The Eleventh Letter

 
Monday, September 24, 2001                                                                10:59 AM
Dear Ducky,
            My friend Tenille came over yesterday after work, and we watched wrestling with Matt.  The thing that is interesting about her is that she was also adopted from Korea.  She and her three siblings are all from Korea, but only she and her sister Tara are actually blood-related.   Their “parents” are white and divorced when Tenille was about twelve.  She is the oldest of the four, and is currently 27.  Tenille, Tara, Tyler, and Tim.  Tenille is very smallàshe only comes up to my shoulder.  She doesn’t remind me of you in any way except that she was born in Korea and her hair has the same texture.  We have never really spoken about her being adopted until about a month and a half ago.  She told me about working on her parents’ farm in Eastern Washington—like actually slopping hogs, milking cows, sowing corn.  Completely different from her big city life now.  And she mentioned something about how growing up, everyone said she was always real afraid of men, especially her father, even though he had never done anything to harm her.  And she has a horrible fear of being grabbed from behind and things covering her head.  She still cannot wear hoods on sweatshirts or hats.  She will just start shrieking and thrashing.  She says her mother once said, “Tenille, something terrible must have happened to you.”  What could have happened to her?  She came over when she was two years old, half the age you were when you came.  And still she is having problems and feeling the effect of her infancy in Korea.  She has trouble getting close to people and can’t maintain a relationship.  She is also an alcoholic.  Is any of that related to her being adopted?  I don’t know.  But she is definitely experiencing things that others do not.
            It’s funny, because I never think of you as different, I never thought you looked strange, or anything.  I always thought you were much more beautiful than me. 
            I remember the scar on your forehead, between your eyes—I used to say that it looked like the top of a loaf of bread.  Where did you get that scar?!

I am beginning to realize that Anne of Green Gables meant something totally different to you than to me—of course!  Why did I never realize it before?!  Anne was adopted, just like you, and Anne’s hair made her look different, just like you looked different.  Did you get teased like Anne?  Did you feel alone like Anne?  And here I have been, all these years, selfishly thinking of myself as Anne, when really she was you all along.  I am an ASSHOLE!  Ugh!  No wonder you never told me anything—I was too stupid to understand!  Of course we fought over Gilbert!  He rightfully belonged to you because he always loved you—not me, ugly, stupid Diana.  Although I have been trying to read Ben Hur like Anne did.  It is thick and a little hard to get through, even for me, the avid reader.  And I guess with you being Anne, you stealing and secretly ordering pizza made you “corrupt,” just like her.  Oh, Duk Sook, I am so sorry.  I am so sorry.

Hey!  Wait a minute!  What about the summer after I graduated from 8th grade and we were at the St. Leo’s Parish Picnic, and I went swimming, and you refused to go?  We were at Hanna Boys Center, the home for “bad boys.”  Was there something going on then?  Were you somehow involved with someone there?  I remember I had thought that you were acting very strange that day.  You seemed very uncomfortable.  What happened?  Remember I was flirting with that black kid named Eric, who kept trying to call me and we were never home?  I had just had my first kiss on the last day of school some months before.  I was finally a woman.  But you had already had sex and drugs.  I must have seemed so young, so naïve, so boring, so unbearable.  And it’s funny, because out of all of my friends, I was the first one to have sex at 15 (exactly one month after my birthday) and it was a long while before anyone else caught up.  Fifteen was supposed to be really young.