Pigeonhole Girls by Chloe Chen

Pigeonhole Girls by Chloe Chen

This house has a cherry tree out front and three lit candles on the sill. He walks kind of clunky, in the way only birds can. His feathers are blacker than the pits of long yan that the girl—his girl—liked to roll around in her mouth, but even in darkness, he feels exposed. The air is humid. A fan whirls to life inside, set to 30-second intervals. 

Outside, the night creatures stir. He hops off the ledge of the second-floor window, his claws catching on takeoff. There’s an old oak in Century Park that he likes to rest on. Flying at night is easiest; it’s just him, the moonlight, and the streetlamps. In the distance, red lights blink from the corners of skyscrapers. Below him, two tipsy teenagers draw figure-eights with their hoverboards. An unbidden laugh, loud and bright, echoes down the path. It sounds like she’s laughing for a long time, but he isn’t sure; there’s a flock of blackbirds perched in hisoak. 

“Ha, ha, ha,” they crow, loud and tinny. 

“Where are you from? You don’t look like you’re,” the leader pauses for a moment, searching. “Made-in-China.”

“Ha, ha, ha,” they chorus. 

He turns his beak to the side, embarrassed. “I am a Chinese Blackbird, like you. I’ve been here my whole life, and you’re in my tree.” 

Silence follows. Then, “We’re not dogs. You have some nerve, threatening to kick a whole flock out.” He bristles at the aggression but feels the prickling sensation of a hundred eyes on his nape, waiting. Coward, he curses. Now I’ve really done it. He’s got nowhere to crash for the night.

He flies until the three magenta spheres of the Shanghai Pearl Tower tower above him. There are no night creatures here. Instead, teenagers stumble out of bars, swinging digicams around on their wrists, all pretenses lost when they think no one’s watching. He likes people. They leave wrappers everywhere; he feels like a predator prowling after crumbs, hidden in the shadows of long coats. 

At dawn, he flies over the Huangpu Bridge. He follows the red taillight of a black Mercedes, looping once before watching the car speed away. The streetlamp he lands on is scalding hot, sending him flailing to a nearby cluster of shikumen houses. The buildings are drooping from weariness; the tiles are browner than a moldy spot on a spoiled mandarin. Vines zigzag up partially rotten posts. Dew condenses on the serrated tips of dark green leaves. He stretches for a sip—

“That’s one weird ass looking bird.”

He snaps up at the drawl. Stepping back from the eave, he inches around the corner, his torso heavy from flying too early. Two yellow eyes meet his. Its fur is matted black and crusted with thin twigs. Crooked whiskers sprout haphazardly from its nose. 

“You’re one ugly cat,” he parrots. The cat scoffs, but it stays docile. Interspecies communication is rare, even for urbanites like him; most Shanghainese birds don’t even speak to anything outside the flock. Usually, he doesn’t dwell on his loneliness. Bantering with a cat, on the other hand, must mean there’s a rock bottom at the bottom of the first rock.

“Your name should be Mister Hat,” it says. “In honor of your gigantanormous forehead.” The cat laughs at its own joke.

“How’d you know I don’t have a name?” 

“You don’t have a flock,” the cat says. “Birds get their names from their friends, no?” 

“We’re not friends—”

“Aren’t we now?”

The cat grins cheekily and scampers off to the next roof, tail pointing skyward. Mister Hat, he repeats to himself. Mister Hat, like some noble. The name tastes oddly like persimmon.

Dad,

I’ve never met so many white people in one place. I don’t know how to talk to them. Two days ago, someone asked me if I understood English. They spoke really slowly, like “Doo you speeek Engliiiish?” I blurted something random and they were all, “Pardon, what?” This is what three years of lockdown does. I miss the QR codes back home. I don’t think I’ve spoken to a cashier since 2019. Anyways, I’ve just moved into my dorm, but my roommate isn’t here yet. I’m scared. What if she’s messy? You know I can’t deal with the disorganized type.

Love,
Emmy

Her legal name is Emily, but she likes the way “I go by Emmy” rolls off her tongue. She always adds that her “official name” is Emily, not some Chinese name. “It’s on my passport,” she clarifies. “My Canadian passport.” Back in Shanghai, she was too foreign (derogatory) because she spoke English to her Chinese parents and was friends with foreigners (nonderogatory). She finds her peace in how curious Americans are. She’s proud that her English is flawlessly American, smooth like her hair, raven-black to the ends. 

Gracie’s flight was delayed until Monday morning. “So sorry,” she’d texted. “Newark is such a bitch sometimes.” Gracie is Emmy’s to-be-roommate. Everything Emmy knows about Gracie is in her Instagram bio, which just reads “nj | va” in fancy font. Emmy notices that the girls from last year scratched their names into the bed post. She wonders what Gracie’s like, if they’ll carve their names into the soft wood, too. 

Gracie arrives in a whirlwind of suitcases, stuffed animals, and bitten-off apologies. She stands in the doorway, backlit by the hallway and heaving. Gracie smiles widely without hesitation—the kind of girl that makes you think, God, she’s unreal.

“I’m gonna grab the rest of my stuff,” Gracie says. She swings back out the doorway and leaves Emmy crisscrossed on the floor, her smile still taking shape.

Dad, 

I know it’s only been a day (I’m not saying that I want to go home), but I finally met my roommate! Her name’s Gracie, and she’s from New Jersey. She is so pretty. I haven’t

“Watchu doing?” the girl next to Emmy whispers. “Nothing,” Emmy says too quickly, and shoves her phone under her thigh. 

Gracie is talking to a pigeon when Emmy keys into her dorm room. “Look at this lil’ guy,” she says. “He was sitting on the windowsill when I got back, all sad and shit.” Gracie purses her lips at the pigeon and beckons Emmy over. Suddenly, Emmy is faced with the full force of Gracie’s attention, her eyes up close, rich auburn in the afternoon rays. “Let’s name him Scarf,” Emmy tries. Gracie grabs her palms and breathes, “That’s so perfect.” 

They spent the next hour introducing their stuffed animals to each other. Well, Emmy didn’t have any, so she told Gracie exaggerated tales of the blackbird she once knew. How it looked a little different and always ate the ripest cherries first, perched by her desk as she worked on Macbeth. They set up love interests and drew a love pentagon (it doesn’t have to be a triangle, Emmy), and Emmy wasn’t frightened by how juvenile all of it was, but rather by how much she enjoyed being a child again. She had come to the States alone, armed with nothing but a good vocabulary, a Bank of America credit card, and a dream school—Harvard. So what if you’re a romantic, Gracie had said, pancaked on the cold floor. Who cares? You can be anyone here. You think? Emmy had asked, so quietly she almost wished Gracie didn’t hear her. Yes, Gracie said, turning to look at Emmy, her face squashed into her elbow. They were only inches apart. Emmy smiled, all crooked teeth and chapped lips, for the first time since she’d landed at IAD.

At nine, she’s tipsy from social interaction, one arm hanging off Gracie’s shoulder and the other gesticulating wildly. Her next laugh slips out too loudly, then dies halfway. She pauses mid-step. “I want a boyfriend,” she tells Gracie. 

“It’s been one day, Emmy.” She pushes Emmy’s hand off her shoulder and does a couple of twirls on the gravel, arms swinging out. “Besides, don’t you have some Canadian guy back home?” Gracie turns to look at her, face partially illuminated by the moonlight. “We both know he’s not real,” Emmy jokes. Gracie laughs brighter than the crescent moon. You’re prettier at night, Emmy wants to say.

That night, Emmy dreams of the blackbird that used to perch by her window, a long yan pit bulging out of its cheek. They used to share long chats when she was asleep—Emmy about school, the bird about his oak tree. She’d never thought to tell it that she’d left for good.  

In seven days, Mister Hat and the cat had traversed most of Puxi. They spent the first afternoon people-watching on an awning above Tianzifang. The cat had lectured him on how tourists built this village on stereotypes of Chinese culture, and where exactly to look for remnants of the French Concession. “This area isn’t pure anymore,” the cat said bitterly. “Pudong isn’t either. It’s all glass panels and faux-brutalist trash.” Mister Hat had thought about the cherry tree in the front yard of that house, a skyscraper peeking through its rotten branches. 

“How old are you?” he’d asked. The cat sat back on its haunches and whacked its tail on the tarp. Whap whap whap. “This is my eighth life,” it sighed. The alone went unsaid. Mister Hat was old friends with this tension, so quintessentially Shanghai; the cat didn’t need to say much.

They’re bathing in the Yuyuan ponds when a flock bursts into view.

“Ha, ha, ha,” they chorus, barely visible in the night. The water around Mister Hat ripples out in tiny waves. He dips his head in the cool water without thinking much about it. 

In the nothingness, he revisits the past week. Unprompted history lessons on the French. Debating strawberryversus hawthorn tanghulu and stealing sticks straight from the stand, riding the sunset on the cat’s back. It was friendship, only confined to the ground. Mister Hat was still a bird that longed for a family of his own; he could not reconcile his new friend with his need for a real community, one that swarmed the night sky in droves. And, he rationalized, if the cat had lived seven earlier lives comforted by its own embrace, there was no need for him. He’s—

Mister Hat sputters from the sudden jerk upward, water pushing away. The canines lodged in his nape retract. When he looks up, the blackbirds are receding behind the trees. The cat blinks owlishly, once, twice. Its pupils are big in the dim glow of LEDs, and it looks like an alien. The cat and his tirades about colonialism, his pretentiousness, the underlying distrust—he doesn’t understand that world.

“I want to go home,” Mister Hat says. He lets the back to Pudong hang between them. The silence is sticky like tar between his feathers, rooting him there where the cat stares. A beat passes, and the chance is gone. He catches the edge of a predator in the cat’s eyes—at least he thinks—and his survival instincts kick into action before his mind can.

“You’re a goddamned coward, Mister Hat,” the cat says to the sky.

“Can you write your name in Chinese?” Gracie asks one morning. Emmy does, slowly, and stutters on the last stroke. Gracie pockets the neon Post-it note.

It’s snowing today. Fat flakes gather on the windowsill, little ephemeral things that vanish when Emmy presses her finger against them. She wonders if their resident pigeon is warm. She knows that Scarf always comes after dark for the sunflower seeds Gracie leaves out. Gracie’s like that. Accommodating to everything, selfless to a fault, yet inexplicably messy. There’s yarn in Emmy’s closet and she finds the hooks (they’re stitchmarkers, Emmy) in her shoes. She leaves open bags of kettle chips on the carpet. Her bed is permanently unmade; most of her throw pillows live on the floor. Emmy is mostly okay with it. In the orange glow of their sunset lamp, it feels like home. 

The other blackbirds speak in stilted one-syllable answers. No, not Pudong. Yes, go west. Mister Hat looks down sporadically in hopes of glimpsing a black cat on the prowl, but it never appears. When he falls behind in formation, he considers turning south.

Last night, the flock decided to colonize a cargo ship.

This morning, Mister Hat wakes up to a silent deck and salt-crusted feathers. 

Alexandria, Virginia
6:47 p.m. EST

“A new pigeon,” Emmy calls excitedly. Gracie rushes over, paint splattered high on her forearms. She’s still holding the wet palette, which drips steadily onto their carpet. 

“I’ve never seen a black pigeon before,” Gracie says.

“It looks like the one from back home,” Emmy says. Gracie snorts out a sarcastic really and rushes to find her sunflower seeds. Emmy observes the duo, perched side by side like brothers in the frigid snow. She has the sudden thought to buy long yan—longan, the Americans call it—for $6.99 a pound on Amazon, last time she checked. 

Talk to me, she urges. Gracie will be so impressed.

“You grew up,” the new pigeon says, in perfect English.

Emmy gasps. Gracie coos.

Dear Dad,

I want you to know this.

You’ve always given love as a wage — something that is earned by diligence and docked by failure — but here I’ve found both love and diligence in a girl, and she gives it freely.

I know you’ve already stopped reading. Forget it. Your disappointment has always traversed oceans on wings of its own.

I’ll still love her, though, so long as she stays Gracie. How do you know it’s not some stupid phase? Well, I don’t know. But if this isn’t love, I don’t want to keep searching.

Still, I have one more request: take care of the cherry tree while I’m away, dad. God forbid my teenage angst decay our home.

* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright Chloe Chen 2025

Image Source: Dey at Fictom.com