CHINARIZING

Her hands were human.

At least, they resembled a human’s. She could never be human. And that was for the better.

She was the United States of America in all of its adjectives and verbs. She could never fulfill each one. She was unsure whether she wanted to. Either way, she does as the United States does. She likes the name America. It was the closest to human she could get in her head. Better, she liked Amy. Nicknames were a daily part of American humans’ lives. But for now, “the U.S.” was the closest to human in her actual life.

“The U.S.” That is no name for a human. No human could be the the of their name. Sure, a human could be the Cathy in a space where other Cathys existed. But they couldn’t be the Cathy. The only Cathy. Yet, here she was, the United States. A single syllable longer than America. A whole two syllables longer than Amy.

It’s not like she’s supposed to feel this way, either. The U.S. sat on a hard wooden chair that might’ve seen the Civil War. She requested a cushion, of which a subordinate state sometimes quickly bought from a Walmart, dozens of times, replaced by dozens of dead brands over decades. Every wall around her was pristine. Not a single uneven layer of white paint nor a chip. It was fit for the most powerful country to have ever existed.

Today, she was reading, her human-like fingers picking up the page and flipping to the next. The U.S. read all kinds of federal documents, from those classified to never see the light, to the hundreds of pages of a Congressional bill that died in the House. She never got to attend such important conventions, of course, but she made do with the reading materials that none of the Congress members read.

None of that today. The U.S. was reading a romance book written by a human. “The cutest romance book of the decade.” - NPR.  It was written in 2017. “One of the best romances to ever grace a page.” - The New Yorker. This was her first romance book.

The U.S. could barely put it down. It was so different from anything else she had read. Her fingers flipped through the pages speedily, but sometimes she lingered on a page for a few minutes, or ten. She even wanted to put her ear to it, to listen to what the characters were saying. She wanted to hear what they heard. Still, the circular room only sounded of A/C and her own breath. The U.S. didn’t need to breathe.

She wanted to feel the main character touch her love interest when he was cooking dinner for them. He was making mashed potatoes. The U.S. knew that dish. She didn’t know that you could be close to someone while they were cooking.

With three-hundred-million people and all of the world connected, the U.S. didn’t eat. She didn’t need to. There was no time and Americans ate for her while she sat alone for most hours of the day. When all Americans are having a free day, that is when she, too, can be free. In this way, she was similar to the country’s bird—only eating on opportunity and good circumstance. Sometimes a state would call. Sometimes a city would talk to her. In two-hundred-fifty years of existing, the U.S. was sure a city, county, reservation, and state were no more biochemically different from her, a country.

The woman she was reading about lived a normal human life, if she had to guess. The U.S. tried to piece together what the average American was like from whatever was deemed “official” enough to be entered into governmental collections. She was unsure if books from decades past were still reliable. It was odd; everything written she could get her hands on, regardless of whether they were memoirs written in the 1800s by President Ulysses S. Grant or the latest Supreme Court ruling, was unremarkably remarkable. There’s no discoloration on the pages. The pages are stapled and bound together with zero error. Her romance book was already slightly torn at the corners, imprints of her fingers visible on a few pages.

Her eyes were glued to each line. She scanned the words with her fingers. Suspense took her as she began yearning. And finally, the line.

“I love you,” he breathed before diving into her lips as they shared their heat.

The U.S. felt a fire in her heart. She tried breathing to extinguish it. She breathed harder, inwards, outwards, deeper. Breathing so much that her fake lungs could explode at any moment and she would still be alive.

She stopped.

The U.S. didn’t want to put the fire out.

Putting a folded envelope inside the book as a makeshift bookmark, she began preparing for her trip to New York City.

Among files and magazines sat her beloved romance book. A romance book was not indicative of what the United States stood for, so the U.S. tried to hide it away. She carried a briefcase for it. Maybe she could pretend she had a good job, like a lawyer.

She supposed it should be an honor that the United Nations headquarters was chosen to be stationed in New York City. The wealthiest, biggest, and most dominant get first pickings. Does someone so dominant kiss another person? Do they take whatever kisses they want? The thought unsettled her. Her very own thoughts made her uncomfortable.

The U.S. shuddered in her beige chair. Although she was on the Security Council, often in front of every country, she had trained herself to make such motions practically invisible. Under the surgical bright lights and the vintage wooden panels surrounding her, the room made for all of her peers felt like a coffin shaped for her and most of humanity. 

“Good afternoon, United States,” Germany dipped her head towards the U.S.

“Good afternoon to you, Germany,” she replied with similar monotony.

Other countries passed by and she did the motions. Brazil handed her something and she thanked her. The United Kingdom complained to her and she entertained him before telling him that he had to go.

She thought about the book. Maybe it wasn’t actually the best romance book of the last decade. The U.S. desperately wanted to see the contenders for that title. There would be some clicking of pens and none of them would be writing a contender for the title of this decade’s cutest romance book. The United Arab Emirates near her would write about what to say next; she had a reputation to uphold and intel to collect. The U.S. felt a stone in her throat. She had a reputation, too. 

There would be no mishaps with the microphone. Each one would carry a country’s voice far. And no need for interpreters. The U.S. sighed when the human book she got her hands on was about learning a subject. Voices echoed but didn’t rest on these glazed, real wooden walls. They stayed within yet would be broadcast to the human world that they themselves weren’t allowed to indulge in. Instead, humans feasted on the countries’ speeches. They would dissect the U.S. and put her back together until she felt less human. They tried to do the opposite; each time they’re giving her more anatomically accurate lungs, a kidney that works better, and skin that blisters like real skin. But she knows they don’t touch her brain.

She thought about the book more. When would “cute” become different from “cheesy?” Maybe if she had human friends she could show them her favorite moments from the book. A scene where they sit in the grass looking up at the moon and stars, far away from the polluting city lights. If she were human, she could have thoughts on pollution that mattered. But in that world, the only thing that mattered was that it created a romantic moment.

France vetoed a resolution.

The United States fiddled with her fingers. So unconfident. So un-American.

Soon, the lights would dim. Later, the building would empty. Once again, it will be her and her domination only.

Except he was still here.

China sometimes sat near her as the only rising superpower of the Security Council. The others already had their time. She had guessed time was always going to favor him. China was old, but when she compared him to the pictures of human men she saw, he looked young. She also exceeded any human in age yet looked like the drawn woman on the front cover of her book—a recent college graduate who lived with her parents. The U.S. wondered why she and he and the others retained this eternal youth while the humans didn’t despite their best wishes.

He glanced back at her, as if he could detect her little motions, every insecurity she had. Their relationship was tense. It was tense because of all of the books she had read on their countries’ relationships. It was competitive because there could only be one, and the U.S. was the one. It was a rivalry because China was evil and communist and the U.S. was good and free.

He glanced back again. She almost got up to confront him. He started heading towards her. She picked up her papers and set them aside.

He straightened out a chair that was ajar from the rest. When she looked at him, she saw a country that looked so human.

“You didn’t need to do that.”

China was actually staring at her this time. He shrugged. “It’d be rude to leave it.”

“I guess so,” she said, looking into his dark eyes, “usually New York cleans up around here.”

“If I see something that needs fixing, I’m not going to wait for someone else to fix it.” He turned and began to walk towards a door.

“China,” she breathed.

“Yes?”

“Have you ever hugged someone?”

Stopping, he stood. He thought. Standing in front of a giant mural, his black hair was the centerpiece of the bright yellow paint.

Finally, he murmured, “Been a while.”

The U.S. knew he would want to leave. So she had to blurt out, “What about a kiss?”

He narrowed his eyes. “Where’d you get the idea from?” he asks in his accented English. She wasn’t sure what kind of accent it was. A human linguist could study it and find that it had the marks of a Canadian in British Columbia who spoke Cantonese as a first language. Or a Shanghainese speaker from the U.K. The U.S. wasn’t sure.

“A book.”

“What kind of book?” he pried.

“It was a… romance book,” she quietly confessed.

“We don’t have time for those books. We aren’t supposed to.”

“It was a book the president’s daughter was reading,” she defended. Now, she truly felt the feelings one would have for an enemy nation. But they were small and bubbling. The U.S. expected the feelings to be explosive and volcanic.

“So? She wasn’t reading it to advise the president.”

“Maybe,” she admitted, “but maybe some ideas from the book will stick to her and she’ll mention it to her dad, and then maybe he’ll implement them. In a speech. Or while talking to some other head of state.”

China sighed. He could never get into the whole thing—the whole living person thing.

“Look, you can end my plans in a single day, so I won’t tell you to stop. But if I was any other country, you’d be running away from here.”

She wasn’t sure if that was a threat. The U.S. had seen many, many threats. But this particular one wasn’t because a country did something wrong. Truly, truly wrong. Violent, evil, and infringing. Evils so inherent, she was sure she could never be human for they stuck to her skin like slime. But what kind of violence and evil did a romance book written by a skilled human do?

“Do you think kissing and hugging are nice to do? To feel?” the U.S. asked once again. She asked because there might not be an again.

“Humans seem to like it,” he responded simply. China sometimes used his hands—his fingers—to talk. Perhaps it was how Chinese was spoken. She knows American humans do that sometimes. But when he spoke in front of all the other countries, he would place his hands firmly on the podium in front of him. He spoke with only his eyes and mouth. Sometimes, he didn’t speak.

As they spoke, the U.S. got up, heading towards China. On any other day, she would have been the predator yearning for a catch. Their formalwear was meant to be stained with spit and blood, not a candlelit dinner at a luxury seafood restaurant.

She looked at him. The whole of him. “Why can’t we do it?” Her eyes creased just the slightest.

He shook his head. “We aren’t meant for that,” he looked up at the ceiling that concealed the open sky, “I think we aren’t supposed to do that. We fulfill a unique role that only we can do, and it’s for humans. Like this building. It’s not supposed to open up. It’s supposed to be private and regal and special for the humans inside it. It’s not bad. We’re quite unique.”

China must’ve sensed her shaking lips because he quickly added, “But we can still do it. We have allies and alliances and we talk to each other.”

“You don’t kiss allies,” she pointed out.

“No, no, you don’t.” He didn’t have many allies. But it’s not like the U.S. had any allies she wanted to kiss. She didn’t. She needed those allies to survive. She wouldn’t die for them. The romance book told her she had to feel like dying for that love.

 “Are we supposed to be enemies?”

He blinked at her. “No, no… I mean, yes, but I… don’t feel like you’re my enemy.”

They stood across from each other from the other side of the table. She walked closer. He got closer.

“We talk to each other too much to be enemies.” The vitriol in her human leaders’ voices when they talked about him was impossible to imitate. The romance book’s characters were similar to each other. China was different from her. They were too different to coexist. He was too different… she could not keep up this train of thought. Why was this impossible to fake in her head yet everything else seemed to possess her tongue with graceful lies?

“I think so, too.”

Maybe one of them would pull out a chair and they would both sit down and start talking for hours.

Or maybe they stand there, looking at each other. They try to make sense of their existence. Their hundred conversations that bear zero resemblance to the one they’re having right now. Remarkably unprofessional. Remarkably undiplomatic. This won’t help with microchip manufacturing and tariffs.

“How long have you been reading that?” he tilted his head at her, a step closer.

“Only since yesterday. I like it, a lot.” She allowed her mouth to crease upwards.

China was now close, close enough to brush away a stray strand of the U.S’ kinky hair and touch the side of her face. He was so close. “I can see why. It makes you ask a lot of questions.”

“And is that so bad?” At this point, she couldn’t stop a grin.

And he smiled. “No, no. Questions… are good. You talk too definitively sometimes.”

“And you acted like you have the answers all the time.”

He huffed and she puffed, copying him. She copied him down to his exasperated grin and the way he put his hands on his hips. “And I thought that I was the one ripping off everything you had ever made.”

The U.S. reached out with her hands, and China complied, letting her pull him in closer. “Copy me one more time, okay?”

He smiled with absence. But he stopped. “Are… we doing this?”

“Yeah. I just want—I want to know what a kiss feels like. I want to do it with—”

“You.” He finished for her. It occurred to him that this should be impossible to want. It was self-interested, yes, but mutually so in a way that couldn’t exist without the other. There were parasitic kinds, but both of them knew this wasn’t it. There was no parasite, and if there was, they’d both share it now, and begin a new disease.

Standing on tiptoes while he angled his head down to reach her, they shared a light kiss on the lips. China felt the U.S.’ lip gloss. They were both supposed to be the most powerful, biggest tribes of humans. Perhaps the most powerful the Earth has ever seen. But his lips didn’t submit to hers, and she didn’t dominate him by holding his hands.

It was done. The U.S. got to live out her romance book. China got to say “yes” to a question that will never be asked again.

The U.S. pulled away as the lights dimmed. She almost forgot about her briefcase if China hadn’t motioned to it. He wanted to be asked one more question that he could go on and on about.

Returning to her own desk, she looked back at him. He would proceed towards the closest exit and instruct a subordinate, either Hong Kong or Macau, to grab his things and help him out. She similarly would get New York City and New York to clean up after ushering everyone out of the building.

“U.S.?”

She stopped, without looking at him. Without spoiling herself. “Yes, China?”

“Call me Zhong.”

“Call me Amy.”

That had felt like another kiss that couldn’t be recreated in words. She wanted to ask him what it meant. Middle, but why her? She wanted him to guess why she had chosen that name. There was a desire to tell him he was correct regardless of what answer he gave, and then spring it onto him that he was wrong months later.

She thought of looking back at him to ensure this was real. This must be what human children feel like growing up and feeling new things. Here she was, older than any human, and learning an emotion known by fifteen-year-olds.

He was looking at her. Or, she thought he was. Humans, like many other animals, have a sense of when someone is looking at them. She guessed that it caused as many unsettling moments as it did awkward ones. She didn’t categorize this in either category, though.

Finally, she looked back. Zhong was real, and he was opening the door.