Issue 34

(after Ocean Vuong, Daniel Liu, and Patricia Lockwood)

,I tilt my head back against the sound. There’s a line I read in a poem that I often repeat to myself now: the most beautiful part of your body is where it is heading. I hold it like water, as if once I squeeze too hard, it will break. Back in rural Texas, behind a front porch in the middle of the Bible Belt, is a house; its rickety foundation with watered-down wood soft enough to bend, its daffodils perched by the windowsill withering in the sun’s stubborn cradle, curling into their bodies like rollie pollies; it is only early February, the month when the weather has an attitude that won’t go away, temper scaring away birdsong. I try to live largely, try to live like a wildly brilliant animal, yet so much for my efforts, because here we all are, stuck on an enormous flatland between two bodies of saltwater, trying out each day of the new year before deciding which one to die on. You are no better than me. I am no better than Claire from across the street. I entered this world with my sadness, I’ll take it with me when I leave. On our living days, we are realtors in our own homes, showing our bodies around space and time before picking some punctum to wallow in; I’ll never admit any of my flaws to my doctor, when he asks how much sleep do you average per night?, I tell him eight hours, which is excluding the time when I sit by my bedside, knees dangling from the edge, blue seeping into my joints, running lines from Ocean Vuong’s book over and over again in my mouth so my tongue can sandpaper the words into perfection and spit them out in syllables again when I need it. I’ll let you guess how long that takes. In Texas, I imagine nothing is happy. They call you fat or gawky or pretty and roll it up like a joint stuffed with insult, well, I figured I’d light it with burning eyes and smoke it, then leave at the first crack of eighteen. The future is parading itself in front of me, a red carpet, and now I am in my twenties, washing after a party I can barely remember just to feel clean. I scrubbed and scrubbed just to see how hollow I was inside, opening flesh to inspect my bones of sadness and calcium, reminding myself of my mother’s words, we are what we eat, thinking that I must have drank too much milk when I was younger. It is the first time I feel close to death, seen enough of a sliver of him to feel afraid; mother says anything can cause death if you are not careful; cover your drinks, cover your eyes, girls, live on to try out every day of the year before choosing your death date. The air here is so thin and sharp and keeps you in exquisite pain. There are flowers by the windowsill (old habits die hard) that open their red throats like tiger lilies ready to speak. Beneath the queer retreat of silken sound, the distant cacophony of doors slamming, liquor hangs in the air and my roommate has written up another list of boys she’d like to kiss, her downpour smile sharp, legs curled up against her body like an apologetica. She asked me why I was looking so blue, I told her I had written out an elegy for her. She doesn’t know what this is about (but finds it funny), and I don’t either: I can say confusion is the best quality we have, so hold on to it when you wake by the darker side of the pool shivering in the summer ode of petrichor and pondering the first time you realized you were alive, your knees giving out beneath your butterfly form when you walk because you don’t watch where you’re heading, tripping into the chlorine water before you’ve decided on a date to die, and all you hear is a murky vodka-soaked cry above from some nearby partygoer on land, you are still too young to try death on like a drug, body in the shape of a child falling off a first bike with rusting handlebars, so you pop your head above the water, the taste of hair plastered in your mouth. Remember all the kissing, all the young death flashing through your head like it’s your last day alive and the animators are frantically filling up the screentime of your life. I’ve taken you forward to where I ended up, let me take you back, back to biting off pieces of laughter like mint chewing gum, back to when we took the form of bodies that were none the wiser. I’m putting it all away: homecoming, the snuffing of a last cigarette, mourning. I think so greatly, so far ahead, beyond the starlings above, high and fevered, that nothing matters, not even the fact that I still don’t belong here—the rest is a dream.

 

 

Michelle Li has been recognized by Scholastic Art and Writing, The Waltham Forest Poetry Contest, published or forthcoming in Blue Marble, Masque and Spectacle, and Lumina Journal among others. She is an alumnus of the 92Y Young Writer’s Workshop and will be attending the Kenyon Review Workshop; you can find her on the board of the Incandescent Review, Pen and Quill magazine, and the Malu Zine. She’ll read practically anything, the more absurd and emotional the work, the better, and plays both violin and piano. She has an unhealthy obsession with Rachmaninoff, morally grey characters, and Sylvia Plath.

 

 

 

It is in my nature to absorb identities. Since I was thirteen, I have played many different roles; hoarding and collecting them like my brother’s stamp collection. It started with my mother. Stately and elegant wherever she went, I felt like a caterpillar trudging behind a Rajah Brooke’s birdwing. I adopted her walk, first, then her mannerisms. As I grew older, I looked to my sister, who was some ten years older, and copied her, until I stole my next identity.

The first ipseity I outwardly stole was in the eighth grade. On the first day of class, I was seated next to Kimberly. There were two other Kimberly’s at my school, but neither were as renowned as the du jour Kimberly, and so they faded into a listless obscurity for the rest of their middle-and-high-school careers. My Kimberly possessed the three traits guaranteed for high school success in America:

1. She was athletic,
2. She had perfect grades, and—
3. She was white

Kimberly was a trifecta, a beautiful statue erected in the image of suburbia, and I wanted to be just like her. I wanted her body, toned from track and cheer; I wanted her straight A’s, her ability to speak up in class and say what she meant without ums and ahs; I wanted her fair skin, her blonde hair, her white teeth, her blue eyes. I even wanted to be white, though I never told Mother or my sister this.

During introductions that first day, she asked me what my name was.

I did not share with her my home name, Ehuang, which means ‘beautiful.’ “Evelyn,” I said.

“Are you Evelyn Smith? You might be in my homeroom!”

“Oh,” I deflated, realizing I was not who she wanted. “No. I’m Evelyn Guo.”

“Oh,” she echoed. We said nothing more, and I felt the silence between us in my bones.

As the days went on, I found myself wanting to be reeled into her circle. While we followed our teacher’s demonstration of quiet country scenes on 4 by 4 canvasses, I would ask her questions, prodding her to speak to me, as if we were friends, not merely two people forced to sit next to one another in a class we would forget in ten year’s time.

“Math is so hard,” I would say, dabbing my brush into our shared paint tray, “what math class are you in?”

“Advanced,” she’d answer, with a roll of her eyes. “I hate it. I’m so bad at it!” I paid attention to the way she held her brush and mimicked it.

“I bet you aren’t. You’re super smart.”
She smiled, and I returned it.

As days turned into months, I fell into deep study—the subject being Kimberly. I learned to speak valley girl and nearly fried my hair every morning straightening it. I begged Mother for new clothes. She said no, said I had perfectly fine clothes already.

Said my sister never asked for new clothes—so why am I unhappy?

When Kimberly told me she shoplifted a tube of mascara, I shoved t-shirts from the mall down my sweaters. When Kimberly told me she’d started a new diet, I asked her what she ate, and at dinner subbed out bowls of rice for lettuce.

On the last day of eighth grade, I walked into art class a near identical copy of Kimberly, a hand-painted reproduction of the real thing. Kimberly complemented my outfit, and as we parted ways, she gave me her home phone number.

She never returned my call—and yet, for the rest of summer, I remained a Kimberly clone.

The next identity I stole was in junior year. I was watching T.V when a singer appeared on screen. Her name was Hannah Montana.

My traditional mother did not appreciate the gaudily dressed, white American singers on television; she called them whores, but in her own way. I watched Hannah in secret, focusing on her footwork, the way she held the mic.

At that time, we were the same age, and I saw in Hannah what I wanted to be next. She was a pop star, a global entity which loomed in the hearts and minds of everyone under the age of twenty.

She wore what she wanted: wide studded leather belts over glittery tops, thick heeled black boots. Sometimes, a frilly tiered skirt, or a long sleeveless tank. Mother did not allow me to bare any skin below the collar bone, so I cut off the arms of my favorite shirts in secret, wearing them underneath hoodies so she wouldn’t know.

I began waking up earlier to get ready for school, hiding what I would wear under baggy jeans and the thick sweaters bought from Macy’s, which I despised. I’d ask to be dropped off at the side entrance, and from there would run to the nearest bathroom to transform.

I took sharpie to my eyes for liner, and used a jar of Vaseline from Mother’s medicine cabinet and beetroot powder from the pantry to make lip-gloss. In the bathroom stall, I slipped out of my jeans and pulled my hoodie over my head, stuffing them both into my bag. I couldn’t change the color of my inky black hair, but I could style it, and often pinned it back with bobby pins.

For a time, this plan worked wonders; in choir, I would sing out, overpowering the other sopranos in the room, and during lunch I would tell fabricated stories of my fascinating home life. I no longer went by Evelyn; my new name was Eva. It was a nice name; short, more modern sounding than Evelyn, easier to pronounce than Ehuang, and most importantly, white.

I told everyone my uncle was an important businessman in China; to my white classmates, this was exotic, but still distant enough from myself that they could treat me as an equal. I then told them that both my parents and myself were born in Quebec and therefore Canadian; that I had been to China and performed there; that I had a boyfriend in Canada, who was also a musician.

“What’s his name, Eva?” Someone once asked. It might have been one of the other Kimberly’s, but I can’t recall anymore.

“Jason,” I said, thinking that sounded believable. “His last name is French, though.”

“Really? What is it?”

I panicked. “Blanc,” I said, accenting the c. “He’s from Quebec, too.”

“Jason Blanc,” remarked the girl-who-might’ve-been-Kimberly, “that’s such a cute name. Do you have a picture?”

I told her I didn’t.

“It’s long distance,” I’d said, “I met him on vacation, when my family went back a few years ago.”

“It’s amazing you two are still together.” “Yes,” I’d replied distantly, “it is.”

Since then, I have taken up many personas; once I was an artist, after I watched my friend Brian sketching out a still life; then I was a bookish girl with blue light glasses, discussing novels I’d never read to impress those around me in college. At one point, I was advertising myself as a DJ, going clubbing despite hating the sound of the bass thumping under my heels.

I have become everyone and anyone, modeling myself after acquaintances, friends, colleagues, people I see on television, voices heard on the radio. But I have never been able to escape my mother, my elegant, stately mother, who wears our culture with pride, or my sister, the model immigrants’ daughter.

When I look in the mirror, I see many faces, fractured, none whole. I see many lives lived, but none of them my own. Who am I looking at on any given day? Who is the woman standing before me, who wears these clothes, this haircut, this makeup?

I will never escape myself. If I could, I have tried. I do not want to be Evelyn, no, never Evelyn.

I do not want to be Eva—she died long ago.

Once, long ago, there was Ehuang, little girl, beautiful, who wore her culture with pride, too. I crushed her long ago, in favor of who Evelyn could become.

But if I could be anyone in this given moment, I would choose to be her.

 

 

Claudia Parker Joel is a young writer from Ohio. She has received honors from the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, and is currently working on her debut novel.