notebook.
At the same time, though, Jim was having trouble with the teacher. Katherine wouldn’t let his problems with pronunciationpass. “Jim, what’s happened to your tongue? It’s Mr.
Brown.
Say it.” Jim rubbed his nose and scratched his head in embarrassment. Katherine waited for his reply. She couldn’t understand why he had such a hard time with this no-problem problem. She could never have imagined that the problem was her perfume and her nearness.
* * *
A fter two weeks of class a new student joined us. He came through the door as we were bowing good morning to Katherine. Katherine didn’t say anything for a long while; she took a long, hard look at him. Then she said, “Be seated.” We all sat down slowly. Her eyes were still on him. She never paid any of us such close attention.
The man was short and badly dressed in a washed-out blue Mao jacket. He carried a green army bag. His hair was a mess. I could barely see his eyes. He introduced himself as “Tian-shi”—Lion Head. He pulled up his hair and smiled. “Sorry, but I was born this way,” he said in response to Katherine’s stare. “I have this crazy hair, it bursts out like a fire. You see, it’s as thick as steel wires. It won’t bend. No hairdresser can tame it. My mother says that I must have found my way to the wrong womb.”
Strangely, Katherine didn’t respond to his smooth English. She said that she had been notified by the school authorities of his arrival. She directed him to an empty chair in the back and said, “We are on page sixteen.”
Lion Head went to sit down. He took off his Mao jacket and revealed a red T-shirt. He had strong muscles and a thick neck. He was so ugly, so male. He had a pair of thick, dirty peasant’s hands. His huge hands were out of proportion to his body size. He reminded me of sunflowers that grew in the salty land—huge leaves and a little dark-faced flower. His eyes were small—two black buttons in a meatball. His hair fell in his face.
Katherine continued with the lesson but my eyes remained on Lion Head. I read what was written across his T-shirt in white ink: I CLIMBED THE GREAT WALL . He wore dirt-colored trousers and a pair of green army shoes.
Katherine began reading Mao’s poem “A Tribute to Female Soldiers”:
A bright and brave look
,
A gun five feet long
,
In the first flush of dawn
They appear marching toward the soldiers’ field
,
The ambitious new Chinese daughters
Who prefer guns to makeup.
“This is quite a wonderful poem, but is it true that women in this country prefer guns over makeup?” Katherine raised her head from the text and looked at the class. When her eyes met mine, I didn’t lower my head like the rest of them. But I didn’t answer her either. I couldn’t. No one dared make any negative remark about Mao’s words. I had only one head on my shoulders and I wanted to keep it. But I liked the fact that she was challenging Mao. I wanted to see how far she would take it.
I heard Lion Head’s weird laugh.
Katherine and I turned to look at him. His eyes disappeared, they became two caterpillars. “Of course it’s true,” he said. “But if you want to learn more about my female classmates, you have to talk to them in their bedrooms.” He laughed again. This time we heard a small birdlike sound come from the other corner of the classroom. It was from Jasmine, the daughter of the school’s president. Jasmine was dressed like a turkey, in a bright red polyesterjacket, tight yellow pants, high-heeled orange-brown fake leather shoes and purple socks with a lotus-leaf ruffled cuff. She always wore fancy socks; it was her trademark style. Jasmine had a small pale face with long permed hair. Her mouth was always in an O shape. No chin. She liked to look at people sideways, as if she were shy. She had Z-shaped eyebrows. She loved it when people told her, “Oh, you look like a foreign doll.” None of us had ever seen a foreign doll, but we
Elizabeth Amelia Barrington