How to Pronounce Knife

by Souvankham Thammavongsa

  Wherever she was in the plant, if he was around he would head straight toward her, excited and hopeful for something to happen between them. He was there when she punched in her time card, there at the end of the day when she punched out. He followed her around as if she were carrying feed. She wondered how he never got tired of smiling so much. She would look away from him, uninterested, but he would follow her gaze. He had seen her interest in the girls who got nose jobs, had seen her taking in how everyone else was noticing them too.

  “I just don’t see what the big deal is,” he had said. “Why go and do that to your face for?”

  “She’s beautiful.”

  “But it’s not real.”

  “It’s real to her.”

  “I don’t see it. I just don’t.”

  “I want to get one too, you know,” Red had confessed, before she realized she should not have said that to Somboun. Now that he knew she wanted something for herself, he might think he was some kind of friend to her.

  “No. Not you. Not you. No way.”

  “Why not me? You think I don’t want to be beautiful?”

  “Why in hell would you do that to yourself! You’re already beautiful.” Somboun said this with such sincere conviction that she was embarrassed for him. How naked and bare, his want.

  “How would you know. You don’t know about girls.”

  Somboun lowered his head and quietly said, “I don’t got to know anything about girls to know what’s beautiful.” He was so proud, and all for nothing. He’d worked at the plant the longest. Started when he was in high school, thinking this was something that was going to get him to college. Ten years later, he was still working at the plant doing the same thing. He was the one who slit the necks in the other room before they got to Red. He saw the chickens when they were still alive. She shuddered at the thought of doing anything with Somboun. What kind of gentleness could a man who did that for a living be capable of?

  Still, after that, nose jobs were the one thing Somboun could manage to get Red to talk to him about. Who had got a nose job and when and if it was a good one. Red told him she was going to get a nose job too as soon as she saved up enough. She always said, “Next year, for sure. For sure.”

  When Red saw Somboun standing at the entrance that morning, still smoking even though he often talked about quitting, and wearing the same drab uniform and the same haircut all these years, he reminded her of all the things she wanted for herself but still didn’t have. Day after day, the sight of him in the same place and in the same clothes and giving her the same greeting each morning showed that, for them, nothing had changed. Nothing had happened.

  “I didn’t get one!” she yelled at him.

  “You look fine the way you are,” he said, as if they were just picking up a conversation where they’d left off. As if the only time that counted for him were the ones they spent together, talking.

  Walking quickly past him, she said, “Thanks, Sam.” Red knew he hated to be called by his English name. “Not Sam,” he would insist, “Somboun,” pronouncing the tones of the vowels the way Lao people would, refusing to make it easy. But he took what she said as if she was teasing and he smiled widely. To know someone’s dislikes was to be close to them.

  “Hey, Dang?” Somboun called after her, trying to hold her attention and to keep up with her as she entered the plant.

  “What is it?” Red said irritably, hoping not to encourage him further.

  “Did you hear about Khet? It was cancer. Started a few months after her nose job. Might have something to do with the material they put in there.” Somboun was always coming up with reasons as to why a nose job was a bad idea. “Just something to think about,” he said, grinning as if the cancer was a blessing in disguise, opening up an opportunity for him to talk with Red.

  She walked faster and he soon fell behind.

  It was time to break for lunch. They only got twenty minutes. Enough time to use the washroom and gobble down some food. Red often used the time to be alone. The smell of raw chicken flesh and loosened guts and all that killing and packaging sometimes made her forget she was alive and living in the world too. She was on her way out of the line when she saw Tommy come by and tap the shoulder of one of the girls who worked for him. This was something he often did. That girl was the one selected for that day. Red made her way outside. A short time later, Tommy and the girl came out and walked to his car, where all of it took place. Red wondered what that felt like, to be seen, to feel the mouth of someone who wanted you. It didn’t matter if what Tommy did wasn’t for forever. He did it and you got to be something to him for a little while.

  Just as they were getting into the car, Tommy’s wife pulled into the parking lot.

  She didn’t even bother to park properly.

  Nicole wore a white fur coat, her blond curls bounced fresh from the salon. She had bright red lipstick on and rouged cheeks. She looked so glamorous and beautiful.

  She was yelling at him about something. Furious.

  Then Nicole grabbed Tommy by the arm. He pulled his arm back and shoved her away. She didn’t fall. She clung to a sleeve, her white heels dragging in the snow. What she wanted didn’t matter to Tommy. He shut the door and drove away with the girl in the car. The bottom of Nicole’s white fur coat was dirty with mud. If Red had not seen the whole thing, she might have thought the mud was shit. Might have asked how the shit got all over her like that.

  From where Red stood, she could tell Nicole’s eyes were smeared with mascara, and her quivering lips looked a clownish red now. Women like Nicole are who the romantic movies were made for. They are always the star of their own lives and they always got their man in the end. But beauty, for all it could get you and all that fussing it took to get it, seemed so awful a burden to have to carry and maintain. There was so much to lose. In that moment, Red felt grateful for what she was to others—ugly. It’s one thing to be ugly and not know it. It’s another to know.

  That public declaration of love in front of family and friends like Nicole and Tommy had—Red knew it wasn’t something that would ever happen for her. It didn’t matter what Tommy did outside of that promise. It had been made, and he would always come back to it sooner or later.

  The only love Red knew was that simple, uncomplicated, lonely love one feels for oneself in the quiet moments of the day. It was there, steady and solid in the laughter and talk of the television and with her in the grocery aisles on the weekends. It was there every night, in the dark, spectacular and sprawling in the quiet. And it all belonged to her.

  Nicole spotted Red and ran to her. She grabbed Red and held her like they were the closest of friends, and buried her pointy nose in Red’s neck. She could feel the poke. Nicole probably would have grabbed on to anyone standing there. Probably. They stood there together in each other’s arms. It was the first time someone had ever been that close to Red, had touched her. Both women cried, but for different reasons.

  Slingshot

  I was seventy when I met Richard. He was thirty-two. He told me he was a young man, and I didn’t say anything about that because I really didn’t know what that was, to be a young man, if that was a good thing to be or a bad one. He had moved in next door to us, me and Rose, my granddaughter, in January. She was hardly home that summer. She had gotten together with a new guy and was mostly at his place across town.

  Richard had parties every Saturday. At first, it was just the housewarming, and then it was other things. His apartment door was always open, people coming in and out at all hours. Sometimes there were just kids over there, little ones, playing with Christmas lights, shaping them into small sculptures, leaving a mess of wire and bulbs on the floor. Other times it was middle-aged people crawling through some tent maze built out of cardboard boxes. He even had a party where people brought over their bikes, and we took a tour of the city. I did not have a bike, so he let me ride with him. I sat on the bar in front of the seat and he pedalled. He told us stories, personal ones, abo
ut his time living here. He’d been in the city for a few years. On the bike tour, he told us about a woman he’d loved once. He showed us where they ate and skipped out on a bill, the places they kissed. There was something about the way he told this story. The city became his. Later, when I walked by that building, that corner, his stories were there. His gloomy voice played in my head like an old record.

  “There’s no such thing as love. It’s a construct,” Richard told me one day when I went over to his apartment. I had gotten a package of his in my mailbox. “You know anyone who is in love?”

  I thought of Rose, who always said she was in love whenever she met a new guy and then would wait by the phone all day, crying. Then I thought of my friends and my own experience. We had all known love, but it happened a long time ago. It was not something we sat around wondering about. It happened, and when it’s happened, there is no need to think too hard about it.

  I said, “Maybe you haven’t had enough time to know a range of people.”

  He told me he knew a lot of people. Thousands was the number he gave me. I wanted to tell him we were talking about different things, but I wasn’t sure he’d understand. A few minutes passed between us, and then he said, “People say that they’re in love all the time, but they’re not. I don’t believe them. They think they should say it because it’s what you say. Doesn’t mean they really know what it is.”

  I looked around his apartment. There wasn’t much in it. A couple of chairs, a couch he’d dragged back from someone’s front lawn, a table, and a little anatomy man. The anatomy man had plastic bits inside. I reached inside him and took out a small brown thing the size of a pencil eraser. I didn’t know what it was and put it back.

  Richard liked to talk about the women he had slept with. There were two he brought up a lot. The first was his ex-roommate, the one he told us about on the bike tour. The second was a woman named Eve. She lived in New York now but came back once in a while to visit. He said he wasn’t in love with her, that they were just best friends. They had, for seven years, been a couple, but now they weren’t. The chemistry wasn’t there anymore. When she didn’t answer his emails or phone calls, he would google her.

  I asked him, “Do you think maybe you’re still in love with her?” He said no—to be in love, you should want to have sex with that person, and he didn’t want that with her. He asked me if I’d had sex with anyone lately. I took my time to answer. I could tell he had no use for anyone who didn’t have sex. I tried to remember the last time. I hadn’t been with anyone but my husband. He died thirty years ago. A heart attack. Sudden. Thirty years is a lifetime for some people. As far as I was concerned, I hadn’t had sex for such a long time that I could consider myself a virgin again. I couldn’t remember how it all happens.

  Richard knew how. He was always talking about the sex he’d had. With hundreds of women, he told me.

  “It’s easy. You just ask. And you never know. If someone tells me no, I don’t get worked up about it. I mean, they said no. What’s more clear than that? There are always others who want to. It’s sometimes just fun to do it. Doesn’t have to mean anything.” Richard was not a beauty, but he acted like one. He said, “I’m not bad-looking. Anyway, looks don’t have anything to do with it. Sometimes good-looking people don’t do anything in bed. They just lie there. You want someone who has imagination, who is excited. It’s the best feeling ever.”

  Richard had one of his parties. This party was different from the others. There wasn’t any food, and it began later in the evening. There was a green glass bottle on the floor in the middle of the room. All his furniture had been cleared away and piled on one side of the room. For all his talk, I had never seen him with a woman before. I knew what the bottle was for.

  I looked around the room, at the twenty-five or so people gathered, to see if there was anyone I hoped it would land on. There wasn’t, but I still wanted to play. When I spun the bottle, it landed on a beautiful blond woman. A lawyer. She was still in her business suit, with the jacket on. I kissed her on the forehead, like she was some child, and everyone laughed. Richard said, “Isn’t she sweet?” I hated that he said that. I didn’t want to be sweet. I was old and I knew it and I had been called a lot of things, but “sweet” really irritated me. I watched as those who were chosen by the bottle kissed each other. After a while, it got boring. The people at the party thought so too and started to file out. I don’t remember who else was playing, or who they kissed. I only wanted it to be Richard’s turn. And each time it was, he always spent a long time with that person, kissing. He kissed a man who had a heavy belly, and then a dancer, then several others. He kissed them all with the same tenderness.

  Richard told me, “You could go home, if you want. We’re just going to keep playing this game. It might get boring.” But I didn’t want to go home yet. It was the start of summer and I wanted something to happen to me.

  There were three of us now. The other woman was named Lorrie. She worked in an art gallery. Lorrie behaved like she was a girl—giggling, chewing a few strands of her long hair, blushing. When Richard spun the green bottle this time, it landed on me. He laughed and said, “You don’t have to. You can say no.” But I didn’t want to say no. He was sitting crossed-legged on the floor, and I leaned over. He chewed spearmint gum. When we stopped, she was gone.

  He said, “It’s three in the morning. You should go home.” He said it like a good friend who was looking out for me. I got the sense too that Richard didn’t like me being there at that time, alone with him. As though he was afraid of what an old woman wanted. “I don’t want to,” I said. I don’t know why I said it. Maybe just to see what he would do. He was a man, and I was bored.

  His bedroom was clean and quiet. I said, “Can you take off your clothes? I want to see.” It surprised me, how he listened. He didn’t say it was a bad idea. He stood there naked, and he was beautiful, the way women are. He had hair on his chest and legs. I hadn’t seen hair on a chest for a long time and so I reached out to touch it. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. It was so easy. He sat down on the bed and I sat on top of him. He didn’t go in deep but held me there. I was supposed to lower myself. But I didn’t. I could go as far as I wanted. The morning light came in, and he said, “We have to stop.” I didn’t want to. I liked looking at Richard’s face when he held me there. He looked scared, or like he was about to cry. Then he lifted me off him and turned around so I couldn’t see his face. He said, “You have to go. I want to fuck you.” And that’s why I didn’t want to go. Because he wanted that.

  After that night, I didn’t see Richard for a few weeks. He had his parties and people came and went. I heard their talk through the walls, and the women too. I wanted to know what it would feel like to have a sound like that in my mouth. But it was only ever the women I heard. He was silent, breathing quietly, probably.

  I asked him why he never made any noises, not even a grunt. “I’m concentrating,” he said. He always talked that way. Easily. He told me what it felt like, for him, for a man, and what it was like having sex with a woman. I had never known that. He told me things I wished my mother could have told me. I wanted to know how he talked to a woman, how he got them to come home to his apartment, how he undressed them, how he knew where to put himself, if it was the same each time. He always asked them, Can I do this? Is this all right? You’re okay with this? The way he described it to me, it was like I had done it too, like I had also been inside them, just like him, as a man. There was no metaphor, no seed and soil and growing flowers. Just the facts.

  After Rose left for the weekend, I knocked on Richard’s door. I tried the doorknob and went in.

  I could hear the shower going, and when he came out, he said, “You hungry?” Just like that. As if he’d expected me all along. He was a good cook. I watched him bringing out plates, the pan, opening the cupboards, the fridge. I liked that he wasn’t mad at me for what happened last time, when we had gotten so close. “Why would I be?” he said. “D
on’t have sex with men who get mad about things like that.” He smiled at me and said, “I liked that nothing really happened. We were close. That’s the best part. To be that close. And to let nothing happen.”

  Soon after, we were sitting on the edge of his bed. I sat on top and I had Richard between my legs. I kissed him. It started off really slow and gentle. And then I kissed harder. Then he pulled his mouth away from mine. His mouth was open, and he was breathing heavily. His head tilted back when I leaned forward. We were so close, breathing into each other’s mouths. Then I lowered myself onto him and said, before I pushed further, “Do you want me to pull out?” I meant stop, but he knew what I meant and why I didn’t say that. He laughed and said, “No, no. God, no.” His lips were red, his cheeks pink. “Tell me you love me,” I said. “Even if it’s not true. Say it.” And he did. I wanted to feel what it was like to have someone inside me again, and so I pushed him into me.

  It was the end of August, and Richard didn’t have his parties as often. We were spending more time together alone. He’d call me on the phone and ask whether I wanted to come over. I knew what he wanted me over for, and I wanted that too. I went over whenever he called. Sometimes we spent the whole day together, not talking at all. We didn’t have much to say, doing what we did. What I liked about the sex we had was how slow it was, and how long we could go, how he waited for my body to respond. When we began it was usually dark outside, and then we stopped when there was light. He told me, “You should get a boyfriend. I can’t be your boyfriend.” But I didn’t want a boyfriend, whatever that was these days. I wanted what I had. I didn’t say anything. I just watched him put on his clothes. Then he turned to me and asked if I wanted to go with him to see his friend, Eve, the next day. She was in town, and she wanted him to meet her new boyfriend. He said he didn’t want to go alone.