[color=gray][h3][sup][sup][i]“Listen, kid. When Sunny says you can be something here, she means something. Not someone. You stopped being somebody the second you walked through that door.”[/i]

Those were the first words Fi had said to her, a couple years back, when she’d first gotten settled. Genny had pushed the notion down into the pit of her stomach. So many people in this world had doubts. So many people in this world denied themselves any chance of escape from their miserable lives.

And yet here they all were, still standing. After getting stitches on her ear and pretending to sleep through the doctor collecting his fee right in the same room, Genny was upright, hobbling forward like a baby giraffe, carrying a box with a gerbil along with her. As if this was all normal, as if she’d just tripped in soccer practice or fallen off her bike. As if this was a normal doctor’s office, and not a vet’s office. A vet’s office where the vet gawked at her just like she was some baby-giraffe—a zoo animal—and not a person.

With the drugs pushing the pain away, it felt good to think again, even about things like that. Sunny was hard to ignore, as always. It never seemed to matter where they were. As she chattered along, flirting with the cab driver, acting like he was the most interesting man in the world, it struck Genny, again.

Sunny was an anomaly bobbing around in a sea of negativity. Fi wanted nothing to do with even an attempt at freedom. Sally was convinced the only way out was through. Her mother died alone, without seeing the fruits of her labors. Her uncle could not face her when she was dragged away from him as a payment for some debt that was his, not hers. Some of his last words to her were, [i]“Don’t you get it? In here, in Taiwan, in Japan—there will always be a part of you that nobody wants. We’ll always be half trash, no matter where we go.”[/i]

And yet Sunny, when she talked about “being something,” the sentiment, clearly, was hardly the same as the others made it out to be. She smiled when called a doll. She graciously accepted being treated as less than human, and seemed unwilling to even pretend to confront the obvious issue therein. This taxi driver, with his sparse hair and sparse teeth, got the treatment of a man greater than a broke slimeball nobody with a laugh that sounded like an avalanche of black phlegm. Why? Why humor even this man, who would never give her a discount, never do anything but gawk jealously in the mirror at every light? It made no sense. She didn’t seem to believe in a future. Just like the others. But rather than resign, she cheered. 

Genny sat with the problem as that little cab bounced along, gripping tightly to the thoughts as the painkillers and residual anaesthetics tried to pry her into blankness.

It made no sense. Until Genny saw her giddily pick at the most pitiful little kiddie cup.

They were all treated by a vet. Not a doctor, but a vet. Fi was right, yes—none of them were people in any way that mattered to anyone else. But what else did Sunny say? She was keen to reinforce customer service—saying, “No matter what, give your friends the look they want to see from you. They’ll appreciate it. They’ll come back. And when they come back, you can be sure you gave them something special.”

Paczki and Sunny were, in a way, the same. The difference? One was carelessly set aside, ignored by all but a few handlers. Sunny, meanwhile, was keen to reinforce that here, with her and everyone else. For Sunny, in her little world, people who’d been abandoned elsewhere could be wanted. Could be [i]loved[/i]. The older kids were quick to dismiss the word “love” as lies and fantasy—bullshit, whether Sunny knew it or not. But seeing the pet and the doll, it all started to make sense. Dolls weren’t meant to feel. And pets? How excited did a dog get for the barest of scraps. Sure, it begged for more. But it always wagged its tail and devoured the smallest scrap. So that’s what she did, didn’t she? Dance for the scraps and feel none of what was missing.

Was that all there was? Was this woman, sitting across from her, simply content to be more pet than person? Had Sunny simply decided that being something at all was enough? Was this all there was? 

No. Fi and Sally were resigned to being things, awaiting their turn in the trash compactor. Sunny could insist that being a pet—an esteemed [i]animal[/i]—was a worthy fate for any real person. But it wasn’t. It couldn’t be enough. It shouldn’t be enough. And how dare it be inevitable. 

Now that the physical pain was suppressed, the spiritual pain could take center stage. Ice cream could not be sweet here. Not like this.

Her jaw tightened. It was trained to smile, to smile no matter what she actually felt, but her eyes couldn’t keep up the lie this time. She’d stopped eating. The stupid, placid doe-eyes couldn’t hold. Her ice cream was melting. And Sunny was trying to get through. Genny didn’t want to talk about it. She tried to kick the can down the road with shrugs.

What was wrong, after all, was that this was simply a great cosmic joke. To have come so far, to have worked so hard, only to have ended up a third-generation glorified comfort woman in the conqueror's homeland? Her mother had seduced, then married an American soldier, had ruthlessly enforced Mandarin and English over their shared mother tongue of Hokkien, just as her mother before her had done with the Japanese. And when her husband left her, happy to go to war in promise of younger flesh, she dragged herself to the United States, abandoning her career as a teacher to become that which she had previously tried to leave behind, in hopes that her daughter—that Genny—might never have to.

And yet, here she was, doing the same thing, but younger than even her grandmother, without even an illusion of a way to enforce accountability on any one of the endless stream of older men. It was two steps forward, who knows how many steps back. It made her angry. It was easy to be angry. When she had first come, fresh off the wound of seeing her own uncle turn his back on her and leave her to her fate mere months after her mother—his [i]sister[/i]—had died earning money to help pay [i]their[/i] rent, Sunny had tried to get her to stop crying, to give up on that life she was promised, and embrace a new one. That’s what it was, though. Giving up. 

When Sunny spoke of being lucky, perhaps she was right. She had made it here. To America. She had continued to stand back up, even as she found herself surrounded by older kids who’d been trampled by the endless stream of fuckers that Sunny clung to for validation. She continued to awake early and make her bed with precision. She continued to claw for study materials, to continue her education even after Sunny dragged her kicking and screaming back through the door insisting that she no longer needed to attend school. She continued to stand straight, like a person—like she was somebody.

Genny stood up from her seat. 

“I’m done,” she croaked.

She gave no response to Sunny’s contestations. She rigidly stalked to the trash and discarded the half-full cup of melted ice cream. She returned and seized Paczki’s box. 

Maybe everyone else was willing, for one reason or another, to just be something, and not someone. She had stopped crying. But where Sunny tried to teach acceptance, Genny stoked the embers of rage.

She had not come this far to give up and take it. Maybe others could be reeds and bend with the wind. In the past, she had taken it upon herself to do wake-ups. She had tirelessly demanded school books from the library. She had clawed back her very own self. A self that could not accept confinement as a lesser. A self that could not appreciate anyone yielding to this Hell and behaving as if there were truly no tomorrow. And for it, she was granted a moniker.

Like all of their names, it was a mockery. Sally was short for Salomey, the pig from Li’l Abner. Fi was short for Fire Hose, because she had a gag reflex that could spray chunks fifty yards at the slightest prompting. Miggy was short for Migiem, some Sorb or Polack crap that had something to do with the youthful vigor he used to have. Sunny, as Fi recalled, was short for “Little Miss Fucking Sunshine.” To be Genny, the General, was a commentary on her rigidity, her uncompromising will to continue with the expectation of a future, and her discipline. In some respects, it was a comment on an otherwise positive set of traits, just as Sunny’s name was. But it wasn’t given in that context. And the context was key. Before it, she had been given generic addresses. “Kid.” “Sweetie.” “Little one.” Innocent words at their face, but guilty of stealing her name. These names were assertions, weren’t they?

[i]You are not your own. You are not your parents’. You are ours.[/i]

Pets get new names with new owners.

And yes, for now, she had owners. Practically speaking. She was an animal, a lamb led by sheep.

But with Radowicz? At school? The future she was after over there was one where she belonged to nobody. A future of personhood. And the only people with the right to name people were the parents.

When Genny crossed the threshold to the house, her mind was made up. She stood straight. She ached down to her bones, but she stood straight, meeting Sunny’s concerned expression with resolve. If she hadn’t put her foot down before, she wouldn’t have gotten this far. If she waited only for opportunities to strike, they would never come.

“When I go to school,” she croaked, “I want my name.”

Sunny responded with confusion. 

“My name. My English name.”

Even her stupid English name, given by a mother that didn’t know better and a father who didn’t care—it was still her name. Her. Name. Hers and nobody else’s.

“When I go to school, I won’t be Gina. I want to be Cherry.”

She had no rights here. She was no citizen, not even a person as far as anyone was concerned. But at school, she would be playing the part of a person. A real person. And that chance at personhood needed to be hers and nobody else’s. 

Sunny hesitated and wheedled. It would cost money, she insisted. Radowicz would have to agree, she cautioned. The lies would have to shift—it wouldn’t be easy to redo these arrangements. 

Chunxin set the gerbil’s box on the hall table. She reached for Sunny, stepping forward heavily. She gripped her shocked keeper’s collar with sudden, swift strength.

“I don’t fucking care.” She wheezed. Sunny tried to calm her. To get her to stop hurting her voice. Chunxin thundered out her demands. Her voice crackled and tore.

“I’ll do whatever it takes. I’ll see him tonight. I’ll cry and bleed. But I want to be myself when I do. I want to hear him say my name. My. Fucking. Name. Che—”

Her voice rattled and broke. Right at the end, it faded into silence. She pushed, repeating herself, trying to force past the whisper. 

She continued to echo her name until Sunny agreed.

Chunxin. Cherry. The General.

[i]I will not let those bastards win.[/i][/sup][/sup][/h3][/color]