198Privileged, Cash poor since 2000, All good though.
1.
I moved to New Jersey in the year 2000. Before that I was a little princess wandering the American Club in Japan.
Kids weren’t supposed to be alone but I knew how to walk like I was on my way somewhere. Every year on the 4th of July I’d eat another piece of the White House, built out of sugar cubes, glue too I guess.
Normal was the subway rhythm with my head in my mom’s lap, subculture expression in Harajuku before the big temple gates. Parks and Shinto shrines tucked in every neighborhood. Electronics vending machines, watch out for the skebes (pervs) on the subways, the foreigners like me gathering in cafes and bars (except they were grownups mostly), my parent’s massive Halloween parties, running from Mr. Watanabe, hearing them talk world politics, birthday parties at the embassies (the Australian was my favorite for this, but I wanted to live in the Ethiopian embassador’s palace), the yakuza run nationalist groups in their coordinated vans protesting outside the Russian embassy again, hearing the “expats” complain about this or that, world history desks grouped with Iran, Thailand, Czech Republic as we say Urrrrrr in chorus. (If you sit with Iran you get to have extra dates on her day to bring her culture to school, and then practice your Spice Girls routine for the talent show). It was feeling jealous of the Japanese girls who got to stay, who were from there. It was Sundays at the military base hearing the clink of a softball bat while I collected dandelion to feed Blue in the stables, stories about Southeast Asia I wasn’t supposed to hear after they had enough beers, Bob Dylan playing on a radio between Big J with the guitar.
I thought of myself as a strong American. My mom after all told the nationalists, “Fuck you, I’m American” as she made her way through, halting the circling vans, and entered the American Club parking lot.
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They said America was a melting pot, I thought maybe there were some racists in the South still, then we stopped in Ohio and I found out my Mom wasn’t white and I was a question that needed answered. And everyone in America sounds a little Black.
Somewhere in time I said my Iranian friend-and couldn’t finish my sentence. Two people, different sides they’d say, shut me up huh.-
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U.S.A.
2005 I got away from a town where my violent ex lived. He didn’t want to let me go though so I spent the next year trying to get away. Graduated into adulthood. Beginning of 2006 it escalated and ended my first year of college eventually. My memory isn’t great.
I know I told those cops that got transferred after they showed up to my roommates party. (They were always pulling up trying to talk to me too along with whoever thought it would be funny to knock on my door lateish, wanting something) told em he was coming around campus from another State.
Idk I had a fan club at the time. Bugged me out you know. I know I was a joke. That and that frat coming on campus asking for me by name because my full name was added to a scavenger hunt list. Start of each year people would start telling me there was a group of guys looking for me. Its fine. Be cool. Keep going. Come to, everyone is mad again. My advisor told me, because she could sense I was distressed, about the women elsewhere, their lives. The slip of paper I never picked up says studio art, feel like I mostly read theory. More than arting in studios, which was a sanctuary too.
I know I tried to tell a couple people. I can’t speak about everything that happened. Who was threatened. Who he was. Even though he has far less power now, it scares me. Even in highschool, he’d wait for me outside and the whole school would pass him knowing my business. Silent.
I didn’t sleep much those four years or after either. I walked Pittsburgh, drank in bars, got in fights, met beautiful people. Found comfort at dawn with others who couldn’t sleep.
Shit went down though-
I am walking til sunrise. I am on the pack porch with your baby til the horror leaves and here and now at home returns. I am limping down the road with the masses and there’s a peace sign on my poster. I am between craze’s bat and future staff seargent’s fire extinguisher, I am watching a blonde girl run after a fight with her girls yelling we are going to be deported. I am talking to my friend and her brothers been deported. I am hearing crying outside my door and sit in the hall. I am sitting on the quad watching her skateboard at 2am. I am the last to hear what I did last night. I am the first to stand up when he grabbed her. I am the first between them when he reached for her throat. I am throwing a chair. I am grabbing the keys so he doesn’t kll us. I am next to a N z* making eye contact with my friend. I am seeing a nose break. I can tell you that much on a Tuesday or whatever and still laugh it off.
I resented campus a bit, I resented the sweetness of people who didn’t know what I was going through, who talked amongst themselves about problems in theory during the day, I drank their liquor at night when I was around, and when they slept I kept walking. Met the people we theorized about. We passed the time together. Sheltered beat up girl just trying to keep that horror away. I found places to stay but I had to box the person who said I love you.
I tried so hard to be a White girl from Jersey. I thought I’d be safe that way. Had a crew that would throw down if it came to it for a bit. Mostly just came out as being a jealous
I bleached my hair, my mom wondered out loud if grandma had the eye surgery.
She had to fight him too.
Was asked how I identify the other day. I said I’m white til I’m not.
That is what scares me. Knowing the experience of being White, yes sir. Then they look in my face, brow furrows, what are you?
I tried to be 100% Hapa too but you know Auntie said, she really is Houli huh. Cuz said, you look mad Asian. Like Keiko san said, I’m from neither here nor there. and more recently the kid said, you’re mixed enough. I still don’t know anything. I just see my mom’s face blinking at me in El Cholo trying to remember which grandbaby isn’t Brown. We laugh as my Mom remembers I’m White.
I found out this year when I get really scared I still talk like I did pre 2000. The one my Dad lovingly teased me about before we left. How could you break his heart and tell I remember thinking.
And if you leave your body and talk to that voice, there’s that little girl I couldn’t protect. At the very least I should try to see her. Its not up to anyone else.
I saw another little girl too, the “bumpkins” (she said) that came first from Japan to work in the fields. Then. We had a general store and were generous with credit. Dad died and debts disappeared. And the youngest of was it 10 girls? She hadn’t seen the planes fly over to Pearl Harbor yet, before rocks were thrown and swords buried. She would run with a rough crowd too, I guess a long line of us did, through Mexico too. It was the Shays(spIknowOk) on the East I’m told who were like me.
And we know to look in your face and smile saying, I am your friend (not your enemy).
The “difference between someone problematic and violent” but being in between you see them “hire” out their dirty work. Gossip saves, and kills. Its not theory, its a memory.
Married to The man, daughters of The man. I read about honor killings over there. I seen them escape them when they tried to leave their man. And get caught. What are the stats for who got buried? Why did she stay”
Been hiding myself because every time I tried to be or tell, you didn’t believe me or told me to change. My dialect in my “foxhole” prayer I’m told is not my own. When my Mom and my Grandma are gone, where will I talk it.
Its an effort to enjoy today, when I remember the stories I wasn’t supposed to hear and remember the faces that look at me like I saw looking up at that party their friends had when I wandered to a conversation about Manila. And I won the lotto y’know. Still can’t seem to stay present for my lucky ass life, trying not to go elsewhere because here, then, -some of you know that slipping of time and space- there is a ledge and not everyone sees it, how steep it is, how easy it is to fall in. Not in theory, in blood. Sick in my bones at -mypeople?- The furrowed brow is the look of trying to discern whether “you are mine or not” and whose side are you on too I guess. I see more you are my doll and I will protect you. The trick is to avoid the proposal so you never have to accept or refuse this “protection.”
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I got an anonymous message in 2008, “why can’t you just be yourself” and I tried to respond, “fuck you” but it was some weird early Facebook App. Am I what I witness?
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I tried to get better, keeping my secrets. I tried to be a worker among workers in a little crew, I don’t know how to not be a raging bull so often. I work hard but what’s the result. I tired myself most. But I arrived at a decision that I didn’t want to be complicit.
When I finally got help, I had already forgotten myself. I was invited to dinner and I thought I believed, this was hope.
How can I describe to you the mix of people I sat with, we sat and had supper, we were supposed to be enemies.
And now something has changed. If there is only that table, is it enough. My faith today 2/16/2024 forgive me
How can I tell you how much I loved my fellows at our table. How much I want to protect them and everyone else too because I was saved. ( not Saved) but it was faith alone, that I let God do for me what I had never done for myself. It was terrifying and painful. Crawling out my skin at 6 months on a beautiful day, my friend on that day who gave me ten bucks and a pack, he should have been my enemy when I told him I almost converted. Reconsidering that today. What was that about.
Its the respectable ones I worry about, that I didn’t have to look at to know they were watching me when I’d yell out to the room past capacity, “WOULD ALL WHO CARE TO, JOIN ME….” Black, Brown, White, Asian, Indigenous and Otherwise- voices in unison, a prayer.
God, it was Good
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And now I am growing louder trying to tell anyone, there are voices of “concern.”
I too come from a long line of women. And I’m trying to tell you that I know after the brow unfurrows, the reaction is like our friend from the Northwoods when he sees two aces. Hand was dealt and and I didn’t want him to see my luck. Tried to fold but he flips em. Eyes roll back, they should have been his.
I know the odds.
I know who looked at me each week and mistook my face for being something that could save them and be possessed. I remember elsewhere the prayers we said for the ones who didn’t make it. The ones who didn’t want to be possessed. Its not as if they didn’t tell anyone.
We can’t save anyone? No, I can’t. We can. Wasn’t that the point of breaking bread? Wasn’t it that simple?
People had to do shit to survive and I finally saw place where they got better. And then I started to see, the lack of unity for those still experiencing the grave effects of the odds of house America.
Some have more Access to peace in their days, can get in the door, head to the solution on a whim and not have to worry about how an hour or two will effect the bills, the kids, the day that needs to be spent treading water.
The anger and denial over the difference in Access was too big a hurdle for the people inside to stick to their principles. And now I’m knocking on doors of good people, and no one can hear me either. Billions of voices, and we can’t see one another let alone hear the message.
There are full tables with few seats. And there are tables feeding the masses with a single loaf, they are being killed. This isn’t just a metaphor. It’s just the odds. Its less scary to think we won the lotto by merit. To acknowledge that the horrible things that happen to us and people we know and love, to admit powerlessness and our inability to manage the horrors of life. I know I can’t do it alone.
There is no end to this, because I’m writing about a beginning, I’m told it starts with Honesty.