How Does a Single Blade of Grass Thank the Sun?
Page 12
The three left the car. My plan had worked. I was alone with Yellow Peril.
“So, Peril, did you just get your hair cut?” I asked, brushing a lock of hair away from her face. I knew the answer, because I had overheard Peril telling Suzie all about her genius Japanese stylist.
“Yesterday,” she said, touching her hair. I noticed that she had on a bright red lip gloss that made her mouth look like a delicious hard candy.
“You look fetching,” I said. I was all ready to move in for the kill, to lean in and kiss her shellac shiny lips when Riceboy threw the door open.
“Am I interrupting something?” He smirked knowingly, and slid into the driver’s seat. He let a big fart rip, and it had the unfortunate characteristics of being both loud and stinky.
I sighed. Peril opened the door to get some air. I really had to mend my relationship with Riceboy. If I didn’t do anything, he would continue on like this, acting as if he was just goofing things up by mistake, all the while pulling up his pants. There would always be an edge of malice in all his dealings with me if I didn’t apologize in some way.
After The Chairman loaded the cans of paint, rollers, pans and brushes into the trunk, we headed to the beach.
Riceboy shredded the scenic route, motoring down narrow streets that had a view of the ocean and the mountains. I peered at my friends again, examining their faces and slouched postures. These were my dragoons. In the moonlight they looked like the kind of people to whom the poets of yesteryear would dedicate verse.
Riceboy halted the car. We had arrived. We were ready to launch.
I got out, popped the trunk and put a drop cloth over the back licence plate. I’d eyeballed enough movies to be an expert on sidestepping issues with the law. Riceboy draped his oversized coat over the front plate. The Chairman marched the cans of paint over to the mural, and Peril and Suzie gathered the remaining supplies.
We approached the mural with the fanfare of a winning army, whooping and menacing our way down the path. The mural had a sinister vibe. Under the streetlight, the settlers appeared to have leers upon their faces. They looked like zombies or cannibals or vampires or some type of unknown monster that fed on the flesh of humans.
“It’s really in need of a touch-up,” Suzie said.
Everyone nodded in agreement.
The Chairman filled a pan with paint, then another. Peril handed me a roller. Riceboy and Suzie grabbed the brushes. We were not jibber-jabbering, but somehow we had all sidled up to the same conclusion: we were going to paint over the entire mural.
We laboured like the Chingers that we were, and in less than an hour, the task was finito.
“That summer you spent slaving for that painting company was worth it,” I said to Riceboy. “This is an example of fine craftsmanship.” Despite all that had transpired that night, the corners of my mouth pulled up—a smile. Riceboy’s face held the same expression. I imagined that this was forgiveness, or something like it.
Peril was next to me, an opportunity. I got up in her personal space, and seized her hand. Her hair smelled like a field of wild flowers, and I was a bee wanting to gather her pollen. She didn’t treat me like a leper. Instead, she held my hand like it was a giant wad of cash she was afraid to drop.
The wall was now beige, slick like the Wongs’ kitchen. There was no evidence that there had once been a mural. My dragoons and I gazed at the blank slate before us. Light drizzle began to fall, but we continued to stand at attention. Although it’s said that the Great Wall of China is the only manmade thing visible from space, at that moment it felt as if anyone looking down upon the Earth would have seen that expanse of beige wall, and us, sleeping giants shaking off a long slumber, presiding over it.
Acknowledgements
Really, how does a single blade of grass thank the sun? It took me a very long time to write this book. I had a lot of support and guidance along the way.
Thank you to my family, and to Elizabeth Bachinsky, Liz Byer, Annie Choi, Kevin Chong, Joe Clark, Amber Dawn, Rilla Friesen, Jacob Gelfand, Andrea Gin, Rebecca Godfrey, Bethanne Grabham, John High, Carmen Johnson, Anna Ling Kaye, Helen Kim, Bourree Lam, Sarah Lebo, H.J. Lee, Samantha Leese, Sylvia Legris, Ming Kai Leung, Janey Lew, Andrea Libin, Maloy Luakian, Robyn Marshall, Jada Pape, Ed Park, Aaron Peck, Meredith & Peter Quartermain, Kate Reilly, Karen Russell, Jeremy Takada Balden, Zena Sharman, Silas White and Diane Williams. Many thanks to Carleton Wilson for his magnificent book design.
I owe a great debt to all my classmates and the professors of my writing workshops and seminars at the University of British Columbia, Lancaster University and Columbia University. Thank you to Sue Ann Alderson, Lynne Bowen, Kate Braid, Jonathan Dee, Francisco Goldman, George Green, Paul Lafarge, Sam Lipsyte, Murray Logan, Sigrid Nunez, George McWhirter, Keith Maillard, Ben Marcus, Maureen Medved and Stephen O’Connor. I’d also like to thank the Writers’ Trust of Canada, Spring Workshop and Witte de With Contemporary Art for their support.
The following stories were previously published: “Days of Being Wild” in Ricepaper; “How Does a Single Blade of Grass Thank the Sun?” in Event and The Journey Prize Stories 25; “Left and Leaving” in Zen Monster; “O, Woe Is Me” in Grain; “Rerun” in Grain; “Robot by the River” in Day One; “Sad Ghosts” in A Fictional Residency; and “Two-Part Invention” in Grain.
About the Author
Doretta Lau is a journalist who covers arts and culture for Artforum International, South China Morning Post, The Wall Street Journal Asia and LEAP. She completed an MFA in Writing at Columbia University. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Day One, Event, Grain Magazine, Prairie Fire, PRISM International, Ricepaper, sub-TERRAIN and Zen Monster. She splits her time between Vancouver and Hong Kong, where she is at work on a novel and a screenplay. In 2013, she was a finalist for the Writers’ Trust of Canada / McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize.