yellow steaming sweet potatoes

my mother’s favorite snack is sweet potatoes. no matter where she goes or what she does a steaming hot sweet potato chases fleeting worries away that comes with the deep blue dark of the night when she sits alone on the table bone weary and tired brown eyes downcast. every two weeks boxes of purple sweet potatoes replenish—stick them in the oven peel the outer layer to unravel sweet yellow insides piping hot. american sweet potatoes aren’t the same as korean ones she would say. orange and tasteless they need brown sugar melted marshmallows butter and even then they lack the particular taste of mother’s box of korean sweet potatoes. they could be too sweet at times so each bite would be complemented with the sour spicy red tang of kimchi—fermented cabbages soaked in chili pepper red flakes fish sauce grated garlic spoonfuls of sugar a dash of salt—we’ve tried yellow steaming sweet potatoes in all kinds of ways—diced up fried with oil soaked in sweet syrup with a spruce of black sesame seeds sprinkled as pizza toppings melted with cheese baked into cake. still my mother—eomma I call her—likes them best simply roasted in the oven purple skin burnt black peel it off hot hot blow on fingers little by little as she sits on the chair sweat on her arms and takes a bite of steaming yellow fruit rolling it around in her mouth to keep the flesh from burning her tongue.

I join her in the chair next to hers and set a plate of red kimchi down—eomma smiles and the corners of her chestnut brown eyes crease into bird wings—she sets a chopstick full carefully on the hot pillar and lets me steal a bite of yellow steaming sweet potato. her yellow skin and mine are the same her cinnamon eyes reflected in my own mahogany ones but inside we are different. different in our thoughts different in our generations different in our heritage different in our colors. my slanted eyes and yellow tint are seen as foreign among my white school mates and they ask me what kind of asian I am I don’t want to disappoint them so I say I’m korean and leave out the other half of me that is white like them and I let them stare when I bring what eomma has made me for lunch and they marvel at how little I know of american traditions. the cleft in my chin and the roundness of my eyes are seen as foreign among the korean strangers at our church and I don’t want to disappoint them so I pretend not to understand when they speak in korean around me and I smile in satisfaction when eomma comes and she says I am her daughter and then they look at me with shocked faces marvel at how well I know korean traditions. there is nowhere I truly belong because I am both the white hot american summers red popsicle juice running down my chin running wild through the fresh green of virginia mountains and also the raging hunger for spicy red cabbage savory brown soybean soup the rich golden heritage of a line of creased faces callused hands crinkled eyes glowing gentle loving pink beneath a blazing sweating orange sun.

warm golden yellow wraps around eomma and I in the dark blue night—a rite of passage which softens the mouth of her heart—we talk laugh cry in our halo of yellow even when sweet potatoes are all gone leaving fingers cold and sticky but insides warm welcome safe comfortable and I know that this is home this is where I belong.