by Grace Mai Kwai

 

Madame sends home notes from school.

They are scratched in red 

across pages torn from notebooks.

The flimsy papers are scarred with her words. 

 

She instructs my parents to stop speaking Japanese to me at home.

She warns that I will never read and write like my peers. 

She fears I will end up as Japanese as the kids in Japan.

 

At nine-years-old, I am confused and rebellious 

I toss her notes out the side window of the school bus.

I watch the crumpled things take flight down the street.

They are sad to be abandoned 

like my mother tongue

and my mother’s mother tongue too.

 

Madame insists that I own only French storybooks at home.

She explains that I will pick up English 

like used furniture off the side of the road,

but French should cover me like a blanket at all times.

 

I think Madame is afraid of my home because she cannot take it into her hands

and mold it into shapes of her own.

I wonder if she pictures my home as a collection of knick knacks and newspapers.

Does she shiver as she pictures my family and I inhaling our language?

I think she wishes we would choke on it like black smoke.

My home is built of bricks and wood and metal.

Madame begs me to let her in. 

 

Mais à l’école je chante comme elle

J’écris et je parle comme elle.

 

Madame loves me when I’m as close to her as possible.

I’m lovely when I’m dressed all up in white.

 

I can be pretty like a daughter

I can be quiet like a doll. 

 

She shoves my family name into her mouth and she hates the way it tastes.

It’s slimy enough to make her gag,

but still sharp enough around the edges to cut her poor tongue.

She bleeds and she hates us for it.

She wishes I would keep my name at home

with the dogs and the canned food.

 

Madame confronts me in class.

She asks me if I am still reading Japanese books at home. 

I tell her that my family is from Malaysia

She stares back at me in silence. 

 

At nine years old I am emphatic and frustrated. 

I point to Malaysia on the map behind her desk.

Malasie I repeat.

 

Madame cuts my family name in half

like it’s a vegetable laid out on the counter

She rolls her eyes

and she sends more notes home.

 

I keep throwing them outside the window.

 

I wonder if the notes will team up together on the street and form a novella.

I picture the red scratches weaving through each other to act as the binding

and the most evil of her words coming forward to make a title.

 

I worry it will follow me home one day and break my parents’ hearts.