I am alone and the love of a thousand faceless mothers is better than no love at all. Tonight, though, the app is back on my phone. Ever since I married Max, the Chinese WeChat mothers have texted me constantly. The night the Chinese WeChat mothers reemerge, my phone freezes. He sometimes wraps me up until we’re tight and pressed like a sausage. But in the end, he always comes home to me. I sometimes ask him when he wakes up, and he always says he doesn’t remember. I have no idea if he dreams and what he dreams about. I’ve spent so much of our marriage alone with his body. When his work permits, he can sleep for thirty-six hours at a time.
#WECHAT THEME ONE PIECE TV#
He’s in China every two months for the reality TV show he produces. I only do the face swaps with him when he’s asleep. My husband doesn’t know about any of this. I see what parts of myself I’ve allowed to be stolen from me. The face swaps tell me more than regular photos do. I keep all of the face swaps in an album on my phone and scroll through them once in a while. I wanted to know what parts of myself were the most resilient. Soon, though, I began to think less about our future children. At first, I did them to see what our children would look like, if they would be pretty hapa babies, if they would be Asian, if they would be white, if they would be mine, if they would be his. I’ve been doing the face swaps for years. I wonder if we’re always just our own ghosts-our hauntings always being self-hauntings. I’m forced to stare at these sticky, horrid in-between versions of ourselves. I can’t power off my phone or exit the app. The scariest though is when the app glitches and the image freezes. I kept tapping the screen, willing the phone to see me. One time, the app didn’t even recognize my face and only recognized his. Each face swap is different-something newly stolen, newly returned. Other times, I get his thinner lips and he gets my thinner eyebrows. Sometimes I get Max’s eyes and he gets my nose.
The first time it happened, I couldn’t help but let out a tiny scream.
#WECHAT THEME ONE PIECE SKIN#
The phone screen lights up our faces and makes our skin look like shiny puddles of curdled milk. In the dead of night, I stretch out my right arm and hold my phone above our two heads. I only downloaded Snapchat for this filter. They bring up the fact that he’s white less this way, certain the mistake will undo itself with time.Įvery night before I go to sleep, I open up Snapchat and scroll until I get to the face swap filter. I lie and tell people we’ve only been married for a month. The night they tell me I’m pregnant, I’m in bed with my husband. Always looking forward to telling a new mother what can’t be done.
Always waiting for a husband to come home, for a child to come back to them. Legend has it that the Chinese WeChat mothers have always been a group, even before WeChat existed. They exist to make sure mothering happens for little Chinese boys and girls the way mothering should-exact, methodical, constant. The Chinese WeChat mothers are there to make sure things go right.
The Chinese WeChat mothers are even hidden to themselves. The Chinese WeChat mothers never go by their own names, only by their children’s, something like Meis_mother_828. Their profile pictures are usually zoomed-in photos of their children’s faces. They understand.” I don’t even know what the Chinese WeChat mothers look like. “They need to know you exist,” she told me when she returned. Without even asking, my mother downloaded WeChat onto my phone. My mother was added to the group when she went back to Shanghai to visit my grandma. I’ve known about the Chinese WeChat mothers since I was born but have never met a single one of them. The Chinese WeChat mothers were the first to tell me I was pregnant. Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, Fall 2019 Aura Estrada Contest judge A poignant testament and exploration of “in-betweeness,” of living in and negotiating worlds within and without. A refreshing interpretation of the theme of allies.