Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning(37)

“Don’t you ever eat my cookies!”

“Helen, I didn’t—”

“Only you would eat half a cookie and put it back in the box!”

Jake was tangentially connected to an all-white cool-kid group whom everyone on campus dubbed the PoMo boys. Helen actually dated one of these guys, a dough-faced aspiring writer who was later caught in a huge plagiarism scandal when he was thirty-five. He dumped Helen for a waifish Pre-Raphaelite indie girl, which sent Helen into a shame spiral about how she wasn’t white or skinny enough. Whether it was because of him or her distrust in men that grew over the years or simply because they deserved it, Helen was a scourge against these boys. They would sit there in Campus Diner, smoking their Pall Malls, talking about Thomas Pynchon or Chris Marker, and Helen would shout out “Pretentious fucks” as she hobbled past them with a wooden cane she’d acquired after she sprained her leg. That cane gave her a sinister and regal bearing. When they saw her hobbling toward them, they scattered like pigeons.



* * *



—

    One day, Helen came over to our house. We hadn’t seen her for days because she’d gone on a heroin bender with her friend Heather. Helen slumped down on our armchair. She was twitchy and had hair in her face. Erin and I were sitting on our brown floral couch in the gray early-evening gloom, drinking cheap tequila from a plastic handle. It was February and the sour winds howled outside. Seeing Helen so despondent on the armchair made me nostalgic for my time in London, when my flatmates and I smoked hash while massaging each other’s feet with shaving cream. When my flatmate Sonya discovered I’d never used a vibrator before, she shook her deluxe Rabbit at me and demanded I rush to my room and try it out: “Then give it to Carla but make sure you wash it first.” They were so warm and carefree. They were so body positive.

“Let’s take our shirts off,” I said.

“Why?” Erin asked suspiciously.

“Why not?” I said with forced cheer. I drank down a slug of tequila and flung off my shirt. Erin reluctantly unbuttoned her shirt and Helen, to my surprise, wordlessly struggled out of her turtleneck. The moment I took off my shirt, I felt self-conscious. My skin puckered into goosebumps and I could feel each goosebump against the weave of the couch. We sat there in the February gloom, shrunken and silent in our bras. Helen was so catatonic, she didn’t notice her glasses were crooked from pulling her black turtleneck over her face.

    “Nice abs, Cathy,” Erin said finally. “Have you been working out?”

Helen stirred. She shifted her posture on the armchair and adjusted her glasses. My heart began to beat fast as she told us that she was feeling terrified. She was hearing voices. She was in a nightmare that wouldn’t stop. The voices were telling her she was repulsive and didn’t deserve to live. Then she looked at herself as if it had dawned on her for the first time that she had no shirt on. She said, “I’m fat.”

“Helen,” we said in unison and over each other, “you’re thin.”

“I’m fat,” she said repeatedly. Then she glared at me. I knew this glare well.

“You tricked me.”

“What do you mean?”

“You made me strip so you can laugh at my fat body. You tricked me.”

“Cathy’s drunk,” Erin said quietly. “She doesn’t know what she’s doing.”

“I’m not drunk!” I said drunkenly. “You’re beautiful! Why can’t you realize that! I want you to know that! Your body is beautiful! Your body is sexy! All I want is for you to love yourself!”

Helen charged at me and began punching me while I cowered with my face in my arms. She shouted that I was a monster. When Erin pulled her away from me, Helen began punching and kicking Erin as hard as she could. I remember the living room being dark, and Helen and Erin as two shadows wrestling with each other. Finally, Erin tackled Helen as she fought under her. Helen had superhuman strength when she had one of her violent episodes, but Erin was stronger. Erin held her for a long time and called her name over and over. They were breathing raggedly.



* * *



—

    In my sophomore year, I began taking poetry seriously and lost interest in art. My doubts about my artistic talent began after taking Athena’s class. It didn’t help that Erin and Helen were so much better than me.

Over drinks, I told Erin recently, probably to get a reaction, that I had stopped making art because of her and Helen.

“It’s still hard for me to admit this,” I said, “but I was jealous. You were too good and I wasn’t good enough. I was constantly comparing myself to you guys. But now I’m thankful for feeling that way because I wouldn’t have discovered poetry.”

Erin looked at me skeptically. “You’re welcome?”

“Although I think Myung Mi liked your poetry better too,” I mused, referring to our former poetry professor.

“That’s not true,” said Erin. “She loved both of our poetry. Your poetry had so much feeling.”

I didn’t know what to make of this compliment coming from Erin. Whenever she sensed any soft-minded sentiment in a work, she attacked it with gusto.

“Anyway, I need to make Helen more well rounded,” I said, getting out my notebook and pen. “Do you remember any funny things she said in college? I just remember the crazy parts.”