This is part one of a short for Cal's Character Contest, using picture prompt #6. You may remember the characters from "Gerrymandering"--they've wandered over into my NaNo, so I'm practicing with them a bit before November. It rambles on and on, so the end to this bit is weird. Glossary of stuff at the end.
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The day Akshay was supposed to pay a visit was the day Shuqiao’s sister bought a shih tzu—in her home dialect, it was shits too, which seemed appropriate. The dog liked to make this known. Even when someone set him on the back porch, he stood on rocks and broken crab shells and howled piteously to be let back in, refusing to defecate anywhere he didn’t have an audience.
When Shuqiao’s lao lao opened the door, he stood in the middle of the kitchen and did his business, gazing up at her shriveled, rice-burnt form as it did so. She put her hands on her hips. “Féiwudiănxin,” she growled. “Stupid dog.”
The dog growled back. Mei swooped in and clutched it to her breast—clad only in a lime-green push-up bra designed to burn the retinas of oglers. She was always two steps ahead. “You’re hurting his feelings.”
“It pissed in my dumplings.”
“He doesn’t know any better, Lao Lao!”
“Maybe I should just put it in the soup, hmm?"
“Maybe you should just be a nice person!”
Lao Lao harumphed. “Maybe you should put on a shirt. Make a nice boy marry you, not some––” She paused. “Or marry dog. See how you like it.”
Mei glared at her and ran her fingers through the dog’s fur, which was still steeped in grease and ammonia from the Humane Society. There wasn’t anything humane about that Society—it smelled so bad that the first time Shuqiao had gone in, that she had vomited in a cat carrier. The cat wasn’t able to tell the difference.
Lao Lao raised an eyebrow. “When you have faults, do not fear to abandon them.”
Shuqiao observed this from the couch in front of the bay window. Mei was always getting away with stuff like that—talking back, rolling her eyes at Confucius. Things that normally meant death and the scorn of her ancestors for Shuqiao.
It was because Mei was American-born. Shuqiao had been born in an overcrowded city hospital; grown up proliferating dictatorial regimes and shielding her eyes from the rising sun. Her parents had a picture of Mao; her grandparents had a picture of Kai-Shek. The only picture that hung reverently in Mei’s room was of the Jonas Brothers.
She was First Generation—the Failing Generation.
And at that very moment, Shuqiao was failing, too. She was clutching a crackling two-way walkie-talkie, tuned into the headset of a Pakistani refugee crouching behind a bush in her front yard. He was beautiful, and sartorially impeccable, and annoying. The walkie-talkie was annoying. It had his sister’s Aishwarya Rai stickers still stuck to the back, clinging with cheap Bollywood resolve.
You know, she’d said the day earlier. Most presumptive high school couples communicate using cellular phones. I could be wrong, but.
He’d played with her bracelet and absentmindedly muttered something about the Patriot Act. He was right—not even the FBI was ready for them. As a couple, they resembled to the rest of America supervillains sporting hypno-rings and prom outfits. They were militant communists; at the same time fundamentalist and atheist. Allah be praised, Allah be scorned. It was a dangerous yin and yang.
Never mind that her father was Presbyterian. Stereotypes held more truth than the Good Book ever would.
His voice parted static. “I can still hear your grandmother, over.”
“Try the window, over.”
“Ah, like Layla and Majnun, over?”
“This isn’t the Arabian Nights, over.”
“You have no sense of romance, over.”
“Shut up before I set Haroun on your finely-toned ass,” she spat. Breathing steam through her nose, she added, “Over”—though it was certainly not over.
Her stress-breaths whistled, like a teapot. She hoped Akshay couldn’t hear it.
While Lao Lao was preoccupied cursing the dog and Mei’s shortcomings, Shuqiao crept down the stairs and into her crypt-like basement bedroom. She locked the door behind her, waiting for the affirmative click that came with the cheap lock. It wouldn’t do much against an invasion of grandmothers or Canadians, but it was comfort that counted.
Akshay was squatting in the window well, along with dead leaves and mice and Yé-Yé’s cigarette butts, his Swiss Army knife glinting against the safety lock. She suspected he’d never had to use it before—at least, she doubted the little cork opener did little to Talib militiamen besides make them laugh.
The bottom of the window popped open, and Akshay slipped through, pulling decaying matter with him. Shuqiao put her hands on her hips. “And you come in here, dragging rodents like––”
He kissed her. She refused to mover her hands. “Ai, Shuqiao. At least Muslim girls are quiet.”
“You can’t date them. And most of them end up stoned.”
His lip curled.
“With rocks.”
“Don't be bitter,” he said, grinning. “Or I’m going to have to give up communist Presbyterians for good.”
She could feel her eyebrows merge; the skin on her forehead pucker into angry folds. “It would be no hardship of mine.”
He put his hands on her shoulders and gently pushed her over to the side of her bed, where he pressed down, like he was training a dog to sit. “You’re so tense,” he said. “And you’re the one in at Stanford, early decision––”
“I’m not tense!”
He crept around her and began digging his thumbs into her shoulder blades. She sighed in spite of herself. “Later, I’ll take you to Cracker Barrel—you love that place, haa? For laughing at fat people?”
“And you, when they ask you if you know bin Laden.”
“That was once, Shuqiao.”
She hunched her shoulders, as far away from his browned hands as possible. “It was funny, once.”
He wrapped his hands around her stomach. “We should spend less time talking, more time making out. You’re bad for my self esteem.”
Shuqiao felt her pride deflate as she realized how good he smelled. Lao Lao was pacing upstairs on arthritic ankles; she could hear them popping over the sound of Akshay’s breath. “We…should go to Cracker Barrel.”
“I’ll buy extra biscuits, if you want.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You hate biscuits. If it’s not pita, it’s not good enough for you.”
He pressed his lips to her ear, thrilled. “I didn’t know you noticed.”
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Lao Lao - Grandmother (Mandarin)
When you have faults, do not fear to abandon them - From The Analects, Confucius
Layla & Majnun - An Arabian poem that's roughly Romeo & Juliet, except it's about a dude who falls desperately in love with his cousin.
Yé-Yé - Grandfather (Mandarin)
Haa - Yes (Urdu/Hindi)
Much love to Chen and Advaith for the Pudonghua/Bollywood crash course.
