Fiction from Avalon Felice Lee

Photo: Maddy Baker

The Chilla

Before gloving up, Ellen strokes the fur shawl on the mannequin. It’s chinchilla, brown, so soft it feels abstract, like the idea of a thing rather than the thing itself.

Bora peeks around Ellen’s thigh, fidgeting with her apron string. “Was the chilla killed, Mama?” she wonders, her voice littler than her self.

“The chinchillas were already dead before their fur was made into this shawl.” In a tin pan on the cluttered industrial table, Ellen kneads together walnut shells, sawdust, and solvents. The laboratory scent soon hardens into a taste. Sweetwood. “Where’d you hear about killing?”

“Lǎolao. She said that’s how people get their clothes. Killed chilla and killed mink.”

By the row of tumbler machines, Lǎolao drowns under blankets on the waterbed. One eye, cataract-gray, is slightly vultured.

Ignoring it, Ellen massages the mixture into the fur. They moved into her mother’s fur laundry studio over two months ago, yet Bora still seems wary of the pelts, as if imagining fangs. “Yeah, well. Your lǎolao says a lot of bullshit.” The cataract-gray vanishes. “You have school in two days, kid. Have you finished your homework?”

“No.”

“Hm. Well, before you start, help tidy up the table. That phone book belongs in the reception room.”

Bora steps on a stool. Her hands make rhythm, shuffling envelopes and legal forms. A snap of rubber band around scented markers. The rat-a-tat of spare buttons in a dish. Cassettes with the latest pop hits in the shoebox—mostly Billy Joel, some Madonna. “Can you still see a chilla with no fur?”

A walnut shell pinches Ellen through the rubber glove. She barely registers it. “The chinchillas are dead, hear me? All of them. Gone.” The word, a fist of punctuation. Bora flinches, punched. Her rhythm loses the beat.

Ellen sighs. “Remember what Mrs. Shannon said. Death means you can’t see them anymore except in your memory.”

Bora goes slack-jawed, lips undone like a philosopher’s, like Anthony’s. That man could think his way out of anything, except the buck’s stare—a flashbang. The millisecond swerve at fifty-five off Flannery Way.

“You can’t see them ’cause they have no fur,” Bora objects. Before Ellen can say more, the girl scurries out of the studio, grunting with the weight of the phone book.

After the three counseling sessions, Shannon noted how remarkably Bora had understood and adapted to the loss. Ellen’s not so sure anymore from the way Bora speaks of death, not as something that happened to you but as something happening, a task you do lying down, a task her father is kinda in the middle of right now, but he’ll get back to you in a sec.

Ellen tosses the shawl into a tumbler. The fur ripples with fluorescence, as if running.

—§—

With each pass of the steel bristle brush, the fox hairs of the coat settle like recent snow. She would’ve been done for the day a while ago, but this coat’s due for pickup tomorrow according to the ticket clipped to the collar. Not that she can bitch about it. Thanks to Reagan, the shops in this square were dominoing. It started with the sherbert parlor; it’ll likely end with the parking lot.

Fortunately, their business relies not on yuppies but old Roseville money, the kind spent on both the medium-rare meat and the even rarer fur.

“Too much work. Time for resting.” Lǎolao hobbles over with a room-temperature bowl of congee and pork bones. Parkinson’s zings through her fingers, but luckily the porridge has congealed enough to stay put.

“Why’d you tell her about killing?” Ellen keeps her tone even as a hymn.

“Almost seven. Old enough.”

“Did you also explain the difference between a tax credit and deduction?” The bristles bite into the fur.

“Not so rough.”

“It’s not getting any deader.”

“Dead, alive—still animal.” Lǎolao yanks away the brush. Her tan forehead knots up. “Ellen. I just say killing is when someone makes them dead. Spirit forcing to leave body.”

Ellen huffs, a fresh ache in her back. “Lǎolao, she’s still trying to understand death. Next time ask me before you tell her about…” About what? How can she place this pain at the exact degree, like a professional with a scalpel?

The body was more pulp than body, its rib cage crushed against the ghost of a seat belt, the brown wept out from the irises. So of course, the funeral was closed casket. It had to be. Of course, Ellen had to tell Bora there was no body.

Maybe that was why Bora had asked for waffles for being so good and not crying like the adults did during the service. She couldn’t figure out what to grieve.

“Look. I’m her mother.”

Lǎolao scoffs big enough to swallow a child whole, wrinkles pulled away. She sets down the bowl. Holds it there, squeezing its life out. Her hand is steady. Then she spits out Chinese like cherry pits. When did that ever mean shit to you?

Ellen glowers, feeling lectured. Young. A grudge should fade with time, but time has faded. Ellen had apologized; gained years; is now a mother herself. Still, that grandmother would sooner move mountains than move on.

“I did my math. Can I go out to the alley?” Bora swings a bucket of chalk, as if the movement will free up the air. Her eyes have gotten wider from consuming too much.

Ellen checks the clock. Emulates its neutral face. “Tomorrow, maybe. It’s too late now, and you already showered.”

Bora looks to her grandmother. Ellen tenses.

Lǎolao brushes the fox. “Listen to mom. Too late. Almost seven.” She beckons Bora over. “Help me brush instead. Like this.” She demonstrates, her motions sincere, as if beneath lies muscles and sinew.

—§—

The cashier runs the items under the scanner from their grocery basket with careless aggression, the rhythm such a lullaby that Ellen almost misses a child’s magenta sleeve passing over her handbag.

Inside, a packet of jerky has appeared. Venison.

She stoops over Bora. “The hell? Are you trying to get me in trouble for shoplifting?” she whisper-shouts under the bellyaching of the AC unit.

“I’m gonna revenge on the deer.” The deer, as if this deer is that deer.

“He died to save that deer.” Which is technically true, despite the buck being found farther down Flannery Way, a pond of blood in its jaw. Officer Grayson told her this as if it meant justice was served. It only meant her husband died for nothing.

“Is that it?” the cashier says.

“Yep.”

“You sure?” he asks, tracking her as she reaches into her handbag. The plastic corner of the packet cuts into her palm. Should she fess up? Claim it accidentally fell in? Is he the type to give a damn if she acts like nothing happened? The ink of his name tag has faded—Andrew has worked here for a while. Has probably lost the noble conviction of a fresh employee. And he looks young. High school, maybe. Yet his teeth are the yellow of a lifetime of Marlboros. How many packs have accidentally fallen into his pocket?

She withdraws her wallet. “I’m sure.” The security camera winks, red.

He purses his lips. “Your grand total is $24.95.”

After counting out exact change, she takes the bag of groceries in one hand and drags Bora out with the other. Her steps quicken like paranoia until her wedges barely make contact with the pavement, Bora pulled behind like a kite.

Two sidewalks later, the kite pulls back, its wind knocked out.

“Shoplifting, Bora? Really?” Ellen wheels around. “Never again. We can’t afford to slip up. We can’t afford the fine, or worse. Jail. You want your mom in jail?”

Bora shakes her head.

“No playtime today.”

The jerky packet peeks out of its hiding place. Grandpa’s Venison Jerky. Medium heat. Best by next April. The silhouette of a buck, antlers wide enough to hold wealth. Lancaster County, PA. “This one’s from Pennsylvania. Can’t be the same deer.” She rips open the packet and gives Bora a peace offering.

A car horn blares. Ellen fumbles as she stuffs the loot into the handbag, sure the flush on her face is evidence enough of her guilt, but alas. It’s just a Mercedes-Benz. The car ahead of it just waited too long behind a green light. It accelerates, and the world resumes around its axis.

“Maybe it ran away.” Bora tears into the strip. “I woulda run away.”

Ellen lets it go this time. This Bora would argue with gravity while falling; would argue even after she was faced with the truth, literally. Yet Ellen can’t stop herself—with a honk like that, maybe the buck would still be living a quiet life.

—§—

Bora should be fast asleep in bed. But the mattress is still nicely made, the three pillows just so with Buggy, her panda stuffed animal, in the middle. At the foot is a homework sheet with five rows of vowels, all yawning. The sixth row is blank.

The page flutters.

The first thing Lǎolao told Ellen when she moved back was that the old apron, which now fit too snug over her curves ripened from pregnancy, still hung on the hook. The second was that to keep the pelts hydrated, the humidifier must be left on and the doors must stay shut twenty-four seven.

Yet a wind lurks in the back hall. Ellen heads over, where the door allows a numeral of burnt streetlight.

Bora idles by the recycling dumpster in the alley. The chinchilla shawl overflows around her shoulders, which she pets as if it’s a puppy, as if it’s on its daily walk and has four legs to stretch. She tilts her head, listening, then snorts. Whispers something back like a schizophrenic.

When Bora would babble on to Buggy, her father would be the one to answer, dropping an octave. He enjoyed it too. Said playing pretend was good for the soul, just like chicken noodle soup. But this—is this good for the soul? Or has she gone too far? Because lately Bora’s grip has been slipping. Both of theirs have.

Mid-conversation, Bora freezes. Her eyes flicker like compass needles before finding Ellen. She clasps the shawl tighter. “Do you think the chilla gets chilly?”

Ellen wants to pretend not to see the fur, or it’d need a rewash. Instead, she strides out, hot with righteousness, and wrests away the shawl. “You don’t touch the furs. You don’t go off in the middle of the night like that without telling me. It’s dangerous.” Ellen’s claw at her elbow, Bora stumbles indoors. “You didn’t even finish your homework. Do it on the table while I rewash this.”

Bora hiccups as she reaches over the waterbed for the vowel sheet, thieving a look at the bathroom occupied by Lǎolao.

Ellen inspects the shawl on the table, brush in hand. It isn’t unclean per se, but an example must be made. She rakes the bristles through the chinchilla.

“You have to be gentle, Mama. It hurts.” Bora’s voice is so quiet it seems to proceed on less than air.

“You too, huh?” Ellen scowls. “Bora, it can’t feel anything. Not this.” The flat of the brush smacks the shawl. “Or this.” The shawl sprawls onto the linoleum floor like a valley.

Sniffling away tears, Bora stares down at the fur, as if anxious to pick it up. The homework sheet crumples in her fist.

Ellen exhales. “The school bus will stop by the brick houses just down the street. You can walk there by yourself again, right?” Bora nods. “Get to bed once you finish your homework.”

“I already finished.”

Ellen scrutinizes the paper. “Y can count as a vowel, you know.”

“Oh.”

As Bora struggles onto a chair, Ellen picks up the shawl. She thought the way Lǎolao sees a mammal in a fur coat was a generational thing, but maybe some heads are just screwed on wrong, the lightbulb aflicker. It doesn’t matter. The girl’s almost seven.

Bora throttles a pencil. Over and over, it chokes out, y, y, y.

—§—

She’s blonder than Dolly, the white lady in a fuchsia blazer who barges into the studio from the reception room, her lambskin purse clutched like a brick ready to fly. Ellen can taste the Monday morning espresso in her shouts. Lǎolao mutters behind the intruder, ignoring the telephone.

Ellen keeps scrubbing the golden sable trim of a hood with a cleaning agent. “Get the phone. I can handle this,” she says to Lǎolao in Chinese, who doesn’t budge. Ellen sheds a rubber glove. “Fine. I’ll get the phone.”

The white lady ices her. She smells of Chanel. “You seem like the competent one. Last Friday, my fur was scheduled for a pickup at now o’clock.” She crushes a green laundry ticket against Ellen’s chest. “Find it. It’s an heirloom, you know. Worth a lot. Even more if lost.”

The phone goes dead, leaving Ellen without an excuse. She inhales the chemicals deeply. “Your fur will be with you in a second, Ms. Theron,” she says as she reaches for the ticket, noting the name and number.

Ms. Theron wrenches it away. “You’d be a damn fool to think I would give up my only piece of evidence just so you can burn it and tell me ‘no tickee, no washee,’” she mocks, eyes scrunched into a joke of a Chinaman.

Ellen wants to tell the punchline—square to her jaw. Instead, she searches through the crowd of mannequins and racks, looking for ticket eighty-five just as the phone starts up again.

Yes, Alice Theron is probably the type of privilege who could make a law bend its knee. Who lives not in a home but an estate, probably with its own legal name, probably in French. Still, Ellen can’t help but like it—the Chanel. Its notes of mandarin and orange blossom, dramatic, like irony.

Someone brushes her arm. A mannequin, this one naked. Though featureless, it has a definite masculinity. Its face opens like an epiphany—it has something to say. No mouth to say it. At its feet, a scrap of green.

She pushes past Ms. Theron, who goes off with gunfire. In the reception room, she jams the handset to her ear. “Ellen Lum speaking.” A stub in the ashtray still has a rumor of smoke.

“Right. I’m calling about your daughter, Bora. She isn’t at school today. Is there a reason for her absence?”

Ellen jabs the stub into the sand like a gravestone.

—§—

Ellen had remembered to buy seven candles but forgot the birthday cake. While Bora and her three friends had a tea party in the living room, he climbed into the tan Chevette. Had been in such a hurry that he forgot to start the ignition. Ellen laughed. Back then, accidents were funny.

Which is why she imagines it was sweet, his death. The box flying open. The ladybug cake midair, forced to learn its fondant wings—and failing. Becoming redder velvet.

She imagines his mouth full of birthday cake.

—§—

Ellen paces by the tumblers, only holding the bowl of egg drop broth for its warmth. Bora the missing child. Bora the next face on milk cartons. The Tahitian island. Bora the accident. Their accident, Anthony’s and hers. Bora in pigtails—perhaps there was a white van. Perhaps she had run away. Had crossed a road. Never made it to the other side. Bora Bora Bora until it’s no longer a name. Just its syllables.

Lǎolao settles onto the waterbed with a groan. “Drink dinner. Calm your mind before bed.” Fed or not, Ellen couldn’t fall asleep there, not with a new absence beside her. “Spoke to police already. Sleep now.” Lǎolao closes one eye. The other preys on Ellen.

“What?” she finally snaps.

The cataract, like a knife tip. “Maybe Bora coming back when she is twenty-five. Maybe she will have daughter.”

Ellen had returned home a widow seven years after the shotgun wedding. Behind the cash register, Lǎolao barely looked up before saying, How can I help you?, in the same manner you’d speak to a customer. Always distant. Polite, depending.

Ellen slams the bowl on the table. The broth sloshes onto her hands. “Lǎolao, I already apologized. What more do you want?”

The old woman rolls over. “I am not your lǎolao,” she mumbles, the weather gone from her tone. She slumps into herself like a wind-torn house, this beyond repair. And yet.

Ellen measures her breaths. Towels off her hands. A sudden exhaustion hollows her out. “Mom.” The word is milk in her mouth. “What more?”

“Drink dinner.”

Ellen’s feet bring her to the mattress, where she slips under the blankets. “I’m not hungry.” She stitches an arm around her mother’s gnarled body. There. For now, this warmth is enough.

—§—

The clock is barely into the a.m. Ellen unpeels herself from her mother and staggers to the studio sink to fill a glass. Only four hours of sleep, yet already she’s shocked through with adrenaline. Maybe the bus that picked up Bora was indeed yellow but not the right shade. Maybe it kept driving. What if she really had run away? The other day, how she thieved a look at the bathroom. As if for an escape.

Ellen jolts. The speckled mirror reflects a torso. Its chest opens with moonlight. Its arms seem strong.

Abandoning the cup, she inches toward the mannequin. Up close, it looks almost alive enough to be someone, alive enough to have a conversation with.

Oh, our laundry business is chugging along. It’s fine. It’s furry.

Have you found a job yet? You’re still looking.

The weather’s great now, but next week there’ll be a rainstorm. Yep, cats and dogs. At least California needs it.

My kid? Well, you know how it is. Still looking.

She grasps its hands. They grasp back, cold. Flashbang—an emotion complicates its face.

Not cold, no. Chilly.

—§—

The dawn meager, Ellen jogs down an unpaved road in a nightgown and jacket. The audience of oaks grows thicker.

She refused floral arrangements at first. For all the Shakespearean symbolism—not to mention the price tag—they’d last a week at most. But after Bora had found daisies and dandelions and purple whatnots in the library planter box, they hiked to Flannery Way, where they fastened the posy to the memorial stake, the same stake now draped in chilla fur. By it, a little girl is fetaled, as if she misses the womb, where everything around you is certain.

“Why’s the fur up there?” Ellen asks with a voice smaller than intended.

Bora startles upright. Her puffer jacket marshmallows when she braces herself, as if to guard the fur. “You shouldn’t have hurt it like that.”

“Bora, the chilla doesn’t feel things anymore. It doesn’t feel pain or emotions. Not the way we do,” she says without much conviction, knowing this talk is just noise to Bora.

“Yes, it does. The chilla feels…” Her lips come undone, moving soundlessly, like a river without water. “Soft. It feels soft,” she whispers. Ellen crouches to gather her close, then loosens her pigtail elastics to dust the grime from her hair.

Bora stays rigid. “The fur’s up there for him. Clothes. So he can come back.”

Ah. Like any good schoolgirl, she did the math. Her father has no body, the chilla has no spirit, and two halves make a whole. It makes no real sense to Ellen. Yet the fact is that the someone needed a something.

“Your dad would be very thankful for your present, Bora. Though I don’t know if he’d enjoy living in the body of a chilla.”

At last, Bora melts into her. Her cold snot smears on Ellen’s jacket, but Ellen crushes her close anyway. The hair finally flows between Ellen’s fingers, brown. Soft.

A brief wind sweeps back the fur. “Do you think the chilla gets chilly?” Bora mumbles.

“Maybe.” The good answer fills her, just like soup.
.

.
Avalon Felice Lee is a writer. She received the Richardson Poetry Prize as well as nominations for a Pushcart Prize and Best Small Fictions 2022. Her words are published in Scapegoat Review, The Boiler, Brain Mill Press, Kissing Dynamite, and elsewhere. Find her on Instagram at @avalonfelicelee.