I was seven when I first
discovered
that the words my mouth
created
were different to the ones
the children
spoke on the playground.
My English was broken,
so I was told,
and in that moment the
stereotypes
hit me as heavy as my mother’s
accent sounded to foreigners.
The world was not my oyster
anymore,
that had been guaranteed
the moment I was plucked from
my mother’s womb
and fell into the latex-covered
hands of a white man.
My classmates spoke of the
Asian restaurants they would frequent,
of how the aromas soaked
their cotton clothes
and the way the food left
them more satisfied
than the pay cheques the
chefs would ever receive.
The leathered hands my mother
wore;
the lines etched into her dry
palms,
spoke of greater stories than
the fairy tales
I had to recite to my English
teacher.
It told of the late nights she
worked,
cutting onions one night and
packaging clothes the next,
all to pay for my tuition,
in a country where education
is supposed to be free.
My mother’s broken English
came with the hope
that I would not grow up
the punch line of some racist
joke.
The shattered hope
that I would remember
the exact ways to roll my r’s
and the proper pronunciation
of words in my native tongue.
But even that
soon tasted as foreign
as the Chinese medicine I was
fed
as a child.
My talent became the ability
to laugh at the racist insults thrown my way,
to make fun of the kids who
had mono lids and brought rice to school;
whilst at the same time,
praying that my mother
would not notice the
deteriorating pride I had for my culture.
I dyed my hair and bleached
my skin,
wanting so badly to belong
in a place that did not want
me.
My English has become more
fluent
than it once was,
but with that it seems
language barriers aren’t the
only things I have broken.
Author: Liv
Author: Liv