Two

I once knew a boy named Julian. He was half-Korean and half-Swiss and looked undecided in his race, like a Korean with shoulders a little too broad, a shade too tall, cheekbones that were counteracted with the Swiss blood from his father's side. I love the way biracial Asians look because they are suspended on a silk line somewhere between East and West, not quite meeting either way and deliciously satisfying the requirements of both. And I am jealous, too, because I am Chinese by birth and American by upbringing, and magazines seem to forget I exist; maybe the editors at Cosmopolitan think that my eyes are so small I can't see how alien I feel on their glossy white pages. But the children from Asian and Caucasian couples are like the Suzie Wongs, Yokos, Ching Chong Changs, after an Extreme Makeover episode. The yellow's been beamed out of your skin, or your eyelids are sliced and sutured in black; maybe prosthetic bone has been hot-glued to your nose bridge. You are not quite yellow and not quite white, and sometimes you are so beautiful.