Famous Adopted People

by Alice Stephens

  Yolanda touched me sympathetically on the elbow and tipped me a slow, satisfied wink. The wink, I realized, was the only way that her face could communicate subtle emotions. I looked back at the woman reclining on the couch like Cleopatra in her litter. She sensed my glance and blew me a coquettish kiss. I turned away just in time to stumble over the tiger’s head.

  Yolanda deposited me back at my room, the door sealing shut with a soft sucking sound as my thoughts clamored and squirmed over each other, trying to comprehend my present reality. In just one week, I had broken up with my best friend, had become a fugitive from Japanese justice, and now found myself who knows where, the captive of a lunatic who claimed she had given birth to me.

  But that nose. I rushed into the bathroom and turned my head as far as I could while looking at it out of the corner of my eyes. It was the exact same nose. What were the odds? I had occasionally encountered people, always Caucasian, with noses similar to mine, though the noses in question either had the bump or else the hook, never both together.

  I shook my head in refusal. The world cannot change in a moment. I had always and forever known that my mother was Korean. It was an entrenched part of my history, the story I had created of my origins: my mother was a poverty-stricken, helpless Korean girl, perhaps an alcoholic or a drug addict, or perhaps she saved up all her illicitly earned pennies to support a blind father and a crippled mother and her five younger siblings. Maybe a prostitute, maybe a bar girl, maybe a hapless local, she was impregnated by a Caucasian American, one of the tens of thousands of American troop members stationed in the country, who used her up and threw her away. She was black haired and slant eyed, with the flat face and strong bone structure of a Korean. She ate rice with metal chopsticks, slept on a thin mattress on the floor, and honored her ancestors. She was not ever a beautiful blond woman in a peignoir named Honey who lived in a hidden lair that was decorated like a soap opera set.

  Fingering my yin-yang pendant, I stared at myself in the mirror. With the heavy mask of makeup, I did not look like anyone I knew. Who was I? Was I, all along, someone else?

  I was used to being the only one of my kind in a room, the raisin in the oatmeal, as one tipsy dinner guest of my parents once put it. Even though there were a number of other Asians at my school—FOB ESL kids, first-generation overachievers, and a sprinkling of diplomat brats—I hung around with the white kids who were on the fringes: slackers, dirtbags, hippies, skater punks, emo kids, and all-around oddballs. I was the only Asian, and the only minority, among them. It didn’t feel weird to me, because all my life I had been the only person of color in a sea of white, whether at family reunions, on a summer home-stay program in Spain, or at a raging kegger down the street from my house.

  In a psych class during my senior year, I learned about the Kübler-Ross model, otherwise known as the five stages of grief. At the time I took it literally, useful only for the terminally ill and victims of tragedy; but if I’d had the acumen to apply it to my own situation as a transracial adoptee, I would have recognized that at age seventeen, I was three steps into the process.

  For the first decade or so of my life, I was swaddled in denial. Though I looked different on the outside, I blithely presumed that everyone—my family, neighbors, and classmates—knew I was just the same as they were on the inside, so I tuned out the lady in line at the grocery store who asked my mom where she got me from, the business associate of Scott’s who got all weepy-eyed over how my mom had rescued me, the young mother at the playground who squealed how she wanted one just like me. I ignored the strangers who oozed their unctuous blessings all over me, telling me how fortunate I was and how grateful I should be; blocked out the compliments on how well I spoke English; earnestly answered the snickering inquiries from my classmates about what I ate for dinner at home and how come I didn’t eat my lunch with chopsticks. I thought that when Kirk Hobson pulled his eyes at me on the playground, it was no different from him making fun of the fat kid, the bucktoothed kid, and the ginger. But then Tommy Feinstein took to yelling “Ching chong!” whenever he saw me, Wayne Goddard liked to follow me around chanting about dirty knees, and Jane Hahn, who I thought was my friend, asked me where my real parents came from. And it wasn’t just white people. When I visited my father in Gaborone, kids would make karate kick moves at me, screeching “Hai-yaaa!” and growling like cats in heat. Eventually, I could no longer ignore that my race was the first, and sometimes only, thing people saw about me, and that it was not I who was in control of my identity, but they.

  During my tweens, I moved on to the anger stage. Why should the shape of my eyes make Kirk, Tommy, and Wayne think they were better than I? I was obviously smarter than they were, and yet they got to make fun of me? But any insult I lobbed back at them was answered with a slur, which immediately won the argument according to the playground crowd. As I entered my teen years, boys began to tell me I was ugly because of my squinty eyes. They were only slightly worse than the boys who flirted by trying to guess which strain of Asian I was or waxed ecstatic about how hot Asian girls were. The eye shadow and mascara that the other girls applied looked frightful on me, drawing attention toward the narrowness of my eyes and their epicanthic fold. I began to parry the dreaded “Where are you from?” with “America,” but that just delayed the inevitable, for the inquisitor would not be denied an explanation: “No, I mean where are you from originally?” And then I’d have to admit that I wasn’t really an American like they were, I was “from” Korea. Sometimes they’d ask how I came to America, and I’d have to confess to being adopted. I hated having to tell complete strangers the intimate details of my life as if I were some one-person exhibit in a freak show. I started to deliberately rebel against the stereotypes. Because I was supposed to be good at math, I failed geometry. Instead of being docile and obedient, I was troublesome and disruptive. Where I should have been straitlaced and demure, I was sloppy drunk and in-your-face outrageous. Though I was an indiscriminate consumer of illicit substances, it was alcohol that brought out the best (as I saw it then) in me, because nothing says “I don’t give a fuck” like puking into a storm drain in broad daylight on a school day.

  My final years of high school, I seized on all things Asian, grabbing indiscriminately, turning my ethnicity into a parody of an identity. I bedecked myself with jade rings, Buddhist prayer bracelets, good luck Chinese coin earrings, dragon-embroidered Mary Jane slippers, padded silk jackets, bright satin brocade cheongsam blouses, and a Mao cap emblazoned with a red star. I dyed my auburn hair black, sharpened the angles of my pageboy cut, used eyeliner to emphasize the slittiness of my eyes, and whitened my face with rice powder. When I found out that Vincent Chin, a Chinese immigrant whose murder by two white men galvanized the birth of the Asian American civil rights movement, was adopted, I built a small shrine to him in my bedroom before which I burned incense every day (which also helped to cover up the pot smoke). I dropped Spanish for beginning Chinese, briefly joined the Manga Club but couldn’t give two fucks about Naruto and Dragon Ball, and then tried the Asian Student Union but felt embarrassed and out of place among the “real” Asians. I scoured libraries and bookstores for Asian literature, reading Yasunari Kawabata, Yukio Mishima, Lu Xun, Mao Dun, Amy Tan, and Maxine Hong Kingston. I rented videos of films by Kurosawa, Ozu, and Zhang Yimou. I didn’t consciously avoid Korean culture; it was just that Chinese and Japanese cultures were much more prominent and accessible, and anyway, it wasn’t about exploring my roots but about exploiting them, an inside joke, a sarcastic sneer. Call it my bargaining stage.

  Yolanda’s heels detonated loudly on the marble tiles, crack, crack, crack, like rifle shots, as she led me through the twisting corridor, feebly lit by widely spaced lamps that looked like phosphorescent toadstools, with long stretches of dark between the pale puddlings of light. We stopped in front of a door, which Yolanda opened by affixing an eye to a small glowing panel, similar to the device that controlled the door to my room. The room we entered was domi
nated by an extremely long table of glossy dark wood, one end laid with four formal place settings, a whole arsenal of silver cutlery flanking gilt-rimmed plates. A short but well-built man with gossamer hair spiderwebbed carefully over his skull sprang up to greet us, the same man who had taken my vitals shortly after I regained consciousness. Rubbing his hands together to make a noise like crinkling paper, he exclaimed, “Lisa! You look the very picture of health!”

  “Who are you?” I demanded to know.

  “Ah, yes, forgive me. I never properly introduced myself.” He took my hand, bending over it so that I could see the careful arrangement of his comb-over. “Dr. Vladimir Panzov, at your service.”

  “Panzov?” I echoed with an incredulous laugh, reclaiming my hand. “Can that really be your name?”

  “As really as Lisa Pearl can be yours,” he said, his thin upper lip curled against salmon-colored gums in a not so convincing approximation of a smile.

  Yolanda icily indicated I should take the seat next to hers. In my room, we had argued again about the necklace. She had seemed almost desperate to get it off me, and I thought tears would leak from her crooked eyes when I refused.

  A three-tiered crystal chandelier caught the sunlight streaming through windows that, like the one in my bedroom, were set high in the wall, revealing only a narrow strip of sky. Two doors—the one we had entered through and a swinging door inset with a diamond pane—were separated by a six-legged mahogany sideboard tastefully arranged with silver candlesticks, gleaming showpiece china objects, and tulips bowing from crystal vases.

  “So, Lisa,” Dr. Panzov said jovially. “How are you feeling? Hmm?”

  “I feel like I need to get out of here,” I answered, before gulping down some water so violently that I almost choked on an ice cube.

  “You do?” His blond brows came down in concern, his small eyes disappearing into blue dots.

  “I need to contact the closest US consulate. I know my rights! Your lunatic boss can’t just keep me captive against my will.”

  His ingratiating smile contracted into a shocked pucker and then spread out again in a smile, this time nakedly malicious.

  Yolanda hissed, “Don’t you dare hurt Madam’s feelings or you’ll have hell to pay from the rest of us.”

  “The rest of who?” I wondered as Yolanda jumped to her feet, grabbing me by the arm and pulling me up as well, a split second before Honey swept in wearing a grass-green linen pantsuit and a pomegranate silk chemise, hair spilling down her shoulders in a golden cascade.

  “Ah, here we are!” she trilled happily.

  Dr. Panzov deftly pulled out an intricately carved, throne-like chair from the head of the table, and she floated down onto its thickly padded leather seat with a satisfied sigh. She nodded, and Yolanda primly seated herself. After pushing Honey snug to the table, Dr. Panzov followed suit.

  “Lisa?” Honey looked at me, her hands suspended in midair in the act of shaking out her napkin.

  “I’m not sitting until I get some answers,” I declared, leaning on the table with my knuckles. “I want to know why I am here. Where here even is! Who are you? What do you want from me?”

  “Lisa, dear,” she cooed, “sit down. Let’s be civilized about this. There is plenty of time to talk. Cookie has made a wonderful lunch.” Her lips, just the same fruity shade as her chemise, curved into a disarming smile. “We’ll talk about it if you’ll just sit down. Please, baby.”

  I clung to my defiance for a few seconds more and then crashed angrily down into my seat, whereupon she gave a careless shake to a little silver bell. Immediately, Ting swung through the door with the diamond-shaped pane. So now I knew that she wasn’t deaf, which meant that she probably wasn’t mute either. She removed the gilt-edged plate that was at each setting, replacing it with a delicate double-handled bowl brimming with pale green soup. “Cream of asparagus,” Honey announced to appreciative murmurs. The other two waited with hands in laps until Honey had taken a first taste before they picked up their soupspoons.

  “Mmm,” Yolanda purred, licking her lips. “Cookie has really outdone himself today.”

  Dr. Panzov grunted in agreement, quickly ladling the contents of his bowl into his mouth.

  It was good, and I found myself bending my head to my bowl instead of glaring defiantly at the others, as I wanted to be doing.

  “So, Lisa,” Honey said after a few moments of soft sipping. “You want answers.”

  Quickly swallowing a rich dollop of soup, I eagerly gurgled, “Yes. Yes, I do.”

  “Who am I?” She brought her napkin up to dab at the corners of her mouth. “My friends call me Honey. I would like you to as well, because, well, ‘Mom’ would just be awkward for the time being.” A grimace that was halfway between a smile and a frown trembled on her lips. “About twenty-eight years ago, I gave birth to a baby girl. But it was a difficult time for me. I was a stranger in a strange land, without a friend, all alone. There was a man who fell in love with me and said he’d take care of me, but he made me understand that the baby—who was not his—could not be included in his offer. I had no choice. Much as it grieved me to give the baby up, if I wanted to be with the man I loved, a great and honorable man whose favor I treasure above all else, I had to give her up.”

  “What about the father?” I asked.

  “What father?” she asked, soup glimmering in the spoon she had just dipped into her bowl.

  “The baby’s father. My father.”

  “Oh!” She shook her head dismissively. “Some university student with toothpaste under his eyes to combat the tear gas, no doubt. No one important. No use thinking about him.”

  Maybe because he had nothing better to do now that he had finished his soup, Dr. Panzov chortled. But it died a quick death in his throat when Honey dealt him a sharp look.

  “Did you give the baby a name?” I was surprised to hear that my voice was shaking.

  “Vladimir, do be a dear and pour us some wine,” Honey murmured. Barely had the words escaped her before Dr. Panzov was on his feet. “No, Lisa, I did not.” She gave a rueful shrug of her shoulders. “I knew it would only make our parting much more difficult. But I have always liked the name Felicia.”

  “Oh, Felicia,” Yolanda agreed softly.

  “Thank god I didn’t have to go through life with the name Felicia.” I rolled my eyes as Dr. Panzov came back to the table cradling a decanter of wine.

  Honey froze for a moment, as did Dr. Panzov, who was about to pour her some wine. Then she threw back her head and laughed with breathy gasps. “It will be so refreshing to have a little American wit around here. The others can be such toadies.” She shook her gold bangles at Yolanda and Dr. Panzov, who grinned ingratiatingly at her. “I think I’m going to like being your mother. Your spunkiness reminds me of a younger me.”

  “I already have a mother!” I protested, dashing my spoon down into my empty bowl. “One who I am sure is very worried about me.”

  “Ha!” Honey softly breathed into her wineglass. “That is one thing that cannot be undone. They can change your name, but they can’t change who gave birth to you!”

  Making a split-second, and rather surprising, decision to hang on as hard as I could to my sobriety, I put my hand over my glass when Dr. Panzov approached. Drinking was what got me into this mess, and I made a hasty vow to myself that I wouldn’t drink until I was out of it. Dr. Panzov almost couldn’t believe it and bumped my fingers with the decanter, before he gave me a have-it-your-way shrug, poured his own glass up to the brim, and, after a quick glance at Honey, took a long, deep swallow. Honey snapped, “Oh, for god’s sake, Vladimir, get drunk off the cheap stuff, not my cellar wines.”

  “Why were you in Korea?” I asked.

  Tinkling the silver bell again, she said, “I was like a shipwreck victim, washed up on its shores.”

  In a slow choreography of china, Ting replaced the soup bowls with scallop-edged salad plates arranged with tender green Bibb lettuce and cherry tomatoes
sprinkled with chives and pine nuts.

  “So we’re still in Korea?” I demanded.

  “Mmm.” She nibbled a tomato that was dripping seeds from the gash made by the tines of her fork.

  “Yes or no?”

  Her eyelids parted, and she stared at me. The color of her eyes was mesmerizing, a dark blue that rippled and changed with the light and the angle, like an opal. “Yes, we are in Korea.”

  “Where?”

  “About seventy-five miles away from Pyongyang.”

  “Pyongyang.” I crinkled my brow. “So just this side of the DMZ?”

  “Eat your salad, Lisa. Look, Dr. Panzov has already finished his.”

  Dr. Panzov lifted his wineglass, clouded with greasy fingerprints, to me.

  Loading salad onto my fork, I persisted. “So, like, we’re near Incheon, near the airport?”

  “Wrong direction,” Yolanda chimed in, an eye scrunching closed in a slow-moving, exaggerated wink to let me in on the joke.

  Macerated lettuce fell from my mouth.

  Honey batted her eyes at me innocently. “Do you see now what trouble I had to go through to bring you here?”

  I looked from Honey to Dr. Panzov, baring the frill of his white teeth at me in what he must have thought was a smile, to Yolanda, who was winking gaily.

  “No,” I whispered, the fork clattering from my fingers. “No! That’s crazy!”

  Obviously, she was just teasing me, getting me back for my insubordination, for my less than joyful reaction to the revelation that she was my mother.

  Honey reached over to pat my hand reassuringly. “There, there, dear. Once the shock wears off, you will quickly get used to life here. Soon enough, you’ll come to cherish the privileged way we live.”

  My stomach felt like it had just swallowed my blood-glutted heart. “I… I feel sick.”

  “Here, Lisa, drink a little wine, it will make you feel better.” Dr. Panzov leaned over with the carafe. “Come, come, doctor’s orders.”