AlliterAsian (18 page)

“No, I'm sorry, you don't understand—” said Dad.

“Please. I insist, a token of my admiration.” The man took Queenie's hand, pressed the five-dollar bill into her palm, and walked briskly away.

Queenie had forgotten about that man until now. Remembering him made her jaw clench up.

“Where is this show supposed to be?” asked Mom as they paced through the mall. She carried Max on her hip because she hadn't wanted to ask Jan to borrow her stroller. “I shouldn't be taking the baby to the mall, anyway,” Mom had said. She held Max like a sack of vegetables, one arm around his back, her hip sinking under his
weight.

“I don't know where. Erica didn't say.”

“Well, what are we doing then? Where do you want to go?”

“I guess we'll just walk around. We'll probably see it.” Mom sighed. She shifted the baby's weight higher on her hip, quickened her pace. They came to the end of the hallway, turned left. For a brief moment, Queenie considered the possibility that there wasn't any fashion show.

“You carry him for a while,” Mom said, putting Max in Queenie's arms. Mom rubbed her lower back. “
Ai-ya
, I told you I can't carry this baby around like this.”

She continued walking, Queenie trailing close behind. Here at the mall, without the baby, Mom looked different from at home. Hunched. Small. Her shoulders curved, her arms dangled. She looked like a small old lady as she walked through the mall's grand, whitetiled hallways, past all the mannequins wearing leather skirts and silk blouses and tight jeans and T-shirts that said
Guess
in sparkly rhinestones. Passing, but not looking. Mom wore white sport socks with her shiny black shoes; you could see them because her pants were too short. Her pant-legs flapped around her ankles.

They passed a girl sitting at a jewellery booth wearing huge hoop earrings and bright pink lipstick. Queenie suddenly wished she hadn't worn the T-shirt she was wearing. She had saved it for this day because it was her favourite one: a souvenir T-shirt with a killer whale jumping above the word
Vancouver
, which was printed in glittery letters. It was her favourite T-shirt, but now it felt stupid, kiddish. It wasn't the right shape, either: square and too big, not like the tight, stretchy shirts that Erica always wore. Queenie pulled the flap of her unzipped fleece jacket over her shirt, tucking it under the baby, but then she didn't like the feel of the fleece jacket, either. It was lilac, with a little squirrel stitched into the chest. She shifted the baby to her left
side to cover the squirrel.

The stage came into view as they approached the food court. An audience filled the first three rows of chairs, adjusting themselves in their seats and taking off their coats. Queenie sat at the back with Mom and Max as the dance music started. Red and blue lights flashed on the stage.

Erica was the first girl to step out, but Queenie didn't recognize her until she had sauntered halfway across the stage in her white high heels. Her curly hair was poofed up, bouncing about her shoulders as she walked, and her bangs were styled in a swoop across her forehead. She wore a denim pantsuit. The whole thing was one piece, and it had a big shiny silver zipper right down the middle, zipped up from her crotch to the v-neck at her chest. It was so tight that it looked like her skin was made of denim. Two small breasts rose from her chest, hugged by the taut fabric. She stood in the middle of the stage, one hand on her hip, showing gleaming white teeth between two bright red lips.

Queenie wondered what Erica's skin felt like beneath the denim. She thought of Erica's bare white legs, fuzzed with those tiny, delicate hairs. She thought of Erica's panties, the skin showing through, the little red hearts disappearing into the shadow where her thighs came together.

Queenie sat through the remainder of the fashion show, not noticing when Mom took the whining baby off her lap and out of the audience. When the music ended and the lights faded out, she spotted Mom way off to the side of the stage area, sitting with Max wriggling in her lap at an empty table in the food court. She looked tired, fed up.

“Your friend was really good,” Mom said over Max's crying, her head dodging his flailing fists. “Do you want to talk to her?” She
pointed to an area behind the stage where Erica was standing with a girl, another model. They were both smearing sticks of pink Lip Smackers across their mouths.

Queenie approached them, smiling at Erica, unsure if
this
Erica, the model in the skin-tight denim suit, would even know her.

“Oh,” Erica said. “Hi.” She looked at Queenie, head to toe, glanced at the girl next to her.

“You were so good,” Queenie said, pulling on the flaps of her jacket and hugging her ribs. Up close, Erica's eyes glowed sky blue beneath the dark furl of her fake eyelashes. Queenie could only glance at them, and then look at the ground. She was afraid her cheeks were red. Erica was wearing green eyeshadow.

“Thanks.” Erica tossed her hair. “Actually, I don't get a break like I thought. I have to stay here. Sorry.”

Queenie shrugged, still smiling. She felt like a dwarf standing in front of Erica, whose white high heels made her look lengthened, like bubble gum stretched into a thin strand. Queenie looked down at her own thighs, draped in baggy corduroy, at her own old running shoes, once white, now yellowish-grey, scuffed along the toes and riddled with dirty cracks. “I guess I'll see you at school then.”

“Yep. Bye.”

Queenie stood there, staring. Max's babbling cut through the ambient noise behind her. Erica bit her nail, stared back. Then she turned to the girl beside her, asked her if she wanted to go back to the dressing rooms.

When Queenie turned around, Mom was coming toward her with the baby. Max had grabbed the breast pocket of Mom's shirt and was pulling, pulling, exposing pods of bare skin between her buttons. Mom ignored him, kept on walking straight ahead, straight towards Queenie.

The hair had grown back. Queenie could see it, black and coarse, sticking out of Mom's eyelid like a cockroach antenna. It was thicker than before, Queenie was sure. She wondered how long it would grow this time. She wondered how long it would take for Mom to notice, if she ever looked,
really
looked at herself in the mirror.

Queenie had dreamt about the hair. In her dream she saw Mom with the tweezers in front of the mirror. But when Mom pulled on the end of the hair, it didn't come out; it kept getting longer. It had been hiding beneath the skin, its length reeled up in a little ball inside her head, and as she pulled on the end, the hair unravelled. She pulled and pulled, drawing the long, black, wiry hair out like thread from a spool. She drew it out until her arm couldn't stretch any further. The hair dangled listlessly, reaching almost to her knee.

Mom put a cold shrimp bun on a plate for her breakfast and sat down next to Queenie, who was eating her cereal at the kitchen table.

“Are you going to your dad's this weekend?” Mom asked. She took a large bite of bun. Crumbs fell to the table. She chewed with her mouth open, pressing an oily finger to the crumbs and then shedding them off onto her plate.

“I dunno. He hasn't called.” Queenie stared into her cereal bowl.

“Well, it's been three weeks,” Mom said. She looked at the calendar on the fridge. “More than three weeks. You can call
him
, you know.”

Queenie shrugged. “It doesn't matter.” She looked at Mom bending over her plate and shoving the bun in her mouth.

Mom finished chewing, narrowed her eyes. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like
that
. Like I have something on my face.”

“Well, you do. You have that hair again.” Queenie pointed to her own eyelid. “There.”

Mom touched the hair. She sighed. “It just grows back, always grows back.”

She left the house after breakfast without bothering to pluck it out.

Queenie was the champion, and now they called her the champion for two reasons: She got the cubbyhole for the fourth Friday in a row, and she was undefeated in the staring contests they had started doing during recess. She had beat Vicky, Sam, Nora, Becky, Travis, Jesse, Ryan, and Graham, and now she was up against Erica. Erica hadn't wanted to do it; she'd said, “I'm the best at staring contests. We have to learn to stare in modelling. I'll just beat you—I know I will—I don't want you to feel bad,” but finally Ryan and Jesse had convinced her. Ryan promised Erica three Gushers if she won.

Now they all crowded in the cubbyhole, surrounding Erica and Queenie. Erica stood right in front of Queenie, so close that Queenie could see little cracks in her lips, filled with caked lip gloss. Her breath smelled like sour cream and onion. The skin along her jaw was so white and smooth that Queenie would have believed it was just bone, not skin at all. The dim light that shone into the cubbyhole covered only half her face, so that the other half was shadowed, darkening her eyelashes and making her blue eyes gleam.

“Ready?” Ryan asked.

Queenie nodded.

“Okay, go!”

Queenie opened her eyes wide, stared straight into the blue of Erica's. Tiny gold flecks swam around Erica's irises. Queenie felt
goosebumps creep through her body.

Erica's eyes held for a moment, but then dropped away.

“Oh my god!” she cried suddenly. “You've got little hairs there!” Erica pointed at Queenie's chin.

“What?” Queenie said quietly. “No, I don't.” She felt her chin with her fingertips.

“Yeah, you do! Little black hairs. It's like a beard.” Erica squealed, started laughing, still pointing. The others started to laugh, too. They all tried to look at Queenie's chin.

“Don't,” said Becky, trying to hide her smile with her hand. “That's mean.”

Queenie didn't know if she should say something, or what she should say. She didn't know if she should ignore Becky or look sad or walk away or get angry or say, “Yeah, I knew those hairs were there.” But she didn't do any of those things. She just laughed, too. Laughed along with the others, along with Erica, tried to copy the sound of her giggling, the look of her open mouth.

       
A
UTHOR
C
OMMENTARY

In writing “Porcelain Legs,” I wanted to explore, through the character of Queenie, the internalized oppression that mixed-race youth who grow up in a white-dominated community often experience—a conflict I battled myself throughout my childhood. Like all kids, I just wanted to fit in but found myself unable to reconcile my own mixed racial appearance with those of the fully white and fully Asian people around me. In addition, the media images that surrounded me told me that only white people could really be beautiful, popular, and successful. While Queenie's veneration of Erica is an extension of her idolization of her white father, her rejection of her mother's unapologetic “Chineseness” reveals Queenie's alienation from her own half-Chinese identity. The single
hair growing on Mom's eyelid becomes an inescapable marker of her foreignness in Queenie's world. This story was in many ways the basis of my first novel,
Belinda's Rings
, which also features a young half-Chinese protagonist. —
Corinna Chong, 2015

       
A
BOUT THE
A
UTHOR

Corinna Chong received her MA in English and creative writing from the University of New Brunswick. Originally from Calgary, she currently teaches English literature at Okanagan College in Kelowna, where she's also the co-editor of
Ryga: A Journal of Provocations
. Her writing has been published in
Echolocation, The Malahat Review, Grain
, and
Ricepaper
. Her first novel,
Belinda's Rings
, was published by NeWest Press in 2013.

No Sleeping on Bench

   
(excerpt from novel
Progress in Process
)

Ricepaper
19, no. 2 (2014)

SKY
Lee

It was March 15, 1953. After finishing up the morning's orders, Florida Waters sat down to a sandwich at her tiny desk when the intercom buzzed her again. She had reason to believe that it was another rush order but it turned out to be a phone call from Seymour Defoe Inman.

“Flor, Trixi's been released from the asylum and she already left town. I'm sending Chas down to pick you up in a couple of hours. He'll have your necessaries packed. Then he's coming straight over here to pick me up and then we're all going to find her. Don't be late!”

“But what about my job 'n my boss?” cried Florida, greatly surprised.

“I'm your boss.” Click.

Certainly Florida knew better than to question him. First of all, if it hadn't been for him, there was no way in hell Florida would have gotten her job with Los Angeles's biggest movie distribution company. It was a fine privilege for a black woman to sit day after day in her very own claustrophobic cubicle with a pinging ceiling fan over her head. It was where she made a significant contribution to the comings and goings by the cartload of stores of inane Hollywood comedies in weighty metal canisters. As well, her husband, Chas, was one of Seymour's many drivers. And then, as if to seal their fate, after Chas and Flor were forced to sell their house five years ago, they had
to make do by moving into a series of apartments indirectly owned by Mr Inman. As patrons went, Seymour was patronizing in his paternalistic way. As a result, Flor and Chas were vulgarized in their subservient way. And that's generally about as far as laundry goes between coloured and white.

So Chas drove in his grey worsted driver's uniform while Florida sat stiffly beside him in stately silence. Behind them, Seymour prowled uncomfortably about in the carriage of the Cadillac until he passed out with the help of a fine-tooled silver flask. He ground his teeth as he slept fitfully. After a while, Florida drove while Chas fiddled with the radio to keep her awake as best he could. Finally, Seymour drove while Chas and Florida sprawled in deep sleep all over the buttery luxury of the leather interior. They arrived at the Salt Lake City bus depot in the late afternoon.

The moment they got there, Seymour sprang out of the car and rushed into the public building. There didn't seem to be a shadow of a doubt in his mind but Florida hung back until curiosity got the better of her. She gathered together her handbag and gloves and asked Chassis, “D'ya suppose ol' Trix is in there, or is he here to meet someone else?”

“I don't know, baby,” cautioned Chas, “but when the time comes, try not to get involved, sweet-hon! You know how those two are.”

Flor thought about that. After a thirteen-year hiatus, how would Trixi and Seymour behave in each other's presence? Seymour was so obviously in one of his manic moods made ever more inflated by his insane workload and gaudy wealth. If not for the fact that he had become their employer now, Florida would have asked him directly, to his face, like back in the days when she was able to do so, when he wasn't quite the giant that he had become, when she was much younger, with much more egalitarian cheek than she had now that the
social and financial gap between them had split wide open.

She took an extra moment or two to pin the beaded and netted hardshell cap firmly onto her skull. And Chas, in hat, knee-high boots and buttoned-down suit, had already hopped out to open the car door for her. Together, they looked the class act. But even as he helped her out of the Cadillac, a police cruiser pulled up sharply behind them. Suddenly lots of people stopped to stare. Chas and Florida dumbly awaited the advance of two cops.

“Sir, you're parked in a no-parking zone,” began the cop.

Chas and Florida breathed an invisible sigh of relief. To be addressed in such a reasonable manner was a very good thing.

“Ma'am, are you the owner of this vehicle?”

“No, sir, she's my wife,” replied Chas protectively.

“Our employer went inside that building.”

“What is the name of the vehicle's owner?” asked the cop, with notebook in hand, while Florida quietly withdrew and seamlessly merged with the gathering crowd of gawkers. But even as she did, she paused to listen to Chas work his usual routine, “Well, young sirs,” began Chas, with his usual scratching of the humble head, “I'm guessing that the owner of this here vehicle might actually be the Star Gate Movie Studios in Hollywood, California, but in fact my employer's name is Mr C. Defoe. He's a Hollywood movie producer.”

“You don't say!” The young officer wrote it all down.

Florida grinned at the slight distortion of Seymour's name. It was one of the underhanded ways that she and Chas and Seymour had always slithered around as a team, unnoticed by outsiders in general.

“Yes sir, why just the other day, while I was driving Mr C back to his Bel Air home—are you acquainted with Mr C?”

“Well, ahh … yeah, sure, I am!” said the cop.

“Well sir, Mr C was telling me how it's too bad how folks just get caught up with the stars and don't pay enough mind to the real men behind the movie scenes.”

“Hey, I think I've heard of Mr C!” cried the other cop.

“Well sir, I'm glad to hear you keep up with the movie business …”

As Chas rambled on, Florida simply let the irresistible sweep of being human push her through the glass and bronze Art Deco gates of the Salt Lake City Train Station and Bus Terminal. Once she was inside, Flor gazed up at the high ornate ceilings of the grand little edifice. The overhead spaciousness immediately lifted her visceral fatigue. She let her heart be lifted into the air like a dust mote on a sunbeam while making her way through the anxious press and collision of bodies in search of human purpose and fulfillment. As soon as she stopped struggling against the rush-hour crowds, Florida felt it. It was an intimate moment of spiritual fullness that she knew well because she already lived it and dreamed it many times over.

Right away, she noticed a little dark–chocolate girl in a starched yellow dress, winking and smiling at her with such warmth and awareness. And when the girl's gaze wandered off, Florida happily followed it until she spied Seymour, of all people, in his rich garb, hunkered down on a bench full of folk along with all their ragtag baggage and sundry. Florida thought it marvellous that she should have found him in this way. He pretended to be catnapping but, in fact, he was intent on watching the tiny coffee shop seemingly situated like a shining glass display case in the propitious middle of everything.

Inside the brightly lit coffee shop, Trixi Lee sat on her ten-minute break at the very end of the counter and was about to dig into a large bowl of vegetable soup, to which she had added a whole cupful of finely chopped parsley and a big squeeze of fresh lemon when, by
finely honed instinct alone, she felt sharp eyes boring into the back of her head. She was about to turn her head for a tentative look-see when she almost brushed noses with Annie, the waitress, who had leaned in very close in order to teasingly say to her, “Aren't you the stranger one, Missy Hu?” Annie called her “Missy Hu” because it was the way Trixi Lee identified herself a few days ago when she first came in to ask for a job in the kitchen.

“I have never in all my bored days seen anyone eat a bowl of soup like that,” Annie continued. “Waddya call it? Halfa soupee, halfa saladee? Sure would save on a manure-load of dishes around here if more customers ate like that!” Annie paused to light her hand-rolled cigarette.

“Hey, kiddo, Garfy there thinks you're so cute, he wants to take you home with him. Waddya say, li'l lady? It beats sleeping in the garbage lock-up at night.”

Trixi Lee looked over at Gar Foo, the Chinese cook, again. He'd been mooning at her nonstop ever since she arrived. Was it his eyes that she felt? She ducked her head as low as it could go.

“Hey, listen!” Annie again. “I know you shur da heck don't say much, but you're shur a good l'il worker, ya know, 'n' I already ast that cheapskate, Ed, if he wans ta pays ya some decent money, ya know, jes in case you wanna stay mor'n a week that is, 'n' waddya know, he said okay!”

That was when Trixi noticed Ed, the boss, eyeing the both of them from behind the cash register as well. It was altogether too much attention, and she just wanted to disappear from all sight!

“So waddya say? God knows, hon, we all been down 'n' out! We all been there, ya know, sweetie. Done that 'n' all. Ain't nut'in ta be ashamed of. Hell, you kin even come home with me if you just wanna
couch for a few nights. I'd jis'asoon kick out that drunken dog of a man of mine …”

Aiyee
, the kindness of strangers, thought Trixi Lee, as she closed her eyes to better feel the warmth of the moment. Annie kept flapping at the mouth. “Hey, I know you're really shy. But that ain't no reason to be scared, honey! We don't bite.”

Trixi wanted to thank Annie, Gar Foo, and Ed for their humanity, but she already knew that her time had come. She could feel the tug and pull of forces beyond her control. Already, in her mind's eye, she could see the
No Sleeping on Bench
sign in the cold early morning shadows of the bus depot's waiting area. And the vision of the sleeping man on the bench unfurled into real flesh and life's blood. He rose and ignited the night with his steaming, hazy glow. There was an ill-omened corona around both the moon and the man as he stepped forward to make contact.

Trixi suddenly realized that she could not allow herself be trapped at the end of a coffeeshop counter like this. Annie and Ed and Gar Foo and all her new friends would not in any way, shape, or form, be able to understand or protect her, and she knew she would have to leave the establishment in order to meet the man head on.

It was just the nigh impossible matter of summoning the courage. Yet with a quick intake of air, she did just that—because she had no other choice. She rushed out into the howl of the cataclysmic wind.

At the first sighting of Trixi Lee, Florida's white-gloved hand shot up to stifle her gasp. She too felt the propulsive force of a pent-up fury that was gathering momentum. She herself had harboured it without even realizing. But now, it blew open her floodgates, and an emotional outpouring began with a deluge of heavy tears.

Drenched to the bone, Trixi could barely see through the downpour
in her heart. Yet she clearly saw Seymour Defoe Inman as he stood by himself. The tragic solitary force of him could be specifically located even though its cyclonic power spitefully rushed at her from multiple directions. She faltered in confusion, not knowing in which direction to run from him.

It was in this split second of hesitation that Seymour mustered his advantage. He was suddenly upon her with a vise-like grip on both green-stick arms. He dealt her a forceful slap upon her cheek, grabbed both her child-thin shoulders, and shook her until she rattled.

He felt he had to do this in order to keep her under his control. He needed to keep her disoriented or else she could slip away like she was nothing at all. He told himself to throttle her throat, anything to keep her from flying off on her witch's broom! He had this one instant to bear down on her. And pound her with all the physical engagement of … his need … to leave her gasping for breath! Damn her all the way to hell!

“Damn you, bitch, for making me feel like this. Don't you ever dare try to get away from me again!” Grunting, he even got on top of her and locked her down with the weight of his portly person as tightly as he could while she squirmed like an electric eel under him. All his exertions overheated him. Breathing hard, he got an erection as hard as he had not had in a very long time. And this was one fuck that should have lasted forever except from the faraway edges of his consciousness and zooming in fast, he began to notice some scattered pedestrian faces hanging in the air, frozen in horror at the beefy sight of him with his diamond-clipped silk tie and ripe air of Los Indios Cuban cigars on top of a greasy little Chinese kitchen helper. But there was no epiphany here! Even with his lingering hard-on, he would have climbed off by himself eventually but for the fact that the two cops in their youthful enthusiasm had hauled him off and struggled to keep
him off. He still needed to keep his eye on her though.

“She owes me money,” he bellowed unconvincingly. He was so wound up he could barely unclench his fist in order to whip back his fallen forelock.

“Sir, do you want to press charges?” asked one of the rookies without skipping a seal-trained bark before a man of means.

Seymour's heart skipped a couple of beats when he realized what he had done. He stopped short and slumped back in abject defeat while Chas pushed through the crowds and stepped up to the plate by loudly declaring, “Oh no! Mr C, you done made a mistake! You got the wrong person. D'ya heah, sir? That's not him. You must not be feelin' good agin. You be havin' an episode.”

Under his breath, Chas hastily warned Seymour of the inevitability of trouble. Already, there was a small-town, camera-ready newspaperman rushing in for a story. “Mistah Seymour, take a look, five o'clock, newsman, fast, we go now!”

“Oh fuckin' hell!” ejaculated Seymour with all his blistering might. He looked all wide-eyed and red-faced around for Trixi Lee, but true to magical form, she had already disappeared into thin air.

Meanwhile Chas begged the constables, “Officers, please help my boss-man back to his automobile. He has to sit down and take his heart attack pills. He's not well. All this fuss'll kill 'im. And all you gent'min kin talk better in the Cadillac. Please, this way, sirs!”

“Where'd she go?” persisted Seymour, even as he was carted off by three burly uniforms. “Where'd she go?”