The chatter of news softly echoed underneath my blankets. The speaker of my phone vibrated against the skin of my palm. The same messages flashed across my eyes: ACAB, BLM, Justice for George Floyd and Breonna Taylor… There was so much injustice in the world. I threw the phone away on the bed and rolled away. My outstretched body curled into a ball. I shut my eyes.
I went to school and saw the little boy scrunching his nose, muttering “ew” under his breath when an Asian girl brought out her bento box for lunch. I felt it. I remembered it. Pulling a packet of beef jerky with Chinese lettering on the packaging just to be confronted by a boy a year older than me; “Is that dog meat?”
Ashamed, the packet would be tucked back into the pocket of my coat. I smothered the sides, flattening it so it wasn’t visible. An audible crinkle shattered the silence, yet somehow it was nothing in comparison to the volume of the question before.
In fourth grade, there was an African American girl named Juliana. She walked into school one day, her usually curly hair tied into box braids. She wore it with pride. The other girls hid behind her back and whispered. They tugged at the ends when she wasn’t looking and ran away as soon she looked back. Their giggles etch into the crevices of my memory.
A few years later, one of the same girls went to vacation in Jamaica. She came back with tight braids in her blonde hair. She wore it with pride. The other girls caressed the dipping edges of each braid and whispered their oo’s and a’s.
It all came together in my head as I laid curled up underneath my autumn blankets. It stayed when I got called down to dinner. I spread my frustrations across the spotted wooden table. The members of the BLM movement had the right to go out and protest. In fact, it bothered me that there had to be a second movement as a sequel to the Civil Rights Movement before people saw things. It bothered me that people had to loot big businesses in order for the people at the top of our social hierarchy to notice. Our problems were miniscule, we were tiny action toy figures in their big world. I ranted to my parents over the table in between bites, chews, and swallows. My chopsticks flew in the air and my hands motioned crazily. My sister agreed, but my parents stayed silent. They simply stated that they did not agree with the riots. They thought that no matter what, protest should not resort to violence. I saw the look of disapproval upon their faces. My face settled into a frown. Their disappointment prompted me to speak.
“Do you not understand the intensity of the situation? They riot because they are sick of being silenced. I don’t agree with it either, but don’t you think it’s kind of upsetting that it has reached that point where they feel the need to break the law in order to be heard?”
My mother diverted her gaze and my father simply shook his head curtly. His fingers curled into the shade of his palm. I wasn’t satisfied with their reaction.
“Do you really think it will all go away with peaceful protesting? That’s what Martin Luther King Jr. did, but look at us, still fighting for our rights. I’m not saying I agree with it, but don’t you agree that there lies some reason in their actions?”
I felt the questions zip out of my mouth before I could stop it. My parents, the gentle people who graduated top of their class in China and graduated with an MD and Ph.D… My parents, the ones who raised me. They rose above and beyond to excel in a new country. Yet here they sit, silent.
I stared at them. My eyes prodded them for a response. Disappointment lingered in my chest, threatening to drop at any moment.
They looked away.
-
The 1960s lived forever as a hard time. You lived with chains around your wrists and a pebble constantly stuck in your throat, threatening to drop at any given moment if you uttered the wrong thing.
You would walk to school in uniformity, across the street from your gender counterparts. Both sides neither touched nor shared a look with one another, as to do so would suffer serious consequences. You came home and listened to silence ringing through the courtyards. You read the books assigned again and again. You did not know of the outside life. You only existed within the confines of your own room. There was no box to think out of. Only void.
You come to America to escape the vacuum you were brought up in. You heard classical music for the first time. It is associated with the airy breeze and petrichor of spring. Another day, you hear The Beatles for the first time. From then on, you listen to it every morning as the sunlight of the patio graces the pages of your book.
You talk about how you wished you had this when you were younger. The ability to explore and find new things. You talked of how envious of an American child’s opportunities to create music through the violin and piano. You would always wave an imaginary baton in the air whenever your daughter played, whether it was scales or Mozart. The blissful look upon your face gave power to the strings of her bow.
In 2020, you remember the communist riots when you watch the riots of the BLM movement on TV screen. You see the glass of business windows breaking and police taking control. It sends you back to your bare childhood. You saw police brutality and thought of the army tanks raiding Tiananmen Square. You saw the heightened senses to racism and misinterpreted it as propaganda.
Now, you look at your daughter and see a mind infatuated with the Little Red Book, just in the format of social media. Your nonexistent opportunities, presented to her perfectly on a silver platter, was only possible through your own hard work, yet here she sat, eyeing you with disapproval. Did she even know what life would be like to have music taken from your very ears?
I saw my parents’ expressions and mistook them for racism or indifference, or maybe even both. I forgot about the life they had lived, about how they worked hard to leave it just to see parallels in their refuge. The situation is different now. But seeing it through my parents’ perspectives humbled me.
I want to tell them, “Thank you for your perspective. It gave your daughter insight.” But instead, my mind came up empty. Their eyes prodded mine for a response.
I looked away.
October 2020