Kate squirmed in the backseat, tugging at the seatbelt across her chest. She peeled the back of her legs from the moist leather seats and squinted as the sun glared through the window. Her cheeks were rosy from the heat. Leaning back in her seat, she looked over at her doll buckled in the seat next to her. Amy is what she called it. Her mom had given it to her for her 5^th birthday the weekend before. She said it was a "Mini Me" doll and was designed to look like Kate. It even had an outfit that looked like one that Kate’s had. Amy had long black hair with bangs cut straight over her eyes, round cheeks and partially slanted eyes. She ran her fingers through Amy’s black, matted hair. Some of the knotted strands snapped off as her fingers straightened through it.

"Where are we going? Are we almost there?" Kate finally asked.

"We’re going to the grocery store. We’ll be there soon, in….two minutes," Kate’s mom glanced at the reflection of her daughter in the rear view mirror.

Kate sighed, "How many ‘two minutes’?"

"Two minutes; you know, one, two."

"You say that every time," Kate whined as she stared at the rectangular mirror, waiting to catch her mom’s eyes.

"Do I say that all the time?" she asked in an over-animated amazement. She leaned into the turn as the car thumped twice over the parking lot speed bumps.

With her thumb, Kate pushed on the red square at her hip until the seatbelt popped out of the buckle. Her fingers hung loosely on the door handle as she waited for the car to slow down to a stop. In the brief moments of her wait, she looked up at the giant sign hanging over the center of the building. There were bright red lines crisscrossing each other in multiple directions. "This doesn’t look like Safeway," Kate said, worried that she would get stuck following her mom on another dreadful errand. "I thought you said we were going to the grocery store and then home right after?"

"I did. We’re at the Asian market. I need to pick up a few things and then we’ll be done with errands for the day."

Kate looked at the Chinese characters on the building. It looked like the drawing she made in class that her teacher called ‘scribble’.

"Let’s go. It’ll be fast. Come on, Kates," her mom said enthusiastically.

"Do I have to go in? Can’t I just wait in the car with Amy?"

"Sorry, Katie Pie, no can do," Kate’s mom had gotten out of the car and was looking through the opened driver’s side door. "Let’s get this over with and go home already."

Kate reluctantly opened the door. She slid Amy out from behind the seat belt, tucked her under her arm, and walked around the front of the car to her mom’s hand held out behind her. Kate put her hand into her mom’s soft, delicate palm, and they walked toward the building.

As the glass doors parted for their entrance, an overwhelming smell of mothballs draped Kate’s entire breathing space. With her free hand, she slapped it over her nose, taking short, quick breaths of the muggy air enclosed in the cup of her hand.

"Okay, we’re in now. The smell is gone; you can take your hand away from your mouth."

Kate responded, muffled.

"All right, enough, Katherine May Chan," her mom said slightly stern. "It doesn’t smell anymore. Now you’re just being rude…and to your own people."

Kate removed her hand from her face. She breathed the open air slowly, tentatively. Her nostrils flared as she looked around the crowded market. Stiff-haired old ladies shuffled past with dingy-looking baskets hanging from their arms, old men loudly cleared their throats anticipating the thick wad of mucous they were soon to hawk up, and little boys with bowl hair cuts giggled as their silver-capped front teeth sparkled in the grocery store’s fluorescent lighting.

"These aren’t my people," Kate said following her mom as her gaze remained unbroken.

"Well, they’re Chinese like us. When our ancestors came here years ago, they might have looked like that, too."

"Did they stink, too?"

Giving her daughter a warning stare, she answered, "No. And, it’s not the people that smell. It’s the food. The food smells a little different, that’s all. You’re just not used to it."

Kate’s mom had let go of her hand and was now pushing the shopping cart through the aisles. A bottle of sesame oil and a jar of plum sauce clanked against each other as the cart rolled along. Kate put Amy in the seat of the shopping cart and strapped her in. She noticed that one of her shoes was missing.

"Mom, I think I dropped Amy’s shoe," she said looking down the aisle behind her. "Can I go look for it?"

Her mom nodded and said, "Don’t go too far."

Kate removed Amy from the cart and retraced their footsteps. Her eyes stayed focused on the ground looking for the white plastic shoe. She saw crushed crackers, some raw rice scattered about, a blue bouncy ball heavily coated in dust, but no doll shoe. She was almost at the front of the store when a lady with a hairnet approached her, shouting in Chinese. Afraid, Kate shook her head and backed away. Another lady came over from behind one of the checkout counters, which sent Kate into a sprint towards her mom at the back of the store.

Breathing hard as she slowed down to a fast walk, Kate turned behind her to find that the two ladies had disappeared. She held Amy out in front of her, "That was a close one, huh?"

"Mom, guess what happened to me and Amy?" Kate said, taking a quick glance behind her again. "Some mean Chinese ladies chased us through the store. They were yelling at us, and I think they were trying to capture us."

Her mom continued reading the container. "Oh really? What were they saying?"

"I don’t know."

"So you know they were yelling, but you don’t know what they were saying?"

"Well, they said stuff like, ‘hong ching chong chop sui...’"

Putting the container into the cart, Kate’s mom looked at Kate with her lips pressed tightly together. "You really need to stop this. It’s not funny anymore."

"But, Mom, there were two mean ladies chasing us. I promise. Ask Amy!"

"Katie, listen to me," her mom said, bending down. "Stop talking like that about Chinese people. It really isn’t nice."

Kate looked down at the ground. She walked slowly behind her mom who had gone back to grocery shopping. Looking into Amy’s eyes, Kate quietly assured Amy that everything would be all right and that the mean old Chinese ladies weren’t going to get them anymore. Amy’s slanted brown eyes stared back.

"Why did you make Amy’s eyes like that?" Kate asked as she ran to catch up to her mom.

"Like what? They’re supposed to look just like yours, Sweetie. She’s a mini you."

"But they’re so small and almost closed. Amy can’t see much like that," Kate said still looking at her doll.

Looking at her shopping list, her mom answered, "Sure she can see. You can see with your eyes, right?"

"Yeah, but my eyes aren’t half closed like hers. I don’t think Amy can see good.

She can see only half of what I see because her eyes are all pulled back."

"Well, she was made to be Chinese, to look just like you. That’s why her eyes are slanted."

"She’s not me. My eyes aren’t ugly like that," Kate said angrily. "And I can see everything." Kate held Amy by the arm, dangling next to her legs.

Walking along the back of the market, there were tanks with bright orange-red layers of live, crawling crab, their big, thick claws tied shut with a fat rubber band. Whole bodies of fish, eyeballs still in the sockets, fins attached, scales covered in slime, lay on the shaved ice packed on top of the open-faced freezers. There were long skinny ones, big gray ones with whiskers, flat, oval-shaped ones. Kate made gagging sounds from behind her hand clasped tightly around her nose and mouth.

As they made their way past the seafood section, Kate caught a glimpse of the dark, palm-sized frogs lying dead on the ice. She buried her face in the back of her mom’s sweatshirt, breathing the refreshing, familiar scent of fabric softener. Her eyes were closed extra tight.

"They’re so gross," Kate said through the sweatshirt.

"Shhhh," said her mom. "Don’t be so loud about it. People might get offended. That’s an insult to their delicacies."

Kate tripped on the back of her mom’s heels. She opened her eyes, "Their what?" You mean this is like deli food for them? They make frog sandwiches in China?" Trying to avoid the freezer section to her left, she stared straight at the ground while holding on to a bundle of her mom’s sweatshirt in front of her. The ground was sticky making the bottom of her rubber-soled shoes sound like she was stepping on wet sponges.

"No. Not that kind of deli." Her mom rolled the shopping cart toward a glass-enclosed section of the aisle. "These are the foods that Chinese people eat. It’s not weird to them like it is to you. They probably think your bologna sandwiches are weird. It’s just different." She bent over and looked into the glass at a limp, naked chicken. Its beak was pointing at her through the glass. "They like this stuff."

"They do?" Kate sounded surprised.

"Of course. Why else would they eat it?"

Kate shrugged, "Because they’re gross. And disgusting. And weird."

"Hey," here mom pointed her index finger in Kate’s face. "Don’t say that. We’re Chinese, too, you know."

"No, I’m not."

"Yes, you are." She continued to explain, "My great grandparents came to America from China. When Grandma was born, she was Chinese, when I was born, I was Chinese and now you were born to me which makes you Chinese, too."

"No, you’re Chinese. Not me. I don’t eat frogs."

"Sweetie, I know the food looks different than what you’re used to; but, everyone’s different. I like tomatoes, you don’t. You think lemon sorbet and Butterfinger go well together; I get sick just thinking about it. See?"

It sounded so simple.

Kate watched a short, stalky man walk over, wiping his hands on his stained apron. He approached the other side of the glass and slid it open. He flipped his chin casually up at Kate’s mom, and she then pressed her finger against the glass, motioning with her other hand for just one of the pink slabs in the plastic grass-lined trays.

"What is that? I’m not eating that."

The pink slab was plopped onto the silver scale.

"It’s beef."

"But, what animal is it?"

"Beef comes from cows."

"Cows? Gross, Mom. We’re eating cows for dinner tonight?"

Her mom chuckled, "Yes, silly. Like we did last night, too. Those hamburgers we had were made out of beef."

"Why didn’t you tell me?" Kate placed her hand over her stomach and let her tongue hang out of her mouth.

Kate’s mom thanked the man, who handed her the meat wrapped in white paper. "You never asked. You liked it, didn’t you?" She tossed the chunk of meat into the cart.

"Are you going to make me eat frogs one day, too? Are you trying to turn me into one of them?"

"Kates, you’re being ridiculous. You already are – you’re Chinese. That doesn’t mean you have to like Chinese food. But you’ll always, always be Chinese. And don’t you forget that."

Kate looked at the man behind the glass. He was sucking on his teeth with his tongue. On his chin there was a round, dark mole with a long, wiry hair growing out of it. She touched her own chin.

Her mom turned the shopping cart around and started back down the aisle. Following close behind, Kate shielded her peripheral view from the frogs and fish by holding Amy up by her face. She draped the other hand over her nose until she caught up to her mom. Tucking her head under her mom’s sweatshirt, she breathed. Relieved by the smell of vanilla scented lotion, Kate waddled along staring at her mom’s bare skin. The light from the market seeped through the white sweatshirt, making the freckles on her mom’s back visible. She traced one to the other with her finger as she walked. She had drawn a picture of a snake from the belt loop of her mom’s jeans, past her bra strap and up to her shoulder blade, where Kate now stopped at the dark, almost green colored tiger. Kate had seen it there before but never really paid much attention to it. There were crisscrossing lines like those on the outside of the market and on the jars in the shopping cart. She scraped them with her pink-painted nail.

"Ow," her mom cried, twitching her shoulder. "What are you doing under there?"

Kate looked at the white scuff mark that ran over the algae-green characters beside the tiger. She could see a few crumbly pieces of skin where she had scratched, but underneath it, the drawing remained untouched. "Nothing," she answered.

The shopping cart came to a stop. She pulled her head out from under the stretched sweatshirt. Her hair was wispy pieces of black strands electrifying each other on top of her head.

"Katie, can you help me put the groceries on the counter, please?"

Kate sighed and tossed Amy in the shopping cart; the doll’s hard, plastic face hitting against the metal bars. She put the jars on the counter and watched it roll toward the lady. Last, she picked up the wrapped piece of meat from the butcher. It was soft, squishy and cold. She held it with her pinky sticking out and dropped in on the counter.

The lady at the register smiled at her, swiping it across the lighted red X on the counter. It beeped like all the other items did. She handed Kate a wet wipe and said, "That yucky, huh? You wipe-ah your hand. Dirh-ty."

Kate wiped her hands.

"You speak-ah Chinese?"

Kate shook her head.

"Say, daw-jeh. Mean tank you," she said, nodding her head at Kate. "You so pletty. One day, maybe you be Miss Chinatown." She smiled.

"Oh," Kate said.

"Daw-jeh," the lady reminded her.

"I don’t want to be Miss Chinatown," she told the lady.

"How come? You pletty girl."

"I’m not Chinese."

"Ohhhh? But you have ver-ly nice Chinese eyes. Small eyes mean you look careful at things, ver-ly smawt. Bling you good luck, lot success."

Her mom picked the bags up from the counter and handed two to Kate. They walked out of the market. As they walked, Kate’s mom said, "See, other people think your eyes are beautiful. Having Chinese eyes isn’t bad."

In the parking lot, Kate put the two bags on the ground next the car. She looked at her reflection in the mirror of the window. "Why do you keep saying that? Why can’t I just have normal eyes, like everyone else? I don’t want to be Chinese."

Kate got in the car and sat alone as her mom loaded the groceries into the trunk. Relieved to be finally leaving the Chinese store and hoping to never have to return again, Kate turned her head away from the market and looked at the empty seat next to her. There lay a white plastic shoe. She looked in her lap, and on the floor, and then outside on the ground, but there was no Amy. Frantic, she remembered Amy lying in the shopping cart inside the store and immediately reached for the door handle. Before she could pull it open and run inside to save Amy, she caught her reflection in the curved, silver handle. As she took a closer look at the miniature distorted face staring back at her, eyes looking as if they were pulled tightly to her temples, she remembered Amy’s eyes. They were similar to the eyes reflected in the door handle. Kate touched the corner of her eye with the tip of her fingers.

"All right, Honey. We’re done, we can go home now. Ready?" said her mom, now in the front seat.

Kate stared hard at her reflection and didn’t say a word.

As they drove off, Kate saw the Chinese lady from the register waving Amy in the air at the front of the market. Kate looked down at the white plastic shoe in her lap, then flung it onto the floor, under the seat. She leaned her forehead against the cool glass and solemnly waved good-bye to the ‘Mini Me’ and the lady.