“"I was instantly immersed in the hierarchy of this world, the sisterhood but also the exile waiting just one wrong move away. The paradox of gaze rings familiar and true--operating as a hinge to power, offering advantages with one hand and taking advantage with the other. The language here is sexy and dangerous and evocative. Spare, but welcoming one to give-in to seconds and thirds..”
—Dantiel Moniz, contest judge and author of Milk Blood Heat

Second Cart Sisters

by Celeste Sea

Winner of the 2021 Flash Contest

When A-Mui starts working at Dim Sum Palace, the carpet is redder than the thread around her neck, her hands are smoother than the jade dangling between her breasts, and her breasts are firm—firmer than firm—and they’re what ultimately get her the job. I’m up for anything, she tells A-Wing, and she nods when he asks her if she really is. Will you show up on time? Do you promise not to steal? Are you careful? Yes, I’m careful, she says, staring at the parade of dim sum carts, their tops steaming with flavor, and A-Wing gives her a knowing look. Second cart, he ultimately says, eyes sticky with suggestion, and that’s who A-Mui becomes: a Second Cart Sister. 

 So lucky, the other Second Cart Sisters say. We all had to start as Sixth Cart Sister. They eye A-Mui curiously and then hook their thumbs toward the current Sixth Cart Sister. Sixth Cart Sister smiles from behind her cart. It’s not so bad, she says. She flexes her hands, the backs corrugated grey-blue-green with time, and she nudges at the cauldron before them. That’s all she offers, all that rests on her cart. None of the diners ever say yes. They stare past her, their mouths seamed in like full purses. Better fare speckles their tables. Cuter fare: dumplings and buns and glutinous rice. They don’t have room for a puddle of Sixth Cart Sister’s soup. No interest in hot juice roped with meat. Sixth Cart Sister ghosts by. 

 If Sixth Cart Sister is a ghost, then Fourth and Fifth Cart Sisters are beggars, the other Second Cart Sisters continue. They’re not wrong. Fourth and Fifth Cart Sisters push carts with foods that only the uninitiated choose: elastic gon chow ngau ho and carelessly fried rice. Families shoo them onward but they always come back, wheeling round and round again. Ngau ho! Ngau ho! they cry. Maybe they are carrion crows; maybe they are vultures, A-Mui says, and the Second Cart Sisters burst out laughing. Yes! they say. You get it. So clever, our new sister! They pat A-Mui on the shoulder, their touches feathering along the stitches of her starched shirt. A-Wing watches them from behind the cash register and when he catches A-Mui looking back, he smiles a secret smile. When A-Mui tries to return it, her teeth pebble against her stretched lips: a Second Cart Sister smile. Pointed. Light. A-Wing, A-Mui calls out during closing, when it’s just the two of them stripping the tables in folded darkness. But A-Mui finds that she has nothing to say, nothing to ask. A-Wing doesn’t seem to mind. Sister, he calls back, cunt-flushed fabric rivering from his fingers, and his voice slinks toward her, hugging her in the night. The acknowledgement is enough. 

 Third Cart Sisters need no explanation. They must smell A-Mui’s newness, must notice it somehow, because they jostle A-Mui’s cart with their own until the metal jangles all the way up through her elbows. Push from your shoulders, the older Second Cart Sisters say, uncurling advice from ribboned tongues. After the weekend service, they huddle around A-Mui. Those Third Cart Sisters think they’re so special, they hiss. They massage dit da jow into A-Mui’s arms, as if by rubbing they can erase away tenderness. It’s okay, A-Mui says, but it’s not, they argue. What’s to remember about fried turnip cakes? No one carries a hunger for taro. So yeet-hay. Each Third Cart plate begs for its own pot of tea, the oldest Second Cart Sister says, and the rest titter their agreement. 

 Second Cart Sisters are the luckiest, and this is what A-Mui gathers from her sisters’ words, from the tilt of their shoulders, from the bend in their strides. Diners watch her with bellies half-swollen from First Cart Sisters’ attention. Hungry eyes have no use for what Second Cart Sisters hollow from their metal stomachs: coiled tofu skins and boiled pork ribs, the ones that sometimes look grey, but that’s the secret: pork ribs are best when they’re grey. Grey means flesh—means something worth chewing on. In the mornings, A-Mui asks A-Wing to let her watch the butcher cleave a ribcage into stars of bone. Pork ribs are magic like that. Eating them feels special, feels like suckling the meat off gemstones.  

 A-Mui sets a plate of ribs onto each pinked table, wringing the cloth warm with grease. Careful, she catches herself saying, you have to work to eat these. She echoes herself when A-Wing kisses her in the leaking night, nudging blindly into her mouth as their shadows bleed together. Careful, she whispers. The first time they do it, her clitoris swells like a winged beast and she laughs, splintering the space between their bodies. Careful, she says, when A-Wing presses his mouth along one firm breast, suckling as if searching for milk. Careful, she says again, when he finds bone instead.

Published September 26th, 2021