Girl at Dawn 黎明女
Capter One （1）
SCARED OF THE AMERICAN
SLAPPING FOURTH’S FACE
|
I |
I stand in the narrow hallway, ready to electrocute my hair. VeVe puts the iron comb on the rack by the door just so I won’t leave the house without having straightened my hair. I pick up the cord of the iron comb and plug it into the socket. Randomly grabbing a strand of my hair and pulling it until it hurts, I sink the teeth of the comb—so hot it gives off a metallic smell—into the curls. Unhesitatingly I move the comb down the length of my hair, all the way to my back. In the power of the 220 volt electricity, the curls give in and slowly unfurl. Then another strand of hair. Every single curl must all be electrocuted, until there’s no evidence I’ve had curls at all. Every now and then, the hot comb gets stuck and the hair is toasted brown and instantly spirals into tight circles, like a wounded snake curls itself in. This, I cut off entirely with scissors. At such times, I imagine a real executioner and wonder if he experiences the same mixed feelings of vengeance, pity, regret, and shame that I feel when he ends the life of the condemned in the electric chair.
In the mirror next to the rack on the wall, I watch myself transform. Between curly and straight hair, I split into two different persons. Sometimes, one is the disguise of the other; sometimes, one is disgusted by the other; and still sometimes, one is the other’s protector. Other times, they are indifferent to each other. I don’t know which one I prefer. What’s worse is that I don’t know which one is the real me, or closer to who I am. Worse still, I’m not even sure if they are me at all.
No doubt, however, the curls are mine, as I was born with them, which is unusual for a Chinese. It is my bad luck, VeVe tells me. My other feature unusual for a Chinese are my eyes. Normally big and dark eyes are considered pretty, but mine are lodged in their sockets so deeply that they are half hidden under my eyebrows. VeVe says that they make her think of two bottomless water wells—she doesn’t say whether she likes the wells or not. SanNe tells me that my eyes look just like those black coal balls piled up outside her house in winter.
All that to say I look too much like a Hui. VeVe started to straighten my hair when I was a baby. “If your hair is straight, no one will think you are a Hui,” she always says. And I believe her—nothing could be worse than being considered Hui.
The Hui Muslims live on the city’s west side in rundown, low-roofed bungalows with white-washed exteriors forever smeared with graffiti. They typically have curly hair, with big noses and deep-set eyes. Although they speak Chinese, they look so different that they might as well be foreigners. Most of them make a living by running small family businesses, such as grocery stores and craft shops. Their children, in shabby clothes, often dirty-faced, sell roasted peanuts or watermelon seeds on the street, especially on a stone bridge in their living quarters. “Roasted peanuts for ten cents!”
I believe that my Hui looks are the reason that VeVe never praises my appearance. No matter how other people say I’m “pretty” and “exotic” “like fresh water lilies,” VeVe’s words are what matters. She herself is a beauty known to the neighborhood and beyond. People on the streets do double takes to look at her. She has long, upward-slanted “phoenix eyes” and willow-leaf eyebrows. Her nose and mouth are well-defined and delicate. She is a walking version of the noble beauties in the Chinese gong-bi paintings. The only features I share with her are fair skin and the watermelon-shape of our faces.
From the hallway, I steal a glance at VeVe. She’s toying with the ink stone in her hand, her eyes far away. Slowly, she begins to rub the stone on the inkwell. The ink should be ready within minutes, but she doesn’t seem to be aware of it. She keeps grinding, faster and faster, as if possessed.
My curls have upset her. For the first time, it occurs to me that her anguish over my hair goes beyond the curls. It’s one of the many mysteries of her I may or may never find out.
As I tilt my head to iron my hair, my eyes fall on the family photos on the wall, inevitably gazing at the one on the side. The photo is small, hung on the edge of the cluster of photos like an afterthought. My father—or whom I insist to be my father—stands alone inside the simple, ill-fitting frame. Ever since I was a child, I’ve been obsessed with this picture, looking for resemblance between him and me. He has small, squinting eyes on his dark, square face, whereas my eyes are big and shaped like an apricot seed, or so others tell me. His nose is flared; his mouth is pulled slightly downward on the side, which gives him a sad expression. The only resemblance between us is the raven blackness of our hair, though his is straight. My father’s photo is small, but his image is huge in my mind. VeVe avoids talking about him. The only thing I know is that he was a renowned doctor who died from a rare illness when I was two. I’ve always had the inkling that he is still alive somewhere. As I grow older, that feeling grows stronger. Once VeVe became angry when I would not stop asking about him and said, “You must forget him. It's just you and me.” I knew then that VeVe was hiding the truth about my father from me, as she does so many other things. How do I even know if the man in the photo is indeed my father?
But he is, I always assure myself in the end.
Still grinding ink, VeVe has fallen into a trance; she seems locked in a place only she knows, and she will stay there until she is spent. This is the image of her I’ve known since childhood. She pours the ink into an empty milk bottle so she can grind more. Later, as always, I will empty the ink in the bottle, or bottles. She will need them again. And again.
As soon as every curl in my hair has yielded to the heat, I pull the electric comb out of the wall and sneak out. VeVe won’t notice I’m gone before I make it back.
