“Or like we’re monkeys.”
The new faction, led by a big monkey the narrator called “Duce,” won. Duce reminded her of her father. Big, cocky, beady-eyed. While the tribe surrounded the body of the fallen leader, “Hegel,” Duce looked at his victim with indifference. He perched himself on the low branch of a tree and watched the other monkeys touch the overthrown king. It was strange. It was like they were sad.
“Look at that prick Duce,” Crystal said.
Duce was the new leader and with victory came the spoils. The females of the tribe were his, as was the fear of the other male monkeys. Duce almost immediately abused this power. He mounted the female monkeys violently, and he abused the baby monkeys that he did not recognize as his. It was a direct contrast to the previous king, who was stern, yet affectionate, or so the narrator said.
“This is amazing,” Crystal said.
“Shh.”
What happened next mesmerized Crystal. The rest of the monkeys, even the ones who supported his move for leadership, plotted against him. Evidently, according to the narrator, a revolution, led by the disgruntled females, was brewing. Suddenly the film panned to Duce. He was sitting by himself. There was an enormous gash in his head that parted his Moe-like hair. One of the previous leader’s lieutenants was the new leader. Duce, scarred for life by the experience, seemed to be in a state of exile.
“Wow,” Crystal said, “it’s like Shakespeare or something.”
Donny turned off the television. “What do you know about Shakespeare?”
“Not much.”
Donny stood up and stretched. “Let’s go to bed.”
Crystal turned the television back on. “I’m not tired.”
Donny grabbed her hand. “C’mon.”
Crystal sighed. “O.K.”
She turned off the T.V. and threw her damp towel in the hamper. She followed Donny into the bedroom and began to undress. Leaving on a T-shirt and underwear, she turned around to walk towards the bed. Donny was sitting on it, naked. “Let’s try,” he said.
His body was unappealing to her. It was thin, and there seemed to be a complete lack of chest muscles. In fact, there was a dent in the middle of his chest whose depth was exaggerated by a slight rise in the stomach area. His torso was hairless, except where a few long strands of black hair grew around his nipples. His legs, which were extremely thin, bent off the bed, and between them was a cock (she always liked “cock” more than “penis,” “dick,” “ding-ding,” “prick,” or the many other euphemisms that were constantly being created, like “ole one-eye”) that seemed to be hiding in a bushy thatch of black pubic hair. Now I’m hot, she thought. She shrugged and took off all her clothes. She plopped on the bed. Just like every other time before she had sex with a man, even if she got completely wasted from booze, coke, or even ecstasy, she thought about her father. The drugs seemed to just limit the duration. But now she was sober.
Kaipo inherited his size and that red hair of his from that father of theirs. He was an Englishman, not a James Bond Englishman, but a green-eyed, hulking, tree-carrying Englishman, whose father arrived in Hawaii from England with his wife and instantly became a “luna,” leering at plantation laborers from horseback. Well, their father inherited the leering, and when Crystal had been twelve, and their Hawaiian mother was leered at so much that she became as unnoticeable as a piece of furniture, their father began leering at her. It was an old story, one that stretched even far beyond the stories Crystal had heard in high school of young girls disfiguring themselves during the Middle Ages so that their fathers and brothers would discontinue raping them. But to Crystal it was a new story, one that she was completely unprepared for, as if anyone was ever prepared.
There had been none of that buildup that she’d heard about from some of the other girls at Club Mirage. A long kiss on the cheek turning into an embarrassing kiss on the lips two weeks later. A hand on a skinny thigh, moving gradually further and further up as months pass by and the thigh becomes more plump. A finger inside, turning into two fingers, three, then… There was no “This is our little secret.” She’d come home from the beach one day in an unflattering, second-hand, one-piece pink bathing suit, and her father walked into her bedroom and raped her. All the while she was gazing at her poster of Jon Bon Jovi that she pulled out of Tiger Beat, trying to imagine his music instead of hearing the creaking of springs under her bed. The leering didn’t begin until after that. And he’d never said “This is our little secret.” He simply blew out of the room while she lay bleeding. She did remember him mumbling, once, “You’re not really my daughter. You’re too dark.” And at first, she wanted to believe it, but she always knew, just by looking at her eyes in the mirror, that it was not true. This had gone on for two years. And when it all ended very badly, the end cost her the ability to have children. Three years later, her mentor, her older cousin Stacy, who was now married to a haole plumber and had three kids by three different fathers, the plumber being none of them, got her to drop out of Waianae High (“They don’t even give you books for all your classes,” she’d said. “If they don’t take school seriously, why should you?”), and got her into stripping.
Donny was instantly on her. He grabbed her wrists and kissed her hard. Crystal closed her eyes. She felt his hard kisses move down to her breasts, his tongue like a slug, leaving a saliva trail from her neck to her chest. But at the same time, she felt nothing. It was about as arousing as kissing her own arm or something. Donny let go of her wrists. His kisses moved down to her stomach. She wiped the saliva from her neck and breasts and rubbed her wet hand on the sheet. His spit left a smell on her hand. It was the smell of wetness in heat. Almost like a combination of sweat and soapless laundry that had been left sitting in the washer too long. Donny’s face was now in her crotch, and again, she felt nothing.
After about five minutes of this Crystal began nodding off. Then her eyes snapped open when she felt him stop. His face shot up to hers. “Suck it,” he said.
He turned on his back. His flaccid cock drooped to the left. “What?” Crystal said.
“Suck it. C’mon, I did you, now you do me.”
Crystal sat up. “Are you crazy?”
“C’mon. Don’t act like you’ve never heard that before. You’re a stripper. C’mon.”
“I was a stripper.”
“Yeah, whatever. C’mon, I did you.”
Crystal stood up and put on her T-shirt. She wanted another shower to get the smell of spit off her body. Donny stood up and looked at her. She stuck out her middle finger and said, “Suck this.”
Donny became angry. He leaped out of bed, and it was the first time she saw him do leaping of any kind. As far as angry male faces went, it wasn’t very intimidating. Crystal was from Waianae and grew up with Hawaiians who could rip Donny’s arms out of their sockets. But he was a man. And Crystal knew, even a weak man’s body was built for violence better than most women’s. The wind will always bend the wave, even a weak wind. “Don’t you fuckin’ talk to me like that,” Donny said.
Crystal thought about her own toughness. She had been beaten many times in high school for supposedly being one of the school sluts. She couldn’t fight. But she knew she could take pain. Her body was poor at offense, but great at defense. She carefully looked at Donny and any previous fear or apprehension she had evaporated. “I’ll talk however the fuck I want to talk.”
“It’s that fuckin’ surfer tonight, isn’t it?”
She had completely forgotten about the surfer and her shower. Masturbation was so underrated. “What about him?”
“You want to fuck him.”
Crystal was thrown. This outburst was not like Donny. It was a possessiveness she’d never seen from him. “So what if I did? I’ll tell you, I’d rather fuck that fuckin’ monkey Duce than you right now.”
Donny’s open hand slapped her on the side of her face. It stung and shocked her at the same time. She smiled. The fuckin’ pussy doesn’t even know how to throw
a punch. Crystal clenched her fist and let it fly. The lack of balance in her body told her she was doing it wrong, but she didn’t care. The punch landed on his nose. Two of her purple nails cracked.
Donny held his face for a couple of seconds. Then he started to laugh. His hands dropped and he said, “Get the fuck out of here.”
“Fuck you, you get out.”
“You.”
“I don’t know how to drive.”
Donny laughed. “I’m fuckin’ naked.”
Crystal looked at his naked body. His skinny arms and narrow shoulders. The dent in his otherwise flat chest and his slightly bulging stomach. She turned around and put on underwear, jeans, and shoes. She walked out of the room and grabbed the keys and her mini Prada backpack from the counter. As she left, she heard the door slam behind her.
While in the elevator, Crystal, rubbing one of her cracked nails with her thumb, started to panic. It was an old feeling for her, but it was one of those feelings that, no matter how many times she experienced it, was always just as intense as the last time. She didn’t know what to do, which struck her as funny, because she always did the same thing whenever she was in this state. Get drunk. Get high. Go to Club Mirage, lay down her plush white faux fur mat, which was slowly becoming a light beige, on stage, lean back on it, and make money. A garter full of one-dollar bills usually made her feel solid. “Just make the money, honey,” her cousin Stacy used to tell her. “The rest is candy. And always bring your mat. There’s nothing worse than stage burn on the ass.” That and the fact that a boob job could bring in about thirty-four percent more revenue was the sum of the wisdom that came from her cousin.
When Crystal got to the parking lot, she stood frozen outside of the car. She had tried to drive once, but that had been ten years before. And even then she was horrible at it. She felt like a ten-year-old child running away from home. She sighed and walked back towards the elevator. She would apologize and he would forgive her. If she didn’t have a place at the restaurant, she would probably start stripping again. She would apologize and he would forgive her. She pressed the circular button by the elevator, and it lit up into a dull orange. She’d often wondered why elevator makers picked such an ugly color to signify the returning or leaving of home. She thought maybe elevator makers were unhappy with their lot in life. They only got to make things that go up and down. Wouldn’t horizontal elevators be neat? They’re called cars, she thought.
When the doors opened, Crystal turned around and said, “Fuck him.”
She found herself standing in front of the car again. She stuck the key in the door and stepped into the driver’s side. When she put the key into the ignition, her hand was shaking. She took a deep breath and turned the key. The engine hummed in German. She adjusted the seat, then laughed uncomfortably, because she didn’t have a clue as to what the proper distance from the steering wheel and pedals should be. She nervously pulled her cigarettes out of her purse and lit one. She then peeled one of her cracked nails off and looked at the rearview mirror. “What the fuck am I doing?” she said.
She rolled down the window and threw her cigarette out. She put the car into reverse, then laughed. It amazed her how something as trifling as an automatic transmission just changed her life. If the BMW had a manual transmission, she would probably have been apologizing to Donny right now. She slowly pressed on the gas with her right foot, then quickly pressed the brake with her left. This went on for the few minutes it took her to get out of the parking lot.
When she got on the road, she still had no idea where she was going. She carefully watched the red lights of the cars in front of her glow in the darkness as they slowed down. She looked into the rearview mirror at approaching headlights, thinking that every car behind her was going to ram into her. It was chaos. But she wasn’t really thinking about that, she was just trying to focus on the road. Her life had been filled with flashing red lights and oncoming traffic, so the adjustment to driving wasn’t as difficult as she thought it would be. And once she figured out that it was easier to work the pedals with one foot, she felt very clever and very sure of herself. She ripped off the last cracked nail on her right hand, doing it while driving.
-2-
When you live in an apartment building with your husband, mother, and son, there’s next to no privacy. One picks fights with you, another criticizes you, and the last expects you to give him what he wants even though he never tells you what he wants. Actually, they’re all kind of like the last. Being a wife, daughter, or mother, they all want something from you, and you never know quite what it is. Won Ju thought about this as she stood in the living room in front of a slightly cracked open window. She tried to make sure all of the smoke was getting out, but most of the time the highrise winds just blew the smoke back in her face.
It was close to midnight. Won Ju was losing the lifelong battle to quit smoking. She had stopped for three years, but a month before, at the restaurant, Donny had left a pack of cigarettes in the kitchen. She didn’t know why she pulled one out of the pack and lit it. Being a smoker on the wagon meant that every cigarette tempted you, but she had lasted for three years. She didn’t know why on that particular day, in that particular second, she had smoked. The Winston was strong and she coughed. She had only finished half of it, but that night, she found herself buying her own pack. She bought a pack of Camel Lights because she hated menthols and there was a coupon inside the cellophane, a picture of Joe Camel smiling. Kenny’s cheapness started to rub off on her.
Brandon was snoring. Since her mother had moved in, her son took the couch. That was two months before. She knew that little late-night access to his computer was making him unhappy.
It would last for two more weeks. Aone-bedroom had finally opened in the same building, and it was Soong’s for a thousand dollars a month. Won Ju was relieved. She saw her mother every day, and that was fine, but to see her every night, too? It was too much for Won Ju.
Footsteps approached in the darkness. Brandon turned over and stopped snoring. Won Ju threw her cigarette out of the cracked window and closed it. She put her fist up to her mouth and coughed. Kenny pulled a clear plastic bottle of water from the fridge and took a long swig. “Smoking again?” he said.
“Just one.”
“It’s bad for you, and those around you.” He looked at Brandon.
“I heard that somewhere before.”
“You should stop before it gets out of hand.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Kenny screwed the cap back on the bottle and opened the refrigerator. The light from the icebox threw light and shadows on his dark, chiseled body. It was a body that Won Ju was once attracted to, but now she did not know. It used to make her feel safe. Like the muscles were there to defend her. And when she’d met Kenny, she’d thought she needed a defender more than anything else. But now she felt like the body had somehow turned on her. It was hugging her tightly, and she could not breathe in the smothering. It was a feeling she knew and a feeling that brought up old nightmares. “You’re up late,” he said.
Kenny walked to his son and stood over him. He pulled the blanket over him. Won Ju laughed. “What?” he asked.
“You watch too many movies. It’s like eighty degrees and you put the blanket over him.”
“Ha, ha. So is your mother going to be able to cover the rent at that other apartment?”
She knew he couldn’t believe that the restaurant made enough money to support that many people. It did, but barely. There never seemed to be enough left over to save just in case business became bad. It was a precarious way to live, just as her shop in the Pacific Beach Hotel had been, but for now it was producing. “She should be fine.”
“What about Darian?”
Won Ju’s younger sister had a knack for making friends. It had taken her two weeks to find roommates and a place to live. Evidently, whenever she was new in any town, she just went to coffeehouses and made friends “like her.” Won Ju hated coffeehouses almost as much
as she hated the Hawaiian Canoe Club. Coffeehouses represented another closed society where the self-described elite perched themselves, looking down upon the unknowing masses. They acted as if they really knew what life was about, while Won Ju always admitted that she didn’t have a clue. These were the same people who would drink imported or micro-brewery beers at some trendy yuppie bar after work and use words like “full-bodied” or “citrusy” to describe the taste. She doubted that Darian and those like her knew much about life. In fact, if Darian wasn’t her sister, Won Ju would have probably hated her. A bunch of unmarried, childless pseudo-intellectuals talking about their existential angst over modish ales that cost four-fifty a pop. “Darian’s fine. She’s thinking about transferring to U.H.”
“The University of Hawaii? She might as well go to school in someplace like Puerto Rico. I heard Robert Kakaula, a local sportscaster of all people, was the keynote speaker at U.H.’s last graduation ceremony. Prestigious, huh? She should stay in Berkeley.”
Kenny had always been proud that he went to school in the mainland, even if it was some half-ass small private school in Northern California that would admit anybody willing to pay the exorbitant tuition. “Well, I’m going back to bed,” Kenny said.
Won Ju nodded. When he disappeared back into the darkness, Won Ju pulled another cigarette from her purse and cracked open the window. Maybe he wasn’t trying to smother her, but she felt like he was as she inhaled deeply from the cigarette and futilely blew the smoke into the wind. There’s something wrong with me, she thought.
At about twelve-thirty, while Won Ju was convincing herself about how she was getting old and liking the fact that her looks were fading, and how once her son became a man that it’d be all over, the phone rang. It was Crystal calling from downstairs. She was rambling about driving a car and horizontal elevators, whatever they were, flat escalators at certain airports, Won Ju imagined, when Won Ju finally had to cut her scratchy intercom voice off by telling her she’d be right down. She put on her sandals, put a coat on over her thin nightgown and walked out the door.
The Queen of Tears Page 10