How Does a Single Blade of Grass Thank the Sun?

by Doretta Lau

  Mark was the first person on the scene. He was riding his bike (having skipped prom) and when he saw the carnage he sprinted like a Tour de France cyclist to a payphone.

  When I am not feeling depressed I tell myself that Suzy had so much beer that night she was probably in a happy state when the truck struck her dad’s little brown car and killed her. Other times—most times—I line up all the bottles of pills from the medicine cabinet on the bathroom counter and think about how I cheated death even though I’m a lousy card player and even worse at chess.

  I came out of the accident with a broken leg. The colleges withdrew their offers and I continued to live with my parents while classmates moved away.

  Enter Melissa. When we met she played the Smallest Woman in the World in the carnival freak show. She’s not really the smallest woman in the world, just an actress/bartender. The trick involved costumes and mirrors. To my great disappointment, I learned that most freak show attractions have an element of fakery. Above all, I was crushed to discover that the bearded lady was really a man. Anyhow, all those illusions deluded Melissa into thinking that her pity for me was love. At present, her feelings are likely closer to disdain.

  Now Mark is heading to the finish line and I’m a fool looking over my shoulder. I’m John Landy and Mark is Roger Bannister, passing me by.

  There’s a note on the kitchen table from Melissa when I get back to our apartment.

  We’re out of toilet paper.

  No Love, M or little x’s and o’s. Mel used to write affectionate missives. She used to put on too much lipstick and kiss me on the forehead while I was sleeping. She once had pet names for me that I liked. Now I’m just loser or jerk. I can’t remember the last time she touched me voluntarily.

  Melissa and I keep missing each other. When I think of our relationship, there’s a pit in my stomach, the same feeling I used to have if I knew I was going to drop the ball. I don’t want to fumble us. So I buy some toilet paper, family size and not just four-rolls-for-a-buck, and wait for her to come home.

  I make the mistake of closing my eyes for a few minutes. Hours go by. When I wake up there’s a new note on the kitchen table:

  Audition today. At work tonight.

  No hearts, not even a thank you. This does not bode well. In high school I was good at three things: running, catching a ball and getting the girls. I can still run and catch, and at the moment I’m not concerned about getting the girls. Keeping one girl, that’s the hard part. I’m sure that Melissa is slipping through my fingers.

  Besides Melissa, all I have is my job and that’s not much. After high school I discovered that I wasn’t even cut out to operate deep fryers. I have no marketable skills other than my ability to run and catch. I can’t swallow swords or breathe fire so I ended up becoming one of four guys who dodges paintballs and rotting vegetables for a living. A new breed of Coney Island freak.

  Whoop the Freak is the brainchild of Artie Daniels, former car salesman. Artie was walking down the boardwalk when he noticed the game Shoot the Freak and decided he wanted in on the action. Whoop the Freak has a smart business model. The overhead is low. The pen is filled with furniture Artie found on the sidewalk. Other than paying a few guys to be freaks, he only has to maintain a small trailer, the five paintball guns mounted at boardwalk level and a couple of slingshot/mini-catapults. To make Whoop the Freak slightly different from Shoot the Freak, Artie accepts rotting produce from various grocery stores and has a “Rotten Tomatoes” option where people can choose to sling putrid fruits and vegetables at fellow humans.

  “Paintball’s bullshit,” he told me during my interview. “People don’t want to be shot at. They want to be the shooter. That’s where you come in. You’re the shootee, the freak. The rotting produce provides a historical touch to our endeavour, which is more than you can say for Shoot the Freak. If you’re good, it’ll be like Shakespeare.”

  At the start of every shift I think, To be or not to be?

  Now that Mark’s onto greener pastures, the other guys and I have our eyes on the lucrative weekend days. So far Artie hasn’t scheduled anyone for Saturday or Sunday. Nor has he mentioned whether or not he’s going to hire someone new.

  “The element of surprise and money are the only reasons to get out of bed,” he often says when someone asks about schedules or their future with Whoop the Freak.

  I get to work early to make sure that the windows on the trailer are clean. They are, but the trailer is covered in graffiti. There’s an anarchy symbol next to peter loves caitlin. There’s also a crude approximation of a naked woman.

  Artie keeps a can of white paint on hand for this very reason. I slap on the first coat in ten minutes, but it does little to hide the damage. As I wait for the paint to dry, I wonder if I’m showing enough initiative to take on Mark’s old workload. I marvel at my new brown-

  nosing self.

  When I see Artie the first words out of my mouth are, “So who’s working the weekend?”

  He points to a button on the lapel of his sports jacket, which reads, ask me tomorrow.

  At least he didn’t point to the one that says, what’s your problem, fuckface?

  Then he says, “Let Joe finish the trailer. You’re on.”

  So I suit up. Shin guards, body armour, bulletproof vest, motorcycle helmet. I walk to the pen and sit on the sofa. All the items in the pen are supposed to represent items you might find in someone’s living room. Well, items you’d find in a freak’s living room. Behind the living room set-up is a picture of a stage with red curtains painted on an old billboard. Everything is covered in paint or rotten food and there’s nothing private about the space. The boardwalk overlooks the pen and there are usually about forty people standing around listening to Artie’s spiel and staring at the freak.

  My favourite thing about my workspace is the dirty white refrigerator, which sits next to the dirt patch that becomes a mud pit when it rains. The fridge looks a lot like the one in the apartment I grew up in, except my mother always kept ours fully stocked. It isn’t plugged into anything and even if it were, it probably wouldn’t work. I keep my empty beer cans in it. Some entrepreneurial soul empties it out every night, saving me the trouble.

  After the fridge, I’d have to say that I like the sofa, mostly because it is good for hiding behind. I have no real use for the broken office chair, except that it is a convenient place to put an ashtray. The reason why there is an ashtray is Artie felt that I wasn’t treating the workspace with respect.

  “Would you drop cigarette butts on the floor of an insurance office?” he barked on my first day on the job.

  “I guess not,” I said, but I wasn’t sure. I’d never set foot inside an insurance office. All the insurance people I’ve ever met showed up to see me at the hospital after the accident.

  I take the helmet off and light a cigarette. Up above, Artie’s firing up the crowd.

  “There are no prizes here, no stuffed animals. If you’re looking for that, go somewhere else. If you’re here to Whoop the Freak, you came to the right place. Five shots, three dollars. That applies to the rotten tomatoes as well.”

  No takers yet.

  I think about Mark and competitive eating. I think about how I thought I could out-eat everyone until I heard that Kobayashi ate fifty hot dogs. When I saw a picture of him—he’s a little guy—I quit. I don’t like losing and losing to a little guy is not an option.

  And now I am here, sitting between two buildings, waiting to be shot.

  The first shooter of the day is a five-year-old boy. I see the mother putting three bucks in Artie’s hand. She beams at her child. The little boy gets me in the stomach before I’ve had a chance to put my helmet on. I start running between the sofa and the refrigerator. Another paintball flies towards me and I dive behind the office chair, knocking the ashtray off. Then I sit on the chair and spin around and around.

  Th
e mother gives Artie another three bucks. On his last shot, the little boy gets me right in the chest. I start an elaborate death sequence, clutching at the spot where I think my heart is.

  I say, “O, woe is me.”

  I drop to my knees.

  “I am dead!” I collapse on my left side. All those acting classes. I count to ten before rising to my feet. When I stand, the mother throws a zucchini at my face and her little son cheers. I fall down again and close my eyes.

  When I open my eyes, the boy and his mother are gone, but Melissa is standing on the boardwalk. She has a new haircut and I think that maybe her hair is a shade or two lighter. She looks pretty, but tired. Although Artie is not one to refuse money, he won’t take the twenty dollars she’s waving in his face.

  “I don’t get involved in my freak’s personal life,” I can hear him saying.

  “Fine,” she says and walks to the paint gun in the middle, stuffing her money in the back pocket of her worn jeans. She pulls the trigger and the first shot misses my helmet by inches.

  “Is that you, Yoshi?” she shouts.

  I don’t say anything. Freaks don’t talk directly to shooters.

  She continues shooting. Then she uses a slingshot to launch a withered eggplant at me. “Aren’t you going to ask how my audition was?”

  A paintball hits my leg. Rancid apples fly past me. I say nothing.

  A two-hundred-pound guy in a leather jacket tries to give Artie a twenty to join in the action. Artie says, “In a moment. Why don’t you enjoy the free show for now?” Leather jacket nods.

  I do a cartwheel. The paintball gun makes its release noise and paint flies towards me. I feel a sting on my left thigh. A bed of limp lettuce breaks my fall.

  “Say something!” Melissa is using her stage shouting voice. Then she gets me in the chest. My heart tightens.

  “Say something, you fool!” shouts a prim-looking woman wearing the kind of hat my grandmother might wear to church if she were still alive.

  I drop to my knees and take my helmet off. I look up at Melissa, standing there on the boardwalk. Instead of collapsing and pretending to die I stay on my knees. I am Yoshihiro. No more rehearsed lines, no more thoughts of death. No finish line in sight, just starting blocks and the tension before the pistol goes off.

  There is no script to follow. I know that now.

  I say, “Will you marry me?” The women standing on the boardwalk start clapping and I imagine that Melissa’s trigger finger is relaxed. The smell of paint and rotting food hangs around me. I stay on my knees and wait.

  Little Miss International Goodwill

  More than anything in the world, eight-year-old Clementine Wong wanted to be blonde when she grew up. At Chinese school, when she was supposed to be memorizing characters for dictation, she drew pencil crayon self-portraits depicting herself as Rapunzel, Smurfette or Barbie. She was certain she would undergo a metamorphosis at puberty: her straight, black hair would soften into blonde curls like those of Amy March, who looked very pretty on the cover of Little Women.

  Her secondary desire was to get the attention of her older sister, Constance, who never wanted to play. To achieve this, Clementine stood in front of the television while Constance studied a vhs tape of the 1988 Miss Hong Kong pageant. Constance believed she was destined to be Miss Hong Kong—or at least Miss Photogenic. She walked around the house with a book on her head to perfect her posture and did aerobics while listening to Leslie Cheung albums on the family’s only cassette tape player.

  “Move!” Constance said. She was watching reigning Miss Hong Kong and Miss Chinese International Michelle Reis’s swimsuit interview, mimicking the beauty queen’s mannerisms.

  “No. I like it here.” Clementine put her hands on her hips.

  “Move, dummy.”

  “I was in the living room first,” Clementine said.

  “I was in the living room first yesterday,” Constance countered.

  “I was in the living room first last week.”

  “I was born before you, so I was in the living room first. Take that, second best,” Constance hissed.

  Clementine didn’t know what to say, so she repeated herself. “I was here first.”

  “Mom!” Constance shouted.

  Clementine didn’t want to get in trouble, so she sat down on the floor to the left of the television, and picked up a Nancy Drew book she had borrowed from the public library.

  Their mother entered the living room.

  Constance smiled. “The good part’s coming up,” she said in perfect Cantonese.

  Clementine pretended to read for a few minutes while her mom sat with Constance, then she retired to her room to play with dolls. She had one Barbie, and she liked to make-believe that the doll was a baseball player or detective or explorer. Constance also had a Barbie, but she had converted the doll into Miss Hong Kong, complete with sash and tiara. She had even coloured the doll’s hair with her mom’s dark brown hair dye. This year the doll’s name was Michelle. It changed from pageant to pageant, taking on the names of winners. Clementine’s doll was called Barbie, “Because that’s her name.”

  Each day, Clementine brushed the doll’s blonde hair one hundred times. She’d read in a book that it was the magic number required for a perfect mane. When she was done, she brushed her own hair, and counted each stroke with her eyes closed as if she was playing hide and seek. At the end of one hundred strokes, she would open her eyes and look in the mirror. She was always disappointed that her hair remained black.

  During dinner, Clementine played with a hole in the elbow of her Expo 86 sweatshirt, a gift from an aunt who had visited Vancouver the year of the world’s fair. Constance was sitting next to her. Her back was straight, and the hem of her dress fell neatly over her knees, which she held tightly together.

  “You’re still holding your chopsticks wrong, dummy,” Constance said.

  “I’m not. See, I can pick anything up.” Clementine picked up a piece of beef and stuck it in her mouth. She chewed it with gusto.

  “It’s wrong. You’re stupid because you weren’t born in Hong Kong. You were born in Vancouver. You’re a stupid banana. You speak Cantonese with a banana accent.” Constance spoke softly so that their parents couldn’t hear what she was saying.

  “Shut up, jerkface!” Clementine shouted, slamming her chopsticks on the table.

  Their parents heard that.

  “Don’t talk like that to your older sister,” their mom said in

  Cantonese.

  “I’m sorry,” Clementine replied in English, though she didn’t feel that she was in the wrong. When her parents weren’t watching, she showed Constance a mouthful of chewed greens and beef.

  “Mom! Look!” Constance said.

  Clementine shut her mouth. She tried very hard to hold her chopsticks correctly so her parents would love her as much as they loved Constance.

  The girls at school didn’t like playing with Clementine. She roughhoused like a boy and didn’t like to talk about clothes or horses. Sometimes she liked to sit inside for the entire lunch hour and read a book rather than play with other children.

  “What are you doing?” Amanda asked her one rainy afternoon.

  “Reading,” Clementine said.

  “Reading what?” Chantal asked.

  “A book,” Clementine said. She disliked Amanda and Chantal, who both liked animals, princesses and the colour pink.

  “I bet it’s hard to read,” Amanda said.

  “Not really. It’s pretty easy,” Clementine said.

  “My dad says Chinese people have squinty eyes,” Amanda said. “It makes it hard for you to see.”

  “Your eyes are weird,” Chantal said.

  “At least I don’t have glasses,” Clementine said.

  “At least I don’t have glasses,” Chantal mimicked, though she was wearing
glasses.

  “You do have glasses, Four Eyes,” Clementine said.

  “But at least she’s not ugly,” Amanda said.

  “And I’m not Chinese,” Chantal added.

  “I’m Canadian,” Clementine said.

  “My dad says you’re not,” Amanda said.

  Clementine ignored her.

  The next day during recess, she filled Amanda and Chantal’s coat pockets with dirt and worms.

  Although she wasn’t a good student, Clementine loved Chinese school. Classes were held in a school cafeteria, with one teacher in charge of students whose ages ranged from five to sixteen. The best lessons featured stories about young boys and girls who grew up to be great people. All the children attending the class aspired to greatness in some form: beauty queen, professional baseball player, medical doctor, war hero.

  During break, Clementine listened to the older girls talk in the washroom about hair, makeup and boys. She thought that boys were gross, but the conversations were fascinating. Even Constance, with all her big sister knowledge, didn’t know as much as Karen and Alice.

  “I was thinking about bleaching the front of my hair,” Karen said, staring at her reflection in a dirty mirror.

  “Blonde?” Alice asked.

  Clementine listened with interest.

  “Maybe. I don’t know,” Karen said. She caught Clementine looking at her in the mirror.

  “You should wear your bangs like this,” Karen said, sweeping Clementine’s hair to the left.

  Clementine touched her hair. A feeling of happiness spread through her body. She now knew what it took to become blonde.

  The household bleach was in the laundry room, under the sink. Clementine shook the bottle. It was nearly full. She undid the cap and discovered that it smelled like motel towels and sheets. First, she tried to comb the liquid through her hair, but it was too difficult and most of it ended up on the floor. After some thought, she stopped the sink and filled it with bleach, then stuck her head in. A tingling sensation spread across her scalp. Quickly, it became uncomfortable.