20. Cute is good enough
What I inherited in love, what I believed in fear, and what I healed in time
This one sits close to the body. It explores beauty, love, and the quiet harm that can travel through families without cruelty. 🎧 Voiceover is mine.
“Am I beautiful?”
“No.” She cracked open a chestnut from Shirokiya with her teeth. “Why do you want to be beautiful?”
I stared at her wondering why she’d ever ask that question. Why do I want to be beautiful?
“Because…” I didn’t know how to explain something that felt like asking why I wanted to have two feet.
“Beautiful causes problems. If you date a handsome man, you will always be worried he will find another woman because the girls will be fighting for him. You can never trust him.” She popped out the brown flesh from the chestnut shell and ate it.
“You’re not beautiful, Lani. You’re cute. Cute is good enough.”
It wasn’t until I was much older, did I realize how much those few years in the middle of the Mojave Desert, away from my Hawaii, changed me. Because we lived on the edge of a new housing development, I had no friends. I found books instead. I kept a diary and attempted to mimic the stories I read through writing.
Although, the problem with spending copious amounts of time at home, is you can overthink yourself into some false beliefs. You know, like there’s a problem with the way you look.
Finding solace in magazines, turned out to be a bad idea, it was my Instagram, reshaping what I thought I should look like. And while I saw myself in Mom’s movie star magazines from Thailand, I gravitated towards Teen and Seventeen. Material I could read, understand, and breathe a culture that checked all the boxes and then some.
But what I learned was I wasn’t pretty enough. I wore t-shirts too big to hide my body. I’d get super close to the bathroom mirror and turn the outside corners of my eyes up. I was trying to open them more and see what they looked like rounder.
Did all Asian girls do this? I ingested the knowledge that hapa or mixed-race Asians were considered a more desirable beauty. Or maybe it was because I was at the crossroads of I-15, I-40, and the old Route 66 that I didn’t want to standout in a sea of sand, scrub, and those long bone-colored horizons.
Mom told me to pull my nose. Even as a child, I laughed because I knew this could not miraculously reshape my nose. My habit was to smash it when it was itchy.
“Lani! Stop it! Pull your nose up.” She’d demonstrate by pinching hers.
“Mom! That’s not going to change it!”
“You never know!”
Of course, her “good advice” further confirmed that something was wrong with it.
When I was tugging at my eyes and contemplating the form of my mouth, I also discovered my profile in a three-part bathroom medicine cabinet mirror that allowed me to create a dual reflection. I was mortified to see how flat my nose really was.
Apparently, it was mortifying for others to see as well. In high school, I got into a nasty fight with a classmate, Roddy. This was after we returned from our Thailand vacation in 1989, so I was in full hippie mode, probably wearing some shapeless billowy dress. A classmate asked if I was pregnant.
We were getting ready to take a test, when Roddy sat in the next row over and started to harass me, so I told him to fuck off. Then he let me have it, he winded up and threw the pitch, the biggest ball of hate.
“Fuck off? Fuck you. Wait a minute, who would fuck you? Flat face, flat nose, flat eyes, flat chest, flat hair, flat dress, flat feet. You’re so flat, the walls are fucking jealous…”
So, after barely enduring this tirade of “flats” that didn’t appear to be coming to an end, I screamed at Roddy, “Fuck youuu!” To which Mr. Hu calmly responded, “Lani, if you can’t behave yourself then I’m going to have to send you to the principal’s office.”
It wasn’t until I was in a Physical Anthropology course in college that I learned how typical my “flat” face was. Our terrier-loving (she had a van full) grandma professor had laid out skulls from different ethnicities and discussed their characteristics. I learned how Chinese my flat nose was and suddenly didn’t feel so bad about it. A flatter nose was beneficial in particular climates, and hell, it was a racial feature, a racial profile (heh, heh). Could I continue to feel ashamed with what millions consider normal?
Mom always seemed to be an advocate for plastic surgery. I’m sure if she could inhabit my body for a week, I’d have the full Kardashian/Hollywood special with bigger boobs. Yes, she has asked me if I wanted them, too.
Anyway, all of these thoughtful suggestions seem to feed into this monster of an idea that the way I am is flawed, or not good enough, that something is wrong with me. But I don’t think my mom sees it this way. She sees cosmetic enhancement as a way to improve your looks and elevate your status in the eyes of others.
She loves to say, “change your looks, change your luck.” For her, these things are natural.
Not too long after Dad died, she underwent double-fold eye surgery. Of course, her eyes were fine before, but since I was six years old when she did this, I remember feeling horrified and afraid with the way Mom looked with her puffy eyelids and stitches. Fresh from my dad’s funeral, I was scared to lose her, and when I asked her what happened, said she “got her eyes cleaned”.
So when I was 16, Mom convinced me to get cosmetic surgery. She meant well, she always means well, but I’d regret this for the rest of my life.
I had a rather cheeky face, and at the time, we wouldn’t know that I’d lose all that baby fat as I aged. In any case, Mom thought a chin implant would be the solution to having a more defined jawline.
She took me to Chinatown, always a GREAT place to go for surgery, and I’m not talking about one of those historically preserved tourist Chinatowns. I’m talking a functional “pig-heads on ice, don’t go there at night, flower-sellers and fish smells” Chinatown. Certainly not what I was expecting, and I had no idea we were going, but Mom must have been on a mission to get her daughter new and improved.
I found myself in a doctor’s office while they all tried to talk me into it. Mom brought reinforcements, a friend of hers who happened to be in the neighborhood.
The doctor was mostly quiet, but I felt ganged up on, and wanted to leave. And just when I thought I had won an uneven battle, Mom’s friend asked the one question, the right question that put me in the patient’s seat, “You want to be beautiful, don’t you?”
After I quietly said, “Yes,” I was equally surprised to hear that the good doctor had time to do the surgery now. Like, right now. So I was ushered into another room, and placed in a chair like you sit in at the dentist. A female assistant appeared by his side.
The doctor numbed my chin with a syringe. I sat gripping the seat, not thinking, not knowing what to expect, or what would happen. Nobody explained what would happen.
Then he opened my bottom lip, cut open the skin where it attaches to my gums, and pushed in a small plastic implant that looked like a retainer into my chin, and sewed me up. He worked quickly. My eyes were wide with horror. I didn’t cry so much as leak — a silent, stunned reaction to the shock at being sliced open.
If there was blood, I don’t remember. They bandaged my chin up. And what followed next was the kind of shame you expect to happen to someone else.
Ironically, the implant didn’t reshape my face, in fact, the implant didn’t conform correctly and so a little piece stuck out. Imagine having something under your skin that didn’t fit, but was small enough that no one noticed.
I was told to push it, in hopes that it would eventually mold. The only other option was for the doctor to open me up, and I didn’t want to go through that again. So the implant remained, imperfect.
That Thanksgiving, Mom didn’t want to cook, so we went to the officer’s club on Hickam AFB and joined their buffet. I was embarrassed to have a big white bandage on my chin in public. My brother and Tim didn’t say much either. I came up with a weak lie, but no one believed me. It became something we all pretended didn’t happen.
I don’t know how much my mom paid, but she, too, was disappointed after the bandage was removed. I looked the same and no one noticed. Why would they? I never told anyone. I played with it from time to time, pushing in the side, until I accepted it.
And it was my shameful secret until I had to have it removed. After college, I went to see a dentist to get my wisdom teeth removed, the x-ray showed the implant as a mysterious blotch, and after watching Dr. Johnson stare at it from different angles, wondering out loud, “What the hell is that?” I finally had to have an open talk about what it was. As it turned out, the implant had been eroding my chin bone.
When I called Mom to tell her, she went quiet in a way I’d never heard before.
“They have to take it out,” I said. “It’s eating away my chin.”
More silence — long enough for me to wonder if she understood, or if she was trying not to.
“I’m sorry,” she finally said, soft and small.
The words landed, heavy. Too late to fix anything.
“Forget it,” I said, though neither of us would.
Dr. Johnson explained they would remove the implant along with my wisdom teeth. I was extremely grateful he found the implant in time. When he showed me how little of my chin was left, I was scared. I was petrified by the idea that I could have fallen, or gotten hit in the chin, and then what would have happened? Would the lower half of my face shatter like glass?
He was also understanding and calm, and I might have developed a crush on him. I might have blurted out during a visit, “Is it me, or is it hot in here?”
At the local hospital, I was put under. What a bizarre feeling, counting backwards, and then passing out, knowing you were unconscious and everyone was working on you. I woke up with dried blood all over my mouth. And as I was wondering why they hadn’t bothered to clean me up, Dr. Hottie showed up to tell me that everything went fine. When he started to wipe the blood away, I realized I had just gotten out of surgery.
Thankfully, my friend Jen was there to take care of me. She had to fight with the local pharmacy to get my medicine because they said she wasn’t me, and even though she explained that I couldn’t come, they still were assholes about it. Nevertheless, it was heart-warming to have her looking over me from my futon bed in my loft apartment.
Dr. Johnson warned me, though, that it would take time for the feeling to return to my chin. It’s weird to poke a part of your face and not feel anything. Yet, over time pinpricks eventually gave way to full recovery. Although my chin never looked the same. The skin puckers in places, a permanent reminder, but it’s out.
After I was healed up, I joined Jen and our mutual friends for a work reunion downtown. Unbeknownst to me, I had an admirer, who, I later learned, after spotting me from across Main Street ran across to get a closer look, and then proceeded to follow me for the entire evening.
He watched me have dinner with a friend, and then later when we joined the rest of the gang at a local bar, he boldly came up to say hello and introduce himself because as luck would have it, he knew my friends, too! But I barely glanced at him, I was catching up with friends I hadn’t seen in a while. I was also leaving Colorado in three short months, so I was hardly in the mood.
But he was patient, he joined our game of pool and we got to know each other through small talk. It was flattering and fun. Then he enigmatically disappeared. I was a little disappointed, but then I saw him again as I was leaving.
“Hey, I thought you left!” I exclaimed. “What are you doing?”
“Waiting for you.”
He was sitting by the front door with friends, making sure he caught me when I left. He was tall with long brown hair pulled back in a sensitive ponytail. Soft-spoken but adventurous, having hitched-hiked from Michigan to here. He turned out to be all those sexy things you’d want in a summer fling ~ younger and better looking than I thought I deserved.
Between our intoxicating love-making and compatibility, feeding me grapes, or tiny spoonfuls of honey, showing up at my apartment unannounced, he had this peculiar habit of nibbling my chin.
Thank you for reading and listening. If this chapter brought up memories or questions, you’re not alone. I welcome the conversation.
This essay is way beyond cute, Lani. It's beautful.
Oh man, LITERAL goosebumps at the end of this one. And I had read parts before!! Thank you for this gift of story--and of you, thank you for sharing yourself with us here!--as we close out the year.