“Blood Makes a Bad Dye” by Samantha Xiao Cody
In the sweltering summer of my fourteenth year, my ma drove Quinnie and me to ballet camp every morning while Quinnie’s parents got divorced. Quinnie was a redheaded sixteen-year-old, a girl I’d known since we were children but had never really known. I hardly spoke in ballet class, or anywhere else. Each morning, I rose at six to dress before Quinnie came. The sun was already above the trees, and I awoke sweating. Ma didn’t like to use the air conditioning at night. We didn’t grow up with air conditioning in China, she said. We slept outside sometimes on rocks to stay cool, she said, which sounded like something she’d made up just to see if I’d believe it. Ma hadn’t bought me new underwear in years—she never mentioned bodies, breasts, hair, periods—so each morning I ripped off one of the fraying pairs I’d worn since the sixth grade, and pulled on my tights and leotard, before the sun had fully risen, before Quinnie could come and be cruel.
By the time Quinnie came to our door with her pink ballet bag, Ma had breakfast ready. She tried to make what she thought a real American teenager would want, frozen waffles and bagels and glasses of milk, but always got something wrong, forgetting the cream cheese or syrup, and I could see Quinnie noting every mistake. Quinnie would enter with her sweetest smile and say hi, Mrs. Chen, and sit at the little dining table waiting to be served. Ma would say in Chinese things that I should convey to Quinnie, even though Ma spoke English just fine—there’s more milk in the fridge, there’s peaches in the fruit bowl—things I never relayed, because I could not think of anything less cool. Once we were eating, Ma would retreat, smiling proudly at us. She was so trusting, so unsuspectingly excited to see me talking at the table with another girl.
A boy in my class wants to do me, Quinnie said, tearing off shreds of dry waffle. Ma was just a few feet away, but Quinnie talked loudly, her full mouth making sticky bready sounds. Quinnie was pretty. Her red hair was thick and wavy and she had green eyes, and very light eyebrows that made her look perpetually surprised. In ballet class, she looked at herself very intently in the wall mirrors. It was almost embarrassing to witness. I wasn’t surprised boys wanted to do her.
Ma was a fourth grade math teacher and had the summer off, which was why she had time to shuttle us around. Quinnie stayed at our house until her mom came to get her, straight from the lawyer’s office where she worked. Quinnie’s mom and my ma occasionally ran into each other at the store, and Quinnie’s mom must have seen Ma as responsible, with her neat little grocery list written in Chinese and her cart full of vegetables. Besides, we lived closer than the other girls at camp, who had nice mansions over by the National Park.
Did Ma’s students like her? Did they think her accent was too strong, her clothes too outdated, that she was boring? I never asked her anything about work. When we talked it was about things that didn’t concern her. News stories or celebrity gossip or myths about ghosts or demons. Occasionally, Ma told stories from Hunan. These felt so distant and strange, I wondered if she had invented them. Ma was good at telling stories, and so was I. It was a talent we shared. I told her stories about school and ballet, about accidentally walking into the boys’ bathroom, falling during a pirouette, cowering under a table during a food fight, embellishing and exaggerating until her face folded into a delighted smile.
The first afternoon Quinnie came over after ballet camp, I didn’t know what to do with her. Our house was lacking in entertainment, and my room was too intimate and childish, full of pictures I’d drawn in kindergarten. Instead, I brought her to the basement. It was cooler there, but our dusty television didn’t have cable and the fabric pattern of the old wicker couch had faded away. Bug carcasses littered the windowsills. Quinnie pulled a Nerf gun out of the crate of old toys, pointed it at me, and pulled the trigger. I brought my hands to my chest, staggered backwards, and said, you got me.
Fuck yeah, I did, Quinnie said, dropping the gun back into the crate with a loud plastic clatter. Fuck yeah, I did. Later that summer, I would whisper this again and again to myself in the mirror. We both sat on the floor right where we were standing—I felt unable to remember any social niceties, unable to move my body easily through space. Quinnie pointed to my legs. I’d changed out of ballet tights into shorts. You don’t shave? she said, her voice innocent. I looked down at my legs. They were prickling with thin lines of black hair.
I usually do, I lied. Just forgot.
You should start doing it, she said. It’ll make you way hotter.
Shaving was one of the many things Ma hadn’t told me about. Totally, I said to Quinnie, folding my legs beneath me. I’ve just been lazy. No one to impress, I tried to joke.
I’d learned about deodorant in a similarly embarrassing way, when a ballet classmate told me, in a kind whisper, that there was a way to stop the sweating and the smell, actually. When I’d first gotten my period, a month ago, leaking brown stains on my ballet tights, I’d left them piled on the bedroom floor conspicuously so Ma would see. Like an animal leaving marks to communicate with other animals. Ma had come into the room and stared at the stained tights, her eyes wide, and said, oh, as if she’d never seen blood before. The next day there were pads under the bathroom sink.
Quinnie shrugged. Up to you, I guess. You know what’s sick? she said. Since my parents are getting divorced, they can’t keep track of their alcohol stash. I can get drunk whenever I want.
That’s cool, I said.
You drink? Quinnie asked.
Not really, I said.
Why am I not surprised? Quinnie laughed. God, I can’t wait to be an adult, she said. Suddenly, she rolled over and stretched out on the carpet. Her red hair spread beneath her head. The hem of her purple t-shirt pulled away from her denim shorts, revealing a gleaming white strip of skin. It felt like something I wasn’t meant to see. She looked perfect—vivid and disheveled—like a character from a movie.
After Quinnie left, Ma said: Quinnie has the hair of a fox.
Then she told me again our favorite fox demon stories, about the foxes who wore painted skins to look like women and captivated foolish men. Sometimes the foxes won, eating the men’s hearts and escaping with their freedom, but most of the time the people won, despite being foolish. They found some Taoist monk who had some trick, and the foxes would fall for the trick and die. Whenever Ma told these stories, she said that the foxes and the men “laid in bed together.” There was a secret in this sentence, the secret of sex, that Ma was unwilling or unable to discuss.
I can see the fox in Quinnie, Ma said.
Ma and I were both more docile, muted creatures. My father had left before I was born, and there had never been other men. Ma didn’t tell any stories about my father. She didn’t talk about him at all. I couldn’t imagine Ma having sex, not just because she was my mother, but because of the ordinariness of all her actions, the way even tying her shoelaces or turning the stove on politely encouraged people to look away.
In the news, there was talk of a young female celebrity whose nude photos had been leaked online. It had sparked a lot of talk about digital security, but also whether it was the female celebrity’s fault.
What do you think about it? I asked Ma, as she tended to her garden. She pulled a weed with her gloved hand and pushed her black hair, limp with sweat, out of her face. The cicadas droned. Would Ma reference the foxes again?
Oh, it’s bad, Ma said, shaking her head. It will be bad for that woman.
That’s all she said. She reached for another weed.
At ballet camp, Quinnie mostly ignored me. We went through a schedule from eight in the morning until three—stretching to barre, to jazz, to modern, to pointe. Every now and then there were fun classes, like pantomiming. Out the large studio windows were the crowds outside the movie theater, the skateboarders, the children running through the fountain. The windows fogged at the edges with our sweat. Quinnie stretched with the rich girls in the back corner of the studio, Stephanie and Lis and the others. They were pretty and slender and white and wore nice clothes. Why was it that rich girls were always so pretty? Maybe Quinnie wanted them to think she was rich, too. But I knew her house looked like ours: squat, old but not in a beautiful way; perfectly ordinary.
I was having a hard time with ballet. When I was younger, the teachers had smiled and said that I was “promising.” I was cast in good roles. But recently, the teachers were smiling less. I was too tense. You’re holding back, they said. You need to let go. I couldn’t move like Quinnie—with the sure knowledge that people wanted to watch.
I felt guilty. I knew that ballet was expensive, but Ma always said that she’d rather spend money on something that made me happy than things like houses and cars. We drove the same old Toyota Corolla that we’d had since I was a child; Ma never bought new clothes for herself. Our house was full of aging furniture, scratched cabinets, coupons. But was ballet making me happy? How to talk to Ma about things like money, or happiness?
After the last class of the day, we all went into the dressing room to change. The dressing room was the most frightening part of ballet camp—a square room with a mirror and a scratchy, carpeted floor that smelled perpetually of feet, too small, such that we bumped into each other as we peeled off our leotards. Our uniforms already left us so exposed, the thin fabric stretched over our bare skin, showing every mole and crease. We weren’t supposed to wear underwear, because the teachers said the bands interrupted the vertical lines of our bodies.
The other girls asked each other their most private questions in the dressing room: how were they meant to feel when a boy stuck his fingers up inside them? Were their boobs big or small? If they masturbated. If this or that had ever happened on their periods. If they knew how to give a blowjob. Of course, they also talked about the celebrity with the leaked photos.
Quinnie seemed to hold all the answers. She quickly became the center of the dressing room, the other girls curling towards her, squirming and giggling.
When you breathe the smoke in, she said, hold it in your lungs until it hurts, then breathe it out. If you drink before you have sex, it feels better. You hold it in your hand, like this, not too soft, and you start slow, up and down…
What about you? asked the nice girl who’d told me about deodorant, looking at me. Have you done it?
Don’t bother asking her, Quinnie said, smiling sweetly at me. She hasn’t done anything. She’s completely naive.
When Ma picked us up, I would sit in the back with Quinnie and worry about making Ma feel like a chauffeur, but she would just smile and ask us how ballet went. Quinnie would look at me with her invisible eyebrows raised, as if daring me to tell Ma the things uttered in the dressing room.
It was good, I always said, nothing more. I looked away from Quinnie out the window, at the familiar route. The churches along the parkway half-hidden by trees, the warehouses behind the military hospital, the fire station, the little grocery store with the old-timey sign. Masturbation, hand jobs, weed. These were stories I would not tell Ma. Her eyes would go wide and she’d just go, oh.
On Friday afternoon of the second week, Quinnie’s mom didn’t come. Thirty minutes passed, an hour. Ma had already started preparing dinner. Quinnie, who could usually talk forever about boys or music or movies, became oddly quiet and went to sit by the window.
Tell her she can stay for dinner, Ma said to me. I told Quinnie.
No, she’s just a mess, she’ll be here any minute, Quinnie said.
I couldn’t imagine talking about my mother like that—not out loud. Ma sliced garlic and glanced at me; I pretended to read my book; Quinnie stared out the window. I couldn’t see her face, only the wild tumble of her red hair, outlined with golden light. Finally Ma put down her knife.
Let me drive you home, she said to Quinnie. It was the first time Ma had spoken to Quinnie directly, beyond a hello or goodbye. Quinnie looked at her for a moment, and then said, okay.
As she gathered her things, she looked out the window, as if expecting to see her mother pull up in front of the house at the last second.
When I’m an adult, she said, I’m never having kids. Why would you have kids if you don’t even want them? She slid her right foot in and out of her flip flop. Well, at least I’ll have the house all to myself, she said. I can get drunk.
Ma smiled in response. Ready? she said.
In the third week of ballet camp, we started flamenco class. Thrillingly, we had to obtain new things for it—a flamenco skirt, flamenco shoes, and a pair of castanets. We were taught by a beautiful Spanish woman who wore her hair slicked into a low, severe bun. Ma said she would make me a skirt. She took me to the fabric store and we selected a blood-red cotton embroidered with large, orange flowers. The house filled with the mechanical chugging of her machine.
As she sewed, she told me a new story, about a young woman who had lived in her childhood apartment building. The woman had a sweetheart in the same building, a boy she’d grown up with. One day, the sweetheart became engaged to another young woman from a wealthier family. They would be moving to America together.
A week later, all of his family’s chickens went missing, Ma said. Usually the chickens were so loud, waking everyone up, but that morning, we woke to silence. We all wondered what felt so different.
Some people said perhaps foxes had eaten the chickens, but there were none of the usual signs of violence—blood, feathers. It was as if the chickens had simply vanished. Then, on the first day of summer, the young woman emerged wearing a deep red dress. No one could look away from her beauty, from the rare and incredible color.
But as the week went on, Ma said, we noticed that the red was fading. The dress became ugly and blotchy.
They never proved it, but everyone was sure that the young woman had killed all of the chickens in revenge, and had dyed the fabric with their blood.
They never proved it, but everyone was sure that the young woman had killed all of the chickens in revenge, and had dyed the fabric with their blood.
Blood makes a bad dye, Ma said to me, sewing away. It may be beautiful at first, but it breaks down.
When I changed into my blood-red flamenco skirt before class, I realized that everyone else had purchased the exact same black spandex skirt from the dance supply store. Where did you get that skirt? Quinnie said, staring.
My mom made it for me, I said. Quinnie’s face folded shut.
She couldn’t just buy one for you? She sounded almost angry. You should’ve gotten one that’s like, professional.
We learned to stamp our heels in rhythms on the floor, and swirled our hands in the mirror until our forearms ached. Quinnie swished the skirt around her calves, measuring her small waist approvingly in the mirror with her eyes. I loved the way I looked in my skirt, too: the way I became a burning red sun when I spun. I was good at flamenco. I could see Quinnie thought so as well, the way her eyes narrowed at me in the mirror.
Our teacher told us to get into pairs. I turned to Quinnie, my only friend, but she slipped her arm into that of the girl next to her. One of the rich girls, Lis. Sorry, she said, still smiling, shrugging. Black skirts only.
I had to pair up with our teacher, whose smell was animal and comforting. She beamed at me approvingly. I hated Lis, and I hated my red skirt.
Why didn’t you just buy me a skirt? I asked Ma at home.
Is there something wrong with yours? she said.
It’s too short, I lied.
I can extend it, Ma said. Just give it to me, I’ll do it now.
Why can’t we just do things like everyone else? I said. Why does it always have to be different?
Ma was still smiling at me, her brow furrowed in confusion. Different how? Something in me ached. Never mind, I said. Forget it. Please forget it.
One afternoon later that week, Quinnie said she was bored of sitting around. Let’s take the bus downtown and look at boys, she said. I left that part out when I asked Ma if we could go. Men played a limited role in the stories Ma told me. Even if they were critical to the story, like in the one about the blood-dyed dress, they were never allowed into the foreground. When I’d first started kindergarten, meeting other children with two parents, I’d asked her about my father.
He isn’t important, Ma had said. We had been in the car, waiting at an intersection. Me in the backseat, looking at her dark hair. We don’t need him. It will always just be us.
Ma gave me a bag of change for the bus fare. We walked down the street to the stop. It was humid and the air seemed to waver. The coins jangled. The bus stop was beside a large street, an exposed swath of concrete at the intersection. I felt painfully visible. A truck pulled up next to us with two men inside. Reddened skin and sunglasses. Their windows were down and rock was playing on the radio. They were looking at us through the dark blankness of their sunglasses. Quinnie shifted under their gaze, a plant turning to the sun. Does the carpet match the drapes? one guy called out.
Quinnie shifted again. She didn’t answer.
Hey, konichiwa, the guy said, pointing his dark lenses towards me.
Fuck off, shithead, Quinnie said suddenly, her voice loud and surprising. Cunt, the guy yelled as the truck pulled away. Quinnie grabbed my hand and began walking back up the hill to my house, pulling me. She held my hand too tightly, crunching the bones together in a way that was both painful and comforting. After a while she seemed to realize she was still holding my hand, and she dropped it.
In the fourth week of ballet camp, I sat on the couch downstairs and Quinnie sat next to me. This was unusual. We usually maintained a careful distance. I had a bowl of slick, yellow mango slices balanced on my knees. I could see all of her freckles. She kept sighing.
Boys are so complicated, she said. She wanted me to engage, press her for details, but I wanted her to pay attention to me for once.
You know, I said, in my mom’s hometown, there was a woman who slaughtered all of her ex-boyfriend’s chickens because he got married to another woman.
I wanted to tell Quinnie a story that would impress her. Something she hadn’t heard of before. None of my own stories would suffice, so I borrowed Ma’s. Quinnie may have known sex and drugs and boys, but she didn’t know Hunan.
Whoa, Quinnie said.
Yeah, I said. She stole them away, slashed all of their throats. Blood and feathers everywhere. And then, she took a dress, and soaked the dress in the blood of the dead chickens. She wore that red dress for everyone to see.
Ma hadn’t said anything about blood or feathers or slashed throats or whether it was ever proven what the woman did, but who was to say that didn’t really happen? And how would Quinnie know the difference?
That’s crazy, Quinnie said. Where’s your mom from again? China? China sounds crazy. Yeah, it’s wild, I said, even though I didn’t know. I’d never been to Hunan. Tell me about the boys you like, she said.
Jessie in eighth grade, with beautiful sketches of fish in his notebook; Kane from history class, who laughed too generously at the teacher’s bad jokes. I had admired them with a lukewarm tenderness, an occasional daydream about holding hands, but nothing wild, nothing that had consumed me. I don’t like any, I said.
Any? she said. That’s crazy. I feel like I always have a crush on someone. I want all of them. Any man walking by, and I just want him to want me, you know? I want him to look at me and think I’m sexy. Even the assholes and the ugly ones and the old ones. Like those guys in that truck. Before they started talking, I wanted them to keep looking at me. Is that fucked up?
I shrugged. I just don’t feel that, I said.
Some of my dad’s friends used to look at me when they came over for dinner, Quinnie said. They liked hugging me, picking me up, kissing me on the cheek, you know. Afterwards, my mom and dad used to fight about it. Dad always said Mom was making it up, being crazy. But it’s true, they looked at me and because of them, she said, her voice becoming quiet and defiant, I knew I was beautiful.
I said nothing, looking down at the mango.
Have you had your sexual awakening yet? Quinnie said. Maybe that’s the issue.
My what? I said.
Have you ever even kissed someone?
I slid my finger around the rim of the bowl of mangoes. I didn’t have it in me to lie.
Oh my god, you haven’t, Quinnie said. Asians are always such goody two-shoes. Well, there’s the problem. You can’t know what you want if you’ve never had it.
For some reason, my heart was pounding. My fingers were sticky and I wanted to lick them clean.
I’ll tell you what, Quinnie said. I could feel the heat of her body now. I’ll give you some practice. As a friend.
And then she was leaning forward, her hair tickling my knee, and she was kissing me. I was thinking about the stickiness of my fingers and what would happen if I lifted them to her sweet, shampoo-smelling hair, and how her mouth felt like the mango, but I couldn’t tell if it was my mouth that tasted of mango or hers, and was it supposed to feel this way if she was a girl? Then she pulled away, and she was taking a piece of mango and complaining about pointe class as if nothing had happened, nothing at all.
We went upstairs when Quinnie’s mom rang the doorbell.
In the final week of ballet camp, one of the rich girls, Stephanie, invited us to a sleepover. A week and three days had passed since the Kiss, and Quinnie still acted like nothing had happened. I could tell that she enjoyed playing this game, sometimes reaching across me to grab something, her hair swinging across my face so that I smelled her shampoo and sweat, or pressing her leg against mine in the car. She was watching to see how I would react. I made sure to remain perfectly calm. In the dressing room, Stephanie told us that we should bring our cutest bra and underwear to the sleepover, and when Quinnie left my house, I frantically considered my options.
My best pair of underwear, which was from the sixth grade, had a pattern of Valentine candy hearts that said things like “be mine” and unraveling elastic that sliced into my flesh. Ma still hadn’t gotten me a real bra. I dug through her drawers and stole one. It was dusty pink and so old that the lace was curling and pilling, the underwire lancing through the worn fabric. I stuffed it into my bag.
Ma drove us to the sleepover. I never got invited to sleepovers, and I could tell she was proud. She was wearing her best dress and nice clogs she wore only a few times a year. So trusting. She had no idea who this Stephanie was, who any of these girls were. They could be satanists, or cult followers.
Stephanie’s house was an imposing white rectangle, with many windows and a long, circular driveway. My ten classmates sat at a massive wooden table in the kitchen, talking and drinking sodas. Quinnie slid immediately into the conversation, and I sat beside her. Stephanie brought out a pile of pink t-shirts. We were going to decorate them and print nicknames across our chests. Apparently this was what one did at a sleepover. Immediately, everyone was consulting each other on what their nickname should be. It was clear that each of my classmates was defined by a set of stories from our many years of ballet: boobs popping out of leotards, flirting with boys, accidentally spitting water onto our teachers, being hungover during class. Some of the stories were things I’d witnessed; some I’d never heard before. Everyone agreed that Quinnie’s nickname should be “queen of the sluts.”
What should mine be? I said. My classmates turned to look at me. There was silence; a few girls glanced at one another. They smiled at me, in the way someone smiles at a lost child. Quinnie was bent over her own shirt. She would not help me.
I’ll figure it out, I said. I wanted it to pass—this painful moment, my understanding that no one knew me, that I played no role in any of their stories. My classmates looked relieved; the conversation resumed. Goody Two-Shoes, I stamped onto the fabric. What Quinnie had called me, right before the Kiss. Maybe someone would find it funny. Maybe Quinnie.
I wanted it to pass—this painful moment, my understanding that no one knew me, that I played no role in any of their stories.
When our shirts were done, we moved into Stephanie’s game room for the night. The room was cavernous, paneled with dark wood, with a huge, heavy pool table in the center.
Quinnie yelled that it was time to strip, and everyone obediently removed their clothes, revealing an array of colorful bras and underwear I’d seen in displays at the mall. I thought about the stolen bra in my bag, ratty and outdated, and suddenly I couldn’t bear to put it on. I was annoyed again at Ma, for being so out of touch. I kept my tank top on. There were a few minutes of exhibition and admiration. Quinnie was showing off a set she’d just gotten from PINK. I knew she often stole things from the mall, but she said it was a gift from her mom. Everyone told her she was sexy. God, she was so annoying. She’d probably kissed every girl here. Someone said my candy heart underwear was cute.
We played games like Never Have I Ever and Truth or Dare. Never Have I Ever was a pain, because I’d never done anything. Truth or Dare had everyone doing wild things and talking about boys. There was a lot of talk about fucking, though when we were asked if we’d had sex during Never Have I Ever, only Quinnie had lowered her finger, to much gasping and squealing. Like, several times, she said. It’s not a big deal at all.
My classmates dared one another to hump pillows, to make out with a pool ball, to give a lap dance to Stephanie. When each girl completed a dare, the others shrieked and whooped and cheered. I decided to risk a dare. I wanted to hear someone whooping and cheering for me. Someone told me to run a lap around the room topless. As I pulled off my tank top, I was thrilled and mortified. I tried to throw the top aside with casual confidence as I stood, as if I did this all the time. I was being invited to be one of them, to prove myself equally daring; but there was also the chance of my failure, of doing the most damning of things—trying too hard. Being too transparent in my desire to belong. As I ran, I was painfully aware of my exposed body; I felt almost guilty, even though I had been asked to do it, even though they’d all been doing the same kinds of things all night, as if I were forcing the image of my body upon the other girls. Especially Quinnie. Had Quinnie felt something in my kiss—the Kiss—something greedy, something wanting? Did she think I wanted her to look at me? Would she look at me, admire my new boldness? Or would she see right through me—see my pathetic effort, my pathetic desires? Would she be disgusted by what she saw?
When I turned the corner of the pool table, I realized no one was even paying attention; they had already moved on to the next girl. My dare had been a throwaway. They’d just wanted to get it over with. They were just including me to be nice, but I didn’t want people to be nice. I wanted them to cackle at my stories, to look at me the way they looked at Quinnie.
I couldn’t find my tank top. I resisted the urge to wrap my arms around my chest—somehow I knew Quinnie would notice if I did. It would be obvious how hard I was trying to be cool and uncaring and bold. A real goody two-shoes.
Did someone take her shirt? Quinnie crowed. That’s messed up! You know she’s shy! You really are so shy, Lis said to me. Like, you never talk.
Don’t be hard on her, she’s just a little different, Quinnie said, placing her hand on my shoulder with exaggerated affection. Her touch seemed to burn through my entire body. Tell them that story about your mom’s neighbor from her village or whatever, the village with all the chickens running around, that woman who murdered her ex-boyfriend or something? She comes from a different world, Quinnie said matter-of-factly to the other girls.
What? That sounds bizarre, Stephanie said, looking at me.
Here’s your shirt, one of the girls said, quietly. It was the girl who’d told me about deodorant.
She didn’t kill her boyfriend, I said. It was his chickens. And she didn’t live in a village. The story, the story that wasn’t mine, was out of my hands; I had carelessly thrown it out into the world, tried to trade it for the opportunity to be interesting, and now I couldn’t take it back. I’d cheapened it, I’d betrayed Ma, the woman with the dress, an entire country I hardly knew anything about. Quinnie didn’t hear me, or she pretended she didn’t.
It was midnight when people got bored of Truth or Dare and Quinnie suggested we play “America’s Next Top Model.” Stephanie and another girl were the judges and came up with challenges, like making outfits out of toilet paper and doing catwalks around the pool table and posing. Stephanie took photos of us with a small blue camera, and she and the other girl looked intently over the photos and eliminated someone each round. I was quickly eliminated. By two in the morning, we sat in piles of discarded toilet paper against the pool table and cheered for the remaining candidates. Then it was down to four girls. Quinnie was one of them. Stephanie and her co-judge were running out of challenge ideas, and people were getting tired. I know, Quinnie said, her eyes wicked. Let’s model sex poses in pairs.
Oh my god, Stephanie said.
And, Quinnie said, we have to do it completely naked.
The other girls screamed. I wondered if anyone else was afraid, if anyone else thought Quinnie was going too far. My only ally, deodorant girl, was fast asleep already. But I knew better than anyone how easy it was to follow Quinnie.
Quinnie and the other three remaining girls stepped out of their underwear, unhooked their bras. I’d seen all these girls naked before, but there was something different about how they were holding themselves, something intentional, as if they were playing a part. They didn’t feel as if their nakedness was an affront, a burden, an embarrassment to glance away from. They kicked their underwear aside indifferently, adopted languid postures—they acted like it was easy for them to put themselves on display.
Quinnie and Lis were a pair. Lis laid down on the floor and Quinnie straddled her, and Stephanie raised her camera. Quinnie and Lis stared into the lens, exaggeratedly serious. They moved into another pose. They were narrowing their eyes, parting their lips, curving their backs and necks, clutching one another close, adopting expressions and positions they’d seen somewhere else—on some adult woman, these poses that sent a signal shining forth into the world, that said come here, come to me, look at me, consume me. They were clumsily obscene, eager to get it right, to create the correct shapes, to look grown up, sexy. Quinnie’s red fox hair fell across Lis’s face. All the girls beside me were screaming. I put my shorts back on and left the room.
I sat at the long table in the dining room. I wanted to go home. It was all stupid, childish. I imagined Ma coming, opening the door to the game room, looking at the scene with her eyes wide, saying, oh. I fell asleep with my head on my arms and woke in the gray of early morning, my eyes and neck aching, my mouth sticky. I walked back to the game room. My classmates were strewn about, asleep around the pool table. Quinnie had put her underwear back on. The camera lay beside Stephanie.
I walked over and picked it up. I felt oddly calm, far calmer than when I’d been running around topless in front of everyone, calmer than I had ever been around Quinnie. I looked at their bodies in the photographs, pressed together into various shapes, their exaggerated expressions. Everything looked even flatter, even more artificial in these photographs, stamped into place. How stupid it was to take photographs! How terrible it would be if someone saw them, someone outside of this room. How much damage could be done. I looked closely at one photograph—Quinnie and Lis kneeling, facing one another in profile, nose to nose, looking one another in the eye. Their eyes were cold, almost mocking, as if even they couldn’t take themselves seriously. But they were beautiful, one couldn’t deny that. I powered the camera off and, creeping over the bodies of my classmates, slipped it into my bag.
Back at ballet camp, Stephanie told us she had bad news. The camera is gone, she said. The camera with all the pictures.
Everyone looked around at one another. No one laughed, or said anything. The air in the dressing room was hot and still and smelled like sweat. I widened my eyes in surprise, mirroring my classmates.
I kind of forgot about it at first. Then I was like, wait a minute, where is it? Then I was wondering if maybe my mom took it, Stephanie said, but no. She was looking down at her knees.
Then Quinnie jumped up. Who the fuck took it, she said, pointing her finger around the room. There were protests. No, someone here fucking took it, Quinnie said. Some creep. Which one of you did it? Spit it out.
No one said anything. Girls glanced at one another. Quinnie turned and looked at me. You, she said. Fucking freak. You’re obsessed with me. You did it.
What? someone said. Her?
Quinnie, you’re fucking crazy, someone else said. I said nothing. I breathed very slow. I looked straight at Quinnie, shrugged and shook my head.
Someone started to laugh, thinking it was some kind of joke. No one could imagine I would ever do such a thing. Goody two-shoes. The air loosened. Other girls started to smile. But Quinnie’s face didn’t change.
I bet it was Lis, someone said.
Lis’s face turned red. Shut up, she said. Quinnie was the one who was way too into it. Are you a lesbian, Quinnie?
More girls laughed. Quinnie looked around.
Fuck off, she said. It was a fucking game. She was silent again, staring at me. The laughter wilted. Quinnie stormed out of the room, slamming the door.
That day, when Ma drove us home, Quinnie didn’t look at me once. We stared out of our respective windows. The churches. The car shops. Fire station. Grocery store. I wondered if Ma could sense it, the anger in the car. When we got home, Ma pulled a bowl of papaya out of the fridge. She held the bowl forward, smiling, everything about her open, as it always was.
I hate that fruit, actually, Quinnie said, still smiling. Her eyes were a cruel, hard green. It smells. I don’t like any of those weird snacks.
She turned and walked to my room. This would be the first time she’d ever been inside. This was how Quinnie saw us. The freak with her freak mother. I was all wrong as an American teenager, I knew nothing, and I wanted the wrong things. I wanted to kiss Quinnie. All I was to Quinnie was another loser who wanted her. And maybe Quinnie thought it was all Ma’s fault I was like this, Ma’s strangeness, Ma’s ignorance, growing into me. I couldn’t even look at Ma. I took the bowl from her and followed Quinnie.
She was opening and closing all my drawers, banging them. I shut my door and stood against it, holding the bowl of papaya and watching. Quinnie threw things out of my dresser, ripped my covers off of my bed.
Where the fuck is it, she was saying again and again, through clenched teeth. I know you have it.
I don’t know what you’re talking about, I said.
In the humidity, her hair stuck to her neck. Her face was red and shining.
Fucking loser, she hissed at me. Just give it up, she said. I stayed very still. Finally she dropped to the floor and, to my surprise, she started to cry.
This can’t be happening, she said. No one can see those. My parents would fucking kill me. They found out about the drinking. My mom slapped me. They can’t know about this. And yeah, I’ve only had sex once and it sucked. So fucking what. God, where is the fucking camera?
I looked at her, trying to make my eyes soft, pitying. I let Quinnie cry on the floor and pushed cubes of papaya into my mouth. Juice slid down my face and I licked it away. I wondered if Ma could hear us. I imagined her serenely washing vegetables as Quinnie cried and yelled just down the hall.
When I thought of Quinnie being cruel to Ma, when I thought of all her small cruelties, I remembered the woman with the chicken blood dress. I imagined the thrill that woman must have felt, stepping out of her door in the red dress for the first time. I held a lot of power, having those photos. It was the first time I had any sort of power over Quinnie.
I finished the bowl of papaya while Quinnie stormed off to the bathroom and shut herself inside, not emerging until her mom came to get her. When I approached the door, I heard her crying quietly.
After Quinnie left, I went to stand with Ma in the kitchen as she chopped vegetables for dinner. Ma, I said, you know the celebrity who got her photos leaked?
Mm, Ma said, her knife rhythmic against the cutting board.
What would happen if that happened to me? I said. I expected Ma to keep cutting, to say something vague, like oh, that would be bad, the way she deflected everything. But Ma put down her knife and turned to me, her eyes urgent and serious.
What happened, she said. Tell me. We will figure it out.
I was startled by how different she seemed. I saw suddenly that she did know, what it meant to take such a photo and have it emerge into the world, what would have to be done about it; she knew everything behind such a scandal, the wants and motivations of adults and almost-adults, the machinations of sex and desire.
Oh no, I said quickly, shaking my head. I couldn’t look at her, at the intensity of knowledge in her eyes. I was thinking hypothetically, I said.
Ma picked up the knife and shrunk back into her usual presence. Don’t scare me, she said, especially when I have a knife. She turned back to the cutting board.
It would be later, in my young adult years, that I would learn that Ma was known as the great heartbreaker of her college class, that she had entranced and then rejected an important government official who had visited her town, that she had been the one to tell my father, a charming but unreliable gambler she’d only been with for a year, to get lost, that she was the one who bewitched men, then danced lightly from their snares. How lucky I am, she would say to me—he gave me you, then he let me go free.
I feel so sorry for Quinnie, she said, brushing the chopped scallions into the pan, where they sizzled in the oil. The sharp smell of the scallions filled the air. She said Quinnie’s name as she always did, long and stretched: queeeenie.
I went downstairs and pulled the camera out from under the couch cushion. I looked at the pictures of Quinnie and Lis, their playacting, so innocent in its obscenity. There was a clear effortfulness to their performance that made me feel something I’d never before associated with Quinnie: I pitied her, she was like me—a child, nervous and uncertain. I tried to imagine myself into their bodies, tried to imagine want and desire, but instead, as I stared at their glare-reddened eyes, things peeled away, every myth I’d made about Quinnie, every man and woman I’d imagined her with, peeling away until only she remained, crying on the floor of my room. I slid the camera back under the cushion.
Every now and then, I would take it out and look through the photos again, wondering what I was looking for; sex, innocence. I did this until the camera ran out of battery. I thought again about the woman whose sweetheart had abandoned her. I imagined her wearing the chicken blood dress out into the courtyard for the first time, a red jewel, feeling the stares of her many neighbors, as focused and burning as the Hunan summer sun. I imagined her leaning over the balcony railing, knowing everyone would notice; I imagined her pride and the thrill of danger and revenge, the swish of the fabric against her skin, the secret knowledge of its origins. I wondered if she’d known then, on that first day in her bloody dress, that in time the red would fade, that soon it would all become ugly and unremarkable.
