Mixed :: Personal Narrative Racial Papers

Mixed Did your real mummy die or something? The son with the snot-streaked face asked me on the playground, next to the jungle gym. He wore a striped blue shirt rough at the neck and his eyeball were so dark I couldnt see his pupils. W-what do you mean? I stared unsaid at him, my voice already taking on a vindicatory edge. I gripped the edge of my red corduroy jumper with my g exciseby hands. I mean, what happened to your real mom? The one thats not a gaijin. Then I understood. Gaijin. Foreigner. I looked down at my clenched hands, too dirty to rub my face with if I started to cry. The boy wasnt trying to be mean, he was salutary curious. But I was sick of it-the teasing, the questioning, the staring. When I hit him hard in the face, he looked more stunned than hurt, his eyes so wide open that I could see white all around the iris. Back in those days, I told many stories close myself. One of them was about why my eyes were golden-greenish-brown and not dark brown due to an illness Id had. Another was about how I dyed my hair to make it reddish-brown instead of black. The close absurd one was about how my mom really was Japanese, but had lived in America all her life and thats why she looked white. Most of them made no sense. I dont know if the kids ever believed me. No matter how many lies I told about myself, I knew deep down that I could never regard away who I was. I would always be Half, not whole. In Japan, people would identify me as haaf-the Japanese bastardization of the English word, half(a)-used to connote someone of mixed race. My dad would get angry over again and again when strangers tried to touch my hair when we went out in Tokyo. And my mom would be asked, where did she adopt those adorable Vietnamese children? every time she brought my crony and me back to the States to see my grandma in Florida. Most of my memories of growing up in Japan can be divided into two groups-my interactions with adults and those with children. Havin g grown up in a house with five adults until I was 5-years old, I naturally preferred the company of older people.