The Woman Warrior_ Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts - Maxine Hong Kingston [90]
The hulk, the hunching sitter, brought a third box now, to rest his feet on. He patted his boxes. He sat in wait, hunching on his pile of dirt. My throat hurt constantly, vocal cords taut to snapping. One night when the laundry was so busy that the whole family was eating dinner there, crowded around the little round table, my throat burst open. I stood up, talking and burbling. I looked directly at my mother and at my father and screamed, “I want you to tell that hulk, that gorilla-ape, to go away and never bother us again. I know what you’re up to. You’re thinking he’s rich, and we’re poor. You think we’re odd and not pretty and we’re not bright. You think you can give us away to freaks. You better not do that, Mother. I don’t want to see him or his dirty boxes here tomorrow. If I see him here one more time, I’m going away. I’m going away anyway. I am. Do you hear me? I may be ugly and clumsy, but one thing I’m not, I’m not retarded. There’s nothing wrong with my brain. Do you know what the Teacher Ghosts say about me? They tell me I’m smart, and I can win scholarships. I can get into colleges. I’ve already applied. I’m smart. I can do all kinds of things. I know how to get A’s, and they say I could be a scientist or a mathematician if I want. I can make a living and take care of myself. So you don’t have to find me a keeper who’s too dumb to know a bad bargain. I’m so smart, if they say write ten pages, I can write fifteen. I can do ghost things even better than ghosts can. Not everybody thinks I’m nothing. I am not going to be a slave or a wife. Even if I am stupid and talk funny and get sick, I won’t let you turn me into a slave or a wife. I’m getting out of here. I can’t stand living here anymore. It’s your fault I talk weird. The only reason I flunked kindergarten was because you couldn’t teach me English, and you gave me a zero IQ. I’ve brought my IQ up, though. They say I’m smart now. Things follow in lines at school. They take stories and teach us to turn them into essays. I don’t need anybody to pronounce English words for me. I can figure them out by myself. I’m going to get scholarships, and I’m going away. And at college I’ll have the people I like for friends. I don’t care if their great-greatgrandfather died of TB. I don’t care if they were our enemies in China four thousand years ago. So get that ape out of here. I’m going to college. And I’m not going to Chinese school anymore. I’m going to run for office at American school, and I’m going to join clubs. I’m going to get enough offices and clubs on my record to get into college. And I can’t stand Chinese school anyway; the kids are rowdy and mean, fighting all night. And I don’t want to listen to any more of your stories; they have no logic. They scramble me up. You lie with stories. You won’t tell me a story and then say, ‘This is a true story,’ or, ‘This is just a story.’ I can’t tell the difference. I don’t even know what your real names are. I can’t tell what’s real and what you make up. Ha! You can’t stop me from talking. You tried to cut off my tongue, but it didn’t work.” So I told the hardest ten or twelve things on my list all in one outburst.
My mother, who is champion talker, was, of course, shouting at the same time. “I cut it to make you talk more, not less, you dummy. You’re still stupid. You can’t listen right. I didn’t say I was going to marry you off. Did I ever say that? Did I ever mention that? Those newspaper people were for your sister, not you. Who would want you? Who said we could sell you? We can’t sell people. Can’t you take a joke? You can’t even tell a joke from real life. You’re not so smart. Can’t even tell real from false.”
“I’m never getting married, never!”
“Who’d want to marry you anyway? Noisy. Talking like a duck. Disobedient. Messy. And I know about college. What makes you think you’re the first one to think about college? I was a doctor. I went to medical school. I don’t see why you have