Fox Girl (25 page)

“Why?” Sookie said. She had found a strip of cloth which she began to wind around her breasts. “You afraid of the competition? You afraid I'll take all the GIs?” She grinned at me, adding: “You never did like to share.”

I turned away, tapping on the baby's back. I knew she was teasing me, but I was still irritated by her comments. “You don't know how lucky you are. You don't know what I'm giving you. You don't know what you want.”

“I know what
you
want.” Sookie looked pointedly at the baby. “What is she worth to you?”

“Is that all she is to you? Money?” To hide the fierceness of reaction, I buried my face in the underside of the baby's neck, inhaling the sweaty milk smell. “What are you going to name her?” I murmured.

“Nothing,” Sookie said as she tucked the cloth around her chest. She looked down at the lumpy wrapping and shook her head. “What a waste,” she sighed. “I'll have to get them pumped up again.”

Myu Myun.
Nothing name. Holding her small body close to my mouth, I whispered, “Myu Myu.” My little no name.

Sookie wiggled into a tube top that left her belly hanging over her orange patent-leather hot pants. When she realized that the tube top's stretchy material outlined the chest binding, she screamed in frustration. “Name it whatever you want. It doesn't matter to me.” She rolled the band of material down her body and kicked it off her legs. “I'm getting out of this zoo,” she muttered. She slipped on a loose blouse, shimmying so that the sleeves draped off her shoulders.

“If it's money you want,” I said, still thinking we were working out a deal, “I can pay you now.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” Sookie dropped to her knees, rummaging under a pair of jeans and several tank tops for her makeup kit. “Just give me what you think she's worth.”

“I'll give you what I've made so far,” I started. “So you don't have to leave tonight.”

Sookie held up her hand. “You don't get it. I can't stay cooped up with that crying, puking brat any longer. I won't.” Eyes narrowed on me, she plucked a tube of lipstick from her bag, smeared the frosted bronze across her mouth. She smacked her lips, then asked: “Remember when Lobetto called this place the Monkey House?”

When I nodded, rolling my eyes, she said, “He was wrong.” Pulling a stained tissue from the bag, she pressed a kiss on it, then tossed me the rubbish. “It's worse.”

One morning after working the club, I returned to Lobetto's house to find Myu Myu alone in the tent. Tangled in the blankets, she wimpered and kicked listlessly. “Myu Myu,” I crooned, but she refused to look at me.

I picked her up, and as I cradled her, I was hit with the stench of feces. Greenish diarrhea oozed from her diaper onto my blouse. “Sookie!” I yelled. “Lobetto!”

Responding at last to my voice, my touch, Myu Myu wailed, high pitched and angry.

“Poor baby, poor baby.” I tried to soothe her, but anger choked the kindness from my words. Peeling the soiled cloth from Myu's bottom, I dumped it on Lobetto's mattress, then grabbed his blanket to wrap her squirming body.

“Sons of bitches!” I yelled as I stomped through the kitchen, jiggling Myu on my shoulder. I bumped her so hard, the breath left her body, leaving the air suddenly still. After a moment, she screamed again.

I looked in the ice chest for a cup of milk, then through the cabinets for some of the powder mix I had bought on the black market. Not finding anything, I grabbed a fistful of cold rice from a bowl left over from last night's meal. I shoved the rice into my mouth, grinding the pellets into a soupy mush which I spit out for Myu Myu.

I placed a pinch into the red wound of her mouth, where it sat in the middle of a scream. Taking a breath, she quieted for a taste and then pushed the gruel out with her tongue. It dribbled down her chin, but at least she stopped crying. I fed her, rice and spit on my fingertip, until the bowl was empty.

Leaving my finger in her mouth for her to gum and suck, I unbuttoned and wiggled out of my top. I dropped the blanket, wadded up the blouse to find a clean patch to wipe at Myu's bottom. Some of the shit had dried to a crust. Afraid to scrub hard because I could see a bouquet of raw sores blooming under the mess, I held Myu Myu under the hose.

She started screaming again, the water cold enough to tinge her body with splotches of blue, but I washed her quickly and wrapped her in the blanket. Propping her against my shoulder, I walked her through the house, in part to soothe her again, in part to convince myself that no one else was there. I rehearsed in my head how I would yell at Sookie when she returned, how I would beat her for leaving a baby alone. I would twist her ears with my words until she felt the pain Myu must have felt.

When Myu Myu's body settled heavily against my shoulder, weighted in sleep, I laid her down on the mat in front of the television. Curling up around her, I watched her sleep, her head nestled near my heart. When she stirred, I shifted my nipple in front of her mouth. She latched on, soothed by the feel of meat against her tongue.

I must have fallen asleep, because I woke to the television. Sookie was clipping her toenails, laughing at a game show host challenging a contestant to perform a pop song. Lobetto's mother was cracking sunflower seeds and spitting the shells into a pile by my head. I could hear Lobetto chuckling behind me. When I sat up, I felt a few stray splinters of sunflower shells drop from my hair. I almost forgot why I felt angry, but when I reached for the baby and she wasn't there, I remembered.

I swiveled around, searching for Myu and glaring at everyone.

“So, the princesss awakens,” Lobetto's mother sniggered, a small zebra-striped seed caught between her front teeth.

I ignored her and looked at Lobetto. He had Myu Myu propped on his knees. “Where were you?” I growled.

“Working, where else?” Lobetto asked. He blew against Myu's belly and she laughed.

I took a breath, trying not to yell. “I came back, and the baby was alone.”

“Oh yeah?” Lobetto shrugged and blew against Myu's toes. She gurgled, waving her foot in the air. He put her toes in his mouth and she squealed, eyes shining.

“I don't think she's pretty.” Lobetto's mother stopped cracking sunflowers and pointed at the TV screen. “That one there,” she said. “The one with the fat face.”

“Could you guys shut up?” Sookie whined. “I can't hear what the girl is saying.” She shook a bottle of pink polish.

“What about you?” I yelled at Sookie. “You're supposed to take care of her when I work.”

“Who?” Sookie asked, her attention caught between the TV and her toes.

“We had a deal.” I gritted my teeth. When she didn't say anything, I added: “The baby.”

“I think someone should clean her up,” Lobetto said, holding Myu up. “She stinks.”

I grabbed her, more roughly than I meant to and she wailed. “No one except me loves you,” I scolded Myu Myu as she reached for Lobetto. “That one will kill you if I don't watch out for you.”

“What?” Lobetto frowned. “Why would you say a thing like that?”

I slapped Myu Myu's hands down. “I said: Don't love him. Don't get used to him,” I told her. “He doesn't want you.”

“Good advice,” Lobetto's mother said without looking away from the television. “His father was good with him, too. Said he wanted lots of babies. But in the end, it didn't matter; he left us.”

“Quiet,” Sookie complained, turning up the volume. “I missed why everyone is laughing.”

I marched in front of the TV.

Lobetto's mother threw a handful of seeds at me.

“Hey!” Sookie shouted.

“We had a deal,” I said to her.

“Me?” Sookie jerked her arm and polish splashed across the floor mat. “Shit!” she said as she tried to blot the color with the palm of her free hand.

“A deal. About the baby,” I insisted.

“I don't think so,” Sookie said, wiping her hand on her shirt and staining what I recognized as her old school uniform. “You told me what you wanted but that's not what I wanted.”

“You wanted money,” I argued, “and I told you—”

Sookie twisted the nail polish closed and tossed it down with a bitter laugh. “Yeah, you told me,” she taunted, standing up. “You're always telling me something. But you know what? I don't have to do everything you say. You're not class leader anymore.”

I stared at Sookie and I shifted Myu Myu to the other hip. Myu Myu twisted, beginning to whimper as she strained toward Lobetto. “You're joking,” I said to Sookie. “I'm giving you a chance to take it easy.”

“She wants me,” Lobetto said. He took Myu Myu back from me and, pushing at the pile of damp sunflower shells with his foot, moved to sit closer to the television. “The baby is not even a year, and she is already like all other women.”

“Stay away from her!” I yelled at him without taking my eyes off Sookie.

“Oh great,” Lobetto's mother grumbled. “Now I can't hear or see.”

“You're giving me a chance to ‘take it easy'?” Sookie said. “Let me tell you something for a change, Hyun Jin: You cannot pay me enough to stay home with that whining trash-baby. I'm bored, and I'm tired of waiting for your scraps. I'm missing my chance out there. You can't make me stay in this dump, you can't keep me down any longer.”

“Keep you down?” I laughed in her face. “I hold you up. Without me you'd drown.”

“That's what you think, isn't it?” Sookie stomped her foot, smudging the polish against the insides of her toes. “That's what you've always thought—that you're so much better than me, so much smarter. Well, Hyun Jin, take another look.” She crossed her arms over her chest and scowled at me. “Maybe you don't want me working with you because the GIs think I'm pretty—to them, I'm not an ugly dog. But you, you're ugly to everyone.”

“I may be ugly, but you're stupid,” I snarled over Myu's head. “Didn't you learn anything from Duk Hee? What you look like doesn't matter in America Town; you can make those Joes see what you want them to see.”

“She only said that to make you feel better.” Sookie tossed her hair, flounced through the kitchen, and ducked under the flaps of the tent.

My hands itched to yank that burned mop from her scalp, but I forced them down. Instead I yelled back, “You still look like a black dog to me.” I sank to the floor, tired from the night before and from Sookie's words.

“You know, she may be ugly,” Lobetto's mother said—and for a moment I thought she was talking about Sookie instead of the game show contestant—“but that fat moon-face girl sure can sing.”

 

That night I took the baby to work. Kitchen Auntie grumbled: “I'm not running an orphanage. I'm only supposed to cook.”

I slipped her a handfull of bills. “Please, for your trouble.”

“Bar Mama's not gonna like this,” she said, but she tucked the money into her shoe.

“Myu won't be any trouble,” I told her, lugging an egg crate toward the countertop. I unstrapped the blanket from my waist and swung the baby into the box. She stared at me with unblinking eyes, stunned from the sudden drop.

Kitchen Auntie clucked. “Of course she will be trouble. All babies are trouble.” She picked Myu Myu up, wrestled her onto her own back, and warpped the blanket around them both. “But my own mama worked with me tied to her, and her mama did the same with her. I did it with my own children, and I can do it for this one.”

“Thank you,” I murmured.

Kitchen Auntie groaned, hunching her back as if it ached with baby weight. “But only for a little while,” she warned. “I'm not young anymore.”

“Of course not. I understand,” I sighed. “I'll cut you ten percent of my honeymoon tips tonight.”

“Twenty percent, each night you bring her in,” Kitchen Auntie negotiated. “For when I retire.”

“Okay,” I nodded slowly, calculating the numbers in my head, dividing the money between Bar Mama, Kitchen Auntie, Lobetto, Myu, and myself.

That first night, I had to stop myself from running into the kitchen every few minutes. Even though I worked extra hard—laughing with the GIs, dancing, keeping my hands and mouth busy so that they continued ordering rounds of drinks—I kept imagining Myu Myu crying. I pictured her abandoned in that decrepit egg crate, soiled and fretful as she had been when I found her alone in Lobetto's apartment. I saw her burning herself on the stove, or getting bitten by a rat. But when the bar closed and I rushed to collect her, I found her sleeping, nested in the crate, fist curled around a boiled chicken bone. Kitchen Mama, who had stayed past her shift, lay slumped against the crate snoring, one arm flung across Myu Myu, guarding her even in their dreams.