

  Duncan and Andy got a few spins around before their hoops clattered to the floor. Max pretended to start but then caught the hoop when Mrs. Tyndall looked away. “Maybe she should just see if she can swap some people,” Hallelujah whispered to me.

  “Meanwhile,” Mrs. Tyndall was saying, “our Brenda Sue needs to be right up here, showing everyone how it’s done. Brenda Sue, you just take this hoop and—RAAAAOW!” Mrs. Tyndall let out a terrible scream and fell to the floor. We all dropped our hoops and ran over.

  The ghost, I thought. The ghost got Mrs. Tyndall!

  Mrs. Tyndall rolled slowly onto her back, clutching her knees. “It’s my back,” she gasped. She had tears in her eyes. For once, she looked small, lying on the floor while we stood over her.

  “I’ll go find someone,” said Michael. He looked upset, like this was his fault.

  Hector stood there, probably trying to imagine what ambulances looked like in the 1950s.

  “Oh no, oh no,” said Tara.

  “Don’t flip your wig,” said Hector, though I could tell by his voice that he was flipping his.

  Mrs. Tyndall closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths. Then she opened her eyes and looked at us. “Well? Why are you all just standing here?”

  “Um, because this is a medical emergency?” said Cheryl.

  “I’m not dying,” said Mrs. Tyndall. “This would be a good time to remind you all of the most important credo in show business. The show must go on. This is what it means to be committed. I had a girl sprain her ankle in act one, and she didn’t tell anyone until the show was over. I had a Romeo who threw up in the middle of the balcony scene because he was coming down with the flu. He ducked behind the balcony, and no one was the wiser. This”—she pointed to herself—“should not stop you.”

  The ensemble exchanged glances. We had problems with Mrs. Tyndall, but this was, admittedly, impressive. Michael came in with Mr. Hoban, the principal.

  Mr. Hoban knelt down next to Mrs. Tyndall. “How are we doing, Edna? Do we need to call someone?”

  “I will need help getting up,” she said. “After the rehearsal. And I could use some Tylenol. Now. I think I have some in my purse.”

  Mr. Hoban got the purse and carried it back across the stage. Then he started looking through it, which I thought was pretty brave of him.

  Mrs. Tyndall gestured toward us. “Ensemble, perform ‘Normal American Boy’ for Mr. Hoban.”

  Lila looked at me. “It’s the principal.”

  I nodded.

  “We haven’t performed for anyone outside of the cast and crew. And Mr. Shea,” she said. “We need to get this right. We need you.”

  I waited for a moment to see if the sad, heavy feelings were coming. But there was something different. Not like Passover, but something else. Anticipation. Hope. Daring. That was what my mom and Duncan had been trying to tell me. People needed to see me. They needed to hear me, too.

  I nodded. I could do this. We could do this.

  Tiffany walked over. “You’ve got this,” she said. She raised her arms and counted us off.

  I opened my mouth, and the notes lifted out of it. I sang for Mr. Hoban. I sang for the ensemble and for Vincent and for Patsy. And I sang for myself.

  But down deep inside, where your feelings abide,

  you’re a normal American boy.

  “That was great!” Mr. Hoban said to us. “I can’t wait for the show.” I was pretty sure that was a line out of the principal handbook, like, Always say something positive about the student production. But I felt like he was talking to me.

  Duncan nudged me. “The theater ghost must have been appeased. We sounded pretty good.”

  “Yeah,” I said. Maybe it was a different kind of ghost that had been quieted. One in my head. The ghost of not-supposed-to. Because singing was what I was supposed to be doing. My face felt numb, possibly from smiling.

  “Singing is the language of the soul.” That’s what Grandpa Joe used to say. That’s what it felt like: like my soul was singing.

  MY NEW BUTTON HAD A PICTURE and the words WHAT HAPPENED TO VINCENT CHIN? This time, lots of kids asked about it since 1) it asked a question they didn’t know the answer to and 2) they could see that my brother had not run away and did not need a kidney and 3) Duncan was wearing one, too.

  Every time I told Vincent’s story, I felt stronger. It was like we were making a promise not to allow things like that to happen again.

  Then I went to science. We had a sub who didn’t care what we did as long as we finished our worksheet on electricity, so Tara came over to my table.

  “Guess what?” she said.

  “What?” For a second I thought she was going to talk about the movie and what happened afterward. But no one was saying anything. It was like they had taken an extra-large eraser and wiped it all away.

  “I get to be in the regional oratory competition after all!”

  “Wait. I thought you said you came in second.”

/>   “I did. But Allison Crockett, who came in first, has to be in her uncle’s wedding, and they are not rescheduling that for the oratory competition, so I get to go in her place. Look at this.” She handed me a picture of a pale-pink Laura Ashley dress with tiny flowers on it. “My mom said she would get me a new dress.”

  “It’s beautiful,” I said. “And getting to go is an excellency.” I did not sing the word. We were both being polite, which did not feel normal. I pointed at my button. “I have my topic for next year’s oratory.”

  “Oh yeah,” said Tara. “I heard some kids talking about it.”

  “You mean him. Vincent Chin.”

  “Yeah, that. All of that.”

  I tried not to feel irritated. Vincent Chin wasn’t a that. He was a person.

  “Did they tell you that he was about to get married? Or that the men who—”

  “Yeah.”

  I didn’t say anything for a moment, trying to pull myself together. I thought Tara would feel the way I did, but instead, she was like a resistor. Resistors are used to reduce current flow. I had the electricity of Vincent’s story flowing through me, but she would not allow it.

  “I don’t know if it would make a good oratory topic, honestly,” said Tara. “You didn’t know him.”

  “People do oratories on people they don’t know all the time,” I said. “Lila did hers on Harriet Tubman, remember? And people are always quoting Einstein.”

  “But because of how Vincent looks, people are going to think it’s personal.”

  “It is personal,” I said. “What happened to Vincent was because of how he looks.” I waited to see if Tara made the connection, the last link in the chain of thought.

  She didn’t. “I’m just saying,” she said, “based on my experience at county—”

  “I don’t care about that,” I said.

  “I’m only trying to help,” said Tara. “You said you had a topic for oratory, and I’m not sure it’s the best one. You’re not mad, are you?”

  The bell rang, saving me from having to answer. But I was mad. It felt like Tara was deliberately missing the point. Maybe the Royal We was over.