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Talking Story  by Polo

From The Asian Reporter, V17, #35 (August 28, 2007), page 7.

When things happen suddenly, when our delicate world, as she’s done a thousand times, turns dark without warning, I act like I’m not surprised.

Sure I do. Sure, we must. It’s how we are. How we have to act. How our hard times’ve made us. Us edgy brown guys. And let me say this, and say it just once (sisters listen silahkan): It’s not that your boys’re bad. Tidak. We respond slow to surprises because cool is better than mad, much better than sad.

So we act instead. Act not-surprised.

And so it was when she showed up again. Unannounced again. In my quarter-million-mile Toyota late-late last Tuesday night, by surprise. Though I never showed it.

It was raining hard. I was looking for a Dunkin’ Donuts. Driving everywhere they used to be. Everywhere they used to be open, every day, any hour. Always an exhausted Palestinian lady putting on a half smile, setting up a battered Dunkin’s mug, laying down a little Dunkin’s napkin and a couple of Darigold half-and-halfs.

Not a Dunkin’s anywhere. Not in Hillsdale, not at that Capitol Highway fork. And my wipers were working hard, and I was thinking Salem’s got one and Salem’s not so far away. Not for a double honey-dipped chocolate twist. I could make it, I could get me one, by midnight.

That’s what I was saying to my tired old Toyota, when she showed up. Like I said: without warning. Without calling, without saying something like: Hey Yoh, I know it’s been a while since we hung out, hooked up — pero, what the heck, it’s Tuesday, it’s late, and I’m not doin’ anything, so …

Hawkgirl.

Hawkgirl in my passenger seat. Hawkgirl with her 40-pound spiked club between her black Lycra knees. Hawkgirl smelling like a packed coop of wet chickens. "Hey Hawkgirl," I said. Not surprised.

"Hey Jimmy," she said.

I signalled right. We turned down an I-5 southbound ramp. I urged my baby up to 55 mph.

"Have you eaten?" I said real loud, above our labored wiper sweeps. It’s what we say. Have to say. For us, feeding’s the same as caring. Very Old World.

"Yes-yes, I’m fine," she said. She had to say. It’s how we are. "Uh huh, I ate. Plenty."

That explains the sudden disappearance of all our Pioneer Square pigeons, I said to myself.

We drove on, each in our own silence.

It’s how we are, us brown folks. Men in our aloneness; women at their distance. So much unsaid. For ducking so much disappointment. With each other. About ourselves. Funny thing though: Around white folks we sing like birds. Canaries.

Near Lake Oswego, near those lovely Mormon spires, tall as their elegant Douglas Fir neighbors, I went for my window crank. Without thinking, I started opening my driver-side window — not because of her smell, Hawkgirl’s big wet bird smell. No, I tell you true: I kind of like it. I like her scent. Hawkgirl’s scent.

I went for a little ventilation because her sodden feathers and cape, her soaked yellow tank top and red French panties, were fogging our windows. I couldn’t see.

I withdrew my guilty hand, fast. I slid far right my peepers, quick, checking if she’d noticed me going for fresh air. Nonyas don’t like it if you think they stink. Women worry about things like that. Sniffy things. That’s why they’ve got all that stuff in pink and lavender and aqua blue, in scrubs and sprays and roll-ons crowding aaall those Fred Meyer shelves. Because women worry — little girls, big girls, Hawkgirls, all the same.

I was pretty sure she hadn’t noticed me reaching for my window crank. I took an old Popeye’s Fried Chicken napkin out of my door pocket instead, and wiped our windshield. "So, Hawkgirl," I said, casual as an English sparrow. "What’s up?"

She didn’t answer, not right away. Chicas do that. Because they’re thinking. Calculating, instead of answering on an honest impulse. The longer they pause, the badder their answer’s going to be. Aduh’illah, we hate it. Us fellas do.

But like I said: We don’t show it. Don’t let them see it. Not a twitch. Not one disclosive little gasp. Never a sigh. The sisters don’t like us weak or sad or mad; like our awful histories, it will be held against you. You have a right to remain silent.

"I’m going." That’s what she said. Finally said. "I’m done, Jimmy," she said.

"Oh," I said.

"I’m leaving," she said.

"Oh," I said, again. It’s an Asian stall-move. Oh is. Intended to lend you an empty moment while you pick up all your running marbles, just spilled from that hole in your head.

"Probably first thing in the morning," she said looking straight ahead.

"Oh," I said. And that was it. Three ohs are all you get. Traditionally speaking.

"I thought I should let you know." Face still forward.

"Uh, okay."

It’s important to note, for the record, that I made not one misplaced tone. Not a hint of surprise. Neutral as sliced cucumber, I was. Tight as a clenched boxer. Not new to a bad beating.

Relentless rain, an odd-odd August rain, never slowed for forty freeway minutes.

Somewhere north of Salem, somewhere close to where Grandpa Yada used to grow sweet onions big as Little League softballs, before the U.S. Army shoved his family into a freight train and put all our Nikkei behind barbed wire, I said "Where you goin’, Hawkgirl?"

I figured I had to speak. I knew she wouldn’t say more. She’d circle high, wait till I revealed my feelings. Once discovered she’d maneuver for advantage. It’s all about our women adjusting themselves, staying ahead of our wobbly world. My question, my anxious tone, hung in our silence.

She didn’t answer. Not for a while. Her sharp senses surveyed my emotional landscape. Estimating my heart. Our ladies’re like that, behind those face masks, under their wide wings.

"Why you gotta go?" I said, maybe a bit impatient. Sort of shrill. Certainly too revealing. Hawkgirl had me. I was made. My goose was cooked, without her even touching her clobber club.

We passed that government boarding school. Chemawa Indian School. Named for a disappeared hunting and gathering tribe. Now only their name remains; the same’s true for Chemeketa, for Clackamas and Klickitat too. Place names and street signs and golf courses, where a vibrant people used to live, to love.

The gravity of this valley, her history, were weighing heavy on me as we blinkered and ramped off I-5 onto Salem’s Market Street exit. Rain fell incessant. Hawkgirl watched me like, well, like a hawk. It would take a lot of Dunkin’ donuts to beat these blues.

* * *

Aduh’illah (Indo patois): Oh my gosh. Milder version of Oh my God.

chicas (Spanish): girls, women.

Indian schools: 19th and 20th century U.S. government policy was removal and termination of American Indian nations, then taking children from family and tribe to be de-cultured and re-socialized in regional Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding schools. Chemawa Indian School was one of those earlier-era re-education centers. Today Chemawa is a progressive model for traditional and contemporary Indian schooling.

Japanese-American internment: removal to prison camps of about 120,000 West Coast Japanese Americans (2/3 U.S. citizens) from their homes, farms, and businesses, after Imperial Japan’s 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. Aggravated by eager politicians and ugly media.

Nikkei (Japanese): in this context, meaning: Japanese American pioneers, immigrants, citizens, community.

nonya (Malay, Bahasa, Javan): local lady.

pero (Span., Tagalog, Indo patois): but, but look, but wait. The big but.

silahkan (Bahasa Indonesia): If you please. If I may.

tidak (Malay, Bahasa): nope.