The joyous sound of the ice cream truck coming sends me running to beg for money from my mom. She gives me a few coins. I don’t know how much money I have. I hold out my hand to show the man in the bright pink truck. He points to what I can buy. Today my mom gave me enough for my favorite treat, a bag of cheddar jalapeño popcorn.
***
“Your daughter is so dark!” The little old white lady points to me as she makes her way to the chapel.
My mom acknowledges me with a pat on the head, “I know, she spends all her time playing outside.”
“In this heat?” The old lady gasps.
“I know! I can’t believe it either. She worships the sun.” My mom tells her.
When my mom takes my hand, her skin is the same color as mine. This happens again and again. Each time my mom points to the sun, I learn to tell people I am brown because of the sun, not because I look like my mom.
***
At school, I learn that four quarters make a dollar. Quarters look about the same size as bottle caps. On my way home, I kick every single bottle cap hoping to find a quarter. I’m hopeful that if I find quarters while I’m walking, I can buy some cheddar jalapeño popcorn.
***
My mom tells me this story from her childhood.
“After my mom left, I went to a new church with my dad. Kids teased and taunted me for being a half breed, for being Mexican. I told them, “I’m not Mexican! I’m Catholic.”
She laughs when she tells this story. As a child, she didn’t know she was half-Mexican and half-white. She laughs at her sass, her pride, her ignorance.
People pointed to her brown skin unkindly and with cruelty. People point to my brown skin with awe and compliments. I am the envy of every woman who slathers herself in tanning lotion every summer. I don’t associate pain and discrimination with my brown skin like my mom did.
***
My siblings and I sit and count out one hundred pennies each and put them in a small plastic baggie. The next day we take our pennies to school to donate them to “Pennies for the Future,” a campaign to raise money to send low-income kids like us to college. The class that collects the most pennies gets a pizza party. I feel so proud to donate my pennies. “Every cent matters,” they tell us, and I donated one hundred cents.
***
On my twelfth birthday, my mom takes me to Clinique to get a free makeover and buy high quality makeup. The Clinique woman tells me I have a gorgeous olive complexion. When I ask my mom what that means, she tells me, “We have a yellow tint to our skin.”
The woman paints my face applying foundation, eye shadow, blush, and lipstick. My mom buys everything but the foundation.
“We don’t need foundation. Our skin is flawless.” My mom tells me.
I feel like the prettiest girl in the world because I have gorgeous, flawless skin just like my mom.
***
Gas costs 88 cents a gallon when I start driving. My mom gives me twenty dollars every two weeks to keep fuel in my car and to buy lunch at school. I save all my pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters in the cup holder in my car. My friends mock me for it, calling me a penny pincher. I ignore them, knowing I’ll buy myself an ice cream cone from Dairy Queen with all that change at the end of the week.
***
When I start filling out forms myself, from the government and doctors, I ask my mom, “Am I white Hispanic or white non-Hispanic?”
She tells me, “You kids are white.”
“I know I’m white, Mom.” I tell her patiently, giving her another opportunity to give me the answer I desire, “The question is whether I am Hispanic or not.”
“I don’t know. I’m Hispanic because I’m half Mexican.” She pauses. “But you kids are white,” she repeats.
I wonder why my mom’s Mexican ancestry doesn’t factor into my identity? My mom is half, so I’m a quarter. I guess a quarter isn’t enough to be considered Hispanic.
I don’t want to say that I am non-Hispanic on the form, that doesn’t feel right. How can I be non-Hispanic if my mom is Hispanic? I don’t know if either option is accurate for me. So, I opt out of answering that question.
***
When I tell my money savvy uncle that I’m moving to Asia, I can’t follow his long-winded response about exchange rates and foreign economies. He talks about the value of the American dollar. It unnerves me that I don’t know what he’s talking about.
***
At the beach in Japan, everyone wears long sleeve shirts and pants to shield their skin from the sun. I feel flamboyant in my motherly one-piece swimsuit as I slather my children’s mostly naked bodies in sunscreen. I can feel people watching me. My sun kissed skin isn’t prized or idolized here.
***
In Japan, I learn that the exchange rate is about 104 JPY to 1 USD. The exchange rate fluctuates day to day, week to week. I watch it closely, hoping to exchange on a day when it is 104.8 to 1 instead of 104.2. Every tenth of yen matters when I’m exchanging an entire paycheck.
***
My mom decides to get a DNA test to learn more about her ancestry. She has always said she’s half-Mexican and half-white. Her test confirms it. We learn that she has German and Finnish ancestry from her father and Indigenous Mexican and Spaniard ancestry from her mother.
I wonder what my own test would reveal? I’m mostly white. My dad is white, my mom is half-white and half-Mexican. I wonder if a DNA test would confirm that I’m a quarter- Mexican? A quarter is not nothing. Not to me.
***
I keep the smallest bill closest in value to one United States dollar from each country I visit as a souvenir. The bills in my collection are the ones I kept separate from all the rest in my wallet as a reference point while shopping. A blue 1000 South Korean won bill, a red 50 Philippine peso bill, a green 5 Malaysian ringgit bill, a purple and pink 10 Hong Kong dollar bill. When I look at my collection, I remember the confusion of constantly calculating how much anything costs in USD.
***
On a vacation in Bali, a taxi driver leans over to my white husband in the front seat and says, “Your wife is brown and beautiful, just like me!”
In Cambodia, a tuk tuk driver tries to flirt his way into getting me to pick him over the other drivers by telling me, “I like your brown skin.”
While on an international cruise to Taiwan with my husband, a Filipino waitress looks at me and asks, “Your brown skin, where are you from?”
In America I’m a white girl with a great tan. Overseas I’m a brown Westerner. Is it the same? It feels different.
***
Post pandemic, the yen rate goes from 104 JPY to 1 USD to 120, 130, 140, to 150! I’m beginning to understand why my uncle had such strong feelings about the value of the American dollar now. In the few years living in Japan, I have seen the value change significantly.
***
While watching the sunset at the beach with some friends in my neighborhood, a white American points out my impeccable tan, my golden-brown skin.
My white husband winks at me. He knows I have grown weary of people always commenting on my skin color, even when they do so in a complimentary way. No one ever points at his skin, why do they always have to point at mine?
My Japanese neighbor-friend asks, “You are not only Caucasian, are you?”
Her directness gives me pause. No, I am not. I am not only Caucasian because I have, at most, a quarter Mexican in me. I have grappled with the value of this quarter my whole life. I know that this quarter is why people point at my skin and not my husband’s. Mostly-white isn’t the same as only white. So, I tell her, “No. I’m not only Caucasian. I have Mexican ancestry.”
Photo by Warren Umoh on Unsplash
