ten
(Not a blog post! Here's something from a college autobio writing class I still like. Unedited, save for identifying details.)
On Interpals, my profile picture is from a recent trip to Japan. My two front teeth have grown back, so I can smile a real smile for the picture, standing in front of a stone statue among cherry blossom trees. My straight hair stops before my shoulders. Zipped up in the pink jacket Mom bought me is Momo, my stuffed bear, poking her head out of where the zipper stops by my chest. I wouldn’t go anywhere without Momo, so Mom was forced to innovate a way to keep my hands free. The photo looks a little silly, but since I have no other pictures of myself on file, I just pray my future pen pals will look past the odd bear head sticking out of my jacket. I fill out the rest of my profile, sitting at the Winnie-the-Pooh plastic table I moved to my big sister’s room for the day.
Summer of 2008 is long and sunny. The blinds are drawn up and the sunset washes Ella’s walls a saturated orange, the grills on the windows painting stripes of shadows across her closet doors. Although we spend the days indoors, we take advantage of natural light as long as we can. Ella is sprawled out on her bed in a nap, so even as the day grows darker I don’t get up to turn on the light. Instead, I scour the site for potential friends in the dimness, relying on the glow of my laptop screen. I am ten years old and have too much freedom on the Internet, but don’t yet know it.
Interpals is exciting because there are people from all over the world. I see people who look like how I imagine characters in my American books look like, with blond hair and blue eyes, tall noses, bushy mustaches. I exchange messages with anyone and everyone, grinning about the prospect of having an uncommon friendship that I could brag about to my classmates at school. Talking to adults from faraway countries makes me feel mature, cultured, a global citizen before I even know what a global citizen is. In fourth grade, I am shy to speak up in class, and don’t have many friends. In one afternoon on this website, I become the most popular girl I know.
—
Lee has blond hair and eyes I can’t make out the color of in his pixelated webcam-shot photo. He doesn’t smile for the picture, but his messages are punctuated with little smiley faces, so I know he is friendly. He is in his late twenties and from somewhere in America. We talk on the site only for a little while before he asks to add me on Yahoo! Messenger, and I say yes, hoping to continue our interesting conversations, even though I now have no recollection of what we ever talked about.
What I do remember is this: I am sitting in the darkness of Ella’s room when Lee tells me out of the blue that he loves me. Unease settles in my stomach like a stone—but maybe it’s good we’re becoming such fast friends. I type back I love you too! and, without knowing why, I clarify: Like in a dad way!
Haha, he types back. Okay. And then: What about in a boyfriend way? ;)
Fear crawls cold up my spine and grips the back of my head, but I am silent. Ella is still asleep. Ohh. I type, and then add something else I can’t recall before I shut my laptop and leave the room.
Mom’s door is open, so she hears the sticky sounds of bare feet across the floor before I run into her room in tears. I blubber to her an incoherent rundown of the conversation. I don’t know why I am so terrified by his question, but she understands instantly. Ella, who has heard me leave the room, comes to join Mom in comforting me. They mostly succeed. Ella blocks Lee from my Yahoo! Messenger and deletes my Interpals profile for me. An hour later, we have dinner.
—
For years after, I dream of blond hair and pale cold eyes, coming to take me away. I’m thankful our windows have grills so nobody can enter through them, but I am paranoid that Lee has access to lasers like in the American spy movies I watch, and will fly to my hometown and cut right through metal and glass both. Years later, I watch a movie called Eden where Jamie Chung gets abducted by a white man for a sex trafficking scheme, and I sleep in my parents’ room for the first night in years.
But by the time I get to high school, I have pushed the memory so far into the recesses of my brain. My parents are surprised when in my sophomore year I announce to them my plans of studying in America. Impressed, I assume, but maybe a little surprised—a few years back, I probably would have never entertained the idea of coming to this country alone.
I am going home for spring break, and this is the first break where my aunt in Long Island cannot bring me to and from JFK. Mom and I worry over FaceTime together about how I will navigate. We don’t say it, but in both our minds America reduces me to age ten, an easy target. Later we talk about nicer things.
I mention I want to get a haircut while I’m home. I keep having to tuck my bangs back as I talk with her, lying on my bed between Momo and another stuffed toy. It occurs to me now that my current hair is about the length it was in that picture. I wonder: If he saw me on the street today, would he recognize me? Or would I be just a passing figure, ten years too old to be desirable? The thought reassures and horrifies me both. I try not to think about it.