TIFFANY: I’ll be a great mom. For sure my baby will look like me. She won’t be in rags and have ants all over her face, like when my parents got me. She’ll be my only blood relative that I know, and I’ll love her forever and ever.
DR. ROSEN: Don’t you think your mom and dad will love you forever and ever?
TIFFANY: Of course they will. But I don’t know if I can explain this. I love them and they love me, but it’s like Ariel said. It bothers me that I don’t look even a little bit like them. They both have blond hair! Everyone in their families has blond hair. We spend a lot of time visiting relatives—and there are a ton of them—in Indiana. Once, at Thanksgiving dinner, when I was, like, six, I asked, “Why am I the only one here with a tan?” Uncle Jack answered, “You’re our little yellow one.”
JESSICA: You’ve got to be kidding! Jesus Christ! That seriously sucks.
HALEY: You must have been really hurt. It would have hurt me.
TIFFANY: But you haven’t heard the worst part. That label—yeah, another label—stuck. Now the Indiana relatives call me Our Little Yellow One. Mother and Father have asked them about a billion times to knock it off. Forget it. They think it’s cute. But the thing is, I’m not just tan in Indiana. All my parents’ friends are white. Nearly everyone in our church is white. I hate it. I stick out like a sore thumb. It’s really hard because it makes me feel like I’m not a part of them.
ARIEL: I’d love to go to China to find my birth mother.
JESSICA: Don’t bother. There are like a bazillion people over there.
DR. ROSEN: Ariel, you said you wanted to find your mother. What about your father?
ARIEL: Yeah, I’ve always wondered about both my birth parents. Who are they? Where did they meet? Do I have a brother or sister? Grandparents? Aunts, uncles, cousins? Why did my mother give me away? Does she think about me? Has she ever looked for me?
DR. ROSEN: I notice that you shifted again to just your birth mother. Why do you think that is?
JESSICA: I’ll answer that one. It’s not hard, Doc. We grew inside our mothers, and they threw us away.
ARIEL: If I went to China, I’d want to look for my mother, even though I know it’s hopeless. That upsets me a lot.
JESSICA: You’re alone in the world like the rest of us.
HEIDI: But now we have each other!
JESSICA: Have each other? I don’t even know you! You and the other one—the brainiac—are starting seventh grade in the fall. Am I right? Those are the suckiest years ever.
TIFFANY: Yeah, mean girls.
ARIEL: It’s still really bad for me, and I’m in tenth grade. We have a ton of Asian kids at my school. Who’s studying in the library instead of hanging with friends during lunch? Who’s getting the best grades? Who’s skipping parties and other social activities to do an extracurricular? Who’s going to get into the best university? We aren’t competing against all the kids to get into college. We’re only competing against the other Asian kids, because we have to check that particular box on our college apps.
TIFFANY: At least our last names aren’t Chinese. A girl in my school—Chinese, born here, with immigrant parents—asked if she could change her last name to Smith or something like that so she would stand out. I thought that was pretty funny. San Marino High is mostly Asian now. I’m Asian, but I’m in the minority, because the nonadopted Asian kids don’t consider me one of them because I grew up with white people. To them, I’m basically white. Those kids are really judgmental.
JESSICA: And what about the white kids? They think I earn my grades easily because of my race. They don’t know how hard I work.
HALEY: I came home with an A-on a history test, and my mom went all crazy. She’s like, “If you want to get into a good university program you have to work harder.” “And if I don’t?” “Then you’ll end up like . . .” Well, it isn’t anyone you would know. Anyway, I said, “Mom, I’m in the sixth grade. I got an A-. That’s all. I promise to do better next time.”
DR. ROSEN: It sounds like you all are talking about two different things. Academic pressure— JESSICA: It’s more like expectation, like I said before. We look Chinese so we should be completely obsessed and working our asses off like those kids with Chinese parents.
DR. ROSEN: I stand corrected, Jessica. My other point has to do with social pressure.
JESSICA: Like, who has richer parents?
TIFFANY: It used to be the old-money Pasadena girls, but now it’s the children of millionaires and billionaires from China.
JESSICA: Who gets a car right when they turn sixteen? And what model is it?
TIFFANY: A BMW or a Volvo or a Nissan?
ARIEL: I got a car when I turned sixteen— HEIDI: Really? What kind— JESSICA: Who has the best house?
TIFFANY: A mansion on Oak Knoll. One of those big brick ones. Old money.
JESSICA: Let me guess. That’s where you live, Haley.
HALEY: Nearby on Hummingbird Lane. My dad inherited— DR. ROSEN: Let’s try to stay focused on the social implications. The effect all that has on you— TIFFANY: Okay. So are you in a house where a bunch of Chinese immigrants are still living out of plastic bags or in one of the gaudy castles the Chinese billionaires have purchased? You mean like that?
DR. ROSEN: Hmmm . . .
TIFFANY: Father says the poor immigrant Chinese are feeding off our American hospitality, while the rich are probably a bunch of criminals—like Chinese mafia or something.
JESSICA: What a bunch of narrow-minded bullshit.
TIFFANY: I didn’t say I believed that— HALEY: My mom and dad say that, rich or poor, those people worked really hard to get here. Everyone wants the American Dream, just like my birth mother wanted for me. That’s why she gave me away.
DR. ROSEN: I’m hearing everything you girls are saying, but can we think about social pressure in a more personal way? Jessica, earlier you cautioned Haley and Heidi about what’s coming for them. What did you mean by that?
JESSICA: Oh, you know, the usual. It’s all about who’s popular. Like, what girl is the most stylish? And that changes all the time. Did you come from Hong Kong, Shanghai, or Singapore? Those girls? Wow! Rich and mean! Or did you move here from West Hills, Chino, or, like, the real boonies?
TIFFANY: And, who’s getting invited to house parties? Who’s being left out?
ARIEL: Who’s hooking up? Jessica, you might know a little about that one.
HALEY: I have a friend named Jade. The kids in school now call her Jaded.
ARIEL: That’s harsh! And you’re still just a kid.
HALEY: I heard my mom tell my dad that Jade earned her nickname the old-fashioned way, whatever that means.
JESSICA: Blow jobs.
ARIEL: Geez, Jessica. Can you lighten up a little? Even I don’t need to hear— TIFFANY: For the Chinese girls in my school, no question is more important than the color of their skin. Who has a complexion as pale as the moon? One girl, a Red Princess and the great-granddaughter of someone who walked side by side with Mao on the Long March—Okay, we get it. You’re a big deal!—wins that prize hands down. I know lots of girls whose mothers take them to doctors for treatments to lighten their skin.