My mother kept a perfect house
and never wore yellow.
“Most Oriental women can’t,”
she said. “It brings out
the worst in our complexions,”
making us buttercups, bananas,
canaries. The kids made banana
jokes in Chinese-American houses:
we’d been given the wrong complexion.
In my twenties, I received a yellow
cashmere sweater, thrown out
by a blonde friend. “I can’t
wear it anymore — my fat arms can’t,”
she lamented. The cashmere, if banana-
colored, felt as chocolate tasted. Out
of my mother and father’s house,
I tried on the proffered yellow.
Nothing exploded. Complexion