One of My Greatest Fears: The Soul of a Child
by Melissa Yaeko Slaker, Special Contributor

Mom, Dad, I am angry and I want you to pay for my shrink bills. Except these aren't shrink bills, it's the energy that created me that someone, you two, need to confess.

You asked me what I wanted for my birthday this past year- - my list is short: I want the truth.

I do not know where my history starts. Baby books are false memories. I don't need to know how much I weighed or what size my foot was or who gave me what gift on my first birthday.

Tell me, why were my eyes blue until I was 3 months old? Why did they have to change to brown?

This is identity.

I want to know where I come from.
You want me to be American, to have white privilege.
But both of you should know, with your graduate school educations, that I'm not.

You loved each other.
You loved each other so much, you say, that you transcended racial boundaries, and had two pretty little half girls.

Half of what?

Dignity.

But I know the truth. I just wish you two would admit it as well.

You loved each other so much, mom, that he left you for a Southern Debutant when I was five years old. He changed his mind and wanted blue eyes and blond hair instead of a Japanese girl. The colonizer decided to go home.

Every day I have to look at myself in the mirror and digest who I am before I catch the train and deal with people who stare at me in public spaces and ask me to sleep with them.

I know I have brown hair with red tints, light brown eyes, and skin too white to be Asian.
I know I grew up yearning to be five foot eight, so I could be a super model.
I know that many men have fucked me because I am a pretty commodity of someone's Oriental fantasy.

I don't look like you, dad. I don't look like you, mom. And I never looked like the Barbie dolls you two bought me when you fought.

Admit it.

Admit never asking my sister and me, "Why are you dismantling those dolls?"

We failed every time, trying to create a plastic replica of us. So we switched to building cities out of Legos; plastic blocks are not gendered. It is sad that only in our imaginations can women govern. No one called us bitches in Lego town, or told us we needed to calm down because we were PMSing. But this was Lego town, and plastic melts inside the inferno known as my mind.

Why don't you tell me how I was created?

Sometimes the energy that fused together to build me explodes inside my heart and I feel like I am going war. I've been going to war since I grew breasts. As I grow older, I understand that the physical space I occupy is always going to be a war, is always going to be angry, is always going to be passionate about life.

(something about rescuing)

It is difficult knowing I was created in subconscious domination, a deep-rooted hate, founded in sex, in lust, in a camping tent in Eastern Washington, on an August night.

I cannot sleep knowing who I am because she scares me. She is a child, wrapped up in fetal position, curled up in a corner, she is not wearing baby gap, she hates lotus flowers, cannot speak any language that expresses her pain, crying because she is the product of fucking.

Lover, this is what I want for my daughter.

She lies on my breasts, sleeping, without thinking about how her parents fucked to create her.

There is nothing except good energy, from me, from the room, from her father, from her family, from the dog sleeping next to us. I lay on my back, on a couch, sleeping with her. Our dreams intermingle and speak with each other. It's equal. I want to give her a world where people will love her curly hair and brown eyes, latte skin, and short physique. I want to give her a world where glass ceilings do not exist for women, for women of color, where she does not feel pressure to wear green contacts or have breast implants, where she will not ask me why there are no people like her on television, in her classes, on the street, because people finally wake up. She will cry because she knows the joy of making love, not racism or sexism that accompanies sex. No man will ever fuck her, no woman will ever fuck her. She sleeps and I sleep, on the couch, being, for her.