Troublemakers
In ‘Victory Girl’, Ace Baker offers a stunning narrative mash-up, using poetry and prose to tell a powerful coming-of-age story. It won the 2012 SiWC Storyteller’s Award, and we were delighted to publish it in Issue 4, Autumn 2021.
Enjoy this excerpt!
Victory Girl
by Ace Baker
My name is Chouko (‘butterfly girl’) Takeda, and I was born on August 29th, 1967, in a little town called Slocan, BC, just outside of where the old Japanese internment camp used to be. Even when released, my father, Jiro (‘second son’) remained in that small community because there was still work he could do. He could still teach the children Japanese and Japanese culture. What was left of it, anyway.
I say my father, not because my mother wasn’t living at the time, but because she might as well not have been. She was a shadow, trailing along after him, seeking to meet his every need. She rarely spoke, and when she did, it was in hushed tones that were impossible to hear if I was not the one right next to her, if I was not the one she was speaking to. She crept like water throughout the home, with soft, fluid footsteps that placed her inches from me sometimes before I was even aware she was there.
I learned little of relationships from my parents, but I know now that even if they spoke openly in front of me, it wouldn’t have mattered much.
It seemed that my father was always at the school — repairing furniture, planning lessons, gathering wood for the stoves whose fires would have to last through a long, cold winter. All he did at home was eat and sleep and order Mother around. Until the year when I was seven.
That’s when he started beating her.
HER LEFT EYE
is black, not blue, from the smack
of his hand — is scanning the black
of her room — is soft where a hard
socket should be — and if she presses
hard, tears snake out — is hard to look
at straight on — is the pain made plain
for all to see, even if she can’t — is a
cold stare in a warm room, the bite
of frost and the reek of flesh burning
— is open to the man with the hand —
is closed to the man with the hand —
is locked away and shut up — kept
from desperate scribbles that ask for
forgiveness — is the hurt when all he
wants is a second chance, and every
part of her, even the eye, that eye,
wants to say,
God, yes!
And on and on it went, a hurricane of slaps, more than punches, as I recall. Then apologies after. An earthquake of emotions, in him, in me, almost never in her — at least it seemed that way. He was frustrated with his students’ lack of progress. He was frustrated with their apathy, their willingness to see their culture fade away. He was frustrated with what had become a tiny life in a tiny space in a corner of the globe most Japanese knew nothing about. He thundered about it all behind closed doors, crashing in on the two of us with more and more power, letting us both slip farther and farther away in his wake.
I found ways to escape.
To find out what happens next, pick up your copy of Issue 4, Autumn 2014!
Ace Baker won the Zola Award, placing first in poetry in PNWA’s 2012 writing contest. He has also won the SiWC poetry prize, the Roux Press poetry prize, and ‘Victory Girl’ won the 2012 SiWC Storyteller’s Award for Short Fiction. As for its writing, Ace says, “Imagine that an English / Ukrainian writer originally from a Saskatchewan town with a French name (Bienfait–population 800) would one day pen a story about a Japanese girl in British Columbia and impress a Scottish Canadian writer and a Mexican / English American writer (Jack Whyte and Diana Gabaldon) who judge the annual Storyteller contest.” THAT’S what it means to be a Canadian writer! Connect with him at fighttowrite.com or @writeracebaker on Twitter.
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