How Will You Know?

How will you know who you are when all the signs that point you in one direction are empty? Will someone stop asking where you are going, and from where you came? Will you know then what to say? How will you stop wondering what people see when you cannot even see yourself? Will you stare in the mirror one day and realize your reflection is reversed? Will you stop feeling too brown to be white and too white to be brown? Will you see yourself in public or in another life and walk past without realizing it? Will your wondering ever stop? Will your mind stop running? Will you think about the first pair of shoes you ever bought and the salesman who explained how only a certain kind of swooping suction sound signifies a perfect fit? Will it feel right? Will you know what it is? Will everything just suddenly slide into place like old gears in a clock just waiting to be oiled and tinkered with? Will something start to tick? Will you stop wondering, then, what it feels like you have the right to call an identity yours? Will you ever feel enough? 

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Will you ever forget the first time someone was dumbfounded by your “racial ambiguity” at the age of six when you were taking swim lessons one summer? 

Will you ever forget your surprise when she asked: Are you half? 

Will you remember how you stared confused so she asked again: Are you half? Will you remember how your small mind couldn’t process what was happening when you responded with: Am I half what? 

Will you remember how she kept asking and asking and finally said: You know like half something, like mixed?

Will you recall simply saying: I’m both of my parents together and they aren’t the same, so I am just all of that? 

Will you remember thinking: Why do I have to be...just half? 

Will you ever forget the sick feeling you felt laughing nervously while adjusting your swim cap? Will you forever remember pushing your feet off the wall, digging your pruney toes into the rough bumps of the pool? Will you always come back to breaststroke reps, and let the water shove away the feeling of otherness that you couldn’t place then, but constantly feel eating inside, eroding your sense of self? 

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Will you ever forget the time at the end of high school when your monoracial classmate aggressively smiled and said: I really want to have kids that look like you, you know mixed, but I just don’t like white people! Like, I would never want to date one you know? Will you ever decide if nervous laughter was the appropriate response or if you were supposed to agree? Will you ever forget how no one seemed to realize what was wrong with such a statement? Will you always remember how everyone else around the table laughed and nodded in agreement like bobbleheads? Will you ever forget the way isolation and discomfort slid over you like warm water? Will you ever realize how quickly you absorbed the hurt because it had become so normal? Will you ever decide if someone wanting your phenotypes but not the reality of one of your parents as the desired outcome in future offspring and partnerships is a good thing? Will you ever name the twisted desire for mixed-race children when you are monoracial purely for aesthetics as racism and essentialism in the form of fetishization? Will it feel weird to be a destination sought after when you can’t even feel whole? 

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Will you remember applying to colleges and being taken aback when your high school college counselor smiled and swirled a plump finger in the air at you and said: So I see your last name...and I am thinking that maybe, and hopefully, there is a little something else in there? 

Will you remember just standing there thinking...inside of where...not sure what to say, do, or think? 

Will you remember her insistent smile when she said: Are you biracial? 

Will you recall never being asked that before or associating yourself with the word ‘biracial’ until that very moment and saying: Um, well I guess yea...I am? Will you remember walking away confused, why would she recommend you to write about your identity for college applications? Will the word ‘biracial’ roll around in your head like a stone in the ocean until it feels a little less wrong? Will you remember how it wasn’t until colleges sent out acceptance letters, and invited you to a student of color induction breakfast, that you realized you were a person of color? Will you wonder how long ‘multiracial’ has fallen under that category? 

Will you recall asking your sister if it was true, looking at your caramel arm, and her laughing as she said: I mean yeah obviously, you’re only half white you know? 

Will you remember sitting with that known fact and wonder why it never occurred to you before? Will you imagine feeling right claiming such an identity in words for yourself? Will you imagine how difficult it will become to see yourself as a person of color, even much later? Will you know that your journey of individuation and articulation will remain just as tumultuous? Will you wonder if other mixed people also knew they were also persons of color?

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What could you do? Will being at the end of the alphabet, with your father’s last name just three letters, ever stop leaving people dumbfounded? Will someone ever stop asking and will you ever stop saying--yes that is my name--when you are never any different? Will you ever forget how your college lab assistant asked you three times for your last name since she was convinced she must have been hearing it wrong since she thought you couldn’t possibly share the same family name? Will you ever stop being crushed by the memory of someone looking at you with skepticism and judgment while wearing your traditional clothing the very next day? Will you ever stop feeling like you have to have a reason to be who you are? Will you shake the discomfort and alienation you feel whenever you enter into spaces where you feel like that “half” of you is wiped clean from your being? 

Will you ever forget the TSA officer who looked at your ID, saw your name and said: Is that your last name? Ahaha cool, with a chuckle, eyes sparkling more from kinship than mystification? Will you wonder what he saw in your face? Will you ever stop wondering why you feel the constant need to wonder such a thing? 

Will those moments ground you? Will those moments remain in your memory tattooed? Will those familiar faces from different places make you feel like you have people in pockets of spaces, faces in time? Will they be the ones that make you question the very question are you enough? Will they make you consider who you could be or if you could be both? Will you ever feel like your selves are blending together yet refuse to be distinguished? Will you ever stop asking yourself if you are allowed to be who you are without any exceptions?

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Will you remember going to a coffee shop visiting your hometown one summer, and seeing a mixed family? Will you see in your periphery the father stare at you softly and then at his children? Will you see the gears in his head moving, wondering, thinking? Will you see the white mom and think of your own? Will you smile and feel flush? Will you feel excited or maybe afraid? Will you just think about how you never thought of such things when you were as little as those children? Will you think about how they should tell their children they are enough? 

Will you feel like telling the parents to hold their children more and tell them: it is okay for you to be who you are in your entirety? 

Will you start to keep a count of the families and interracial couples you see going on walks, holding hands, pushing strollers, walking through parks? Will you wonder if they see you as you see them? Will you ask yourself if you ever thought of anything of your family as a child? Will you wonder what your childlike brain saw when you saw families? Will you wish you had continued not to see anything? Will your renewed sense of family and purpose seem to slightly sting since it only exists out of necessity? Will you think about how you never saw your family as anything but normal until you were forced to see it as abnormal? Will you consider how it feels to have an affinity for families like your family? Will you hate that you had to recognize your family as deviant in order to see them as beautiful? Will this ground you? Will this confuse you? Will this hurt you? Will this make you feel warm? 

Will you remember the clump in your throat and the tears that welled up so quickly, streaming down your face when a woman with deep kind eyes asked: And how do you identify? Will you remember feeling hit in the chest and quivering when you said: Me?

Will you remember her nodding when you said: I’m mixed, and her warm mahogany hand on your shoulder resting with earnest eyes that seemed to pry open your tightly wound walnut heart when she said: And that is ok? 

Will you remember the clip-clop sound of wood and linoleum? Will you open the door to the sound of suction, exhale, and feel a rush of cold air? Will you gasp in the cold? Will it feel like you are breathing for the first time in months? Will you feel lighter? Will you feel your eyes burn since the air is too cold? Will you feel heavier? Will you feel a sting in your chest and eyes when you have to cough from the too-cold air? Will you feel anything at all? Will you wish you could? 

Will you remember how you felt allowed to be who you were in your entirety, yet simultaneously ripped apart since it has taken so long to understand? Will you remember this momentary yet momentous realization as something you could not really hold on to? Will real crying feel like something you have not done since infancy? Will your tears feel insufficient? Will her words--and that is ok-- sink into the overturned stones inside of you and burn into your memory, tattooed? Will you quickly slip back into old habits of erasure since it feels so much easier to not feel angry at your deprived sense of self? Will you begin to latch on to anything and everything else to fill the gap in your chest? 

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Will you call your parents one day crying and shouting: I am finally seen for who I am. I am no longer invisible? Will you know that’s impossible? Will you ever accept the fact that no matter what, a part of you will always feel inadequate? Will you ever stop running helplessly towards something that cannot be reached? Will you ever stop blaming the world for your inability to achieve the “essential” version of all your identities? Will you ever realize that the so-called “essential” version of all your identities is a fabrication that does not really exist? Will you ever accept who you are without feeling like you aren’t allowed to be because you’re convinced that 75% of everyone everywhere doesn’t see you for who you are? Will you realize it’s a lot more complicated than that? Will you ever convince yourself that you couldn’t know the minds of the billions of people in the world? Will you ever stop feeling the double, triple, quadruple consciousness that buzzes around you insistently? Will you ever realize what you think people see in you is not always true? Will you ever stop needing others to see you for you, since you should reside in you? Will you ever see all the things you are and more? Will you ever see how incredible you are? 

What will it take to change? Will the sinking feeling of no solid identity to hold and to grip and to squeeze subside with the passage of time? Will it always feel like a constant fight? Will it feel like slipping in a sand trap? Will you accept the fact that you are an anomaly and that you live in a world of all grey in a universe that sees only black and white? Will you decide that that is alright? Will you ever stop chasing what you feel you’ve been wrongfully deprived of? Will you ever feel light? Will you ever feel whole? Will you every place your thumb in the hole in your heart and realize it still thumps? Will you ever touch your face and pull at your cheeks, and feel who you are in your entirety? Will you ever breathe without suffocating on a false sense of self? Will you someday see the sky and stop wondering why you cannot seem to shine despite the stars in your eyes? 

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Will you sit in a car quietly? Will you be with your father who tells you: well of course you are and smiles? 

Will you be able to shake the feeling of crushing inadequacy for just one moment when you exhale and say: Really? 

Will he say: Of course, who else would you be?

Lenora Yee writes poems, plays, shorts stories and songs. As a vocalist and an instrumentalist, Lenora often places multiplicities and the many layers of identity in the center of creative expression. Poetry and prose are her favored mediums. “How will you know?” was first published by Crosscurrents Literary Arts Magazine in 2020. Lenora will graduate from the University of Puget Sound in May of 2021, with a degree in English with an emphasis in creative writing, Spanish language, culture, and literature and a minor in vocal performance.