Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier (2020)
Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier (2020)
Chapter 4
Rita Booker and her husband, Louie, gave me hope that it was possible to make it into your thirties with the same person and still be in love.
They’d always answer the door together, wrapped around each other, usually minimally clothed. They barely looked at me as they paid. Rita would ask me how I was doing, how was that man of mine, wasn’t life wonderful?-all while staring directly into Louie’s eyes. Sometimes she would stroke my face and smile at Louie. “Look at this caramel. I hope our future babies are as pretty as she is.”
When they answered the door that day, he was shirtless and in basketball shorts. She was naked underneath one of his button-downs and I could see her nipples through the soft pink material. I handed her their large Buff Bleu Chick and made sure to keep my eyes on hers (37).
...that day I had to know-“How do you guys stay so happy?”
They turned to me and their cheeks had a lovely rosy flush, and if I’d had a camera I would’ve snapped a picture of them right there. Once I got home, I would’ve stared at the photo and pulled out a set of paints, mixed until I got the exact color of their cheeks.
Louie shook the box in his one hand and played with the collar of Rita’s shirt with the other. “Pizza and sex seems to help.”
“Seriously, though,” I said.
“I mean, we’re being pretty serious.” Rita looked at Louie, a stone-melting look. “Like, yeah, pizza and sex is not all it is, but when you’re with someone that you love-like, really love-you work through whatever shit that’s managed to stick to you over the years, and when you want to punch walls, or rip out your hair, or if you feel like if you opened your mouth only screams would come out, you remember those pizza-and-sex days.”
They started kissing with tongue, so I thanked them and wished them all the best (38-9).
Chapter 6
I had been thinking constantly about han, a feeling that had been killing generation upon generation of Korean people. According to Mom, han was born in the gut and rose to the chest. Every injustice, every instant of helplessness, when the only reply to a situation was a mumbled “Fuck this,” all of it noted by an invisible scorekeeper in your heart. Han was a sickness of the soul, an acceptance of having a life that would be filled with sorrow and resentment and knowing that deep down, despite this acceptance, despite cold and hard facts that proved life was long and full of undeserved miseries, “hope” was still a word that carried warmth and meaning. Despite themselves, Koreans were not believers, but feelers-they pictured the light at the end of the tunnel and fantasized about how lovely that first touch of sun would feel against their skin, about all they could do in wide-open spaces.
I wondered if a more complex language like Korean had a singular word to describe the feeling of getting off a long shift of a physically demanding job and finding that, for at least half an hour after, everything, every last thing, was too beautiful to bear (74).
“When I was eighteen, I only applied to colleges in weird, faraway places. I ended up choosing NDSU. My mom and dad thought I did it to make them furious and maybe I did a little, maybe I was tired of being a smiling size-two who never broke curfew and was described by all her teachers as ‘quiet, serious, a dream come true.’ Mostly, I felt small every day and blamed the city, thought maybe if I went somewhere unlike anywhere I knew I could be fixed and new and like I’d always wanted to be” (78).
“Listing all those places doesn’t make me feel worldly or fascinating or anything close. I like the idea of me being some doe-eyed Midwestern girl moving to the big city for the first time more than the reality. Because the reality is, I’ve been to so many places and not a single one has saved me. And I need Los Angeles to save me. I need this place to work this time.”
I realized then that for her even to be sitting across from me she would’ve had to find someone to watch Adam. Whether a babysitter, a friend, her faceless husband, she called in favors or pulled out her wallet to go to the meeting in the church she talked so much shit about. I watched her fiddle with the edges of the menu, flip pages back and forth, mumble something about dessert-should we get some?-and thought about how easy it would’ve been for Jenny just to stay home if a small part of her didn’t hope that the meetings weren’t bullshit, that one day she would emerge from the church basement and onto the street, blinking rapidly, her eyes adjusting to the brighter, more beautiful world of a healthy, well-adjusted person, all of it unlocked for her by a circle of women.
I waved the waiter over. “Can we get a bowl of ice cream? We’re going to be here for a while.”
The waiter walked away, Jenny had that smile again, and I hoped she was thinking, yes, Los Angeles would work this time (80).
Chapter 8
My head’s a mess. Everywhere I go, I seem to find a way to trap myself. Most days, I can ignore it, but like anything you leave open and forgotten, it begins to rot. There are just too many thoughts, memories. I can’t look at anything and not think of something else.”
Jenny let go of my hand. There were white half-moons on my palm from her grip. “You don’t get it yet, but you will. Soon, you’ll have your own beautiful boy or girl who will look at you with their perfect little face and you’ll feel love and hope and, mostly, you’ll feel the weight of everything that’s ever happened to you and everything that will ever happen to them and you’ll want to run” (127).
A buzzing sound started out of nowhere. I jumped, felt myself start to shake until I remembered that my phone was still in pieces. Jenny reached into her front jeans pocket and pulled out her phone, looked at the name on the screen, and slipped it back inside. She took a drink, and before she could even put the bottle back in her lap, my lips were on hers.
I’m sorry he leaves you here, traps you here alone in this house. I have phone calls I don’t want to take too. There’s a place I used to go when I felt lonely and small-not age-or body-wise small, I’m five ten in sneakers, I’m never actually small. But like when you’re in a people-packed space and there’s not a single face that looks at you for longer than a second-it’s not invisibility, it’s worse, they see you, they just have already decided in that second that there’s nothing about you that’s worth knowing, that kind of small. I liked sitting on the curb of the 7-Eleven parking lot. I’d get a Slurpee and sit a little left of the door so I could see all the people going in, but only their legs. A store across that street sold lamps, and it was always so, so bright.
Seconds passed without Jenny kissing me back. Seconds of she hates me, she doesn’t feel my thoughts. A second more and her lips were pressing against mine, even harder, and I wanted to take her to 7-Eleven.
I’ll get the cherry Slurpee, you get the Coke, we’ll sip and kiss and it’ll be fruity soda perfection. Bask in that lamp-store glow. You are beautiful and I will never make you cry, you will pick up every phone call from me on the first ring (128-9).
Epilogue
I’D AVOIDED thinking about Jenny. I’d stared mindlessly at fluorescent lights for hours, been taking a different route home from work, I’d shouted at Mom a week ago when she suggested we order pizza for dinner, but as Jenny stood in front of me in that grocery store parking lot, I realized how avoidance was the most attention you could give something (186).
There was still more I wanted to ask her. What exactly I meant to her, how much of herself did she actually reveal to me, did she still miss me sometimes like I missed her-a missing that had no electricity, no lightning, or thunder, a missing like a hand digging into an empty chip bag searching for crumbs, any last salty bit, a missing more like mourning (188-9).
Chapter 4
Rita Booker and her husband, Louie, gave me hope that it was possible to make it into your thirties with the same person and still be in love.
They’d always answer the door together, wrapped around each other, usually minimally clothed. They barely looked at me as they paid. Rita would ask me how I was doing, how was that man of mine, wasn’t life wonderful?-all while staring directly into Louie’s eyes. Sometimes she would stroke my face and smile at Louie. “Look at this caramel. I hope our future babies are as pretty as she is.”
When they answered the door that day, he was shirtless and in basketball shorts. She was naked underneath one of his button-downs and I could see her nipples through the soft pink material. I handed her their large Buff Bleu Chick and made sure to keep my eyes on hers (37).
...that day I had to know-“How do you guys stay so happy?”
They turned to me and their cheeks had a lovely rosy flush, and if I’d had a camera I would’ve snapped a picture of them right there. Once I got home, I would’ve stared at the photo and pulled out a set of paints, mixed until I got the exact color of their cheeks.
Louie shook the box in his one hand and played with the collar of Rita’s shirt with the other. “Pizza and sex seems to help.”
“Seriously, though,” I said.
“I mean, we’re being pretty serious.” Rita looked at Louie, a stone-melting look. “Like, yeah, pizza and sex is not all it is, but when you’re with someone that you love-like, really love-you work through whatever shit that’s managed to stick to you over the years, and when you want to punch walls, or rip out your hair, or if you feel like if you opened your mouth only screams would come out, you remember those pizza-and-sex days.”
They started kissing with tongue, so I thanked them and wished them all the best (38-9).
Chapter 6
I had been thinking constantly about han, a feeling that had been killing generation upon generation of Korean people. According to Mom, han was born in the gut and rose to the chest. Every injustice, every instant of helplessness, when the only reply to a situation was a mumbled “Fuck this,” all of it noted by an invisible scorekeeper in your heart. Han was a sickness of the soul, an acceptance of having a life that would be filled with sorrow and resentment and knowing that deep down, despite this acceptance, despite cold and hard facts that proved life was long and full of undeserved miseries, “hope” was still a word that carried warmth and meaning. Despite themselves, Koreans were not believers, but feelers-they pictured the light at the end of the tunnel and fantasized about how lovely that first touch of sun would feel against their skin, about all they could do in wide-open spaces.
I wondered if a more complex language like Korean had a singular word to describe the feeling of getting off a long shift of a physically demanding job and finding that, for at least half an hour after, everything, every last thing, was too beautiful to bear (74).
“When I was eighteen, I only applied to colleges in weird, faraway places. I ended up choosing NDSU. My mom and dad thought I did it to make them furious and maybe I did a little, maybe I was tired of being a smiling size-two who never broke curfew and was described by all her teachers as ‘quiet, serious, a dream come true.’ Mostly, I felt small every day and blamed the city, thought maybe if I went somewhere unlike anywhere I knew I could be fixed and new and like I’d always wanted to be” (78).
“Listing all those places doesn’t make me feel worldly or fascinating or anything close. I like the idea of me being some doe-eyed Midwestern girl moving to the big city for the first time more than the reality. Because the reality is, I’ve been to so many places and not a single one has saved me. And I need Los Angeles to save me. I need this place to work this time.”
I realized then that for her even to be sitting across from me she would’ve had to find someone to watch Adam. Whether a babysitter, a friend, her faceless husband, she called in favors or pulled out her wallet to go to the meeting in the church she talked so much shit about. I watched her fiddle with the edges of the menu, flip pages back and forth, mumble something about dessert-should we get some?-and thought about how easy it would’ve been for Jenny just to stay home if a small part of her didn’t hope that the meetings weren’t bullshit, that one day she would emerge from the church basement and onto the street, blinking rapidly, her eyes adjusting to the brighter, more beautiful world of a healthy, well-adjusted person, all of it unlocked for her by a circle of women.
I waved the waiter over. “Can we get a bowl of ice cream? We’re going to be here for a while.”
The waiter walked away, Jenny had that smile again, and I hoped she was thinking, yes, Los Angeles would work this time (80).
Chapter 8
My head’s a mess. Everywhere I go, I seem to find a way to trap myself. Most days, I can ignore it, but like anything you leave open and forgotten, it begins to rot. There are just too many thoughts, memories. I can’t look at anything and not think of something else.”
Jenny let go of my hand. There were white half-moons on my palm from her grip. “You don’t get it yet, but you will. Soon, you’ll have your own beautiful boy or girl who will look at you with their perfect little face and you’ll feel love and hope and, mostly, you’ll feel the weight of everything that’s ever happened to you and everything that will ever happen to them and you’ll want to run” (127).
A buzzing sound started out of nowhere. I jumped, felt myself start to shake until I remembered that my phone was still in pieces. Jenny reached into her front jeans pocket and pulled out her phone, looked at the name on the screen, and slipped it back inside. She took a drink, and before she could even put the bottle back in her lap, my lips were on hers.
I’m sorry he leaves you here, traps you here alone in this house. I have phone calls I don’t want to take too. There’s a place I used to go when I felt lonely and small-not age-or body-wise small, I’m five ten in sneakers, I’m never actually small. But like when you’re in a people-packed space and there’s not a single face that looks at you for longer than a second-it’s not invisibility, it’s worse, they see you, they just have already decided in that second that there’s nothing about you that’s worth knowing, that kind of small. I liked sitting on the curb of the 7-Eleven parking lot. I’d get a Slurpee and sit a little left of the door so I could see all the people going in, but only their legs. A store across that street sold lamps, and it was always so, so bright.
Seconds passed without Jenny kissing me back. Seconds of she hates me, she doesn’t feel my thoughts. A second more and her lips were pressing against mine, even harder, and I wanted to take her to 7-Eleven.
I’ll get the cherry Slurpee, you get the Coke, we’ll sip and kiss and it’ll be fruity soda perfection. Bask in that lamp-store glow. You are beautiful and I will never make you cry, you will pick up every phone call from me on the first ring (128-9).
Epilogue
I’D AVOIDED thinking about Jenny. I’d stared mindlessly at fluorescent lights for hours, been taking a different route home from work, I’d shouted at Mom a week ago when she suggested we order pizza for dinner, but as Jenny stood in front of me in that grocery store parking lot, I realized how avoidance was the most attention you could give something (186).
There was still more I wanted to ask her. What exactly I meant to her, how much of herself did she actually reveal to me, did she still miss me sometimes like I missed her-a missing that had no electricity, no lightning, or thunder, a missing like a hand digging into an empty chip bag searching for crumbs, any last salty bit, a missing more like mourning (188-9).