The white tiles of the living room were cool to the touch of my bare arms and legs. In between the gaps of the tiles were lines of grout, some light gray, some dark, some brown, and the uneven surface discomforted my forearms and chest as I lay down on the floor. My mind was not wary of my body. Before me was a miniature princess castle interior with pink and purple accents, built with detailed walls and furnished with minute tables and chairs.
While the origins of this toy set escape me, the bottom of my forearms retain the memory of imprints from the ridged floor and memories of playing with the set when I was in elementary school. The princess figurines of the castle were lost possibly as soon as I got the set, yet I can still remember fidgeting with a tiny orange-brown plastic mushroom in the castle’s kitchen. I wanted to find a mushroom resembling the very one of the castle, but it seemed to be an American variety I could not find in the Vietnamese dishes my grandma and mom served me. While the mushroom was simply a toy, I wanted to taste it.
This castle could have been my gateway into what it meant to be an American girl—a childhood of Disney fairytales instead of weekly trips to the temple to hear the philosophies of the Buddha. I grew up attached to movies like Ratatouille, One Hundred and One Dalmatians, Spiderman, and the first three Harry Potter movies—primarily because my dad kept a limited selection of Blu-ray discs and movies he pirated onto a flash drive. The rest of his DVDs were of foreign films, typically Chinese or Japanese. He put them on mainly to watch something on the TV that wasn’t completely unfamiliar to my immigrant mother or grandma, who weren’t invested in American media and didn’t know much English. Either way, his choice of movies rarely included ones with a female protagonist.
Along with these movies, I kept legends and myths close to my heart: ancient Greek gods, Santa, and the Tooth Fairy. I wanted to believe in magic, in things beyond the normal—to feel as though I was part of a special outside that only a select few could access. When I first tucked a fallen tooth under my pillow, disappointment sunk in me as I lifted the pillow to see my tooth still there. I should have done better. The next day, I shared my failure with my mom who then helped me clean and wrap my tooth in a tissue. After waking up the next morning, I jumped out of bed when I found a 20 dollar bill instead of a tooth. 20 dollars, for my tooth!
When Halloween time came around, I was unsure of what I wanted to dress as. Classmates, teachers, and aunts all proposed a princess costume, but the idea offended me: Princesses were not special, for they did not know magic. To spark an idea in me, my dad took me and my brother to a local Halloween store. I began by walking around inspecting the disturbing, mutilated masks of horror characters and bloodied scythes until an employee helped escort me to the kids’ section. There, I found princess costume after princess costume. My brother emerged with a Harry Potter costume, his bored face and sighs urging me to pick something already. I took a good look around, glancing past the costumes of Snow White, Cinderella, the Little Mermaid, Little Red Riding Hood, witches, unicorns, superheroes—until I saw Tinker Bell.
While I cannot remember if I ever watched the Tinker Bell movie on my dad’s unlawful flash drive before or after I got the costume, I know I was utterly fascinated in the Halloween store. There was an allure about the costume that called me to pick it up from the shelf and hand it to my dad for purchase. It was confusing since I hated the idea of myself as a princess, and yet I was very happy to be a fairy: the only well-known fairy in the Disney franchise.
When I donned the costume at home and showcased myself to my mom, she giggled in glee, perhaps because the clothes matched perfectly with the glitter TOMS she bought me to match with hers. My mom, brother, and I set out from the house with our plastic tubs covered in Halloween-themed graphic designs—mine purple and my brother’s green. It startled me to see numerous families out and about this early, already taking candies that could have been mine. But nearly every humble house in the neighborhood was made ornate with sheer strings of synthetic cobwebs, skeleton bones scattered throughout lawns, stacks of pumpkins with hyper-detailed carvings and those that were obviously done by a child, and fog that crept along the porches. I was relieved, expecting several houses to dish out endless amounts of treats. At this point of my life, my diet consisted primarily of chocolate, and I was most excited to collect a candy that I couldn’t find in classrooms, doctor’s offices, or the local Asian market: Tootsie Rolls.
The night left me with vivid memories—not of moments, but of feelings. The fear as I approached the doors of elaborate homes for a trick was thrilling. My smile brought laughs to my neighbors, whose affection then brought glee to me. Finding a good amount of Tootsie Rolls, doubled by my brother’s stash, satiated my post-dinner dessert for weeks to come. Tinker Bell is the sole Halloween costume I can remember wearing in my early childhood, not simply because I wore new versions of the same costume for several future Halloweens, but also because of the nostalgia.
Upon retrospection, the strange interests that marked my childhood were vital to my upbringing. I grew up with snippets of knowledge from the American media I engrossed myself in and from the Vietnamese traditions my family passed down to me. My unusual curiosities within Western culture stemmed from the mingling of my divergent backgrounds. I was obsessed with my toy mushroom because it was something in the toy set that was familiar to me, just like my mom and grandma’s food. My media consumption was male-centric because my dad did not know enough about Disney heroines to even show me their movies. The tooth fairy was so special because it meant that I was normal, experiencing what other kids did even though my parents didn’t know about the fable until I told my mom about it. I chose Tinker Bell in that store, for she was as magical as the tooth fairy and she was a singular magical heroine that made me feel greater for dressing up as her. With these odd fixations, I found myself in joy amidst a culture that was not fully mine.
