At some point, if I didn’t understand a question, I took to giving random answers. Somehow, I deemed this preferable to revealing that I didn’t understand the question at all. If there was only one word that I didn’t understand, as in, “Do you like poetry with onomatopoeia?” I could ask, “What’s onomatopoeia?” But frequently, I would think I understood all the words in the question, but it didn’t make sense.
For instance, while I was still in preschool, a girl in our apartment building once decided that I just had to see her stuffed rabbit. She raced into her apartment and came out with it.
“Hoshii?” she asked me. I blinked and said “Huh?” She repeated the question. We repeated this exchange twice or thrice, but she simply continued repeating the question.
Here was the thing. I knew the word hoshi, which meant star. But it made no sense to me that she would be asking me, “Star?” with regards to her stuffed bunny, which had nothing in common with a star. Finally, I concluded that she must be asking if I thought it was pretty like a star. I said yes.
“You can’t have it!” she told me gleefully, clutching the bunny to her chest.
That was how I learned that hoshii meant to want. She had been asking me if I wanted it. (I was grateful that she hadn’t been serious, since I didn’t particularly want the worn stuffed animal.) This was a pattern that became a habit.
There was a girl with whom I became instant friends in preschool. Let’s call her Snowy. Our friendship, I believe, was based less on mutual liking and more on the fact that no one else seemed to want to spend any time with either of us. Snowy was loud, outspoken and disruptive. She taught me the word “benjo,” a rude word for toilet, by leading me through the preschool bathrooms, opening every stall, screaming, “Benjo!” and slamming the door regardless of whether or not their was an occupant. (The children’s stalls didn’t have locks; there was only one stall for the teachers that did have a lock.) Then she took me to the urinals and taught me the word “chin-chin” (penis) by harassing a male teacher in the process of relieving himself. He valiantly tried to explain why what she was doing was wrong over Snowy’s very loud squeals and exclamations while simultaneously fending her off.
Snowy was not conventional by any stretch of the imagination. Later, when we attended the same elementary school with nearly 600 students, everyone knew who I was because I was foreign; but everyone knew who Snowy was because of who she was. We fell in and out of friendship during the five years that we attended the same schools. She had been born in the US, and was happy to watch Disney movies in English with me. I never knew the rules of interaction with Snowy, so maybe that’s why I can’t remember a time when I ever thought of her as a best friend; but she was certainly a constant.
In elementary school, Snowy and I were placed in separate classes. It was convention that children walked to and from school alone, though we were told never to stray from our assigned routes. Drop-offs by car or bicycle were not permitted. So during the first two weeks, we went home in groups, led by a teacher. Snowy and my houses were in the same direction, but her assigned route broke off of the main group very early on.
“You’re this way, right?” Snowy asked me on the first day. I didn’t understand the question, so I nodded (it seemed the right thing to do; defaulting to nodding seemed in generally better than defaulting to shaking my head). Moments later, she was pulling me down the side street with her, and understanding flooded me just a little too late. I also didn’t have the courage to correct her, but the teacher didn’t call out to stop me. I ended up walking home through the side streets, past Snowy’s house.
Mistake though it may have been, I enjoyed getting that time with Snowy, so the next day I was happy to do it again. Only this time, the teacher (who had a list of which children were supposed to turn off where, and no doubt noticed when I wasn’t there at my turn-off on the previous day) noticed.
“You’re not that way,” she laughed, and ushered me back to the group. I shuffled along, my face burning. I glanced back and saw Snowy looking at me, her jaw slack. She clenched her teeth and spun on her heel. The rush of shame and guilt was already a familiar companion. It didn’t make it any less unpleasant.
The next day at school, Snowy turned her nose up at me and told me she wanted nothing to do with liars like myself. I was too tired or too guilty to contradict her. I didn’t know how to explain.
“You always lie,” Snowy said to me. This hurt more than Snowy’s frostiness.
My mother talked of her own childhood like she was a paragon of honesty and integrity. She never lied, she told me. When her teacher, who checked that everyone had their handkerchiefs every morning, forgot to check on the same day that my mother had forgotten her handkerchief, she had gone to the teacher of her own volition and admitted to not having it. She had been good and honest. I was trying, but still I was bad and a liar. I didn’t know what to do about any of this, but certainly explaining this situation to any adults was out of the question. I couldn’t bear the shame of letting them know exactly what I’d become.
So I lied to my parents on purpose to hide the shame of the lies I was telling left and right at school without meaning to.
I was six years old.