I
YELLOW
never know which version of you I’m going to get. There was a time when I knew exactly how you felt, when I could anticipate which weapon you’d employ against me, when you didn’t even try to put on a front of allyship. Perhaps that afternoon’s mode of attack would be unsolicited commentary on the food my mom had packed me. I would take the top of my Tupperware off, exposing my soba noodles for all the juniors at the outside lunch tables to see. You’d gag and say it looked like worms, and I’d swirl my shame around a plastic fork until I lost my appetite and covered it up again. I’d spend the next two periods wondering how to ask my mom to start packing me sandwiches instead without hurting her feelings. Or maybe, since I had just gotten my driver’s license and was on a high from nearly blowing out my car speakers, you’d undercut my mood in one fell swoop with the words, “I would never drive with you. You’re Asian and a woman.” Sometimes you liked to show me those videos of strangers telling me how the one race they would never date was Asian. Did you get off on my doubt, wondering if anyone would ever find me attractive? Or did you get off on my shame, wishing I could look like my white friends? Other days, if you were feeling particularly vicious, you would infiltrate the brains of my own people, using other East Asian girls to level backhanded compliments at me, like, “Wow, you’re really pretty for being Asian.” That was something like five years ago. I woke up to the news that eight people, including six women of Asian descent, were killed in a series of shootings at spas in the Atlanta area. The Cherokee
County Sheriff’s Captain Jay Baker attributed the killings to the murderer having a “really bad day.” This came after the news that three people, including a 91-year-old man, were assaulted in Oakland Chinatown. That a 61-year-old Filipino man was slashed across the face with a box cutter on the subway in New York, so severely that he received one hundred stitches. Nobody on the train helped him. That an 84-year-old Thai man, Vicha Ratanapakdee, was enjoying his morning walk in San Francisco when he was violently shoved to the ground and hit his head on the pavement. He never made it home to his daughter and two grandsons. I thanked God my grandparents never had to see this day. You didn’t acknowledge the attacks. You go by “Yuki,” or “Mayumi,” or “Mochi,” online, and your profile picture is an East Asian girl you pulled off Tumblr. You’re white. It’s 2023, and you like me, finally! Everyone has yellow fever, and I cater to that craving. You tattoo kanji on your white skin—does it mean “seven rings” or “shichirin”? You’re not too sure, but it’s cute, right? You slant your eyes with makeup or a slight pull at their corners for social media accolades, just like you used to do when you’d sing, “Chinese, Japanese, Americanese,” to me on the playground. You buy clothes from Western brands that capitalize off kawaii culture and Harajuku fashion, and you hang halfnaked depictions of East Asian girls on your walls. You find me sexy, but I remember your last girlfriend being Asian, too.