For most of my life, my voice has cleared up any misconceptions. All-American, with accents only of Texas and lately a hint of Chicago, my voice has always been my "get out of ethnicity free" card, whether I've known it or not. If my teachers threw me glowering glances on the first day of school, I hastily raised my hand to clarify that, though different-looking, I was same-sounding. I thought that for the wayward traveler who happened to my family's door to sell Girl Scout cookies or collect a bill, my bland, American English might be a welcome respite from my mother's at-first-bewildering accent. And this thing, this sound I had that was genuinely common and regular, worked as a talisman against the evils that befall people who are thought of as different and therefore scary.

One day in eighth grade my talisman stopped working, at least for a few minutes. It was the day after the Oklahoma City bombing, and we had been herded to the front of the school under the pretense of a routine fire drill. Actually, the rumor went, a bomb threat had been phoned in. Those same "Moslems" who blew up Oklahoma City are trying to blow us up. Those Moslems suck. Someone must have realized that Those Moslems included me, and when they turned to glare, my voice got me nowhere. Before things could escalate, a teacher came around to maintain the lie that this was only a fire drill. It's only a drill, she said, it's not the Real Thing. Everything is OK. NEXT »

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