I know I shouldn’t say anything and I do anyway.
“I didn’t know you didn’t speak Korean.”
He turns and looks at me over his shoulder, not angrily, just blankly, with a sort of shrug.
“Why should I? My mother is Mexican.”
I mean duh.
He knows that I know that, but he insists on beating around the bush.
And that means one of us just has to say what we’re thinking.
Not it.
I find another way to skirt the real question.
“What did you do while you were in Korea for the music video shoot?”
“I used a translator like any other foreigner, ” He doesn’t even look at me, still staring at the glass-
I feel pin-pricked-
A thousand pin pricks-
But these roses…
Are immaculately, angelically, infallibly white.
“It’s not a foreign culture when it’s your father’s...”
He just shakes his head, “Tell that to my mom.”
I want to say something but for once my mouth knows better than to let me.
When I don’t reply Kat keeps talking, maybe for my benefit maybe - because he’s been waiting to get this off his chest - the words pour out like a monologue he’s been rehearsing for years-
“She never once told me I was biracial when I was a kid.”
Alicia.
“When I was in grade school and the other Hispanic kids would tease me for my ‘Asian eyes’ she would tell me that her grandmother had eyes just like mine."
