How We All Knew She Was a Fake

She told us to call her “Aunt Sandy”, but I was wary the moment she insisted she knew what it felt to be from another culture since her family moved a lot when she was younger. We were at a conference for kids who grew up in other countries, which meant we were all bound to each other by our common unfamiliarity with the Western culture.
What credentials "Aunt Sandy" had to consider herself a TCK (third culture kid), I’ll never know, since she admitted to only living in the United States.
     “But I know what it’s like to leave friends,” she said as she looked sympathetically at each of us.
The girl from Nigeria caught my eye, half-smiled and shook her head. By instinct we all knew: leaving people was not the same as living with people; being the only white person; running from car bombs; eating monkeys; being forced to live on a compound; or drenching oneself in another culture.

So, while this “Aunt Sandy” implored us to embrace bittersweet friendships that would end in four days, we busied ourselves with making memories. We did not fear leaving. Rather, the knowledge inspired us to climb a mountain at 4:00 a.m., skinny dip after the bonfire and explore the Colorado mountainside in the middle of the night with nothing but two flashlights and a large stick to keep away the mountain lions.
Instead of learning names, we called each other by our home countries.
Moldova: the black haired boy who went with us to hike the mountain and whose violin looked like fire in the sunrise as we sat on boulders twelve hundred feet above sea level.

Russia: the girl who showed us how to braid flowers into a wreath; who taught herself sign language because her younger sister went deaf after a high fever.

Japan: the boy who got road rash from the afternoon we decided to play hockey using nothing but sticks and a coke can.

Kenya: who puked for an hour after he drank an entire bottle of hot sauce just to win $75.

Thailand 1 and Thailand 2: the brother and sister team that borrowed their parent’s car so we could cram thirteen people in and drive downtown and watch “Finding Nemo” at the dollar theater.

Names and pasts didn’t matter, only making memories. Because, in the end, they were the only things we carried with us. Memories were the only things that permeated our being, stuffed unseen cultures beneath our skins and changed our paradigms.
“Aunt Sandy” would never know us truly, not till she understood how to be an alien in her own skin. (Months later, we discovered that “Aunt Sandy” had taken notes on each of us, met with our parents and had given them psychological evaluations of each of us. To my knowledge, not one person from our group ever contacted the woman again.)

We were, by nature, episodic, pieced together with shards of what past we could remember. After all, we who felt aborted from our nations loved our cultures with an unnatural ferocity for we ourselves were unnatural, born of two worlds yet belonging to neither. Protecting our past and our country from ignorant comments became part of navigating Western culture. Like when my parents put me in a one-week American camp when I was fifteen and the counselor told us all to sit in a circle and introduce ourselves.

That was when I began learning to protect my past by gauging my audience, because when I mentioned growing up in China, the pimply boy across from me jerked his head up.
     “Do you know anyone that, like, died from SARS?”
No one spoke, but I felt my throat tighten and grow hot.
     “Excuse me?” I asked.
     “Do you know anyone,” he raised his voice and spoke slower, “that got that SARS thing and died?”
Without missing a beat, I snapped out the coldest lie of my life.
     “Actually, my best friend died two days ago from SARS.” I cocked my head sideways, still staring at him. “She had to suffer for a week without medication before her lungs filled with blood and she drowned.”
My lie sank in; I saw the weight of my words slap the boy, turning his face red and opening his mouth to flap like a dying fish on hot pavement. Everyone was silent. I continued to stare across the circle,  not caring.
I wanted them to feel the magnitude of his ignorance.

Since that day, I’ve wondered many a time why the fifteen-year old me could not simply smile and forgive the high school jock and why his rude question spurred such a vicious retort.
Perhaps it was because I remembered my entire family wearing pale green masks during the SARS epidemic.
Perhaps it was because I could not forget how a stranger’s cough brought a surge of fear.
Perhaps it was because I know what the hospitals were like, and what primitive treatments awaited the unfortunate.
Perhaps it was because the memory of my younger brother burning with fever, limp, flushed and coughing still makes my heart ache; how we knew it was only a bad cold but had to hide him so the health inspectors would not take him away and lock him up with people who actually did have SARS.

I know now that the memories of brutal reality spilled over into rage when asked such an insensitive question. Now I have learned to guard my memories as much as my tongue. Our memories shape us, inspire actions and stitch together who we are as people.
Warp them, and they will warp you.
Idolize them, and your past will forever trump your future.
Ignore them, and you ignore yourself.
Come to peace with them, and you will learn to love your colorful, patchwork past.