My eighty-year-old Korean mother bought a trailerin a 55+ Florida trailer park. She has always seemed morecomfortable around white folks than other Koreans,delights in their abundance of potato salad and poke cake,appreciates that so many of their children did notgo to Yale or Harvard, is awed by and basksin all of their shameless, American imperfections.When she came home from a six-week stay and I askedher So, how was it, her face lit up— Oh! I was the only Oriental,so they just loved me! My mother, an adorable curiosity.So small, so precious. Something to behold.Unbeknownst to her, I too have a trailer park story.When I was fourteen, I got wasted and then trippedon acid for the first time. My friend Ondine and Idrove down to the trailers off Woodward, pastSix Mile Road, looking for pot. I was five the first timesomeone I loved called me a chink. Twelve the firsttime a grown man said he loved me then shoved histongue down my throat. Maybe that's why I amalways desperate to stray from whatever flockI am told I belong to, wander insteadto those who see me but keep their distance,those who do not care that I can only flybackwards. I got my first tattoo that nighton someone's bed—a hummingbird on my right ankle—a choice I was too drunk to remember making.He held the tender bulb of my heel in his handlike an offering while everyone else watched.Hummingbirds don't migrate in flocks, choosing,rather, to travel hundreds of miles on their own.When they find each other, they are called a glittering,a shimmer, a hover. My mother is homeand I meet her at the door so she can watch meretreat, hum my wings so fast I can almosthide behind my own heartbeat.