Windows

At the traffic light, my aunt’s abyssal black ponds stare back at me in the rearview mirror. She clicks her tongue. When Wong Boh Yee grows up, her eyes will need to go under the knife. Open them up.

I flit my eyes down to my lap. She speaks as if her seven-year-old niece isn’t in the car, as if my mind isn’t yet an infinite sponge.

The car lurches forward. We’ll be late to Mass again.

Her eyes are her eyes. She wouldn’t be who she is if you changed them. My grandmother’s words massage the knot in my chest. My aunt rolls her luscious eyes and pulls into the church parking lot.

Every woman in my family has an opinion about my eyes. They tell me, you have your father’s eyes. One big one small. Single fold.

But my father couldn’t read a billboard without glasses since middle school. I have near perfect vision.

We quit the subject for now in the house of God, where there’s enough judgement to go around. I squeeze my grandmother’s hand in the back of the nave. She squeezes back. Still, I cannot shake their voices.

Open them up.

One big one small.

I pray to God he opens my eyes.

If you have epicanthal folds, the skin on your upper eyelids sags onto your lashes and conceals the pink, fleshy bumps in the corners of your eyes. You don’t have the coveted deep crease most white girls have.

Half of all Asians don’t have it.

My mother is in America. One day, my grandmother will be dead and I will leave Hong Kong.

My mother will say, pretty eyes are important. They’re the windows to your soul.

What’s wrong with my soul?

It’s called the Asian blepharoplasty because it’s the most common cosmetic procedure in Asia. Plastic surgeons in South Korea and China have perfected the craft through practice, driving Bentleys back to the high-rise penthouses we bought them.

I’m now a fifteen-year-old Chinese girl in the suburbs of Michigan. My mother sees her ex-husband’s eyes and tells me, soon, we’ll get them fixed.

We read the magazines at the checkout counter while standing in line. I see women’s “before and after” photos compared and ridiculed. FAKE!

Unlike Audrey Hepburn, whose Bambi eyes are centered on the cover of TIME’s special edition like a testament to her grace.

No, I don’t want to. That’s embarrassing, I tell my mother. She snaps at me for talking back and buys me more drugstore eyeliner and eyelid tape.

I try to conjure my grandmother’s words, but a dead woman’s voice fades in time.

Did you know Immaculate Conception was the sinless creation of Mary in her mother’s womb, not Jesus?

But no one told me every woman is immaculately conceived.

Windows to your soul. I pray to God he saves my soul.

You need to do it now. Do you want your future husband to know you had plastic surgery? My mother shot back. I’m nineteen now. I’ve been considering telling the girl who works at the same restaurant I do that I’m in love with her. I’m not dreaming of a husband I can hide from.

The surgeon in Beijing leans in and examines closely but he doesn’t see me. He points a pen at the inner corner of my left eye. We’ll make the crease, yes, but we’ll also need to slice out some of this skin. The latter is called an epicanthoplasty, commonly done alongside a blepharoplasty.

My mother stands behind the surgeon, arms crossed, nodding. I ignore the shiver down my spine.

I have dreamt of motherhood since I fed my first doll plastic cookies with chopsticks.

She had a tiny waist and big blue eyes that opened to nothing.

I didn’t tell her she was immaculately conceived, as all good mothers should. Instead, I took off her clothes and cut her hair.

On the operating table, I shut my windows but I’m awake. Lidocaine and epinephrine allow me to hear a painless slice through my upper eyelid.

Her eyes are her eyes, a sweet lady once said.

Tears swell the surgical site. The surgeon knows I’m afraid, but he tells me you cannot cry. Then he softens his voice. There, there, you’re doing good, you’re very good.

His words soothe me because I’m still a child.

My mother receives a similar surgery. She has more prominent eyes than I do but wants them enhanced. She tells me she cried, too, but the same doctor just barked at her.

I make a new friend who tells me, you have such pretty eyes. Flattery swells my brain as my soul winces in defeat.

I accept that I like my eyes. I let myself feel beautiful as others now insist.

But my old eyes, the ones that, centuries ago, would’ve insulated my corneas from snow blindness and the freezing winds of East and Central Asia, are still my real eyes. I remember this as I prepare to become a mother.

What’s within will outlive me.

You will see it in her eyes.

Windows good enough for my dear, immaculate child were always good enough for me.

And she’ll know her soul doesn’t need your gaze.

She will not cower at your stare in the rearview mirror.

She’ll say, thanks, I have my mother’s eyes.