Mixed Breed

by Sora Hong

When I am in middle school, my aunt brings home a puppy named Laroo. He is a mutt she found in a cage full of geese, who honked at this strange furry Other and pecked and pecked at his little paws until he was yelping. Even after he is freed from the cage, he will reject chew toys and bones and shoelaces to gnaw at his own paws instead, until they bleed and stain his feet-fur muddy red. I bite my nails. For seven years, I am the only Asian among the sixty children at my Lutheran private school. My classmates hook their unbitten fingers into the corners of their eyes and tug up. My classmates shriek at the salty anchovies in my lunch box. My classmates are my classmates for seven consecutive years, and still ask sometimes if I am Chinese. I use the napkins my father lovingly folds around my chopsticks to dab at my bloody cuticles. I go home and watch Laroo chew his paws on the dirty Fox News living room carpet. Home is my white grandparent’s house, and they wear shoes indoors. No one can make them stop. No one can make Laroo stop. My scabby fingertips try to pry his muzzle away, and he snarls at me. It makes me anxious that he is hurting himself, so I gnaw at my nail beds. Laroo licks the blood away for both of us. My dad can’t make me stop, so he packs more anchovies in my lunch box and asks my mutt mouth to chew on those, instead. 

Laroo and I go on a walk together in those North Seattle suburbs. Nine years later, I will drive wobbly, driver’s permit circles around these church casserole cul de sacs with my island-brown father in the passenger seat. Something white and geriatric, leering between the blinds at my father’s smiling face, will see Fu Manchu and cry Yellow Peril, and a police car will tail us for fifteen minutes — silently escorting and deporting us from my childhood neighborhood. But for now, I am eleven and trembling with Laroo as a white stranger asks us what we are. What are you? A mutt. My mom is white. Pomeranian, maybe a little shih tzu. A rescue? No — I wasn’t adopted from China. But my aunt found him in a cage. There were geese in the cage. My parents are married. Where are we from? We live two blocks away. No, like, where we’re really from … Okay. Well, I was born in San Diego. The cage was in Eastern Washington. My dad immigrated from an island off the coast of Korea. When he came to Alaska, he was a 6th grader, and when they served him Jello in the cafeteria at school he didn’t know it was food. I don’t think it should be food. I don’t know where the geese in the cage migrated from. My dad is brown and has a mustache and an accent. You know about him now, so please don’t call the cops when we circle your cookie cutter homes in a Hyundai. That’s not Fu Manchu in the passenger’s seat, that’s Charlie Chan, and I need him to show me how to drive roundabouts so I can take Laroo to the dog park. 

But the stranger doesn’t listen, and I don’t practice driving again after that. I resent my ability to drive freely in a city where my father can’t. My permit festers in my pocket. I joke about it with friends, make it more intersectional. You know what they say! Gay people can’t drive. But that’s later. For now, I am on a walk, and after our interrogator slinks back into their milque toast upper middle class mansion, Laroo shits on their lawn. I don’t pick it up. We return home to my white grandparents’ house. Because the smell agitates my grandmother, my father isn’t allowed to cook fish. We have to settle for the store bought anchovies. Laroo naps in my lap as I read gay fanfiction with my grandfather’s boxy computer monitor and dial up internet. My grandfather is a Lutheran pastor who barrels through the Sodom of Seattle, Capitol Hill, without once glancing at the rainbow flags that slip past his window. He likens his fear of being salted by a higher power to that of Lot’s wife. I liken his fear to that of a slug. His computer is in a storage shed in the backyard, and it’s November. My nails are cold as I nibble at them, but my lap is warm from Laroo and my chest is warm from the stories. Velma and Daphne kiss in a haunted house. Ash Ketchum and Gary Oak share a tent during their Pokemon journey and hold hands in the dark. Shang loves Ping before he loves Mulan. These stories are immune to salt. I’ll discover that I’m immune to salt, too. I’ll learn how to salt anchovies, how to make homemade Korean side dishes. But that’s later. 

For now, I go to school and crunch at my anchovies and nibble at my fingertips, and afterwards, Laroo and I go to the arboretum to stroll along the docks. The sight of Lake Washington inspires in Laroo uncharacteristic enthusiasm and with his leash still attached, he vaults over the raised edge of the docks and into the water. He is a horrible swimmer, and the happy underwater wagging of his tail impedes his doggy paddle. I am afraid he will drown. He grins at me. His dark eyes, usually watery with fear, shine with simple, animal joy. He is too short and weak to leap back onto the docks, so I scoop him up and out of the water like a baby. Watery engine oil and duckweeds and dog slobber drench my shirt. He shakes the water out of his fur and laughs at me. I try to scold him, but the lakewater has washed the blood out of his paw-fur and left his feet shiny and white and dancing on the docks. I don’t scold him. I laugh with him. I stomp my feet against the docks to his manic-happy rhythm. I go home and I give him a treat, something with salt in it. Maybe a handful of anchovies. 

But that was before. Now, I crouch on white North Seattle kitchen linoleum and meet Juno. Juno is a rescue mutt. Juno could be Laroo’s twin. Juno is twice Laroo’s size. Juno is Laroo allowed to grow outside the confines of the goose cage. Laroo is dead. Laroo spent the last four weeks of his life snarling when we located his internal collapse with gentle, dowsing rod fingers, when we carefully catalogued where we could pet him. He snapped when we touched his belly. He worked his feet into ruddy red pulp. He didn’t want to be compartmentalized. I snarl into my cuticles when my Korean grandparents ask me if kimchi is too spicy for me. I read fic about women in distant star systems holding each other and imagine they look like me. Sometimes I get territorial over Mitski. 

But that was before. Now, Juno is the ghost of what Laroo might have been. She puts her snow white feet in the air and pedals them in easy surrender. I pet her belly, and I go to the Queer Person of Color Alliance on campus. The room is small, but not like a cage. There is room to grow there. No one pecks at my feet. We show each other our bellies. We recommend fic to each other. I smile as soft as Juno. We have potlucks sometimes, so I squat on the kitchen floor with my mother and learn how to salt Korean side dishes to life. The creator of Fu Manchu died of an Asian strain of the flu. I renew my driving permit. I write stories about women who look like me, holding women who look like them. I dance on the docks. My nails grow out. My cuticles heal neat and pink. I scratch at Juno’s belly. That’s now.

About the Author

Sora Hong is a Seattle-based Korean American writer, artist, and student. As a biracial, bisexual second generation immigrant, she does everything in twos. She is currently finishing a degree in English and Cinema/Media Studies at the University of Washington and researching anthropomorphic “half-breed” animal narratives as allegories for the mixed race experience. When she isn’t channeling all those twos into art, she enjoys reading comic books, tide pooling, and watching terrible talking dog movies from the early 2000s.