Vincent by Ariana Lee
The worst part about being bilingual is when you
are speechless. I don’t say thank you when a man
holds the door open with his foot because he bows
as my mom and I pass through. I don’t acknowledge
his konnichiwa. I think: In a different decade, this
same mistake, this same ignorance, buried a man.
Vincent Chin. A Chinese man
beaten to death with a baseball bat
the night of his bachelor party
by two white men who blamed
the growing Japanese auto industry
for putting Americans out of
work. They kill us so easily
for something we’re not. Those men
got away with murder. No more
starry nights for this Vincent,
just the distant dirt in Detroit.
It doesn’t matter that he was Chinese. It doesn’t matter
that he wasn’t Japanese. All they saw: monolids, dark hair,
a strange last name. The guttural sound of Chinese/Japanese
characters, onomatopoeia to accompany the whack
and the smack and the splat as they swung their rage.
I think about Vincent’s family. I wonder if his fiancée
held her wedding dress to her chest while she cried. If
the white fabric was stained black with ruined mascara,
a ruined future. Wedding bells and death knells all ring
hollow. No holy union, just a hole in the ground. No
happiness, just a rupturing that feels like helplessness.
What ugliness does America hide under her veil?
Isn’t marriage, too, a pledge of allegiance? What
rationality—what nationality—could justify murder?
I wish Vincent could’ve walked away. We mistake
each other for enemies, for things we are not.
I wish I hadn’t walked away. They conflate us,
they confuse us, but I want people to see us for
the past, present, and possibilities stretched over
our faces. Let them wonder about how we live.
