1.Birth
The first time you saw the sun was when you were only two months old and your mom
took you to a fortune teller. He gave you your Chinese name, described your character,
and delivered your future on a silver platter that his frail fingers clutched loosely. Your
mom tells you that, only moments after tracing the soft lines swirling your palm, he
predicted you would be an intelligent, driven girl, born to be a worldly diplomat, fated to
have a heart of gold.
When she first told you this, you could not help but feel your entire body swell with
pride. Now, you believe it’d be a good idea for your parents to locate that fortune
teller and ask for a refund.
2. Asian (sometimes)
It’s nice being Asian because you know your friends are aware you have the best school
lunches. The thermos of fried rice you bring with the sweet sausage cut up into small
chunks. The chicken katsu with cherry tomatoes and cucumber sticks on the side. The
pan-fried gyoza lined up in a three-by-two array in your LunchBot container. Your Asian
is something that stands unwavering and proud until mentions of stinky tofu and chicken
feet emerge to drag it down. Suddenly, you cannot stop your body from grimacing and
shaking, running and shying away from what people think you are, worried that any
sense of familiarity with such delicacies would corroborate their belief that you stick bats
in your mouth.
You could try to stand up for yourself, play the soundtrack of your bloodline laughing
and drinking on a winter’s evening, eating chicken feet painted in numbing red sauce,
and swiping cups of tea off a Lazy Susan as the fog sweeps itself across the restaurant
windows and bundles you all in the warm, yellow light. Or maybe, you can allow your
body to shudder and jerk in all different directions as you whip your head back and
permit your chest to spasm with laughter and regret, joining your peers in their
anti-stinky tofu protests.
But you know that such an effort wouldn’t change anything. So you remain seated,
tight-lipped and nodding because, in this colloquial language, both silence and noise fail
to convey your truth anyway.
In February, most people wear red for Valentine’s Day, but you do it to wrap yourself in
blessing and good luck. You say you love Chinese New Year: you and your Asian friends
will ask each other how much money you have all received and what food you have all
been eating any time the subject comes up. But what you will not talk about is how you
have condensed Chinese New Year’s fifteen days into one, thinking, if it weren’t for the
phone calls to relatives and the red envelopes that slip into your palm, would this day
even exist anymore? You suck a little harder on your White Rabbit candy. You receive
another red envelope. You let the good luck and fortune melt on your palm.
Spring break rolls around, and you sit on a plane, ready to endure the fifteen-hour flight
to Taiwan. When the flight attendant comes by with her cart, asking your mom what 飲
料1 she wants or if she would just like 水2 , your mom chooses the latter, and as the flight
attendant gives your mom a bottle of 水, you start mentally practicing to tell her that you
want 一杯可樂3. But when her gaze flickers over to you, she opens her mouth and drink
topples out instead of 飲料, water instead of 水. You stare at her, trying to process why
this encounter is nothing like what you envisioned it to be.
Thankfully, there are a few options you can consider here:
Snatch one of the plastic cups stacked on the side of her cart, and let the sweat that
formed on your neck from frantically practicing your Mandarin under the buckles of
your breath dribble into it. When the warm concoction of stress and salt fills the plastic
to its brim, offer her a drink in Mandarin—if you can manage to get the words out
without the cup overflowing—and right as she opens her mouth to answer, chuck your
burden at the crisply ironed uniform she is wearing.
The other option you can consider is properly answering her question. This is the option
you end up choosing, telling her that you would like a soda.
You cower in your seat as she places the chilled beverage in your hand, watching the heat
from the pads of your fingers melt the condensation and cause the droplets to bleed and
roll down the can. You thank her—in English—and she nods her head and rolls the cart
away to ask the passenger behind you what they would like today. She asks them in
Mandarin.
You arrive in Taiwan, and for the next few days, mornings are filled with walks to the
nearby 7-Eleven that sings an automated tune when you open the door. Afternoons
consist of lying around in your Ah-Ma4’s apartment wondering what dinner is going to
be. Evenings are filled with night markets and noodle soups and unbuttoned pants after
eating too much. Occasional thoughts of living here scatter themselves throughout your
stay.
You take out your phone to take pictures of every dish placed in front of you and of
every shop you pass that has a cute sign. You don’t bother trying to hide the tourist in
you anymore because every native can tell you are one at first glance anyway. Your
Ah-Ma says that it’s just because you dress like an American and have the body language
of one. This answer annoys you because you were hoping it would be something you
could help. Either way, the photos are worth receiving prolonged gazes and questions
asking where you are from. You put them up on your Instagram in a series of stories and posts, and you are reminded how satisfying it is to display what you are up to; this international getaway, it makes you a little more interesting, a little more worldly, a little more exotic.
Your photos are all imbued with these messages: Look at the red-roofed temples. Admire
the wide range of scenery: the clear blue lakes to the bustling evening streets. Watch me
devour this delicious bowl of beef noodle soup and wish you could lick a droplet of broth
from my spoon. On a screen, your Asian looks better than ever, but as you peer out the
balcony of your Ah-Ma’s apartment to observe the 6 p.m. streets, you notice a young,
uniformed girl leaving the local cram school, heading over to a run-down building settled
within the nook of a desolate alley. You take note of the violin case secured in her hand.
You remember your mom telling you that most kids in Asia stay in school till the
evening. You recall a different time when you were complaining about practicing piano,
and she countered your whining by telling you that she used to take piano class right after
school till 9 p.m.
You watch the schoolgirl look right and left before crossing the street, only to disappear
into the crevice of two dingy buildings shortly after. Noticing how dark the streets have
grown, you look up at the gray sky, trying to see where the early evening’s light has gone.
But as your eyes burn into the heart of Taiwan, discerning the heads of all structures,
taxis, grocery stores, and other lurking suspects, you fail to find who is responsible for
swallowing the sun, and you slowly come to understand the fact:
This could never be your home.
3. House Inventory
★ The purple thermos that always smells a little bit like fried rice
★ The piano books and Certificate of Merit feedback sheets that sit on top of the
grand piano (you quit last year, and you never looked at the feedback you
received)
★ The Taiwanese tongue your grandma gave your mother but your mother didn’t
give you
★ Your red envelopes that sit in your parents’ cabinet with crisp tens and twenties
buried in them
★ The AP Chinese workbook on the hallway countertop (you wanted to take the
exam Freshman year)
★ The Gen-Z vernacular your parents will never understand
★ The loud, crocheted beanie that your Ah-Ma gave you. Have you ever worn it?
Will you ever?
★ The dream of having a high school boyfriend that your mother has crushed
between her palms
★ Home-cooked leftovers sitting in the fridge for the last two days (you wanted
takeout instead)
★ The Post-It notes with reminders scribbled on them that your mom madly sticks
on the computer but never takes down
★ Shrimp crackers that melt on your tongue
★ The way your mom drapes a blanket over your dad when he falls asleep on the
couch
★ The faded photos of your parents with little dates scribbled in the corners.
You wonder if their problems were anything like yours. You wonder if they were
anything like you. You wonder if such history even matters.
x. Error
We skip the number between 3 and 5 because Ah-ma says that at any sign of death, we
must run and hide.
5. Patterns
Did you ever notice that your mom didn’t know how to react when her dad died? Did you
ever notice the silence that spoke in the dining room when it was just the two of them?
Did you ever notice how little they had to say when they looked each other in the eyes?
Did you ever notice the way your mom doesn’t hug you? Did you ever notice the way she
leaves you in your room to cry? Did you ever notice the way she stresses that utter
independence is good for a young girl? Did you ever notice that she hasn’t said I love you
in a while?
Did you ever think that maybe you didn’t notice her try?
6. A Letter
Dear Daughter,
In a world where we are bound together by red string, I know you like to cut our ties.
Did I ever tell you how hard it is to be a mother? How hard it is to be yours? You twist
and you turn and your straining is causing too many knots to gather themselves amongst
our strings. I know that I feed you broken stories of a love that knows no bounds. I
know that the calluses on my fingers cut your raw skin as I wash your back. I know that you are working for the knife, filing away at the strings until they shred, the threads falling limp
and loose until you make your final cut, striking the ground: the finishing note of your
sonata. But I know that no matter how many times I wake up to find no one on the other
end of the red road, I will always look for your loose thread, bend my knees and reach my
palm down to tie our strings together and make ends meet.
So do not fret. Do not hide. Do not turn and run away. Our strings are bound together; I
will not let you go so easily.
7. Yours
You watch movies of blonde hair and blue eyes winning the man over and over again.
You tell yourself that one day you will experience that win too. One day, he will tell you
that your boba-colored eyes are beautiful. He will cup his palms around your face and
lean his forehead against yours. He will tuck your hair behind the shell of your ear, and
you will feel the wind blow against your cheek as he whispers, “It’s you. It’s always been
you.”
Watch the girls with the slim thighs and long torsos make him fall onto his knees. Wish
you did not have your stubby Asian frame. Wonder why it’s never you. Notice that on the
rare occasion that black hair and brown eyes win, they have been washed over in white;
they do not fear letting their parents’ words fly off their palms and shatter like glass; they
do not know what it means to grieve.
Your friends convince you to attend a party at the house of a boy named Chris. Or maybe
it was Nathan. Or maybe it was Matthew. It doesn’t matter. Hear about early first kisses
and sex, drugs and alcohol. Agree and laugh. Try to live life merely for the sake of
satisfaction and fun. Smell the scent of nicotine that puffs out of toothy grins and sinks in
between sofa cushions. Bear witness to the lines on your palm falter and twitch and wilt.
Watch as they waste away, decaying from pride to corpse to weary bone. Wonder if this
ache will ever abandon you, if the gold the fortune teller found on your hands will crawl
its way back to life. Let your grief wander, merely love that doesn’t know where to go.
Think about going home. Dread seeing your mom. Wish that you were wrapped between
her arms.
When she shows up at Chris’/Nathan’s/Matt’s doorstep to pick you up, you get in the car
and notice the bags of groceries sitting next to you. Habitually, you find the shrimp
crackers and open the bag to pop one into your mouth, letting the umami soak your
tongue. You watch the crumbs fall onto your lap and into the dimples of black leather,
gathering together to spell out your sins with their unshapely bodies and pollute the air
with their seafood scent. You remind yourself to vacuum the car later, but you will
forget. And your mom will end up cleaning up after you, the same as all the other times
you have made a mess.
Your mother tells you that she has one final errand to run: the secluded plaza where the
Japanese supermarket is. But you never remember pulling into the vacant lot that night;
you only remember the sound of the car locking and your mom’s grabbing her cloth bag
from the trunk to disappear into the store’s white light. You wait for her to come back,
your eyes falling shut as you plunge into the leather seats.
You dream of an autumn, not quite golden and not quite browned, one that submerges
you in a burial of leaves. You see a figure next to you, their face blurred and the outline
of their body fuzzy. They reach for your face, stopping when their fingers are less than an
inch away, the five joints not daring to take that final step until they hear your
permission. You lean your head forward so that their hand grazes your cheek, and they
press their lips to your temple, sealing your ache with a kiss.
You close your eyes to inhale slowly, but your breath hitches as you feel the heat of a
gentle caress leave your body. You open your eyes to see that it is no longer autumn, but
winter; to realize that nothing is with you other than a faint memory of tenderness
thrumming along your skin. You feel something wet trickle from where the remnants of a
kiss remain. You sit up, and it drips from your forehead, down the side of your cheek, and
slopes off the jut of your jaw. It dribbles onto your hand, and you look down to see red
bloom across your fingers and rain onto soft patches of snow. You quietly watch as your
blood thaws the white blankets to reveal the soil underneath, too distracted to notice that
winter is suddenly growing into spring, too lost to pray for your rebirth to come.
You are dying, but that’s the kind of thing you realize only once you are dead.
When you open your eyes, you see your mom in the front seat of the car, ready to head
back home. You mean to tell her you love her, but you fail to stop salt from slicking your
face, from falling into the dips of the backseat to join the crumbs. You tell your mom that
you’re sorry, that you wish you could be better, but that you wish you weren’t so much
like her. She reaches her hand out to cradle your face; you let yourself hide in the shelter
of her palms.
You tell her that you’re sorry. She tells you that she’s always understood.
You both sit and listen to the sounds: the opening and closing of the supermarket door, as
if to say, You are still here; the dying whistle of the wind, as if to say, Your time has not
run out yet; the rise and fall of your mother’s chest, as if to say, nothing at all.
