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Talking Story |
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From The Asian Reporter, V17, #23 (June 5, 2007), page 7.
Hawkgirl and me: Hawkgirl at Popeye’s
From last week: Hawkgirl showed up without warning on my solitary late Friday night loop around and around Portland’s freeway bridges. Her scent was fowl, her mood was foul. I lightened her up by suggesting Popeye’s Fried Chicken. Catfish nuggets were on special.
Northeast Portland has two Popeye’s. Both are hopping on Friday nights. Lots jammed with mid-‘80s Oldsmobiles and Pontiacs, most of them throbbing with bad rap.
I yanked up my tired Toyota’s park brake. I hopped out and nipped around to Hawkgirl’s door. I opened my big umbrella. I urged her out by her elbow. Très gallant. I was raised on Cary Grant, on Gregory Peck Saturday matinee movies, back home. All in English, but it didn’t matter. It’s the moves. It’s aaall about the moves. The chicas love ’em.
The cops don’t. A rain-slick cruiser stalked by us, slow, by me in my sneer, by Hawkgirl in her tight yellow tube top, in her red French panties and long-long black boots. Her gnarly mace too.
We got in line behind ladies with beautiful Dove Bar skin, between black guys in jeans roomy enough for four Asians. "Chicken for my bud, catfish and fries for me, two small Cokes," I said when we made it to the counter.
"Which chicken?" the Mexican girl said.
"The clucker kind," I said. "The kind scritch-scratching around barnyards."
"No-no," she smiled. "Which chicken meal?" With that, Hawkgirl elbowed me aside, kind of mean, maybe jealous.
"I’ll have New Orleans Spicy," she said sharp, she stared hard, until that poor chiquita dropped her peepers and poked it into her register.
We took a window table.
She sat quiet, maybe getting even for my silence during our loops around twinkling downtown, probably as punishment for my flirting up front. Who knows. Women’re unpredictable. Showing up without calling. Getting possessive with no warning. Jeez.
She ate voracious though. Tearing apart her chicken. Breaking naked bones, sucking out marrow. Done in two minutes flat.
Talking to turkey
"You know, you need to eeease up a bit," I said, reaching across with my napkin, wiping her greasy chin, dabbing the pretty corners of her mouth." She let me. But her hand moved under our table. Toward her club.
"You might even think about, you know, leaving that big ugly stick of yours at home. You know, every once in a while."
She shot to her feet. "DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?" It wasn’t really a question. "I AM HAWKGIRL, SOARING THANE OF THANAGAR."
"Right-right," I said, standing too and putting my cool right hand on her hot-hot cheek. "I really do know who you are, Sister’saya. Please-please, sit with me." I mean, all that loud-mouthing was fine with our Popeye crowd, but those itchy blue cops were just outside. Circling, circling.
She sat. "I AM THE EXILED WIFE —"
I put a forefinger on her bottom lip. "Shh. Shh. A little softer, all right?"
"I am the exiled but faithful wife of KATAR HOL, Dreaded Defender of Thanagar!"
"Yes-yes. Exiled, faithful — we got aaall that," I nodded like a dashboard bobbly-head.
"HE could CRUSH your eggshell skull before your next foul breath!"
"Yah-yah, I know that too." I squeezed her knees together, tight, between mine, under our table. She made one more half-hearted move for her mace. A little one. Just a jerk really. I eased my squeeze.
"But you know, Girl —"
"Don’t call me Girl!"
"Okay, you know Sister’saya —"
"I am NOT your sister."
"All right, Meiti’manis —." She didn’t snap back; she doesn’t speak Indo, giving me a chance to go on. "I know you’re one angry nonya. No doubt. No question you’ve got your reasons. Sure you do. I mean, us men’ve been a bit out to lunch, so to speak. It’s the times. Lots of chaos. Way too many changes. What sociologists call "traumatic dislocations —."
She was getting impatient. She’d heard enough of my mealy-mouth abstractions. I heard her club’s ugly spikes scrape dull across Popeye’s linoleum. Her jaw tightened. "And your point isss?"
"The point is: we need to talk quietly and then walk carefully our way through these bad times, together. Us dopy guys don’t need women shouting as foul mouth as we’ve been, our aching earth cannot have you behaving as badly as we have."
"Mean-ning what?" she said, placing both her fists on our little Formica tabletop. And I realized — in that very moment, in that packed Popeye’s, on that perpetually explosive boulevard named after the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — that I better get this right. The next three sentences out of my mouth would either "send me to my maker," as she was fond of bellowing, or get this primordial, this impatient, enormous feminine energy flowing in a way likely to redeem us all. Creative, compassionate, conciliatory. Female.
Behind the hawk mask
"Here’s what I mean, Sister’saya." I put my greasy, my catfishy, fingertips on her forearm. She shuddered.
"See these edgy black men in here?" Her eyes shifted left-right, left-right, behind her mask. "You see those exhausted brown guys, back by their chicken fryer?" She raised her self slightly up, off her seat. I took a quick peek down her tube top.
"Aaand?" she said out the side of her mouth.
"Now, you see those big blue cops, out there? Out in the lot, out on MLK? It’s the same guys, the same vigilance, under angry battle group steam just beyond the breakers off Iran’s coast, off Korea’s coast. It’s the same overpowering violence parked in Strategic Air Command hangers and programmed into auto-pilots of stealthy intercontinental bombers ready to flatten noncompliance no matter where angry men may gather, late nights, whispering poison."
Hawkgirl glanced down at her nasty mace. I caught that. I caught her. She blinked at her tidy little pile of Kentucky fryer parts.
"So?" she said soft. Still examining her bones.
"So, Meiti’manis. It needs to stop. I know you’ve been hurt, but you need to lose the mask. Silahkan. We know guys’ve done you wrong, but you need you to dump the club. If you please. Sister please.
She let go a long-long sigh. Out her nose, from behind her cover. Me too.
I thought about buying a side of Popeye’s corn bread. You melt Darigold butter in there, drip on lots of Tupelo honey. But I was out of cash, I wasn’t sure of my bank card balance, I knew for sure asking Hawkgirl to pay would be the end of this big moment.
We sat quiet. Outside, rain fell. Cops cruised.
"Can we go now?" she said after a long calm. We got up. We got out. The club stayed.
I put my arm around her bare shoulders. I was about to open our big umbrella, but she spread a warm wing over our heads.