Infanta Lizardess

Written by Priscilla Wong

I Anorak

This is a story about Avery and Anorak, an incarcerated Cambodian gang leader. San Francisco, CA. USA.

WANTED.

Dead, or alive.

Magnificent stalkers inspire fear in children who tend to cling to one another out of shared warmth.

1. Telemarketer claiming to be a Calvin Klein intimates salesman. Caucasian.

2. Midnight stalker in oversized denim. African American.

3. Warthog thug. Accidentally punched her in the face. Polynesian.

4. Twins who cornered her brother, pantsed him in the kindergarten bathroom to coerce a fight. African American.

5. Bus stop Khalesi or Khalid - whatever her name was. Mugger. African American.

6. Blondie cornrows with bedazzled claws. She clawed Avery's face. Avery broke her nails and slammed her skull against a car - Latin.

7. Child abductor driving a stolen windowless van. African American.

8. Fat Mary with undiagnosed bipolar disorder. Vietnamese.

9. Phone terrorists demanding ransom on the account of being ugly Chinese nerds.

Caucasian, Filipino, Polynesian, Latin and African American.

10. Abusive foster care drug addicts across the street - so inebriated that they may have eaten their dog. African American.

11. Local truck squatters who littered the sidewalks with spit and sunflower seed shells. Mexican.

12. Swisher Sweets and beignet corner store chainsmoker. African American.

13. Cinnamon flavored chewing gum. All ethnicities.

14. "JESUS LOVES YOU!" Downtown homeless protester. African American.

15. The Haight Ashbury tunnel urinary heroin addict. Caucasian.

16. "Si, se puede!" local Mission st. protester. Mexican.

17. Crowds of elderly Asians running desperately for the bus in Chinatown.

18. Screaming tourists who can't seem to work the subway machines. European.

Avery's childhood friends were Kpop stars before Kpop was born. That was then. This is now.

Koreans are sexy enough to be criminals now.

Nobody cared about Asia Minor until 9/11 occurred. Afterwards, Middle Eastern pornstars discovered fame.

Plenty of girls around, enough to fill a small dance hall.

The young man chosen as their leader and protector, was a tall Cambodian with an elegant frame named Anorak. That word that comes to mind for this man is virility. Some are born with more agility and wit than others. Not dangerous, though impassioned when it came to a battle of the sexes. Her name was Natasha. A bit like a rapper with his video girl. There was a baby along with ample verbal abuse. Anorak hearts Natasha. Aw. They were uninterested in higher education. Some might say tall, dark and others would say, handsome - lucky to be born with a strong bone structure and abnormally large brown eyes for a man of Asian descent.

Who cares? Such details matter to Kpop fans.

Natasha was curvy, with considerably larger eyes than the other girls. She wore her hair long, as smooth as silk. She painted her lips with thick liner and gloss, just like Kali. The severe beauty frightened Avery as a child. Did Natasha understand the blatant vulgarity of being a clownish femme fatale? It meant that if someone touched her face, the chemical cake frosting came off. She was the alpha and every girl imitated her.

A vision of post colonial tea happened to be fond pastime. The menu of nostalgia - Vietnamese iced coffee and delicious pastries - moderately flat and crispy, with golden brown flakes, infused with the savory aroma of fresh scallions. Egg flower tarts, with curd whipped so light and fragrant, that a child who only knew of diaspora could never dream that her sisters and cousins would be greedier. As greedy as the Kardashians. Olivia's house was the favorite excursion. Light atmosphere with borrowed jungle humidity. Exotic Silver Dollar Coins were the show stoppers of the garden amongst sprawling fern. Parakeets chirped quietly in elegant cages, as the soft murmur of Mandarin that pulsed from within her parents - unlike the typical peasant migrant, they spoke of intellectual concerns. Olivia was the quietest, the fairest, with her alabaster skin and fine fingers. Her robotic demeanor excluded her from most adolescent activities due to a condition of anemia. Assuredly, this is no Sailor Moon setting in Neon Tokyo. This is Avery's adolescence. Untreated bad hair, gentle female. Only mean girls used a hair iron with expertise. They either preferred the scathing heat or the other option was to commission cornrows from the local hair braider. Olivia spoke only of her research on chinchillas. Some might say that she had Aspergers. It was easier for her to dive into topics of veterinary science than it was for her to be friendly among her peers. Her alabaster skin bruised and cut too easily. In the present era, the mere suggestion of a flaw means total damnation. What exactly does that entail?

Ask the plastic gorgons of luscious Kpop.

Tomboys played basketball, trolley hopped to rooftops while the juveniles partied. They slid down the grassy hill outside my home in old cardboard boxes, performing dangerous back flips on bikes, scooters and skateboards - breaking limbs and causing a scene. They modeled their behavior after Jackass on MTV. All the while, Olivia locked herself away with dietary and health restrictions. She caught a cold too easily, her cough was light and frail, and if ever, color showed up on her lips, it looked like a stain of blood. She bore the resemblance of a delicate porcelain doll. Pretty and boring. Didn't take long for Avery to discover how eccentric she is compared to the other girls. Between Castro and Haight Ashbury, the best landmark is still the enormous hooker legs in fishnet stockings and red stilettos, crafted by a well meaning hippie over the predecessor business to Hot Topic.

1. May was as sturdy as a work horse, polite enough. Agrarian ethic code. Chinese.

2. Wendy behaved like a docile pageant queen. Dyed medium brown hair. Vietnamese.

3. Natasha - unimaginative diva and teen mom. Dyed reddish brown hair. Vietnamese.

4. Jessica - abnormally large lips and eyes, too awkward to ever speak. Chinese.

5. Karen - depression - wished dearly to be thin. Taiwanese.

6. Cindy, Mary and Linda - early motherhood. Pink collar work. Blonde balayage. Vietnamese.

7. Annie - bright and literate, until she wasn't. Chinese.

8. Angela - scoliosis sorority party girl. Might die, I mean aloha in Hawaii. Dyed medium brown hair. Chinese.

9. Lydia and Julia moved to the next town. Awkwardness and depression. Blackinese.

10. Donna and Alice - raver video girls. Blonde balayage. Chinese.

Hair dye might be the most important element to the aspiring Asian gangster sex doll.

Although not nearly as important as concealed weapons carried to school.

1. Pocket knife

2. Taser

3. Brass knuckles

4. Heavy chain

5. Plastic toy gun

6. Occasionally a real gun

A true outrage.

The otherwise disgraceful and dark Anorak had no reason to be entangled with fights among the Blacks or the Latinos - Bloods and Crips truce - and yet trouble crept into communities that wanted nothing to do with gang territory. By and by, the girls huddled around Anorak for protection. There was community. They each only wanted a ride in his shiny white Acura. Autonomy is all Avery ever wanted. Working class women only dream of marrying a rich man out of weakness. They think they're in love. It's an illusion. There existed a quiet acknowledgement between Avery and Anorak, a sort of knowing, that she wasn't all girl or all boy.

Sudden gunshots were fired. Mary cracked the door wide open. She was robbed by hoodlums. Drew her in close with feigned politeness and roughed her up before taking her rucksack, along with her wallet and keys. So startled, Avery almost fell off the couch with my pen and ink splattered over a crisp white tee. Urban lesbian attire. Mary was a sorry sight to bear witness. All tears and snot. One ugly bruise on her cheek that would turn into a black eye. Those kids would really harm a sweet simple thing like Mary, huh? Man of action, Anorak lept out of the house to chase down the kids, speeding carefully to avoid the cops, weaving expertly through the streets, without as much as a squeak.

He didn't return until dawn.

By the time he came back, he wore a tired old grin with the left arm in a small makeshift cast. After prodding in the quiet, the girls learned that he had broken his wrist from strangling a kid in midair with one hand. He caught the thieves and recovered Mary's belongings. Funny how loosing just a few items, is enough to break a poor family. Amidst the celebration, I was downhearted to know that these kids, Bloods they were, would find him again the next day with a vengeance. There was something in Anorak's height that made him seem more shadow than man, though what good was being tall against a pack of wild young things who'd been thrown away by schools and society both? These weren't children anymore - they were creatures born in concrete and raised on rage, each one of them carrying death in their pockets like loose change. Avery watched them, time and again, moving through the streets like wolves. They'd pour off the trains and subways, a flood of dark faces with darker intentions, hunting the elderly who couldn't run fast enough. The shopkeepers learned to keep one eye on their goods and one on the door, though it didn't much matter in the end. When the cops finally came, they were always too late, showing up just in time to draw chalk lines around another body. The gunshots became a kind of terrible music in those days. They'd crack through the night like lightning, and come morning the newspapers would sing their grim chorus about another dead man or boy. Sometimes both.

Only a person touched by madness would stay in such a place, where childhood died young and violence grew up in its place, where every sunset might be your last and every sunrise brought new graves to dig. If caught alive, juvenile detention waited in its stead. For the time being, Avery watched it all through eyes that had seen too much but couldn't look away. The following day, Avery dropped my colloquialism and left them all behind. The news moved through town like wind through dry grass, touching every corner until the whole place shook. Anorak had tangled himself up with the law again and violence followed him like a hungry dog. Bodies kept turning up in alleys and doorways, each one a story none wanted to tell but everyone whispered. Folks started looking at their homes like temporary shelters, counting the days until they'd have to pack up their lives and leave this dying place. That last night before Avery slipped away from him and Natasha like a shadow at dawn, she did something she'd never done before. Her small hands, still soft with childhood, found their way to his face. They moved across the hard planes and valleys of it, learning every scar and whisker like a blind person reads braille. She was reading the story of a man who wasn't her father but somehow was, and he let her do it. Just Avery. Nobody else ever got that close to Anorak without paying a price, yet still as a stone he sat while her fingers traced the map of his life. Maybe he knew it was goodbye. Maybe he didn't.

Avery went and never turned back.

II Infanta Lizardess

The evil sorcerer, Dick Sanchez took Avery from her own as his younger kin.

They celebrated more than protested. He knew the act'd bear a price one day. Burning crosses inside pentagrams made a happy home. For an evil sorcerer, he was a nice guy. No tears. No whining. No lameness. He banished all the crown thieves. Changed her face for all the bear witness - for the outage of the sins of her kind. She was guilty too - until proven innocent. He decided, Winehouse seemed a feasible path for Avery.

Black. Ugly as sin.

Kittens are a mess - full of madness.

The only types of kittens he could bear to tolerate are natural hermaphrodites. He'd hoped that Avery might fit the bill, small as she was. Otherwise, she wouldn't have been worth the energy. Raised amongst creatures born in concrete and raised on rage where blackness will always prevail - it was certainly not easy to be Dick Sanchez. He counted all the burning crosses he'd plant in her mind before Father Time could rob him of his good work.

The trick is volume.