Recently, I remembered my first American friend. This was the first friend I ever made after I immigrated to the United States. I would have been six years old. I was born three years after Tiananmen when the borders were closed so this would have been the late nineties.

She was from North Korea and had just moved to the United States like me. We lived in the same apartment complex back then or attended the same elementary school. I think it was both because I remember sitting with her on the school bus. Neither of us spoke any English. I didn’t speak Korean and she didn’t speak Chinese. We clung to each other like two six year old children who didn’t know how to tell the teacher that we needed to use the bathroom. We found ourselves in Iowa together, me from Henan and her from Chosun.

I still remember that girl. She was the only other girl with messy, badly cut black hair, the only other girl from clothes donated to the church or from the thrift store. She was the only other girl who didn’t have any toys, who the other kids didn’t talk to. We stuck out together. Whenever we could, our bodies would find each other and we would walk together or sit together.

I don’t remember her voice but I remember her face. We were two little girls who crossed a cold war line. We were scared of the same things.

Another little Asian girl went to school with us—a girl from South Korea. She seemed popular to me and my friend. I remember her cute leopard print fur coat which she wore in the winter and her perfectly trimmed bangs. Her parents spoke English. At the time, I thought that all of the other kids liked her a lot but, in hindsight, I never saw her with any close friends. I wanted to talk to her but I knew that my friend didn’t like her. I couldn’t understand why. She was so pretty. I wanted to be friends with her too because she was Asian like us.

“Of course they don’t like each other,” my mom explained. “One is from North Korea and one is from South Korea. They must feel very strange around each other.” At the time, I didn’t know what she was talking about. Where was Korea? Was it close to China? Where was China? Was it close to the US?

In retrospect, I wonder how that girl who was my first friend is doing. North Koreans are so dehumanized by most of the people around me. Sometimes, I wonder what some of the parents of my friends thought about Chinese people back in the sixties. North Korea and China are not the same—very different. I am able to visit my family as long as I have airfare and can take time off from work.

At the time, nothing made sense around me. I clung to my friend. Sometimes, things made more sense when we pointed out the same strange happenings. I still wonder what that third little Asian girl, the one from South Korea, thought when she saw us talking together and getting close. She must have felt alone too because she had just immigrated too. What was it like to be her that year, watching and learning what Americans think about Asians for the very first time?

I can’t remember how me and that girl drifted apart but I know it happened even if I don’t remember the exact events. My parents turned Christian. They had been raised in China during the Cultural Revolution when all religion was banned and they turned Christian. We started to hang out with people from church only. None of this made any sense to me either. Their actions felt like an emotional betrayal but I couldn’t figure out how or why. They were just trying to improve our lives, make us better as though our old selves weren’t enough.

Now, I understand more. The infrastructure for settling Chinese immigrants into Christianity exists here. Bookish white men go around with the sole purpose of evangelizing to Chinese immigrants. This mission makes sense to them and they believe that they are doing love’s work. I think that Chinese immigrants also understand these men in some way. Most of the oldest schools in China were built by the Jesuits. Chinese immigrants who don’t get on their knees for anyone will get on their knees for these white men and for Jesus. Since the churches in the United States are segregated by race and nationality is sometimes seen through the lens of race, me and that girl started to spend less and less time together.

Recently, I started to remember her and to think about her wellbeing. If our parents didn’t immigrate across a cold war line, we would never have met each other. No way. I remember once, that girl pointed into the distance. I followed her finger with my eyes. Our eyes met the same building and, for a moment, we saw the same thing.