Family Dinner

My mother the hard boned Chinese woman 23 years in this country without bothering to learn its language buys lean pork ribs special order at the Hop Sang in Chinatown and cooks dinner for an extended family of twenty-five during holidays. Seated loosely around the dining table trying to eat quietly I am scrubbed down to skin and bone, her oldest daughter— spineless, a headless snake a woman grandfather says who should have her tendons lifted out slowly by the steel point of a darning needle until she writhes. To my mother I'm useless but dangerous, capable of swallowing the family whole into my pelvis while I sit waiting for the boyfriend white and forbidden to touch our doorbell.