Maybe if she and my father had been able to have more kids, she might not care so much about who I end up choosing to date. Or if they hadn’t already been nearly forty before I came along, so that my mother’s mind was already too crowded with trending sitcoms starring white people, with popular books filled with white characters, for my voice to be heard. So that hers was lost too. Or if I’d been born with any other birthmark instead of the splotch of brown on my neck that she says is in the shape of America, of a part of the world that lies far from the East.

This, Holly, is a sign that you’re of the West.

I think it looks like a whale (to be fair, I’d been six when I’d declared this).

No, it doesn’t.

Then a man wearing a cape.

No.

A ballerina with a huge, fluffy tutu?

No.

And I’ve never dated a guy just because he was Chinese or just because he wasn’t. The first because I don’t actually know that many Chinese guys in the first place, and the second because people like Kyle and Dev and Ross—who then lead to people like Kyle’s uncle and Kyle’s father—can get kind of tiring.

Grandma died last year at the ripe old age of eighty-two. You’d think she would have been really old-fashioned and told me to date only Chinese boys because only Chinese boys would ever understand what it means to be in a Chinese family. How could a white boy ever really know you, Holly? Know our ways, our traditions and duties? But she would only ever just shake her head at my mother’s advice and whisper to me in the kitchen as she made me help her with dinner.

That birthmark’s not America, Holly. That birthmark’s just you.

I had no clue what that meant. She had to explain.

Your mother wants the best for you, but she forgets how that should mean choice.

I’m not sure if my having had three boyfriends total quite measures up to the grandeur of that declaration.

Still, it’s a fact that Kyle, Aaron, and Zach had each fit my mom’s idea of a guy suited for me.

Hey, Grandma, I’d say to her now if I could, how about my choice of dating no one for a while?

“Nathan’s planning on UCLA, actually.” My father scoops up gai lan. “Eugene says he wants to stay local, but it’s also the money. Too expensive to head out of state.”