I’ve read many stories of discrimination against Asians but none of them speak to me. Mine is one of self-destruction, internalized hate and overwhelming shame.
On my first day at St. George’s School in Newport, Rhode Island, I saw two paths. On the wide boulevard is the crowd of white kids, coming from the suburbs of New York and Connecticut, dressed in Lily Pulitzer and Vineyard Vines; in the back alley are the stragglers, the international students with accents and the people of color who sat at the corner of the dining hall. On that first day, I told myself, I will not be in the back alley.
The schoolhouse at the center of campus was built in 1923 as a memorial to the young St. George’s boys who served in World War I. On the second floor is the study hall, its walls lined with names of honor roll students and school prefects carved on planks of expensive wood. I walked down the hall, examining each plaque. The boys’ names were decorated by “Jr.”, “III”, and even “VIII.” Their long last names sounded noble and historical, as if I was reading the character list for a regency romance. John Jacob Astor, V., Livingston L. Biddle, Jr., Roger W. Strauss, Jr… No girls until the 1970s. No names looked like mine.
My English class sat at the top of the schoolhouse, above a skinny, wooden stairwell that creaked with each step. In the middle of the classroom is a large round table, and the six of us, including the teacher, sat around it. I scanned the room, except for me and a black girl, the rest were white. The black girl smiled at me when I walked in.
“Inclusion,” Mr. Fraser explained, “On the Harkness table, we all have a voice.”
A boy put his feet on the edge of the table, tipping his chair back and forth. I sat stiffly.
“Ok, let’s go through the names,” Mr. Fraser flattened the paper in his hands, “Samuel Townsend.”
In a loud clunk that shook the antique floorboards, Sam released his feet from the table and the legs of his chair landed, “that’s me,” he raised both hands in the air. Two girls giggled to each other.
“Q…in…Wen?” the ginger eyebrows on Mr. Fraser’s face scrunched together, his lips pursed at each syllable. He looked up at me.
“I go by Rachel.”
“How do you say your name?”
“I go by Rachel.”
“How do you say it?” The class leaned over; six pairs of eyes burned on my face.
“Qin Wen,” I said, “I go by Rachel.”
“Can we call you that?” Sam cocked his head, “That’s so cool.”
“How do you write it?” a girl asked.
Mr. Fraser motioned at the chalk by the blackboard, his eyes widening with eagerness. For the first time since stepping onto campus, I felt my invisibility cloth shed. The attention from the class eased to me, soothing the tense nerves standing up on my body.
I took the chalk and began tracing out my Chinese name on the blackboard. With each stroke, the class “wooed,” and I soaked in their fascination like a dried plant coming alive from a sudden rainfall.
Their curiosity energized me. “Sure, you can call me Qinwen.” I patted the chalk off my hands.
“Qinwen,” Sam repeated slowly, as if the word twitched on his tongue, enjoying it like an exotic fruit. A gentle smile lingered on his face.
I always introduce myself as Rachel. Qinwen is too formal, the Q too difficult to pronounce, and the sound is like two large metals clashing into each other. I like Rachel, but they seemed to like Qinwen.
“Can we touch your hair?” two months into the school year, the class turned to Camila, the black girl.
Camila sat separately from us on the Harkness table; even with a circular shape, Camila chose the farthest end while I snuggled in between my white peers.
“No,” Camila stared at us.
“Why not?”
“I said no.”
“I love your hair, it’s so…it’s so,” Lulu looked up while snapping her fingers gently, as if the right word was printed on the ceiling, “… I don’t know, I just love it,” Lulu squinted her eyes and opened her palms at Camila, waiting for the black girl to accept her compliment.
“My hair could never do that, it’s so thin,” I said, then added, “I wish it was like yours.”
Sarah stood up behind me and put her hands through my fine black hair, “I love it when people play with my hair, it’s so soothing.” I smiled back at her.
Camila began packing books into her backpack, “no,” and she walked out.
Our giggling resumed.
By then I was friends with the two white girls in the English class, Lulu and Sarah. The three of us bought matching beddings with dancing monkeys on them, and on a long weekend, we threw a party at my family’s empty apartment in New York City. Sometimes I did math homework for Lulu. Sarah and I studied for U.S history together, but I didn’t tell her that I stayed up late without her because I didn’t grow up with George Washington and the Salem Witch Trials like she did. We laughed together constantly; when we called to order Chinese food, we imitated the delivery man’s accent. Mine was the best. They told me I was their favorite Asian.
At the end of the year, I had everything I wanted. I was in a stable friend group, and someone always accompanied me to the bathroom in between classes. The last unit of our English class was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, and my partner was Camila.
“Don’t you love the 20s? The dresses, the parties, the Hamptons… how glorious!” I turned to Camila while I flipped through the pages.
“Sure, if that’s what you like,” she barely budged.
“You don’t sound excited.”
“No, I’m not, I don’t want to read this.”
“Why?”
“Another book about white people, have you not had enough?”
“It’s Fitzgerald! Plus, their lives are so interesting.”
“Whatever, let’s just finish the assignment.”
“I want you to be excited. I don’t want to be your partner if you don’t even want to read the book,” I paused, “Everyone else is so excited.”
Camila finally looked at me, her rounded eyes radiated under the afternoon sun. In that moment, she felt so much older than me, like the way my mom looked at me when she told me she had expected better.
“I thought you would be different,” Camila’s voice was flat, her eyes drifted down to the pen in her fingers.
“Different how?”
“Different from the rest of them.”
“Them? My friends?”
“Yes, I thought you and I would be friends.”
“Oh,” my voice hushed as if I was afraid to awaken a sleeping mystical dragon.
“Never mind,” Camila said, and we returned to the assignment.
Jay Gatsby construed a life for himself, complete with an origin story and hidden under the façade of inebriating wealth. Yet the hollowness inside is like a gaping abyss, haunting him until his lonely death.
Camila looked at me, and I thought her eyes pierced through me. I thought she could see how hard I was trying to fit in, to be as close to whiteness as I could, to equip myself with an armor that made me disappear beneath.
Fitting in as a Chinese girl in a white boarding school was like forcing a puzzle piece into another puzzle, until I sawed down my edges and buffed out my shine, then I thought I could fit in anywhere. I didn’t realize then, but now I know, I will spend the rest of my life finding my edges again.
