Sometimes I forget who I am, what my name is. Here in the Ping Yuen, we just try to make it to another day. I look out at all the laundry hanging on the clothes line next to the dried out bok choy, and I dream one day I am gonna make it outta here. It's a race, between God and the man who tries to keep me down. I have faith most of the times in God, but I tell ya, somedays I have my doubts, like when my mama is beating me down, I have my doubts. One time, she was so angry that she shoved me against my bookcase, knocking down my CP3O model. It went crashing down to the floor, and its arms went flying. My mama don't care. She stomped on the pieces when she went storming outta my room. I sat there listening to Alan Tam playing from the neighbor's open window and cried to myself. It took me almost two days to build the CP3O. I got burns all over my fingers from the hot modeling glue, but I persevered and built it. I was so proud of myself, like for once, it was something I did for myself, from start to finish, I accomplished something. But she didn't even notice. When she looked at me, she just saw another mouth to feed. She said I was dumb like a piece of barbeque pork. I ain't sure what she meant, cuz I don't really know how you measure how smart a barbeque pork is. But that doesn't mean it didn't hurt, for your own mama to think you are useless. Deep down I know mama is just doing the best she knows how. She's got it hard too. It's not her fault. Somewhere it gets passed down, all the anger. People at the Ping Yuen don't got much hope. You see the same pain over and over again. You ain't got no reason to believe.
But my counselor at school believes. She ain't got any skills with the hair and makeup, but she's a nice white lady anyways. She's like, "Don't ever let anybody convince you that you are a piece of barbeque pork. Everybody is good at something. You are good at math, and math will take you far someday." I was like, "How do you know I am good at math?" She was like, "I can see it in you. I can look through your glasses into your eyes, and I see an engineer, or a mathematician, or something like that." I think she's right - it's flowing thru my Chinese blood like a golden dragon. I need to remember my ancestry. I can't let the circumstances drag me down. My people are a proud people. We are not defined by the Chinatown ghetto we live in. We got numbers in our calculating soul. My heart beats like an abacus. Sometimes when my mama is yelling and screaming at me, or when my neighbors are fighting cuz a mahjong game gets really heated, I think about the pythagorean theorum to drown out all the noise. It helps. It helps to know no barbeque pork I know of knows the quadratic formula. My mama don't know it yet, but I am better than a piece of barbeque pork. If my counselor believes in me, then I should believe in me too. The white lady's like a messenger from God. I don't know why in minority stories like this, the messenger from God is always white, but it ain't no difference. I shall rise up.
Anyways, I am not saying everything is alright just cuz I know a little bit of math. It's still hard. My CP3O is still sitting there on my bookcase armless. My mama has expanded her attack to calling me a salted duck egg instead of barbeque pork. And sometimes there is still urine in the Ping Yuen elevator, and the Wah Ching and Joe Boys are still fighting their turf wars. But it's a good thing to know that even when I forget what my name is and lose my way, God and the white lady counselor will remember me. And no matter the madness and chaos circling me like pitbulls with rabies, a² + b² = c² will always be true.
Math is...precious. Don't you ever forget it.
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