Like Mandarin

by Kirsten Hubbard

  “Not on your life, missus.” She held it out at arm’s length. “But don’t you have a dance coming up? There’s always a dance in the spring, isn’t there? Maybe you want to try it on.”

  I giggled. “No way.”

  The jingle bell on the front door rang. We both turned to look.

  Mandarin stood in the doorway, wearing a men’s white undershirt and a cocktail apron over her lowest-slung jeans. “Well, hey there,” she said. “I noticed the two of you in the window.”

  Momma raised her eyebrows at me. I glanced from face to face, knowing I had to make the introduction I’d dreaded.

  “Momma, this is … Mandarin Ramey.”

  “Oh, yes,” Momma said. “Of course.”

  “Nice to meet you finally!” Mandarin turned to me. “I’m on break. An extended break. How about we grab dinner? There ain’t enough pervy drunks yet for my dad to need me, not until dark.”

  Pervy drunks? Was she trying to get me in trouble? “One second,” I told Momma. Then I walked into Mandarin, pushing against her, forcing her to back up around the corner.

  “What are you doing?” I whispered once we were out of sight. “You can’t talk about drunks in front of my mother. She’ll forbid us from hanging out, ever. She’ll—”

  Laughing, Mandarin shook me by the shoulders. “Snap out of it! I can deal with adults. Just you watch.”

  To my horror, she shoved past me and called, “Ms. Carpenter?”

  “Yes?” Momma said.

  “That’s a lovely color dress you got there.”

  Momma glanced down at the lilac monstrosity still draped over her arm.

  “Grace told me about her birthday supper tomorrow,” Mandarin went on. “And I thought I’d be working, but I was fortunate enough to get my shift covered. I’d love to join you, if the invitation still stands.”

  I gripped the edge of a plastic bin to keep from visibly cringing.

  Because the thing was, Momma hadn’t specifically invited Mandarin to dinner. She’d said I could invite my friends—which undoubtedly meant Alexis. But to my surprise, she appeared interested. I could see menus, outfits, decorations flickering before her eyes. A guest was a guest, I supposed. Even a girl with no future but trouble, in Momma’s own words.

  “Why not?” she replied. I wanted to groan: the British accent was back. “We live at 17 Pioneer Ridge, up on the hill. How does six o’clock sound?”

  Mandarin nodded, half smiling.

  “So dinner tomorrow,” I said, my skin still crawling. “All of us together. Great. But I’m going off now with Mandarin, all right? Don’t save dinner. We’ll get something at the A&W, or whatever.”

  Momma shrugged. “That’s fine.”

  She busied herself hanging up the purple dress, smoothing it out, puffing the outrageous sleeves, as if anybody cared.

  “I’ll get it!” I screamed, but Momma reached the front door ahead of me. All day she’d been on edge, zipping around like a crazed hornet, perching on chairs and popping up as if they were strewn with nails. Only the concept of a brand-new audience for her affectations could override pageant prep.

  She flung open the door, her ankles crossed as if she were about to curtsy. “Welcome!” she exclaimed before both our mouths fell open.

  Mandarin wore a white blouse with ruffled sleeves, tucked into a pleated khaki skirt. Neither fit quite right on her angular frame. A white gash of scalp showed through the part of her hair, which she’d tethered in matching pageant-perfect braids. Her black shoes had two-inch heels. She wore nylons.

  Since the previous afternoon at the junk shop, I had come to accept the freakish clashing of personalities my birthday dinner would bring. I’d even started to anticipate it. Finally, a chance to spite Momma, or at least to get her attention.

  But this wasn’t the Mandarin I’d meant to bring home.

  Just when I was about to do something rash—laugh or shout, I didn’t know what—Mandarin stole a glance my way.

  This is just a game I’m playing, her expression read. It’s still me in here.

  Still, I felt only slightly placated as she turned to Momma and smiled demurely. “It’s so nice to finally have a proper meeting with you, Adrina.”

  “Of course,” Momma said after faltering for a moment at her first name. “I’ve been wanting to meet you, too.”

  “Is that right?”

  Momma cupped a hand around her mouth and lowered her voice conspiratorially. “You’re famous round these parts!”

  I swallowed hard, attempting to keep my soul from fleeing out my throat in humiliation.

  “Only joking!” Momma said, her British accent stronger by the second. “I’ve made us a delightful supper. Alaskan salmon, shipped all the way from the North Pacific. Baked in wasabi cream sauce. Bet you’ve never had authentic Alaskan salmon before.”

  “You bet right.”

  “The trick with salmon is baking it as little as possible,” Momma said, winding her arm through Mandarin’s. “Chewy salmon is the worst. But if you don’t cook it enough, you might possibly give everybody parasites.…”

  She led Mandarin around the corner toward the kitchen, leaving me alone in the entryway. I stood there a second, feeling as if I had missed something. Then I shut the door. On second thought, I twisted the dead bolt, to keep out any other disturbing imposters.

  But apparently I’d trapped another one inside, as I discovered when Taffeta came sashaying down the stairs in jeans and one of her little-girl undershirts.

  “Taffeta! Why in the world are you walking like that?”

  She stopped in the middle of the stairs with one hand on her hip. “It’s my new pageant walk.”

  “You look ridiculous. And if you don’t change out of those jeans, Momma’ll kick your butt halfway to Nebraska.”

  “But you’ve got jeans on too!”

  “Taffeta,” I said warningly.

  She stuck out her tongue and charged back up the stairs.

  In the kitchen, Mandarin and my mother were engaged in intense conversation.

  “I mean, Alaska, Paris, Rome …,” Momma said. “All those places, I know I’ll get there someday. But I haven’t been in any sort of a hurry.”

  Mandarin seemed to be avoiding my eyes. In fact, she appeared fascinated with Momma’s words, flicking the end of one braid like a paintbrush.

  “And Washokey’s such a magnificent place to raise the children, after all,” Momma said. “Such a fabulous school. No robberies or muggings. That’s why I settled here in the first place. I spent some time in Jackson Hole when I was your age, but it only took a few months away before I realized I had to come back.”

  “Washokey doesn’t bore you?” Mandarin asked.

  Momma answered a little too quickly. “No! Of course not.” She shrugged. “Everything I need is right here. I grew up in these hills, and they’ve got meaning for me, they really do. A little vacation every once in a while would be nice, but …”

  “Aren’t you going to Washington, D.C., with Grace this summer?”

  I stared at Mandarin in horror.

  “Washington, D.C.?” Momma said. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “You mean Grace hasn’t told you about the leadership conference?” Mandarin said before I could speak. “They found out that idiot kid Peter copied his essay, and Gracey here’s the real winner.”

  Momma placed a hand on my shoulder. “Is this the truth, Grace? Why didn’t you tell me you won?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. I just—”

  “Grace was just telling me how lonely she thought she’d be, traveling by herself,” Mandarin interrupted. “Wouldn’t it be better if all of you went together?”

  What was she doing?

  I knew Washington wasn’t part of Mandarin’s plans for us. But just the thought of my mother and sister tagging along—Taffeta’s brattiness, Momma’s incessant prattling, like mistuned radios spoiling all the sounds and sights—was too much for me to handle.
I wanted to double over. “But it’s a conference, Momma,” I protested. “I’ll be in classes. I’ll hardly have any free time. I don’t think—”

  “Grace doesn’t tell me anything,” Momma said to Mandarin, as if I weren’t even there. “She’d have had a terrible time and I’d never have known. Washington, D.C., with my girls! It’ll be perfect. And a perfect dress rehearsal to get us ready for our trip to California.”

  I saw Mandarin’s grin freeze on her face. “California?”

  “If Taffeta wins the state pageant in a month—or rather, when she wins—after she wins the tri-county, that’s where the nationals are held.”

  “The beauty pageant nationals,” Mandarin clarified.

  Momma nodded. “I’ve forever wanted to go there. Some people call Jackson Hole—that’s where I used to live—they call it California East, did you know that?”

  I was still stuck on the nightmarish notion of Momma and Taffeta joining me in Washington. “Momma, you know the conference is three whole weeks long,” I said. “What about work?”

  “Are you kidding?” Momma turned from me to Mandarin. “The nice thing about my line of work—selling makeup products for Femme Fatale Cosmetics, Inc.—is that I get to make my own hours. I’m my own boss. So I get lots of free time. Usually June is my busiest month because of sweepstakes, but now they’re doing it twice per year, and so it’s no problem if I take some time off, especially for my brilliant daughters.”

  Momma reached out for my shoulder again, but I leaned down just in time, pretending to adjust my shoe.

  “You know what, Mandarin?” she said. “Maybe you should look into cosmetics sales yourself. You’ve certainly got the looks it requires. Beauty is everything, I’m telling you. No one wants to buy lipsticks from a wrinkled old lady. Now, I’ll be right back. I have to use the powder room.”

  As Momma danced out of the kitchen, I turned to glare at Mandarin.

  “It ain’t my fault you didn’t tell your mom you won,” she whispered. “And anyways, can’t you take a joke? Stop looking at me like that.”

  An hour later, we sat around the dinner table, which was cluttered with the remains of our feast: plates mucky with pink slivers of salmon flesh and silvery skin, balled-up napkins, empty glasses stained with cranberry juice. Taffeta hadn’t taken her eyes off Mandarin throughout the entire meal. Mandarin sat across from me, leaning back in her chair while Momma lit the candles on my cake. As with everything she cooked or baked, the cake was elaborate—three layers, the top one leaning slightly to the left.

  “Shall we sing ‘Happy Birthday’?” she asked.

  After a short pause, all three began to sing. Mandarin sang low and deadpan, while Momma sang high-pitched and off key. Taffeta’s miraculous voice was buried by the incompatible tones of the other two.

  “Now!” Momma exclaimed when they’d finished. “How about a solo from Taffeta?”

  When my sister finished her encore, there was a long silence. I tapped Mandarin’s toe with mine. She should have known to compliment Taffeta’s voice. Wasn’t it obvious? But she didn’t, and the silence stretched on until Momma broke it.

  “So, Mandarin,” she said. “What did your own mother do for your birthdays?”

  I wanted to kick Momma under the table. It was as if dinner had been going too well, and she thought the universe needed upsetting. Taffeta, a veteran of dinnertime tension, slipped halfway below the table so only her big eyes rolled about.

  Mandarin stared at my mother straight on. “Nothing much at all,” she said. “We hardly had the chance.”

  “Oh no,” Momma said, feigning sudden enlightenment. “Oh dear! That’s so unforgivably clumsy of me. I entirely forgot. It’s rotten when a mother stays away like that, a dreadful shame …”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Mandarin said. “She’s dead.”

  “Is that so? Because—”

  “Just stop it, Momma!” I cried. “It isn’t any different than my dad, okay?” I looked at Mandarin. “I never even met my dad.”

  As if I had started it all, Momma thrust her chair away from the table and stood. “Grace! You will not talk about that man under this roof, in this kitchen, over this supper I laid out with love on your birthday. Understood?”

  I glared at her.

  “Now, how about some ice cream?” She twirled toward the freezer like a ballerina, her too-short cocktail dress flipping out around her thighs.

  I glanced back at Mandarin. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I mouthed.

  She shrugged.

  As soon as we’d finished our excruciatingly silent dessert, I pushed back my chair and stood. “Where are you running off to so fast?” Momma asked.

  I looked at Mandarin for help.

  “Didn’t you know?” she asked, beaming grotesquely. “Tonight’s the cowboy dance. It’s the biggest event of the year!”

  An attack of laughter threatened to overcome me. I didn’t trust my voice, so I nodded.

  “The dance is tonight? Grace, honey, you can’t wear those awful jeans. If you like, you can pick an outfit from my closet. How about that spotted teal dress with the belt?”

  “Um, we’re stopping by Mandarin’s first. I’ll just borrow a dress from her.”

  “Wait! You can’t leave without your gift.”

  Momma pulled a box from under her chair. It was wrapped in pink tissue paper, the same kind she used to wrap my sandwiches. “I found it at Nelly’s Bargain Boutique after you left,” she said, sliding the package to me. “I couldn’t believe I found it. It’s perfect for you.”

  It had to be the rock tumbler. What else could it be?

  I felt a sweeping rush of affection for Momma, a sensation so new it was almost debilitating. I used a bread knife to split the Scotch tape, aware of Momma’s affinity for reusing wrapping paper. When I uncovered a shoe box instead of the rock tumbler package, my heart sank.

  I lifted the lid and found a camera. Not a digital camera or a video camera. But the decades-old, film-only kind, as big as a brick and half as heavy. She’d also included a few rolls of film in black canisters.

  “What do you think?” Momma asked. “I used a film camera for all your old pageant photos, you know.”

  I picked up the camera and touched the lens, the shutter release, the focusing rings, notched with tiny numbers. The attached leather strap smelled faintly of sun-warmed bomber jackets, of cowboy boots and rodeos. I unsnapped the lens cover and peered the wrong way, as if the camera were a gun aimed at my head. My reflection, tiny and distorted, peered back.

  As Mandarin and I snuck onto the football field, nearly two hundred teenagers climbed the stairs of our school on their way to the cowboy dance.

  They wore their cowboy best, or so I imagined: Stetson hats and pointy boots with heels, fringe and chaps, denim and leather, accessorized with spurs and lassos. The girls curled their hair in beauty pageant ringlets or bound them in double cowgirl braids, like Mandarin’s. The boys sprayed themselves with their fathers’ Cattleman Cologne—a real scorpion in every bottle! They passed through the double doors adorned with balloons and barbed wire, and filtered into the cafeteria decorated with bales of hay and cardboard steers.

  That was how I pictured it, at least.

  Mandarin and I could hear the wind-strewn music as we squeezed through a gap in the chain-link fence. We clanged up the empty metal bleachers and chose seats at the top. Mandarin was barefoot and bare-legged, having left her nylons in a ball on my bedroom floor. She’d traded her skirt for a pair of my gym shorts, with her frilly blouse half buttoned. The sky was streaked with clouds that glowed around the edges, as if somebody held a flashlight behind them. I could barely make out the visitors’ bleachers on the other side.

  “I’ve never been here when there wasn’t a game going on,” I said.

  My words reverberated off the bleachers, distorted and metallic-sounding. I shivered and lowered my voice before continuing.

  “I think it’s crazy how involved everybody g
ets. Especially since we play the same two teams over and over, and the winners and losers never change. I’ll bet the wild animals within a twenty-mile radius bolt as soon as the floodlights come on.”

  I waited for Mandarin to smile, but she didn’t seem to be listening.

  “It’s not like I’ve been to many games, anyway,” I continued. Three. I’d been to three football games in my entire life. “My mother hates the noise. And … I never liked going with my old friends.”

  “I love it when no one’s here,” Mandarin said.

  I glanced at her, but she wasn’t looking at me.

  “When everything’s quiet,” she continued. “Heavy and still. It feels like … like I’m disconnected. Like I’m suspended underwater. Nothing there but me.”

  She extended her arms, palms down, and closed her eyes, like when she’d floated on her back in the canal.

  “Sometimes I feel that way even when there’s lots of people around. In the halls at school. Or at the bar, real late. Like I’m just an empty space moving through the crowds. Like I’m not really there at all.”

  When she opened her eyes, they had a faraway cast, as if they’d lost the ability to focus. They made me think of the eyes of the elk head trophy, drifting through the tunnel of river trees. My breath caught in my throat. Before I knew it, I’d reached over and placed my hand over hers.

  Mandarin glanced at my hand as if she’d forgotten I was there.

  “Y’know, your mom’s a riot,” she said. I drew back my hand and tucked it between my knees. “Does she really make her money selling that fatal female crap?”

  “Not all of it. There’s an inheritance from my grandparents. And my father.”

  “Your father,” she repeated, drawing out the word. “Who was he?”

  “Some cop. When she was eighteen, she ran off to Jackson Hole after her parents died. She stayed with her father’s brother.”

  Mandarin pulled the rubber bands from her pigtails and shot them into the dark, then began unwinding her braids.

  “I guess he, like, felt her up a couple times,” I went on. “I don’t know the details. But after that, she moved back home to Washokey. A cop drove her most of the way in a police car. Did more than drove, apparently. Their fling didn’t last much longer than the car ride, though. My mother didn’t know she was pregnant until he was long gone.”