The white girl from next door somehow appears both brilliant and elusive, the sticky sweet effervescent bubble gum scent lingering when she passes you in the bus. You look down, away, out trying to avoid her gaze, feel the greying edges of your too big, too formless shirt, hanging past your butt. Keep your eyes fixed on a faraway point as the bus meanders through the neighbourhood. You have been here for two months, a near eternity at the age of 9, yet everything is still raw, gaping and new. You cannot explain to Mom and Dad why you are heading into the 5th grade wholly unfamiliar, unacquainted with the neighbourhood children when they have been playing skipping rope and hopscotch in the blazing sun all summer. You recognize that something is distinctly different between them and us. You do not belong. Perhaps it is how when the smell of green onions and shiitake soy sauce drift out of the two white-rimmed windows every evening as your mother wrestles with the wok, swirling lazily into the hot Texas air, it sends the next-door neighbours scurrying back into their houses, windows snapped shut. Perhaps it is how you experience a spark of confusion every time your ears are not met with silk threads of the curved Chinese vowels but hard and angular English as you step outside.
Even so, you admire the ease with which they move, the smooth warm fluidity that chauffeurs them to wholesome summer activities of horseriding and violin, of church camp and Girl Scouts. It is jarringly different from the Seattle world of crisp, rainy days, where you would drift to and from the houses of your two best friends—childhood days infused with the taste of Aunt Lan's special egg rolls, the golden-brown shell cracking audibly on your tongue, giving way to tangy bamboo shoots and a burst of savoury pork. Even so, as uncomfortable, as off-tilter as the strawberry blonde girls make you feel, you long to know them, to glimpse the secrets tucked into their red cloche hats.
Begin anew. After months of drifting aimlessly through the brightly lit halls of Hillberry Elementary, without a semblance of attachment, of anchorage, they approach you. They approach with twinkling giggles, arms strewn messily over one another.
“Say something in Chinese,” the girl in the blue plush sweater says, sharp and breathlessly. The others chase her query with pointed laughter, amused and emboldened by audaciousness.
“Like what?”
“Like anything.” You curve your lips and tongue to form the arching syllables ni hao wo de ming.… They do not ask you to translate. Instead, they trade glances tacitly before reaching a strained conclusion.
“Come sit with us.” It is not a question but a demand, suffused with intentions you cannot place. Pity, intrigue, a dark crimson streak of cruelty? However, it is inevitable that you follow them, back to their fixed lunch position beneath the willow tree, tall and swaying, feathery leaves streaming down, a thin green veil between these strawberry blonde girls and concrete reality. A dreamlike state. You sit on the navy blue lunch benches, knobby knees crashing awkwardly as they trade pre-packaged Sav-mart meals of cold salami, cheese, and whispery thin crackers. Do not take out your own lunch of sticky warm rice and stir-fried vegetables thinly coated with earthy glistening sesame oil. Smile politely, lips pursed slightly, as they exclaim surprise at your unaccented English. After school, follow them home to watch reruns of Friends on the television, glancing at the corners of their mouths sporadically, peripherals trained for small creases, an upward lilt. With this strained concentration, you laugh at all the right instances, yet it is always a heartbeat too late.
Imposter.
Build this tidy world of four-square courts and hopscotch grids painted pastel on the blacktop, of plaited hair and of two cream barrettes. Watch it expand and double and shift; wait for it to envelop you. Yet after some time, watch this reality fade into murky grey, watch the seams slowly come undone. The heart is strangely absent and all you feel is this heavy emptiness.
Imposter.
A year later, when the heavy Texas sun and muggy torrential storms return, announcing the start of a new school year, you are clustered around the vanity of the girl who was dressed in blue on that very first day. You now know her as Mandy.
“Hand me the pink,” she directs Madison, half impatiently. We press dark pigments of orange, blue, and pink onto our skin—12 year olds on the brink of exiting teenagehood, playing dress-up with stolen brushes and makeup. When we are done you look at yourself in the vanity, face cast in sickly, too-white pinpricks of light that line the cherry and cream wood that frames the dusty mirror. You look like a TV with the colours turned too bright: cheeks glowing orange, lips overlined and magenta. You look past the gawky makeup into reflected dull, glassy eyes, and you see your mother’s face in the mirror. You see the crescent almond eyes which slanted downwards with painful strained confusion as you had stopped speaking Chinese to her with the iteration of “it sounds ugly, Mom.” Now, you want to reach out into this shingled mirror and seek her out, but you cannot grasp the words, your tongue lost in the Atlantic. You look into the mirror and you see a girl who is trying to run away from herself, an empty brittle husk. You want to vanish.
Imposter.
Months later, when the glazing Texas sun retreats and the trees begin shedding coats of molten orange and red, you begin once more. You walk past the willow tree and the navy benches, glimpsing snide smirks and a sly roll of the eyes. You feel your shoulders stiffen, yet you walk on. You make your way into the shaded field and sink into the plush yellow-green grass, three feet apart from the new girl in school named Josie, who seems almost wonderfully strange with eclectic yellow and black bumblebee knit leggings and a reserved yet unafraid demeanour. She smiles slowly, eyes beaming, then returns to her book. You take out a round tupperware of your favourite chicken jook, the warm and sweet and homey aromas enveloping you. You look down and with brief surprise you see yourself reflected in the thin filmy top layer of the rich broth. It is a moment of fleeting clarity. You see yourself just as you are: human and breathing, momentary and finite, both Chinese and American, an intricate reflection of the thousands of faces and lives that preceded yours. You do not know, in full, who you are yet; perhaps you never will. Yet you feel at home within yourself, in this moment of warm chicken jook, and for now, this is enough.
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