Not the Only Broken Thing

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