I was in third grade when I realized that my name was different. I spent most of that year admiring the way my short hair stood in a vertical ponytail, waiting for reruns of That’s So Raven on Saturday mornings, and most of all, obsessing over monkey bars. I devoured them. Curvy ones, green ones, ring ones, straight ones, yellow ones. I inhaled them in a frenzy, doing as many rounds as possible, holding onto as many bars as possible, attempting as many variations as possible before the recess whistle blew. Even when it rained and fresh drops of water clung to the bars, I still swung on them. And after I made it through a set of slippery, wet bars, I wiped my damp hands on my jeans and started again.
Third grade was also the year I learned origami. On Fridays after recess, free time welcomed my flushed cheeks and pounding heart with the promise of freedom. We could do anything. We flew through sheets of printed coloring pages and marveled at the way glitter glue sputtered under our squeezing hands. We crayoned and markered loud, vivid cards for our friends and traded stickers and leftover snacks as our currency. We read and played cards and scrolled through computer games and experienced the highs of getting excited as quickly as the lows of becoming disinterested—we could do anything. It was delicate chaos, outfitted in velcro light up shoes and scratch and sniff t-shirts. The room buzzed with the excitement of having freedom and the anticipation of the almost tangible weekend. I loved the artsy areas. But my favorite was the origami station. My half-white, half-Japanese teacher introduced my class to something I had never seen before—folding a plain, square, six by six inch sheet of paper into frogs, pianos, ninja stars, and cranes. My eight-year-old brain exploded. So, I spent a profuse amount of Friday afternoons learning how to fold paper. How to have crisp corners and exact shapes. How to drag my nail at an angle to make perfect lines. How paper was docile but also stubborn. I folded countless cranes into existence that year—so many that I can now bring them to life through muscle memory—without realizing that some folds, some creases you can never take back.
That same year, I felt the difference of my name. Why did my name get underlined in red on Word documents? Why couldn’t I find my name on a Coke can? Or keychain? Magnet? Was there something wrong with my name? Why couldn’t any substitute teachers pronounce my name right? Why was I always a pause on the attendance sheet rather than an easy check mark? Why did they always scrunch their eyebrows and apologize in advance before calling out my name? Why do they keep talking about butchering my name? Why do they use the word “butcher?”
They wielded that word so easily. “I am totally going to butcher this next name.” With such lightness. As if my name was simply a helpless slab of meat waiting to be hacked. And hack it they did.
Son-he. Hack.
Sang-he. Hack.
Son-gee. Hack.
Sang-eye. Hack.
They were more than just substitute teachers and they did more than just hack it—they slaughtered it. They folded my young, tender name into neat shapes that best suited the boxes of their mouths. Sliced into the rounded softness and gave it sharp edges. My name bent to the demands, mincing parts of itself until it became convenient for them. It became easier to say, easier to rip into and chew and swallow whole. The two pronunciations of my name walk hand in hand, creases and cleaves and smoothness and delicacy all together. I drift between the two, shifting and changing my color depending on where I am and who I am with. And on days when it feels like correcting those who butcher my name is somehow my fault, I remember the severed sounds of my name. The gentle vowels and easy consonants. The movement of tongues and teeth and lips. Most of all, I remember that if they can learn to pronounce Heraclitus and Caravaggio and Nietzsche, they can learn to pronounce Sangi.
Sangi Lama is a Nepali writer. She was born in Hetauda, Nepal and immigrated to the United States at the age of four. She graduated from Portland State University with a Bachelor of Arts in English and currently lives in Oregon.
Photo by Dominic's pics on Foter.com / CC BY