Patina

by Elizabeth Wood

Elizabeth is from Holt, Michigan. She graduated from the University of Michigan with a MA in Transcultural Studies. Her master’s capstone, a collection of short stories and interviews, explored her maternal family’s immigration from Laos to the United States, as refugees of the Vietnam War.

When she got to America, she didn’t know her name and she spent her first year in between an English-speaking classroom and a language learning center in the school, for students who came from other countries, speaking other languages. The teacher did not know how to help them, so they had to learn for themselves and that’s why—she paused because sometimes it was easy to think about something in English and other times it required her to translate the phrase or thought from Laotian, the language her brain naturally processed and thought in—that’s why she hated school.

Her teacher had given her a project on the first day of school. To write six letters on a piece of paper over and over. Annoyed, was the only word she could think of, she said. She said it twice, once in Laotian and once in English.

She brought the paper home and told her dad that she didn’t want to go to school anymore. They expected her to learn English and wasn’t comfortable. They asked her to tread water and she was tired. She felt like her head was bobbing and she was taking in gulps of water.

She makes me write these six letters she complained to her dad. She showed him the paper and waited for him to be equally bothered, to come to her defense, to pull her out of the water.

Instead he laughed.

He laughed for so long, tears formed in his eyes.

Spell it, he asked.

P – A – T – I – N – A.  

Patina, he said. That’s your name.

I laughed with her as she stopped for a moment, set the knife down on the counter and smiled. That’s why education is important, she said, so you know how to recognize yourself with the letters and words you use every day.

One day, meu khony tongkansai hong nam, she said, but she didn’t know how to say it and the teacher had already reprimanded a kid for asking to go and because he took too long to come back, her teacher said no one could go. She had found the boy playing with the water in the sink. Khonyyan so bad that her hands were shaking, she said, her leg was bouncing against her desk, and she was sweating. The teacher took the pass and put it on her desk. My mom wanted to raise her hand but didn’t know how to say it in English. In her head, khony samadsai hong nam daibo? Khony samadsai hong nam daibo?

Frozen, she couldn’t hold it any longer. Khony hed. The kids screamed and the teacher rushed over. The seat was wet, her cheeks were red, mouth mumbling words no one could detect, her teacher hovering over her and asking if she was okay. She was not. She was drowning in the letters of the alphabet, their harsh consonants and multisided vowels consumed her and pushed her down. Each wave of American school culture was coded and overwhelming.

The teacher ushered her out of the classroom and got her a change of clothes. She told her that she could go anytime she needed, that the boy was just playing to avoid school, that not everyone followed the same rules, that it was okay she didn’t understand.

Khaphachao mikhuaam laoai, she said, head bowed over the cutting board, like she sat in her desk thirty years previously. Neither language came to mind, to tell her that she was a child and she couldn’t have known.

Kho khony othd I finally said. The usual response when someone is in pain and you don’t know how to help them.

Wo pen jang. She smiled when she said it, like she did every time. When I pushed the cart into her heel in the grocery store aisle, when her hair caught in my bracelets during a hug, or when I forgot to tell her about the bake sale at school the next day.

Was it okay though?