Bronson Gao

May 28 20XX

家

日本人じゃない

I am not Japanese. I have a Chinese mom and a White dad, and am in no way Japanese. So obviously, I took four years of the language, probably to piss my parents and extended family off, though I don’t regret it. No surprise everyone says I don’t know “my language”: “my language” this, “my language” that; some poetic musing or conventional wisdom on “heritage” and “identity”; a way of living I’ve never had.

I remember Mom made me learn some kanji in elementary school and a fistful of phrases (“hello,” “goodbye,” “yes,” “no,” etc.). So it wasn’t for a lack of trying, though I can’t remember any of it, unless it was loaned to Japanese.

I thought I was supposed to feel like an American after all. やっぱり、アメリカ人にならなければいけませんでしたが、まだなっていません。Even when I’m not and I know it, it’s all there is even still. I’ll eat meatloaf and McDonalds and smoke American cigarettes sometimes. And as a consequence, I am a disappointment to them, their biggest one.

My older brother died last weekend. He worked for a Chinese company, doing something vague and important-sounding, something-something with computers, one of those made-up office jobs they give business majors. But at least it was a career, and one that paid well. And then me, I wasn’t valedictorian, prolly ‘cause I was more interested in having a real life.

Related to what I mentioned earlier, I tried looking for a girlfriend a couple times, and I did get into it at a couple parties, but I never got a number after it was done. Usually, she was kind of drunk, and so was I. And it’s a miracle: their dads never called or came to break my nose.

I heard what they’d say. I don’t need to repeat it all. Whatever you come up with is probably more interesting than most of what I’ve received. In high school, they don’t say it as loudly, or with as much spit on your face as in middle school, but I won’t mistake it for a change of heart.

Now, they just do it with their friends when you’re out of earshot, or in their head when they look at you with a stupid face like they think you don’t know. I mostly tried not to talk about it whenever the subject came up, ancestry. “Where were you born?” the question was. They had a way of using that word, “you.” It’s like I was a little cousin, some spit-faced nephew, a case study, lab rat, etc.

It got easier as I got older, at least. I started lifting weights around the eighth grade. I figured it’d make me more intimidating. I did get bigger, in fact, not bigger than any football kids, but, they stopped stepping on the back of my shoes when I was walking, stopped going through my shit when I got outta my chair, stopped feeling me up like a specimen whenever they felt it’d be safe and easy—at least usually.

I recall a couple situations at parties. It hardly ever happened—and was probably mainly just the drinking—but for certain, I remember those nights, wincing for the choked air, for the metallic soreness in my knuckles, for the breathless perforation in my chest. It didn’t feel that bad, usually, and I don’t even think we hated each other. Some asshole just said the wrong thing.

There was a joke that I knew martial arts, but then some people started to believe it, so then it became a rumor. I don’t at all, but that implication gave me a mystique, especially when I could finally act the part. 実は、空手ができないんですが、まだ喧嘩するのが上手なんです。And that doesn’t sound very Japanese of me either, giving myself a compliment like that.

My brother was a lot older than me. He was born in China, in some place nobody has ever heard of. That was just after my dad’s first tour, and that was where he met my mom. All three learned, and can—or could—speak “my language.”

And my brother died of alcohol poisoning in his apartment. It was his thirty-second birthday, and I was skating, listening to Candiria when they called.