Light From Uncommon Stars
Ryka Aoki
For Katrina, and Katrinas everywhere …
People think selling one’s soul for music is as simple as “Sign this contract and—poof!—you’re a genius!”
Were it that easy, the world would be awash in transcendent song. Obviously, this is not so.
Souls are cheap.
The trick is finding the right soul.
FEBRUARY
1
Shhh …
Yes, it hurt. It was definitely not just a bruise. Yes, she was scared. Her throat was raw from screaming.
Cautiously, Katrina Nguyen felt under her bed.
Girl clothes. Boy clothes. Money. Birth certificate. Social security card. Toothbrush. Spare glasses. Backup battery. Makeup. Estradiol. Spironolactone.
Katrina had made an escape bag the first time her father threatened to kill her.
At first, the bag seemed an “in case of emergency,” a glass that one would never break.
But after tonight …
Why had she let it come to this? Why couldn’t she be what her parents wanted?
Part of her was in a panic. What have you done? Apologize. Knock on their door right now. Say it’s all your fault—say you’re sorry, say you’ll promise to change.
But another, stronger, part of Katrina was calm, even cold.
You have to escape. Tonight. Breathe, be quiet, and listen.
And so, Katrina listened … for footsteps, for breathing, for sleep. She listened, and listened. Through the dark, she heard her mother’s one last cough. Her father’s one last flush.
And then, finally, there was silence.
Katrina clutched her ribs, then propped herself up. The pain was sharp, but manageable. She was in her room, behind a locked door. All she needed to do was be quiet. And calm. She could do this.
She could do this.
By the light of her phone, Katrina applied concealer around her eye and to her cheek. It would be better not to face the world with visible bruises.
Then she placed a note on her bed.
In it, she had written that she was sorry, that she wished she’d never been born, that she didn’t want to make them angry, and that she’d never bother them again. That part was true.
But then she wrote that she was going San Francisco.
There’d be no reason to doubt her; of course she would go there. That’s where the queers went. Her father would punch the wall, throw something heavy and breakable; her mother would cross herself and utter a prayer. In a day or two, her mother would call Tía Claudia across the Bay to find their stupid son and send him home.
By that time, though, she’d be almost four hundred miles away.
Silently, Katrina put on her coat. She slid open her bedroom window. Outside, there was noise from a police helicopter, noise from some family next door. There was noise from the highway, from nice cars leaving and less-nice cars coming home. Yet, Katrina moved steadily, almost gracefully, as she gathered what she needed.
Ticket. Laptop. Escape bag.
Violin.
Then Katrina crawled atop her desk, and dropped to the ground. Mercifully, adrenaline overrode her pain. She reached up, slid the window closed, and looked at her phone.
Good. There was still time. As quickly as she could, Katrina limped past the neighbors, the highway, the cars, the police helicopter overhead. She’d catch BART to Oakland, then find somewhere to wait out the night.
In the morning, she’d get on a big white bus to Los Angeles.
Those who’ve never ridden a big white Asian bus probably never will. These buses don’t load at Greyhound bus depots or train stations. Instead, one catches them at an Asian shopping center or supermarket.
Some are Vietnamese, a few are Korean; many are Chinese. Some trek to Las Vegas. Others shuttle to the casinos of Morongo, Pechanga, San Manuel. Yet another subset runs along a network of Asian communities throughout the state. Oakland Chinatown, San Francisco Chinatown, Little Saigon. San Diego Chinatown.
And, of course, fleets of them converge on the San Gabriel Valley—Rosemead, San Gabriel, Monterey Park, and the rest of the Asian-American Holy Land.
“I think girl,” the woman said. She didn’t bother whispering. So what if the kid could hear? They were speaking Cantonese; the young ones were either Americanized or learning Mandarin.
“Not girl!” the other woman insisted. “Too ugly to be girl.”
“But she’s wearing makeup!”
There was silence.
“Too ugly to be girl,” she finally agreed.
“Definitely boy. To be a girl would be sad.”
“Yes, so sad.”
Those women were around her mother’s age—they could have been her mother’s friends. She didn’t need to understand them to understand them, for it blended with the chatter that she heard every day.
Katrina didn’t try to block their words; she had given up on that long ago. Instead, Katrina leaned her head against the window and listened … to the voices of the women, the drone of the engine, the roar of a passing truck. She listened to the pain in her ribs, the throbbing keeping time with each swerve and a bump in the road. It was all music.
Let it be music. If she could make it music, Katrina knew there would a place where she could breathe. A place where she could rest.