Bite Out Your Tongue
At a Glance
Section titled âAt a Glanceâ| Metadata | Details |
|---|---|
| Publication Date | 2019-10-01 |
| Journal | Meridians |
| Authors | Nancy Kang |
Abstract
Section titled âAbstractâIn the junior high yearbook, there is an innocuous photo of an overweight Asian American girl running after an errant rubber ball. The balls are standard gym grade, the color of toasted salami, with a pleasing pattern of small stars stamped all over them, slightly raised to massage the fingers mid-dribble. The skin is thick enough to make a satisfying âTang!â on the ground when kicked or flung. A good grade in physical education was key to a commendable average (90%+); a commendable average opened doors to a prestigious university (top-tier, ideally Ivy); a prestigious university charted the path to a successful career (likely medicine, engineering, accounting, or law); a successful career reaped the hard-earned rewards of a comfortable home, serene quality of life, and conscientious capacity to give back (supporting oneâs parents in their vulnerable years). Such pursuits of balls, times, points, scores, ribbons, trophies, scholarships, and accolades were agonizing for fat children who puffed and blustered like anthropomorphic paintings of the West Wind, sweating profusely, tasting blood at the back of their throats. The lungs felt microwaved, the muscles sprinkled in salt and pummeled mercilessly. For amused gym teachers and cavalier peers who never had a belly press inconveniently against their thighs when sitting, it was great fun, a pitiable parade of pain.For the fat Asian, the so-called endurance runs (thirty laps of the gymnasium) were portals into the circles of hell while clad in waistless drawstring shorts and low-cost sensible âWWII shoes,â thus described by one more fashionable classmate who was ironically sporting what would have been called âsweatshop shoes.â If the affable, overweight Chinese boy Jimmy Yan could pass the gymnastics unit by launching himself into the air with a half-twist and flailing arms (the physical equivalent of screaming âCome what may!â while hurtling down a dark staircase) only to crash into the mats like a calf stunned by a slaughterhouse gun, the kid could go once more around the gym, the track, the circle, the pool, the field, and the schoolyard, in the years that moved by with a tongue clamped tightly behind clenched teeth, and still survive that endless gulping of air and acid.The kid had a prodigious head, the largest in the entire seventh-grade science class, paired incongruously with the smallest hands. Indeed, these measurements were taken, recorded, compared. The point of such an exercise remains a mystery. We no longer live in an age of phrenology, although some of us do need our heads checked for sure, and not just for lice or spiders in the ears. The âscientificâ inquiry was remembered with laser acuity by this unlucky freak show. The kid imagined herself to have a bubble brain and small webbed fingers, sticky with the slime of alien difference. When she asked her mother about the odd contradiction, Mother replied, âThatâs because there is a lot of brains packed in there, so your head is stretched out.â The kid imagined a mass of furiously twisted brains with boiling soup ladled over them, then poured into the skull and sealed for decades under concentrated tenderizing pressure from parents and peers. Was the on/off button in the space between her eyes, or more discreetly placed at the base of the skull? âThe small hands are a gift from your simian ancestors,â joked her clever sibling, who had just read Edgar Allan Poeâs âThe Monkeyâs Pawâ in English class and found the tale lurid and fascinating. She uttered a crescendo of jungle shrieks for maximum effect.The soupy skull was perched atop a stout neck that absented itself altogether in photographs, usually thanks to an unfortunate angle that rendered the chin a sort of afterthought, like melted residue on the sides of a baking tin. Mother would declare, âShe has no neck at all!â blaming the deficiency on Father, whose lineage of short necks must have evolved in Korea during the era of Japanese colonization to preempt beheading or hanging, even if it did not prevent righteous beatings. âYeah, itâs from me!â Father would shout back. Short necks are actually a boon in old age, preventing turkey wattles and cellophane skin that the long-necked tribes are heir to once their expiration dates close in, greasy creams and lardish lotions notwithstanding. Her eyes are small and monolid âlike slashes in dough,â Mother once observed drily. They virtually disappeared whenever the kid laughed. School portrait days necessitated a serious mien which typically ended up conveying either exaggerated surprise (Photographer: âYes, open them up as wide as possible! Hold it ⊠good! You can blink now. Are you okay?â) or an expression suggestive of mild insanity. Unsmiling photographs were good practice for passport photosâbut certainly not mug shots. Better to close oneâs eyes in death than that.The sisters had large eyes that easily accommodated contact lenses in a splendid array of colors, manifold mascaras, palettes of hummingbird powders, solid kohl and liquid liners, small stickers in shapes like stars/clovers/hearts/ice cream cones and the like, various configurations of false eyelashes (desiccated insect legs or full caterpillars), and all the other glorious paraphernalia of Maybelline eyes and manga faces. âI donât decorate myself like girls here do,â admitted Sora Lee, a visiting student from South Korea in the same class, âbut if I get into Harvard, my dad will get me plastic surgery. He promised.â To the fat kid, the prospect of having contact lenses spurred much jealousy and subtle longing. When one sibling grew up and welcomed a half-Asian child, the babyâs large eyes were a point of prideâand reliefâfor the sibling: âThank God he inherited the double lids.â The fat kid, while grown up, felt something crack and bleed inside, hearing that kind of talk. She thought of Oedipus Rex, walking around with streaming red wells where the eyes used to be and felt a bit better.In high school, the kid finally acquired contacts to fulfill that long-awaited desire for true beauty. Unfortunately, they had to be hard lenses by dint of the astronomically bad prescription, which Mother spun into a point of pride because students who did not study as much as the fat kid certainly did not have poor eyesight. They spent their leisure hours hanging out on the hoods of cars, drinking cold sodas outside the corner store, maybe having sex and profoundly disappointing their parents. âMy mom said that if I got a motorcycle or a tattoo, she would die,â confessed a Chinese student that the kid tutored on weekends. The threatening negative integer was also paired with considerable astigmatism. âBad eyes, good grades,â reiterated Father proudly.At the fitting, the white optometrist was initially appalled at the grimacing and squinting that accompanied the liberal flood of tears, lashings of lubricant, and multiple attempts to plunge the two shards of plastic into the animal-wild eyes. âWell, Asian lids are typically tighter,â the professional mused with a smutty smile. Every time she looked up or to the side, the lenses shifted and cut, as if there were a nylon net that would be dragged over the corneal surface in rapid succession, fishing for floaters and minnows. The urgent and constant reminder of presence made them an impossibly aggravating luxury. Classmates joked that she looked âtotally cross-eyedâ; one boy, Mark Hollings, even took to spinning his eyes while puckering his lips simultaneously, resembling the Bozo the Clown she had seen on a local advertisement for the Shrine Circus. She avoided the bus stop for a few weeks to avoid this highly coordinated demon boy. Blue-eyed Heather Leacock commented quietly, âBut you have absolutely beautiful eyesâ after class. The kid assumed she was part of a church group, the kind that had its people approach in an overenthusiastic way and declare, âJesus loves you so much!â Sulky and troubled, the teen asked Mother for advice on whether to keep them. Mother demanded, âLook at me.â She then declared bluntly, âYour eyes look scary. Like a cat about to jump at me in the dark. Get rid of them. Do you see eye doctors wearing contact lenses? No. They wear glasses. That means glasses are better. Smart people wear glasses. What a waste of money.â The lenses were thus retired after a mere month. The hunt for new glasses, inexpensive and able to accommodate untowardly thick lenses, began.These new glasses were gold-rimmed and mildly geriatric, the lens unnaturally wide, spanning from the tops of the eyebrows to the center of the face. When she smiled, the cheeks formed a fleshy cushion upon which the frames would momentarily rest, like some weary diner waitress taking a seat between shifts. After a while, facial oils secreted by the acne-prone skin burned through the metallic paint lining the bottom of the frames, corroding green and eventually chipping. Small red crescents formed, one on each cheek, as if branded there with little tongs, all thanks to an acute nickel allergy. The awkward duel between cheeks and frames continued until she painted the metal over with nail polish, an obnoxious red because that was the only color Mother had, and it was hidden away at the back of the second dresser drawer. Glasses were expensive given the familyâs single income, and these frames were from the âProfessional Menâs Collectionâ at Sears, the only ones that would fit such a wide, broad moon face. No dainty red plastic frames, no designer accents in two tones, no brand names alluring to girlish tastes and the expanding materialist imagination. Having frames that fit was blessing enough.With her short-cropped hair (âYou need to look clean, and short cuts do that,â Father advised), menâs glasses, lack of neck, and residual Michelin tires of stomach hidden under argyle vests, tight turtlenecks, and tent-like T-shirts (accrued from volunteering at MS races and diabetes society bingos, folk festivals, film festivals, jazz festivals, and various other scholarship-minded extracurricular ventures demonstrating community involvement), it was no wonder an old white man at McDonaldâs ordered briskly, âYoung China boy, pass me that newspaper!â She did not correct him even though âBut Iâm a girl ⊠â lingered under her breath like a lit match that quickly burned itself out. She still passed him the paper with both hands, as she was taught to respect elders, even the rude ones who sipped coffee noisily, littered sugar packs all over the table, and leered at the Sunshine Girl centerfolds of young women sagging confidently out of gaudy bikinis. Not a one had glasses; not a one was Asian. She would understand that the latter were reserved for the late-night porn channels instead, tumbling over lumpy beaded cushions with blunt bangs and lips the color of a red headache. She counted her teeth with her tongue and clenched her jaw in silent annoyance. She hoped these gazing geezers would get diabetes, but only Mother ended up getting it. Years later, the fat kidânow an adultâwould climb into the dumpster to find the insulin that had been thrown out by accident, with Mother calling down from the top of the bin, crying and apologizing for the inconvenience. She passed away the next year. The kidâs last memory of the body was that its mouth was open, as if to taste a spoonful of sweetness one last time.For a long while, the kid had the rounded shoulders of the desperately well-fed children of immigrants, used to sitting studiously at a library table or home desk, perhaps munching deftly cut fruit, salty-sweet nuts, or nori-laden rice crackers neurotically across from the âstudying so hardâ siblings. She was often hunched over a textbook, one leg shaking in nervous tension, tearing at flesh on her hands, fingers, or feet. There was sometimes a sock peeled halfway off the foot for circulation. Or, the shoulders might be curved and sloping from shelling peas or separating twigs, mouse droppings, and other refuse from a sack of dried soybeans at the dining room table after the siblings went to bed. The work was done in an efficient but not entirely invested way. She was aware of the dictum that âOne must pay bap khapâ (or, in literal translation, labor for the privilege of the meal in the household). If something were free and easy, it should invite suspicion, not delight. This is something the immigrant parent knows; this is something Father knew when he won a Fulbright Scholarship to Hawaiâi but a corrupt government official had Fatherâs name erased, only to be replaced by that of the officialâs own daughter. Imagine, thought the teen, I could have been a beautiful Hawaiian. âFat chance, Fattie,â another voice responded in her head. âMaybe they would spit-roast you over the coals and the back fat would sizzle,â someone else chimed in. Hearing stories of colonial abuses, war anguish, murdered relatives, government corruption, student protests, unjust incarceration, immigrant humiliations, and dreams deferredâor extinguished altogetherâthus prompted the teen to grow up cautious, untrusting, head quick to shrink back into the body turtle-like, self-protective, vigilant, expecting loss or sadness and genuinely surprised by joy when it did come. She knew that the day she was born, her father was not let out of his job because his Ukrainian boss said no (âYou did not set up any substitute, so you canât goâ) so her mother took the cab to the hospital alone. The father always uttered the chuck of his bossâs surname (Elaschuk or Minchuk or Simenchuk, something along those lines) with particular bitterness. No one remembers when she was born, as Father only comments, âAfter the workday was over and I arrived there, you were already asleep.â Whenever he tells this story, the kid thinks of the day he came home and smashed his thermos on the ground in frustration, shards littering the linoleum like candies from a burst piñata. Mother cleaned it up on her hands and knees.On picture day, she wore a red oxford white with the up, and a plastic of a in This was The hair was a cut while the would all in the and Mother down the cold white with the would make for an in a way like a but just as at school, his leg in a by into in head and back for the boy, whose name was never He also a girl in by her a with his each her and on her legs like they were a but no one said The who was to porn on was not in the room at the The fat kid remembered he had on a because she did not a with a she had done so by She by a after him during class and having him at the hands of his was a the the is unnaturally and as a Father the short cut short hair the of lice and that time would not be spent on when oneâs had as an she the with the of a Asian young and impossibly and the white students called were a small of from who in in the and wore with on them like A to a her a or out of the Asian girls in the grade, on her facial and body that someone wearing multiple of to the The of that the were not at were by one of her Chinese American on a cold day, the against the and and The had it upon the Iâm so I should not have The breath out in a of cold as the teen and to it was all but with an that her of the where a is into a of and out and Her body felt like on a in the the teen, his prodigious belly like a down under a tight in the on the way He you Do your people and and He let a of that her of a on who went after a where his was in the head but he stop She had a that maybe they had a in the that and the of the legs and there in the lingered in her with particular immigrant had at as would a or âI you ⊠I in threatening to all through class. after she him a of with the a Chinese American boy with a and the expression of with or was her He her in class by up the of her to full he her in of the class, he made while himself up against the in when she passed him in the like a through the after her one day as she the on a In a he âI you to have my while an about the of his She walking a through some for the Mother her there after a few as the of was to the of these young A of cold a of on a a a even in in gym class, the of over and asked her about her they What kind of hair did they while was sitting in a This of was had made to the same for the of the her body during the at a local Her was by the white one that she had from a sibling because there had been no for any of her had even called her at home in the to her a because âThe are about not if you was a or and had a white they were not and not even in the same class, the teen the all the is to for someone you will never after but you still get for had the facial of a and eyes the color of in but he had himself an and was to have a on the The teen had to about his or his She knew that had asked a classmate out and had perhaps that he her This had in her to a jazz set at the in a tight of the had a out of in of a rubber ball. She had an red the color of and to was overweight but with her hair up in a she was and never once conveying a of on her The that up on the and when about his at the next day, out in a I would actually go out with someone like The Asian teen was the to the of the and the had it that had looked in those eyes and âYour that same gym class, perhaps by her to a into the skull with such that it the glasses off her and the at a the top of her There was no just a small red like a smile. Her which had been by the red and like a for a good of the She its eventually by her and the bottom of the until a was This had to be done over a of an odd when oneâs is awkward enough in let There were no comments, or from or from was after as she through the with was the of the where they by gym to by the of junior was an of because of the the the of other at the and was a into a space the of a and the lining the like of good boy, with large at the from and teeth of the as they into the on their He small through a at the Asian teen in a kind of the back of the neck, another the of the one the it bit another on the a but with a nail of a He and his âFat fat as she by to the and the in boy through class like a through the and their during the that the the same âFat time she went up to an She won with a Mother but the an her on a on the of her of any joy or pride in the in the to her to high school, had her on the and I you Do you you are What a need to be the a She had never the boy but his name and with the of the the of the of that she never that old of teeth and of to to the on the parents she had herself through and down like a stout through at a She to his with hands deftly the air for the She looked at the of a hair like a who wore so tight that they had to be off in the room by two girls never her had at her and you like a and made a of her on the linoleum like of these girls were in their own and for any on was an she had the all on the of from a that the to be taught a in âShe thinks so was the for the a after the was The teen was at this of she could about was all because of the fat teen had the and that made her a of jealousy from the a out in and hair with of various colors, twisted and like Her was only by her which with a few of and to an that the of peers and teachers expression the of an when a small rubber ball. over remains a but Asian American but some the There was who made such a of the in home class that the with the same used for in the behind a father that the fat teen had to a for because his her average and should have been eventually and the mother of two When the Asian an into her at the local the young a his legs in the and another looked to a spent in constant of and an of and that to be out of the that such would only the of her some as as She did not to to the understand the of the so-called fat and and these with the awkward fit of the young of color in a in a in a She away from her teachers because she had been to keep to She by the always at that age, but who would be by a of women in women so that even of from a could keep their at other women of color she at a for women who and did not her to them on the all because she was what they said she even her that she was a