I listen to my brother fight for his name, for the millionth time. “No,” he says, “It's ‘p-i’, like ‘pie’, but it sounds like ‘pay’.” He could just say Peter. It's only one letter away to ease. To efficiency. To acceptance. He even says, “It's the Dutch form of Peter.” He will likely never speak to the man on the line again, but he cedes no ground. “It's Pieter,” he says again, and what he wants will take longer to get here, but he wants his name more. “It's Pieter.” I smile unseen over my book, thinking of Xiaoying, and Santosh, and Jarietta, and Buket, and Johanna, of Ahmaud and Kamala, of the names I've heard hiding in a stranger’s voice behind “John” or “Anna”. It doesn't matter, they say, Whatever you prefer. Then I watch tears form in my friend’s eyes as I correct the man who has mispronounced his name for ten years. It's just easier, he says, his shoulders low, It doesn't matter. “You can call me Nikki,” I say, to the man with my same, white skin who treats my foreign name like a gravel patch on his smooth highway, a hurdle, a bite of gristle in his teeth. He smiles, teeth large, yellow block barriers on every other road. “That's much easier.” “It's Pieter,” my brother says, and I turn the page. The time will take as long as it needs.
(The literal poetic irony that the automated audio mispronounces every name here—including my own—is not lost on me.)