An Autobiography

Gordon Shi

(This work was assigned by Mr. Joseph Murtauph, my junior year English teacher.)

Part I

Eating shouldn’t be a challenge for a two-year-old. But for me, a tiny vessel containing a dangerously high amount of Mercury in his bloodstream, the simple biological function seemed like an insurmountable task. Ironically, my feeding disorder had developed as a result of what I was fed. Mom had discovered too late that Chilean sea bass was not only ineffective as an IQ-booster but also rich in the poisonous element with the potential to cause brain damage. Now, my brother had been diagnosed with autism and I resisted all of my parents’ attempts to coax me into taking down a spoonful of rice or a glass of milk. I can hardly envision this version of myself today, and it would seem unbelievable to anybody who’s ever seen me in the Kaye North lounge wolfing down flaming mouthfuls of ramen. Yet there is a man who vividly remembers that period in my life during which I was hospitalized for my feeding disorder at a center for kids with developmental conditions. There is an image burned into his mind that he views through a one-way glass window, an image of his baby being force-fed by a therapist with a white suit and latex gloves. When he views this image, the child cries out to him through a mouth stained with blood: “I want my Dad. I want my Dad.” And he holds his tongue and swallows his words because he knows that his child can’t hear the reply.

               The man’s name is Shi Heping and the strength and resilience which carried him through the years I wouldn’t eat are also the reasons I ever came into existence. His father was not able to watch him grow and provide him with guidance the way Dad himself did for me, as he was sent to a labor reform camp by Mao Zedong’s government when Dad was only five years old. In reality, he was not a “counter-revolutionary” like the Chinese government insisted, but the word of the state was considered the word of God. Since his father was designated with this label, Dad was by extension an enemy of the government, and therefore attending school was out of the question. He also had no hope of working in a factory or even joining the military to make a living; the PRC would not even give him the liberty to die for them. As a result, he spent his teenage years in a small village in northern Anhui, where his days were filled with backbreaking labor that his malnourished body could barely survive. With the limitations imposed on him by society, there seemed to be no reason at all for him to go on living. In fact, his own grandfather had ended his life because the strain of poverty had been too much to handle. Dad, however, refused to leave in a similar manner. He would repeat the same mantra to himself day after day: “As long as I can carry water for the poor old lady next door, my life still has meaning and I will not commit suicide.” That one statement would eventually become the framework of my entire mentality, and it kept Dad strong until he found a way out. When he was fifteen, his best friend led him to the exit from hopelessness, which took the form of a tiny hole in the wall of an abandoned library. In this sanctuary, he discovered forbidden western literature and language, and from then on he spent every free minute soaking up the magic of 19th-century Russian poetry or memorizing English words from a dictionary. After Mao’s death, the schools in China reopened, and Dad’s knowledge became his most essential asset. His education was a set of wings, and he flew higher and higher with them, out of the quicksand of ignorance and disenfranchisement into the lofty branches of higher education, where my mother was waiting to be discovered.

               In a communist utopia where all men and women were equally “well-off,” it wouldn’t make sense that Mom had it better than Dad growing up. But as George Orwell wrote in the novel Animal Farm, “some animals are more equal than others.” Like her future husband, Cheng Xueru was from a “counter-revolutionary” family, and like her future husband, her physique was comparable to that of a stick insect. But she did not have to skip high school. Her academic excellence was reason enough for her the government to grant her the opportunity, and she rarely completed an assessment with a score below perfect. She never had to search for her name on the list of student exam scores which teachers in China would post outside of their classrooms because it was always at the very top. So Mom grew up with a thorough understanding of every concept that can be taught inside a schoolhouse, save for one thing: failure. While Dad rubbed the callouses on his dirt-stained fingers and wiped sweat out from is blood-shot eyes, she sharpened her pencils and thumbed through her textbooks. Yes, she witnessed people dying from starvation in her community, and yes her father and mother were harshly persecuted for their involvement with the Nationalist party, but Mom herself had everything a Chinese girl growing up in the Cultural Revolution could reasonably ask for. When she graduated from Beijing University (China’s equivalent of Harvard or Yale), her mindstate was as beautiful, as serene, and as elegant as a porcelain vase. Dad never guessed it was fragile until they moved to America together. As money became scarce and job opportunities diminished, he watched it tip over, wobble back and forth, and crack. Then, when Mason and Gordon were diagnosed with autism and a feeding disorder respectively, Dad watched the vase drop and shatter into a million pieces.

               Those early years of my childhood were more torturous for Dad than any punishment Chairman Mao could dream of inflicting. Not only was he burdened with twin boys who couldn’t either couldn’t talk or couldn’t eat, but he also became the life jacket of a woman who was actively trying to drown herself. After Mason said his first word at age four and after I tried a bite of pizza for the first time at age seven, Mom was no longer suicidal, but instead of swimming, she was struggling to stay afloat. Being in such a low position for so long had driven her expectations for me unreasonably high, and her anxiety seemed to outweigh her love. She went into fits of rage so frequently over the most frivolous reasons that to this day I cannot picture my house without seeing her anguished face through the semi-transparent curtains. Yet in the darkness of Mom’s pain, there was a shining sparkle of hope: Mason’s love. There was never any rhyme or reason to his compassion, no possible explanation for why he was so deeply devoted to a family that showed him far less kindness than he deserved. But whatever the reason, he would take the blame for my misdeeds so that I would never have to face the wrath of Mom’s anger even when he feared it much more than I did. Mason was and still is deeply committed to Christianity, though he never went to Church or was affiliated with a specific denomination. But during Mom’s lowest moments, he would rush to her with a Bible in hand to speak to her about faith, love, and hope. I still doubt that she ever considered the words she was saying, but he could have been speaking in Latin and she would have still got his message.

               After one particularly bad outburst one day, we all sat around the dinner table with tears in our eyes. Mom was sobbing hysterically as she tried to eat and grains of rice were slipping back into her bowl through her quivering chopsticks. Dad leaned over to kiss her and then addressed us all softly: “I think it’s incredible that no matter how loud Mom yells, everything is ok afterwards. She loves us all even more than she loves herself and we can still be a happy family.” With that being said, Mason decided to reveal the truth of the situation to us: “Mom’s feeling ok now because I prayed.” I realized something at that moment. I honestly don’t know if there’s a God, and if he does exist, then I’m unaware of what miracles he can. Maybe heaven does only help those who help themselves In spite of all my doubts, one thing is for certain. Whenever Mason prays, things seem to work themselves out.

Part II

The salmon-colored piece of paper perched upon the desk is visually and psychologically repulsive to every fiber of my being, but somehow, possibly with a little help from my fear of rapidly approaching deadlines, I muster up enough willpower to scan the text on the page. “You’re being graded,” it screams, “on the quality of your writing, the quality of your examples, the smoothness of your structure and narrative, and your willingness to dig.” At that last requirement, I let out an exasperated sigh so vigorously that the elderly librarian sitting twenty meters away from me jumps to her feet.  Asking me to divulge the most intimate components of my character and personal history in a well-organized essay for a man who I’ve known for less than a year, all for the sake of a number that colleges will eventually use to ascertain my societal worth, is similar to requesting that I painstakingly disembowel myself with a scalpel and serve the contents of my intestines on a silver platter while appearing relatively presentable. My mind, already tormented by a fog of uncertainty over the nature of its identity, defaults to a failsafe which admittedly has only ever led to failure: procrastination. The process is initiated with a succinct yet nonetheless strong transmission to my eyes, one that says “Get off that damned, ugly paper ASAP,” and they obey without hesitation, leaping to a nearby bookshelf and sprinting across the ancient titles imprinted on the spines of timeless novels. When they have traveled far enough, they collapse on a stylish, cursive font which spells out “THE DIVINE COMEDY.” Hold on, haven’t I heard of this story? If I recall correctly, this tale was written about a man who journeys through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven to save his soul. Now, 700 years after Dante penned it, there sits a Chinese boy in an American library too exhausted to remember the specifics, much less comprehend the theme of this literature. It is ironic, then, that in the past few years of his life this Chinese boy has forged a path through onerous hardships, reflected upon and redefined the purpose of his existence, and reached a higher state of enlightenment, all in order to save his soul.

Much like Dante’s protagonist, my descent into the Underworld came on the heels of my pursuit of the sun shining brightly at the top of a hill. Middle school was a forest which, despite its density, I navigated with relative ease, and I graduated eighth grade with A’s in every course as well as a smile on my face which radiated with enough hope and joy to flood any grotto I had ever ventured into with light. At the base of this hill, however, I too encountered three malevolent and relentlessly violent beasts. They took the forms of frightening forces of nature, namely Honors Chemistry, Precalculus AP, and Computer Science, and sank their fangs into my conscience, tearing at my own desire to educate myself. For two years I shielded myself from blow after devastating blow, but for all my effort I could only watch as the life drained from my GPA. As the “straight A” average I had solidified with no difficulty began to lose its consistency and slip through my fingers, my mother was consumed with an anxiety that engulfed my house and my world in flames. Two hundred miles from home I could still feel its sweltering heat, but that didn’t burn as deeply as my own feelings of inadequacy. All around me I saw people with my own yellow complexion and narrow eyes reach levels of intellectualism I could not, and I often wondered how I could even consider myself one of them. How come the other Chinese boys could maintain a 4.0 while I only scored a 40% on a final exam? Their academic efficiency was so flawless compared with it registered in my mind as being nothing short of robotic. But despite perceiving myself as mentally inferior, I had sown the seeds of my persona and carried the burden of my mother’s expectations while growing up under the yoke of this Asian culture, and as a result, it was impossible for me to holistically distance myself from the demographic I subconsciously resented. If those kids were robots, and if I was biologically one of those kids but unmistakably outperformed by them in every aspect, it was only logical that I was a defective model. I believe it was these “rational” thoughts that caused me to lose faith in my manufacturer. If one of his products was inadequate, then why hadn’t he decommissioned it yet?

As time went on and my thought process matured, I began to question whether I was indeed broken or simply misapplied It was clear that mathematical and chemical equations left my brain cells feeling clumsy and hog-tied, but they sprung back to life whenever I needed to use words. In my Precalculus classroom, I could vaguely recall that e was equal to 2.71 or 2.72-something, but in my English classroom, e was entirely emotional, an evocation of enchantment, echoing emphatically through each and every example of figurative language. Whenever I wrote, I could feel a fire spark up in my chest, and I fanned this flame with an inherited devotion to social justice. Years of candlelight vigils for the victims of Tiananmen Square filled my memory and drove a younger version of myself to spend hours in front of a mirror with his fist raised in the air, staring past his own reflection into the masses of thousands applauding his rallying cry for democracy. I never even understood the meaning of “打倒共产党,” but I didn’t have to speak Chinese to understand the fervor with which these Tibetan, Uyghur, Taiwanese, and Han people painted their visions. At the same time, I diversified my influences. I would watch videos of Liu Xiaobo and follow them with footage of John F. Kennedy or Malcolm X or whoever I was intrigued by, all the while drawing parallels between the different speakers and subject matter. By this time last year, my repertoire of rhetorical devices had grown so expansive that I felt proficient enough to unite people under any cause for the betterment of humanity. After the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, I wrote and delivered an award-winning speech about resilience and determination in the face of corruption and subsequently organized a group of students to attend a March for Our Lives protest in Princeton. I was powerful enough to stare death in the face and attack it vehemently. I had nothing to fear from it.

               Then, on February 21, 2018, death showed its true face and sent the golden walls of my fantasy crashing down all around me. As soon as the words “Malcolm Baldwin has died” slipped from the mouth of the headmaster, they penetrated my skull with the speed of a bullet. I wasn’t sure what had pierced me, but I could tell my eyes were bleeding. The crystal clear fluid dropped slowly at first and I stained my hands trying to plug the wound, but the tears poured faster and faster until they became a deluge of shock, fear, and inexplicable emptiness. A few days afterward I sought closure at his funeral, but the pale-faced, well-dressed boy lying in the casket was not the vessel of energy I had shared so much joy with for the past two years. This incarnation of mortality struck a primal fear within me, and my thoughts began to gravitate around the permanence of death and the apparent futility of life. I was never afraid of death, but I was deathly afraid of the pain it left behind. With all the uncertainty in life, I could just as easily become the boy in the casket, watching my family through eyes wide shut as they sorted through memories trying to reach me. As I agonized over these thoughts, I strayed further from activism. After all, there was no way for me to launch a revolutionary campaign for human rights if I did not fully grasp what it meant to be human. It was so easy to read about the seventeen victims in MSD High School and to think that I was sympathetic enough to comprehend their pain, but I felt broken when confronted with the loss of one individual. I wanted to run away from these conflicting emotions and find a place where the evils of the world could not reach me, but I needed a psychopomp for that. I sought a spiritual guide to do for me what Vergil did for Dante, and fortunately, I had one. Mr. Wood, also a well-versed writer from a time before my own, led me through thought-provoking conversation and introspection to my own Earthly Paradise at the peak of Mount Purgatory. As I gazed down from my seat with an ancient wind caressing my face, I could observe all of humanity’s suffering me beneath me and recognize all these pains as my own. There was nowhere to go but down, but I didn’t feel that way. I was ready to ascend.

On the last night before spring break of 2018, I went to the Chapel one last time to say goodbye to Malcolm. The plastic candles arranged in a heart, the copious amount of pictures that littered his little memorial and captured vestiges of his unmistakable energy, the heartfelt notes stained so heavily with tears that they were impossible to read yet far too easy to understand, the girl sitting in the first pew crying her heart out, all reminded me of the Tiananmen vigils, except this felt so much more intimate. Malcolm wasn’t a victim of political persecution or racially motivated violence, and the girl sitting before me wasn’t a part of a democracy movement or socially progressive cause. But they had shared so much with me. Meals, moments, time, tears, laughter, love, and so much more. I sat down next to her and we began a conversation under an atmosphere that transcended the metaphysical. I came to learn that this beautiful young woman with enough strength to carry the entire world upon her shoulders. The ensuing conversation, which shattered years of frustration and anger and lifted both of us, was deeply engrained in my memory. I still remember that conversation today, a year after it took place. I still marvel at how it liberated me from the human feelings of doubt and ineptitude and endowed me with the divine spirits of compassion and hope. When I reminisce now I realize that God, regardless of whether I do or do not believe in him, guided my hand in that chapel. As Dante said, “My desire and my will were being turned like a wheel, all at one speed, by the Love which moves the sun and the other stars.”