Fieldnotes (V)

FIELDNOTES (V)

1) I wanted to locate my roots in someplace sexy / when I took the DNA test at 24 / I wanted scientific evidence / that “exotic” could designate anything / except for a fetish

2) as the sum of my saliva on swabs / I was an ugly American kid / the brown girl hiding behind her books / & I built up my brain as compensation

3) before I rewrote the dictionary’s definitions into a marble notebook / before I watched the educational programming on PBS Kids / before I memorized decks of Brain Quest cards / I was born Bangladeshi with A+ blood

4) I wanted to know if my bloodline fucked white people & if that was why my family or what I knew of it was foscha & thereby beautiful according to the Bangladeshi eye

5) with my bloodline & me trapped inside helices / the DNA test confirmed my homogeneity / 84% Central & South Asian / 14% East Asian / the remaining trace results were dismissed / due to experimental error

6) I was just another brown bitch

7) when I returned to the country of my birth / I was 21 / I was bideshi / a foreigner in Dhaka’s streets / in my pink Banana Republic shirt-dress & black jeans / in my Americana marked fuckworthy / as aspirated consonants / fell from men’s mouths / I still don’t know all the bad words in Bangla / but I knew those words / in Dhaka’s hundred degree streets / I tried to dress modestly / to look like a real Bangali girl / I bought tailor-made Bangladeshi clothes / to pass as a real Bangali girl

8) before I left / my relatives in Bangladesh told me / that if I never opened my mouth of broken Bangla / & if I ever wore a sari or a salwar kameez / that any Bangladeshi could still look at me / & know instantly / that I wasn’t a woman of their country

https://shenandoahliterary.org/692/fieldnotes-v/