My favorite color is red
Article and Art by Julia Nichols
My mother made me take piano lessons when I was single-digit little.
She says that’s why I have long, slender fingers and strong pinkies.
I wonder what kind of fingers my birth mother had.
My mother’s boyfriend plays the piano professionally.
He says I’m too old to be great, but I could still be really good.
I know my scales, I know how to read music (treble clef).
I quit piano before I could become great because I didn’t want to be another Asian girl who played piano.
I grew up white. My mom is white, my family is white, I was a member of my family and my mom was my mom so obviously, I was white. My mother didn’t hide the fact that I was from China or that I was this thing called “adopted.” I thought it was a simple trait like having a favorite color.
11 months old
Adore her. Squish her face and tell her in your baby voice that her cheeks are just like marshmallows but she’s one hundred times sweeter. Put your pointer finger in her hand and watch it instinctively grip you like you were always her mother.
“Were you sent to your mom in a box?” I was in second grade and I didn’t understand the question. Was it bad to be sent in a box? How did other parents get their children? I didn’t have to understand the question to understand that people knew something I didn’t when I said, “I was adopted from China.” I carried on with caution, still thinking that being adopted was normal, but maybe I shouldn’t tell everyone.
3 years old
Don’t keep secrets from her. You flew across the world for her, you prayed for her, you knew the second that you held her that she was yours.
Comments made towards me between middle school and high school: “Why don’t you have an accent?” “You look like someone who would play the violin.” “Your dad must have strong Chinese genetics.” “Your eyes look like hot dogs.” “Oh, you’re Chinese? Can you read some Chinese for the class?” “You don’t look Chinese Chinese. You look Western Chinese.”
8 years old
Tell her that her mother loved her. She wanted what was best for her. Selflessness is the only reason people give up their children.
Learning that I was not white was a hard pill to swallow. Learning that other people saw me as Asian was even harder. I became repulsed at the thought of playing the violin so I quit. I pretended I was bad at math, I insisted that I didn’t like K-pop, I curled my hair so it didn’t look so straight and coarse and Asian.
Early Teens
You can no longer convince her that love is stronger than blood. She knows why people ask the same question whenever they meet you and her together. She knows why they blink three times when you introduce her as your daughter. Remind her of the good old days. She will hate you because you are implying that the good days are behind her.
My mother used to force me into Chinese language lessons and summer camps. One summer she placed me in an immersion camp. Perhaps she thought that’s what I deserved after refusing to absorb any Chinese from my lessons. At the camp, the staff would not let me go to the bathroom unless I asked in Chinese. They knelt to my level and tried to talk to me in a language that didn’t feel like mine. My mom told me it was so I could “connect to my heritage.” I didn’t know what heritage meant. The people around me felt like they didn’t belong in my world.
16 years old
Watch over her shoulder as she molds her chin to a point and practices smiling in the mirror.
Pray that she doesn’t turn into one of those girls.
Sometime in my teenage years, I was snooping through my mother’s China memorabilia. I had seen most of it a million times: pictures of me at my first doctor’s appointment, pictures of us the first time she held me, my mother’s plane tickets to China, and the keycard from the hotel. My mother wasn’t home when I found a folder with a different kind of memorabilia. A piece of paper that told a story about a baby found on the street with no home and no family.
18 years old
Dream about the days when she used to say I love you instead of goodbye.
18 years old
Touch her shoulder hoping she’ll hold your hand.
18 years old
Take note of her cupid’s bow. It is the only thing that has not changed.
I like to think I get my slender fingers and pointed chin from my mother. I like to think that I get my stubbornness from her too. And I realize that I have. But not from the mother I was thinking of. I hate that I don’t know if I’m genetically predisposed to develop heart failure or cancer. I hate that I care about knowing those things. I hate that if I asked my mother about it she wouldn’t know either. I’ve come to realize that there are parts of me that my mother will never understand. There are experiences that my mother will never be able to share with me the way an Asian mother could. I find myself wondering how much I would wonder if I grew up with my mother. My other mother. I instantly feel ashamed.