Quiet As They Come. Angie Chau
we had thirty more cents we could have had two cheese slices. If we hadn’t taken the bus, we could have gotten one cheese and one pepperoni.
I smash my hair back into place. I borrow Frank’s comb. I fluff up my shirt to air it out and tie it in a knot above my belly button. I pinch my cheeks to make them have rosy apples like I’ve seen mom do. Finally, I take a deep breath before I approach.
I hear the man yell, “Shit! God, damn-it!” before I’ve reached the counter. Then he says, “Are ya gonna stand there all day or are ya gonna order?”
The coins are all sweaty inside my fist. I can smell the tinny stink of it. I nod.
“All right, then what’ll it be?”
I point to the pepperoni behind the glass.
“How many?”
I hold up a finger.
“One? How ‘bout your friends there?”
I shake my head no from side to side.
He says, “Not much of a talker huh?”
I’m holding my breath and then I say quick as I can, “Two please, if we can owe you.”
He’s looking at the TV. I bite my bottom lip and wait. It is only a commercial but he watches closely because there are two pretty women at the beach in red, white, and blue bikinis. Together they smile and say, “This Bud’s for you.” The game comes back on. He puts a pepperoni slice on a paper plate. “There ya go, one-fifty,” he says. He sits back down with his eyes still glued to the screen.
I put the exact change on the counter beside the register. I wonder if the man didn’t hear me or if he was too embarrassed to say no. My shirt looks stupid and I yank it back down.
Sammie runs up and says, “Where’s my slice?”
Sophia says, “That’s mine.”
“Shut-up,” I say.
I leave so the man won’t be even more embarrassed for us. I pick the booth as far away from him as possible. We gather in the darkest corner of the room. It’s as if we’ve fallen in a well.
“But where’s mine?” says Sophia. Her bottom lip sticks out in a pout.
I give her the first bite so she won’t cry. We pass the slice around. Each one takes a bite and then watches as the next person takes their bite. We watch each other like tigers, or rats, or Viet Cong spies. We say to each other, “Don’t eat it all,” or “We’re skipping you next time,” or “Oink! Oink!”
The seven of us are bent over the one slice. Our elbows are on the table. There are five pieces of pepperoni so we divide them in half to make ten. There are three halves left and those go to the youngest. Our parents always tell us older siblings take care of younger siblings so Frank and I, and Dean and Marcel have to hold out. I see the spit bubble on the corners of Frank’s mouth. We are pigs at the trough, another secret to hide.
When we are done we stare at the white paper plate with the wet grease spots. Marcel picks up the paper plate and licks at the yellow-orange trickles of oil. He then puts the plate smack to his face and tries to suck out every last bit of it. We all understand that want. Not one of us makes fun of him for it, for cherishing that extra bit. We watch silently. It’s the first time we’ve been quiet all day.
We are perfectly still, so still that we are surprised when the man finds us and stands over our table. He has a big grin on his face but he says, “Hey kids, you know you’re not supposed to be here if you’re not eating or playing games.” In the dimness, his teeth look bright white. It reminds me of Little Red Riding Hood and the wolf before he eats the little girl. Then the man shrugs his shoulders and says, “Sorry guys, store policy.”
We pick up our towels and the orange arm floats and the sunglasses that Frank almost forgets. We’re scooting out when the man says, “Hey stop, what do you think you’re doing?”
I say, “You told us to leave, so we’re going!” After I say it I suck my lips into my mouth and look around at the others hoping he didn’t notice it was me.
He tells me, “I never told you to leave. I said you’re not supposed to be here.”
I’m sure the man’s just messing with us now. Frank’s eyes are wet. They shine big and then he juts his chin out at me. I swallow the lump in my throat and say, “Well, we don’t like it here anyway.”
The man says, “Hold on to your horses!”
Frank’s eyes widen and he says, “Come on, we better go.”
But the tears have gushed out and once I start I can’t stop. And I hear myself saying something about Buddha and America and how we don’t want to be Japanese Baptists, and how we’re going to do good in school and get good grades so we can “Go back to Vietnam.”
The man shakes his head in disappointment. He says, “You want to go back to where? What-cha-ma-call-it? Now what kind of thing is that to say on the Fourth of July? What da ya mean you don’t like it here? When you’re living in the home of the Giants, huh? Would you get food like this anywhere else?” His smile reaches his ears. From behind his back, he sweeps out a big disk glistening with grease and cheese and pepperoni. He says, “How about you guys help me celebrate our whooping Padre butt today, huh?”
All the kids cheer and slide back in the booth. The man pulls up a chair and he sits in it backwards at the head of the table. Everyone is happy to claim their own slice but I’m too ashamed to eat. I put my head on the table and bury my face in my arms until the man taps my shoulder and puts a slice on my napkin. He says close to my ear, “Some day some lucky guy will tell you how cute you are when you get mad.” He winks at me. “Come on now, eat up ya little firecracker.”
We sit in a darkened booth on the Fourth of July. We eat pizza and listen to baseball. The man tells us how close the game was. He describes the last play. The way Chili Davis hit a double, and Max Venable stole second, and Jeff Ransom slid into home. He says how the stadium roared and everyone jumped out of their seats and the coach was so happy he cried. He says, “That can happen to you. Sometimes you’re so happy that you cry.” He says it straight at me. He loves baseball so much he makes it sound like a big amusement park, and calls it the Big Show with things like cracker jacks, and circus catches, goose eggs, and curtain calls. And even though we don’t get to see fireworks that night because our parents are too tired to take us out, in my sleep, I see balls like comets blazing across the night sky, and stars like lollipops shooting pop flies.
THE PUSSYCATS
It sounded like a purely capitalistic concept when her six-year-old explained it. “You bring something special into class and tell everyone about it.” In Vietnam, this was called bragging. In America, it was called Show and Tell. They had arrived in this country only six months ago and already her daughter was begging for things, and of all things, Sophia wanted a cat. The best Kim could offer was a movie called The Pussycats. It would be Sophia’s first ever outing to a movie theater and Kim hoped movie magic would cure her daughter’s meowing.
Although the movie outing was indulgent, she wanted to make it up to Sophia for missing their promised Fourth of July play date. Kim’s schedule consisted of ESL class in the mornings, Miss Marty’s beauty school in the afternoons, and weekend work at a beauty salon to earn extra cash. This was her first entire weekend off in two months.
She held Sophia’s hand as they walked at a brisk pace to the discounted matinee. The sun was out, her heart raced, and Kim felt alive, as if anything was possible on a day like this. When they passed a phone booth she thought, why not call him, poor guy’s probably home alone. Kim hopped in and dialed but the longer the rings grew, the more nervous she got. Every succeeding ring became shriller than the one before. The blank spaces in between them were dark pockets to spin inside and cause to hold her breath.
She was unprepared for her foolishness.