Pick a Color

by Souvankham Thammavongsa

Genres: Asian American; Cultural Heritage; Family Life

Synopsis

From Giller Prize and O. Henry Award winner Souvankham Thammavongsa comes a revelatory novel about loneliness, love, labor, and class, an intimate and sharply written book following a nail salon owner as she toils away for the privileged clients who don't even know her true name.

“IliveinaworldofSusans.Igotnametagsforeveryonewhoworksatthisnailsalon,andoneveryoneisprintedthename "Susan."

Ning is a retired boxer, but to the customers who visit her nail salon, she is just another worker named Susan. On this summer's day, much like any other, the Susans buff and clip and polish and tweeze. They listen and smile and nod. But beneath this superficial veneer, Ning is a woman of rigorous intellect and profound complexity. A woman enthralled by the intricacy and rhythms of her work, but also haunted by memories of paths not taken and opportunities lost. A woman navigating the complex power dynamics among her fellow Susans, whose greatest fears and desires lie just behind the gossip they exchange.

As the day's work grinds on, the friction between Ning's two identities—as anonymous manicurist and brilliant observer of her own circumstances—will gather electric and crackling force, and at last demand a reckoning with the way the world of privilege looks at a woman like Ning.

Told over a single day with razor-sharp precision and wit, Pick a Color confirms Souvankham Thammavongsa's place as literature's premier chronicler of the immigrant experience, in its myriad, complex, and slyly subversive forms.

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Print pages: 208

Sample

I live in a world of Susans. I got name tags for everyone who works at this nail salon, and on every one is printed the name Susan. So many girls come and go. I don’t want to bother getting new name tags each time. Besides, you know, it’s never difficult to pronounce a name like Susan.

None of our clients notice. They come in and we are ready and set to work. That’s all that matters to them. We all have black shoulder-length hair and wear black T-shirts and black pants. We are, more or less, the same height too.

And, anyway, the clients will never be wrong when they ask for Susan. Dear Susan is always available and at your service! Susan never takes a day off and Susan is never fully booked if it’s you who called for her. Susan, our dear, sweet Susan, always makes time for you.

The Susans and I are friendly, the way you are with someone you work with, with someone you have to see every day. I like to keep my distance, not get too close to any of them. They aren’t family. Even with family, I like to keep my distance.

I did my time.

The brightly lit box we work in is called “Susan’s.” There are others like us scattered around the city, and some are just a few doors down from us. But we’re the best. It’s no lie and I’m not kidding anybody when I say that. We’re the best. I get people in and out, in and out, and so do the Susans.

I’m in charge, and I do what I want. I can do it all. I am the first to arrive and the last one to leave, and I never take a day off. I have got four girls—Mai, Nok, Annie, and a new girl coming, Noi. I know our names sound the same, but because I know what their names mean in our language, they aren’t the same to me. Any one of us can answer the phone and take appointments. Only the ones with more experience can do the manicures and pedicures, facials or waxings. And someone’s always on standby, just a call away.

You can’t fit much in the shop. Five chairs lined up along the pink wall, four stations, and our centerpiece—a white leather chair that leans back and spins. The chair is mostly for facials, waxings, threading, but we can do mani-pedis there too. We usually reserve it for someone who wants the works. Or just to make someone feel special. But they can sit anywhere in the shop, and we can go to them and do it all from there. There can’t be more than three of us, each with a client. Face, hands, feet. Any more than that and I lose track of who is doing what and when.

And I don’t like to lose track, to not know.

My day begins at seven in the morning. When I open my eyes I know exactly what I will see. The ceiling. There’s a crack in there. It has the shape of a single black hair with a split end.

I live in this tiny apartment on the top floor, right above the shop. Hardwood floors, a kitchen and bathroom with a shower and tub. It is just one room, but I don’t need that much space. There used to be some plants, but I didn’t care for them. So I don’t have anything like that around.

I am alone because I want to be. If you want to know—because people like to know stuff like this where I work—I’m not married. And I don’t have kids. I am a family of one. You can be that, you know. A family of one. I could have had what everyone else has, but it didn’t turn out. I am about to turn forty-two. It’s a good age to be. I don’t have to become anything anymore.

It is the middle of August.

I should open a window, but I don’t want the hot air from outside to get in. It already feels like I’m inside a mouth. All wet, so little room, and there’s no place to go but down. I do love it at the shop. I can’t remember the last time I spent any time away from it. I live down there, really, spend more hours there than I do here. Been here, on my own, for just about five years. It’s a solid number, isn’t it. I got my start working for someone else, watching how they ran the whole thing. And before that, I had a whole other life. I was a boxer. My dad got me into it. Convinced I could go to the Olympics or do something like that. I never made it that far, didn’t win anything.

And I hurt a girl real bad one time. Put her in a coma for a few weeks. My coach, Murch, said I was glorious, but that’s not glory to me. Once you’ve been in the ring, you don’t forget it. It doesn’t take much for a memory to strike me. A sweat bead on someone’s forehead, the length of someone’s arm, a bruise. I’m quick to read people, see if I can take them out. And that thing I have been told—protect yourself at all times—I still do it. Just can’t let anybody in. I’m not too hard up on any feelings about leaving the whole thing. Why turn my face toward something that spit me out? Anyway, I aged out of it real quick too. I didn’t know what to do with myself after and kicked around, doing various jobs, living in a bunch of small towns. But I missed the city. The streetcar, the pigeons, the sound of the ambulance.

Maybe my old coach felt sorry for me. Saw how I was spit out into nothing and wanted to help. Told me about one of the guys at the gym. Said the guy had a sister who owned a nail salon and if I needed work she’d give me something to do. I was twenty-five then. For a long time, I answered phones and did just the basics. I shared a room with a bunch of girls who worked at the nail salon. Then one night, Rachel—the guy’s sister—said, “You’re the oldest girl here. I don’t know what you’re thinking, but I don’t want to grow old with you.” I never thought of myself as old. I felt the same as I was when I first started. But I wasn’t outside looking at my own face like she was. The way she was looking at me. I just felt like I wasn’t welcome anymore. She cut my shifts after that. Part-time. And then suddenly there wasn’t work for me. Twelve years I was with her, and I was spit out of that too.

I still had my finger then.

It was winter when I got this place and moved in upstairs. The trees across the street, in the park, looked like upside-down trees. The roots frayed with nowhere to go. I know the feeling, and when I saw that I knew this place had to be mine.

I hear the phone ring downstairs. It means someone out there wants me today.

I turn on the light switch by the entrance. Flick. And it all comes to life. Everything is as I left it. The five chairs, the four stations, the centerpiece.

I walk over to the phone.

See its blinking red light. A message. Before I check that, I move over to face the computer screen and look at the appointments. Who here on the list is new to me, who might be familiar. I think of what we booked them for, and I think of what else they might ask for when they’re here and if we might have time to squeeze that in. This computer is old and it could give out anytime. I keep a logbook right next to it. The book is a black, leather-bound, sturdy thing that holds everything the computer does, but it runs on nothing. I reach out and pat the cover like it is someone’s back.

I look at the screen again to see which girl is on the floor with me.

Is she experienced or might I have to step in and help out, leaving my own client? Will the client I am with be patient and understanding when I am out of service to them for a bit? Will the girl be slow, will the girl and client match, and what to do if there’s a blowup between the two of them? Can she talk?

When I was just starting out, Rachel asked me, “What’s your take on babies?”

“Don’t want them.”

“And affairs.”

“Don’t have them.”

“Married people.”

“Wouldn’t want to be them.”

She laughed at my answers, and said, “Well, in our line of work, you better get used to hearing about babies, affairs, love, married people, weddings. And you better look interested when it comes up.”

“Why?”

“They come for the talk. Talk they can’t get anywhere else. They don’t come back for the nails.”

“How can you stand it?”

“You think that shit is dumb? Beneath you? Is that it? You motherfucker.” Rachel said that affectionately. “This shit is our fucking glory.”

“Don’t you hate that anyone can just walk in here? Expect us to be things?”

“It’s no different than any other job. You decide what you want to be to them.”

I do what I usually do this time of day. Give Mai a call. Go over who we’ve got coming in today. She likes to know that stuff before she gets in so she’s ready to go. She doesn’t even say hello or anything like that. She picks up and just says, “What’ve we got? Who’ve you got coming in today?”

I tell her the pitcher’s booked his usual hour.

“Anyone else? Anyone else?”

I tell her it’s just him. The one guy for the first hour.

“We shouldn’t just do his hands. We always do that. Let’s get his feet done. Pluck his brows. Shave his face. Book him in for next time.”

I nod, and realize she can’t see me.

“You listening to me? You got this?”

“Yeah. I got it.”

I’ve known Mai for what feels like forever. It was always like this. Us, talking. She barks something at me and I take it in. She reminds me a little of Murch. When I first got to his boxing gym, I was little, or itty-bitty, is what he called it. He had his favorites—his boys, his champs.

Thing was, none of them were any good. Were told all their lives they were good. By their mothers, their sisters, their cousins, their girls. Always someone telling them, in their corner. And the minute they didn’t hear that, always another woman telling them.

I didn’t have that.

Murch said to get in there, in the ring, and try anyway, that’s a champ. “I know one when I see one,” he said then.

But he’s got a new itty-bitty now. I see him posting stories of her on Instagram. Her face pops up for five seconds. I don’t know why I even bother to look. Haven’t talked to him in years. It is kind of hard to watch it all unfold in real time. This bright, shiny new thing. Anything she does, like put on a glove, there’s a story about it. When I was his boxer, not a lot of people knew about it. Everything I did, I did in the ring.

“Who else?” Mai asks. “That pitcher bringing in his friend?”

“Won’t know until they get here, but we don’t have him booked.”

“We see him, we book him.”

I stare at the computer screen, and quickly run my eyes down the list of clients who have booked appointments. The baseball guy, the waitress, a bridal shower—will need the e. . .