Honey Girl Read online

  Yes, Grace thinks. They are.

  “Tonight,” Yuki continues, “I had a listener write in about sirens. So that’s what I’m going to talk about. Sirens.”

  Somewhere in the distance, a truck rumbles by. It nears dawn, and things begin to creak awake.

  “Sirens started as a Greek myth,” Yuki says. “It’s a woman, well, half woman, half bird. It’s a creature who rested and waited and preyed upon the deep sea, whose great big lungs created sounds that lured in those who dared breach the blue. These creatures lured people under the water so sweetly they didn’t even feel the burn of salt water in their chests, filling them up from the inside out.

  “But this is not,” she says, “just about the origins of sirens. It is about the evolution of sirens, the modern-day existence of sirens and the things used to lure us in.”

  She pauses, and her captive audience waits.

  “I think they must be lonely,” Yuki says. “I think anything that waits and sings from the very bottom, the very pit of their stomach, is a very lonely creature indeed.” The dead air wouldn’t work on any other radio show, but for Yuki, it becomes space to absorb her words.

  “And I think,” she continues, “that those who venture, traveling through the water toward their song, must be very lonely, too. I think lonely creatures ache for each other because who else can understand but someone who feels the same dark, black abyss?”

  Who else, Grace wonders, can understand loneliness if not someone who sits in solitude all their own?

  “I think there must be a different song for each person. I think a siren must peer into the very soul of a lonely creature to understand what brings them closer. What song makes lonely creatures step further, toes then ankles then knees and deeper, until they are nothing but a sinking thing that a song can no longer reach?

  “I have a question for all the lonely creatures out there,” Yuki says near the end of her show. Grace doesn’t know where the time has gone. Yuki’s tale of sirens is like its own song that Grace is unable to pull away from. With her two best friends, she feels like their grip on her hands is the only thing keeping her steady.

  “My question to all the lonely creatures out there is, who is your siren? Who is your fellow lonely creature who sees into the very core of you and knows which song to sing? What song do they sing for you, and do you follow? What would happen if you did?

  “We are all lonely creatures in our own way,” Yuki admits. “That’s where I’ll end tonight. I have one last thing. If you’ve been following along, you guys will know I’m hoping there is someone out there that’s listening. Someone who glows like bee honey and has golden hair that spreads out when she’s sleeping, like a halo. Someone who shares a key with me, perhaps a key to the messy, ridiculous core of me, but me, nonetheless.”

  Grace’s breath hitches. Yuki is talking to her. She is the bee honey. She reaches a hand to the key under her shirt. Yuki is talking about Grace, to Grace, lonely creature to lonely creature.

  “If you’re out there, Honey Girl, I am singing you a song. It’s a good song. It won’t lure you to the depths of the ocean. It’s a song that leads you just to me, I think, if you’re listening. This has been Are You There?, and I am Yuki. Sleep tight, everyone.”

  Six

  Before, Grace had been afraid to hope for the best about her champagne-fizz wedding. The girl who clung to her hand and kissed her gently and climbed through flower bushes to click a lock into place may not have matched her memory. But hearing Yuki’s voice, hearing her call for a girl that glows like bee honey and talk so intimately about loneliness, sparks something brave and warm in Grace.

  She finds herself hoping, desperately and passionately, for this to be good. For Yuki to be good.

  She has a phone number Agnes found somehow and tries to find the courage to press Dial.

  “What are you doing?” Meera asks, and Grace jolts from her thoughts.

  “I’m still on break,” she says. She holds her phone up to her chest, suddenly possessive. “I have, like, fifteen more minutes.”

  Meera blinks. “Relax,” she says. “Not even Baba cares if you go over your break. You’re his favorite.” She squeezes into the space where Grace is hiding. “Whatcha doing?” she asks again.

  Grace exhales. She still has to tell Meera and Raj. Soon. But she wants to call Yuki first.

  “I have to make a phone call,” she says. “It’s mildly terrifying, and not for the normal ‘I have to talk on the phone’ reasons.”

  Meera frowns. “Is it for a job?”

  Grace sighs. “Don’t tell anyone this,” she says. “But I got an email from a recruiter. He said my research seemed impressive.” Grace’s initial joy at the interest had quickly turned sour as she kept reading. She deleted the email as soon as she was done, but it still leaves her bitter and angry. “He also had some questions about my listed membership with the Black STEM Group and the queer group I started in the astronomy doctorate program.” She shakes her head. “I’m trying not to think about jobs right now.”

  “You know they’re full of shit, right?” Meera asks. She wraps an arm around Grace. “You deserve better than some place that doesn’t want you in all your glory.”

  Grace turns her head so she can fully wrap herself in Meera’s hug. “Thank you,” she mutters into her kurti. Today the fabric is sun yellow and orange with stripes of green. It makes her look like summer. “Same goes for you. You’re going to be a dope-ass psychologist one day.”

  “I know,” Meera says, smiling. “Okay, so it’s not a job that has you anxious right now.” She traces the inflamed nail imprints in Grace’s palms. “What is it?”

  Sirens, Grace thinks. Girls who stand below the surface to sing you a song. They have flowers behind their ears. Their eyes are dark. They know you, the deepest part of you.

  She doesn’t get to answer before her phone buzzes with a text.

  Agnes

  12:47 p.m.

  did you do it

  Agnes

  12:47 p.m.

  who am i kidding

  of course you didn’t

  Agnes

  12:48 p.m.

  DO IT

  “Supportive as ever,” Meera says, reading the texts. She untangles herself, tidying up the errant strands loose from her braid. “I’ll cover for you, okay? Do the scary phone thing.”

  “You don’t even know what it is,” Grace says. She frowns as Meera moves to leave. Maybe it would be easier with someone here, someone to hold her hand and coax the words up from the pit of her stomach.

  “I have tact sometimes.” Meera shrugs. “Besides, the Grace Porter I know isn’t afraid of anything. I’m giving you some time to get your shit together before I bombard you with more questions. See how nice I am?”

  “A saint,” Grace tells her, only kidding a little. “Thanks, M.”

  Meera sticks her tongue out, and the kitchen door swings shut behind her.

  The Grace Porter I know isn’t afraid of anything.

  The Grace Porter Grace knows is afraid of many things. She is afraid of disappointing people. She is afraid of straying from her carefully curated life plan. She is afraid of being a brown, gold, bee-honey lesbian in an academic industry all too willing to overlook the parts of her that don’t make sense to them. She is afraid of hearing her rosebud girl on the other end of her phone.

  But she is a Porter, and Porters do what needs to be done. She dials.

  Someone answers, first with an unsure breath and then with a hesitant, “Hello?” and Grace is tongue-tied.

  “Hello?” Yuki’s voice turns wary and impatient and she says, “Anybody there?”

  Grace takes a deep breath, like one does before jumping into the water. “Hello,” she says. “This is Grace Porter.”

  A silence. “Hi, Grace Porter. Do I know you?”

&nbs
p; “You do,” Grace says. Her fingers clench around her phone. “We, um. We got married in Las Vegas?”

  “Fuck,” Yuki says under her breath. “Hold on, okay? Jesus, just hold on. I thought you were a fucking bill collector, and I was ready to scam my way into debt forgiveness. I’m at work. Hold on.”

  Grace holds on and hears the background noise of what sounds like a restaurant. There’s the faint buzz of a crowd, the clink of dishes and kitchen timers that remind Grace of the ones at the tea room.

  “Can you cover for me?” Yuki says to someone. “For like fifteen minutes. Yeah, I need that long, Christ.” A door creaks, and there’s the noise from outside. Wind and car horns and foot traffic. “New Yorkers,” Yuki mutters. “You don’t live here, right?”

  Grace blinks. “No,” she says, settling into the crook of her little corner. “I live in Portland. I don’t really think it’s the same.”

  “It sounds like a dream,” Yuki says, a little laugh catching over the line. “So, Grace Porter. I’m guessing you know my name?”

  Grace nods and remembers Yuki can’t actually see her. “Yeah. Yes. I, um, I looked up your show. Your radio show.”

  Yuki whines. “That’s humiliating,” she says. “I left you that note and my business card like a total asshole. I don’t even know why I have business cards. I think there might have been a discount.”

  Out front, Meera and Baba Vihaan laugh. There’s the faint clank of teacups against saucers, and for a moment it’s like Grace and Yuki are in the same space. They are in the same kitchen with the same plates clinking against each other.

  “It was cute,” she says quietly. “It was. No one’s ever done that for me.”

  “What?” Yuki asks. “Nobody’s ever made a total ass of themselves the morning after they got married to you in Vegas?”

  “Nope,” she says. “You’re the first.”

  Yuki makes a satisfied little noise. “Congratulations,” she says. “You married an innovator.”

  It’s quiet. Maybe it’s that word. Married, said aloud in an alleyway, in a deserted kitchen, between two coasts. Married. It makes her laugh. She laughs like she has buzzing fireflies tickling her ribs.

  “What?” Yuki demands. She sounds so petulant. “What’s so funny?”

  Grace smiles. “Married,” she says lightly. “I mean. That happened. What the fuck?”

  “What the fuck?” Yuki agrees. “I came home, and it felt like—” She pauses here, and in the stillness, Grace catches dozens of words unsaid.

  “What?” Grace asks, suddenly desperate to be let into Yuki’s thoughts.

  “It felt like a dream,” Yuki confesses quietly. “It felt like one of the stories I talk about on my show, you know? Like, there’s no way I married this beautiful girl and was so fantastically happy, and it was real.”

  “It felt like that for me, too,” Grace tells her, like a secret. “In my head you—”

  “Tell me,” Yuki presses.

  “You bloomed,” Grace says. “In my head you bloomed like the flowers that were stuck in my hair. You had—you had rosebuds, growing on your cheeks, you know? That’s all I could think about. The girl who bloomed roses. The girl who held my hand and danced with me and—”

  “Got married to you,” Yuki finishes. “That was mad beautiful, Grace Porter. I almost hate to tell you the roses you’re imagining were probably just the Asian flush. Not half as romantic.”

  Grace laughs. “That makes you more real and less like the champagne-bubble girl in my head.”

  “Champagne-bubble girl,” Yuki says softly. “Cute. You were Honey Girl in mine. When I pictured you, it was just honey, everywhere. I woke up next to you, and I swear it was like buzzing bees. That sounds ridiculous.”

  “A little,” Grace admits, and Yuki lets out an indignant “Hey.” “It was just my hair,” she says, separating her curls with careful fingers. “It’s not blonde, not brown. It’s gold,” she says. “My mom used to say the sun took a liking to me.”

  Yuki hums, and Grace relaxes. “Sounds like something moms say,” she answers. “Do you think she was right?”

  “About what?”

  “The sun,” Yuki says impatiently. “Do you think it took a liking to you?”

  “No more than anyone else,” Grace says.

  There’s shuffling and noise again, like Yuki’s opened the door back to the real world. “I don’t know, Grace Porter. It would be nice to be married to someone like that.” Her voice goes muffled. “Yeah, yeah, I know it was longer than I said. Hold on a goddamn minute.”

  “Someone like what?” Grace asks, terrified suddenly that if they hang up, it will be for good.

  “Chosen by the sun,” Yuki says, like it’s the simplest thing in the world. “Honey gold, melted sweet under the summer sun. Real poetic, you know? Oh my God, I said I’m coming.”

  “Yes,” Grace says, listening to Yuki move farther and farther away. “That does sound nice.”

  “You’ll do for now,” Yuki tells her. “Listen, I have to get back to work. Can I—can I call you? Next time?”

  Grace lets out a breath, and in it, the fear begins to dissolve.

  “You can call me,” she says. “We can take turns.”

  “Marriage is all about compromise. I gotta go.”

  “Okay.” Grace closes her eyes. “I’ll talk to you soon?”

  “Isn’t that what I said?” Yuki teases. “I’m hanging up now. We can’t be one of those couples that banter instead of hanging up.”

  “We’re a couple?”

  “We’re married,” Yuki says, and the word starts to sound familiar. “And I’m hanging up, Grace Porter.”

  “I’m hanging up, too, Yuki Yamamoto.”

  “That’s cute,” Yuki says. “Is that going to be our thing?”

  “This is starting to sound like banter,” Grace points out.

  Yuki hangs up.

  Grace saves the number in her phone.

  * * *

  “Come home with me,” Grace says to Raj and Meera after their shift.

  Ximena and Agnes are out on one of their totally not-a-date dates, so Grace has the apartment to herself. Baba Vihaan lets them go early. Raj piggybacks Meera on the walk home, and they all tumble into Grace’s bed and put on the comfy clothes they keep in a drawer for nights like this.

  “What’s up, Gracie?” Raj asks. His hair has been put into a neat bun on top of his head, and the face mask they concocted in the kitchen cracks when he speaks. “Not that I don’t love sleepovers with you two.”

  Meera curls up on Grace’s lap, buried under the covers. “I’m sensing some sarcasm there, Rajesh,” she murmurs. “Some big brother you are.”

  Grace reaches out for both of them. They are her family, the ones she found and made and kept. “I want you to listen to something with me,” she says, heart pounding too fast in her chest. “And you have to—you have to promise you won’t be mad.”

  “I promise,” Meera says immediately.

  Raj squints. “Why would we be mad?”

  “Raj.”

  He shuts his eyes and leans back against the pillows. “I’m not promising,” he says. “But I will try to keep an open mind. I am filled with empathy and compassion and have never judged another person in my life. Let’s hear it.”

  Meera pinches him, but he stays stubbornly still.

  Grace sighs and glances at the time on her laptop. She felt brave when she asked them over. She felt in control. Now she feels pink-raw and vulnerable.

  She exhales and watches the little audio player load on her computer. “Okay,” she says. “Okay.”

  A pause, and then, there it is: Yuki’s voice, quiet and spooky and a lonely, lost creature.

  “Hello, my fellow late-nighters,” she says. “I want to say hello to a special late-nighter in particular,
one that I hope is listening. In fact, she is the one that inspired me for tonight’s show. Are you there?”

  Grace grabs Meera’s hand. Raj leans closer, intrigued. Above them, Grace’s glow-in-the-dark stars shine neon green and alien. Grace has counted them hundreds of times, trying to follow them to sleep, but tonight she follows them to a voice of a girl who transports her somewhere new and terrifying.

  “If you’re listening, Honey Girl, this is for you, okay? You said something to me. Or, actually, your mother said something to you. She said the sunlight was drawn to you. She said the sunlight loved you so much it had to infuse some of itself in you where everyone could see, and that’s why your hair burns gold and melts into the bedsheets like bee honey.”

  Grace holds her breath. One, two, three, four. Exhale.

  “I asked you,” Yuki says quietly to her audience, to Grace, “I asked you if you thought it was true, and you said you didn’t think the sun favored you more than anybody else. Well, I think that’s bullshit. I think that maybe your mother knew the sun was watching when you were born. I think the sun saw something in you, something bright all its own, and it picked you. It dripped sunrays from the top of your scalp to the very ends of your hair, and it made you fucking glow. I saw it. I saw you glow, and I—”

  Yuki pauses, her frantic, almost angry tone tumbling to a stop.

  It is so quiet. Grace does not breathe. Raj and Meera do not breathe.

  “I was scared,” Yuki says finally. “And I’m scared now, saying this to you over a local Brooklyn airwave. But you glowed, and I was drawn to it. You were warm, like a sunrise, and it killed me to leave the bed with you in it. You are orange and pink and brown-gold, and your mother was right, and you don’t even know.

  “I wonder,” Yuki asks quietly, “do you ever get scared like I do? Do you ever wonder how things will come together, and how things will fall apart? It seems bizarre to wonder so deeply about a stranger, but I have half of you in the ring on my finger, so I don’t think you are a stranger at all. I think you are a favored child of the sun, like your mother said. I think maybe she watched as the sun sent its blessing down to you. I think maybe she saw, over the years, as the rays grew and multiplied, until you were Medusa in your own right. There were not snakes that sprouted from your head, but sunlight like fire. But gold.