Barbie Chang Read online

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  For my mother, 1941–2015

  The soul is ambitious

  for what is invisible.

  JACK GILBERT, REFUSING HEAVEN

  Contents

  Title Page

  Note to Reader

  Dedication

  Once Barbie Chang Worked

  I

  Barbie Chang Parks

  Barbie Chang’s Father Paid

  Barbie Chang Runs

  Once Barbie Chang Loved

  Barbie Chang Shakes

  Barbie Chang Can’t Stop Watching

  Mr. Darcy Leans

  Is a Windcatcher

  The Prognosis Is Poor

  Barbie Chang Got Her Hair Done

  Mr. Darcy Takes Barbie Chang

  Barbie Chang Loves Evites

  These Men Can Be Collected

  Barbie Chang Has No Intention

  Mr. Darcy Grabs

  Barbie Chang’s Father Calls

  Barbie Chang Waits

  II

  Dear P.

  III

  The Doctor Says Hospice

  Mr. Darcy Comes Again

  Barbie Chang Vows to Quit

  Barbie Chang’s Tears

  There Are Lungs

  Mr. Darcy Grows

  Barbie Chang’s Daughter

  Then Barbie Chang

  Barbie Chang Keeps Watching

  Barbie Chang Wants to Be Someone

  In the End Elizabeth

  Is It Rude for Barbie Chang

  Barbie Chang’s Mother Calls

  Once a Man Said Everything

  Barbie Chang Refuses

  In and Out These Men Go

  Some Days Barbie Chang

  Barbie Chang Should Have Seen

  Barbie Chang is Done

  Barbie Chang Pokes Through

  How Alone Barbie Chang’s Mother

  IV

  Dear P. There will be a circle

  Dear P. Let her let them

  Dear P. Someone will love you

  Dear P. If you are like me

  Dear P. Please forage please do not

  Dear P. One night the power

  Dear P. Now that my heart

  About the Author

  Also by Victoria Chang

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright

  Special Thanks

  BARBIE CHANG

  ONCE BARBIE CHANG WORKED

  Once Barbie Chang worked on a

  street named Wall

  once she sprinkled her yard with

  timed water once

  she wore lanyards in large rooms

  all the chairs

  pointed in the direction of one

  speaker and a podium

  once she stood up at the end to

  leave but everyone

  else stood up and began putting

  their hands together

  and that started her always wanting

  something better

  I

  BARBIE CHANG PARKS

  Barbie Chang parks next to the

  Soroptimist Park

  to part her heart a hippopotamus

  of a heart a potomac

  hurt why unearth her high school her

  children unearth

  everything with their fingers and

  plastic shovels

  chicken fingers and triangles of

  pizza everywhere

  the beautiful thin mothers at school

  form a perfect circle

  the Circle will school her if she lets

  them they have

  something to say doves come out of

  their mouths that

  explode into splinters in the sky

  Barbie Chang knows

  that an outline of a tree can never be

  a tree that the opposite

  of her fate is to not be born when she

  says she wants to be

  visible she means she wants to be

  invisible she fell in

  love with the Circle but she is allergic

  to them unnoticed by

  them a streak of blue light in a blue

  sky she Skypes the

  women at school each day only to learn

  that she is the last

  person on earth the last leaf on the

  last tree there are

  hints of fingerprints on the window

  but no more fingers

  BARBIE CHANG’S FATHER PAID

  Barbie Chang’s father paid her tuition

  by intuition his brain

  now shuns all logic the law is thin with

  rules about love but

  if a person is so edited that they are

  unrecognizable can you

  still love them is it possible to write an

  elegy for someone who

  isn’t dead yet what if a name no longer

  means what it used

  to where does the wind go when it

  is not blowing

  today Barbie Chang packs up his

  clothes again to move him

  to a facility to mute him no longer

  able to travel to Italy or

  the local deli he tells Barbie Chang she

  is demented his dementia

  is self centered it has no more center

  his words have lost

  what they are trying to signify she drives

  away from his house for

  the last time it’s cold outside he stands

  at the front door waving

  saying that he’s fine that he’s put on

  his long distance shirt

  BARBIE CHANG RUNS

  Barbie Chang runs on a treadmill

  pinches her nose to see

  what her mother’s breathing feels like

  there’s a name for it

  pulmonary fibrosis but it is simply

  called suffocating

  simply called dying die will die the

  trouble with being a

  mother is that you too must die no

  more dice to roll the

  last roll was the outcome all board

  games must come to

  some end because of too much

  losing there is always

  someone else doing something else

  everyone always cares

  about someone else other people

  caring about something

  else is called protesting on the news

  protesters come out again

  police officers rotating in a line like

  a pinwheel there are always

  new people dying a man alone on
<
br />   Everest under twenty

  feet of snow who doesn’t know much

  doesn’t care about

  the protesters there’s always a woman

  worrying about other

  women wanting to be loved by other

  women when Barbie

  Chang was younger she thought the

  quiets before the storms

  would last now she knows the storms

  will come in any form at

  any time in the quiets she worries

  about the Circle in the

  storms she thinks nothing about them

  and their fables it is

  April again the storms have come again

  the man under the snow

  digs a small circle around his mouth

  and takes his last breath

  ONCE BARBIE CHANG LOVED

  Once Barbie Chang loved Mr. Darcy

  who had many

  rivals who arrived at her doorstep each

  morning he had so

  little body fat he never floated to the

  surface of the pool

  Barbie Chang watched him disappear

  like a servant maybe

  that’s why she is always thirsty always

  looking for someone

  else to make her worthy Barthes says

  lovers are wedged between two

  tenses of the now and the then it’s too early

  to say the mothers at

  school have ruled her out they are the

  future tense the then

  the Circle they form each day works

  as a ring around a

  planet magnetic and genetic if she sticks

  her head out the window

  as if she is on a train maybe night

  will take her head off

  BARBIE CHANG SHAKES

  Barbie Chang shakes the hand of

  another Smith a former

  beauty queen who still wins friends

  at school sets the

  rules for who is cool and who is not

  Aristotle says that

  desire is a reaching out for the sweet maybe

  Barbie Chang reaches

  her hand into the center to not

  possess but to be

  possessed the Smith appears sweet

  has nice teeth she is

  taken aback that a Chang would be

  so strange and arrange

  her own handshake without being

  asked first they both

  gave birth but the Smith would never

  again say hello to that

  Chang even one named Barbie unless

  she was the one performing

  her children’s surgery no matter how

  likely the Chang was to

  change her time zones instantly clone

  herself to find a new

  home she didn’t yet know that certain

  suburban homes were filled

  with people who wanted to be alone to

  dial certain phones

  Barbie Chang’s phone rings again the

  doctors are calling again

  pretending that they are caring again no

  one but Barbie Chang

  knows her father might have a tumor

  on his thyroid

  he used to put on a tie to get promoted

  right around the carotid

  he still knows his name is Fu but can no

  longer tie his own shoes

  BARBIE CHANG CAN’T STOP WATCHING

  Barbie Chang can’t stop watching

  the Ellen Pao trial

  while the rest of the world wonders

  about a plane crash in

  the Alps helping Ellen Pao is not an

  option Barbie Chang

  opted out but never really severed

  ties with the people in

  the office she kept quiet because by

  speaking she would

  become a victim something projected

  upon like the canvas

  that paint is thrown on she quietly

  packed her bag and

  pulled it through the narrow door some

  say what a whore Ellen

  Pao was to fall in love with a man in the

  office doesn’t she know

  that men like to take off their clothes

  extend their tongues

  to see whose body it will run on some

  thought Ellen Pao was a

  cyst in the office made lists in the office

  of all the wrong things

  someone made a poll about her did she

  or didn’t she was she or

  wasn’t she always the same binary argument

  racism or incompetence is

  there a third possibility that when we

  have seen something so

  many times we no longer recognize it as

  injustice our heads

  are always only one foot away from

  the man’s head in

  the other hotel room but we don’t notice

  because we can’t see him

  around an empty office building dead

  birds lie in the grass new

  ones each day hit the glass each face

  the same expression

  forever frozen in its own form like

  a stamp

  MR. DARCY LEANS

  Mr. Darcy leans into Barbie Chang again

  weans her from his lean

  then leans again his face doesn’t reach

  her face but she can feel

  its heat soldering her to him his shoulder

  lacks flesh but she still

  wishes for it when he says cheese she

  shows her teeth and

  wonders when she will believe in the

  idea of white space again

  when she hangs a child’s picture of

  a bird on the wall

  some of the glitter falls off each day

  why does love feel

  like a slow drip without a puddle a faded

  paddle on the beach

  that the eye cannot see fading an open

  door and the triangle of

  light trying to separate sometimes

  children hold hands

  and spin until one gets so dizzy she

  spins out and away from

  the group it’s impossible to outline

  a beating heart

  IS A WINDCATCHER

  Is a windcatcher still a windcatcher

  if there is no wind

  moving it is Barbie Chang still a

  woman if there is no