I’ve been asked several times about what I think is my best feature. I have to say that I honestly don’t know. The best part of me is probably on the inside, manifesting itself only in the darkest of hours, when I think I’m alone in the world—the little child that still believes in magic, wonder, and unending hope.

But people have found fascination with various physical parts of me. My mother, from day one, was in love with my eyebrows. My eyebrows. She would trace her finger along the line of one, from the inside to the outside, smoothing the arch of hair as though to paint it in. She would compare my eyebrows to those of Brooke Shields, and she’d gush about how perfect they were.

My mother was also fascinated with my skin and hands. Kines, kines, she’d say in Tagalog, while smoothing her hands along my upper arms. Soft, soft. Then she’d hold my hands in hers and admire the shape of my fingers for a long, long time. She bade me take care of them because I had such pretty hands.

In the seventh grade, I hung out at the pool with my girl friends, and the boys they invited were crass enough to rate us in our bathing suits. I actually got a 10 for my derriere, which baffled me because I didn’t much like the shape of it.

In the eighth grade, I could not stop staring at my friend’s new boyfriend Eric. He remarked to my friend later that I had eyes like a cat’s… huge, dark, and ever so watchful.

A boy named Mike in my ninth grade drama class was once actually stunned by my teeth. My teeth. The entire drama class was on a field trip to see a play at the university, and riding the bus in the twilight dark, it seemed only natural to joke with my friends and have a good time. Mike, however, swore that every time I smiled or laughed, my teeth would flash white in the darkness and light up our little area of the bus. It embarrassed me because I always thought that my teeth were too big, so I ended up keeping my lips closed tightly that night out of self-consciousness.

In my junior and senior years, it was the hair. Romeo, who sat behind me in Chemistry, would stand behind me during lab and breathe in the scent of my hair. They smelled like strawberries, he said, but what he was actually smelling was my cheap shampoo and conditioner. That same year, hairdressers and close friends would croon over my hair, saying how thick and how soft it was, how healthy and how long. Why didn’t I leave it down more often? they would ask, and I would tell them it was a pain in the butt. I trim my own hair these days, so I never have to hear that sort of thing any more, but my hair has definitely been a fascination for many people.

In the cheersquad—both in high school and in college—the other girls would remark on my legs. Legs, they called me, because whenever I did a Russian jump, that was all anyone noticed. It always seemed odd to me because I always thought of my legs as stick thin and straight as a toothpick, my bony knees the only curve on those lines. My mother, too, always liked my legs, most especially because her own legs are just little bit knock-kneed.

In my second year at college, one of the tenors in my singing group could not stop staring at a vein in my neck. He said himself that he was fascinated by it and wanted to trace it, and all I wanted was for it to go away.

These days, for the man who feeds the lady of the house, one of the cutest parts on me is my pair of feet. Monkey feet, he calls them, because I can pick things up with my toes, though I’d rather think of them as dexterous. There are other parts that he thinks are worth mentioning, but really, this is already far too much talk about my various body parts.

Now I wonder about other people’s parts. Speak up, you. What is your best feature?

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