Doreen Jorge Cotton

My brother sends me a model house he built, a trophy for my being First of the Class.   I give it to the nuns.  They display it on a little table in the hallway.   By the time the new term starts, it is gone.

The nuns see that pushing me up a grade was not enough.   There are unintended consequences.

They push me up another grade.

It is painful to lose all my classmates once more.    There is no time to brood.   I scramble to catch up on classwork.

Our new textbooks come from Catholic University in Washington.  New teachers arrive from the U.S. and Europe.

Mother Theotokos is young and modern.  She teaches us biology in an American accent.   She tells us stories about teenagers like ourselves.   We are jealous that they do more fun things in American high schools.   Compared to them we are drudges with our noses pressed to the grindstone.

Mother Columbine is Irish but she has been in the Far East for a long time.   She is petite, and the huge English literature textbook seems even heavier when she handles it.   How much of that can we cover? Undaunted, Mother Columbine begins with Beowulf.

Mother Columbine teaches that emotions are good.   I think of my father’s anger and how is that good?

This literature textbook has two complete Shakespearean plays, short novels and stories, and the essays of Emerson, Thoreau, James and other American and British writers.   Why do I remember being absorbed in Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych?   They must have stuck some translated works in there.

The section of poems is enormous, but not random.   They have been given a form.  Here are the lyricists, there the metaphysical poets, over here the transcendentalists, over there the allegorical poets.

I want to read everything in this treasure trove, but I know that I must focus on what Mother Columbine assigns.  I have to separate the two.   What I need is a map.

Out of the blue someone gives me a very large Coca Cola calendar.  The back is blank.  Perfect.  I draw a map using color pencils.  I give a place to every writer and work we cover.   I add identifying clues.   This way, I can remember the details by “seeing” the whole map and focusing on the place where I put the author.

I notice that even though I don’t make maps for my other subjects, there I am also remembering patterns and structures.   I can “see” the information I need as a logical part of the whole.

I think everyone studies like this until Annie enlightens me.

One of the unintended consequences of being pushed up two grades is that at graduation I am still fifteen.  The colleges in the nuns’ network consider me too young to be uprooted and sent thousands of miles away for four years.

They say wait at least another year.   To me, that is too far to see.

Out of the blue, Mother Paulinus sends word that she wants to see me right away.  There is someone she wants me to meet.

She introduces me to Elizabeth Reid.  She is an Australian.  She is the editor of a Catholic newspaper in Hong Kong.  She came to Macau for a retreat.  Elizabeth greets me with a warm smile.

I soon discover that the nuns have been effusive in talking me up to Elizabeth.   She is holding a copy of The Rosette.   Now that the nuns are no longer responsible for keeping my pride from stumbling into a horrible fall, they are bragging about me like tiger mothers.   They use the word gifted without mentioning demons.

Elizabeth offers me a full scholarship to a new kind of school in Ohio, U.S.A.   She promises me that after one year at this school, they will place me in an appropriate American college.

What new kind of school?  Mother Paulinus hands me a brochure.

Elizabeth says that when I come to see her in Hong Kong she will answer all my questions.

The brochure shows small buildings in a rural setting.  They mention international students, including a European baroness.  From this I gather that they are a sort of finishing school like the ones in Switzerland that my cousin Didi is considering.

Although the teachers are not nuns, they emphasize spiritual training, whatever that is.  In any case, I will only be there for one year.

I am going to America!

My sister reveals another bombshell that blows apart my neat explanations of what happened with Titi.

After my uncle told me that I was going to America, he calls my sister to his home.  Out of the blue he tells her that my mother has left us money.  It is in the form of a demand loan to a Chinese businessman.   Before she died, my mother signed over this demand note to Titi along with her jewelry.

When did he discover this?

Instantly, I remember seeing my mother at her wardrobe handing a necklace to a young Chinese woman.   The woman was weeping that her father suffered from tuberculosis and they were desperate.    We were in the middle of the war.  Did that incident have anything to do with this loan?

Another thing sprang to mind.   When I came back after my year with my father, Titi went out of her way to let me know that money was tight, at least when it came to me.

Complaining that a book I needed for school was too expensive she borrowed it and typed up a copy.  It was The Pilgrim’s Progress.   Her copy was full of mistakes.  It didn’t matter because I read the original before she finished typing it.   She never copied another book, but she made her point.  I dreaded asking her for money.

As a practical matter, I had everything I needed.   My school uniforms were custom made, as were my shoes.   Titi provided me with enough clothes.   My uncles gave me pocket money.

My sister knew how to bargain with local tailors in Hong Kong.  She had a keen eye for quality.   She sent me custom made clothes copied from the latest fashion magazines.

To me, money was abstract – I didn’t think about it.

In my excitement about going to America, it had not occurred to me that I needed money for the voyage, a deposit with the U. S. government for the voyage back, suitable clothes and all sorts of other expenses.

My mother’s demand note is for much more than I need.

My sister says that it took three telephone calls from my uncle before Titi sent over my mother’s jewelry and the demand note.

With Titi, was it always about money, then, as my sister claims?

It weighed on me.  Why?

My mother