III.

There are many hard places on my body

Mostly the skin of my hands and my feet

And one spot on my face, up in the corner by my hairline where there used to be a scar.

In between are many soft places,

Places I sometimes caress

But usually hide.

A man yells at me. From the passenger seat of a car coming around a corner, one block from my house. A red sedan, beat-up. Piles of junk in the backseat. I do not hear what he said. I slide my rollerblades along the broken concrete, head down. No eye contact. My older brother is ahead of me out of earshot and the little one is somewhere behind us. I hope he doesn’t hear. The car rounds the corner. Another yell, longer this time. I look up and see him: Lighter skinned Latinx. Male. A snarl. I put my head back down, neck tight. Eyes on the ground, erase yourself into the ground. One last yell. I still can’t hear him. A plastic bag flies out the window and hits the ground three feet from me, clanking, scraping. Metal. Tires screech. My eyes focus and I see my rollerblades.

I think, I knew I shouldn’t have gone out in these

I think, my body White, he saw my body White, my body an invasive species

I think, but I’m wearing black sweats, a hoodie, hoops, a messy bun, a mask, a performance

I think, it never did belong to me.

Then I remember the soft places no fabric can conceal. I remember age twelve the snarls the smiles the squeals the stares, age fourteen looking over shoulders to see a him standing there, age fifteen beauty to violence the flip of a coin, age sixteen the knowing that nothing ever really happened to me, after all the bag didn’t touch me, after all the words went unheard, after all: guilt.

When I asked my father about his childhood, he sat silent for a while then said: I’d rather not rehearse trauma.

It was only afterward that I remembered the hate crimes towards Asian-Americans this year. 

It was only afterward that I remembered the stories of erased Asian women, the ones with bodies crusted hard from the inside out. 

It was only afterward that I remembered the other incident from a week before, when an old white man with blurry eyes looked at me and said: Korean girl. Not even from here. 

I erased this memory. Because I was certain he saw some other girl’s body when he looked at me. I was certain I made up the phrase, heard wrong, projected indecency onto a man with a cart of dirt-plastered blankets, a man who I pitied, a man I should not have pitied, a man I am at once above and below depending on what hierarchy I choose to analyze, a man who looked at me and said: Korean girl, not even from here.

We go home. My mother is there. I explain what happened in simple sentences, keeping my voice level. My little brother says he would beat up the man and the older one looks troubled. They both know who the enemy is. My mother says, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. Who is she apologizing for? I slip away, up the stairs, eyes fixed on the wood. I pause. My fist smashes into a shoe that hangs on the wall. I go to the bathroom, shut and lock the door. I stare at my face hoping that this time I will find something telling in this grey pool, this murk of a body. I stare and stare and try to uncover what part of this being—the woman, the White, the Asian, the both, the neither, the everything, the nothing—was to blame for that bag of metal. What place: Soft or Hard?

If I had heard what he said, would the knowing make any difference? 

There is a space between this ground and me. A hazy space.

Sometimes, when my feet connect with this ground, I understand that my soul resides there—here—in this ground, this concrete ground.

But today I am floating— 

I push my heel down but it will not connect 

I take off my shoes and lower my toes but I feel nothing

I know my soul is planted in this concrete

There: by the abandoned Health at Home center, with its plywood windows and rotting fruit trees 

There my soul sleeps, 

binding my body to this place.

I wish someone would wake her up.