Cathy Linh Che

I see my mother, at thirteen, in a village so small it’s never given a name. Monsoon season drying up— steam lifting in full-bodied waves. She chops bắp chuối for the hogs. Her hair dips to the small of her back as if smeared in black and polished to a shine. She wears a deep side-part that splits her hair into two uneven planes. They come to watch her: Americans, Marines, just boys, eighteen or nineteen. With scissor-fingers, they snip the air, point at their helmets and then at her hair. All they want is a small lock— something for a bit of good luck. Days later, my mother is sent to the city for safekeeping. She will return home once, only to be given away to my father. In the pictures, the cake is sweet and round. My mother’s hair which spans the length of her áo dài is long, washed, and uncut.

She opened her mouth and a moose came out, a donkey, and an ox—out of her mouth, years of animal grief. I lead her to the bed. She held my hand and followed. She said,Chết rồi, and like that, the cord was cut, the thread snapped, and the cable that tied my mother to her mother broke. And now her eyes red as a market fish. And now, she dropped like laundry on the bed. The furniture moved toward her, the kitchen knives and spoons, the vibrating spoons—they dragged the tablecloth, the corner tilting in, her mouth a sinkhole. She wanted all of it: the house and the car too, and the flowers she planted, narcissus and hoa mai, which cracked open each spring—the sky, she brought it low until the air was hot and wet and broke into a rain— the torrents like iron ropes you could climb up, only I couldn’t. I was drowning in it. I was swirled in. I leapt into her mouth, her throat, her gut, and stayed inside with the remnants of my former life. I ate the food she ate and drank the milk she drank. I grew until I crowded the furnishings. I edged out her organs, her swollen heart. I grew up and out so large that I became a woman, wearing my mother’s skin.

My father does his own dental work. A power drill and epoxy and steady hands— On Christmas Day, he mistook the Macy’s star for the Viet Cong flag. While watching Forrest Gump, he told me how he too carried a friend. He squeezed around my throat so tight, I thought I’d die with him.

I looked brightness in the eye. The iron, the tang of metal & rust. I held a penny on my tongue. The taste shocked me, its brown-gold sweet. I roamed the field angry & burned asking bitter questions of a gun. Dance is a body’s refusal to die. But, oh, your gone hair. The flame & orange flare. Our forms, our least known selves — barrel, sugar, & stench. Your pleas, looped in writing, the stutter of a body’s broken grammar.

Because the birds sculpted the air with their song — I sent that flash across the sea. Candle in a paper lantern, the flame rose and dipped. • I’ve been hiding from my father. Fog-damp pall over the city. I ink this bruise onto paper. Years ago, in Highland Park, we’d picnic in the backyard. We slept in the living room. I clung to my beautiful mother. Flipped the pillow and pressed against its coolness. I held grudges like tiny fists of sand, then, let go. I kissed the fog and sky and the ocean’s cobalt hue. You. I hadn’t yet met you. • Murky alphabet — I falter the letter, I elide the gaps. If the opalescent dew meant anything, it meant that one day I’d be lifted above my feelings. You’d become less than a feeling, the way every lover I’ve known no longer hurts me. Those old charges detonated. • Here and now, I make room for joy. Birds ribbon the air with their singing. Bird voices riot up. The planes with their hulking engines — they fly too. The jags of each cliff head — Your lips — I uninterrupt. I charley horse and miracle ride your absence. The whipped froth of the ocean. Puddle of salt water, shivering wound. Seaweed, we sing of losses. Cold under this blanket, I wait for my alarm to sing. • I’ve polished this anger and now it’s a knife. I’m hardened as a hunter ornamenting his cave with the bones of the dead. I’m so sick of history dragging behind me. Today, I don’t want to be sad. But my father has retreated into silence and the lashes across his back have not healed, and my mother tells me he could have killed himself that night and we’d be blamed. Call the police, she said. We stood barefoot on the street, listening to him throw things against the garage walls, detonations of only what we could imagine. I hurl stones into the ether. I wash my hands in ink. The lost in the fog body borne of matter, history-less, untethered. Better to be alive and bewildered. At least I can name the thing. To love my father is to love his wounds. In times like these, we present our hurts like old toys we polish up to show each other who we used to be.

The coal-dust hushed parameters of the room. Outside, my mother stitched whole dresses for $3.00 a piece. I slept in a bedroom which faced the street. A cheerleader was killed in a drive-by that year. She died in her sleep. I watched the headlights sweep overhead. * It felt like skin. It did not feel obscene. When that boy tongue-kissed me and wiped his mouth, it was a coming into knowledge. * When my mother whispered, Has anyone touched you there? I had to pick. Alan, I said. I was seven. The training wheels were coming off. Between the couch and wall, the ceiling was white with popcorn bits. The boys stood and watched. I lay there, my eyes open like a doll’s. Someone said,Let me try. He pulled down his pants and rode on top, then abruptly stopped. The boys laughed, said Shhh and stood me up.