The Yellow Washcloth

A cloud of steam rises from the whistling coals as Zhen Chao screws the lid onto his water bottle. He returns to the wooden bench, folding his long legs beneath him, and the sizzle slowly dies away like the distant hiss of crickets. A drop of sweat trickles down his neck where it finds his chest, fine black hair dotted with white bean sprouts; his father also went grey in his thirties. In order to give you this life, he’d say, which was his excuse for everything, for his absence, further justified by his consistent return every Spring Festival. He’d arrive with White Rabbit candy and a bag of firecrackers for the kids; and this consistency was good parenting, he’d say, though the cheerful greetings were consistently followed by the distribution of Soft Cloud cigarettes—they’d just hit the market—and the eager draining of bai jiu bottles.

Consistency meant good parenting, did it? Consistency, though it be the gloopy consistency of his mother’s mapo tofu.

Zhen Chao runs a dark and calloused hand over his chest, scratches his left breast with overgrown fingernails; it sags more than he cares to know with his shoulders hunched forward, his knees about his chest like a frog; he resembles his father, his red-faced father snoring on the floor amongst sunflower seeds and cigarette butts.

He wipes the sweat from his brow with a suntanned forearm, and the door creaks open, the temperature dropping slightly. A woman in a black bathing suit enters and he absorbs her with a glance; she’s dripping wet, and her glossy black hair catches the light, sparkling silver like a school of fish. Zhen Chao averts his eyes as she slinks in, but he catches a glimpse of her white calves, delicate feet, her pink toenails like plum blossoms. He feels the wood shift beneath her weight, hears its shy creak; but he doesn’t see her look his way, see her examine his red face, see her noticing his eyes on her feet.

She lets out a sigh and runs a washcloth up her legs; he glimpses her fingernails, pink like petals, the water droplets on her thighs like strings of pearls. He straightens up, untucks his legs from beneath him, and as he raises his head he meets her dark eyes; he’d blush if he weren’t so red, the heat clinging to his thighs, gathering like a ball of wool in his belly. He unscrews his water bottle but finds it empty. The woman smiles and glides towards the coal where she unscrews hers. There’s a cloud of steam, a sizzle, and Zhen Chao’s eyes run up and down her slender figure, tracing the lines where her bathing suit meets her skin.

She spins around and he tears his eyes from her thighs, finds her face, her smile.

“Thank you,” he says, noticing a large canine tooth; it brushes her lip when she smiles. She returns, silent, to the bench; and again, the wood shifts slightly, shifts slightly more this time.

Zhen Chao fiddles with the frayed drawstring on his swimming trunks. Hi, I’m Hu Zhen Chao, he’d like to say, but he stares silently into her white calves, delicate feet, pink toenails; he doesn’t see her keen eyes studying his face, he doesn’t see her pout, he doesn’t see the question that rumples her brow.

***

Water droplets form on the walls and trickle into branches. The steam, the silence, is suffocating, and Zhen Chao’s wet hair clings to his neck like a leech. A shadow passes behind the fogged glass and he jolts upright, eager, running a hand over his chest, over his wiry black hair; he plucked all his greys last night, as though weeding a lawn, but still resembles his father: loose-skinned and red-faced like a boiled Sichuan pepper.

Surely she’d come; they were closing in half an hour. He’d watched her swimming laps from behind his locker, her long black hair streaking up and down the empty lane. He could almost feel the wood shift under the weight of her image, her calves, her pink toenails. Hi, I’m Hu Zhen Chao. He’d even cut his fingernails, though they were still stained yellow from two decades of smoking Soft Cloud cigarettes; like father, like son.

The door creaks open and he melts with relief, pleasure, anticipation. The steam races out the door and gathers about her like an aura, the blinding corridor lights illuminating the wet floorboards at her feet. Today she wears a white one-piece. She closes the door and they’re enveloped in semi-darkness, the dim light glittering in her hair, on her skin. Zhen Chao unscrews his bottle and takes a sip as she lowers herself onto the bench. He screws it closed and notices her blue toenails. Hi, I’m Hu Zh—

“Do you remember me?”

Zhen Chao freezes beneath her gaze, studies her face, her dark eyes, the point of her canine tooth peeking out from between her lips.

“I’m Gu Meng Xi,” she says. “Meng as in fierce, three drops of water xi.”

He pauses and bites his thumbnail, torn between her syrupy voice and the chafing misunderstanding; he squirms and readjusts his swimming trunks.

“You must have me mistaken for someone else, Miss Gu.”

Her brow scrunches up, her eyes squint.

“I’m Hu Zh—”

“Zhen Chao.”

“Oh,” he says, laughing nervously. “I can’t seem to place you.”

“That’s funny, I haven’t forgotten you.”

“That’s sweet.”

“Is it? It’s been fifteen years,” she says. “You were the camp monitor.”

Something registers; there’s an inkling, maybe. Her eyes are glued to him as he searches his brain; this time he sees the question rumple her brow, sees it tug at her lips; this time he sees more than her calves, her feet, her toenails; he sees his past.

“What’s your zodiac?” he asks; one never asks a woman’s age.

“Dog,” she says, biting her blue fingernails.

“I’m a r—”

“You’re a rabbit,” she says.

Zhen Chao hesitates; he sees his past as though through fogged glass, but he can guess, he can guess as his eyes caress her thighs; he can guess as his mind wriggles beneath the elastic where her bathing suit meets her skin.

“We were just a couple of kids, huh?” he says.

He doesn’t see her lip curl into a snarl, doesn’t hear her response—I certainly was—because he’s looking at her white one-piece shimmer beneath the dim light, transparent as an onion.

“We could always get to know each other again,” he says.

She rises and empties her bottle over the coals, the bottlecap a qinghua porcelain blue between her white fingers. The coals whistle, steam rises, and she shrugs at her empty bottle, the audible crunch of plastic filling the room.

“I’ll be back,” she says, though she waves goodbye.

Zhen Chao makes nothing of it, submerged in a steamy daydream; it’s her delicate curves that he sees as she turns away, tails of steam following her out the door and into the light.

Zhen Chao waits a moment, a handful of moments, running his yellow washcloth across his face. He unscrews his bottle and drains it, the crunch of plastic reverberating against the wet walls. The water cools his throat, his chest, like an ice cube applied to the skin. He used to wake his drunk father by putting an ice cube down his shirt, and he still has a scar beneath his swimming trunks to prove it.

Surely they’d be closing any minute now. Where was that delicious creature? He rises, slips through the steam—maybe she’d gotte—and pushes at the door, pushes at the door, pushes at the door and panic sets in, panic sets in, panic sets in as he realises it won’t budge. He calls out, first quietly, hesitantly, and then his voice rises with the steam. Water droplets form on the walls and trickle into branches, connections, ramifications.

Gu Meng Xi? Camp? Porcelain skin, freckled cheeks, black pigtails?