Half and Half (2 page)

“Really?” said the teacher. “Is it a Chinese name?”

“No,” I muttered. “It's Scottish.”

“You're Scottish?” asked the teacher, unable to hide her surprise. Somebody giggled.

“I'm half Chinese and half Scottish,” I explained for what seemed like the millionth time.

That first day in school seemed to last forever, and I was glad when it was finally over and I was able to escape.

“Is Fiona a common name in Scotland?” asked a voice behind me as I walked toward the school bus.

I turned around and saw a girl from my class who looked Asian.

“It sure is,” I told her. “My mom gave me that name because her folks came from Scotland.”

“My folks are from Japan, but they didn't try to stick Japanese names on us,” said the girl. “I wound up Amanda, and my sister's Melissa.”

“Are Japanese names that hard to pronounce?” I asked.

“Some of them are,” said Amanda. “I know a girl called Yukiko. Her parents want to make sure everybody knows she's Japanese. Her last name is Kakimoto, so her full name is Yukiko Kakimoto.”

I tried to pronounce the name and got tripped up by all the ks.

Amanda grinned. “Yukiko has a lot of trouble with people messing up her name. But she's good about it, just like you.”

I liked Amanda right away. She made that first day in school seem not so bad after all. We got on the bus together, and we also got off at the same stop.

I saw Amanda again the next day in the lunchroom. I
was joining the line to pick up the hot dish, and after putting it on my tray, I looked around the crowded lunch-room. Where did I fit in? I passed by a table where some kids from my class were seated. One of the boys looked up. “Fee fi fo fum,” he whispered to the boy next to him, and they both snickered.

I flashed him my brightest smile. “Hello, Fee-Fi Boy!” I said, and quickly looked for another table. I thought I heard someone laugh.

“Over here!” said Amanda, and I saw her waving at me.

I joined Amanda's table, and this time my smile was real.

Since grown-ups like to put people into boxes, they'd have to call this table the Odds and Ends Box. The kids there included African Americans, Hispanics, whites, Asian Americans, and all sorts of mixtures. It just seemed natural for me to sit at a table where there was variety. Because we were such a mixed bunch, nobody felt different. We were all different and our percentages were all different, too.

Soon after Amanda and I became friends, I pointed out Ron to her. We were in the schoolyard during recess, and
Ron was up on the bars swinging himself along. “That's my brother over there.”

Amanda stared at Ron. “Your brother doesn't look like you at all!”

I sighed. “That's what everybody says. He's got that red hair and everything.”

From the way Amanda looked at Ron, I suspected she was getting a crush on him. Was it because he looked 75% white? Or maybe she just liked the easy way he swung himself along?

I didn't have the heart to tell her that Ron was basically a loner and would be hard to get to know. In all the time that Amanda and I have been best friends, she and Ron probably haven't exchanged more than twenty words. As far as I remember, “Pass the soy sauce, please” was the only thing he'd ever said to her directly.

While we waited for the school bus, I told Amanda about filling out the form for my dance class. “Would you
believe it, I can't enroll in the dance class until I decide what my race is!”

“You're kidding!” she said. “What are you going to do?”

“Ron and I are both signing up for classes,” I said. “So I've decided that I'm Asian and he's white. That way, the two of us will average out, and the recreation center will get the right amount of money.”

Amanda giggled, and we were still laughing when we got on the bus. After I sat down, I glanced across the aisle. That was when I got a shock.

The boy sitting across the aisle was Harry Kim, a Korean American boy who sat at our lunch table. That day he looked so different that I didn't recognize him at first. He had bleached his black hair a light blond.

It got me thinking. What would happen if I dyed my hair, too? All my dolls were blondes or redheads, with long, long legs. In most movies and TV shows, the women have blond hair and very blue eyes. Obviously this is how most girls want to look.

With Harry's Asian features, the combination was kind of exotic. But I still couldn't decide whether or not I liked
it. Since my own features were 70% Asian, I'd look exotic if I dyed my hair, too.

Amanda was also looking at Harry. “My sister Melissa has been talking about dyeing her hair blond. She and my mom had a terrible fight about it.”

“Why won't your mom let her?” I asked. “I see lots of kids with dyed hair, not just Harry.”

“Mom says Melissa wants to change her hair to blond because she wants to deny her Asian heritage and try to look white.”

I don't always get along with Melissa. She's usually in a sour mood, and when I go over to Amanda's house, Melissa calls me “That Scotch Girl” in a sneering kind of way.

But this time I was on Melissa's side. “Your mom's not being fair. Lots of white kids bleach or dye their hair, sometimes in really weird colors, too. Black hair is so boring! Maybe Melissa just wants to show her independence, or make a fashion statement.”

Amanda looked thoughtful. “I wonder if my mom would still say no if Melissa wanted to dye her hair
blue or green. Then she couldn't accuse her of trying to look white.”

“What if I dyed my hair red?” I asked.

Amanda laughed. “Well, you'd be denying only half of your heritage since half of you is Scotch.”

If I did dye my hair red, would my percentage go from 30%/70% to 50%/50%? That way my outside would match my inside percentages better.

Then I remembered one good reason not to change my hair. Nainai was coming to visit soon, and she would be staying with us for a few days.

n
ainai is what Ron and I call our Chinese grandmother. It's the Chinese word for your father's mother. There is a different Chinese word for your mother's mother, and that's waipo. But I don't call my other grandmother waipo, because she wouldn't understand. My mother's parents are the MacMurrays, and they came over from Scotland thirty years ago, when Mom was only five years old.

Mom still speaks with a bit of a Scottish accent. My
friends think it's cute, but frankly I wish she wouldn't roll her rs quite so hard. I think she does it on purpose.

Nainai has an accent, too, but since she spent most of her life in China, I don't mind it so much. She tells great ghost stories, and her Chinese accent makes them sound even scarier.

“Nainai will have to sleep in your room when she visits,” Mom told me. “She'll have your bed, and you can use your sleeping bag. I know you won't mind.”

Mom was right. I didn't mind sharing my room with Nainai. She and I are close. I love the way she smiles at me and says, “You look more and more like your father.”

Dad is Nainai's favorite son, so this is a real compliment. That's why Nainai would have a terrible shock if I dyed my hair red. She might be hurt, because she would think that I was trying to look like my mom instead of my dad.

Nainai had to share my room because Mom's parents, the MacMurrays, were coming, too, and they'd be using the guest room. They were coming down from Vancouver, British Columbia, for the annual Folk Fest.

The Folk Fest is held once a year during a weekend in
spring, and it's when all the ethnic groups in our region put on programs showing their arts, crafts, costumes, food, drama, dance, and music. Our teachers and the local papers and TV are always talking about how “ethnically diverse” Seattle is, and the Folk Fest is supposed to show off our diversity. Our family goes every year and we squeeze in as many shows as we can. In three days you can see performances from every continent on earth, from countries I hadn't even heard of.

This year Grandpa MacMurray had been invited to direct some of the Scottish dancing at the Folk Fest. Music and dancing are his two great loves—maybe that's where I got my own love of dancing. Over the years, Grandpa has taken part in many dance programs in Vancouver, but this was the first time he'd be doing one in Seattle.

Since Grandpa and Grandma live close by—Vancouver is only about 150 miles away—they visit us so often that we've gotten into the habit of thinking of the guest room as their room.

This wouldn't be the first time my father's and my mother's parents met. They were all there for my parents' wedding, of course, and they met during the holidays a
few times. But they never had to stay together in the same house for long. Dad's parents usually stayed at a hotel when they came up from San Francisco to visit.

But since Dad's father died last year, we always invite Nainai to stay with us when she is in town, since we don't want her to be in a hotel all by herself. Lots of other single women do it, of course. But Nainai looks kind of soft and helpless, and we can't stand the thought of her drifting around, lonely and lost, in a big downtown hotel.

So that was why Nainai would be sharing my room three days from now. It would also be the first time she and Mom's parents would be spending more than a week together.

I didn't think there'd be a problem. Grandpa and Grandma MacMurray are happy people who like to laugh a lot and make jokes.

If I was worried about anything during my grandparents' visit, it was with Dad. Normally, I enjoy being Fiona Cheng, daughter of Frank Cheng, the writer and illustrator of children's books. It always gives me a thrill when one of my friends says to me, “I just loved your father's
latest! When is he going to do another Cowardly Dragon book?”

My brother Ron and I try to think up ideas for Dad, but in the end he always comes up with the best ones himself. So I'm proud of my dad—most of the time. It's just when Nainai comes to visit that I feel embarrassed. For some reason, he starts acting like a child when she's around.

I began to notice this during Nainai's visit last year. It was her first after our grandfather had died, so it was the first time she came alone. When both my Chinese grandparents were here, the men usually hung out together. Dad, Grandfather, and Ron would sit in the living room while Nainai, Mom, and I prepared food in the kitchen. Actually, it was Nainai who did the cooking, while Mom and I looked on.

But during this visit, things were different. Dad didn't have his father to talk with, so he came into the kitchen and joined Nainai. Since he normally did the cooking anyway, this seemed perfectly natural. It was the way he talked to her when they were in the kitchen that was so strange.

I noticed first of all that his voice sounded higher than usual. Even worse, I heard him calling her Ma. He sounded like a doll I used to have that said “Ma” when you pressed its stomach.

Later that evening, he brought Nainai all his newest drawings and sketches. That surprised me, because he never showed his sketches to us. I don't think even Mom saw them. Dad stood there patiently waiting while Nainai slowly looked over his work.

Nainai frowned at one of the drawings. She pointed to a corner and said, “Bu dui.”

Although I know very little Chinese, I did understand this phrase, which means “Not right.”

Dad just bowed his head meekly and accepted her comment. It reminded me of the times when Ron and I brought home our report cards and stood nervously waiting while our parents looked them over and made comments. It's okay for Ron and me, but it was different when I saw my dad, a grown man, doing it.

Mom noticed me looking on. I must have made a face, because she called me over and took me to her bedroom. “Why does it bother you, Fiona, when your father is so
anxious to please Nainai?” she asked. “What's wrong with a child wanting his parent to be proud of him?”

“But that's just the point!” I said. “He's a grown-up! He looks so silly, behaving like a child again!”

Mom sighed and patted the space next to her on the bed. When I sat down, she looked at me for a moment with her hazel eyes, then turned away and played with a curl of her hair. She always does that when she's not quite sure what to say. I love the way her red hair curls naturally.