My Asian Father

     

It's important that I begin by saying I am not Asian.  I'm not partly Asian, faintly Asian or Asian-ish.  My racial background is Caucasian mixed with Caucasian.  Not that I don't like people of Asian descent or I wouldn't be thrilled to be Asian, but I'm simply not Asian.  I only mention this because it is paramount to the story that follows.

    

I worked as an academic advisor in a department with quite a few other advisors.  One such advisor was named LaTanya and students would often get our names confused.  However, we looked nothing alike.  I was, and still am, a short, thick, white woman.  LaTanya was (is) a statuesque black woman.

    

One day, a student called and asked to make an appointment with the advisor he had met with before named "Tonya".  Since the other advisor also went by the name "Tanya", the secretary asked, "Is she black or white?"  Long pause.  The secretary, being very familiar with the typical white guilt that makes white people too nervous to say the word "black", smirked and asked again, "Is she black or white?"  Again with the pause followed by, "She wears glasses."

    

The secretary was so amused by him avoiding the racial issue that she wouldn't let him slide.  She said, "They both wear glasses."  Which was true.  "Is she black or white?"  This time the pause was longer followed meekly by, "I always thought she was Asian."  Yep, he was talking about me.

    

Oh, the secretary thought this was supremely funny and proceeded to tell the story to everyone in the department.  I didn't mind that so much.  Of course I look more Asian than a medium-skinned black woman.  But it was when people would hear the story and respond with, "Yeah, I could see why he would think Tonya was Asian" that irked me. 

    

What in the hell were they talking about?  I'm so white it's ridiculous.  I am covered with freckles, for God's sake. I have never questioned my racial background.  Why should I?  This prompted many long looks in the mirror.  I'll admit that I tried to see if I could pull off a more naturally wide-eyed appearance.  I just looked like a female version of Marty Feldman.

    

I quickly moved toward the notion popularized by disgruntled children everywhere, maybe I'm adopted!  I thumbed through my memory searching for any recollection of pictures of my mother pregnant with me.  Oh, right, that one photograph of her in the shapeless yellow maternity dress with her ankles spilling out of her pumps.  Ok, I wasn't adopted.  But that doesn't mean my mom wasn't scandalously impregnated by an Asian foreign exchange student at the Baptist college she and my dad attended after they were married.

    

Did I really want to go there?  My sweet, virginal mother who was studying to be a special education teacher at a religiously conservative college with her husband?  It would be very romantic, yet tragic.  My dad would be an upright, responsible man and claim the love-child as his own to protect his wife's virtue.  What a wonderful man.

    

Then I remembered what my dad's mom said about me the day I was born.  My dad, my aunts and uncles all retold this story a thousand times when I was growing up.  When my dad called my grandma and said they had a baby girl she asked who I looked like.  My dad said, "Well, she kind of looks like me,"  to which my grandmother, his mother, replied, "Oh, I thought she'd be pretty."

   

Yeah, I've been told a million times I look like my dad.  One colleague once told my father that he never considered that the female version of him could be pretty, but it was.  So I'm not an illegitimate love-child or adopted.  Whew! I was finally secure in the feeling that I was not racially ambiguous. That security lasted exactly one week.

  

While on campus during lunch, a man standing on the steps of the Psychology building caught my eye and my heart jumped.  The man looked just like my dad.  Sure, it's not uncommon on a university campus to see a man with longish hair, chinos, a collared shirt and a v-neck sweater, but he really looked like Dad.  It couldn't be him because he was seven hours away, but he looked so much like him.  As I walked closer to the man, a delivery truck pulled between me and the man so I couldn't see him again until I was very close to him.  He turned his head and I saw.....he was Asian.