Litmus

 
ONE: 

In November, you are dancing in a club with your partner of ten months. The music is too loud, and you are sober. A grown man approaches from across the room. He says: “Sorry to interrupt, but I just had to ask. Are you Asian?” His voice is punctuated by more period than question. You stare at his mouth, how it closes around his guillotine teeth, unable to open your own. 
 
[Litmus is a pH indicator paper treated with extracted lichen pigment. While its dyes originate from various species across the world, much of today’s lichen is sourced from California. When dipped into a liquid sample, litmus paper transforms, turning red in acidic conditions and blue in alkaline ones. Pure water doesn’t change the paper’s color.]
 
 
TWO: 

You are dancing in a club with your partner. A man grabs your bare shoulder and towers over you—a Jenga column ready to tumble. “Sorry to interrupt, but I just had to ask. Are you Asian?” Reflexively, you shake your head no. You know better than to be honest. He walks away. Your partner asks: “Did he just ask if you’re Asian?” You nod, but have otherwise forgotten how to move. 
 
[The first known use of litmus was around 1300 by Catalan alchemist Arnaldus de Villa Nova. Now, imagine it—the wry smile of a man as he whispers, “What are you? What are you!” into a metal beaker. The slow dip of lichen into an ambiguous solution. His impatient eyes fixed to the light, the litmus still wet and dripping between his fingers. His furrowed brow, his teeth, all contorting. The color transforming into something unexpected.]
 
 
THREE: 

He just had to ask. You shake your head no. You feel it in your gut. The guilt for this reaction, for changing color on command. But your first thought: the Atlanta spa shooting. Your second: Pulse. Your third: every person who has ever told you that he prefers Asians. He dislikes that you have dipped into your whiteness. He refuses your attempt to pass. “Really? You’re not Asian?” Still more statement than question. This time you say it. “No. No, I’m not.” Disappointed, the man walks away. He understands, but your partner does not. “Did he just ask if you’re Asian?” You nod. Your partner shrugs and resumes dancing without another word. Overhead, the warm lights wash blue while you stand still through the thrashing. 
 
[Litmus can chameleon for reasons besides acid-base reactions. When exposed to chlorine gas, for instance, blue litmus paper whitens. In this case, the dye is bleached from hypochlorite ions, not acidity. The litmus is only responding to its surroundings. A chemical reaction, an automatic response.] 
 
 
FOUR: 

The man. You shake. He asks. “No.” He begins to say more. Ask more. Intrude more. Flash more of his white teeth. You look to your partner in a panic. Someone—not her—interjects. “Leave her alone! She does not want to talk to you!” The man recoils, then sulks away, hands up in the air. His shrinking silhouette feigns innocence. The withdrawal reflex is just a chemical reaction. Neurons scream at other neurons until the pain is gone. You need to go home, but stay put.
 
[Six centuries after its scientific discovery, the litmus test became embedded in everyday language. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the first known use of the phrase was in 1913. Other words and phrases coined that year include: voyeurism, teenager, sex appeal, segregationist, nonfeminist, close-up, action potential.]
 
 
FIVE: 

On the walk back to your partner’s apartment, neither of you mentions the man. You shake under the streetlights. Maybe it’s just the fatigue. Or the cold. You try to visualize his face in your vaporizing breath. You wonder what he wanted from you. Maybe this is all a test. You tell yourself to just keep walking. 
 
[In contemporary use, a “litmus test” is a situation in which a single factor—a belief, event, or fact—is decisive. Though reductive at times, everyone uses a version of this test, even you. One way or another, you must dip your toe into uncertainty. You must test your surroundings, gauging if it is safe to show your true colors.]
 
 
SIX: 

The next morning, you tell your partner you are still bothered by the man in the club. You say you need to talk about it. You question her action potential, her potential to act. Her neurons—were they screaming, too? You want to ask: “Why did you just stand there and watch?” You don’t mean to test her, but it comes out as: “What did you mean when you said the first thing you noticed about me was the shape of my eyes?”
 
[Since the mid-twentieth century, the litmus test has served as a decisive ideological question in American politics. Used to determine a candidate’s suitability for office, it’s applied most often to potential judicial nominees. Like its scientific counterpart, this litmus test is not without error. In 1953, for instance, California Governor Earl Warren was appointed Chief Justice to the U.S. Supreme Court. Although Warren was chosen for his “middle-of-the-road philosophy,” he went on to oversee one of the most liberal Supreme Courts in the country’s history.] 
 
 
SEVEN: 

For a moment, you think but do not say: “And last summer, when you called Earl Warren’s support of Japanese incarceration ‘complicated.’ What did you mean, exactly?” 
 
[When Executive Order 9066 came, a reaction to Pearl Harbor and decades of anti-Japanese sentiment, there was no litmus test for who was Japanese. No singular consideration of eye shape or inherited language, ideology, or citizenship. No clear indication of who was and was not a “threat.” Still, neighbors watched this disorganized adjudication. They watched from bridges, from kitchen windows, from corners across the street. They watched as mixed families were torn apart, children orphaned. They stood by as anyone with “one drop of Japanese blood” was shoved onto trains, lives and livelihoods abandoned, and forced into the desert. Some ballooned their eyes in horror. Others squinted through splayed fingers, before walking away altogether.]
 
 
EIGHT: 

Reflexively, your partner says: “You know I didn’t mean it like that.” 
 
[In the California desert, the lichen grows. It splays its yellow hand to grope through fevered desolation. It crawls upward, across sandstone and sheets of sunlight, sprawling in a perpetual test of its conditions, fighting desperately to belong.]