Pool and its Role in Asian Communism

by Colin Cotterill

  So imagine their shock when Wanita Wong finished her set and went down to talk to the old guy. Maybe she was just being charitable, they thought. But no. It was clear them two hit it off real big. They wasn't talking more than two minutes when Waldo stood up and followed her out back.

  "He ain't got a car man," B.O. said, all jealous and irritated.

  "She's a star," Doddy reminded him. "She'll have a room. Maybe even one of them caravan things." The others nodded and B.O spat on the carpet. What a send off this was for the fat guy.

  16

  They was sitting on two Chevron oil drums out back beyond the latrines.

  "Shoot." She said. "How the rather d'ya know it was me? I got more make up on me than a Cherokee war party."

  "You're my trainee, girl. I been watching you real close, making sure you don't do nothing stupid. I know how you move. How you sound. But most important, I know how you smile. It don't happen that often, but when it does there ain't nobody can smile pretty like my trainee."

  She looked down and smiled embarrassed at her shoes. They blinked back at her.

  "I nearly shit myself when I saw you guys out there. Whatcha gonna do?"

  "Do?"

  "Yeah, you gonna tell them at Roundly's?"

  "Tell 'em what?"

  "That I'm a singer."

  "A singer?" He drew his big lips back from his teeth and laughed a deep chesty laugh. She jumped down from the barrel, put her hands on her hips and waited for the laughing to stop.

  "You hear something funny, old man?"

  "Well, I know what I didn't hear, girl. I sure as hell didn't hear no singers in that there butterfly dungeon."

  It was suddenly like steel shutters dropped down over her mood. The butterfly turned hostile.

  "Well, fuck you, nigger. They say you black mothers got some rhythm but you obviously wouldn't know talent if it walked up and bit your fat arse." Somehow, a tear managed to find its way out of all that mascara and run a little trail through the cheap makeup.

  "I got more talent in my left tit than them whores in there got in their entire bodies. Screw them."

  Waldo watched the little renegade tear rolling its way towards her chin. It weren't no bigger than a ladybug but it sure carried a lot of weight. It made him feel as sad as he'd felt since he lost Aretha. Felt like he had an ironing board in his chest. He didn't know what to say to make her feel better. There was more tears following the first one now and she spoke through the sobbing like a child telling how it got beat up at school.

  "I ain't one of them hookers, Waldo. They only come here to turn tricks man, you know that. They only get up on that stage so they can show their bits. Ain't one of them could carry a tune if you put wheels on it.

  "OK. I ain't no Gloria Gaynor. Not yet anyway. But voices like that don't just come. You gotta work on 'em. I know I got it. Gotta get my lungs bigger, that's all." To emphasize her point, she used both hands to hitch up the foam she was using as a chest that evening. The tears was spraying out all over the place and making a hell of a mess of her paintwork.

  Waldo realized he'd read the girl wrong. This wasn't acting. When he first saw her up on the stage he assumed she was a hooker like all of 'em. Didn't worry or surprise him none. It was her life. It surprised him more that she wasn't. Dressed up like Wanita Wong there, she could of made a better living than the Inn Diana and Roundly's combined. He wondered why she didn't.

  17

  It was a week since the visit to the Butterfly. It was all everyone could talk about. Sure they boasted about the girls, and the ambiance and everything, but mainly they talked about the arrest.

  You see, once the boys had helped the singers out with a few bucks, when it come to paying the bill at the end of the night, even with Desire's generous contribution, they was forty bucks short. Seems they miscalculated by not adding something called a 'service charge'. None of them ever heard of a service charge and didn't understand what service it was for. But there it was on the check large as life.

  It seemed like the cops had been called out to the Butterfly before. The sheriff and the bouncer was on a first name basis. Even though the boys was drunker'n skunks, the cop let 'em follow his car across the county to the lock up. There they was all allowed one call each to try and round up enough money to pay the bill and the bail.

  It probably couldn't be said the wives and girlfriends was too pleased to be woke up at 3 am to bail their fellas out of jail cause they couldn't pay the bill at a fancy whore house. Them girls wouldn't never let it rest. That was the night Ribs' and Doddy's marriages started rolling downhill without brakes. Lot of silences at home for the longest while.

  Even though it was supposed to be Waldo's night, he ended up paying more than any of 'em. When they invited him, they knew he was a soft touch when it come to money. Wasn't many in the factory didn't owe him this or that amount they never intended to pay back. He'd had one or two Cokes in the Butterfly and didn't have to pay for no fondles, but he handed over most of the deficit, and the cost of the wax lamp no one remembered busting.

  -o-

  The relationship between Waldo and China was weird there for a while. It didn't make 'em any better friends right off, but it sure made 'em lesser enemies. They probably already liked each other by then but didn't know it yet. The sandwiches had brought them together. She never said 'thank you', but she never refused neither. She ate 'em too, even when they was odd tasting, like when Waldo experimented with curry.

  18

  It took longer at Roundly's than other places for the first attempt at sampling Chinese meat. The aspiring rapist was a nineteen-year old machinist name of Kirk Workington.

  He knew she parked out front of Roundly's, and turned up there after three a.m. He'd watched her undress in the back seat a couple of times. It'd got him real excited, mainly cause her body looked a lot like his younger brother's. His brother weren't having none of it, and he figured the chink would be more accommodating.

  "Hell, she'd be grateful to a white boy for showing interest in her."

  He lurked there in the shadows one morning and waited for her to be in her underwear before the attack. The only weapon he needed was his old fella. That should scare her enough. Show her he meant business. He got it poking out of his jeans like the figurehead on a Viking long boat before throwing open the back door of the Chevy and hurling himself inside.

  He hadn't never seen a knife that long before. When he retold the tale later, he left out some parts, like how she took hold of his figurehead in her left hand and held the blade tight up against his balls with her right.

  He was froze there, especially when she said, "You want 'em on or off?" You ain't never seen a figurehead sink so quick. He didn't dare move a muscle cause he really wanted 'em on, and he knew she wouldn't think twice about having 'em off. He could feel the cool steel against his sack and he was sure he'd be singing soprano in the church choir till he was sixty.

  Kirk was one big old farm boy, but when you got a little China lady with a knife holding on to your cock, it really don't matter how big you is. If you could save your personal belongings, you'd take whatever chance you was given. She only give him one.

  "Here's the deal," she said. "I imagine you wanna have children some day. If that's the case, I don't wanna ever see you around me, or around this car again, anytime." He nodded gently so as not to disturb the knife. "Wait, I ain't finished. If anyone else comes here and tries this, first I'm gonna slice theirs off, then I'm gonna come looking for you and slice yours off, cause I'll assume you recommended my tasty Chinese ass to someone else. You understand what I'm saying, you sorry looking redneck?" He nodded again.

  As soon as she let his old fella be and lifted the knife, he was out of that car and halfway home before she could say, "Have a nice day." Old mamma Workington sure had her work cut out on wash day, getting the stain out the seat of his underpants. China didn't have no more trouble with the boys from Roundly's after that.

  19

&n
bsp; I been kind'a slow in telling you China's name I guess. But that ain't by accident. You see, most places she went she was China, or Nip, or worse. Whatever they felt like calling her. Wasn't too many people went to the trouble of asking her real name. Bet you was quite happy with her being called China. Having an Asian in the factory in them days was something like buying a goldfish. You could call it whatever you wanted.

  "You got a name?"

  Waldo knew she'd got a name cause he saw it on her job application. Just didn't seem right using it without permission. She'd never said, "Call me …" whatever. But today, out of the blue, she'd said "Thanks" for the sandwich, and sat down beside him to eat it. Once he'd gotten over the shock, he asked her her name.

  "What you wanna know for?"

  "Do you sooner I call you China?"

  "No I don't sooner." She looked into his big ostrich egg eyes to see if he was making fun of her. She didn't see no mockery.

  "Saifon"

  He thought about it.

  "That sure is a pretty name. What's it mean?"

  "What's it mean?"

  She thought back all them years to when she first found out it meant something. It was the only thing that was hers in them days. The only thing she'd bought to America. She treasured it because of that, but it hadn't crossed her mind it was anything other than a name. When the old Lao lady at the centre told her what it meant, it was something like magic.

  It was like the story they'd told her about the little country boy who was given a birthday present by a rich widow just before she died. It was the only present he'd ever had and he treasured it and protected it all his life. Even though he was so poor he couldn't afford no coal to keep warm, he refused to burn the present.

  On his deathbed, his grandson saw the box with its dirty ribbon and asked him what it was. The old man told him it was a birthday present he'd gotten when he was child. The little boy asked him;

  "What's inside it grandpa?" The old man looked surprised.

  "Inside? You think there might be something inside?"

  That's the way she felt when she found out her name had a meaning, and it was such a pretty meaning.

  "Raindrop," she said.

  "That sure is pretty."

  "Yeah."

  20

  Two days later they was sitting eating their baguettes together and she asked him a question. It was the first question she'd asked him about him.

  "You like being black?"

  "Don't know. I ain't never been black."

  He was quick to answer so she knew he'd already thought about it a lot.

  "No?"

  "No."

  "Then what color you being now?"

  "Burnt sienna."

  "You what?"

  "I'm burnt sienna." She stared across at him.

  "And who in hell's name told you you're burnt …"

  "Sienna. Ain't nobody told me. I looked it up."

  "You looked up your color? Where the …rather can you do a thing like that?"

  "At the hardware store."

  "You're messing with my brain now, fat man."

  "No ma'm, Saifon." She liked how that name sounded coming out of some other mouth. "At the hardware store they got color charts for paint. You can see what color you really are. I'm too light for dark chocolate and too dark for coffee. But you stand me in front of a field of old siennas that got 'emselves burnt down, and I'd be invisible."

  "Why would you go to all the trouble of looking up something like that?"

  "I just wanted to know."

  "Why?"

  "How come you never ask me this many questions about pool balls?"

  "Why?"

  He rehearsed his answer to himself before he spoke.

  "Well, there's people call me black, right? But it ain't really talking about color. It's a word they use to describe my race. Except, black got a lot of other meanings too, like dirty, like sinister, you know? Them civil rights brothers stand up and tell us we gotta be proud of being black. But I ain't black so why should I be proud of being it?"

  "You sooner be proud of being burnt sarsaparilla?"

  "No. Well, yeah, kinda. It ain't easy to explain. I just wanna put 'em straight you know? I got this perfect world planned out. First we get to be proud of being black, and the people who ain't quite black enough say, 'hey, what am I gonna be proud of?' So they break away and make a brown group. But in that brown group you got all different browns, you know? So they all break away and make a coffee group and a burnt sienna group. But the burnt sienna group got frizzy hair or they got straight hair."

  Saifon knew there had to be a point somewhere at the end of all this. She waited patiently, chewing on her sweet corn and beet baguette.

  "So, where do we get to? The 'being proud' groups keep dividing and splitting cause they realize they got differences. And at the very end, we got millions of groups with one person in 'em. And each of them one-person groups is real proud of themselves. But it ain't cause of their 'sameness' no more, they're proud cause they're different, they're unique.

  "Can you imagine how difficult it'd be to hate people on account of their one-person group? Can you hear 'em? 'I can't stand you dark pink, bald, green-eyed, long-legged, nine-toed, bad-breathed, small-butt people.' Think how exhausting that would be."

  "Wow."

  "It's like if they call you, excuse me, if they call you yella, you can put 'em straight and tell 'em what you really are."

  "What am I?"

  "Well, hell I don’t know. You have to go and look it up at the hardware store."

  She looked up at the greasy windows, but she could still see the light.

  "You know Waldo, I'm gonna rather well do just that. Being called black don’t seem too bad to me, but yella, man I hate that. They say yella through their teeth like it's something you catch. Ain't nothing yella about me."

  "All right."

  "What time is it?"

  "Ten of one."

  "Should just be opening when I get there."

  "Where you going?"

  "Hardware store."

  "We start work in ten minutes."

  "Rather you, Mr. Trainer. Old Desire says to me, 'Do everything Waldo here tells you to.' And Waldo just told me to go to the hardware store to look up my color. So here I go." She stood up, dusted the breadcrumbs off her front, and headed out to her truck.

  "Wait I …didn't mean n …''

  21

  "So she comes back about an hour later and tells me she's magnolia white. Hell, Reet, that ain't even yella. You know? She's a shade of white. She's whiter than any of them pinkies at Roundly's. Can you believe that? She was so happy."

  Waldo had emptied everything outa the closet, and was going through his clothes. He figured it was time to select his wardrobe for Mexico. Raking deep into that closet was like one of them archaeology digs. He dug through the layers like he was digging through time. He hadn't been in there for so long, the nostalgia rating was almost as high as the mothballs.

  First thing he come across was his old Indiana Pacers sweatshirt. He used to wear that thing all the time. Him and that shirt was inseparable. There was only one thing could stop him wearing it, and that was himself. He grew out of it. The hundred and seventy pounds he'd put on over the past six years was more than that sweatshirt could hold.

  Then there was the nylon jacket he'd wore at the hospital the night Aretha went to meet her maker. It was the last thing she'd seen him wearing. He hadn't worn it since. There was some fossilized paper tissues in one of the pockets and a bus ticket from South Bend.

  The deeper he dug, the smaller the clothes got. He couldn't believe he ever wore the T-shirt with 'Jelly Roll Morton' embroidered across the front of it. But he had. Both of 'em was wearing the same T-shirt, if you know what I mean. Him and Aretha was together at the show. They'd saved up for five months to go and listen to Jelly Roll and his Coloured Jazz Orchestra at the Tokio in South Bend.It was supposed to be a sitting show but the bouncers could
n't control the impulses of the audience. After the band's second number, every ass cheek in the house was off its seat and jiggling.

  "Reet. You recall what we did after that show?" He blushed just thinking about it. Him and Aretha down the back of the bus depot. He put his hand on his belly. "Don't reckon I could manage tricks like that no more." But he smiled at the memory. Him and Aretha sure was an active couple in them days.

  Way at the back of the shelf behind the clothes, there was a box of bullets. There weren't a gun no more to put them bullets in. That was probably still covered in rust at the bottom of Lake Michegan. There was only one bullet missing outa the box, but that's all it had took to do the job. He still couldn't bring himself to ask forgiveness for the one evil thing he'd done.

  There weren't a thing in that wardrobe Waldo could use in Mexico. But it turned out that didn't matter none.

  22

  The two guys in suits might as well of had 'cops' written on their backs. Always seemed odd to Saifon that cops would study their asses off to get out of uniform, then all walk around in the same suits.

  She'd been watching Ribs making a mess of the lacquer dips. He'd only been working on it two years so it wasn't surprising he hadn't quite mastered it yet. It was a process that involved using his eyes and his hands at the same time. Didn't seem to be much communication going on between the two. She looked over his shoulder at what was going on at the far end of the plant.

  The two suits had surrounded Desire. She seemed to like the attention. She called Waldo over and the cops escorted him to an alcove in among the loaded boxes. She was too far to hear what they was saying, but they sure said something to shock old Waldo. It was like they'd found his valve and let some of the air out. He kind of collapsed onto the cases. One of the cops put his hand on the old guy's shoulder and nodded. The other one slipped a cue ball in his pocket cause he thought no one was watching.