Que Sara Sara

“ It is time to sell that crap.” She thinks, in awkward semi-Americanized British English. Ever since she had moved in, Randy has been working on her trailer. Randy told her they would go to San Francisco for the Parade. She used to be so enthusiastic about it, before Randy had that tattoo, that haircut and that piercing.
“ You look like a diesel dyke now.”
She drank a mouthful of Campbell soup
“ What is a diesel dyke?” Randy has no clue. Her crew cut is so blonde and it kinda pulls her scalp back. Now she has a bigger face, a clearer jaw line that extends to the side of her neck. Her shoulder is a pinkish pearl color, even pinker at where the strips of the white tank top are.
“ I don’t know, just a name to call lesbian that look like you. “
“ You sound like a homophobic.” Randy chuckles, and she sees that dimple on the left.

It drives her crazy though, the thought of her being homophobic and homosexual at the same time.

When she first met Randy she was a newbie at Vista High. She was a fucking newbie with a Hong Kong British accent. Over processed brown hair with highlights, not so well executed eyeliner, foundation too thin, with only lip balm on. She had no idea why she wore make up. All her life in her country she wore no make up. It was the American virus that spread and replicated beyond control. It was so contagious that she put on that beautiful masquerade just like everyone else. She knew she look nice in that make up. She also knew she look ridiculous. It was how the American Chinese look. She wanted to look at least like the ABCs. Long black unprocessed hair meant Vietnamese. Gothic fringe and dolly bangs with Vans shoes are Japanese. The dark skinned with big breasts are Filipinos. But how do Chinese look anyway? How does a girl look; how does a guy?

She got through school with her too perfect dictionary English, and she picked up phrase by phrase from conversation.
The greatest joke was when she told her class “ I am talking to Randy.” Exact quote.
Talking To was the phrase that she not yet picked up. She told everyone that she talked to Randy. It simply meant Randy called her about Math the other night and she “talked to” her. It was when the guys started to walk away. Some stays, thinking she just got hotter this way.

Randy was a laid back, tank top, baggy jeans and Converse All Star kid. Randy used to have hair like Ellen Degeneres. She learnt about that name in a magazine she forgot the name. The second that she associated Randy with Ellen she knew she had fallen into some sort of spiral. Ellen, Randy, Converse Shoes, Randy. Her world started to spin like a washing machine. She was trapped in that little metal vault, seeing her world spin out of control and could do nothing about it. Wet with dirty water and tears, she believed she was cleansed after their first kiss. She was never a lesbian nor a straight girl. Sex just did not occur to her as important. It was just an option on the major form that she did not check. She took what was mandatory, like being pretty, being nice, getting good grades. But on that day when her world started raining soapy water and the wall got slippery, she checked that box with red pen.
She loved Randy’s Ellen Degeneres hair, her pale white girl skin and the freckles. The freckles make her look like a big kid. She always loves the part of Randy that never grows up, that childish smile, that concentration when she eats, that passion for her toy cars. She imagines herself raising Randy, seeing her first walk, first speech, and first handwriting. All white babies look angelic. My Baby Girl, she liked to call her. Randy would rest her head on her shoulder like three years old and ask for a bedtime story. She ran her finger through Randy’s hair, so smooth like a baby’s.

Oh how long haven’t she done that. The yellow spikes on her head glare at her like needles piercing right through her eyes.
“ I like your Ellen Degeneres hair.”
“ Ew.”
“I like that.”
“ Uh-uh, that’s not me.”
“ I like that anyway, more than this. “
“ So you don’t like this now?”
“ Nah, forget it.”
Randy slides back under the trailer. She can see Randy’s waist from here, under her tank top, smeared with grease and mud.
“ Jess,” she thinks, “ What a dyke.”

So there she is, an American Asian with a white girl friend, how liberal can she get.
The story went surprisingly with not much bumps. She kept it in the closet well, since her parent were 25000 miles away. She never misses them, but they do miss her a lot. She did not want to think about them too much. A place too much love and warmth, it baked her like a microwave. Before you knew it, your raw young heart is already cooked. It is no longer crispy and it becomes placid if you don’t swallow it real quick. Her microwaved heart became hardened and dead with her parent’s overheated love. She liked to tell them that spoilt, apparently happy kid had the highest suicide rate. That was the magic word that set her Mum to tears. She tried that once and would never do it again. It ached more than anything to see her Mum cry, and it ached even more knowing her Mum knew nothing about that ache. She had her revenge being with Randy, a silence protest without melodramatic parental conflict, and a little revenge that changes nothing at all.
She did send picture though, with her “ roommate” with Ellen Degeneres hair. She stopped sending those picture now, not with that hair and piercing. Not with that tribal tattoo with a female sign strangled by a maze of thorns. She saw her Baby Girl mutilated in those spikes. They cut her creamy white skin open like there wasn’t any pain at all. Then she filled the little wounds that never heal with blood red ink.

Sometimes she looks at Randy with pity and sometimes with awe. Randy is tough inside out. She walks in and out that bathroom alone in those stares. She fixes her spikes at the sink like she doesnt see the shock in the ladies faces. She remembered it was how she fell in love with Randy, the girl who doesnt gives a damn.

There seemed to be no reason behind Randy’s change. As if the girl in her just died, as if she simply shed a layer of skin. She emerged with such confident, like a mature butterfly out of the cocoon of femininity. She simply grew up, for better or worse, she is just growing up. Like herself, she grew up to wear lipsticks and mascara, wonder bra and heels. Randy became unrecognizable just like herself and the girl in the mirror: that flirtatious fling of her hair, the sway in her walk, the way she shrugs and pouts. She hardly knows herself anymore. She wonders Randy feels the same.

Randy loves her feminine though. Sometimes she does a little strip tease for Randy just to feel like a woman. She loves the way Randy watches; she never know desire itself can take on such an apparent form. They used to make love in the living room with Sade’s soulful R &B. They looked at each other naked, speechless with awe at the marvel of how curves fit together like landscape. They used to have such slow and mournful sex like some pagan ritual, full of earthly pleasure veiled in divinity.

Now Randy is finally done with the truck. She washes her hands with double amount of soap. When Randy goes on to cut her nails, she senses a menacing tension, that little deer in her heart makes a resigning leap and stops.
Not today, for no reason that spikes, that piercing, that female sign glare at her with double hostility today.
She takes out the crabs from the fridge. She wants it so bad lately-- Authentic Chinese style steamed crab. Randy looks at that with a face like she is watching Fear Factor.
“ Ew, are we eating that tonight?”
“ I miss it.”
“ How do you eat it?”
“ Steam it, crack it open and eat.”
“ I’m ordering pizza.”
“You mean you never had crabs before?”
“ Hell no, I m not into seafood.”
“ Why not?”
“Seafood is not a white thing, ok. We eat cows and dairy.”
“ Oh you do? I’m never a white thing anyway.”
“ What’s up with you today?”
“ Nothing.”
Randy wraps her arms around her.
“ Leaves me alone.”
“ No.”
Kisses after kisses on her neck.
All the while she is thinking about the crabs, how her Dad taught her to dig out the meat with chopsticks. Poke it in, add a little twist to the shell, and pull the whole strand of white meat out; fresh and a little salty, taste like the sea. It is best to steam it with nothing. Grandma liked it with ginger and green onion; it was never as good. She likes things as their pure forms, as they are and only what they are.
Randy’s kisses become aggressive these days, the way she makes love, the way she is so obsessed about penetration.
Out of nowhere Randy took something out from under the bed. She put it on herself, for a moment she thought Randy is wearing her undie back.
Then she feels it.
“What are you doing?” She gasps in horror.
“ Fucking you.”
It is a right place for a naughty laugh.
Pause.
“ You don’t like it?” Randy leans back a little and looks at her with that look of a horny teenage boy on his first date after prom.
“ No, I am fine.”
At that point she felt like tearing.
My Baby Girl. She thinks. She loved that little girl with an almost sadistic pleasure, witnessing the greatest catastrophe in her life that shattered her to pieces and built her to be who she is today. Now she is loving her like a straight woman.
Randy..oh..Randy.
She thinks she is really homophobic.

The next day she makes Randy breakfast, and sends her off to work. There is this little shop near Randy’s store, with neon lights and luminous color signs. It is a crazy thought she tells herself, but she just can’t contain that temptation no more. She always wants to visit that shop, and she feels she has nothing to lose today.
The Vietnamese woman greets her with English that sounds like nut cracking. Long straight hair, so straight that it doesn’t look real at all.

When Randy comes home she was watching TV, the 3 o’clock Ellen show. She almost couldn’t hear Randy’s calling.
“ What’ve you been doing all day?”
“ Watching TV.”
“ That’s it?” Randy reclines into the couch next to her, arms stretches like a tired dad.
“ I had a manicure.”
“ What?”
“ Acrylic with diamonds on them, 30 bucks.”
“ A manicure? For God sake, A Manicure!!”