Help the Shoots Grow, Pull Them
BY PLOI PIRAPOKIN
Fay Ku, As The Crow Flies, graphite on translucent drawing film, glue, and paper, 2020. Courtesy of the artist.
HELP THE SHOOTS GROW,
PULL THEM
PLOI PIRAPOKIN / OCT 2021 / ISSUE 10
Part II of IV
1994.
Outside Monsieur Beaufort’s office, Lily pulled me in for a tight hug. “Baz must’ve told him something else.”
“Maybe his story will change now that she’s back.”
“I don’t trust any of them.” Her eyes glinted. “Frogs don’t have to deal with their consequences. Their parents bring them over here for some rich, fancy job, holding rich, fancy passports, and they can leave back to their icy continent anytime. But our parents? Us? Where can we go?”
Sprout had been fooling around with Baz in the gangways behind the Sevens’ stadium earlier that day. Together, they fumbled—Baz thumbing for Sprout’s buttons, Sprout draping her arms around his swan-like neck—their limbs intertwined like the top of a mille-feuille, a cream and chocolate drizzle. They kept their trysts a secret, though Lily and I didn’t know why. Baz’s friends, equally elven, curly haired, and long nosed, always caught them fondling in club balconies, in enclosed stairwells on the way down from pool halls, and in the back of humid minibuses. His friends perched themselves on the railings, shaking their legs, hissing, Why Sprout? Why her? When Baz could play with any number of elven girls, like them.
Our administrators, teachers, and other non-Frog friends kept emphasizing that this was a colorblind zone, but we weren’t treated the same. Baz and his friends sauntered through the hallways with their shirts untucked; no teacher would reprimand them. They’d dawdle outside of the classrooms with Beaufort, rallying about how George Weah dribbled past four players in the last two seconds—the game ended too late to finish their homework, d’accord? They scored lower than us in every exam, yet Lily and I would get chastised for not participating in afterschool activities, “Don’t you want to go to university? They want well-rounded applicants, not only your brains!”
Baz never crossed my mind until Sprout had flopped over the chairs one lunch last year, “He told me I have really smooth hair, the smoothest he’s seen.”
“Is that all it takes to make you see stars?” I rolled my eyes.
Lily clasped Sprout’s shoulders and exulted, “You do have Pantene commercial hair.”
Baz’s attention on Sprout lowered our fight or flight response, even if we doubted his sticky tongue. We weren’t meant to fraternize with Frogs. Although we inhabited the same classrooms, we were forced to work together in group presentations, and pressured by our teachers to help translate lunch orders for them. Boys like us—tanned, coarse-haired, and lith-limbed, would sneer: Vapid chickens. Bananas. They’d taint us if a Frog showed interest: Not Asian enough. They’d establish themselves at the top of a pecking order if we returned a shy smile or a wink to a young Frog, and demand: “Combien?”
Lily would goad: “How much is your mother?”
Since kindergarten, our parents drilled in us the reason we were here. “You’ll get a chance to continue your studies abroad,” my father would say.
While I believed we were privileged for the opportunity, I knew the lycee couldn’t exist without us. “It’d be nice to hear a compliment or two sometimes, about how lucky they are to have us,” I once said.
My parents chalked it up to having oppositional values and despite being thrown in the same nest, the incubation periods differed between Frogs and non-Frogs.
From Beaufort’s office, Lily and I marched to the field steps where the Frogs clustered. Baz stood in the middle, surrounded by dirty blonde heads, bobbing along to a staticky beat booming from portable speakers.
Lily elbowed her way in. “T’es foutu. Hear me?” She grabbed Baz by the collar with both hands, snapping with speed and rage. His friends gasped. I counted ten to two, hoping we shocked them enough to stay put.
“I told him the truth, I swear on my mother.” Baz’s eyes flickered at Lily, then at me. Red splotches surfaced on his neck. “I left with Sprout that night to take her home. She wanted to find a more private place before her bus stop. We found a construction site and broke into the front seat of a crane, you know, before workers came running to—"
“Did you tell Beaufort you left her?”
“No, I lost her. Sprout split off in another direction.”
Another Frog named Andre put his hand on my shoulder. “Vas y calme toi.”
Lily softened her grip on Baz. “You never looked for her, did you?”
“What was I supposed to do, bang on her door in the middle of the night?” Baz said. “Wake up her parents? Hi, I’m the foreigner your daughter likes to kiss when she’s drunk.”
“How about, ‘I’m the foreign boy that cares a lot about your daughter and we’ve been kissing for too long?’” Lily shoved him aside and forged ahead to a pile of backpacks, and she punted one off the ledge.
I mouthed so sorry to the Frogs and followed her. I felt their eyes crack the back of my skull.
2021.
We hatched a plan. Sprout’s father would wait for another twenty-four hours before involving the police. Until then, Mr. Watanabe couldn’t prove that his daughter was in danger—forty-two-year-olds don’t have curfews. Why should our poorly paid, understaffed, hungry police force hunt down a single, non-Frog woman with no status, no reward, and no bribe? What if she went searching for a foreign husband to whisk her away from her cramped, sweaty life? Before involving the authorities, we’d retrace her steps: gather her call details, check who she spoke to, then scour the marketplace. We prayed Sprout would emerge someplace, balanced atop a stool clinking cold beers with coworkers.
“She’s been visiting the hilltop village of that hilltop tribe since she came back,” Lily said.
“I know. That village is now a temple,” I said.
Dan dropped into the sofa. “Why are we worried again? It’s not like she’s gone for months.”
“She didn’t bring anything with her,” I said. “It’s a rerun of what happened the first time she disappeared.”
“Lils fainted when Sprout showed up at our house three months ago.” He motioned for Lily to sit next to him. “I don’t want her frazzled again.”
“I don’t think you understand, Dan. We’re old friends with an unbreakable bond. The kind that will gouge out both of your eyes for one of ours.” I wanted to force-feed him rocks. Maybe their sharp edges would help digest his thoughts before he spoke.
Lily’s eyes narrowed. “Chryssa, you’re in his house too.”
“Laisse parler ta mec, since he has so much to say,” I spat.
She lugged me into their bedroom.
I had missed Lily’s first wedding, and that slight bubbled like frogspawn on the surface of the pond waiting to erupt. I had just started graduate school in a new country and couldn’t afford a ticket back. Yet, Sprout—devoted as always—flew in from London to walk her down the aisle.
Lily’s ex, a shallow fore-headed man, was like us—a non-Frog of Chinese descent with a little tropical heat sprinkled in there, shaped by a European upbringing yet familiar with our ways of conforming in the world. He’d leave us alone to gossip, providing solutions only when asked. Unlike Dan, who would burst into our conversations uninvited.
“Why do you hate Dan?” Lily hissed.
“I hate that he stole you from a happy rest of your life.”
“You didn’t choose Dan, I did! I know what I signed up for. But you think that’s beneath you, don’t you?” Her eyes glowed, the same embers I had missed from when we were children. “You think love is a contract where you sign on the dotted line and it’s done—anything else is a betrayal. Well, I chose my first husband every day until I woke up a stranger to myself. Do you know what it’s like to stay at home because your husband’s bonus is contingent on your unemployment? What’s it like to watch him fail his English, French, and Chinese tests over and over again, when you can dream in all those languages simultaneously? Do you know what it’s like to come home begging for your husband’s affection? I’d watch him nod at me while taking calls in front of a computer screen, and then he’d slide under the covers to enter me like it was a chore, like some duty he fulfilled because that’s what young couples were meant to do. I realized I would have to live as a shell of myself for the rest of my life and for what? For posed photos, for my parents to be able to speak to their son-in-law, and for all of the rice bowls we could eat only to end up in a box next to him? I’d like to live before I’m tossed into the earth.”
“I would never want you to live empty like that,” I admitted. “But you don’t sound happier with Dan.”
“How would you know? Are you inside of my head? My heart? I thought old friends were meant to accept one another no matter what our choices are.”
Lily’s taut face, angular cheekbones, and dark eyes dissolved into Sprout.
I saw myself in their grimaces. The crestfallen gazes. Their disapproving tone. I recognized how selfish and wrong I was for trying to keep my friends the way they used to be in the flipbook of my heart.
1994.
We stood outside the Watanabes house clutching boxes of sweet rice cakes our parents had packed for us. Mrs. Watanabe accepted the packages and untied them immediately.
“How is Sprout?” Lily asked.
“She’s fine, but she’s not the same,” Mrs. Watanabe whispered. “She’s so quiet now.”
I imagined Sprout as a stunned flightless bird, occasionally flapping her wings, wondering why she can’t fly.
Lily stepped into Sprout’s bedroom door first. She had always insisted that she knew Sprout better because they had met in a kindergarten cooking class. I crept behind, peeking over Lily’s shoulders to see Sprout.
Our best friend was wrapped like a hand roll in her blanket, lying sideways. Her tousled black hair poked out on one end, and her thick calves came out of the other. The soles of her feet were dusty, her cheek, wet and shiny. Sprout’s eyes were two black saucers staring past us, as if we stood in the way of what she really expected.
Lily knelt, measuring herself in Sprout’s eyeline. “My girl.”
Sprout turned, facing her back to us. Lily beckoned me over, and I curled by her side. We held our breaths for what seemed like years.
Sprout cleared her throat. “No one believes that I really saw the Star People.”
“We believe you.” Lily nudged me, and I nodded.
Sprout remained an immovable mound.
“Why don’t you tell us about them?” I added.
“They found me when I was hiding from the construction workers,” Sprout said softly. “I couldn’t really see them. They were bright, like blinding white.”
We gave a small sniffle.
“At first, I was paralyzed. I heard heavy footsteps, boots marching in unison, surrounding me. I thought, these men, they’ve found me, and who knows what will happen. Except they didn’t feel like men. They felt light, airy, and welcoming. They said they were Star People, and they had watched me from above, running for my life. How tiring, the Star People giggled. You were born running like a baby ostrich, from broken eggshells into the wild. I felt the Star People seeping into my body, the way hot blood courses through your veins when you’re in love. They spoke to me from inside of me: Time to stop running and start chasing, and I couldn’t hold it in. You know when you finally reach the bathroom after a long drive? It felt relieving to let it all go, not realizing how long you’ve been clamping onto your bladder.”
“I should’ve stayed,” I blubbered. “I’m sorry. It’s my fault. If Baz forced you into something you didn’t want, I’m sorry. Andre told me we’d meet at your bus stop again, and I was selfish to believe him, just for a second—"
“Chryssa, I’m not angry with you at all.”
She rolled over, studying me. “Why would I be mad? Because of you, I have found purpose in my life. I got to meet the Star People. I’ve discovered how special I am.”
2021.
Dan caught me snatching my bag, heading out of the door. “Do you blame yourself?”
“Excuse me?”
“Not about Lily, she’ll get over it. She loves you,” Dan said. “I mean, do you blame yourself for Sprout disappearing the first time?”
I thought about his question. For a long time, Sprout had convinced me that I’d done the right thing by not interfering. That night splinters into several images every time I close my eyes, trying to piece together where it went wrong. There was Sprout, fingers locked with Baz and Andre, skipping down the gangway to introduce us. There was Andre, plum-breathed and eager, begging me to buy Sprout and Baz some time. There was Sprout biting bottle caps off before handing me one. She danced next to me, one arm hooked around Baz, the other arm by her side, her finger still looped around mine. Andre was holding my hips, but I swore he needed me to stay standing more than he wanted me beneath him. We were babies then: chicks unfurling our legs long enough to cover a savannah; eyeless tadpoles sucking underneath lily pads for protection; and girls, knobbly, tanned, ripening creatures, designed to be consumed. Only we walked, talked, and looked nothing like prey. Together, our legs, mouths, and elbows fused into one and maybe that camouflaged our true forms.
“I’ve read that those who are abducted by aliens are often victims of sexual assault,” I said carefully. “No one knows what really happened with Baz that night, but I don’t believe aliens abducted her from this planet for three whole months, only to dump her in a village not too far from her house. Didn’t Sprout lick herself like a wounded animal when found?”
“She also spoke khmu to the villagers. Where would she learn that?”
Lily and I didn’t ask Sprout about what happened in the three months after the Star People took her, but the entire experience seemed to empty her of her weight. Sprout was buoyant. She floated when she walked, the ends of her sentences rose in a sing-song tone, and when she came back to school, her laughter rang like bells. Even though her parents eventually divorced, and Baz ignored her, and his friends stopped waving at her when she waltzed by, nothing brought her back down again.
Meanwhile, Lily and I felt like bricks anchoring Sprout down by the ankles, holding her so tight that she had to kick to move forward.
Ploi Pirapokin is a Thai writer from Hong Kong. She is the Nonfiction Editor at Newfound Journal, and the Co-Editor of The Greenest Gecko: An Anthology of New Asian Fantasy forthcoming from Wesleyan University Press. Her work is featured in Tor.com, Pleiades, Ninth Letter, Gulf Stream Magazine, The Offing, and more.
Fay Ku is a Taiwan-born, New York City-based artist whose work is figurative, narrative and connects with past and present cultural histories. She is the recipient of a 2007 Louis Comfort Tiffany Grant and 2009 New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship grant. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally including solo exhibitions at the Honolulu Museum of Art ( Honolulu, Hawaii) New Britain Museum of American Art (New Britain, CT) and Snite Museum of Art (South Bend, IN); she has also participated in several artist residencies including Wave Hill (The Bronx, NY), Lower East Side Printshop (New York, NY), Tamarind Institute (Albuquerque, NV), and Bemis Center for Contemporary Art (Omaha, NE). She attended Bennington College, Bennington, Vermont for her BA and holds both a MFA Studio Art and MS Art History from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY.