Days of Distraction

by Alexandra Chang

  For example, how my body does not know how to respond to this drastic change in climate. Or how haunted Ithaca feels with its narrow streets of old houses. Or because it’s tiny and I have walked to all the places I can walk to, seen everything I can see. Or that J is so busy, living a full life, while I plod in circles in the house and my mind. Or the dead squirrel I saw, so pristine and still, its eyes so open that I thought it was simply taking a rest, staring up at the sky, but then the dog nudged it with his nose and my whole body felt its death radiating out, like death could touch me. Or the creeks that rise so high and rush so opaque and brown, you begin to wonder what’s being swept away underneath.

  And yes, the whiteness. The whitenesses. The kind the woman distanced herself from. And the kind she inhabits. I thought I had grown accustomed to at least one, from time in Davis, time in the workplace, time in life. But maybe I have not.

  When I get home I look up the college’s journalism department page and see that, as expected, the faculty is entirely white, with the exception of one black male professor who teaches sports journalism.

  “You speak of the yellow peril, we speak of the white disaster,” said Yamei Kin to a New York audience in 1904.

  After I tell him about the encounter, J asks if I’ll apply for the lecturer position. I say nope, not going to happen.

  “Just because of what that professor said about Asians in Ithaca?”

  “I’m trying to prevent and avoid certain situations when I can.”

  “Who cares what she said? It can be to your advantage.”

  “That’s one way to look at it.”

  “I bet you’d be good at teaching. And it doesn’t seem like you like what you’re doing now anyway.”

  “But I don’t want to see her again. I don’t want to interact with her. I’m the one who cares about what she said.”

  “You probably won’t have to, though. Don’t you think it would be better to at least try?”

  “Yes, I would have to. She’d be the reason if I get hired, and it would be irritating and demeaning to be around her.”

  “I just feel like you complain about your work now, so you should try to do something different. And it sounds like they want someone like you.”

  “What does ‘someone like me’ mean?”

  “Someone with a tech journalism background.”

  “Sure, okay. But that’s not only what she meant. I just don’t want to be some walking form of proof that she’s a good white person. She’s the kind who would see me and make little comments about how she helped get me there, as if I should be forever grateful to her. And she’d be constantly trying to prove how good she is. Like, she’d come to me to make herself feel better. And it would have nothing to do with me and everything to do with her.”

  “It sounds like you’re overthinking what she said. You’re taking a hard lens to it.”

  “What do you mean, a hard lens?”

  “Like, you think what she did is really bad and that she’s bad.”

  “I’m not saying that everything and every person is either good or bad. There are obviously gradations and variations. I’m not saying she’s the worst person, or that she was blatantly racist. But what she did comes from that same line of thinking.”

  “To me, it just seemed like she was being nice and thought you’d be a good fit because you worked in online journalism, and the Asian comment was just something she noticed. I mean, California is way more Asian than here.”

  “Wow, yeah, okay, great! Let me just go work for this nice, observant white lady, who definitely doesn’t want anything from me, like for example filling some diversity quota she just realized she needed to fill or whatever! As long as she’s nice and I get something out of it, then nothing else matters.”

  “Okay, then.”

  We both go quiet.

  “You don’t get it,” I say.

  He doesn’t respond.

  “I just wish you would try. Or maybe you’ll never understand and that’s fine. Just trust that I’m upset for a real reason and support me.”

  “I do support you. But I’m also telling you what I think. Do you want me not to be honest with you?”

  “No. That’s not what I said. I just don’t get why you’re arguing with me, your girlfriend, and defending some random person you don’t even know, after I tell you that she made me feel weird and bad. It feels to me like you’re defending her because she’s white and so are you.”

  “I don’t think so. I’m not arguing. I have my own thoughts, too. And I don’t want you to feel bad. But I don’t think you should feel that bad from what she said.”

  “Oh. My. God. Really? We’re going to keep doing this?”

  Our conversation, or whatever it is, goes in a few more spirals, and both of us grow fatigued. And in the tiredness, the silences between our words extend further. There are distances neither of us wants to traverse, as though going from where one stands to where the other stands is to break from an essential part of oneself. And if both of us remain as firm in our positions, then what? Is it possible both of us are in the right? I doubt it. I won’t go there. Fuck dating white guys, I hear Jasmine say. This is the longest she and I have gone without talking since we met. I realize I miss her. I miss the past. I fantasize about running away. Booking a flight back to San Francisco. Getting up and walking out the door, taking the bus to New York City and staying there. Him doing something more terrible than this, him cheating on me or worse, so my departure can be justified and understandable to everyone outside of us. A life with somebody who would understand, without the trouble or difficulty. Or a life alone. A life with my own direction.

  . . . With the impetuosity of youth, we were eager to solve the mysteries of the universe together, to seek hand in hand the attainment of perfection in a world of imperfection. These mysteries and aims were to be eternally symbolized for us in the symphonies we heard, in the historic spots we visited and in our growing interest in each other. . . . Within three months from the time of our first meeting, we were secretly engaged.

  Then, followed months of heart-searching discussion on the problem of the marriage of diverse races. I was truly a product of environment. From infancy to young manhood I had lived in an atmosphere poisoned with the bitterest racial prejudices and antagonism. . . . As a result, like all my kind, I suffered from the twin diseases that are ineradicable from Chinatown, pathological race consciousness and what I call “Americanitis,” a condition in which all of one’s traditional heritage becomes anathema and all that pertains to the western world seems perfect.

  He finds me upstairs in the office and approaches. He touches my arm. I refuse to react.

  “Alexandra?”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry,” he says.

  I don’t believe him. “I don’t believe you,” I say. “Sorry for what?”

  “Sorry for not supporting you and listening to you,” he says. “I know I don’t understand, but I’m going to try harder. I just don’t want you to be miserable at home, doing work you don’t like. You’re always talking about how much you hate Ithaca. It makes me worried.”

  Now I feel guilty and ashamed. Why?

  “I’m not miserable. I don’t hate Ithaca,” I say, unconvincingly.

  He holds me.

  “Spending the last two hours on Vine was an excellent use of our time,” I say to the kitten, who is curled into a shrimp shape on my lap.

  Was it this morning or yesterday that I brushed my teeth?

  Being of a proud nature, I did not wish my fiancée to rush blindly into a mixed marriage without a true picture of the situation. To forewarn her, I implored her to read all the books obtainable on the subject of interracial marriage. She did and found the trials and tribulations of such unions numberless; their joys, few. Yet, undismayed, sure of herself, she refused to turn back.

  Oh, that’s what I should have asked him to do. I send him this article and a long list of others, collected in a haze, t
hen text: Did you see the links I emailed?

  He writes back: Yes, but don’t have time to read them right now. I will later.

  Do not think that I overstress the horrors of race prejudice. One cannot be indifferent to the sufferings of one’s own people any more than one can ignore a severe personal injury. . . . But my wife, who had never yet personally experienced any instances of race prejudice, was amazed, insisting that I was foolish, that I magnified the dangers.

  The dog and the cat sleep in the same position, on their backs and feet up, as though in peaceful surrender. They know something I don’t. I could watch them forever.

  And now, high alone, I am thinking about texting the not-drug-dealer Rob. But I don’t know what I would say besides “hey,” so no, my sober part tells my high part, Don’t.

  “. . . Under this pressure our marriage will doubtless crack wide open. In case it does not, your cross will be a difficult one to bear. You will be denied the right to choose your place of residence. Personal services will be extended grudgingly. The majority of your people will stare at you as at a circus freak. Still others, race glorifiers, will despise and curse you for committing the most unpardonable of mortal sins—marrying a ‘Chinaman.’ These experiences will sear your soul.”

  I stumbled on recklessly, mercilessly, intent on enlightenment. I have often asked myself, Was I cruel? Perhaps. Yet the greater cruelty, I was convinced, lay in leaving her in ignorance.

  I collect some more articles and attach them, replying to my previous email to J.

  Stoned thoughts, numbers, approximately, 261 to 272: Do white people ever wish they weren’t white? And if so, why? Out of guilt or something else? Do they ever wish they were Asian? And if so, why? Misunderstood desire? To steal and to plunder? A self-hatred rooted in . . . what?

  One late October night, however, we were brutally dislodged from our false sense of security. We drove into a sumptuous Southern California autocamp. In answer to our request for a night’s lodging there came back the laconic reply, given to the accompaniment of a slamming door and a muffled oath, “All taken!” The cabins were untenanted. The camp was practically deserted. Yet, the realization was bitter, we were not wanted. My wife became intensely angry; for it was her first experience with racial prejudice in its extreme form. As for me, my face flushed fire as a flood of bitter memories came rushing back.

  That was not this. This doesn’t mean anything. She didn’t mean anything by it. You didn’t mean it. This doesn’t have to mean something. This doesn’t mean anything, if you don’t look at it that way. What does this mean, then? This means nothing. What do they mean, then? What they mean is that you mean nothing.

  He once told me he loved me because I was loyal. Loyal!

  Couldn’t that be translated into a form of narcissism? I love you because you love me.

  Then again, I guess I do, too. Love him because he loves me.

  “But maybe the me he loves is not the me I am. And vice versa, the true, deep-down him that he is is not the him I love,” I say to the dog and cat curled here beside me in bed.

  “Does that make sense?” They follow me everywhere. They are the best listeners.

  Stonehead, my mom called him.

  “It’s ‘stoner’ or ‘pothead.’ And he’s not one, I swear,” I said, laughing.

  “Pothead, stonehead, bonehead,” she said. “All the same!”

  “Actually, yeah, you’re kinda right.”

  On the phone with my sister—who has forgiven me—we are asking ourselves, yet again, and this time more seriously on my end: Why are we with white men? Is it because we’ve been taught all of these years from all of this white American media that whiteness is the epitome of attractiveness? And even though we are aware of it, have we internalized it so deeply that it can’t be rooted out? (That might have something to do with it.) Or are we subconsciously trying to climb social and political ladders? Are we fitting into this stereotype of the gold-digging Dragon Lady Asian wife? (We hope not!) Or was it that, where we grew up and went to school, white people were more readily available? (Must play a role.) Or, my sister muses, are we trying to ensure that our kids are part white? (I am probably not having kids, I say. Okay, she says.)

  “I’ve thought about that a lot lately—am I dating a white guy to make sure that my future kids are also white, and have it easier? Is that a form of survival?”

  “Well, are you?”

  “I don’t think so? But I don’t know! Maybe it’s subconscious!”

  We laugh for a while. It is funny. It’s all too funny. We survive through the laughter.

  She asks if I remember how everybody obsessed over our cousins when we were young. Yes, I say. Those beautiful Eurasian faces. She says she used to think the mixed-race white and Asian girls in high school got along better with the popular white girl crowds. Maybe it was simply because they were white passing. Their proximity to whiteness gave them white privileges.

  “I had no idea back then that a lot of white people can’t even tell when somebody is part Asian,” she says. “And if they’re the ones who can’t tell, I guess that’s what matters, so maybe that’s why.”

  “But I always think mixed-race white and Asian people look more Asian,” I say. “The Asian genes are so dominant. In that way, we can’t be erased!”

  “Yeah, but that’s just how you see it,” she says. “And even though they look Asian, they’re treated differently. I feel weird about saying they look better, or more attractive, because saying that makes me feel like I’m saying that looking whiter is better.”

  “Yeah,” I say. I tell her about not-drug-dealer Rob, and how he is mixed-race Filipino and white, and how yes, he is also hot.

  “Ha ha! See. Anyway, it’s just something I’ve wondered.”

  The notion that interracial relationships with white people could solve the problems of racism—that, we don’t even consider.

  What I’m wondering, though, is: What would be different with an Asian man, or another person of color? How much easier would it be? What kinds of conversations and pains could we bypass? What kinds of cultural aspects and perspectives of the world could we share?

  “I’ve been with more people than you,” says my sister. “And not only white people.”

  It’s true, I’ve only ever been serious with J. He was my first boyfriend, first everything, which, too, has its advantages and drawbacks. But I have the impulse to defend myself.

  “I saw and sorta dated plenty of nonwhite people in college,” I say.

  “You sound like Didi,” she says. “And that’s when you were like, what, eighteen? Nineteen? So then why didn’t you date them more seriously?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I guess because I was eighteen or nineteen.”

  “Anyway, in some ways it was easier. But we had other problems. I mean, look at Mommy and Daddy. It’s not like being with somebody of the same race or ethnicity solves everything, either.”

  “True, true,” I say. “But do you think Daddy was happier with Mommy than with Sharon?”

  “Oh yeah,” she says. “I forget he had another wife before, and a white one. Thinking about them from before creeps me out. Wait, are you asking because of this guy you met?”

  I laugh. “I don’t know,” I say. “But it is a question I’ve been asking myself.”

  “Do you ever look at me and think I look like a stranger?” I ask.

  “Huh? No,” says J.

  “Oh.”

  “Why? Does that happen when you look at me?”

  “I mean . . .” I hum a short tune. “There are also times when I look in a mirror and I’m like, what the, why? That looks like a stranger, too. Does that happen to you?”

  He looks at me, worried. “No,” he says, slow.

  “Never mind, maybe it’s just me!”

  It was not that bad, he said.

  Unquestionably bad:

  On May 4, 1983, Thong Hy Huynh, a seventeen-year-old Vietnamese refugee, was stabbed a
nd killed on the science quad of the Davis Senior High School campus, in between class periods, in front of an audience of around one hundred students. The murder was said to be the culmination of a months-long “feud” between a group of Vietnamese boys (all immigrants, refugees, newly arrived in the country, newly arrived in this idyllic little college town—Huynh had been there all of three years) and a group of white boys. The feud, unsurprisingly, was caused by the white boys tormenting and bullying the Vietnamese boys. In the middle of this particular murderous dispute, the white boy, with violence and racism in his heart and mind, went to his car to get a hunting knife, and stabbed Huynh in the torso.

  “This might have been a conflict between human beings without the immigrant aspect being a factor,” said the principal days later at an assembly. “But I don’t want to downplay the possibility of conflict between the mainstream and new people.”

  “They were loners—they stayed by themselves,” one student said of the Vietnamese boys. “They always tried to ignore the hassling. I guess the only people who get bothered are the people who make themselves outcasts.”

  Of the white boy, it was said that he had “a thing about showing off in front of his friends.”

  The following week, on the same day as Huynh’s memorial service, during which his mother cried for forty-five minutes and collapsed, leaflets from a group called the White Students Union of Sacramento circulated on campus, urging white students to stick together. For what purpose exactly, it was unclear. Two years later, the white murderer was convicted of voluntary manslaughter—a lesser charge than murder—and sentenced to a measly six years in juvenile detention, after the judge heard pleas from the mothers of both the victim and the murderer.

  It’s too lenient, it’s not enough time, said Huynh’s mother.

  The school put up a plaque, which is still there today, in the science quad among perennials. I have seen it. We walked by the plaque nearly every day in high school, but most of us never noticed or paid much attention.

  Another outcome of the murder: Friendship Day. It was—and still is—a monthly event meant to bring high school students closer, to break down social barriers, and to build, as the name calls for, friendship. And yet, the day itself was, like Davis, so white. A group of select students acted as Friendship Day facilitators. To become one, you had to go through an interview process. It was common knowledge, however, that it was largely a popularity contest. If you were close to an outgoing facilitator or the Friendship Day coordinator—a well-liked white male AP U.S. history teacher—the chances of you becoming one increased exponentially. It was no surprise then that facilitators were predominantly white. There was an occasional outcast—a dorky kid or an international student—among them, there as if to prove the system wasn’t what we felt it to be. Facilitators, too, chose who to invite. I knew a boy who went to four Friendship Days in one year. My senior year, I went to two, and on one occasion, my friend group made up at least half of the attendees. We didn’t need to be there. And we didn’t ask, Who isn’t here because we are? It was innocent. We were having fun, and for a good cause. Inclusion and exclusion worked in these veiled ways.