AlliterAsian (17 page)

       
A
UTHOR
C
OMMENTARY

I visited my Vietnamese uncle in France when I was seven, and again at nine. He used to listen to jazz records. Smoked long cigarettes, cool and elegant, blowing out trumpets of smoke. My father had told me he plotted, across mysterious lines of communication, about different ways to overthrow the Communist government of Vietnam. Imagine! A counter-revolutionary in my own family. Years passed, I grew older, and I read nothing about a coup d'état. Disappointed, I conceded in my imagination that most “meetings” had probably deteriorated into drinking parties, but, intrigued enough, armed with other family stories, I decided to
write a historical novel set in Vietnam. A what-if set the first chapter into motion. What if such a group of men managed, in spite of themselves, to spark some sort of political action into motion, which then took on a life of its own? This excerpt is an early draft of
Mysterious Fragrance of the Yellow Mountains
which had the working title
Lucky in Saigon
when it was published in
Ricepaper. —Yasuko Thanh, 2015

       
A
BOUT THE
A
UTHOR

Yasuko Thanh is the author of the short story collection
Floating Like the Dead
(McClelland & Stewart, 2012). “Lucky in Saigon” is an early draft from her first novel,
Mysterious Fragrance of the Yellow Mountains
, set in French Indochina. It is forthcoming in 2016 with Penguin Canada, Hamish Hamilton, and Editura RAO, Romania. She was one of ten CBC Books' writers to watch in 2013, a
Quill & Quire
Best Books pick of 2012, and she won the 2009 Writers' Trust Journey Prize.

Porcelain Legs

Ricepaper
18, no. 4 (2013)

Corinna Chong

A single hair.

It grew, long and wiry, right out of Mom's eyelid, just above the crease of her almond lid. The kind of hair you'd expect to see on a toilet seat and not on someone's face.
Did she know it was there?
Queenie wondered.
Didn't she care?

When the hair first appeared, it looked like a tiny check mark drawn with a mechanical pencil. You could mistake it for a stray eyebrow hair, plucked that morning, escaped from the swipe of her hand. But then it grew longer, thicker, started to catch the light the way a beetle's back shines. Soon, the end of the hair hooked into a coil, twisting itself into a crimp along its length. Then, another crimp. It grew long enough to dangle, to rest against her eyelashes.

“Your dad was at the recital, did you see him?” Mom ladled black bean sauce over Queenie's rice.

“Yeah,” Queenie said, taking the ladle from her hand. “I want more pork.”

“How come you keep looking down at the table? It's rude. You look at people when they talk to you.” Mom set her bowl down, picked up her chopsticks. The hair jogged along her eyelashes when she blinked. She absently whisked her palm across her face, the chopsticks sticking out of her fist. “Why were none of your friends there?”

“It's just Kiwanis, Mom. Lots of kids had recitals. No one cares.”

“No one cares. You always say that. What kind of friends do you have?”

Queenie shrugged. “They have other things to do on weekends. Soccer and dance and stuff.”

“Hmm,” Mom said, looking over her bowl that she held under her chin. The end of the hair was now combed between two eyelashes, hovering in front of its reflection. It tugged gently on her eyelid each time she lowered her eyes back to her bowl. Mom chewed her rice thoughtfully, smacking her lips. “We talked to your teacher after.”

“I know. I saw.”

“She didn't believe that your dad was actually your dad.” She snickered, revealing a ball of rice between her teeth.

“No one ever does.”

“Anyway, she said your rhythms were excellent.”

“That's good.”

“Weren't you having trouble with the rhythms before?” Mom put down her bowl, swept her eye twice with her fingers.

“No.”

“I thought you said the rhythms were hard.”

“No, I said the time signatures were hard.”

“Oh,” she shrugged. “I thought it was the same.”

Queenie rolled her eyes.

Mom sighed, picked something out of her teeth with a long pinky nail. The hair rested against the fan of her eyelashes. “It was nice of your dad to come. He said it was really good. He thought you were so good.”

The hair was still there two days later, longer, crimpier. It spent most of its time brushed across her eyelid, clinging to the skin. Every so often it wandered down, dangling, threatening to fish in the wet of her eyeball. When Mom got home from work, she went straight into the kitchen, heels clicking against the tile, and started
unpacking her lunch bag like she always did. Queenie was sitting at the kitchen table eating Ritz crackers and cheese. Mom took out her Tupperware and placed it in the sink, paused to rub her eye. The white was bloodshot.

“My eye is itchy,” she said, pointing it at Queenie. “Does it look infected?”

Queenie picked up a cracker, nibbled the edge. “There's a hair there.”

“What? What do you mean?” Mom walked right up to her, brought her face level with Queenie's.

“Right there.” Queenie pinched the hair between thumb and finger. The feel of it reminded her of the dog hairs she always had to pick off her sweater after she walked the neighbour's German Shepherd. The eyelid skin tugged.

“Ow.” Mom jerked back. She fingered her eyelid, pinching at the skin. Finding the hair, she pressed it between her thumb and middle finger, gliding them down its length. “It's so long,” Mom said, half-smiling. She released the hair suddenly, pulling a chair right up to Queenie's and sitting next to her. “Pull it out,” she said, thrusting her face forward and closing her eyes.

“Pull it out?”

“Yes, just pull on it.”

Queenie's fingers pressed the hair firmly. She pulled. The skin stretched.

“Ow, ow. Get it. Ow. Pull it.”

“Ew. It's not coming out,” Queenie said, releasing the hair. It stuck out straight.

Mom clucked her tongue and huffed. She hurried upstairs, leaving her shoes standing at the bottom of the stairs.

Queenie and Erica had the cubbyhole that day. The cubbyhole was really just an alcove in the brick wall on the outside of the school. There was a red door at the end of it that was always closed. It was dark in there, and deep enough that a dozen kids could huddle inside it to escape the biting winter wind. But over the years it had become tradition for the grade sixers to use it for escaping the eyes of teachers instead.

Way back in September, Erica had worked it out with Ryan, Jesse, and Aaron that the boys could have the cubbyhole on Mondays and Wednesdays, and she, Becky, and Queenie could have it on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The boys said no way at first, but Erica had made them all gather around her in the cubbyhole, making a wall with their bodies. Make a wall, make a wall, she had said, and they all asked her why, what was she doing, but she just giggled and kept motioning with her hands. Once the three boys, Becky, and Queenie had surrounded Erica, blocking the light so that only the dim glow pouring over their heads shone on her body, she grabbed the hem of her skirt and whisked it up, holding it in clenched fists under her chin.

They all gasped.

Erica stood motionless, her eyes gazing directly ahead, a tight smirk stretched across her face. Her panties were white and patterned with tiny red hearts, but the fabric was worn thin, so that her skin showed through in patches, and some of the hearts had turned pink. Queenie could see the faint grey line down the middle of her crotch.

Ryan and Jesse clapped their hands over their mouths and burst into hysterical laughter. Slivers of light filtered through the gaps between their legs and danced about Erica's naked thighs, illuminating the tiny white hairs stippling her skin.

An image flashed in Queenie's mind: the porcelain doll her aunt had given her years ago. The doll had black hair and dark brown eyes, just like Queenie's. She stood out on the shelf among Queenie's other six dolls, her flat brown eyes staring. “It's a Chinese doll,” her aunt had said when Queenie opened it. Yes, Queenie could see, the doll's eyes were slightly upturned at the corners. But when she lifted the doll's yellow taffeta skirt, she saw her white porcelain legs. So white, so smooth, so thin, Queenie was afraid they'd shatter if she held them too hard.

Queenie looked at Becky. Becky wasn't smiling. She was staring, eyes vacant, at Erica's face, her lips parted slightly. Queenie thought Becky looked worried. Scared.

Erica opened her fists and allowed her skirt to drop. Her smirk cracked into a big smile as the boys ran away, still hysterical with laughter. With the boys now gone, the light poured into the cubby hole, glinting against Erica's glossy teeth.

Queenie and Becky stared at her, holding their elbows.

“What?” Erica said, brushing her palms together. “Now it's a deal.”

The boys let them have Tuesdays and Thursdays after that, and Fridays were for whoever could get there first. The last two Fridays, Queenie had got the cubbyhole because she was the first one let out of class, having finished her assignments early. So now Erica and Becky called Queenie “the champion,” patted her on the back when the boys came around sneering. Erica and Becky had also let Queenie hang out with them for the whole recess every day last week and this week.

Today was Thursday, and Becky was at home sick. It was a cold December day. Queenie and Erica leaned against the wall of the cubbyhole, taking their snacks out of their jacket pockets with mittened hands. Erica's legs were so long that she could plant her foot against
the opposite wall and hold herself up. She liked to show Queenie and Becky, and she always made them try too, even though neither of them could ever do it. Without Becky there, Erica put one foot up against the wall, but she didn't ask Queenie to try.

“I'm doing this fashion show thingy at the mall,” Erica said. “On Saturday. Wanna come?” She poured a little pile of Wheat Crunch in her mitten and tossed it into her mouth.

Queenie reddened, her eyes growing wide. “Well, I don't really know anything about modelling.”

Erica giggled. “No, I just meant to watch. You have to be
recruited
to model.” Her pillowy bottom lip puckered out when she said “recruited.” “It gets kinda boring in the breaks between shows. They make us stick around, but we can go walking around the mall if we want.”

“Okay, sure,” Queenie replied, tearing open her fruit snacks. “I'll just have to ask my mom.”

Erica wiped salt from the corners of her mouth. “Your mom's not the Chinese one, is she?”

“Yeah, she is.”

“I always thought you lived with the white one.”

“Well, I go to my dad's house practically every weekend.”

“Ohh, okay. Cool.”

Queenie nodded.

“So, do you like, talk Chinese at your house and everything?”

“No,” Queenie said, shaking her head. “Never. I don't even know any Chinese. We only ever speak English.”

“But weren't you born in China?”

“No. I was born here. And my mom is actually from Malaysia. There's Chinese people there too.”

“Oh,” Erica said. “Neat.” Her lips, irritated by the salt, blushed dark pink.

Queenie inspected a cherry-shaped fruit snack that was missing its stem. Mom would only buy the generic brand, and half of them were always deformed. “What does it matter,” Mom had said when Queenie complained. “Food is food.” Just to get Mom to buy fruit snacks in the first place was hard enough. “Why do you want to eat this gummy stuff when you can have a banana or a bao-zi?” Mom had asked. Queenie didn't bother trying to explain how they traded at recess, and no one would trade for a deformed cherry fruit snack. No one would trade for a generic fruit snack either; it had to be Sodalicious or Gushers. Ryan had once traded a Gusher for one of Wendy's paper-thin pieces of seaweed. He and the other boys had laughed as he tore off a little square of the seaweed, opened his mouth wide, and gently placed the square on the tip of his pink wet tongue before curling it back into his mouth. “Eeeeuuch,” he garbled, grimacing. The boys laughed and laughed. Wendy laughed. Queenie laughed, left her little saran-wrapped package of bao-zi in the bottom of her backpack, squished beneath her binder.

“Saturday?” Mom said, without looking away from her reflection in the bathroom mirror. She was staring at her upper lip, tweezers poised. “Saturday's no good. Jan asked me to babysit Max for a couple of hours. And I have to do it, no choice. She watered our lawn for two weeks in the summer, remember?”

“So?” Queenie said, looking at Mom's reflection.

Mom pushed her tongue under her upper lip, tilted her head to catch the light. Little black hairs stuck up along the edge of her lip like centipede legs.

“Why does that matter?” Queenie asked, turning away. She couldn't
watch Mom doing that, plucking away and looking like a gorilla with her tongue sliding under her upper lip—her
hairy
upper lip. “You can still babysit.”

“And carry that crazy baby up and down the mall? Ha, I don't think so.”

“You can just drop me off at the mall.”

Mom snickered, plucked a hair from her chin.

“I'm almost thirteen now. Everyone else is allowed to go to the mall without their parents.”

“Aren't you supposed to be at your dad's on Saturday anyway?”

“He can't on Saturday. He said I was old enough, I should just go to the mall alone.”

“I see.” Mom put the tweezers back in the medicine cabinet, swung the door shut. “Fine. We'll go to the mall on Saturday. But you're not going alone.”

Santa's Village was set up in the mall's main foyer. Kids and their parents lined up behind the red velvet ropes. It wasn't quite noon, and Santa's throne was empty.

Once, when she was little, Queenie went with her dad to get a picture with Santa. Santa's Village still looked the same as it did then. She remembered lining up between the velvet ropes, her eyes glued to the curtain behind the throne, where she knew Santa would soon pop out. She felt Dad's hand suddenly grip her shoulder, and when she looked up at him, she noticed a man standing beside them, on the other side of the ropes. The man was old, with a long grey beard. He wore a tie that looked like the keys of a piano.

“That's a wonderful thing you did there, sir,” the man said, tapping Dad on the shoulder. His eyes were light blue, and Queenie could see the whites all the way around. He nodded, looking at Queenie.

“I'm sorry?” Dad said, smiling at the man.

“If people like you weren't around, I don't know what would've happened to these ones.” He patted Queenie on the head with a large, white hand.

Dad pulled Queenie closer as the man reached inside his pocket. The man retrieved a five-dollar bill.

“Here,” he said, holding it out to Queenie. “To show my appreciation. I did my service overseas, mind you, but I never did my part for those poor children over there.” He smiled, showing teeth lined with grey gums.

Dad laughed, gently pushed the man's money away. “Oh no, sir. That's not—she's mine. She's my daughter.”

Queenie hadn't understood what was happening. She wanted the money; nobody had ever given her five dollars before. She wanted to reach out and take the bill from the man's hand, but she could tell her Dad would get mad if she did.

“Yes, of course. She's your daughter. People said we didn't win the war, but was that any excuse to let the children suffer?” The man shook his head gravely, still holding out the money.