He says: you know I really hate this whole thing right here.
You brought it up.
He says it makes him like me less when we talk about it.
That’s nice.
You’re my friend, that’s why Monk. I care about you. I care about your dad too, but I care more about you.
I say: your friend?
I care about you, and your family.
You care about art though. That’s what you care about more than us.
That’s not true. His voice is a long cough.
Then what do you care about most? If it’s not art, or me, or my dad.
There is a pounding vein on his forehead. He says: can we get out of this goddamn lift?! He stabs the open button with his thumb and I press the close button, slam him up against the wall. I tell him: you’re not anyone’s messiah, you’re not an artist. What’s worse than you not caring about anything is that you want to make everybody else not care about anything but you.
LEVEL 9
He follows me out of the elevator with one hand grasping onto his other arm. We’re in this skinny hall and I turn around to him, point at the window, a square of dim shine at the end. I check the piece of paper, look up to see if Santa Coy’s trying to peek, but he’s staring at the wall.
He watches me nudge Sadie’s front door open a bit more. I knock and wait for a while. When nobody answers I go inside. Around me is some kind of dizzy Orient. A true obsession with Eastern ritual. There are weave dolls from Thailand with needles—a voodoo custom. One wears a white kimono like Honey’s. My breath is swampy. Curtains everywhere, a few small fans, plastic red stools. The smell of a cheap perfume moulds around each curve of the plump couch. I take a deep breath out the front door and down the hall is empty: Santa Coy has left. And I scowl for a bit because for a while everything was our dreamy scuba dive on Dad’s brown couch the other day.
Sadie’s heels coming down the hall while I’m looking through her medicine cabinet. The only thing I recognise is Xanax. I take one. I read all the labels and wonder if any are flammable. This might be the good kind of burning Honey wants me to do.
The front door creaks and a lady voice yells: Tre baby, is that you? I just ran into someone getting the mail!
There’s a window I barely fit through because my hips are becoming matured, and I’m emptied onto a tin roof.
ROBBING LIST
Curtains that’ll catch fire, some tea towels and tin-foil vomit from drawers, a mahjong set-up on a furry table. Her stack of newspapers that she will not throw out because she has an easy memory. Throw it all in the centre of the room. Flour, corn-starch, sugar, fine-ground taro suspended in the air. It will all go violently. She tells me to practice my burning, that she’ll let me know when we can go ahead with it.
I’m back inside Honey’s healing parlour with nobody else around. Videos of some guy lighting dresses on fire. I watch them and Honey visits in small successions, her head leaning in from time to time. We drink some oolong tea. It steams on our cheeks.
Plans being made in quiet talk. Nobody really exists until they’re plotted against.
MAYO A KIND OF GOO
When I’m back home Aunty Linda has made okonomiyaki. Kewpie to moisturise the tempura of it. A kind of romanticisation about adding sauces to food, a polite smothering. I say: this is new. I ask her when we can visit Dad. She says I’ve been able to for the last two days, that she told me this the other day. I tell her, do you listen? I told you that I don’t listen.
Aunty Linda hasn’t talked since she murmured: Lord she needs Jesus. She’s decided to take me to this church in the middle of Chinatown—a brick pothole, carpet that smells like old pastry. On the riser two women stand, one playing the flute and the other singing a low whine. The lyrics are saying Almighty Powerful God and everybody’s sagging and it’s not making me cry like Aunty Linda’s other church did. There’s a man behind me breathing on my neck.
A youth service. A perfect performance scheme for Chinatown invisibles. The PowerPoint projection jiggles and the singing won’t stop. Halfway through the service two new people get up. One plays an electric portable keyboard and the other has her own microphone. They sing a few more songs and fix their eyes on the same spot above the exit. They sway slightly from side to side. One is wearing a puffy vest, the other a long floral skirt. They sing in unison and don’t do any harmonies. I imagine our noise band in a Battle of the Bands with them. When they sing about God they don’t mean it the way the homeless man means it outside, shouting and seizing his own body like it’s his own lover passing away.
After the church service there is a shaking of hands, kiss on the cheek if you’re lucky. Then people stand around and say they have to leave and slowly they exit.
When we’re outside, I notice the man who was breathing on my neck before is shouting from the curb about some kind of end times.
We take the train home, Aunty Linda sitting across the carriage from me. She talks loudly because she thinks nobody can hear when they have headphones on. She asks if I want to visit my father yet. I tell her no, that he never visited me, and we get off and Aunty Linda buys herself some roasted peanuts from a vending machine and a girl and boy a few years older than me are making out on the side of it and when the machine rumbles they slump their bodies off and give Aunty Linda a dirty look. I think about what it’d be like to be her age and alone and then I give Santa Coy a call and tell him I’m sorry and like a broken machine, he tells me I can’t do that thing to Sadie for Honey. Then I think about what it’d be like to be Aunty Linda’s age and subdued; dutiful angel.
LATE-NIGHT BUMPS
Honey makes me call Sadie to arrange a guidance counsellor meeting.
She tells me, pretend to have problems.
On the phone to Sadie I arrange an appointment for next Wednesday afternoon. She tells me a dozen times she’s not a school guidance counsellor anymore, but still she makes the appointment.
Tie her to a chair, says Honey when I get off the phone. Tie her to a chair, mention me, tell her that Honey knows how she ripped her off with that last hoaxed two grams she tried to sell. Let her watch her things burn, then put the fire out, and if she resists do something else—something more than fire.
I say: two grams of what?
Honey licks her upper lip, and says: voodoo, you know.
When I ask Honey to remind me why she wants me to do this she tells me that Sadie and her have a terrible history with each other and that this is something that needs to be done. That the spirit’s telling her so.
The spirit’s calling me to, she says. And I need to protect my family—that is my primary duty.
I ask: does it have to do with Tre?
She says: darling it had to do with Sadie long before Tre, but now it’s like walking on hot coals. And a mother will do anything to protect her child.
I tell her about how we went to this jungle gig the other night. How it was a whole different thing, especially how nobody waited for me, how they just left me. I tell her how I went home alone. I tell her how people were taking fake drugs thinking they were real and almost dying.
Honey strikes up like a correction tick and asks me where the drugs came from.
Were they from Tre?
I tell her I don’t know.
She sighs: I wish Yuya had her own mind—took more initiative. I wonder why she is not as strong as you, as me.
I tell her: people can be strong in their own ways.
Honey just smiles an empty smile.
I say: if it’s not to do with Tre, is the whole thing with Sadie because you’re jealous of each other?
Honey tells me that when you’re in a business like this, where you’re helping helpless people, that you become obsessed with becoming everybody’s helping hand. That you hate it when other people take over. And you can forget what you’re doing, and why you’re doing it. Forget about what’s helping long term and adopt what helps short term. Because you begin to obsess over the idea
of pleasing somebody, how that feels afterwards. That this competition is forever. She tells me that she’s not always proud of it.
Honey is wearing a face I’ve never seen before. And then she snaps out of it. She gives me some money and asks me to get us some fried chicken fingers.
Outside Honey’s healing parlour is a village of idiots. I go to the chicken shop and buy chicken fingers. Everybody has this stupid grin on their face. I bring the box of chicken fingers back straight away while they’re still hot.
We eat chicken fingers on opposite sides of her desk and Honey asks me how Yuya is and I say: how should I know? I tell her that she should know. And I ask her: how is Yuya doing from your eyes?
Honey says: well she’s eating her rice. This is a mother’s job: to make sure her daughter is eating her rice. I ask her if this is one of those metaphors. Honey grabs two chicken fingers. I stare at them snuggled in her curled palm. I ask her if she knows how Yuya keeps chocolates in her bedroom? Honey frowns and says no. I tell her that the chocolates liberated her and swimming in pools made her an activist. Honey’s finished her two chicken fries and takes one more. She offers me the last one and says: go on—eat it up, Monk.
There is power in meekness—something my Aunty Linda said once.
Honey goes to the bathroom for half an hour and when she comes back, the parting in her hair has changed.
EIGHT
VALLEY
The blue lights have only just turned on in Chinatown.
I ask Aunty Linda what her parents were like.
She says: your grandparents.
I say: exactly.
She says they were very good. She has sauce on her chin but I don’t tell her. I ask her what they all did together back in China. She turns the television down using the remote. She puts three hunks of turnip in her mouth and scrunches them with her teeth. She says that they played board games, that their father took them sailing on a boat a few times. But he never let them steer or control anything. They could only watch. And their parents didn’t talk much. She says their father took them to church and their mother took them to help out at the local shelter. I ask her if my dad helped. She says that he tried, that it was very lovely whenever they were there, that he’d talk to the men and women lining up for food. That he was really charming, really nice, made everybody happy. That he kept forgetting to clean up the floor like he was supposed to, that he was too busy in conversation. That this one time their mother got really angry about it.
She says, I remember it so clearly, our mother had never yelled like that before. And in the car she yelled more. Your dad cried. No one ever talked though.
Later, Aunty Linda gives me more clothes.
I’ve learnt how to help helpless people.
DESAFINADO
Tonight is Zig’s house again. This time I’ve got platform foam sandals that make me a Prada explorer and sunglasses on for irony. Santa Coy has demonstrated that most things in art are done for the sake of irony. In art everybody’s a pawn, I tell Zig.
Zig’s playing video games and his friends are listening to Korean rap I don’t know. I ask him if Yuya and Tre are coming over tonight. He tells me that Yuya’s mother made her stay home to eat dinner tonight, that she might come later but that Tre might stay home anyway because his mother’s in a phase.
I tell him: you can say that again.
Zig’s face mushes in and he says: what?
We eat dinner: precious Chinese takeaway using everybody’s cash pooled together. Zig’s mother is still at work. Zig offers to put in for my share. He looks at me while we’re eating and each noodle we eat we watch slurp and slide in between oily lips on each other’s faces. We’ll laugh about it straight after.
I tell Zig about Santa Coy while everybody else smokes. I tell him everything. Everything about Santa Coy and Dad making and selling fake art. Zig says: hey, that’s kind of like selling fake drugs. Someone is pressing their cigarette into the back of the couch, lying backwards, their back moulding the shape of the arm rest. Zig shouts at him, ay! And the kid snaps up.
Zig tells me he doesn’t smoke because of how his brother spiralled into drugs and everything. But he still lets everybody else do it, even if it’s in his parents’ house. Because it’s not his place to tell anyone what to do with their bodies—everyone’s a little different, that for some people it might be good for them. I tell him he’s so clever and I’ve never seen him smile so big before.
He leans over to me: you want to know something that you’re not supposed to tell anybody? He’s still smiling and there’s a twinkle in his eye that makes him look nicer than he ever has before.
Sure, I whisper.
Well, Tre couldn’t come tonight because he overdosed on that pink molly he had at Zagame’s the other night.
I say: oh. Zig says: yeah. He shrugs.
We watch a 1996 television program on VHS about how to make the most beneficial fruit and vegetable smoothies. I ask any of them if they’d like to help me burn a lady’s apartment down and some of them just grin. I tell them all: well—not burn it down, but burn some things in it. The good kind of burning, the cathartic kind of burning. I guess nobody knows what this means because nobody responds to it, and so I just ask for their lighters, promising I’ll give them back after Wednesday. Zig gives me his, and then three others hand me theirs. I have a pocket full of future flames.
COWBOY
Waking up to a radio song from a few years ago, and Aunty Linda has made a kind of egg design, like sunny-side-up but with the middle cooked like a hard-boil. And Santa Coy hasn’t sent me a message in nearly two weeks and Dad hasn’t requested to see me, not even once. There are no more canvases in the apartment, only sudokus like leftover hieroglyphics.
Snoring pounds the thin walls and a morning TV show is playing. Undercooked voices, about a new remedy for stress; a meditation ball. The hosts are on their stomachs, rolling on it back and forth like a doleful Superman.
When Aunty Linda and I eat together nowadays we don’t speak. She asks me what happened to all of my interesting questions. I shrug and jangle the lighters in my pockets. Something about the way they shiver and wait.
Aunty Linda puts on her black silk cardigan that sways in summer. I say goodbye to her. She’s going to her class for wannabe designers. She tells me you’ve got to be absolutely proactive if you want to do what you love.
ROMANCE CITY
The city has slowed down since last night. Curtains of clouds travel a pinking sky.
I’ve become the ranger of Chinatown. Here there are tourists taking pictures under the wooden orient frame. Stone lions and cold beer.
I leave Santa Coy a voicemail when he doesn’t answer.
I tell him: if you love me let me know because today is pretty much risky business.
Supreme jacket left on a public bench, taken by me and worn to burn. It scrunches when I walk. All my clothes are loud but I don’t mind because it covers up the jangling in my right pocket. Two women smoking cigarettes that stain their gums. They look me up and down. Then down at their own quiet clothes.
A gloppy sidewalk where vomit stretches out like fingertips on the pavement. A kind of Jazz Liberatorz playing in this coffee joint. It’s a tavern made to warm your heart up to the idea of today. I’ve never tried a latte before, only the black coffee Dad used to boil on the stove before he went to work at the university. It’d keep me awake the whole day, no problem. I ask for a skinny latte and the man tells me I’m skinny enough and I guess I do a sort of grin.
I ask a businessman if I can sit on the high stool next to him. He tells me there’s a seat one over and I say: I didn’t ask to sit there. He says that I don’t need to ask at all, unless I want to make a deal of it. There are pools of light on this table and it makes me want to squint. Cartoons play on the communal television that sits level with the ceiling. We watch together, then the man sips his coffee with his lips pouted. He looks at me watching the TV. I bet he thinks I’m twelve.
He asks me: you smoke?
I say: what?
He says: cigarettes?
I say: why do you care?
He looks defensive and says: I can’t tell what’s going on, you made a deal about sitting right here next to me and now you’re acting like you don’t want to talk to me.
I flip my hair to one side. The girl gives me a full takeaway cup. When I swish it around it feels gooey. It’s the middle of the week and I wonder if Aunty Linda completely quit her IT job to do this design course. I think about how I haven’t asked her about it.
I ask the businessman that if he had some kind of undercover name, what it would be. He stirs his coffee with a plastic straw. He says: some kind of pharaoh’s name.
I tell him: me too. He is agitated. It’s in the curling of his mouth. He says: a queen?
I look at him, he’s got this kink in the side of his lip.
He tells me: if you’re serious about it, there was a pharaoh woman called Nitocris who invited the murderers of her brothers to feast with her and then sealed them in a room and flooded them with the Nile.
I tell him I wasn’t serious.
His little curl has grown into a fat smirk. He tells me he studied this for his final thesis. I tell him to have a good day at work and his lemur eyes flail. He says: you too, after I walk off.
Around the corner in slow bursts, one by one, each sceptre in my brain spurts and this was the way of a fast spiral. I stare at a fly infestation, buzzing all over a spilled bubble tea almost in the gutter. I wonder that if the plastic cup rolls into the trench whether the flies would follow it all the way down into the sewer. I think if I could fly I’d go down with the cup.
Last week I had a dream like this: I was sitting on Santa Coy’s leftover computer in my bedroom, on my bed, and instead of Santa Coy being over he was messaging me from some girl’s house. In my dream I imagined him with his beanie on, lying on her bed on his stomach. He typed, the bubble came up: I think I’m falling in love, is it weird that the best feeling in the world is being asleep next to her? In the dream I am crying but no tears come out of my eyes. And I don’t know how to respond—it’s too casual. So casual that I might explode with it, inside the dream or out.
Pink Mountain on Locust Island Page 11