White and Weird

You think it is you who are at fault, you with your round “Buddha belly” and your long “Buddha ears” and your squinty “Buddha eyes.” The kids at school wonder why you can’t be normal. “You’re so weird,” they say. Weird because of your weird Thai lunches of rice and fish sauce and hot dogs cut into octopi. Weird because of your Thai accent that makes you slur your S’s and switch your R’s and L’s. Weird because you don’t wear a cross around your neck. Weird—you enjoy saying the word. It feels funny in the mouth—the way the tongue moves and tickles the roof. Weird. Weird. Weird. You say it, but don’t want to be it. You want to be normal. Normal isn’t a fun word. It’s split in two. Nor. Mal. You feel the gap, this infinite leap between syllables. Still, to be weird is bad. To be normal—no matter how unpleasant the word sounds—is good. But what is normal? How do you mold yourself into normal? What does normal look like? Feel like? You search for it. Try to figure Normal’s secrets. You watch the normal kids at recess. They run. You run. They jump rope. You jump rope. They bounce a ball. You bounce a ball. They wear British Knights gym shoes. So do you. You’re changing yourself, trying to appear more like them, talk more like them: “God, that’s so weird.” “God, what a turd.” “God, you’re so stupid.” You speak of God like he’s your buddy, like you carry him around in your pocket. God is another cool word with hard consonants at the beginning and end, a word sure of itself. God. God. God. You don’t know who God is, though. You don’t know God made the world. You don’t know God has the power to flood the planet. You don’t know God created animals. You like animals, especially dolphins. You don’t know God because you are Buddhist. Buddha, another word you can break. Boo. Duh. You pray to him because you are taught to, because, in your little suburban world, he occupies every room, because he listens to you. You ask Buddha for help. “Buddha,” you say, “I don’t want to be weird. I want to be normal.” Buddha is kinda weird, too, isn’t he? He wears a funny looking hat that looks like an ice cream cone has plopped on his head. When he speaks to you, he says, “You’re weird because you’re not white.” You think this. You think this all the time. One day, you sneak into the bathroom before school. You rummage under the sink for your mother’s rose powder, the one she puts on after her baths and makes herself ghostly white. When you find it, the bathroom becomes a snow globe of drifting white. It smells like a park of roses. You put so much powder on you sneeze, and your sneeze makes it snow more. Your hair, your shirt, your brown slacks are speckled in white. Your face is white, too, with spots of brown peeking through. You dump more powder to cover them up. In the mirror, you’ve become overly white. You think white is not the right word to describe white people. Neither is black or yellow or brown. But here you are, white in the purest sense, white when you sneak out of the house, white when you arrive at school, white when you enter the classroom, white like the other white kids, who point at your white face. “Look,” you say. “I’m like you.” White powder snows onto the carpeted floor. Onto their desks. They laugh. Laugh and laugh. You laugh. Laugh and laugh. “You’re not like us,” they say. But you are. Can’t they see? Don’t they understand how hard it is to be like them? Doesn’t their white come off like yours? Do they reapply their white every morning? “You’re white and weird,” they say. White. Weird. Two words dancing around in your mouth, ricocheting off the walls of your brain, dividing you into who you are and who you aren’t.

“I’m white and weird,” you sing-song all day. “White and weird. White and weird. Like you.”
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