The Radical Element

by The Radical Element- 12 Stories of Daredevils, Debutantes

  I pass under a heavy velvet curtain into the ladies’ lounge, where it is clear that a thousand roses died in vain, their fragrance overwhelmed by the stench of body odor and Chesterfield cigarettes. The room features dove-gray walls and a domed ceiling from which a giant orchid of a chandelier blooms. Girls lounge about in various stages of repose. Some look fresh and prim, as if they’ve just been planted, while others stretch out on upholstered sofas like wilted blades of grass.

  When the girls notice me, it’s as if some invisible conductor has lifted his wand, cutting off the symphony. After everyone has gotten a good look — even the wooden puppet on the arm of a milky-faced girl — the voices resume, whispers punctuated by snickers.

  A tall brunette cranes her long neck in my direction, frowning. She is exactly what Audrey Hepburn might’ve looked like after an accident with a wall — doe-ish brown eyes cresting a squashed-in nose and chin. Beside her, a petite blonde trims her nails with manicure scissors. The blonde resembles Doris Day, with freckles and white-blond locks cut above her ears. I would bet a half-dollar that she’ll be singing “Secret Love” for her talent.

  Doris Day levels her cornflower-blue eyes with mine, sizing me up, cutting me down. Just like her beanstalk of a buddy, a disagreeable expression sours her good looks.

  Doris drops the scissors into a smart-looking clutch with gold tassels. Fluffing up her hair, she sashays over, lemon skirts swishing. Audrey slouches after her. Bad posture for Audrey and high heels on Doris put them about the same height as me — five foot three. Height seems to be one of the few ways in which being average gives you an edge. The short will ruin their feet for it, just as the too-tall will offer up their spines.

  When Doris reaches me, she jams a fist into her hip and her eyes drift like blue-jay feathers down to my sling-back flats, which I considered a practical, if not boring, choice. “Looks like someone got lost on her way to the tiki bar.” Her bottom lip sticks out more than the top so that in profile, her mouth resembles a miniature boxing glove.

  Audrey sniggers, fingers twisting at a ring. “Trader Vic’s is just down the street. I hear they’ll take anyone.”

  I clap a hand to my cheek. “I must have taken a wrong turn at Stabby City. But it looks like I found a couple of piña co-bimbos right here.” The best defense is to hop on the fence and throw tomatoes, Pops always said. When you’re a duck in a chicken world, you learn to peck with a little in-your-face humor, which tells people not to mess with you. Of course, it doesn’t always work.

  From behind my two new friends, the girl with the puppet laughs. At least her puppet laughs, a replica of its animator with the same nutmeg hair parted down the middle. They’re even wearing the same white dress with blue flowers.

  A flush stains Doris’s neck. “They’ll never choose you to be Miss Sugar Maiden, and you know why?”

  “Something tells me I’m about to find out,” I say cheerfully.

  “Because no one will buy sugar if your face is on the box. They want to see something sweet, not” — she hitches her shoulders — “jungle.”

  Audrey adds in a nasally voice, “It’s like how Ivory Snow detergent has a baby on the box. Babies are sweet and pure, just like the soap.”

  I clasp my hands together and rock forward. “Oh, I think I understand. It’s like how your face would go well on a bottle of cod liver oil.”

  Audrey’s trap falls open, flattening her nostrils.

  “And how yours would go well on a box of rat poison,” I tell Doris so she doesn’t feel excluded.

  Doris’s cheek twitches, and I’m reminded of the tiny crack in Oba’s old teapot. No one thought much about that crack, until one day the pot just shattered. Glass remembers past wrongs, said Oba, and maybe it’s the same way with people. But then again, teapots don’t go around insulting people for sport. In my mouth’s history of wisecracking, I’ve only been called to the mat once, in fifth grade when a kid called me a chinkie-winkie, and I told him it must be exhausting to fit his entire vocabulary into one sentence. He clocked me with his three-ring binder even though the principal was standing right there, which goes to show how stupid he was.

  To my surprise, Doris polishes up a smile, one that shows a smear of red on her teeth. It’s either her lipstick or she bit the head off a mouse. Audrey notices and, with a meaningful glance, discreetly gestures to her own teeth. The buddy system works its magic. Doris takes out a compact, into which she bares her teeth, then erases the wayward stain in one quick motion. “I’m sorry. We seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot. This is Penny Pimsley, and I’m Martha Roth.” Martha’s eyes cut to mine. “You are?”

  I grudgingly hand it over, wondering at the abrupt shift in temperature. “Lana.”

  “As in Turner.” She snaps shut her compact. “How scandalous.”

  The sexy starlet Lana Turner has been called the baddest beauty to ever grace the screen — she’s on husband number four — but for me, Lana is short for Lanakila, meaning victorious. Mom named me that after I put her through eighteen hours of labor.

  Martha turns her mischievous eyes to my ukulele. “You playing that little thing for your talent?”

  “Yes,” I say guardedly, preferring outward hostility to this faux friendliness.

  “I’m singing.” She pats her friend’s arm. “And Penny’s dancing. Well, if you consider ‘tap’ dancing.”

  Penny’s cheeks pinken, and she lowers her eyes to her patent-leather tap shoes. I’m about to ask what the chickens else you would consider it, but then I wonder why I’m even in this conversation.

  Before I can leave to find better company — myself — Miss Lovejoy’s peach-hued figure sweeps through the curtained entrance. “Ladies, ladies! Remember to place the items you will require on the cart.” She lifts a hand toward a two-tiered rolling tray on which several objects have already been placed. I spot an accordion, a top hat and cane, a pennywhistle, and a bongo drum. “An attendant will bring your item to you when it is your turn to deliver your act. I’ll fetch you in fifteen — please be in ready form.”

  “I need to powder my nose. Good luck, Lana.” The way Martha drops my name triggers a warning, the same feeling you get when you step on something that you know is a wad of gum. You keep walking, hoping you were wrong but, inevitably, you’re not.

  Martha and Penny disappear through another set of curtains that I presume leads to the sinks and toilets. Slowly, I exhale, only now realizing how tightly I’ve been holding myself. Oba always said to take it as a compliment when someone treats you like dung, because it means you’re destined to make the world grow into a beautiful place.

  I remove Oba’s ukulele from the case and store the case by a rack sagging under the weight of too many purses and coats. All the chairs are full, so I huddle by the least occupied wall and tune my instrument.

  Oba gave her uke to me the day she died. “You should have this, since your mudda has a wooden ear,” she said in her soft Japanese accent. Then she went into her bedroom and closed the door the way she did before she took a nap. When I went to wake her, her skin was clammy.

  As instructed, I carefully set Oba’s uke on the pushcart, suddenly reluctant to part with it — the only friendly face in this room. But feeling the eyes of the other girls searing into my back, I release the wood. Then I feign interest in a glass etching of a nude sitting backward on a prancing goat.

  “That could not have been comfortable,” squeaks a voice like a rusted hinge. It’s the girl with the puppet — though again, it’s the puppet speaking.

  “For the girl or the goat?” I ask.

  The puppet laughs, but the girl’s mouth barely budges. How does she do that?

  “I meant those girls, Martha and Penny. Word is, Sugar Maiden’s looking for someone ‘different’ this year. They can’t stand it, well, mostly Martha. She goes to my school, and she’s stuck-up.”

  “I’m Lana.”

  “I’m Maude.” The puppet points to the girl. “And she’s Judy. Who
taught you to be so funny?”

  I’ve never been asked that before. “My pops. He was an embalmer.” It’s what brought him to Hawaii from his native California. There was a shortage of embalmers in the navy. After returning to the mainland after the war, someone offered him a job as a shoe cobbler, which he took because, unlike bodies, shoes still had their soles. “If you couldn’t find your funny bone, you didn’t stand a chance. He liked to say embalmers were more than a couple of working stiffs.”

  The puppet laughs, and for the first time, I catch movement from Judy’s shell-pink lips.

  “Do you always talk for Judy?” I ask Maude.

  The puppet takes a good look at Judy’s round face, pushes her wooden hands into Judy’s pert nose, then pulls at the girl’s ears. “If I don’t, she stammers. She’s been this way since she was seven.”

  “I see,” I say, even though I’m not sure I do.

  Judy closes her fist and the puppet crosses her arms in front of her chest. “I hope that’s not a problem for you” comes Maude’s voice, even squeakier than before.

  “Of course not.” We all need people to lean on, even if they are made from wood and cloth.

  Both Maude and Judy tilt their faces to one side. “Are you Japanese or Chinese?”

  I brace myself. “A little of both. I hope that’s not a problem for you.”

  “Of course not.”

  All three of us smile, though now I’m not sure who I should be looking at. I marvel at how sometimes it only takes one kind person (or puppet) to run the squeegee across one’s sullied outlook. “What I really want to know is, who gets to be on the sugar box if you win?”

  The puppet turns her painted-on brown eyes to Judy. “People say she has the better bones. It’s not a fair comparison, since I don’t actually have bones.”

  A flash of peach sends a nervous thrill to my heart. “Ladies, it’s time,” Miss Lovejoy announces in her chirpy voice.

  We are marched up a ramp in a rustle of silk and satin and the catch and release of held breaths. Penny, as the first contestant, trails just behind Miss Lovejoy. Separated now from Martha (number nine), Penny isn’t slouching anymore. With her shoulders back and her slender neck held aloft, it’s clear she’s here to win — a fact that improves my opinion of her. Martha strides before me, placing each foot down with the confidence of a man laying down aces.

  Once backstage, we park ourselves on a line of wooden chairs, with Penny closest to the wings and me closest to a costume of a rhinoceros in a tutu. Maybe I should put that on and break up some of the tension here. Anticipation hangs in the air like the knotted and frayed ends of the stage ropes. The scent of turpentine and musty curtains tickles my nose, goading me to sneeze.

  Then Miss Lovejoy, the only one allowed in the wings, sweeps her arms at Penny, meaning, Go! The girl’s dance shoes pa-tat! pa-tat!, and she disappears from view.

  PENNY: My name is Penny Pimsley, and I’m eighteen. I should be Miss Sugar Maiden because I’m sweet as vanilla Coke.

  MAN: Where are you from, Miss Pimsley?

  PENNY: San Francisco. It may be foggy, but I am told that I bring sunshine wherever I go.

  Appreciative chuckles from the audience.

  WOMAN: Where do you see yourself in ten years?

  PENNY: I’ve always wanted to travel to Spain. I’d love to travel anywhere, actually.

  MAN: Thank you, Miss Pimsley. Please proceed.

  There’s the sound of men’s shoes walking onstage from the other direction, probably bringing Penny her cane and hat. Then a piano starts playing “You Are My Sunshine,” and Penny begins tapping.

  All seems to be proceeding as expected, until the sound of a cane clattering to the ground interrupts the flow of the taps. The audience gasps, but the piano keeps up the melody.

  Beside me, a smirk lights Martha’s face. Some friend. The mistake might’ve cost Penny the crown, a thought that should cheer me but doesn’t.

  Martha catches me watching her, and her eyes sharpen. Penny picks up her routine, and Martha withdraws her daggers, more concerned now with flicking lint off her skirt. There’s a deliberateness to her movements, as if milking each moment for maximum value.

  The other acts follow. I suddenly hate the number ten, which forces me to endure a barrage of unnatural peppiness, bootlicking, and admittedly good talent. The bongo drummer makes even me tap my toes.

  When number eight, Maude/Judy, sallies forth into the spotlight, my fingers tingle with nervousness for her.

  MAUDE: Judy should be Miss Sugar Maiden because like sugar, she is wholesome and children love her. Also, she sits nicely at a table.

  An amused chuckle follows.

  MAN: What is your favorite dessert?

  MAUDE: Marshmallows.

  MAN: All right, Judy, er, Maude. What will you be doing for us today?

  MAUDE: I will be reciting a poem called “The Climb.”

  She clears her throat.

  “A man filled his wheelbarrow

  With his every worldly thing.

  ‘I’m off to climb the mountain

  And live there like a king.’

  The way was always up,

  No downs did he encounter,

  But on and on he toiled,

  For soon he hoped he’d mount her.

  His favorite book bounced out

  And tumbled down the slope,

  But he wouldn’t stop to catch it —

  At least it wasn’t his soap.

  A flash of gray came at him,

  A wolf with eyes of yellow.

  It bit his leg and ripped it off;

  Still onward marched our fellow.

  His burden eased as more fell off,

  His fedora and his rope.

  A grizzly took his arm for lunch;

  A blackbird pinched his soap.

  At last he hopped the final step,

  Half the man as when he started,

  But seeing just how far he’d climbed

  Made our chap lighthearted.

  ‘All those things I carried up,

  I didn’t need them after all.

  They even took my arm and leg,

  But I’m still standing tall.

  Yes, I’m still standing tall.’”

  A robust applause fills the theater.

  I can’t help wondering why Judy chose that poem. What was her treasure, and how hard was her climb? And what about Martha, beside me, with her streak of ruthlessness and her boxer’s glove of a mouth?

  I glance at the row of now-empty chairs. Ten girls an hour for eight hours makes eighty in total. Eighty wheelbarrows being pushed up our own personal mountains.

  Finally, it’s Martha’s turn. She gives me a glittery smile before gliding away.

  MARTHA: I’m Martha Roth, I’m seventeen, and I should be Miss Sugar Maiden because it is simply my destiny.

  Laughter, followed by applause.

  MAN: I like your confidence. Tell us about your favorite hobbies.

  MARTHA: I love gardening. My apricot tulips took first place at the county fair last July. Also, I play a mean game of tennis. I bet I could beat you.

  MAN (teasing): I would love to see you try.

  She certainly has his vote. The piano starts up, and Martha begins “Secret Love,” which surprises no one. Regrettably, despite my fervent prayers, her singing voice doesn’t sound like a bullfrog dying of dysentery.

  I twist wrinkles into my dress, then press them back out with my sweaty fingers. Martha’s voice, a lighter version of Doris Day’s, grates my nerves. I tune her out and imagine Oba playing the song I will play, her face lost in a memory as she strums the chords. She used to sing it to the baby daughter strapped to her back — my mother — as she hacked at the cane.

  My love is like the cane fields,

  Every day, there to meet me,

  Hips a-swaying,

  Chatting gaily in my ear.

  Sugar on her breath.

  When the audience claps and cheers,
I pretend it’s for me. Miss Lovejoy gives me the signal. I fix Oba’s iron smile on my face and step into the light.

  There’s a wide expanse of black where the audience should be, a darkness thick with whispers that sound more surprised than welcoming. I shrink inside my curtain dress, wondering if my talent could be to disappear inside it. Did they whisper for the others? I didn’t notice.

  “My name is Lana Lau, and I’m sixteen.” I cringe at how shaky my voice sounds.

  “Yeah!” cries a man, along with the squeak of a chair. “Yeah! That’s my girl!” Pops.

  I give a small wave in his direction, imploring him to sit down. Then I inhale deeply, scattering the moths that flutter in the pit of my stomach. “I should be Miss Sugar Maiden because” — why? I can’t remember. Something about being sweet? No, that’s someone else. People like me can’t afford to be sweet.

  Though I can’t see Pops, I know his heart reaches for me.

  I can do this for him. For Mom. For Oba. “I should be Miss Sugar Maiden because Oba, my Japanese grandmother” — I can almost hear all the eyebrows raising — “she worked in the sugar fields for most of her life. Even as a woman, she cut and stripped the cane and burned the stalks when the harvest was done.” The more I project, the more the stage amplifies my voice, giving it a heft and ring. “Each crystal bears her fingerprint.”

  No one moves, and I wonder if I should somehow signal that I have finished speaking. “And that is why I would make a great Miss Sugar Maiden.”

  “Miss Lau, you’re pretty enough, but it wasn’t so long ago that we were fighting a war against your country. You think an American serviceman or his wife will buy sugar with a Jap face on it?”

  A fire roars to life in my belly. I can’t see the speaker, but I imagine he is slovenly, with a face full of grape-size moles. Where are the easy questions the other girls had, about my hobbies and such? But I keep my smile tightly screwed on. “My father would buy it. He served in the navy for six years. And if you did not think my Japanese mother was American enough, you wouldn’t have hired her to make sure your sugar meets industry standards. Mom wanted to be here today, but she decided that her job should take priority.”