| Litany,
Eulogy Ho Lin |
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Download story in rtf format Fictional Tribute to Iris Chang (Author of The Rape of Nanking) We did not want to attract attention. This is a new place, my father said, and it was best to merge, be no different from the others. The denim pants. The yellow plastic barrette in my hair. The braces to straighten my teeth. So we lived in an old brown building, a place that reeked with janitor soap and puke. On a window sill broad enough for flower pots, my parents insisted on rosemary shrubs - good for cooking, good for keeping the insects away, good for shelter against everything. Except the people who lived above us. They blasted their music, thump-ba-thump-ba-thump through the ceiling, rattling my head, more felt than heard. They |
would toss their cigarettes, they would land in the rosemary, scorch holes in them until the smell of their burning was like cinnamon. My father collected a pail full of butts, that's how many cigarettes they threw, and presented it to those upstairs people very politely, all Rodney King-like, can't we get along? No use, those people would slam the door on him, spit nonsensical Oriental-sounding words at him. And then I knew, for the first time, that this country is a battlefield, it's about swelling yourself righteous, you must take what you take. So seven years old, already burning passion, I yelled at those upstairs people to stop, chucked pebbles at their windows, but all that did was make them angry: Shut up, you ching-chong motherfucker! I wanted to bust down their door, rip down wallpaper that I imagined was sun-bleached and sad, knock over furniture and belongings,  |
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