“Don’t stare,” Sonny said, tugged me toward the lockers.
“Why would I stare?” I trotted to keep up so he wouldn’t dislocate my arm. “Johnny’s just your cousin, right? From the Mainland?”
Something unreadable crossed Sonny’s face. “It’s hard to explain. Just - be cool.” Then he craned his neck and called, “Hey Johnny!”
I craned my neck too but didn’t spot any Chinese-looking boy in the lunchtime crowd. No one responded, either.
“Johnny!” Sonny called again.
Still no response. I’d heard loads about this unfortunate cousin, abandoned with Shao Lin monks in the mountains of northern China, half-civilized from living their ascetic ways. Sonny and I’d had long conversations about the antics his mother had gotten up to, trying to Americanize ‘Johnny’. I felt bad for the kid being thrown into a new culture, forced to conform against all he knew.
Sonny rolled his eyes and called out in sharp Mandarin. “Jun Fei! Get over here!”
The crowd shifted. I couldn’t help but stare. Jun Fei was...tall. Well over six feet, and lean, with golden skin and Persian-dark eyes, round eyes, caucasian eyes. His head was shaved, just like monks had their heads shaved, and he was dressed in shabby gray trousers and a matching gray tunic, like monks wore in kung fu movies, and he was even wearing little black slippers, but there was no way that boy was Chinese.
“Good day, Cousin,” Jun Fei said, inclined his head politely.
“Hey,” Sonny said in English. “Rachel, this is Johnny, my cousin. Johnny, this is Rachel.”
I offered my hand and forced myself to blink a few times so it wasn’t so obvious I was staring. “Pleased to meet you, Johnny.”
“My name is Jun Fei, despite what Song Fei insists on calling me,” Jun Fei said, and Sonny winced at use of his proper name. “But it is good to meet you.” And then he spoke in rapid-fire Mandarin, too fast for me to keep up.
“Whoa, hey,” Sonny broke in, “Rachel was raised by gweilos - she doesn’t speak the Mother Tongue.”
Jun Fei blinked solemnly at me. “You are not Han?” he asked.
“Er...biologically, sure. But biology doesn’t make a girl fluent in Chinese.” I couldn’t help but look him up and down and notice that he was lean, built along clean lines, like a runner, but I could see the smooth slide of muscles beneath his skin when he moved. And then I asked it. “Are you Han?”
Jun Fei blinked again, that puzzled blink that Chinese boys gave me when they knew the answer to a question but refused to give it.
“I’m guessing someone gave you a mirror eventually,” I said. “So, you want to sit with us for lunch?”
“That would be...nice,” Johnny said cautiously. He spoke careful, unaccented English, which was pretty good for a Shao Lin monk.
“C’mon.” Sonny headed for a table.
After a moment, Jun Fei and I fell into step behind him.
(500 words)
2 comments:
I don't understand what Han is but I really liked your first person POV. That is how it should be. :)
What a lot of people don't realize, I guess, is that there are different types of Chinese people (because they don't really all look the same; there are specific ethnicities within Chinese; same as within Japanese), and Han is the kind most people are familiar with, Hollywood-wise.
Back in the day, the Han were called Mandarin.
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