by K-Ming Chang
In a past life, Ben’s mother sold one of her ovaries when she was a teenager, after a river molested her city and she needed money to rebuild her house. If Ben and I offered our hands, kneading her mother’s neck for an hour first, she’d let us ask her about it. She’d worm out of her skirt to show us: The scar made her loss legible to us, an indented hyphen three inches to the left of her belly button. Ben stroked the blue scar like a bird, as if she could calm it and coax it into her hands. What Ben wanted was to hold our hurts for us. She once told me a bruise was scratch-and-sniff. She scratched the one on my knee and sniffed it and said, Sweet.
Inside the shack, Ben and her brother pretended they lived in a bomb shelter: Outside was a war they could win solely by surviving. When we played together, the bunk bed was our only bunker and every cockroach was a landmine. If I stepped on one, the penalty was death. Ben wore the uniform of a soldier, white pajamas that turned fog-thin with her body heat. I dressed in the uniform of a casualty, a masking-tape X over my heart, a bullet hole penned into my neck. We argued what color it should be: Ben’s brother said red, because of blood. Ben said black, because that’s the color of the hole itself. I wanted to say neither, but I was already dead.
Ben’s birdcage was neutral territory. She placed it on the floor in the center of the shed, and whenever one of us placed our palm on it, we were safe for a maximum of ten seconds. I was the coward that always ran to the cage, placing both palms on its domed top while Ben and her brother waited on either side of me. They counted, and when I dropped my hands from the cage they tackled me at the same time. They stacked on top of me, one sitting on my chest and the other holding down my feet, promising to give me a good death, promising to bury all my bones as neighbors.
Beg us to let you go, Ben said. Her hands corseted my ankles, her thumb stroking the bone.
Let me go, I said, meaning don’t.
* * *
_
The hole in Ben’s lot doubled its depth. I asked Ben if we could fill it up with water and convert it into a swimming pool, maybe even host the Olympics, but Ben said that swimming pools were square and this one was round, an eye socket for the sun. We asked Ben’s father why the hole was getting deeper while no house was rising out of it, but he never answered. He drank beer at his drafting table and then pissed into the same bottle. Sometimes he reached down for the bottle an hour later, forgetting what it was full of. We laughed when he spat the piss out, the wall a mosaic of stains.
Ben and I stood on the gnawed edges of the hole and looked down into its cavity, its ribs: Inside the hole were discarded two-by-fours. One time we saw Ben’s father stand here at the edge and pee into the hole, competing with the sky to see whose rain reached the deepest roots. Circling its perimeter, I told Ben the house didn’t seem any closer to done. The hole was just deepening because her father didn’t know what else to do, and down is the only direction that doesn’t require any imagining. She slapped me, her palm spiked with sweat.
I touched my face with my fingertips, the skin flaring. Ben stepped back from me and looked at her hand like it was a hornet, like she was the one stung by it. We stood apart, facing each other. The hole laid behind her like a shadow, and for a second I wondered if that was the true shape of her.
Ben said I shouldn’t talk about other people’s fathers when my own was a myth, a story gone so sour that nobody wanted to tell it. My tail descended to defend me, swinging between my legs. I said she didn’t know anything about my father or what I’d done to him. My many mothers and what I’d do for them. Mothers ago, I was a beast. I stalked whole countries to eat. I plotted their shores with my teeth. Ben said I should stop lying. Before she could say anything else, my tail whipped forward, shifting me onto my toes. I obeyed its weight and moved toward her, pushing Ben with both my hands.
Ben stumbled and went backward into the hole, landing on the pyre of two-by-fours. The breath tore out of her mouth. I didn’t remember calling down to her, but Ben said I did, and that’s how her father heard and brought his ladder, bringing Ben back up in a mulch sack. He laid her on the soil and slapped her face till her eyes came on again. I watched while my tail retracted, curled and beating at my lower back.
That week, I stood again at the hem of the hole and begged her to push me in. Do it, I said. Ben wore a bandage around her ribs to make sure the bones clasped back together in the correct place. I’d watched her father cut it from a bedsheet. I spoke with my back to her, waiting for her hands to decide I was right, that I was a species she didn’t recognize. But she never did it. When I turned around, her bandage was undone and whipping the air like a wing. I couldn’t look at her face. Behind her, the sky was blue because I’d bruised it. Her voice had salt in it, a rasp I’d never heard before. The word I wanted was forgiven, but she never said it.
I’d dreamed once of yanking the key off her neck, giving her my hands to wear instead. A bruise-necklace around her throat. I knew how to make jewelry of my cruelty. Each of my knuckles was named after an aunt I had never known, and Ben touched each one to her cheek. How many of me she had yet to meet.
She knotted herself to the ground, fought her own stillness. The desire to see me hurt was defeated by the desire to not give me what I wanted. When she didn’t push me, it felt more like punishment than forgiveness.
She pulled us both away from the hole and into the shade of the shed. Taking my wrists in her hands, I thought for a second she might twist them into wicks, bring me to my knees. I’d worship whatever pain she gave me. I’d be the saint of injury. But instead, she rubbed her lips against my knuckles, soaping them with her tongue. When she leaned forward, mending my lips to hers, I thought of tonguing out all her teeth and keeping them alive in my cheek, seeds of her mouth I could spit out and plant later.
Her hand speared down my waistband, wrapped fast around my tail. I tensed, told her to let go. You once told me you didn’t want it, Ben said, twisting my tail until the bone creaked. She said it looked like things had changed: Now I needed it. I could take it from you. Right now, if you wanted me to. I shook my head, afraid if I spoke she’d sprain my tail.
I knew it, Ben said, letting go. She laughed. Withdrawing her hand, she wiped it against her shirt hem. You don’t really want to get rid of it. You love it. I asked her what was wrong with that: My tail and I were married at the marrow. I knew now how to wield it.
Ben shook her head and said, Who inside you am I speaking to? Who? She took a step toward me, standing so close I could see a dried flake of spit on her chin. I licked it without thinking, my tongue flitting across her skin. When she didn’t swat me away, I leaned toward her, traced her jawbone with my lips. Slid my mouth up and down the slope of the bone like playing a harmonica, a song humming out of her.
We crab-walked to her bunk bed. No one was home but the light coming in through the window-hole. We took off our shirts and I shut my eyes to the room, my hands on the back her neck. Her tongue towed its heat across my belly. She straddled me, lifting my arms and licking the pits, the black patch of hair where sweat dewed, where I smelled most like myself. We butted mouths, backed up, laughed. I propped myself up on my elbows and kissed along the slant of her rib. Her hands around my breasts like unbroken bread.
The key dangled from her neck and hung above me, lowering into my mouth. I took it on my tongue and suckled it, the key’s teeth a copy of my own. When she sat up, the key jerked out of my mouth and caught my upper lip like a fishhook, lancing it open. A key, she said, looking down at me. The key swung between us, gilded with spit and lip-blood. Your tail, Ben said. I think it’s a key.
* * *
_
Ben and I squatted in my backyard. All holes, she said, just need a key. I tried to follow her, but my mind was still on her mouth.
Ben crouched over the one in the center, the 口. Where does this one go? she said, and I said I didn’t know. Like all bodies, they didn’
t lead anywhere except inside themselves. She turned her back to the hole and squatted over it like she was taking a shit, demonstrating what she wanted me to do. She wanted me to feed my tail to the hole, to slide it in like a key. I pulled down my pants and dangled my tail in. The hole healed around my tail, soil shifting as it swallowed me. When the hole opened its mouth again, I fell forward onto my knees.
Stand vigil, Ben said. Hours after the sun was gone, the hole spoke its first word. I listened for its hum. The 口 squinted, spat out something white and tongue-slimed. Tugging it loose, I flipped it in my hands. It was skin, wet from being born, poreless and soft. Both sides of it were dyed with words. Inside the house, I turned on the kitchen light and held the hide to my face, deciphering the dark between each word.
A few of the fragments were written in characters, but the only one I recognized was my mother’s maiden name. The rest were written in an alphabet. It was my handwriting, my way of stringing letters neat as beads, but the words weren’t mine. The skin was moth-holed: My mother said that Ama treated every pen like a needle, piercing holes to make meaning. Ama’s first language was not found in books, only in bodies. Tayal was written in the English alphabet, each word a phonetic translation written by missionaries, translated through their hands. The same hands that had beaten children into belief. Those hands were fluent only in punishment. I imagined a missionary transcribing Ama’s body, tracing her tongue on paper and burning it so that she spoke smoke.
I read in the kitchen, transcribing into English as much as I could read. When I showed Ben in the morning, she said I should squat over the hole again, but this time it didn’t open its mouth for me.
It only works once, I said. What kind of key only works once? Ben said. We tried to feed the holes again, this time with water from our palms. We tried prying them open with sticks. We fed them strips of pork jerky. But they chose silence.
At school, I gave Ben my transcriptions on notebook paper. We’d midwifed a language together, delivered it from the dark. When she folded the sheets into her pocket, I told her to be careful, to treat the letter like a daughter. Ben asked me what my ama looked like, and I said I knew her mostly by voice. I reported one of my mother’s memories: Once, Ama striped her face with mud and told them about Hu Gu Po, weighing down her daughters’ bellies with a swallowed story so that they wouldn’t be whipped away by typhoon wind, by wind that flexed the trees like bowstrings.
My mother liked to say she and I were born at the same time, into the same story, and that we were just growing at different rates: I grew like a tree and she grew like a riverfish. She said she’d died and been reborn many times in the span of my life. Someday, she said, you’ll go back to the river and give birth to me there, spitting out a jet stream of eggs, all of them me. I’ll dew the skin of your fists. I’ll hatch when you open your hands.
GRANDMOTHER
Letter I: In which the river is not responsible
Dear eldest,
Now that you are dead you can see why I never wanted you to live. See how much lighter you are now? barren of a body mother to nothing? You darkest of my daughters in skin in smoke. I burned you this ash is yours rebuild it into anything you want me to be. This letter is not apology . I am not writing for a response a bullet doesn’t ask to be given back. My second husband the soldier lives by the law of loss kill what you cannot carry marry what you cannot bury writing will wring lies from the white open a gate to our griefs. I have no need to grieve what I named . I’m here shitting my pants. The zhongyi says sphincter loose as a sleeve says it’s because of my age I suspect it’s your father the first man I married for his soldier’s pension for a future the color of tendon one night I woke to him between my legs tongue out weeding my pubic hair with his teeth balding me said he could see the lice on me the size of pearls stuffed me with what he plucked I birthed hairballs the size of your head rehearsed birth until you born drilling my body into wind
You my littleplum I raised you braised in my blood let me begin the river is noodled with snakes the river is not to blame I once saw soldiers throw prisoners into the river the fish for weeks were shaped like boys they say the babies here born gilled bladed or hammerheaded evolution is the body becoming its best weapon. What feeds on your body without permission is a parasite children are no exception. The only cure is to survive what lives off you
The river steals the sky a color suggestive of birds where the river hinges like my elbow it floods when I say the snakes rise to the surface of the river like scars the snakes have always obeyed my veins the evening before you turned four the rain came red my tongue rumoring snake. I was nineteen five babies my breasts stones that skipped out of your mouth. You practiced latching on my finger firecrackering my husband the second one hard against me prick parting my ass I told myself be stone moan an animal awake somewhere is smoke I pour rainwater into rice for porridge four of your sisters strapped to me. Two across my chest, two on my back. I walk sandwiched by their hunger rain ranting down our street you asked to put on your boots new ones I cut from my own you said you’d never seen a puddle before a sea you could span with your mouth mirror the size of whatever I show it. Lake the width of your face you have mine nothing of your father don’t ask me why I hated you then your hair grown up black. You said you’d been watering it long you stood in the rain waited for your spine to sky. I held you by the hair stepped outside you dangling boneless from my hand my babies I wear asleep beaded to me. You kicking your feet as if dreaming this I walked to the nearest bridge eight houses away I counted in twos swinging you a sack of salt I threw you down my tongue in my mouth a salted slug dissolving your name the river outraged by last night’s rain ate you your white-bellied feet flippering so fluent on land wordless in water in in in in in river whipping itself this raw word I
I threw the babies in too. What alive can tell me why. I & unstrapped the cloth all four of my babies spearing in after you I I I I even then they chose you over me water trotted over their backs . Snakes arriving to scalp you I watch you open your mouth in the water brief flower the snakes answering from inside you
Years ago a storm chaperoned your birth the soil gave up its trees for adoption the snakes singing now rhyming that year & this morning my babies buoying river lifting like a tongue to lick my back turn me around I do I needle my body through the water stitch you this new ending I fish you out one by one last of all you my eldest I went in belting the river around my waist on land I lay you safe water flocking from your mouth the river revised you a new body ribs ridging into scales your skull a snakehead legs arrowed into a tail hands honed into fins
Snakehead fish can limp on land their gills sewing shut I carried my daughterfish*1 home in my skirt released you all into a rainbarrel from the river I take frogs turtles fish I scoop the turtles from their shells debone the frogs with my fingertips feed you minnows whole feed the barrel like my own belly in the water you slough your scales your fin fleshes into a foot you outgrow your barrel in a week girl again
I ask you not to blame the river you did anyway you wanted the river dammed some part of you misses that water umbilical cord of salt silt admit it return to it your name the river loving your wrists like rope you my redgirl my shithole my first to follow little missionary boys around hunting sparrows frying them on f
encewire candying the bones I didn’t want you around those boys I knit you a leash from reeds tied you to my calf you dreamed of slaughtering both my calves vealing me running from me. If every mother in the world threw her children*2 in the sea how high would the water rise to hood me how much of this coast do I lose to you daily
When you died I asked the crematorium to wash your body clean as when it was born bright as an onion don’t believe any doctor what whipped your blood to cream wasn’t sodium sofas food coloring it was the river roosting in you eroding your bones into rooms I’ve lit. I admit to putting it there: I pulled the river through you like string through a bead into the mouth-hole out the asshole my life threaded through yours
*1 YOU LUCKED OUT. A TIGER TAIL IS SO MUCH COOLER THAN BEING A FISH. I KNOW YOU’RE AFRAID OF IT, BUT I’D MUCH RATHER BE FEARED THAN FEASTED ON. —BEN
*2 小鬼, I WOULD STAY AWAY FROM WATER IF I WERE YOU. —BEN
DAUGHTER
Mazu
The snake in Dayi’s belly breeds itself into three. A braid of snakes born in the south of her stomach, migrating up through her mouth. Most days they slept in her bowels, wearing her intestines like sweaters. When I shined my flashlight down her throat, I saw a rope-thick shadow shouldering out, tackling her teeth. Dayi said a snake swam down her throat when she was a baby. It grew to adult size inside her, eating everything in her belly and leaving nothing for her blood. I asked her how the snake swam in and she said, I fell in a river once. When I opened my mouth to shout, it made a home in me. She said: Anything open can be owned. She said: Never sleep with your mouth open or a man will slide in, just like a snake, and beach in your bowels until you belong to him. The only man you should marry is the moon, she said, so you can divorce it every morning.