Pronunciation Practice

C.J. Anderson-Wu

1. 

He sank in the water, letting the flow bring him down. It felt so good, the coldness in the stream. He thought of lifting his head to get air, but the water was so tender, so caring, he decided to stop breathing and bury himself further into the stream, leaving his troubles behind. 

A moment ago, Redage was ordered by his classmates to kneel down and apologize to them for nothing he had done. Redage refused, so they threw rocks at him, kicked his knees. They kicked him so forcefully in order to injure his joints, so he would conform, or, feel too hurt to stand up. 

It was not the first time. He had been bullied by these boys since he enrolled in this school, a school in which he thought he could learn gymnastics. Redage performed well in school, but he couldn’t get along with his classmates, or, to be correct, they couldn’t get along with him. Redage’s dark skin was mocked, and his insufficient vocabulary of Mandarin was criticized.

“Hey, you indigenous boy, you are more like an animal than a human. That’s the reason why you jump higher.” 

“Redage, you speak like an idiot. Are you an idiot?”

“My sandwich disappeared. Redage, you stole my lunch, right? I know it was you, don’t deny it, I have witnesses.” Redage did not even know what a sandwich was. He never stole anything, he did not have to.

Redage was hardly left alone, he was hassled when he was eating, sleeping, and studying. It was an experience he never had when he was in his hometown. In his tribal community, Redage was well taken care of not only by his parents and his siblings, but also everyone in the village. He was a jewel in the eye of his people, and when he was admitted by the school in the city, they congratulated him by killing a boar to share with the entire clan. They wished him a bright career as a professional athlete, to clean the name of his tribal people as barbarians. “Bully” was a new thing to Redage, he never knew people from a different world could be so mean. Who was more uncivilized?

Redage’s right knee was hurt so much by the relentless attacks of his classmates. But he couldn’t surrender. The pride that was his birthright did not allow him to beg for mercy from these villains. He jumped into the creek. He was not running away, he was seeking relief from the things he was familiar with. The creek water, the soul sustaining medium, he was a part of it.

2.

It’s eight o’clock at night, I must finish my homework before that, and start my pronunciation practice. It’s an agenda my mother set, she wants us to speak perfect Mandarin. At first she would pick up one piece of reading material for me and my two sisters, each of us read it with the best Mandarin pronunciation we could manage, then we took turns correcting one another. 

We are from the Rukai Tribe. My mother left her community to work as a missionary when she was eighteen years old. She was recruited by the pastor from the Presbyterian church in their village to be trained in the city. Mom worked several years as an assistant to several missionaries after the training, and decided to stay and work in the city. 

Mom’s first job was in the kitchen of an elementary school. It was the beginning when she first began to understand what discrimination was. Mom’s co-workers decided she was the lowest among the kitchen staff because she was from the remote mountain area, belonging to the “world of savages.” Mom was assigned to do the jobs the others did not want, cleaning the restrooms, taking trash out, and mopping the floor. One time, when the school’s director of discipline came to check the kitchen work before the supervisors from the Bureau of Education visited, he murmured something to the head of the kitchen staff. The next day Mom was forbidden from touching any food.  

Because of my dark skin, I must be dirty?

Later, Mom changed several jobs and with the little wages she earned she finished her college degree. She had been working in the warehouse of a supermarket, a gas station, and a Hong Kong food restaurant. Once Mom was advised to work as a betel nut girl, wearing very sexy outfits in the booths by highways. She was told she could make much more money if she could attract as many long-distance truck drivers as possible who need to chew betel nuts to stay awake. But Mom was clear that if she wanted to have a career instead of a better income, she needed to choose an industry or a profession. 

Mom became an excellent architecture model maker. She first worked for an architect, and built models with several designers, most of them were men. Mom’s ability to read architectural diagrams impressed them, they let her prepare the materials, such as paper boards, plastic panels, styrofoams, tooth picks, and a variety of glues. Mom was also quite good in estimating the quantities of each material for a model, her skill saved a lot of expense for the architecture firm. 

Mom was happy with her work as a professional architecture model maker, her salary was satisfying, and she got along with her colleagues. But she hardly shared her background with her colleagues, she did not want them to know that she was an indigenous woman from a “savage village” in the mountains. Since my teenage years, I noticed Mom always chose facial creams emphasizing the function of “whitening”. I guessed it worked, because Mom’s skin was indeed quite fair, compared to mine. 

I was born a dark baby, and my skin tone was a worry for Mom. I believe she must have applied her whitening cream, probably a more expensive brand, over me when I was little, but obviously it did not work well. My father has dark skin, too, but I am not sure if it's from sun tan or genes. Dad is half indigenous, half Han.  

Worrying that I will be treated unfairly, my mother insists that we all must speak perfect Mandarin. I am not against perfecting my Mandarin, in fact, raised and educated in the city, I have no problem in speaking perfect Mandarin at all. So the pronunciation practice every night is more for me to correct my parents’ speaking and grammar, and my reading of articles my mother selected for us from the newspapers. 

“Kneecap, bracket, patella, bracket… is it Hsi Gai, or Chu Gai?” Dad asked, not sure how to pronounce “knee” in Mandarin. 

“Hsi, Hsi Gai. I’ve corrected you so many times already. It’s not Chu. ‘Chu’ makes the knee bend, but your knees don’t have to bend, OK?”

“Alright, alright. Hsi Gai, not Chu Gai…” Dad carefully wrote down the phonetic symbols next to the characters that confused him so many times.

“Dad, it’s easy to remember it with a C, like the C from A, B, C.” My younger sister said.

“Oh, that’s right!” Dad put a large C on his notepad, “With this I won’t forget it again. C, from A, B, C.” He smiled. 

Mom seems to be lost in the train of her thoughts. Sometimes I can’t help but think Mom’s ideas of assimilating us into the mainstream are ridiculous. Why can’t we see ourselves from our own perspective but only from that of the mainstream? 

3. 

When Redage’s body was found, his skin was so pale after soaking in water for hours. His sister, Vauvauni, couldn’t recognize him, or: she refused to believe it was her baby brother’s body. She noticed his right knee was injured badly, and a large area of his muscles showed bruises. She wanted to touch it, to relieve the pain he must have suffered, but she couldn’t. Redage looked so fragile, it seemed that he would fall apart if she touched him. 

The official story from Redage’s school was that he fell into the water while playing with his classmates and drowned in the fast currents. But Redage was such a good swimmer, he could swim in waters much more dire than the stream he was found in. 

Looking back, Vauvauni had to admit that Redage had lost his smile since he started going to the school in town. Stories about how hard it was for indigenous peoples to live in the cities began to be passed on to their family. Perhaps they knew it all the time, just they chose not to believe it, not to face it. After all, it was Redage’s dream to be a professional gymnast. 

Teenage boys needed to find victims for their evil egos, and a person with a different appearance was a perfect target. Redage’s unusual talents in sports became his burden. If he did his best in his performance, he’d be given a hard time. His classmates reported him to the teachers with the most trivial matters, like if he did not bring his handkerchief, or if he left the door of the gear room unlocked. Redage might be tripped by one of them unexpectedly when he was running, or he might find his bag dampened by dirty water. He began to realize that staying down by performing at a mediocre level was the best way to avoid conflicts, but he was in despair, not able to learn much in classes.

Vauvauni never could forgive herself. Had she inquired of Redage what had really happened to him in school, they might decide it was better to take him home. But the whole family’s belief that Redage certainly would become a super star in sports blinded them, they did not suspect the danger in Redage’s school life. 

The wounded knee. For a long time Vauvauni couldn’t remember how her little brother looked when he was alive. The only image of Redage imprinted in her head since his death was his wounded right knee. Redage’s wounded knee, her older sister’s nightmare, for years.

4.

My mom always vaguely suggests I should avoid exposing myself under sunlight too much. She advises me to use sunblock, an umbrella, and facial cream that will “brighten” my skin tone. I always laugh off my mother’s ideas, which are so unnecessary and impossible. I am such a good athlete, I participate in my school’s games and training as often as possible: track running, high jump, long jump and swimming. There is simply no way I can avoid sunlight. One of my strengths in sports is that I perform better than other girls in scorching heat. My indigenous identity is rightly respected, although not really understood. I once volunteered to teach my teammates how to swim fast in a river, but our self-training program shocked our coach and teachers who immediately forbade us from doing it again. They thought it was too dangerous for anyone to swim in fast currents. We had fun, though. And I believe my teammates have improved their swimming skills. 

I also like to try gymnastics, but my school has no instruments or instructors for gymnastics. I mentioned it when we were in my mother’s tribal community, and it was the first time I heard about my uncle, who died about the age I am now. 

Every summer my parents will take us back to their hometown, it is the most important thing to us each year. Their hometown is in the remotest mountain in southern Taiwan, each year we will have to drag our luggage and presents we prepare for our relatives in the mountains and take a bus to the train station, and after a long train trip, we still need to take two bus rides to the village at the foothill of my parents’ mountain. At there we either call our relatives to pick us up, or hitchhike to my mother or my father’s community. Vehicles taking us and our big luggage usually are trucks. On the bumpy and winding road, we are tired but happy since it means we are close to our destination. For the trip to my parents’ hometown, we usually take off as early as dawn, and arrive as late as midnight. 

When all my classmates are in the summer camps of backpacking, English learning, creative writing, or basketball playing, I am in the remote mountains, reviewing my parents’ mother tongue with elders and my cousins, and swimming in the streams that my ancestors called “roads walked by fishes.” The streams nourish us, they are abundant and giving; we belong to them. 

It is also the time my Mandarin is laughed at. 

“You speak like a Beijinger.” 

On the plain, it is a compliment because people in Taiwan believe that the down-to-earth Mandarin came from Beijing, and speaking like a Beijinger is the goal for people like anchormen and anchorwomen from TV news channels. But in the tribal community, a girl with dark skin and curly hair like me is not expected to speak like a Beijinger. Behind my mother, I’d mimic the accent of my cousins. To my ears, they speak Mandarin like singing. In fact, they communicate with one another by singing very often. The social codes are in the singing, but I can’t make them out. 

One night we all sat in the open space in the center of the community, under a Large-Leaved Nanmu tree. I was asked how I was doing in school. I never bothered to tell them how good I was in math, science, or Chinese classics, I knew they were not really interested. So I told them what sports I was exercising and racing. I told them I wish I could learn gymnastics. 

“You know who could be an excellent gymnast? Redage!” Granduncle Sula said; he was close to being drunk. All others fell into silence. 

Embarrassed, Sula’s wife stood up and walked toward him, “Didn’t you say you are checking the boar trap you set this afternoon?” She pulled Sula from his seat, and they walked away together. 

The others remained silent for a while longer, then they began talking about something else. 

I still don’t know much about Redage, who I believe was my uncle, my mother’s younger brother she never mentioned to us. I also vaguely understand why my mom cares so much about my accent, my skin tone, and how I am getting along with my peers. It is not because of her vanity or illusion that being like the others will make our social status higher than our true indigenous identities, but being who we are could be shameful, undignified, and even tragic. 

5. 

I bury my face in the water. Rocks on the riverbed remind me of the huge mountains surrounding our community, their colors shine in sunlight, grey like my grandpa’s hair, brown like my uncle’s skin, green like my mother’s leek.  I am always in awe looking up at them under the holy sky. No view can be broader than what I am seeing at this moment. Now they are surrounding me again.

The cool water flows past my hair, my shoulders, my stretched arms, my back and chest, my waist, my hips, my thighs, my knees, and my feet. It heals my wounded knee. It is sacred, I am purified and delivered. I am not going back to the world above water. I am melting into it, I am lifted when I reach the deepest. I am a part of it. I am.