“Is much okays. I only afraid sweat make betel nut juice get all smeary.”
“I was afraid of that, too, Chuba. But the stain didn’t run.”
Biff looked as much like a native boy as Chuba did. The tattered shorts and torn shirt that he wore had been dug up by the always astonishing Chuba. Biff’s face, his body, his legs, were stained a light, yellowish brown. This had been done with the juice of betel nuts, mixed and thinned with still another liquid, to lighten the blackish fluid crushed from the betel.
On his feet, Biff wore floppy, torn sandals.
“Only one thing, Biff. Your eyes. Should be more slanty. I fix.”
Chuba took out a piece of charcoal. At the outside corners of each of Biff’s eyes, Chuba deftly applied upward strokes with the charcoal. He stepped back to view his handiwork. Then he went into a gale of laughter.
“You much China boy now. No one could tell difference.”
“Just call me the Chop Suey Kid,” Biff laughed.
“Chop Suey Kid? What’s chop suey?”
“You never heard of it?”