Oh no. Ahead of me down the corridor, strolling like royalty, come Anita and her boyfriend, Steve, who is the all-time school-champion sidestepper of the chink. He is also Neil Bradford’s best friend. Steve’s and Anita’s hearts pump liquid Red Hots.
Anita spots me coming. Her eyes dart like scared roaches. The hall is narrow and empty with no shuffling crowd to buffer us. I slow way down, eyes on her, my stomach churning as they approach. So, Anita, when Steve does his typical enemy sidestep, what’re you gonna do? Look at me, or not? Sidestep too? Don’t sidestep? Ignore Steve? Turn around? Start coughing, sneezing, choking? Gaze into thin air? Go blind?
Anita slides around behind Steve and switches places so he’s by the wall. She shifts her books to her left arm and slides the right through his bent elbow. Parked a distance ahead of them, right in their path, is one of Mr. Howard’s rolling utility cans full of trash. Anita looks up at me in a complicated help! kind of way. I square my shoulders and let my feet steer me across the centerline so they will have to either slow way down or bump into the trash. I have them, for a split second, trapped.
They stop. Steve makes a slight I smell garbage sniff. I look right at him and sniff back. Anita looks down. I glide past them all the way to my locker, my insides buzzing. Ha! I twirl the lock but I can’t remember my combination. No matter. For once, I do not want to crawl in it.
I hug my books, staring at the vents in the chipped metal door, and try to calm down. I wonder what they would have done if I was walking with Elliot James. Hmm . . . battle won. But, ugh. A victory, I guess. But it doesn’t feel like one.
Elliot never would have stooped so low. Neither would Mr. Howard.
Sorry, everybody. I acted as pathetic as them.
* * *
While the rest of the world continues to obsess over Valentine’s, just two days away, I am lining my bathroom sink with a towel and running my weird bootie under the faucet. A web of hairline cracks appears on the surface, plus faint flecks of gold on the toe. I set it next to my new Chinese doll, which is so gaudy compared to this serious little slipper.
Next I rinse the broken jade piece. Detailed cuts of a scaly tail show up. I hold it to the light. A lizard has been hiding inside it all along.
Maybe if I take a bath it will reveal the true me under my skin.
Ralph is in his room. He is making Valentines for his sixth-grade party on Wednesday, but the Valentines aren’t about girls. They’re about getting the Art merit badge. He read the requirements from his Handbook for Boys at the dinner table. “Part A: Make a sketch of some Scout equipment grouped together. Part B: Design a decoration for some article of your own. Part C: Tell how your artwork would be reproduced using the half-tone process.”
“What’s that?” Dad had asked, swiping his mouth.
“Half of the full-tone process,” Ralph answered, dry as a bone.
“Yes, Ralph,” I said. “Hearts will burst when people view your Valentines with still-life renderings of athlete’s foot powder and pellet guns in a latrine trench.”
My parents are cohosting a party Wednesday night at their friends’ house. Cupid is discriminating against the Chinese this year. My love life is as interesting as saliva.
It’s hard to imagine where Elliot James will be, since his heart pumps India ink. He and his tall, blond, sculpture-perfect girlfriend will probably reenact those immortally sweaty lovers in the backseat of his car.
Mr. Howard has been hounding me about the special Valentine’s dinner at the House of Chow. He says he could use my help and the Chows are all for it. “I need you to fold napkins, scoop out the fish heads, chase the frogs’ legs, tie up the eels, choke the chickens, stir the bird’s nest soup . . . unless you are already busy. It’ll be an adventure.”
I finally promised him I’d come. I told my parents that the Red Cross Club was having a Valentine’s Day gathering at the soda fountain at Cooper’s Drugs. It definitely sounded strange, but also social and safe and American.
Only Ralph knows what I am really doing—going to the House of Chow, something social and safe and Chinese. Thank God he isn’t bugging me to come. He’s got a date with his candy hearts.
* * *
Early Wednesday evening Mother is all girdled in and made up—painted rosy red with dark undertones. She drops her fancy gold compact and lipstick into her beaded purse as Dad escorts her to the car. He has stuffed a red handkerchief in his suit coat pocket.
I race up to the bathroom, stare in the mirror, and splash my face, which is light tannish with pink undertones. In a minute I am on the streetcar headed to the House of Chow.
Auntie Chow waves a meat cleaver in greeting. I hurry past a big bowl of chocolate marshmallow hearts wrapped in red foil. Mr. Howard gives me a quick tour. This exotic kitchen is on a different planet from the Firestone kitchen, with its offerings of watery canned pears served at room temperature and suffocated lima beans. My mother uses a recipe for everything, even ice cubes. This kitchen is alive with plucked chickens and gutted fish on huge chopping blocks made from slices of tree trunk. The surfaces are infinite crosscuts. Mrs. Chow pours boiling tea over one to clean it after filleting a fish. “Oolong best,” she says, her glasses fogged. She guides me around baskets of seaweed, racks of stockpots, strainers, knives, and whisks. Rounded cooking pans called “woks” balance over the burners on collars called “rings of fire.” The kitchen is a controlled explosion, like an art room for food—cluttered and creative. No wonder Mr. Howard likes it.
“No Minute Rice here. No bleach!” Auntie Chow says this at honking-goose volume while standing over the rice cooker. She sticks out her tongue. “American Chinese food different than Chinese Chinese. American like fragrant and predictable. Real Chinese pungent ! Fried oyster pancake, coriander, chive, garlic, ginger pull out tear and joy.”
Auntie Chow’s face is pungent—etched by steam and onions and garlic sizzled in hot chili oil.
My job is to fill bud vases with water and artfully insert a trimmed, golden chrysanthemum. The mums are pungent too, and gorgeous.
Shock of shocks, Elliot James walks in through the kitchen door off the alley. Alone. “Greetings, my man,” Mr. Howard says, giving Elliot a tight little Chinese bow. Mr. Howard wears an apron and a flat, pleated chef’s hat.
My man?
Elliot takes off his coat and scarf. Mrs. Chow stuffs a dumpling in his mouth. Mr. Chow claps him on the back. His wife brags about Elliot’s calligraphy skills and lists the signs they need for tonight’s buffet. Mrs. Chow pours a cup of plum wine for each of us and toasts, “Happy Valentine Day.” Her eyes shift from Elliot to me. “You two sticky?” she asks, raising her cup to us. Oh, my God. I shoot Mr. Howard a desperate look, but he just shrugs, drains his wine, and seasons his wok full of lotus root.
I steal a glance at Elliot, who is pushing up the sleeves of his wrinkled navy-blue shirt. The only part of us reacting to “sticky” is our hair. His is curling every which way in the steamy heat and mine has wilted straight as a broomstick.
Mrs. Chow stuffs more bites in our mouths. I try egg rolls and pot stickers with pork and plum sauce. This kitchen seems like the only island in the universe where different colors of people are dancing together—stirring, laughing, sniffing, chopping, sharing. And that’s just in the kitchen!
The dining room fills up. Valentine’s toasts float through the kitchen door. We run our legs off. Time races away. “I’ve got to go!” I tell Mr. Howard suddenly, dashing to get my coat. What I don’t say is that I have to take a shower and wash my hair, get rid of the pungent on me before my parents get home. Auntie Chow shoves a paper sack in my hand at the door. In it is a fish head—a dead-eyed, chopped-off fish head. “Old Chinese tradition for good luck! Prosperity!”
Oh yes, I will attract many Valentine’s suitors with my guillotined carp head.
“Take home,” she insists. And I will, because it’s the perfect Valentine for Ralph. I stand in the streetcar shelter. Mr. Chow stands under the front awning, waving four hundred thousand times.
But it’s not the streetcar that stops. It’s Elliot in his car. He leans across the seat, cranks the window down. “I’ll take ya.”
I clutch my fish head. “B—but don’t they need you in there?”
“I’ll go back. Get in.”
So I do. His car smells like turpentine, which masks the dead carp. There are rags and tablets, and a big tackle box on the backseat. Not a good spot for the make-out session I had envisioned. I crack the window.
My voice sounds like a flock of birds has flown from my mouth. “I live off Oxford Road on . . .”
“I know,” Elliot says.
“Oh, of course, you brought my books over.”
Elliot punches the car radio. Every station is in the “mood for romance”—Perry Como, Nat King Cole. No war news.
“Chinese . . . uh, calligraphy must take loads of practice,” I say.
“Yeah. I copy paintings at the museum,” he says. “The brushwork is amazing.” We sit at a stoplight. Anita and Steve and another couple stop right beside us. She looks over, superdazzled, as if she’s witnessing a miracle. Ha! Ha! HA! Elliot doesn’t notice. He just stares at the red light, then turns to me and says, “I like Chinese stuff.”
What?
Heatstroke.
Mind smoke.
I wrap my arms around my waist and stare at the baby-blue diaper pin that he uses for a key chain. The whole universe has caught fire at his use of the word “stuff.” Is he referring to paper umbrellas or soy sauce or humans?
“The Chows are gonna cater a big event there pretty soon,” Elliot says.
I turn and sputter, “A big event where?”
“At the art museum. They’re dedicating the Buddhist temple. It’s been redone. I’m gonna go.” All I can imagine is Mrs. Chow yakking so loud The Thinker will plug his ears.
As we pull up I check my parents’ upstairs bedroom window. No light. Thank you, God. Elliot turns the car off, turns to me, runs his hand through his hair. But before he can speak, I do. “Bye.” I yank the door handle—“Thanks”—hop out and race up the walk, picturing Dad’s car wheeling up the driveway any second. I fumble with the house key and stop right inside the entry hall, my fist pressed against my lips. Chinese stuff ? I peek out the side window. His taillights flash. Bye, Elliot. . . . I hear him shifting gears: first, second . . .
I plod up to the bathroom and scrub myself into an all-American Minute Rice girl. Pungent gone. Flame doused.
Ralph is tickled pink with the fish head. Pigeon fuel. I almost have him convinced that they served bird’s nest soup. “It’s made from nests that flicker birds build in Chinese caves using their own spit. It dries hard as cement and then they boil it in soup.”
Ralph stuffs a handful of Neccos in his mouth. “Why don’t they just have the birds spit in the soup pot?”
I climb into bed with a stomachache—oyster pancake and marshmallow heartburn. I mean, what else would I have? A headache?
A heartache?