fourteen years old

on a westward-bound plane

i become an american.

not really,

i was always

american and mexican and

mexican-american and

just another

foreigner, especially

to those who’d say:

watch the way those people talk,

why is that daughter’s skin dark

when her mother’s is white

let’s charge them 200 yuan

instead of 50

but my mother is good at bartering

na tai gui la

we don’t need the extra 150 yuan

like they must

in the lift they ask where

i come from and i

respond, to their astonishment

in poorly-toned mandarin

with a place i barely know

but to them have more in common with

than my real home, right past

the bustling road

in the gated culdesac of

high-rise apartments reserved for

wealthy chinese diplomats

and expats, like us

english at home, english at

school, except for an hour

mandarin in the metro station

spanish when grandma calls

que inteligente son mis chinitos

american when my british friends

call it football

i stop calling it soccer, too

four years old, i hold my nose in the fish market,

savour the salmon my ayi brings home

in the basket of her little black moped

street stinky tofu stains my nostrils

sweet tanghulu strips them clean

let’s get family market baozi for the freezer

the ones with red inside, not green

if the video pirates are outside the store

can we watch something new tonight?

taxi cabs go

requested, but unhailed

because we look like we

probably don’t speak

mandarin. sometimes we catch one

only for it to be sent away by my

father, it has no seatbelts, laura

the roads are dangerous here, you know

but i was upset

because it was one of those cabs

with a TV in the back

the plane lands firmly

you’re home, you must feel so at home

i roll my suitcase

into a home with

fifty fewer stories

welcome back to the land of

grocery aisles miles long,

not kilometers

you love doritos, don’t you?

welcome back to

drive-thrus and

trash trucks,

youtube and

tap water

no more water bottles

to brush our teeth

this is your home.

everyone asks

what it was like to grow up

in china

but no one has

asked what it was like

to grow up in

a bubble of

america that is not america,

in some ways

not even close