Read Online Inclination by Mia Kerick - Free Book Online

was special rather than different, as there aren’t many Asians
living in Wedgewood. To be exact, there are the folks who own and run Taipei New England , the local Chinese
food restaurant, and me.
    When I was four,
she’d come to the Holy Trinity Tikes Preschool and laid out on the floor in the
middle of our meeting circle the outfit I’d been wearing when they’d picked me
up at Logan Airport on the day I’d “come home to America.” All of my little
friends had studied the tiny clothes I’d worn, the bottle I’d held, and the
blanket that had covered me. Then she read aloud to the class Mommy Far, Mommy Near by Carol Peacock, an adoption
storybook she’d read to me many times on the living room couch at home. By the
end of her visit, all of the preschool teachers had been crying, but the
fifteen kids in the circle had simply seemed bewildered. I still remember at
the conclusion of her overly long explanation and the story, my fellow student
Kerry Curry raising her hand and asking Mom, “What is a- dop -shun ?”
    In kindergarten,
Mom had visited Wedgewood Elementary School on Gotcha Day, which was when we
annually celebrated the anniversary of when my parents had taken me home from
the airport. Each year we had a party, complete with gifts, balloons, and cake.
That year it had been little Lazarus Sinclair—olive skin and dark hair, wide
innocent-looking brown eyes—who’d raised his hand and declared, “No fair.
Anthony gots two birthday parties and I only gots one.”
    In grade school,
I’d managed to express to my mother that when she came into school and made a
big deal out of my adoption, it made me feel more different from everybody else, and not super special, as she’d hoped. So, Mom had changed tactics, and
at home we’d started nearly a decade of intermittent “South Korean Home
Projects” to explore “Anthony’s culture”. We made kimchi about ten times—I actually liked it but we couldn’t even force-feed it to my
sisters—we colored, sewed, and glued South Korean flags, and we made and played
traditional Korean board games like Yut-Nori . We
learned the Korean alphabet and how to count to ten in Korean. I even went to a
Korean Culture Camp one summer in elementary school and took Tae Kwon Doe lessons for three years of middle school.
    None of these
activities had done too much in the direction of making me feel connected with
my Korean heritage, but they had let
me know how far my mother would go to make things right for me.
    And now, in my
current effort to assimilate (I wrote this SAT-quality word on the palm of my
hand with a red Sharpie on my way over to E’s house, so I could check its
usage), I’m sitting in a movie theater beside Elizabeth O’Donnell, on my very
first date. Just over an hour ago, I picked her up and said a very polite hello
to her parents, who I already know well from church, and then we sat in silence
in my car for nearly half of the distance to the movie theater. It’s strange
that although we can discuss a wide array of topics at Our Way meetings, being
together on a date felt totally different. During the duration of seemingly
unending silence in my car, I continually cast glances at my date, and made an
honest effort to appreciate her freshly brushed strawberry hair and the way
she’d painted her nails pink, and I even made sure to sniff in the sweet scent
of her perfume. But David’s hair had smelled much better, if I was going to be
honest.
    Sitting properly
in the passenger street of my car, Elizabeth O’Donnell was the definition of
loveliness. And I was completely unmoved by her charms. But that had been early
in the date. I’d assured myself it was too soon to worry.
    When we got to
the movie theater, I bought our tickets and popcorn, and then she led me to
seats in the very back row, which very honestly had made me sweat bullets. My
first thought had been, “Oh, my gosh, she’s going to want to make out”, but
then I corrected my paranoid