“Don’t you think Indians look like hairy apes?” Jane snickered in Joan’s ear during “the talk” at practice. Joan chuckles in agreement. Jane made sure I was watching, “But not you, Hope, don’t worry.” She smiles a pretty smile that seems to erase what just happened from everyone’s minds and eyes.
On instinct, I outwardly pretended to glow inside, to keep the peace, securing my place as separate from the two Indian girls she was looking at, but her disqualification at the end did not make me feel better. I knew what she was saying. I had picked the message up at school in other ways, from other casual, laughing remarks in the halls: People here didn’t like people who looked like me.
Mr. Brown saw me running a bit separately from the team. He leaned in as we ran by, searching intently for reasons in my eyes.
“Hope, smile more.” He belts. “You’re always frowning. Get along with the team.”
I hated being publicly established as a loner this way, for everyone to hear and see. My mind stewed as we ran away. A thought occurred to me and I stopped, turned back around, and separated from the group. Why should I always take on the blame? I am quiet. I hide all the time. It’s how I justified my innocence at school, by not doing or saying anything.
I walk up to Mr. Brown, and he bends his tall frame down to my level. I think he wants me to speak. He has been watching me run and waiting for me to truly speak all the years he’s known me, it seems.
I am surprised I was given space. I took a deep breath, preparing myself for my moment.
“They’re racist.” I found the courage to say. I felt a euphoric rush as my racing thoughts settled, and a chill broke through the surface of my arms, raising the tiny hairs on end, as my spoken words hung precariously in the air.
Mr. Brown’s eyebrows peeled back. He stares at me straight in the face, and then looks down. He won’t look me in the eye. I don’t look into his. He doesn’t ask what happened, or try to find out more. He is silent, hesitant to talk about the issue. My gut drops when it registers: the pity. He feels sorry for me, the brown girl whom everyone ostracizes. I am the star of the team, and I evoke pity, not hope and inspiration like the athletes on the wall. His pity sticks to me, submerges me in a dimmer light.
I know this dark world of pity well.
“You’re different,” he told me once, as I was walking onto the bus for a track meet. I had been alone, separate from the group of giggling white girls, waiting outside. He did not elaborate, and I did not ask. My imagination contorted his comment to mean all sorts of things over time, but mostly, what stuck is that it is something about me.
Why does everyone feel sorry for me? Can’t they see I’m winning? I’m the star, the fastest one. In practice, my times are faster than Autumn Fogg’s — Autumn, who won the 1992 cross country state championship and later ran in the Olympic Trials.
I work fucking hard — last summer I ran seventy miles a week. Even if running is the only thing I can do in a day, I make sure to get it done. I am determined about that. I will get it done even if it takes me four hours to pull out of a depressive spell and get myself out the door. But my work ethic, my sole avenue for self-expression, seems to reinforce stereotypes and diminish me. What kids at school — even the nice ones — reflect back at me: I am an unquestioning and hard-working Indian, mindlessly complying with my immigrant parents’ expectations for excellence. A member of the model minority, the image of perfection without emotional interiority or needs. But the clothes don’t fit. I am aching with unseen need. If anyone could see my pain, I could be saved. But I am helplessly trapped behind a faceless image.
Can’t anyone see? No one wants me to run. Not my parents. Back in tenth grade, they would lock me in my room and yell at me to focus on studies, not sports. Not the girls on the team. They cried and threatened to quit if I was moved onto varsity when my times started getting good.
Yet I am here, still, senior year, running anyway. I’m on varsity now, the fastest one on my team in the 5K, by about a minute. I’m breaking all the rules, flouting what everyone expects and demands. And I’m a star at it.
No one witnesses my act of self-definition. To me, running is my art and my rebellion. It keeps me alive. But in the eyes of others, running is my unthinking obedience, and consequently my erasure. Kids see me run quietly around the school and laugh, “Why?” They roll their eyes. To them, I am another overachiever, lumped together with their image of other Indians at school. To them, I wasn’t athletic because I was athletic. I wasn’t successful at running because I had any intrinsic abilities or drive. Anything I achieved at all was attached to my brownness, and anything I achieved because I was brown did not “count” to earn respect. To them, I live an undeserved life handed to me: I am a robot who has been given everything, programmed for perfection. They think all I do is study all day, all I do is work. The reality is, all I do is cry. I lose hours paralyzed on my bed in fetal position, thoughts chaotically swirling, carving what seems like fissures through my brain. I cannot focus enough to study the way I want to, for what I want to accomplish, for me, but I grind through anyway, with inconsistent results. My brain is in handcuffs. I am whipsawed between eroding forces: a distorting filter that muffles my pain into invisible silence, and a constant weakening from within. I cannot find a better solution to the problem, other than to try harder. I am given no other space to express myself. But my effort to stay alive pigeonholes me more. It erases me.
Jane and Joan are fast, too, but they get to have visible personalities. They are given space to speak without being shut down or snubbed. They control who speaks in the group and are treated as track stars at school. In fact, everyone sees them as better than they are, in my humble opinion. Even Mr. Brown. He juxtaposes us relentlessly. Even though I have run faster, he goes on and on about their oh-so-natural talent during “the talks.” He says I am not talented, just “hard working,” and that I’ll never be able to run as fast as their potential, which they have only skimmed the surface of. He is preparing us for states. He wants me to hang back during workouts and let them pass me so they can build confidence, work on their stellar sprints. He says by the time the state meet comes around, they are going to be faster than me.
“Jane’s got talent. She can easily go under 5:00 minutes in the mile.” He told me during one of our private talks my sophomore year.
“I want to go under 5:00 minutes in the mile,” I responded, shifting the focus back onto me.
“You are never going to,” he said, “You don’t have that kind of talent.”
He went back to talking about Jane.
I remembered running across the field in kindergarten, back in California. Our whole class began in one straight horizontal line at the base of the field. Mrs. Krajesack was going to have us run across it, holding hands. When we began, I moved as slowly as possible to hang back with the class, but kept accidentally gaining ground with my natural stride length. Finally she said, “Go Hope, go! Run as fast as you can!”
And I did. I separated from the pack within seconds, my pigtails flying in the wind behind me, bangs brushing against my face as I cut through the air with my newfound speed. The thrill of ability coursed through me. The class faded behind as the end of the field got closer and closer. Another boy named Quinn began to chase me, but he couldn’t keep up.
And like that, every year since kindergarten, I had been the fastest kid in my grade. I was always made to be “it” during freeze tag at recess. My group of friends insisted that my being “it” was only fair, since I was irrefutably the fastest. I was fine with it, because it meant I got to run more. I’d challenge myself to tag everyone before they could unfreeze each other. One day I ended the game by freezing an entire group of boys. Everyone on the playground was stunned.
When I am able to get Mr. Brown’s voice out of my head, I know I am meant to run. Words cannot describe the feeling the setting sun gives me when I am out here, on the track, or on the roads. It feels like nostalgia, living a memory in the present. And it reminds me there is a future, or maybe a place, that is different from here and now, a point in my life when this timeless torture is distant and long gone.
If I can break 5:00 minutes in the mile, I can be one of the best athletes of all time at my school. I would go on the wall. I would be seen how I want to be seen — for my passions and accomplishments — and maybe I could even inspire. As life seems to slip through my fingers in every other way, I hold onto these imagined possibilities. In a way, I am both escaping my nightmare and running toward my dreams. I am somewhere in between, lost in the vivid orange veins of the sky, the scent of the cool night air slowly wafting in, the muffled, scuffled sound of my shoes hitting the pavement, powerful with every stride. I am fast and graceful. As I watch the bright burning sun dwindle behind the black shadow of trees in the distance, I know I’ll never forget this feeling as long as I live. And when I run, I know I want to live.
I love running because I can fly. Because my personal best is just that, mine. Because the pain of a blister is nothing compared to the pain that fills me when I stop. Because I like the resistance the wind gives me. And even more so, I like the resistance I give the wind.
Why do the white girls get to be talented and not me?
Mr. Brown calls a meeting after practice.
“Don’t be racist to Hope.” He lectures.
I do not feel vindicated. I feel embarrassed.
The team is shocked. He said the “r word.” The contrast in how it hits our ears divides us even further. The other girls have never heard it before, directed at them like that. It is clear they have never even thought about it. And I am holding it back at the tip of my tongue every moment I am around them, and I am around them every day. It is exhausting. Our worlds in this same high school are so different. His words began to fade as everyone’s eyes focused onto me until their icy glares were all I noticed.
In the locker room afterward, everyone on the team rushed to comfort Jane and Joan, relieving their tears at being called racist.
“He made us question ourselves!” Joan said. “He is abusive!”
All the girls on the team agreed. Mr. Brown was abusive.
No one asked me how I felt that day. I didn’t exist. My humanity had not registered in the eyes of the team.
I see and feel racism everywhere. I see it and feel it when I am standing next to my white teammates and people look at me as an afterthought, if they do at all. I see it and feel it when I am picked last in gym class even though I am one of the best runners in the state. I see it and feel it when boys ignore me at school. It trickles down from society into my immediate world. It looks like reality. It feels like reality. Somehow it is my reality, even at home.
It has been a tiny seed in my head, growing and gaining force, for as long as I can remember.
*********************
“Apply it this way,” my mother said to me when I was a young girl. We were standing side by side in front of the bathroom mirror. There was no room for negotiation. It was another step in my before school morning routine, another given, like brushing my teeth or waiting dutifully as my mother braided my hair.
I curiously eyed the pink and white tube of cream in her hand. “Fair and Lovely” was written along the sides. My mother explained it would make my skin lighter.
I squeezed some cream onto my palm. It was soft, airy and white, like whip cream, but with a pearly sheen. I applied it to my face in a circular motion, so it would absorb better.
My mother carefully monitored my application, making sure I was covering all sides and every corner, evenly, as she applied some herself. It left a translucent white cast on her already fair skin. Even through my own white cast, my darkness was visible. We stood next to each other, dark against fair. You wouldn’t even know we were related.
I began to use the cream daily, going to school with my white cast, and waited patiently for it to start working its magic. I endured its discomfort. I did not like how it felt heavy on my skin and made me sweat on my upper lip.
But it never worked. And I knew what that meant: No matter how many harsh chemical ingredients I applied to my face, or how many perfect, deep circles I rubbed with my hand, I would always be brown.
The morning I realize this, my mother sees my crestfallen expression in the mirror.
Even as a young girl I knew — somehow, from somewhere, even if it was from my own flagged hope — that light is “better” than dark. Dark is something to counteract and subdue.
“You have nice features,” my mother reassured me, “Nice eyes, the straightest nose on your dad’s side.”
I waited for her to say something about my skin color. I had only wanted her to tell me it was alright, at least acceptable. But she spoke around it, the way I would later recognize my classmates to speak around it after I moved to New Jersey.
“Nice lips, thick, black hair.” She continued, deaf to my hopes.
She was not asking me to change my eyes. She was not asking me to change my nose, or my lips or my hair.
She wanted me to change my skin.
I knew it, even though she didn’t say it.
*************
When I get home from school, my mother and dad are in the family room, watching Indian television. I am pacing around the house, ruminating. When I am not paralyzed by sadness, I am often briskly walking around the house with racing thoughts and restless energy that feels more like baseline agitation.
“Always sad. And sit down, you’re always pacing. Always making us feel uncomfortable.” My mother produces an oversized frown to mock the one on my face and hunches in an exaggerated manner to show me how unattractive I look. Her rendition of me sends a sting to my gut.
I see myself through her eyes, through other people’s eyes, and want nothing more than to release tension from the sting.
“Everyone is racist!” I cry, breaking through the barricade. I was not seeking comfort from anyone. My frustrations had reached a head. My truth simply burst out of me.
Suddenly, blistering pain smacked across my face, and I felt my brain slam against the side of my skull. My face burns hot, and a tear involuntarily trickles from the corner of my eye, a bit of cool relief. I realized my dad had slapped me.
“Don’t use bad words!” My father, who is now standing in front of me, screams. His scream echoes throughout the house. I can feel the sound waves ripple through my chest, sending my heart into a flurry. My brain says the “r word” isn’t a bad word. It is a bad thing. And I am always denouncing it. But when I see it and name it around me, everyone yells at me.
“It’s just true!” I scream back.
“Always negative.” My mother puts her hand on her forehead, annoyed at me for existing. They want me to stop speaking and turn off my emotions. If only I could just be the happy disciplined robot everyone expects me to be.
“Go clean your room! Go study! You have everything! Always whining.” He raises his hand to slap me again, put me back in my place. I wince and hunch my shoulders in reflex, cowering, like a scared pet.
I think of what Mr. Wasserman said in class, in front of everyone when he caught me sleeping in class, “Doesn’t your family live in that nice new development?” He sneered, “I grew up with a single mother.”The image of me he put in other people’s heads: I am a whiny, spoiled brat. I deserve mistreatment. I deserve the shame directed at me. The image that reigns. I can fill in the gaps of what everyone thinks: My poor parents. Having to raise me.
I have no words. I cannot say anything. Everything I do, say, and think implicates me. I hold my temples and let out a scream. The house shakes. No — I am shaking.
“Pagal!” His high pitched voice rings in my ears as he reaches out to slap me again. Even my own father sees me as a lesser “other.” Pagal is a pejorative term for a “mentally ill” person in Hindi.
“Get off of me!” I scream back. My words shock me. I have gone mad. I am crying and do not feel in control. His round protruding stomach juts out at me and becomes the focus of my anger and hatred. I push at it, away from me. He loses balance and takes a couple steps back to readjust.
“Pushing the parents!” He grabs me with one hand. His other hand is above me, clenched in a fist. “You are abusive! When I am old and in a diaper, you will beat me with a stick! That’s the kind of child you are. So ungrateful.”
I still am crying and still do not feel in control. Deep down inside, a sane part of me feels ashamed of my actions. But I couldn’t shake the thought of him, weak and emaciated, in a nursing home, powerless as I feel. I imagine a distant day in the future when I wouldn’t have to deal with this… him, or the powerlessness.
The contents of my mind scare me. It’s true, I must be abusive. What kind of child wants her parents out of her life? Maybe I am evil. What happened to me? I remember I was nice once. Maybe even good. People used to like me. At my ice skating birthday party in fourth grade, Michelle V. did not know how to skate. Without thinking, I took her hand and modeled the movements with the skates. We slowly skated together, practicing round after round. By the end of the party, she had learned to glide on the ice. I was so happy for her. Her mother wrote me a thank you card for spending my own birthday party teaching her daughter how to skate while everyone else played on the ice. I didn’t even think about my sacrifice. I was just that way. I wanted everyone to be included, and I was always glad to help. Adults counted on me. Now I am not the one who determines who is included. I spend my energy hiding. I must have been a nice, responsible kid. Everyone has forgotten.
What have I done to deserve to be stuck in this pain, while everyone else moves so effortlessly around me? I know everyone has problems, but I do not recognize pain in their faces that slows them down, halts their words, confuses them. I think of my own debilitating version: pain that leaks out and speaks even when I am not opening my mouth. Pain that backs me into a corner in my own mind. Pain that grips my temples and doesn’t let go. Pain that clouds my head and makes me forget how to tie my shoes and brush my teeth.
It’s the pain causing this mess and making everything so difficult, and nobody sees it.
Nobody here knows I used to be one moving effortlessly. I won the sixth grade science fair. I split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen using electrolysis. I don’t even want to think about how I’m doing in chemistry right now. In California, I placed in the speech contest. Now I cannot even speak to others without stuttering and hesitating and looking at the ground. I used to be respected as the fastest miler. Now I am either invisible or despised. Whenever I experienced success in California, my classmates cheered me on. I was supported. My dark skin color was not an aberration or a label at school. I remember before I moved how all my teachers told me at recess one day I was a candidate for valedictorian. They wanted me to know I was “a star.” I had never heard myself described in that light before. But I liked it. My memory of those warm smiles surrounding me keeps me rooted in this rootless existence.
In this New Jersey town, people misread the pain on my body and ignore the human. Back when I tried to be friends with Jane and Joan, they would give me “tips” for my problems. Without even letting me speak, they told me I saw myself as inferior, so I am inferior, simple as that. Somehow it’s my problem. Maybe it is. To them, to the world, confidence is worth, a currency of the social world, and it is a matter of choice: you can choose to be confident or not. I am the one who has made the wrong decision, that is why I’m broke and broken. They do not contextualize my pain, probe where it comes from, not like they would for another white person.
“What’s wrong?” I recalled Mr. Brown asked Jane at practice once.
He later told me in confidence, “I think she may be depressed. She’s not smiling her pretty smile anymore. We need to figure out how to get her on track.”
Like that, her sadness has a cause outside of her. It is separate from her — not her fault, not a part of her. And the world wants to help her.
What I would give for someone to ask me what is wrong. Everyone tries to tell me the root of my problems: it’s not the girls on the team, it’s not my parents. They appear to be functioning in society just fine, so they have it together and I don’t. I know how it looks: like they are right and I am wrong. That I am the mistaken, flawed one. Nice people try to be helpful and say I just need to take responsibility and fix my self-esteem.
It doesn’t feel like a choice to me. I do not have energy to make choices. I am just getting by.
Where did my lost self go?
I want to bring her back, feel strong again, full of life and possibilities.
All I can do is run, as hard and fast as I can. And I do. I run with my heart.
********************************************************************
I know I want to get to the bottom of the pain that dwells deep in my throat, a pain that exists in the background of every memory I’ve had since I was thirteen. When I come close to describing my pain, I feel like I am as close as possible to authentic expression, my true self, free from impositions on my consciousness. But in my mind, as I come closer to reaching this “voice,” or telling the story that feels right and real to me, I can hear the people in my life talking over me, telling me I am mistaken.
I close my eyes and memories of different oppressive situations shuffle through my mind, intrusive voices buzzing like static, telling me to not care, that it’s not real, that’s it’s all in my head. I cannot even peer into my own reality without these voices yanking me away, telling me to not look, to not see, to not feel as I naturally do. Where do these voices come from?
I cannot pinpoint what it is about me that makes people dismiss me, and part of that has to do with how I can’t pinpoint “me” half the time without their perspectives invading my own. Is it because I am too sensitive or too brown? Is it even something about me at all?
I want to authentically express my pain, to give it form and ablate it from my body as though it were a benign tumor. Instead, as I poke and prod myself searching for its root, I find diffuse, animalistic anger that has metastasized throughout my core. It is integrated into me. I cannot remove it without also removing the internal organs that keep me alive: it is an anger that drains me and sustains me: a weary expression of my “self” asserting itself against abuse, oppression and discrimination.
I take in my reflection in the mirror. I search for my own story from my own perspective. I see my anger in the image of my eyes and then I feel my anger inside. I am a walking wound, the evidence of violation itself. My truth is etched into my nerves.
The wound I see evokes my lost self, torn and tattered but still alive. She is trapped in skin that on the outside renders her invisible to others and on the inside reflects warped images back, rendering her invisible even to herself. She is yearning to see and be seen in her authentic form, as the star in her dreams, the star who lives inside of her as a memory of life before all this mess. The star who still feels, after all these years, her singular existence in the cool rush pressing her body as she runs against the wind. It is she who fights to express and be heard. And perhaps the person who needs to see her and hear her is me.
Just then I know it deep down inside, like I always know in the last stretch of a race, my truth: I am still going, still strong. I am. Resilient.
