Alice Hong

In high school I was in love with the sixties. I adored Twiggy and I wanted to live in her world. It’s why I wanted a Vespa scooter. I wanted a Volkswagen Beetle too, but I didn’t like cars in general. What I didn’t like about them had nothing to do with the cost. To me, a car by Toyota is as good as a Mercedes-Benz or a BMW. The problem was simple. If anything were to happen to the car, my mom was going to kill me. I did’t want to give her a reason to do it. 

The thing is that whether you have a car or a scooter, you need a driver’s licence for it. I didn’t have the will to study. I was busy. I had homework and piano practice and swim practice, etc. When I had to go somewhere, I had take the bus or Skytrain. I had to go to the other side of Vancouver every week for piano practice. The long and boring rides across the city became a part of my life like the classes I took at school. 

A few years ago, I told my mom I wanted a bike, so she bought it for me. I used it a couple of times and when I became a student at UBC Okanagan, I took it to Kelowna. There was a storage room where I kept it. The bike was like new when I gave it away to my sister. Though it’s a lot of fun, I don’t want to ride a bike everyday, as some people do. I don’t know when I’m going to get a driver’s licence but I hope it won’t be too far from now. 

I was a fan of anime in middle school. I didn’t have a lot of friends. What kept me from trouble was anime. I tried to make a web site about an anime called Sentimental Graffiti. I didn’t know that it was a dating game. I just wanted to draw like that. I was a fan of it because I wanted to think that I had friends as beautiful as they were. I gave up the dream when the research became hard.

Nothing has changed. As it goes, I’m still young, cute, and an extra small. I don’t have to try. But I’m afraid to leave home and to take responsibility, because I don’t know what I’m capable of. I can be stupid and funny like Homer, but I can be lost and confused like Lain. Here in Korea, I am normal, but it takes time to learn the ways in which you are.

In my dream, 
drilling into the marrow 
of my entire bone, 
my real dream, 
I’m walking up and down Beacon Hill 
searching for a street sign - 
namely MERCY STREET. 
Not there. 

I try the Back Bay. 
Not there. 
Not there. 
And yet I know the number. 
45 Mercy Street. 
I know the stained-glass window 
of the foyer, 
the three flights of the house 
with its parquet floors. 
I know the furniture and 
mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, 
the servants. 
I know the cupboard of Spode 
the boat of ice, solid silver, 
where the butter sits in neat squares 
like strange giant’s teeth 
on the big mahogany table. 
I know it well. 
Not there. 

Where did you go? 
45 Mercy Street, 
with great-grandmother 
kneeling in her whale-bone corset 
and praying gently but fiercely 
to the wash basin, 
at five A.M. 
at noon 
dozing in her wiggy rocker, 
grandfather taking a nap in the pantry, 
grandmother pushing the bell for the downstairs maid, 
and Nana rocking Mother with an oversized flower 
on her forehead to cover the curl 
of when she was good and when she was… 
And where she was begat 
and in a generation 
the third she will beget, 
me, 
with the stranger’s seed blooming 
into the flower called Horrid. 

I walk in a yellow dress 
and a white pocketbook stuffed with cigarettes, 
enough pills, my wallet, my keys, 
and being twenty-eight, or is it forty-five? 
I walk. I walk. 
I hold matches at street signs 
for it is dark, 
as dark as the leathery dead 
and I have lost my green Ford, 
my house in the suburbs, 
two little kids 
sucked up like pollen by the bee in me 
and a husband 
who has wiped off his eyes 
in order not to see my inside out 
and I am walking and looking 
and this is no dream 
just my oily life 
where the people are alibis 
and the street is unfindable for an 
entire lifetime. 

Pull the shades down - 
I don’t care! 
Bolt the door, mercy, 
erase the number, 
rip down the street sign, 
what can it matter, 
what can it matter to this cheapskate 
who wants to own the past 
that went out on a dead ship 
and left me only with paper? 

Not there. 

I open my pocketbook, 
as women do, 
and fish swim back and forth 
between the dollars and the lipstick. 
I pick them out, 
one by one 
and throw them at the street signs, 
and shoot my pocketbook 
into the Charles River. 
Next I pull the dream off 
and slam into the cement wall 
of the clumsy calendar 
I live in, 
my life, 
and its hauled up 
notebooks. 

Anne Sexton