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Talking Story
by Polo
From The Asian Reporter, V17, #4 (January 23, 2007), page 7.
Hawkgirl on ice
I am an island boy. We pick golden rice. We chase silvery fish.
The Creator of all things, that Guapo who moves this thumping heart, that elegant heron, those shimmering eucalyptus leaves, did not make our folk for freezing cold, for slippery snow. We didn’t get the word for ice until my parents’ time. It arrived in a big block, under a limp sail, by sampan pisang. Banana boat.
Not in our ancient teachings, not in our strip mall drug and variety stores — will you find wool socks.
And so, I tell you true: No one I know was at all happy about January’s snow. Not funny.
Of course, everyone was awed by our city’s early morning muffled with a lovely white blanket. So quiet. Naturally, I was moved by a solitary inky black crow settling on our sidewalk’s lone naked maple. But cranking my ice-cold Toyota, praying to anyone listening, cancelled all that magic. Not cool.
A slow hour later, I sat, teeth chattering, motor clattering, at the end of a winding red serpent of tail lamps as far as you could see. The Banfield Freeway. East-end commuters.
What am I doing here? I whispered at my quarter-million mile coche. She shuddered uncontrollably from a thousand achy joints. It’s okay, I patted her dash. Just a lit-tle farther and I’ll put you, I promise, all nice and cozy in a downtown SmartPark. No slushy street-side for my Baby. No way.
And I was muttering thus, under my breath, so not to let out too much precious body heat, when she showed up. Again. Again unannounced. Again, in a foul mood.
And again, as always, I smelled her before I actually saw her. Farmyard fowl. Damp feathers. Bird dander. Hawkgirl.
She makes my nose itch. Hawkgirl does. But it’s best not to show it. It’s a little Asian thing. It’s a big island rule. We work hard not hurting another’s feelings. Girls’ above all. Supergirls in skin-tight yellow bodysuits, with spiked clubs, with anger-management issues, above all. Hawkgirl.
"Apa kabar, Hawkgirl?" I said.
"What’s up, Worm?" she said.
"I asked you first," I said.
"YOU DON’T TALK UNTIL YOU’RE SPOKEN TO, MAGGOT."
Birds of a feather together
It always gets me, how quick she goes from bird to boil. It makes me wonder — I mean, anyone would, how long it’s been. You know, how long since she got what my Mexican cousin Cisco calls: a little loving. Girls get edgy, you know.
"STOP YOUR MISERABLE MUMBLING, AND SPEAK UP LIKE A MAN!" she bellowed, not six inches from my face. Sour raptor breath. Half-digested Pioneer Square pigeons. A Starbucks sparrow or two. I turned up OPB news a bit. Enough to know more about traffic ahead.
"You know, Hawkgirl — " I began, but she cut me off. "YOU will address ME by my full royal name: SHAYERA THAL, EXILED THANE OF DREADED THANAGAR." Way too many THs for me.
"Okay-okay, Sha-nah-nah, lost chick from all that Big Badness." I figured I’d comply. She was, after all, clearing my windows, front and rear, with her heat. And she did have that nasty beater between her black lycra thighs. And those tall red boots. Whew.
I pried away my peepers and glanced in my mirror. To check my front teeth, for food, for black pepper grounds. Also for cars in the slow lane. "Your Royal Birdness," I continued. "I was just wondering, if I might ask you, if it’s not too much trouble, if you would kindly consider: giving me a hand getting on some chains?" I blinkered right.
"Chains?" She tightened her grip on her killer club. "Chain up who?"
I knew another awful escalation was near. "No-no-no, Sister. Not who. No one’s tying up no one. I’m talking about strapping on traction devices. On my Baby."
"WHO YOU CALLING ‘BABY,’ COCKROACH?"
I didn’t think it was really a question, so I didn’t bother answering. Instead, I took the Hollywood exit. Gingerly. Keeping what little grip my tired Toyota had on that gruelly mix of snow, sand, and pea gravel.
"My car, I call our car ‘my Baby,’" I said as gently as I could, though a bit distractedly on account of my Toyota and me now yawing at about 15 degrees into our exit ramp. A barely controlled skid. Gent-ly, because we’ve learned as islanders, from living on a geologically restless chain on oceanic mountaintops, from sleeping on the rim of seas suddenly ferocious, from tending our rice under skies irrationally angry, that you’ve got to talk quietly, always quietly, so not to irritate easily agitated spirits. Like Birdgirls with big sticks.
But try as I might, my Toyota and me and Hawkgirl, too, slid off the side of that highway ramp and into a soft bank of snow and soil. We stopped. I shut my Baby down. I patted her dash, I mouthed, It’s okay. My mistake.
I looked at Hawkgirl. She looked at me. I thought for sure she would blow her top, swing her mace, and holler all kinds of extravagant curses — but no. She looked at me. And me at her. "C’mere, Maggot," she whispered, almost sweet, certainly kind.
And so I went. To her. Sure I did. Into her muscular arms, now unexpectedly tender. Under her downy wings. So warm. Because me, like she, is a bit lost. No heavy winter shoes, not one thick coat in my thin wardrobe, not a lot of fat between Oregon’s arctic chill and these blue islandboy bones. And both of us, too far away from home.