Your tiny, wrinkled hands are perpetually cold. Cold to the touch, cold when you touch things. Your dad imagines ringlets of fog rolling off your fingertips, like they're ice cubes on a counter. Your mom silently screams when you grab hold of her when you're nursing. Your dad incorrectly assumes your hands will warm when you dance with him. Your mom attributes your cold hands to your grandma Melody. Though your dad gauged that your mom's body temperature significantly cooled when you came around, too.
In the public library's gravel-edged courtyard, your mom fed you breast milk from a bottle. A loud, metallic clang rang out every few seconds as a boy in the adjacent children's creche jumped up and down on a giant boat sculpture. Clang. In the sunlight, your pupils shrank to pinholes, and your mom saw green at the epicenter of your blue eyes.
Your grandma Claire clings--without malice--to westernized standards of beauty. Barbie doll standards that are not just ingrained, but pounded (clang) incessantly into Filipino girls' culture. Tall, skinny, blond-haired, blue-eyed. Everything a Filipino is predisposed against becoming.
"What color are her eyes?" your grandma Claire asks on the phone.
"They're blue," your dad answers.
"Oh good," your grandma says. She is relieved.
"Well, ma, all baby's eyes are blue at first. That wears off after a few--"
"Is her hair still black?"
"Her hair is black, ma. It's thinning out a bit since her birth, but--"
"Is it straight or is it curly?"
"It's, um, it's pretty straight. I mean, when we dry her hair though--"
"Oh good, good. That's good." Clang.
