Kim Fu - For Today I Am a Boy

“Yes.”

“Can I help?” I didn’t know what to do at a party. I knew how to peel apples.

She took so long to reply that I searched her face. She was older than I had thought from her high-pitched voice, her singsong yes that had seemed teenage in its disdain. Deep lines followed the shape of her mouth down to the loose skin of her neck. Her hair was bleached white and cut short, flat to her head, her bangs slicing a severe diagonal across her face.

“Absolutely,” she said finally. “Take an apple.”

I went through all the drawers until I found another usable peeler in the mishmash of tools and rust. I kept coming across utensils mangled beyond recognition. The kitchen had a hanging, charred smell — burned popcorn, dirty stove elements, the ruined bottoms of pots and pans.

We stood peeling in silence. Press of the peeler on my thumb, smooth run of green skin. “I’m Peter,” I said, feeling like I had to say something.

She put down her half-naked apple and faced me, slamming her hand on the cabinet behind my head, all in one swift motion. I realized she was taller than me. The details of her face flooded my field of vision. Her eyebrows were plucked into straight lines that slanted down toward her nose with no arch, and she had light crow’s-feet, like dough imprinted by a fork. Flecked granite eyes. I could feel her breath as her nostrils flared.

“God, you’re pretty,” she said.

I jolted. The thing twitched. I felt like she had said a word that only I knew, that I had made up. Her eyes flicked down, staring at my mouth. I looked at hers. Thin lips coated in a dark plum. Pretty!

Someone entered the kitchen, singing to himself. It was the man who had greeted me at the door, his tie now undone and hanging over his neck, one end in each hand. He walked to the syncopated rhythm of his song, his left and right steps distinct from each other. “Hey, Margie! Hey, Bonnie’s brother. How goes the salad?” He didn’t seem to find anything unusual about the position we were in.

Margie relaxed, picked up her apple and peeler again. “Hi, Dave. Still working on the dressing.”

I went back to my apple as well. I pressed down hard to stop the shaking.

The door greeter patted his naked belly in an exaggerated way. “Well, hurry up. Lots of hungry people out there!” He lumbered back into the living room.

We finished our apples. She handed hers to me and told me to mince them both, then started pouring juice and oil into a blender.

“What are we making?” I asked, rooting through the cupboards for a cutting board.

She started the blender and talked loudly over the noise. “Salad. Nuts and dried berries and spinach. That’s all Dave eats.”

“Do you live here?”

“No. Dave does.” She stuck her hands in an open bag of pistachios on the counter. “He’s my son.”

“Oh.” She glanced sideways at me. I hadn’t meant to sound so surprised. “Why does he call you Margie, then?”

She shrugged. One of the pistachios opened with a gunshot crack. “What do you call your mother?”

“Mother.”

“Why? Why not Mom?”

“I don’t know. It sounds wrong.”

“Well, the only thing that sounds right to Dave is Margie.” Another crack. I was looking at her hands while I chopped, watching her thumbs ripping open the shells, breaking their backs. I felt a sting and dropped the knife on the cutting board.

“Oh shit,” I said. I had glanced my knuckles with the knife, shearing off a thin layer of skin. My eyes welled up.

Margie grabbed a paper towel and wrapped it around my hand. It was hardly bleeding, but it stung. “Are you crying? Oh Lord. You pathetic little girl.” She pulled me violently into her arms. I clutched my cut hand with my good hand behind her back. She pushed the back of my head to mash my face into the crook of her neck. “There, there, pretty darling,” she said.

I wanted overwhelmingly for her to kiss me. I had been looking for Chef everywhere. His gruff masculinity and crude hands. How had I found him in a woman in her fifties, wearing silk trousers and dark lipstick, whose neck smelled like the spray of fake roses?

Bonnie told me later, when it was too late, to stay away from Margie. That she was insane, cruel, bigoted, twisted. “And old, ” Bonnie added at the end, as though that were the worst part, the part that she found the most bewildering.

Margie had brought most of the alcohol at the party, perhaps two dozen bottles, and everyone toasted her with glasses filled with her wine. The salad was unpopular. I took a big bowl when it became clear no one else was interested and sat munching on it slowly in a corner. I sat on the floor. Many people did.

Margie came and sat beside me, folding her legs carefully. She held a bottle of wine in one hand and two glasses, crossed at the stems, in the other. “I notice you’re not drinking,” she said, pouring.

“Not much of a drinker,” I said.

“That’s rather rude,” she said, “considering my generosity.”

“It must have been very expensive,” I agreed.

“Money doesn’t mean much to me,” she said. She handed me the glass. “Are you looking at my bracelet?”

I hadn’t been. It was a diamond tennis bracelet, whiter than white. “Very nice,” I said.

“Try it on,” she said. She unsnapped the clasp and then yanked my arm straight. She slid on the bracelet. It was cold. Her skin hadn’t warmed it.

We both admired how it looked on my thin wrist. The bold piece of jewelry went well with the arm I had waxed clean with a drugstore kit. Margie stared me up and down, her top teeth exposed in a sneer. Blunted, penetrating. Women did not look at men this way. Grown men looked at young girls this way, sometimes, men who could take and possess from a distance.

I went to unclasp the bracelet and Margie reached to stop me. “Keep it,” she said. I smiled unsteadily at her, feigning protest. But I wanted the bracelet.

“I’ve always wanted a little China boy,” she said. “I’ve never had one before.”

I opened my mouth, trying to find a sentence, something I had been taught to say. The stranger offers you candy and you say no. The anthem begins and you rise from your seat. The fire alarm rings and you file quietly with the others outside. Someone calls you little China boy and you rage, you lecture, you gook, you chink, you traitor. I wanted the way she looked at me, into me, pushed inside of me. I wanted the bracelet. I said nothing. I drank.

Bonnie said she’d looked for me when the party was thinning, and Dave told her I had left with Margie. I remembered getting into the cab and out of it, not the ride in between. I remembered sitting at the foot of Margie’s bed, swaying, my spine softened to a reed by alcohol. I watched her take off all her clothes. I had lived my life in children’s beds. Her sturdy, king-size bed felt palatial.

Still completely dressed, I rested my head against her belly as she stood in front of me. I kissed her navel — a round, surprised mouth — with a joking smack, the way you’d kiss a baby’s stomach. My navel was an indented line, as though I had been stabbed in the stomach with a boning knife. Bonnie has an outie, I thought, the tied end of a balloon. Even my thoughts slurred, sloshing left and right through my mind.

The idea that I was supposed to pleasure Margie hadn’t really taken root. I squeezed one of her breasts experimentally. It didn’t feel the way I had expected it to — I was surprised that the skin gave so much, that it changed shape in my hand. I thought breasts would be harder and more resilient, with just the suggestion of softness underneath, like a tomato. I pushed one to the side and watched it spring back.