I Put the Stares in their Eyes: Louisville, KY, USA

I’ve been Chinese-American all my life but it was always just a fact, like my hair was black, like my eyes were brown, like I was short, something that was but always forgotten until it mattered.  The kids I grew up with were a mix, Korean and French and Japanese and Irish and Indian and Spanish and Thai all tangled up until you couldn’t tell where one started and one ended and it didn’t matter anyways.  Their ethnicity had no bearing on me.  It was a non-issue, something that floated in the air around us but not explicitly acknowledged.

Yet as I walked down the streets of Kentucky, I felt their eyes upon me, the people passing us by.  Their stares brushed over my skin like the worst kind of paranoia, that indescribable tenseness that only comes from being constantly watched. When I finally gathered the courage to meet their eyes, I was met with a particular expression: a confused bemusement as if something inexplicable had entered their midst, some strange creature that had ventured into the daylight.  I had never felt my ethnicity so vividly, a mirror held up to my face, surrounding me until all I could see and feel was my differentness. 

No one mentioned it out loud though, no crudeness or rudeness, just the stares.  Instead, they said "Good day" and "Welcome" and "This is the bus stop you wanted to get off on".  I responded with "Thank you" and a smile tacked on for good measure.  They always smiled back.  In the end, their hospitality, their slow-drawled kindness was what finally penetrated through to my heart, melting down my reserve.  Even though the mantle of my Asian-ness still obscured my features, I lifted my head high, pushed my shoulders back, and joined in the revelry.