a vulnerable shell

But first, a series of separate yet related accounts...

____________________

"Do you see half of what I see?"

I laughed and playfully shoved Bailey's shoulder as she pulled her eyes back from the corners bringing them to a slant as she innocently smiled and giggled.  It was senior year of high school and we were heading into orchestra, the last mod of the day.  Bailey was a sandy-blonde freckle-faced girl I considered a friend.  She radiated with an earnest, genuine air that assured me this was no offense.  She was a church-going, friendly-to-everyone, always smiling kind of gal, so I knew she meant no harm.  No harm, no foul.  I knelt down to my locker as I paused to recall the 3-digit combination on my lock. 

"You know that's a stupid question, right?" I said jokingly, looking over my shoulder to see her smiling back down at me as I shook my head and rolled my eyes.  She shrugged her shoulders, giggled once more, then turned to her locker and began spinning the dial on her own lock.

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I always remember loving school.  The first day of school was met with so much excitement.  I would hang my backpack in our living room the night before and make sure all my folders, binders, pencils, and erasers were neatly organized.  I couldn't wait to fill my folders with hand-outs and worksheets, to hear the sound of a projector humming quietly, or to meet my new teachers.  School was a safe place...most of the time.

After 2nd grade I was pulled from school because of bullying.  I hardly have any recollection of memories from that time, except that my teacher smelled of bubblegum and wore thick-rimmed glasses that framed her big, blue eyes and blonde hair.  Our teacher had formed quads out of our desks, with two desks facing another two desks.  We would work on our assignments together, and were allowed to talk as we practiced cutting out circles and colored maps.  My mother said I used to complain of stomachaches every day, and pleaded not to go to school.  She'd take me to the doctor only to find out nothing was wrong with me.  

We had to write daily journal entries for school to practice our writing.  After some time, she discovered that I had been writing about the bullying in my journal.  She called the school and scheduled a meeting with my teacher who assured her she would take care of it.  Her solution, though, was to have me switch seats with another student.  Before I knew it, I was placed in the quad with the kids who were bullying me.  She told us that we simply had to learn how to get along.   

My mom pulled me out of school and homeschooled me for the next three years.

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The lunch rush had dwindled down.  It was 2016.  The other servers and I congregated in the back kitchen eating leftover tater tots as we waited for our tables to clear.  

"So, I have a question to ask you, Nikia," one of the male servers said to me as he stuffed a tater tot in his mouth.

"Oh great," I replied sarcastically, knowing he was the token clown of our work crew.  I braced myself for impact.

"So, my older brother dated an Asian girl for a while.  And he told me that Asian girls have an extra muscle in their...you know, in their vagina.  Is that true?"

I hadn't braced myself for that.

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There was a boy in high school I tried to avoid.  We can call him Brian.  In 2006, the school was just shy of 2,000 students, averaging 500 a graduating class, and only a handful of Asians whom I remember.  That meant I stood out and Brian liked to remind me of that.  Our school had three stories for academic classes, a wing for music and arts, a basement for locker rooms, athletics and theater, and a bunch of portable classrooms around back.  There were only two Asians that I remember sharing a class with throughout my four years of high school.  

When the bell rang to switch classes, it cued a flurry of students that filled the hallways.  Freshman would frantically be looking at their campus maps trying to figure out which direction to walk while Seniors would be procrastinating and telling jokes in circles that made it difficult to squeeze by.  Lockers would clink open and slam shut.  Teachers would stand outside of their classrooms sometimes to monitor the halls for noise level and PDAs.  The dangerous parts in my class routes, though, were always the stairwells.  Rarely were there teachers present, despite there being an influx of students racing up and down the steps trying to beat the bell.  Brian and I would always seem to cross paths in the stairwell, an unfortunate timing.  I could never get there fast enough to beat him, and if I waited too long I'd miss my bell.  I didn't know much about Brian, though we were also on the same bus, so I knew he lived nearby.  He had a particular walk, as if he was always limping and seemed to talk with lips so loose and floppy that he never enunciated his words.  He'd wear his backpack half slung on with the straps stretched out so it hung as low as possible, falling completely off his shoulder most of the time at which point he'd just start dragging it on the floor behind him.  There in the stairwell, he'd spot me and make his way towards me as I quickly tried to ignore him and stay the path.  He'd get in my face and pull his eyes back while taunting, "Are you Korean?  Are you Korean?"  He knew I was Korean, but liked to ask me that because he knew it bothered me.  The other students would just continue on their way, never seeming to notice.  Some days I was able to muster up a laugh, thinking that if it was clear it didn't bother me then maybe it would stop, but it didn't.  After a while I just chose to ignore him as best as I could and pretend he didn't exist.  Sometimes I would peek through the glass of the door of the stairwell to see if I could see him coming down the stairs and I'd get lucky and slip in behind a large group of students.  Most days, though, I was on my own.

Another boy who rode my school bus, let's call him Joe, was one of my best friends growing up.  Joe wasn't an exceptionally tall boy, but he had a fire in him.  We became friends in middle school once I'd returned to public school, and we'd walk together from our neighborhood up to the elementary school park and play on the playground.  One time we thought it'd be fun if I got on his back while he took his skateboard down the biggest hill of the park.  I hopped on and we both wobbled, a little bit from the lack of balance and a little bit from laughing.  He put his foot down to give us a few pushes and before we knew it, the front end of his skateboard tipped down and whoosh!  We made it down about 1/3 of the way before his skateboard veered off the side of the paved path and into the grass.  We both tumbled down and somersaulted a few times before our limbs flung hard onto the ground, our bellies hurting from laughing.  We stood and examined our arms and legs for any scratches or scrapes, still giggling from the exhilaration.  Aside from a few grass stains, we were fine and ready to do it again.  Joe and I didn't have much in common, but still I considered him one of my best friends.

One of the most vivid memories I have of Joe was at the end of a school day.  Once the last bell of the school day rang, students would flock to the perimeter of the school to find their school buses.  Luckily, Brian's last class of the day must have been farther away because I always seemed to beat him to the bus.  Most days there were three or four of us who would rotate seating, but Joe was always there while Brian sat towards the front of the bus because his stop was one of the first few on the route.  This particular day, Brian must have been let out of class early because as I made my way to the bus I saw him out of the corner of my eye.  I sighed and prepared myself as he bee-lined his way towards me and to the bus.  Here we go again, I thought.  "Are you Korean?  Are you Korean?" he started, walking backwards in front of me so he could stay in my face, always pulling his eyes back and laughing.  Every now and then he'd scream it at me from the front of the bus, but it was usually so loud on the bus that I could easily pretend I didn't hear him, though I always heard him...and so did Joe.  "Are you Korean?  Are you Korean?" Brian was relentless, but the bus was in sight and I knew if I could just make it to the bus, I'd be free from his torment.  Suddenly, Joe had rushed up next to me and pushed Brian away.  Before I could say or do anything, Joe wound back his arm and socked Brian right in the mouth.  I stood, shocked by what I had just witnessed, and quickly looked around to see if any teachers had noticed.  They hadn't.  I don't remember what Joe said, but Brian nodded his head as he massaged the bottom of his mouth and checked his fingers for blood.

"Come on, let's go.  He won't bother you anymore," Joe reassured me.  I quickly followed him onto the bus.

Joe was right.  Brian never got in my face ever again.

____________________

We woke to the tornado siren blaring a little after 5 a.m.  It was still dark and only one of my roommates was home with me at the time.  I wasn't used to hearing tornado sirens, but in Nashville they went off every month for testing.  This time, though, it wasn't a test.  I felt panic spreading from my chest to the rest of my body as my fingertips began to tingle.  Every nightmare I had ever dreamt of with apocalyptic tornadoes wiping out the earth came to the forefront of my imagination.  My roommate stepped out from her bedroom and we both stood in the living room, silent.  After a few minutes, the siren stopped.  Flooded with relief, we both took a deep sigh and retreated back to our rooms.  Ten minutes later, the siren began again.  This continued for two hours.  Panic, relief, panic, relief.  At some point I grabbed my laptop while my roommate and I set up shop in the bathroom, watching the weather radar and clicking refresh on every weather report I could find.  Once the storm had finally passed, I checked my phone only to see a missed call and a voicemail from my mom.  I knew something was wrong because it was too early in the morning for a regular check-in call.  My heart, still racing from the storm, began pounding louder in my chest.  I listened to the voicemail, but only made out the words, "dad...bad accident...hospital..." before I felt the tears start to swell.  My hands were shaking as I called my mom.  I was told that my dad had fallen off a high ladder while at work and was being taken to a trauma center.  I told my mom I would be on the next flight home and I'd see them soon.  

I called my boss to tell her I had a family emergency and wouldn't be able to work for a few days.  I packed only one bag, and waited impatiently in a coffee shop until it was time for me to head to the airport.  

When I got to the entrance for security there was no line, but I was stopped by a TSA employee who wanted to check my boarding pass.  He was an older white man with a belly and a bald head.  He looked at my boarding pass, then at me.  

"You traveling for work or pleasure?" he asked.  

"I'm just traveling home," I responded.  

He looked at me as if to study my face, then said, "you should smile."

My dad is in a hospital and I'm worried he might die.  I don't want to smile, I thought silently.  I just stared at him.

"Where are you from?" he continued.  Before I could respond he interrupted me, "you know, my nephew married a Chinese woman.  She makes a really good wife.  I think Asian women make good wives because they're quiet and obedient.  I bet you'd make a good wife."

Many thoughts rushed my head at this moment, none of which were pleasant or kind or PG.  I remained silent and just stared at him as I thought about my dad lying in a hospital bed while this ass-hat talked to me about infuriating stereotypes of Asian women.   

"Well, you have a good day now," he said as he handed back my boarding pass.

____________________

We stepped outside to grab some fresh air.  It was a Sunday night and my boyfriend and I were continuing our tradition.  We spent nearly every Sunday during Fall of 2012 watching all the NFL games followed by a trip to our local watering hole with his Uncle to shoot pool and throw back a few Natty Bohs.  It wasn't much of a place, in fact, it was actually a real hole in the wall and not in the hipster-trendy kind of way.  It always smelled of cigarette smoke, there were questionable stains on the floor, and almost always "Pour Some Sugar on Me" was playing on the jukebox.  The only other women I saw there were dressed in over-sized zip-up sweatshirts, leather vests, or gray t-shirts with motorcycles on them and had raspy voices.  I never thought about it much, but I must have stuck out like a sore thumb.  I was only twenty-four.

We sat on a swinging bench on the front patio cracking jokes and laughing with his Uncle who stood off by the railing in front of us.  We poked fun at each other until a man stumbled out of the bar.  He looked as if he might fall over, then caught himself and balanced his weight up against a wooden beam.  We continued to talk, but occasionally glanced over at him.  He reached in his jeans and pulled out a cigarette and lit it.  I accidentally made eye contact with him and he jumped at the opportunity.  

"Where are you from?" he barked at me.  I said nothing.  He was clearly drunk out of his mind and I knew this conversation wouldn't be good for me to participate in.  

"You fucking Chinese?  Vietnamese?  You're a fucking Vietnamese girl, aren't you?  Fuck." he prodded.  He took another drag of his cigarette and stared me down.  "I was in Vietnam."  

He grunted as I kept my eyes to the ground.  I felt frozen.  Paralyzed, even.  At this point we had stopped swinging.  My boyfriend, a former college football player who was  6'3" stood up, I assume to show his size and offer some silent form of protection.

The drunken man stumbled from the railing and sat down on a chair near the swinging bench.  He cackled and began to poorly imitate some resemblance of an Asian language by yelling single-syllable words that ended in "-ong" and "-eech" while looking at me and laughing.  He was loud and unforgiving.  

"Hey man, stop that," my boyfriend chimed in.  "She's my girl."  

But he just laughed.  My boyfriend's Uncle gave him the finger and told him he was an asshole, then motioned for us to leave.  I was embarrassed and I felt ashamed.  I was crying before I even got to the car.

____________________

I wish I could say that these were the only instances of shame I felt for being in my skin, for looking the way I did.  On the outside, I was Asian.  I had black hair, squinted eyes, and yellow skin.  But most of the time, I just felt like...me.  I felt like Nikia.  A human.  A person.  Nothing more and nothing less.

As I grew, I slowly morphed from a little Asian girl who only had to worry about other kids pulling back their eyes and laughing, to an Asian woman who learned to be careful about sexual "exotic" fetishes.  By the time I was in middle school I had learned that porn had its own category that featured only Asian girls, thanks to afternoon rides on our school bus.  I had even dated a boy in high school whom I later found out only dated Asian girls.  My sense of self-value and worth dwindled at the thought of being "just another Asian girl".

Racism and stereotypes are a difficult thing to unpack as an adoptee.  Not only do we feel the hurt and the shame of being reduced to something less than, but we're painfully reminded that there is a bellowing gap and a severe blind spot between what other people see and what we see.  

Every time I was negatively reminded that I was an Asian woman and made to feel targeted or diminished, it was as if a stranger was shoving a mirror in my face and grabbing my hair to turn my head and make me see what I looked like.  Ultimately, it made me confused, angry, scared, and ashamed.  Not only were people making assumptions about me as an Asian woman, but they were first assuming I was Asian.  And I didn't feel Asian.  I didn't consider myself to be Asian.  Didn't they know I grew up eating a lot of potatoes and sauerkraut?  And that my great-grandmother's last name was Schmitt and my grandmother's first name was Hilda?  Do they sound...Asian?  For goodness sake, my brother's name is Shawn Patrick.  That's not Asian.  Don't they know that?  It felt as ridiculous and confusing as taunting a black kid for being white, or a white kid for being black.  It didn't make sense to me.  I felt ashamed for looking Asian.  I felt ashamed for questioning whether I was Asian.  I felt ashamed for being reduced to an Asian stereotype.  I felt ashamed for wishing I'd be stereotyped as a German or Irish girl instead.  I felt frustrated with people who thought they know who I was.  I felt frustrated with myself for not knowing who I was.  I felt sad and deprived when people assumed I belonged in a certain category.  I felt sad and deprived when I found myself wondering if I even had a category to belong.  

I didn't have the emotional awareness to understand why it hurt so badly, deeper than the stereotypes and deeper than the racism.  It pierced me.  It was my Achilles heel.  I couldn't hide my pain and hurt and confusion because I wore it on my skin, in my eyes, and in my hair.  Looking Asian was a vulnerable shell that welcomed more harm than protection, and I wasn't equipped to cope with it in healthy ways.