HELM [Volume 17]

Harker Eclectic Literary Magazine // Current theme: SPACE [Volume 17]

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Don’t let your art be an urchin. Give it a home: the pages of HELM.

Call for submissions for our Spring ‘16 print edition of HELM!

Theme: Space

Due date: February 15

Email all submissions to [email protected]. Check out our submission guidelines here for further information.

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I built a tower for you today—well, it looked more like a ziggurat anyway—but I stood at the top and my shoulder hit the moon I built a tower for you today and it was made of sun-baked bricks and steel rods and I held it together with my hands and put Elmer’s glue in the cracks I poured cement into half-squares and waited until it dried while I washed the dishes and walked the dog I found in my neighbor’s yard with his big hungry eyes and took home and named Clive, after your dead husband I peeled some oranges and rubbed the peels on the sides of the tower so that you could smell potpourri but the fresh kind with lilies of the valley in the corners I painted you a mural on one side—I pulled away the corners of a Starry Night so you could have the whole galaxy—but I forgot some stars so I poured turpentine on it hope you don’t mind I built you a marble staircase—the kind that hold silk trains and catch-in-throat breaths—I couldn’t find velvet for the rug so I used burlap it came by the yards cheap I found a portrait of your mother your father painted before he left and never painted again and I hung that on the side for you and I built you a frame for it too with handprints and pine and popsicle sticks I hung a chandelier for you—you always liked candles, you said—it has diamonds and charcoal and burns like incense and overcooked pasta this is what you wanted, you said I built a tower for you today and it’s in my backyard and bulges over the fence and fills my curtains with its unsightly gold gates but you deserve a palace so I thought we could climb it together and be careful your feet don’t slip on the mud porch

Title: Clay and Marble Writer: Lisa Liu (Contest winner)

HELM Issue 17.1: Duality

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Title: Bay bridge sunrise Artist: Andrew Skrobak (Contest winner)

HELM Issue 17.1: Duality

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nothing within (you have soft flesh and a heart thrumming to all the right frequencies, but you are not alive. ) once i watched you conceptualize reality into free-body diagrams, simple and elegant as the inked hardwiring in your circuit board soul. your cadence is too smooth, distant like a phone operator's - and i don’t know why, but i imagine crystallized honey and disquiet on your tongue when you speak. eyes wet, i search in vain for foibles in the margins of your calculations, for minor anomalies slanting through curlicues of your mechanical serif print and i’m unsurprised to find nothing. these days your joints are wound up too rigidly beneath your automaton cocoon; maybe the zircon clock will chime at midnight and the iron exoskeleton will corrode and rust, finally exposing the human inside, vulnerable under a velvet sea of icy stars.

Title: kumquats Writer: Jacqueline He, Featured Contributor

HELM Issue 17.1: Duality

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Title: Between two worlds Artist: May Gao, featured contributor

HELM Issue 17.1: Duality

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Logic

Writer: Tiffany Zhu, featured contributor

He was useless, the intern who worked on the same floor as me. His name was David. He was from the University of California, Berkeley. His supervisor, my coworker, gave him a program to debug. He sat and squinted at it through black titanium-framed rectangular glasses for an hour without typing a word. Fifteen minutes after that, my coworker, his supervisor, handed the program to me. I debugged it in twenty minutes. When I turned around to report back to her, he was just relating his projected solution to her.

HELM Issue 17.1: Duality

He was useless, the intern who worked on the same floor as me. His name was David. He was from the University of California, Berkeley. His supervisor, my coworker, gave him a program to debug. He sat and squinted at it through black titanium-framed rectangular glasses for an hour without typing a word. Fifteen minutes after that, my coworker, his supervisor, handed the program to me. I debugged it in twenty minutes. When I turned around to report back to her, he was just relating his projected solution to her.

           “David,” I interrupted him. Both he and my coworker turned to me in surprise. I smiled. “You’re overcomplicating the matter far more than you should. If you simply modify the outermost structure, you could fix six out of seven of the bugs in the code with five or six lines. Alisa,” I said to my coworker, “here’s how I fixed it. David, you probably want to come around and take a look.”

           After a few minutes of silence, I looked at both of them in turn and smiled. “So you see. As for the last bug, all you need is a change in that block there and it’s resolved. Simple.”

           “That’s an unusual solution,” David said. “But does it work?”

           I ran the program. It worked.

           “It’s pure logic,” I smiled. “Anyone can solve the problem if they think about it hard enough.”

           “Yes, and Lavinia’s the most logical person you’re going to meet around here,” my coworker told David. “Trust me. She’s the best programmer on our team.”

           Though she added nothing to that sentence, I could extrapolate the rest of her thought from the tone of her voice, the inclination of her head, and my knowledge of myself. I was logical. I did not believe in sugarcoating criticism. If someone was a slacker, I was going to rebuke him. If someone wrote poor code, I was going to tear it apart. Some interpreted it as rudeness or hurtfulness, but I saw it as an ineffable trait of mine that had, many times, rescued projects from failure. I accepted no excuse. I tolerated no fault. “And the harshest,” I knew my coworker was going to say. I preferred instead to think of myself as the most diligent and equitable, but what did her opinion matter when the outcomes of my actions spoke for themselves?

           David was useless at programming. He was also useless at minimizing napkins used when eating a popsicle. He bunched up two or three at the base, carried another in his hand, and ate the popsicle from the top, letting it melt on the side. Not only did it drench the napkins, it threatened to drip onto the worn, heavily marked copy of Frankenstein over which he pored while he ate. I cupped a bowl with a perfectly round, half-eaten scoop of vanilla ice cream in the center. “If you tore a napkin in half and used it to hold the popsicle, used the other half to wipe your mouth, ate off the top before licking off the sides, and put away your book, you could save a few more trees,” I remarked. He discarded the two or three he was holding and replaced them with two or three more.

           When I returned to my desk, I still had one scoop of ice cream left. I put the bowl on the table and prepared to get back to work when I suddenly realized that for the past minute, a series of um’s had been directed at the back of my head. David, it seemed, was also useless at getting people’s attention. “Yes, David!” I spun back in my chair.

           His downcast look betrayed dismay and upset.

           “Um,” he said again. Then he straightened up, as if he weren’t already as stiff as a mannequin. “You’re Lavinia, right?”

           “Lavinia Lai,” I confirmed.

           “Um,” he said with eyes downcast. “I don’t want to seem disruptive or anything. I am just curious about some things. So I just want to, um, ask you a few questions. Is now a good time?”

           “Now’s not the best time, objectively speaking, but it’s the best time you can get a hold of me any workday,” I informed him.

           “Oh. Um, well…” I smiled up at him, waiting for his response. He shifted his feet agitatedly, rubbed his forehead a little, and then crossed his arms. “Do you read or watch science fiction?”

           “Science fiction’s rubbish. I call it entertainment for people who think they’re geeks.”

           “How about…speculative fiction in general? Philosophy?”

           “There is a reason that I am a programmer at the epicenter of the high-tech revolution, not a philosopher at a university.”

           “What reason?”

           “Oh, he’s good!” I exclaimed. Instead of succumbing to disgust, anger, shame, upset, or dismay, he was responding to the nuances in my speech. I was impressed. “Namely that my brain can’t handle nebulous entities. It’s not that I don’t like abstractions. Computer science and mathematics are actually much more abstract than we think. I simply cannot tolerate nebulous words and ideas that manifest rarely, if at all, in the real world. And I find descriptions, of which most novels consist, useless.”

           “So what—In that case—Why—” David started to phrase a question several times but failed. He sat down in the chair beside me and thought. “Okay, so I assume you haven’t read any books or watched any movies where, like…so not emulation. Unless it’s…”

           “Oh, David! Are you a psychologist?” I exclaimed mockingly. “Trying to tease out the truth about me?”

           He crossed his legs, leaned forward, and raised a finger. “All right, here’s my question! Imagine, Ms. Lai—if a race of angry, armed, militant robots with no tolerance whatsoever for negotiation kidnapped you and threatened to suppress your emotions, destroy your human instincts, and basically make you a robot like themselves—would you resist?”

           I suppressed a laugh. About a month ago, Larisa from Human Resources asked me the same question, albeit more concisely worded, with slit eyes and hands on her hips. “I’ve been asked this question before, so don’t think you’re the first one to try to see through my mind. Would you like me to repeat what I said to the person who asked me?”

           “Sure?” David regarded me hostilely.

           “You should be able to deduce the answer without asking me.”

           David narrowed his eyes at me. “That answer is no, right?”

           “My answer is no, and this is why. One, they’re angry armed militant robots with no tolerance whatsoever for negotiation. No matter how I argue with them, they’re going to do it anyway. Why would I expend energy putting up a show of resistance if it has no effect? Two—” the answer that everyone wanted to hear— “not only am I no different when I have become the robot, but I even get an indestructible metal casing. See, the last person who asked me this question said they were indestructible metal robots. I assume you just forgot to mention that.”

           “Oh. I think we were referring to different robots from different shows, but…never mind. You don’t watch TV at all, do you?”

           “I get the news on an app on my phone. Television is a waste of time and money.”

           David wasn’t done with his pet question, though. “So you would take the conversion? You’d just give yourself to them?”

           “Why wouldn’t I?”

           “But what about your family? Your friends? Or your principles?”

           “I’m not close to my family, and if you haven’t figured it out already, I don’t have friends.” I laughed. “As for principles, what do you mean by ‘principles’? I operate on logic, and logic tells me that not only is it futile to resist, there are even benefits to conversion.”

           “But then you wouldn’t be human anymore! You’d just be a robot. An angry, armed, militant robot.”

           “Which I am already, as I’ve often been told. Though I’m not armed, in which case there’s the added benefit of weaponry.” I sat up and folded my arms. “I’ve noticed, when people ask me this question, they find it insulting and demeaning that I don’t mind losing my humanity, so to speak. I, meanwhile, find it interesting that people place such sentimental value on ‘humanness’ and let this sentimental value sway them from the truth. What is the real benefit of keeping your ‘humanity’? You keep your emotions, which usually lead people astray, and you get to enjoy the sentimental value associated with being ‘human.’ But in the end, it’s just base sentiment that keeps you holding on to your ‘humanity’. The logical thing to do would be to convert when presented with this scenario.”

           I had outargued David. His eyes fixed intensely on the table as though he wanted to burn a hole through it with his frustration. I said smugly, “Well, you’ve figured me out, Mr. Psychologist. You’ve heard all you want to hear. Will you let me go back to work?” David clutched his forehead but didn’t reply. I looked idly at the empty chairs in the room, my glowing computer screen, the glinting spoon starting to drown in my melting ice cream. “Or do you have any questions pertinent to your internship?” His intense glare yielded to a sad stare.

           “Oh, don’t pout like that. I do commend you for one thing. Whatever your project is, you’ve gone about it every bit as logically as I would have. You presented me a controversial question, observed my response, questioned its nuances to glean as much information as possible, and I presume that you’re currently trying to synthesize your findings into a definitive conclusion.” Now he looked up at me, startled. I continued, “That’s a surprisingly reliable way to gauge someone’s personality. You may think you’re the champion of illogic and sentiment, but you operate more logically than you want to admit.”

           I observed his stiff posture and began predicting possible responses: in order of probability, sulking away, storming out, or another controversial, philosophical question. To my surprise, he picked up my bowl and dumped the last scoop of melting ice cream on my laptop.

           My eyes widened, and he shrunk away in shock. He blushed, clasped his hands together, shrunk back, while I half rose in my chair and stared at the ice cream slowly seeping in between the keys of my keyboard. It was a few seconds before I remembered to punch the off button.

           I looked up at David slowly, deliberately. “What was that for?”

           Every trembling movement of his hands or feet betrayed fear and guilt, but when he turned his eyes to me, behind the fear lay a glint of defiance.

           “Fighting logic with illogic, are you?” I demanded. “Throwing me something incomprehensible just to break me? Or is this a gambit to glean my personality? Either you’re incredibly foolishly, blindly devoted to your pet project, or you’re every bit as cold and rational as I suspected.”

           “Are you going to report me?” he asked weakly, eyes downcast.

           “You bet your bottom dollar I’m reporting you!” I shouted.

           Except he cowered there, and I towered above his shrinking form.

           “Why…aren’t you reporting me?” he whimpered at length.

           “What, you want me to report you?”

           “But…if you’re as logical as you say you are,” he said quickly, head drooping lower and lower, voice quieter and quieter, “you wouldn’t—you would be reporting me because an intern isn’t—isn’t allowed to do this. Except now you’re angry, and—and that’s not logical. You’re angry at—at an intern, and you—”

           “You’ve argued yourself into a corner,” I said. “In fact, it is logical for me to be angry at you, because you’ve just ruined my laptop.”

           “But why aren’t you reporting me?”

           He looked up at me with eyes clouded over with fear. But that little glint of defiance still shone. It nudged and winked at me. It tapped on my shoulder. I whirled around, snapped up my laptop, and strode to the IT center.

           The kid at the desk glanced at my keyboard. “Accidental damage isn’t covered by the company, so you’ll need to pay a portion of the cost of a new computer, and you’ll also need to pay for the data recovery,” he said.

           “It wasn’t accidental,” I could have said, and I could have called up Human Resources and reported an instance of disrespect. But I nodded tightly, let the kid charge up my account, took out a loaner and strode back to my desk.

           When I returned, David was leaning against the wall. He shot up fearfully when he heard my step.

           “You’re a lucky guy,” I warned him.

           “You…didn’t report me?” he whispered.

           I set down the loaner with a clunk. “You’re a lucky guy,” I repeated stonily.

           “I think I’ve figured out why you didn’t report me,” he said quietly.

           I spun around. “You’re not done with your pet project yet?”

           “Because it was too much fun,” he continued. His head was practically turned backwards, so desperate was he to hide from my gaze, and his hands were clenched behind his back. But he continued nevertheless in a soft yet steady voice. “You’ve never had this much fun before. Why else would you take up bullying a blundering intern? Reporting me would be like forfeiting a match. It was too much fun dealing with me, and you didn’t want to give up the game so soon. So you didn’t report me, even though logic—real logic—would dictate that you would.”

           “Look at that logic there,” I remarked coldly. “Look at that calculation. You think you’re so overwhelmed with guilt, but your mind is churning out motives and characteristics like the slickest algorithm. What do you say you really are, David—a champion of illogic or a covert rationalist?”

           “If you’re going ad hominem, so will I,” he retorted. “You haven’t answered my question: why aren’t you reporting me? And is my guess correct? You’re evading the question, which leads me to think that it is, and you don’t want to accept that you’re not so logical as you think you are.”

           “I do know that if you keep daring me to report you, I really will, and no sentiment will stop me. How much longer are you willing to play, David? You know I have the upper hand. You think that I’m not being serious, but are you willing to risk a position at this company for one little pet project? Weigh the risk in a balance. Does the glee of finishing your pet project really outweigh that risk?”

           David couldn’t outargue that. He turned around and slunk back to his table. I decided that, as extra punishment, he should put away the bowl for me, but I never got around to calling after him. I don’t know why.

           I filed the incident in a corner of my mind and got back to work. But that evening, when I returned home and cooked myself a plate of pasta, it all came back to me. And that night, when I went to sleep, it came back to me again. Every time, I dumped it back in the corner of my mind. Every time, it slipped back out. On the last day of David’s internship, I planned to look him in the eye, smile as if nothing had happened, and shake his hand before he left. The minute I glimpsed him down the hall, I turned down another corridor and made my way to the copy room. I stood there amidst piles of paper and boxes of pens. Why couldn’t I will myself to perform a simple, reasonable act anymore? What had he done to me? What was I becoming?

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Title: Duality Artist: Debarati Chatterjee, featured contributor

HELM Issue 17.1: Duality

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MILLENNIUM a thicket crossroads, a groan of ennui; “they’re useless,     painted faces in a pale world          of snow and shelter;               pay them no heed.” [ grass-woven baskets     stain hands for moons     and berry bushes leave bruises colorful as their produce ]     keep moving, agriculture. don’t wait on the next deer. a horse-and-carriage road-stop, a grumble of languor; “they’re talked-out     with nothing to say,     shriveled fanaticism     of those damned women;     send them back to the kitchen     for a loaf and beans.” [ a wooden stove burns with slow, slow precision but will cast a pyrrhic glance at incompetence ] [ capabilities fiendish;     hell is but a biding assemblage of licking flames ] women, yes, women–     and black bodies thrumming with rhythm,          backs ribboned with scars; [ don’t tell me they’re already ontologically dead– ]     keep moving, technology. a slow Ford beeps, its driver screaming in agony at the muddy junction;     “those damned women and their          signs,” hours of labor bemoaned and stern faces, steady voices     [ above hiked skirts and          sodden boots               manufactured by those weak womanly hands                    and trekking abstract miles beyond bigoted comprehension ] rush into a barrage         of animalistic               power inhuman– a low and incomprehensible chant: “we want the vote. we want the vote." [ run away, run away, boy,     these women will steal your pants          and bereave you of house & home;               who dares give them a voice? ] whites and colors     less separated laundry     than separated water fountains          and schools          and hoods          and clouded lives– keep moving, gentlemen. a red-green-yellow intersection, a shout and a shaking of fists, a crude gestu–[    ] [ pillow-talk smothered by finger-shaped bruises no longer reminiscent of sweet, sweet necessity ] black and white and yellow and brown;     no more splattered paint than     lashes and welts and dynamite and battle;     our firecracker skins have met     in a contention oppugning the     very roots that have quenched our thirst     for ambition // frescos // blended canvas battles–          [ we all bleed red, but               whose blood stains our grieving pavements? ] wheelchairs and psych wards and medication;     less blue pills and thin white scars and models’ mascara tears     than 3AM dry red eyes and black ceilings patterned with self-hatred and insomnia          [ i see the devil incarnate when i can’t fall asleep ]     paranoia that mother is dead – that betrayal is a norm – that your ills will never pass,     violent violets & demons & mystics & begging apparitions clinging to bedroom walls;          [ am i meaner than my phantoms?                make them go away ]     forget, forget the meaning of love (and the name of your lover).     sympathetic glances from well-meaning patronizers–     condescendence is a way of life. one reported rape case each six minutes;     [ tick tock // tick tock –          we breathe dead dahlias & moral decadence ]     are the statistics of each second, each dire beating, each letha heartbeat jumping in a throat          not enough? bride-burnings before burning tainted bridges, wedlocked eight year olds dying on wedding eves, bound feet & amaranth bruises & fear, fear, intrinsic fear–     [ is it not time again          for cultural revolution & revelation? ] domestic screams and shattered plates, “girls can’t play football–” “put on some damned clothes, you slut–"     [ don’t tell me that micro-aggressions          & slurs & prejudice & sexism don’t hurt ] keep moving, world.     [ i stop the world      but it keeps turning & turning      unwinding like the ribbons of an obsolete VCR      telling our adulterated stories & fermenting ruined lives ] have these centuries of whim and wonder and war served naught but to haunt our backs with blades and scars from decades gone?     [ we cannot say     that we are progressive,     a fountain of youth & miracles,     a growing glowing global centerpiece     when we are nothing          but the damned ] keep growing, children.     [ do you dare to rectify     the structured past? ]

Title: MILLENNIUM Writer: Emily Chen, Featured Contributor

HELM Issue 17.1: Duality

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October call for submissions: Duality

We are now calling for submissions related to the theme of duality for the month of October.  Submissions will close on Tuesday, October 20. Read our submission guidelines for more information.

Nothing is monolithic. Existence demands subtleties, nuances, multidimensionality — we are each others’ lovers, and we are each others’ adversaries. Look for  moments of dissonance and turmoil, when your skin crawls apart and you feel like your ribcage has declared war on the rest of your abdomen. Seek out symbiosis-turned-riotous-opposition; search for the peaks and valleys of the fierce and the soft, the solid and the fragile, and the singular locations where these paradoxes mingle. Duality is the friction, the perpetual contradiction within ourselves and our environments. Sparks are only inevitable.

We will publish 1 poem, 1 piece of prose, and two pieces of artwork this month. All submissions will automatically be taken into consideration for our annual print edition, coming out in Spring 2016.

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Title: Perspective Artist: Shay Lari-Hosain

First published in HELM: Revolution

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Title: Untitled Artist: Serena Lu

First published in HELM: Revolution

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Grass left impressions on my face & your arms those indented memories, so saccharine. Your smile could grate my skin to the bone over the course of an hour. Neither of us have an hour to give. We—the pyrrhic victory— We—the time bomb— //LET'S GO, YOU AND I RIGHT NOW, INTO THE ANIMALISTIC YELLOW FOG & WINDING STREETS THAT ARE A HEAVY-HANDED METAPHOR FOR MY INDECISIVENESS// I scrape the memories off collarbones, a bear tearing bark from the fir tree, forgetting that I can't forget; I blink your fuselit appendages in & out of my view like bad airwaves, your bad airwaves five years from now bringing coffee to me in bed. I don't drink coffee. I don't do beds. Your mouth, bitter— Come closer— I like its burn— //THOREAU USES NATURE TO MASK HIS FEAR OF THE UNKNOWN. WE MUST LIVE SIMPLY WITH DECADENCE.// Treat me the same, I can scream. Treat me the same, debate how you love me, even when you cannot. Swim in those paradoxes. You, art & artist— Turned stone under my hands— //MY "A" WOULD TURN BLACK WITH THE SMUDGES OF SLAP-YOU-IN-THE-FACE SYMBOLISM. I DON'T NEED A PRIEST, I NEED A PURPOSE.// I can follow you through the ocean, balance stanzas and stanzas on the tip of your tongue; I can never touch you again; I can take artillery fire for you and shrapnel for you and bad test grades and passive aggression and venom and bruises and scratches and brimstone and disapproval and //SHUT UP// We have time— I see it in your face— PASSING ME IN THE HALLWAY Your eyes gape LIKE THE GATES OF TROY I see myself & the world in you, TWO THINGS I CAN'T KNOW sparks, thunder, lightning when we ricochet, THIS LIFE'S ON FIRE I'll come back.

Title: You are home and I am sick of it Writer: Elisabeth Siegel

First published in HELM: Revolution

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Title: Anguis Artist: Alexis Gauba

First published in HELM: Revolution

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These are the cities of my dream. Their links a quiet diamond symmetry, dance of slender harmony. I travel through cityscapes alike, every perfect node gazing upon an equal number of paths; I wander these to other perfect nodes. Mirrors; these cities are mirrors that beam. A kaleidoscope of silver roads and I stand on one, count corners round my path, meander any other path to count and see twin triangle echoes all about, looking like mirrors all around reflect one view. Come with me to see the horizon from this city. Look to the distance, at those cities looming. For each an equal number of cities passes through from there to this one city of my dream. I know this because they lie beyond the paths that lead out from here; they lie beyond these roads. Let us behold the wonder of these cities; these cities flawless balance their abode the views about nodes about paths the views horizon-ward all reflecting one kaleidoscope one cogent dream, these cities to tender equilibrium true. Now I write these lines to transcribe this my dream. I sketch these lines so each one draws a city. I dream that between two lines lies a path to show they share a stanza or an ending. That words might make my dream come true and trace in shorthand these elegant nodes. So we find here now the cities of my dream. But I know yet not which of my dreams may be-- when we count the corners round a path, count all the paths that emanate from a node, count cities to the horizon leading, which outcomes could ever possibly be true?

Title: Searching for Strongly Regular Graphs Artist: Suzy Lou

First published in HELM: Revolution

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Title: My English Teacher Artist: Sophia Luo

First published in HELM: Revolution

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Differentiating Equations

Writer: Meilan Steimle

“I’m Chinese,” I say, when it is my turn.

The teachers look skeptically at my brown hair and pinkish skin. “Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure,” I say, frowning. My mother is Chinese and most everyone else in the class is Chinese. How could I not be?

First published in HELM: Revolution

Reflexive property: Meilan = Wasian (White + Asian) Kid

        Pretty self-explanatory.

German-Irish Dad + Cantonese Mom = Wasian Kid

In the Chinese zodiac calendar, each year is assigned a different animal in a twelve-year cycle, and according to Chinese astrology, each animal confers specific personality characteristics on those born in that year. My family is hardly superstitious, but we still identify with our animal, whether it be dragon or ox, albeit with the same seriousness that most Americans regard their horoscopes.

On February 3, 1999, my family gathers at Hunan Garden restaurant for my Red Egg and Ginger party, a celebration of the one-month anniversary of my birth.  Since I am born in early January, before Chinese New Year, a problem presents itself: following the American calendar, I should be a rabbit, but according to the Chinese lunar calendar, I am a tiger. Consequently, the zodiac-themed gifts, which are piled in vibrant, satin pouches on the cake table, are a hodgepodge of tiger and rabbit jewelry, fiery orange stripes lying next to the soft grays and taupes of the rabbit. Where the tiger is ferocious and independent, the rabbit is gentle and centered on social harmony. So, which am I, a tiger or a rabbit? I’m one month old and already having an identity crisis.

At the party, a good time is had by all. My father’s side of the family is less familiar with Hunan cuisine, but they love the copious amounts of sodium. There’s a picture from the party that I look at from time to time. My paternal grandmother holds me, eyeing the German chocolate cake to her left, the fuzzy auburn halo of her hair clashing with the red painted eggs in the background.

***

I first become conscious of my biracial ethnicity in pre-kindergarten when we sit in a circle and share our cultural heritages. “I’m Chinese,” I say, when it is my turn.

The teachers look skeptically at my brown hair and pinkish skin. “Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure,” I say, frowning. My mother is Chinese and most everyone else in the class is Chinese. How could I not be?

Property of inequality: Meilan + math < success

It turns out that Chinese blood doesn’t necessarily equal brilliance in math.

“Meilan is having some trouble with simple multiplication,” my math teacher says. From the throne of her desk, gray fingernails tapping a sonata on the brown veneer, she is queen. I am flanked by my parents, giants squeezed awkwardly into the constraints of third-grade furniture. My teacher raises an eyebrow at me through silvery glasses, and I gulp and shift my gaze sideways, where fanciful, pastel Easter bunnies frolic across the slate walls.  She continues to explain my various shortcomings with simple calculations, and heat smolders behind my eyes and spreads to my nose, where it burns. I lower my head into my hands, squeezing my eyes shut, and my teacher’s nasal voice is muted by my new mantra: I am not good at math.

Simplifying polynomials: find the greatest common factor

 In 1994, Crystal Children’s Choir was founded by a small group of immigrants with nothing in common but their love of music and their Taiwanese heritage. Fifteen years later, the only thing that’s changed is the number of choristers.

Being one of the only Wasians in a choir that’s often mistaken for a Chinese tour group has its perks; I usually show up on the website (Crystal Choir welcomes diversity!), and teachers remember my name (the white girl!) before most of my friends’. Still, it can be annoying when one of the teachers tells a story in Chinglish and all I observe are flamboyant hand gestures and the occasional squawk about eating at “Mac-uh-dah-no’s.” Sometimes, when I have to ask yet again for a translation of the conductor’s stage directions, a little resentment settles in my stomach. I’m not Chinese enough for this choir.

 During one late night rehearsal, the unseasonable humidity seeps into my cheeks and neck, reducing a perky ponytail into the drooping ear of a basset hound. I race around the courtyard, chasing my friends, hearing the squishing in my shoes with every damp step. As I sprint ahead and tag a boy, my 10-year-old lungs and equally mature sense of social propriety dovetail in a bellowing scream of “YOU’RE IT!”  There is silence for a moment as my friends wince at the echoes of my shriek, and then everyone begins to laugh.

“That’s her white part coming out,” quips the boy I just tagged.

Our giggles and breathless energy intermingle in the evening air, and I laugh the hardest.

At this moment I recall my mother's stories of her childhood in Los Angeles: the oppressive summer heat pooling into sweat stains on her T-shirt and the insensitive white classmates in their saddle shoes and Keds who jeered “Ching Chong Chinaman” across the tanbark. She had recounted how she and her siblings would frustrate them by pretending not to hear their taunts, later laughing at their ignorance.

Tonight's revelry is so different from the sweltering afternoons of my mother’s childhood. I know I have great pipes; why else would I have been chosen for the solo in “Hot Cross Buns”?

Less is More: when 90% > 100%

“And don’t forget to use the finger!” my mom calls across the house as I head upstairs to start my math homework.

Shortly after the conference with my math teacher, my mother takes it upon herself, with all the ferocious resolve of a Chinese matriarch, to mold me into a mathematical superstar. Once she has determined that my troubles lay in the details of arithmetic (seeing “13” where the problem reads “12,” forgetting to carry the “1”), she devises a brilliant plan to remedy them: the finger. What starts as a simple method of running my index finger along the numbers so as not to lose track of them becomes my mother’s mantra, countering mine: “use the finger,” as if every utterance will add another percent to my grade.

Over time, I begin to despise “the finger,” the phrase losing its meaning through overuse. Pretest: “Remember to use the finger!” Posttest: “Did you use the finger?” Bad grade: “I thought I told you to use the finger!” Good grade: “See what happens when you use the finger!”

***

 It is a balmy, California afternoon, and I sit alone, puzzling through algebraic word problems.

The jaw is one of the most powerful muscles in the human body, the passage reads, as if including background facts in the word problem will distract from how inherently frightening algebra is. Under the right circumstances, humans can bite off their own tongues! If Daniel takes two bites to chew through a banana, and an apple is three times as tough to chew, how many bites does it take Daniel to chew the apple? I daydream about gnawing off “the finger” to a bloody stump and presenting it, wrapped in graph paper and decorated with pieces of protractor, to my mother.

I take a break, and, on a whim, google “Wasian.” What comes up is a slew of articles, forums, and websites lauding the general attractiveness of my ethnicity. Half-Asians are the most attractive ethnicity, professes a (in retrospect, extremely creepy) message board with an album of bikini-clad Wasian women, some with bunny ears, posted below. Cute Asian faces with curvy bodies? writes one commenter. Count me in!

I smile as my self-esteem rises. I am not just a mathematically-challenged middle schooler, I am part of the Half-Asian Master Race, as one commenter eloquently puts it. For the first time, being Wasian seems like something special. I’ll always be considered pretty, I think with a smirk. With or without five fingers on each hand.

Inductive reasoning: from specific to general

Fox News would have me believe that New York, like my native California, is a melting pot encouraging cultural awareness and political correctness. This is not the case at Riverside Country Day School.

When my choir class travels to New York to perform at a music festival, we stop at a local middle school, and I gape at the utter… whiteness of the student body. Cackling voices echo around the auditorium where we are waiting to perform. I look out at the roiling sea of ruddy skin and freckles, yellow and brown curly hair, and feel utterly foreign.

For context, I attend a school that is 40% Indian, 40% East Asian, and 20% other (that’s where I am). Consequently, though I have been to several Diwali festivals and K-pop dominates my iTunes library, I’ve never been to a football game where the players were any bulkier than the flutists in the marching band.

“I’ve never seen so many blondes together in my life,” I whisper to my roommate, Tiffany.

We watch in silence as a chubby, towheaded boy yawns, his chin gathering in rolls at his neck like fondant folding over itself.

“Behold,” says Tiffany in mock wonder. “It’s your people.”

I glance around at my fellow choristers, who are giggling loudly amongst themselves in a mass of glossy black heads and uniform yellow shirts, and I let the ecumenical brown of my hair fall in a veil around me.

 “Hey!” I turn to see a boy with a complexion similar to uncooked dough squinting at me through my curtain of hair. “Where in China are you guys from?”

I blink blankly at him. “We’re from California.” I’m not sure what I am supposed to feel: amusement as his mouth gapes open like he is trying to swallow his embarrassment, annoyance that he assumes every group of Asians is from China, happiness that he lumps me in as Chinese, or sadness that he lumps me in as Chinese. How can he and Tiffany both see me as different from themselves?

Inverse logic: “If p, then q.” “If not p, then not q”?

“Ni hao ma, Mei-Lan?” asks Simon, the aging owner of Hunan Gardens, his skin lined and wrinkled like the crumpled graph paper in my backpack.

“Wo hao,” I say clumsily. I’m sure my accent is abysmal, but Simon doesn’t mention it. To him, it probably sounds like the Chinese equivalent of “Mac-uh-dah-no’s.” “Why are you at the front desk today? Don’t you usually work in the kitchen?”

“Jarvis is taking care of it.” Simon’s smile stretches across his face when he mentions his son. “He’s growing up.  I wanted him to go to college, but he didn’t like it. He’s really good in the kitchen, maybe better than me.”

As a thirteen-year-old, I don’t quite relate to Simon’s parental pride, but when I watch Jarvis emerge from the kitchen, balancing two circular platters tangentially on his arm, I think I understand.

Pan-fried noodles, wavy like sine curves, sizzle and pop like it’s Independence Day. I crunch on them with my cousin, six-year-old Chen Li, who was adopted from China.  “We should go to China,” she says while gesturing with a piece of orange chicken perpendicularly impaled with her chopstick. “So the whole family can see where our ancestors lived!”

“Not everyone in our family is Chinese,” I remind her.

“Who isn't?” asks Chen incredulously. The restaurant lights glint and reflect off of her hair, shining in orange streaks down her back.

 “What about your dad?”

I find great amusement in the way Chen Li’s face slacks with shock. “Really?” She looks disbelievingly at her ethnically British dad, with his sandy hair and narrow nose. It has never occurred to Chen that her father is different from her. She wasn’t taught specifically about race, so she didn’t give it any more thought than variations in eye-color.

 When we prepare to leave later that evening, I hear Simon conversing with a young boy in fluent Mandarin. Someone must have studied hard at Chinese School, I think sourly, remembering miserable afternoons in front of a chalkboard more gray than green with a teacher who taught entirely in Chinese. When I turn around, I’m stunned to see that Simon is talking to a Caucasian boy wearing a Tigers baseball cap.

“How long did you live in China?” asks Simon, switching to English.

“My whole life,” the boy replies. “We just moved back this year. I went to an international school, but I’m pretty culturally Chinese.”

Embarrassingly and irrationally, a part of me is jealous of this boy I’ve never met. How is even he more Chinese than I am? If this white boy can unapologetically identify with being Chinese, why can’t I?

Three points determine a plane

 Heat steams off of the worn steps of Tiananmen Square and condenses on the lateral faces of my tangerine parasol. People shimmer and flicker through the Forbidden City like holograms, wavy and insubstantial, there one minute, ghosts the next. The dizzy haze rises through layers of stone and history and coils around us like the spiraling tails of the dragon statues decorating the compound. Here, in the mist of human discomfort, tourists and natives alike blur together. To distract myself from the burn of my shoulders, I think of a beautiful site we had toured earlier in the day. The Temple of Heaven, which was constructed completely without nails, is perfectly balanced, both graceful and architecturally sound, a transcendent example of art and math combined.  

“Excuse me!” The Chinese girl who is squinting through blue contact lenses calls out to me in English as broken as her peroxide-blond hair tips. “Can I take a picture with you?” After I’ve nodded awkwardly, she hands her phone, ensconced in a tiger iPhone case, to my mom. “Halfies are always so cute!” she says as my mom snaps the picture.

***

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” says a casual friend, shaking her hands in shock after I recount the story in Crystal Choir. “You’re Wasian?! I thought you were just white.” I nod, and she grins. “That’s so cool! Can I, like, be your best friend?”

Isosceles triangle: two equal sides on a stable base

Sometime in my eighth grade quest for “self-definition,” I stumble on a blog about people of color in the media. Am I a woman of color? I send a question to the moderator of the blog. A few hours later, I receive a response.

“If you can pass as white, then no, because you have white privilege,” she has written.

What follows is thirty minutes of scrutinizing my nose in the mirror until my breath fogs up the glass. Can I “pass”? It is obvious that I look more white than Asian, but could I not be a woman of color just because of how I appear? To me, the words “woman of color” evoke thoughts of my mother and Rosa Parks: strong, successful women triumphing over adversity. The words “white privilege” conjure up images of bullying and separate water fountains. Staring at my blurry face, I scowl. How can it be fair that half my heritage be denied based on my skin tone?

Later, I semi-jokingly lament to my mom about how I have to admit to having white privilege. She looks at me like she should know me but doesn’t.       

“Well, of course you do,” she says. “Would you rather be discriminated against for how you look?”

 I deflate, and I realize that I’ve just done what all the minority-rights bloggers say is the worst crime a white person can commit: whine about the tribulations of being white. I look white, so I have white privilege. I look white, so I am not a woman of color. I look white, so I am not Chinese. Heat gathers behind my eyes, and then I feel hot all over, like the oppressive summers in Los Angeles and the sizzling noodles at Simon’s and the steaming steps of Tiananmen Square. Hot like shame.

But to my surprise, my mother goes on.

“I was teased in elementary school for being Chinese,” she says. “But when I went to college, people said that I wasn’t Chinese enough.”

I stare at her. My mother, the full-blooded Chinese woman, wasn’t Chinese enough?

 She continues. “I don’t speak Chinese. I don’t eat Chinese food, and I didn’t marry someone Chinese, so people would say I’m not that Chinese because I don’t ‘act Chinese.’” She pauses. “Who you are isn’t about labels or behavior. It’s something inside of you. I don’t need to use chopsticks to prove I’m Chinese.”

 A smile begins to creep onto my face.

“Besides,” she says, “forks are faster.”

sin x / x: Meilan approaching 1            

At the end of my freshman year, my family gathers once again at Hunan Garden. It’s changed a lot since I celebrated my Red Egg and Ginger Party here more than 15 years ago. Simon, who still asks me “ni hao ma?” has crumpled into an old man with a sloped back, his hair streaked with white.

A few weeks earlier, my family, dedicated patrons that we are, received a flier informing us that Hunan Garden was being replaced by Mandarin Roots, a Chinese-Californian fusion restaurant run by Jarvis. So here we are at the opening, sampling pork quesadillas with mango kimchee emulsion and beef sliders with Laotian chili aioli.

The decor is also different; the traditional, circular tables with spinning lazy Susans have been replaced by sleek rectangular ones, and new chairs are covered in tiger-print upholstery. Simon scurries around the restaurant, grinning, chatting with diners, and bragging about Jarvis’ culinary training at famous restaurants throughout the U.S. I suppose that some may contend that Asian culture has been lost; a once purely Chinese restaurant has shed tradition for the 21st Century. But I look at Simon and I know that there’s nothing politically incorrect about happiness.

 It’s funny, but math is my best subject now. Somehow, in the seven years from third grade to now, the seemingly impossible happened: I changed. I was just too wrapped up in who I thought I was to realize it.

[harkerhelm]

Title: iWorld Artist: Kevin Ke

First published in HELM: Revolution