Nationality-Blank American Kathryn Lee

Nationality-Blank American

By Kathryn LeeWhen my grandfather died last summer, we burned his clothes at sunset. In the rice paddy facing the family house where green blades no longer peeked through the water since harvesting season ended, my cousins set down a burn barrel. Alitmatchfellfrommyuncle’sroughenedfingertipsintothebarrel.Iwatchedassmokebegantospiralupward, climbinghigherandhigheruntilflamesfinallyemerged. Cotton button-down shirts and dark mid-length pants—clothes that once draped over a man who had been toothintofitthem—sailedfromourhandsandhung,briefly,intheair,likeanangelwithoutabody,beforebeing consumed by the blaze. My cousins continuously walked in and out of the house, carrying out large bundles of clothing each time. Thereseemedtobeaninfiniteamountof thingstoburn,buttherewasnorush,onlyatacitagreementthatthefire was at our behest. Not vice versa. “We stood outside until every last article of clothing that had belonged to my grandfather—a reserved, kind, gentle farmer and father of five—was brought out and incinerated.”

Ididn’tknowmygrandfatherortherestof myfamilywell.IwasborninAmerica—měiguóinMandarin; literally,“beautifulcountry”inEnglish.AndthoughIvisitedTaiwanalmosteverysummer,mylackof fluencyin both the local Taiwanese Hokkien dialect and the more universal Mandarin, coupled with my grandfather’s taciturn nature, resulted in a lack of basic communication. My grandfather represented everything that ostracized me from my family. He spoke Hokkien while I spoke English;hewasolderwhileIwasyounger;hewasquintessentiallyTaiwanesewhileIwastentativelyAmerican.And as the patriarch, it was he who had to act as a microcosm for our entire family’s values and attitude. Helaidonthecouchmostdayswatchingtheafternoonnews(andsometimesrerunsof Taiwanesesoap operas at my grandmother’s pestering) while I squirmed on the faux red leather couch nearby, the humidity painting patchy sweat stains on my tank top. Vacations in Dounan, my grandparents’ ancestral home, were the typical “nothing-to-do”summerlullsthateverykiddreads.Ourhousewasflankedbyricepaddiesandunknownneighbors. The nearest building was a car dealership across the street and the walk to town took eons under the burning sun, which prided itself on consistently heating the landscape to over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. But I was secretly grateful that neither of my grandparents spoke much to me. There was less to be ashamed of—neither my broken Mandarin nor my complete ignorance of local customs could be exposed if I didn’t have to say anything. I hid behind my sister when my cousins took us to night markets, endured pointed comments about the way I held my chopsticks (crossed inappropriately at the top, the most obvious sign that I wasn’t purely Asian), and startled at the sputtering sound of the postman’s motorcycle outside our door. Ispentthesevacationsdrowningmyselfinunease,manicallyworryingaboutbeingleftaloneeverytimemy sister turned to converse with our cousins. With my sister occupied for hours on end, the guise that I was busy with something fell apart. This opened the door for my uncles or grandparents to turn their well-meaning but uncomfortable attention toward me. So despite the trademark square-cut face and ruddy cheeks that identifiedmeasamemberoftheLeefamily,Ifeltlikeawàiguórén,asforeignasaEuropean. My grandmother and I would walk through the local supermarket, a huge building akin to Target, my eyes wandering over the items yet struggling to fully read the labels. I recognized some words here and there: “the,” “best,” “cake,” but it was always the one elusive word like “chocolate,” that would steal from me half the item’s identity. Rinse and repeat for hundreds of other items in the store.

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White Chrysanthemums are symbols of mourning in parts of Asia including Taiwan

ASIAN OUTLOOK

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Still, I knew more than I realized when my grandmother introduced me to one of the store employees with whom she had become acquainted on her weekly grocery runs. “This is my granddaughter,” she said, her dark eyes owlish behind large spectacles. “My youngest son’s daughter. She doesn’t understand Mandarin or Hokkien.” Ifistedmydamppalmsinmyshirt.Everyone—mygrandmother,uncles,auntsandcousins—felttheneed to preemptively excuse me during their conversations with others. She doesn’t speak Mandarin or Hokkien. Speak freely. She can’t understand you anyway. “The youngest son who went to America?” The employee leaned forward, eyes glittering with poorly-hidden interest. In Dounan, where people lived and died in the same few square miles, I was an oddity. I gave the employee a tense smile. “Where do you live?” “New York,” I said in Mandarin, hoping my accent didn’t peek through too much. “Oh. My nephew lives in Virginia. Vir-gi-nia,” she said, sounding out “Virginia” slowly in Mandarin. I nodded. “You know, you shouldn’t lose your connection with your home country. It’s important to be able to speak Mandarin! Don’t forget it.” This was another theme in Taiwan: every adult that came within a one mile radius of me felt the need to exercise an unspoken, unsolicited form of civic duty by telling me to remember Taiwan! as if I was the second U.S.S. Maine. And each time, I responded with a pasted-on frozen smile, biting back the desire to respond in Mandarin, I know exactly and perfectly what you said about me. The discomfort I faced during the day carried into the night as I twisted around in the sheets of my tiny cot.Inanattempttosleepalongsidemymotherandsister,Ioftenstaredattheceiling—decoratedwithtackygold wallpaperthatIimaginedhadbeentheheightofluxurybackwhenthehousewasfirstconstructedfiftyyearsago.I listenedtothepiercingcreakofametalhingeoutsidetheroomandtheclickthatfollowedit—myuncleshuttingoff the hot water for the night. I twisted. I stared. I imagined. I listened. And I desperately wished I were back in New York. Butthetruthwas,eventheapparentcomfortsof Americacouldn’tprotectmefromfeelingsplit.Different threadsof identityloopedaroundmywristslikehandcuffsandpulledinoppositedirections.Tawaineseechoedin every corner of my home in New York, from the Hokkien my parents spoke to each other and the monthly longdistance phone calls with my grandparents I had to stumble my way through. American, on the other hand—loud, brash, proud—whooped and shouted through the unmistakable reality of my New York life, replete with my friends, Hollywood movies and secret stories I had written in English of which I knew my parents would disapprove. In New York, I could pretend I wasn’t such an enigma to myself. I walked into two-hour weekend Mandarin classes, but walked out with little recollection of what I had just learned. I accompanied my family upstate to Buddhist temples and clasped my hands together in prayer, but all thoughts quickly rushed out of my mind as I bent myhead.Iwenttoschool,achievedgoodgradesinEnglishclass,andscurriedawayatthefirstsuggestionoftaking Mandarin as my foreign language. They slide past each other without touching,

“The reality of being AsianAmerican—or any nationality blanklike trying to force two magnets of the same polarity toattract.Youwillfindyourselflongingforonewhen you think you have committed to the other. You will

American—is that you seldom manage hear the endless joyful chatter of people who have to solder together your two worlds.” theirfeetfirmlyplantedinoneworld.Peoplewho free from the self-imposed burden to choose. are Your physical features may indicate that you I tilted my head skyward, watching are strictly nationality blank, but it can mask the the auburn sparks, like little stars, return to uncertainty that swirls and eddies in your stomach. their dark celestial home. The last vestiges Because despite the color of your eyes, hair and skin, ofmygrandfather,crumbledintheflames. half of your soul longs for something different, Everything that made up his life, everything something easier, and the other half chastises its that made him him … gone in a few hours. counterpart for wishing so. I imagined each spark as a part of my grandfather. His white hair. How thin “I looked down at the withered, dry straw of he’d been in the last year of his life. His arms around me as a young child, back when I had been light enough to sit on his lap. the rice paddy—the final verdict that harvest had long passed as barrenness was all that My shoes sunk into the gummy remained—and felt relieved I hadn’t known my dirt. No one spoke a word. grandfather better.”

Vol. XlI, Issue I 11