Litany, Eulogy

Ho Lin

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, tell them they were assholes, because I was a good girl, and I wasn’t going to sink to their level and use the f-word. I recited this plan out loud, every detail, down to the asshole, and my mother heard. She slapped me in the head for bad language. Like the time I was trying to open a package of donuts, my hand slipped and I yelled Shit!  She hit me then too, and for me the word shit means a pile of powdered donuts scattering tragically to the floor. I fell flat to eat them anyway, you cannot waste anything, not a single speck of sugar, so I lapped it up, tongue to hardwood like a cat. And Mother, horrified, treated me just like a cat, thrusting her broom at me, and the straw poked me in the eyes, scratched my face. Yet later she was very reasonable, and said: People who use bad language are out of ideas. You’re smart enough to always have ideas. Always, always, always. 

The soldiers created a game out of it, I am told. A test to eradicate the coward inside you, vanquish every single fiber of being that does not allow you to attain your full potential. It was a diversion from the damn heat, the dust that stung their eyes, the sewers poisoned with dysentery and rotted limbs. If it had been winter, it would have been different. Snow to drink, enough gas to boil water all day and night. But in the summer, in the midst of drought, gas was rationed, hardly enough to even burn the prisoners’ bodies. They tried, but the corpses could only burn halfway -- the husks remained, blackened rusty gnarled trunks sprouting from the earth everywhere, like contagion. So they gave up, gave in, created this game. Prisoners were lined up by the dozens, and the prisoners greatly outnumbered the soldiers, and yet the prisoners’ eyes held only pleading, fear, supplication, which infuriated the soldiers all the more. What an utter lack of pride and will and resistance -- not even the desire to survive. Worse than animals.  The game would begin with the commander instructing the newly arrived conscripts: It must be one swift, sure stroke. Observe!  And with that his blade swooped, and a prisoner’s head would be severed cleanly, twin fountains of blood spraying into the air from the exposed neck. Soon all of them were taking their turns, racing to see who would accumulate the most heads, the most accurate blows. The younger ones couldn’t get it right at first -- heads would dangle from bodies, connected by mere flaps of skin, bobbling in place, and more blows were required to fully sever them. Through it all the prisoners never moved. They only trembled, cried out, muttered words to their gods in their own guttural language. Shut up!  the soldiers would shriek, and they doubled their pace, just to quiet them all. Soon, inevitably, the prisoners’ blood would run down the soldiers’ faces and clothes, and it was strangely refreshing.

	Tonight there is much ceremony and rejoicing, and thank you all for coming, I want to dedicate this on behalf of, without whom, thank you again. The waiters in their cute little half-tuxedos smile at me, and I want to ask, How do you feel? Really? Name cards are passed to me, Let’s talk sometime, and these razor-sharp slices of information are too heavy for my hands, I really cannot handle this responsibility, a person’s entire life and reason for being have been condensed, and now I hold them all, this is something no one should bear. But nonetheless, I exhort my colleagues, give private little pep talks, You should take on that job, I’ve heard about that diet and I think you should try it, grab these opportunities, recognize how lucky you are, and I leave rows of smiles in my wave, like tiny explosions. Pats on the shoulder, proper and friendly kisses on each cheek, why I am here? Rethink: I know why I am here, but not why, because nothing has been done, nothing prevented. Events have been documented. That is all I do. In this society, there is no honor in merely observing. I am an instrument. Someone blows a wind through me, my mouth moves, my fingers jump up and down like keys. I finish my fourth glass of wine, head throbbing, skin taut and filled to bursting. Someone says, What’s on tap for your next masterpiece?  General laughter, as far away as the wind whipping through the exhibition hall’s statue-gray courtyard. Above all, only one thought, stark as the flashbulbs that drone on ceaselessly, directed at myself: You are nothing. How dare I think that, how selfish, how self-absorbed, but this is not about me, this is about the thought, this is outside my purview, and I hold one hand to my head, the other to my mouth, not sure which one will erupt first, and all the while You are nothing you are nothing you are nothing you are nothing you are nothing you are nothing you are nothing.

My father was murdered. Late day at the university, a thunderstorm at night, driving alone down Route 40, minding his own business, and then the screech, the full force of the 18-wheeler driving him against the railing, a chance ribbon of metal slamming through windshield, gashing his forehead. And yet, even then, his face a bloody wound and his right eye punctured like an olive, he still breathed, his body squirmed, unconscious. But the trucker who collided with him was drunk, scared, playing scenarios in his head. Make it look like an accident. Push the car off the side of the road, off the cliff. It must have been a sight, the pot-bellied trucker and the shadow he cast, his boots tracking prints in the soaked granite, how he tore at his beard under a full moon as he considered the man slumped against the wheel, his remaining eye hidden under his disheveled hair, breathing, still breathing. My father must have looked young then, as if he had reverted to the childhood he never had, nestled on the back seat, the passing lamp posts waving at him with shadows as the car drove on.

I catalog because this is meaning. What can be seen, counted, pointed to, these are the only things that matter. Three hundred thousand died, but then some claim two hundred thousand, and some even say nobody at all. Better to be total, to say Those who died, died. Sometimes I think that, why not say it? Quantity does not matter, but it does, because everything is not the same, we cannot tolerate same, there is no point to same. My set of tragic deaths is more important than your set of tragic deaths. A number becomes a story, statistical significance becomes tangible priority. What about the Yangtze flood of 1975? Over two hundred thousand people wiped off the map, out of history for twenty years. But there must be a number. With a number comes responsibility, demands, You must apologize for this, you must acknowledge this, it is wrong not to be cognizant of it. And then with the crumpling and burning of a piece of paper, a miniature bonfire, I could make it all simply disappear. The universe explodes in eight hundred million years, and none of this will appeal to anyone.
 
Kill them all. That was the directive. The soldiers were disbelieving at first. Many blinked, many pressed hands to mouth in mime-like protest. The order from Central Command was incontrovertible, no hint of ambiguity, but the words had no taste. Say the word food, in either the locals’ tongue or the soldiers’ mother language, and they would cradle their stomachs, look to the cloudless sky, mouths gaping, ready to accept anything, even the shit that emaciated birds dumped. Then a short blessed rain, the grass turned green for a triumphant week, and they all scrambled to eat it, chewing and slurping, spread out like crippled snakes. Perched atop the city wall, underneath the shade of his immaculate umbrella, the commander witnessed all this, and with the trembling fingers of an artist, raked a cloth across his brow. This is the way to gain advantage, he decided. And so a week later, the grass gone, the soldiers gathered in a restaurant bombed with ruin, fondling chopsticks and porcelain spoons, reduced to imagining, candlelight spastic on the walls, some of them clasping chafed hands over the flames, as if the fire itself was a great delicacy just out of reach. The commander said, Food, and the soldiers convulsed in reflexive response. There is not enough of it, the commander continued. Too many people. There is only one way. Kill them all. This the soldiers could understand, and in the dim light their eyes danced, while in the distance the midnight watch sounded the bell.

The noise in my ear simply will not go away. It began a few weeks before, as I was handing in the proofs of the new book. I was thinking, And soon this will be sent to that industry magazine, and it will be up to them, and bang, there it was. Both ears, it would have been fine, but the sound limits itself to my left ear. It is as if someone is very delicately buzzing his lips right next to me. I slap at imagined insects, but nothing is there. I scratch at my face, not even near the offending ear, I simply itch all over. My skin is pockmarked red. Perhaps it is the ear that is blessed, the rest of my body that is cursed. This is an evolutionary trick. My left ear has acquired dog hearing, and the rest of me must catch up. I cannot sleep. I paint to pass the time, the daffodils outside the kitchen window, half-remembered horses from old oil paintings -- were the paintings genuine, or were they knock-offs from Chinatown? My friends say Chinatown food is terrible, because it is not authentic, but I say, As long as it’s good, who cares?  But I am a monster for saying that. My five-year old son looks at some of my paintings. What do you think?  I ask him. He grabs hold of my bony arm -- I have lost much weight due to lack of sleep -- and he says with great seriousness, Are you okay, Mommy?  And with that I realize that he hates the paintings, that he thinks I have no talent, that my attempt at artistry is an affront, because otherwise he would say something, and instead he is making a vague comment about my health to hide this calamity. 

There was no time. The enemy was like a great wave, very natural, flooding down the hills in clumps, nothing symmetric about them. Fighting had gone on for some time, with many lost on all sides, so not all of them had guns. They carried club-like substitute weapons, knives, hatchets, torches. And now they were here, and the villagers were told: You have one hour to leave. That as all, no conditionals, no or else. Those who could gather food and clothes did -- the rest only stared helplessly at their thatched roofs, their floors of dust and burned bits of twig. And on the hour, the enemy set fire to everything, many of the villagers giving up right at that point, sitting and watching the flames creep toward them, even gazing incuriously as their limbs ignited, and then they were screaming, but this was not their pain, not even their voices, this was just the act of a spirit escaping, or at least that is what the survivors would tell their children. Some ran out of their huts only to be immediately bludgeoned or shot. The enemy took their time with others, stripping them, skinning them, their bones retained as souvenirs, cracked-open skulls serving as candle holders. Still more of the enemy were pressed for time, and simply threw would-be escapees down the well, then tossed grenades in after them. Some fled into the mountains, where the roving packs of wolves awaited, if you didn’t starve to death first. The razing of the town took place on a full moon, so for the first week afterwards, you could see the wolves from a distance, their eyes glowing like fire as they flowed between the trees, and when they set upon you could find warmth and comfort in their hard breaths, appreciate their bright teeth, brighter than any human teeth you saw in your life, just as they sank into your neck.

I do not remember specific activity from childhood, only observations. I would stab the tip of my finger with the record player needle – something exact as that. The first moment I realized my father’s breath was bad, or an awkward moment catching my mother in a state of undress, her breasts small and already drooping. There was so much sun, too much of it, and in those roads as wide as rivers, it shone down on you. In daytime my sister and I played hide and seek from it, and from each other. My sister with the bouncy head, and the arm I slammed in a car door once, because I was lazy enough to do it. Her face went all red as a result, and she never seemed more alive. An accident, I told Mother, and looked straight at her, blameless. It all comes back, she said. Everything you do returns. But no, the toad I accidentally flattened underfoot is not returning. My sister, even after lying flat on the bed, even after many trips to the doctor, does not return to me. She simply moves on. Letters from school, letters from out of school, oh yes, she has left, something wrong with her, and it is not even her arm, it is with her head, all scrambled inside, like a dented pillow, even though it is by all credible appearances normal, and I think that I should have slammed her head in the door, maybe that would have prevented this. Once, like a fool, I propped my feet on the handlebars of my bicycle, hands behind my head, and cruised. Then the moving van came at me, my feet dropped to the ground, and in the moment poised between standing and falling, I looked down at my left foot. The truck’s sagging tire shaved the edge of my shoe, an inch from crushing the toes. Then it barreled on, I was on my back, looking up at sky and brick buildings, and it was plain to see -- I had used up my life. Everything from here on in was merely a favor.

My friends have commented on the state of my office, and usually their observation ends with opinion: This is intense. You should rearrange things. This can’t be good for you. Not a square inch of wall is bare -- everywhere there are photos, laudatory notices, angry letters. I sit for hours as they gang up on me, and every so often a particular item sends me scrambling into myself. A book review written by a professor who never writes book reviews, but he cannot refrain from revealing how I have used doctored photos, how my facts cannot be correct, because if three hundred thousand people died, how did the population of this city increase by fifty thousand during this time period, and what about that map that was seemingly copied whole cloth from another source, a disreputable source? He is right. That is to say, I cannot focus on these particulars, the ache in my ear that pounds like a drum every time I open my mouth to speak or desperately yawn is all I can think about now, but I have every right to be ashamed, because I have failed. They are all interested in statistics, credit, blame. No one asks about the what, the why, the how, they must focus on that miserable little author, which was not the intent. This chess game demanded more rigor, and through momentary weaknesses I have been undone. But I should take solace in some of these other letters scented with hope: You should be proud for having brought this to light, or I saw you on that news program with my son, we were both too disturbed to watch it, but we respect you for your courage. No, that is even worse, to know something but not to face it, isn’t it just another form of not knowing? But no, that is more presumption on my part. Another failure. I have shoved a thing in front of a person, and commanded them: Witness! Acknowledge! As if I have the right. And then I stare at a grainy photo, a woman in the midst of torture, a machete sickly sweet with death as it slices through her left ear. Two other men pin her down, a strand from her braided hair falls across her wide-open face in a manner that might have inspired poets in another age. A soldier, perhaps the group’s senior, stands apart from the tableau, stares straight at the camera, neither joy nor horror on his face, only the repose that comes from determination. This photo has traveled thousands of miles, been passed from one rebel’s hand to another, eluded officials and censors, acquired the importance of a holy grail, because here was evidence, here was remembering. I saw it for the first time in a tea garden, held in the hands of an eighty year-old man with a beard that ran down his chest and ended in a point just above his belt-line. As he smoked and the birds rattled around in their cages, he told me stories. About the great crossings of rivers, those beautiful tremulous mountains he and his family discovered even as they fled the invading armies, the cousin who was kidnapped in those mountains by bandits, only to be set free twenty years later and reunited with what was left of his family. He offered me this photo of the soldiers and the woman, and then he showed photos he had taken of every visitor to that garden he had had the privilege of meeting, volumes and volumes of them, compulsion made history. He took a fresh photo of the both of us, the camera stuttering out its timed click, and gave me a thumbs-up as goodbye. Such an incongruous gesture, but now it drives me to tears. All these and more crowd the office, and when I do fall asleep at my desk, the nightmares come. My heart heaves in my body, I believe this must be a coronary attack, and all the while it is a mere rattle of fear because events are taking place out of sequence, or reassembling into some opera, and it all becomes clear, even in the sunny light of day when I wake, face pressed to papers and decorated with ink: I should have lived then, I should have died then.

The word slave wasn’t used. Women who wanted to stay alive accepted; those who refused were punished. Not killed, although that did happen, more out of sheer exhaustion than anything else, for the soldiers were still hungry, still wretched in their clothes and skin, rubbing dirty bare arms against dirty mouths, chewing on dust and gravel and sweat, maddened by the heat, and with all this, worrying about a woman was just too much to bear. Any movement, any glance that could be interpreted as reluctance or rebellion, was enough to drive them to action. And even as the women protested in their native tongue -- I did not say anything, I did not mean -- the soldiers grabbed their mouths, those spotless pale lips. How did they keep them so clean in this Hell? They pried those lips open, grabbed and pulled teeth, seized their tongues, and with the tips of their machetes, hacked them off, but the machete was not meant for such subtle work, and as a consequence, the downward stroke would slice open cheeks, necks, even as far down as breasts. That was the other item of note, the breasts. Prominent, easy to grasp, easy to pinch the nipple and sever it with a penknife. In every alley women lay, slumped and sitting on the ground in shock, staring at the items of their bodies left in the oven-like sun. Their eyes never blinked, never moved. They only looked down on their tongues, their breasts, their ears, as if they were secrets waiting to be unlocked.

How do you apologize? Start with one, then the other, finally you apologize for everything. That ends it for everyone else. Not very fair. In fact, selfishly unfair. As if you can take responsibility for something. And so the foreign minister blusters on TV, claiming to be responsible for my hearing problem and the knife cuts that I have inflicted on my own arm so as to calm myself, what a martyr you are Minister, it suits you, just as it suited me when I was nearly run over by the truck, just like my father when he didn’t ask for it. But without apologies there is no point, is there not? So apologize, I insist. We cannot move forward in history without an apology. Everything else is insubstantial air. Better to deny, plausibly. Then we have reasons for doing something. He is not apologizing, so we must make him apologize. That is the mission. The game. He knows this, and draws the game out for as long as we can muster. Then weakness or boredom sets in. We both forget, accuser and apologist, and then suddenly on a rainy day we see you on television, and you say I regret, I am sorry, it is unfortunate. And suddenly the game is over, and rain crashes down on the windows even harder.

	I did not see my sister until after my mother died. All very sad, I was told, a sudden illness, but I did not have the chance to see her. I was participating in yet another talk, a chance to expound on the dangers of forget and neglect, We must confront our collective pasts or we are doomed, etcetera, and looking at these bright young faces, these assorted nods and clenched fists, I had to wonder, am I their Santa Claus? They gathered around me, offered chewed-up pens for signatures, and I signed, every last one, because I have no scruples about being a celebrity, someone must set a good example, it must be proven that to be famous is to be the same as everything else, just something to get through. Again, I am told: What you are doing cannot be measured. Or: The stories you are recovering will become part of our cultural narrative. I can only mumble thanks, and suggest that the book will be around long after we are all gone. They can all get behind that. And then my sister calls: Mother has died, I am executor of the estate, What are you going to do about the money?  When Mother was alive, she sent my sister a stipend every month, and every month the same response: How can I live on this?  And my mother would snap, You don’t have a job! You just sit at home, buy expensive clothes!  Which was true, although it wasn’t my sister’s fault, we were told, it was this thing inside her head, this thing that did not allow her to hold a job, that advised her to leave in the middle of a shift, or scream at people about cold coffee, but to my mother this was all just words, because my sister looked fine, and what was this thing inside her they kept talking about? If she really had something that dangerous, wouldn’t she be dead by now? So my mother yelled, Stop making excuses, and my sister would counter with something about lack of parental affection when she was younger. And on and on, and now it was my turn to be Mother. Growing older does not mean more friends and wisdom, it means you must go to greater lengths to avoid people you no longer want to see. So I said to my sister, I can’t talk about this now, and that was a big mistake. Neglect is fatal, and inattention leads to things like my sister stealing all the old family jewelry from my mother’s cramped apartment, and the hatchback to boot, selling them for quick cash. Which is what she did. She didn’t even use the profits for something daring like drugs. Instead, strapless dresses that would be out of style six months later, or every variety of cigarette in the Western hemisphere, or a trip to Hawaii, even though she has been there fifteen times before with one of those ex-boyfriends who is married but can’t seem to leave the picture, but it is the only place she can “relax,” and if I only gave her enough to settle down on Kona, and take that wellness class spiced with a little yoga, she would be perfectly happy, which is utter bull, she can never be happy. No snap judgments,  I say to myself to calm down, you are no better. But I am better, I have the earache to prove it, I am dripping with sympathy and compassion and respect for people who have long since died, and Mother has joined that pantheon. I sit awake at night under my fluorescent lamp, staring at the light until it dances violet in my eyes, regarding the numerous autographed copies of the book on my shelves, and I think that if I could burn these books one at a time, these shelves would eventually be bare, which is something to be looked forward to, but it also means the end.

They killed you, but first they forced you to tear down your own house. Emplacements needed, additional open space for traps and mines, or perhaps the commander simply found aesthetic pleasure in empty ground. Any member of your family who could stand was expected to participate. To the children, this was a game, as every tragedy becomes a game; for them this was a tremendous lark, because they didn’t have to go to school, because there was no more school, and this was just another event in a continuing stream of good luck. They would pull nails, point them at each other like weapons, line them up in the corner in efficient little rows of five or ten. And you could only lean against the tattered walls and stare at them, and wish that everyone could free themselves from the need to grow, understand responsibility, be a productive member of society. You weep into your smudged shirtsleeves at that thought, but still you are under orders to destroy, even as your arms hang tired and useless at your sides, and the soldiers are beating at your back with canes, but you do not feel a thing, your skin is one big callus. It was in your best interests to proceed slowly -- the longer it took, the longer your own death was postponed. And yet progress was unstoppable, and you watched as shards of home drifted down the river, mixed with neighbors’ detritus. Once the roof was down, the soldiers would spread lime everywhere, and at first dull outrage washed over you -- What was foul and polluted about my home?  -- but this gave way to incomprehension. Why not assign this task to you? Was this some sort of unsaid apology? The soldiers grunted, muttered to themselves in their own language, and yet they were very thorough, even womanly, in their attentions. The powder would pile up, crystalline like snow, and the children would play in it, flinging it at each other, and now they were crying, for the lime was hitting their eyes, and all you could think is Good, because the less they see when they end comes, the easier it will be for them. 

	It was a blizzard, with youthful mispronunciation I called them nor’eaters, the snowflakes fat and lazy and beautiful, and my mother was yelling at me about something -- no memory, only observation: her face spread out and giant, she was accusing me, something about a lost item, one of many lost items, I never stole anything, I would appropriate, replace or hide or reformat, but never steal. She didn’t believe, she never did. I was supposed to be silent and assenting, that was the best way to survive, it didn’t matter to my mother where you are, if you can’t listen and nod, if you disease yourself with opinions, then life will be unhappy. So she left to get groceries in her wisp of a hatchback, and on the icy road, a block away from our building, a school bus skidded into her. The entire passenger side of her car was crushed, she was pinned under the steering wheel, but all in all, just a busted kneecap. As the driver side window was bashed open to pull her out, bits of glass scored her face. The next-door neighbors carried her up all ten flights of stairs, gaining onlookers and followers as they went, footsteps and voices and shouts mounting those steps, Take her to the hospital, no we’re taking her home first, she needs help, no she’s fine we just need to get her medical card … With that mass of noise and motion, it was a veritable social movement, but not a word from my mother, she wasn’t directing anyone, no growls or complaints, not even the double-wrinkle her forehead got when tired. My sister was too busy, trying to touch her nose with her bottom lip, my father was away. Mother was being good for me. When the neighbors set her down on the couch, she just looked at me. The droplets of blood had congealed on her cheeks, and they looked like cunningly placed makeup. She wanted me to fawn, to feel shock and relief and tears, to wipe that blood from her face, overcome with concern and love. I looked away from her, ran to my room. I was ashamed of her injury, her weakness, how this woman who yelled and screamed and prodded had been reduced to plain want. The neighbors stayed over, my father came home and spent the entire night at the couch, padding her fevered head with a cloth, and I watched it all from a sliver between opened door and frame. If I could, I would have stayed in that room for the rest of my life, because now I was regretting what I did, but it couldn’t be undone, and my mother would always remember, every time I wouldn’t look at her.

The commander wanted to set an example, or perhaps the heat and humidity and long days had finally driven him mad. He probably fancied himself some sort of savior, leading the lazy and the doubtful to clarity of purpose. So he called for the cauldrons to be placed high in the hills, at the memorial shrine. Soldiers carried buckets of water drawn from the river up the stone steps on a constant basis, streaming lines of them one after the other, like a giant hand reaching up the side of the hill. At day, all was quiet, but when the sun set, the cauldrons boiled, smoke rising like the mist of ancestors, and the soldiers would carry the babies, squealing and shitting, up the stairs. The soldiers were mute, grave, as if this was a matter of importance, and likewise, the commander would only button his collar, clear his throat, rub his hands against each other in a vain attempt to cleanse them of dirt. Each soldier would approach the cauldron in turn, deposit the baby in the roiling waters, turn, and retreat down the stairs. One might see a stray red arm waving about, or a cry stifled by the gurgle of water, and it could be imagined that they were getting comfortable, becoming pacified. One baby per soldier per day, that was the ration. Some wanted more, not out of blood lust, but for the momentary pleasure of standing atop the hill, feeling that all too rare night breeze, pretending just for a moment that they were home, smoking cigarettes and pipes, contemplating the mammoth chirps of the cicadas, reflecting on the faraway lanterns that could have been relatives or lovers. A mile away in the town, sequestered and imprisoned, the women would wail for their lost children, but atop that hill, the sounds could have just been the music of insects from the next valley over.

	I gave up on swearing when I was a child, but that was all right, for he did all the swearing for me. He was not an editor or writer, but he was relentless. He would get up all close, his breath like rotten bananas, and yet this scent was comforting, as he would puff himself up with intensity, like birds taking flight: Fuck it, you can do better than this. This teaser doesn’t sing. Why do something when you don’t try to be the best?  And then he would launch into the story of how he competed against this woman for his residency, and the woman looked and smiled like a cheerleader, a straight A student, except for that one time she got a B-plus, but that was because she was saving the life of a boy who got hit by a car the night before her final exam. How do you compete with that? But he did, and he won, by sheer exhausting persistence. In everything he did: Bump against him in the street, and he would pursue you even if you tried ignoring him: Hey! Motherfucker! Apologize for that right now! I’m talking to you! Or playing racquetball, grunting and throwing himself against the spotless transparent back wall, leaving sweat marks there, screaming at every perceived mishit, smashing racquets into the tiled floor, every point another opportunity to grasp perfection or failure. He even convinced me to have our son, and he is a very good boy, I admit he was right, he was always right. Except when he complained about the fucking Fascist pedestrians in this town, how they would dawdle across intersections and hold up traffic. People should drive faster, clip a few of them, just to teach them, he snapped, and leaned on his horn, leaned on it. This is where I made my stand, and I said, very quietly, The day a pedestrian runs over a car driver, that’s when you get to complain. And that must broken something in his head, because he just gaped at me, and shortly after that he told me he was getting off his Paxil, because it didn’t make him feel right, And I want to be the real me again. And I said to him: But what if the real you is an asshole?  But it was too late, he had infected me, or maybe more accurately, he reintroduced me to a part of myself, this habit of telling people what to do, pushing and provoking, obsessing about what next, what now. I have always been one to intentionally overdo it, scrabble at greatness so hard that it eludes me, but at least I have my excuse: I tried as hard as I could … I would attempt to learn guitar, but it would soon devolve into me slashing at the strings, gripping the fretboard like a lifeline, the tips of my fingers raw and bleeding, my knuckles popped open, but I could feel good about my defeat, because I suffered for it, just as I suffered when I wrote the book, with him hovering and judging over my shoulder, before he left. The guitar sits in the corner and my son tips it over with a musical thunk. Those vibrating strings remind me that all stringed instruments are the innards of animals, the true guts, I am strangling your guts. And for the first time since childhood, I say the words Fuck me, and it is such a needless, pleasurable release. Fuck me.

	You are a prisoner of war, and you are given a choice: You must bury the person next to you. Bury him alive, in the sand, up to his neck, and leave him for the winged predators and insects and high tides. Do it, or it will be done to you. What if the person is your next-door neighbor, the one you could never tolerate, the one who would spit on the ground when he walked, not caring about the barefoot children playing nearby? Kill him, and you are safe. No one would notice. His family is probably already dead. When this is all over, everyone who knows him would likely be dead. It would be a secret, between you and your captors. And you have been bestowed with good fortune, to receive this order. You could have been the victim instead of the perpetrator. But mathematically speaking, it could just as easily have been reversed. So it really means only what you want it to mean, and the soldier in his burnished mustache is staring at you, eyes bulging like egg whites, ready to bark at you to do it now, and you think of how you could be here, of all the fates that could have befallen you, of all the places to have been born and lived and taken, of all the millions of probabilities that led you to this point. But this is sophistry -- you are here, you are experiencing this, and only you understand. So you take the shovel and begin digging. That next-door neighbor is blubbering, driving you mad with his inchoate shouts and begging, and the soldiers beat him down with the butts of their rifles, and that only makes you dig harder, sand blistering your feet, the slivers of the shovel handle impaling themselves on your fingers, sweat scalding your eyes, and you must dig deeper and deeper, all that is left is pure action, and maybe if you continue to dig, the order will be forgotten, or there will be a reprieve, or you will sink lower and lower into the pit you are building until you come out the other side, and all will be forgotten, like when you awakened after your very first night in this life. 

	The headlights are like tracers, locating, pinpointing, target sighted, they come straight at me. Finally, the moment that was always incipient, anticipated, previewed in my head like a bad B movie, and just as in the movie like a stupid animal I stare at the lights, even as the rest of me catches up and screams Move move move!   And then shame, because the headlights are those of my own car, it was a trick of reflection, the chrome bumper of the truck in front of me, or the mirrored glass of the billboard this side of the rise. All around me, other cars rush. It is a pity, I was ready for the crash, now I must cope with the pain in my ear that dominates my head, runs all the way down the back of my neck, straight to my heart like an injection, and it is too much, it is always too much. I imagine it, that’s what I am told, I am merely imagining my misery, isn’t that what we are always told, it’s all in the head, but why is that statement always tossed off, undervalued? When the bodies are gone and forgotten, it is all in the head, and that is the disgust of it all, it is all inside me, no one else. I pull off the side of the road, the car rattling against the gutter, plush leather seat stabbing me in the back, and even this is welcome as it diverts from the pain in head and heart, but not enough, Just end it, that’s what I tell myself, but foolish me, commands do not exist. I reach into my purse, grab hold of the taser, and point it at myself. I breathe heavy, I must work up the courage every time, because all pain is remembered, even if these are mere fractions compared with what wracks my head. The taser’s twin tips nuzzle my body, I press the contact, breath is trapped, my head is flung back and I am staring at the car’s upholstered ceiling, my eyes are the only thing that move, everything else is locked, as if chains have been through around me and pulled. It is an interesting sensation, and I muse about it like a scientist, as an experiment is balanced on the edge between hope and fruition. And then the muscles contract, stretch, pull, breath dies in my throat, even the air is wrenched now. No good, I am still conscious. One more time. I am building an immunity to this, like I did with the pills. The record is five times, or that is as far as I remember. So once again, prods to skin, activate. There is a moment before I black out, and that moment is a tide, a blessing, feeling dribbling away from limbs, heart, mind, cracking and chipping off like paint, and I look at my sweaty face in the rear-view mirror. A pleasant sight, just like when I was a child and I admired myself after an entire afternoon of playing, and there was no injustice, no fear, no righteousness, because it was what it was. Sweat away your troubles, blood, sweat, and tears, and I hear Mother now, calling for dinner. Ready, she shouts, Ready I shout back to her, confirmation and emulation, Ready.

	The opposing army was approaching. News spread among the occupying soldiers that their comrades stationed at the next town down the river had been massacred. But not through some worthy stratagem. The soldiers were dying of thirst, and the only way to replenish their supply was to venture down to the riverbank. So the opposing army awaited them, and sure enough, the soldiers appeared, either alone or in small groups, scrambling or crawling, or even walking because they didn’t care, they didn’t think, their need was commanding them. And the opposing army took them down, just like a fairground gallery, pop pop pop. So now they were moving in, it would soon be over, and with war’s conclusion would be trials, convictions, even a few executions. But even as the soldiers gathered in the central square, sat on their behinds in neat rows like good children, some of them openly weeping, awaiting orders that would never come, others were being dispatched to the far hills, the western mountains. The commander had only one directive for them: Do not surrender. The war continues. And with that task done, the commander retreated to his private chamber, festooned with the tapestries and skeletons and jade tables he had acquired in his conquests, and calmly disemboweled himself with a knife. Even as his blood ran in rivulets across the marble tiled floor, he allowed himself an instant’s appreciation of the luxury around him, the worthiness of these captured cultural artifacts, and with a flutter of eyelashes, he expired at peace. The men he sent to the mountains were never heard from again, and many surmise that the wolves and bandits took care of them, even though there is no evidence either way. And so that particular war came to an end decades ago, the rubble and burned stalks of village buildings long since overrun by ring roads and skyscrapers and sewage drains that still stink of shit in the long hot summer months, and people still wear plain cotton shirts like they did fifty years before, even though their hair may be longer and they wear sunglasses that dazzle with reflected light. Yet somewhere in the mountains the remaining members of the commander’s army may yet be hiding, their skin leathery with age, their hair white and as unruly as wire but their uniforms immaculate, still huddling around a fire at night, nibbling with deadened teeth at the remains of the wolf they killed the night before, still solemn and purposeful as they debate the next day’s events, or the time when help will arrive, or the plan that will allow them to claim final victory. As the fire dies, they sing a song of the homeland, just a murmur, for it is not good to attract attention, and as they share lyrics and remind each other of the forgotten words, their wizened faces continue to burn with camaraderie.

My sister is in a good place today, so I drive her and my son out to the headlands, to a place of plentiful lakes and forest, just a little getaway. My son urges us both, Come on, come on. It will be our last time out together -- I know this without knowing the particulars of the future, it is just that my mind is clear on this, it is pure certainty. Come on, come on, he still says. Doesn’t he know that I only see the dead leaves that are pasted to the ground with mildew, or the bruises on my sister’s bare legs? My sister and I are arguing about something, even in this deathly beautiful place, we are quarreling. She smiles, as she always does to end our debates, it is as if she is saying, You have nothing to compete with this. I see those teeth stained brown, and I want to yell at her, Can’t you see?  And yet, her hair is cut short and pert, she wears a dress colorful as a daisy, and the smell of honeysuckle bathes her. I can lie, I can imagine that the odor emanates from deep within her, just this once. And still my son yells and encourages, and the trail leads deeper into the forest. He jogs ahead, cutting through the fog and mist, he has such confidence in his body and his whereabouts -- it is a talent I never had myself. Like headlights at night, I can only see to the next bend in the curve, but beyond that is pure abyss. He is giggling too, I hear his sneakers squeak against the ground, and this is good because it distracts me from my sister, but she is saying something that seems strangely significant: …Brutal honesty is just a form of selfishness, she concludes. What was the beginning of that last thought? I missed it. She would say something like that, her and all that no-mind philosophy and tanned skin and perfume that drowns out her imperfections. My ear is buzzing, and I am resigned that it will never stop. I walk the trail that hugs hill and hollow, and the fresh winds pry me open, fill my head, freeze everything, like how the back of my mouth goes numb when I eat ice cream too fast. Come on, come on, my son urges, and finally I can laugh. I chase after my boy, my sister ambling behind. And then the path becomes something that could still be path, or a random bunch of footprints on leaves, no, maybe just mud that resembles a path, I am calling for my son to wait up, and even my sister is out of sight, left behind. Clouds muffle the sun, and each step leads me further into darkness. It is as if I have stepped through a trap door. The temperature has dropped. The wind kicks up, the trees weave and saw. It is difficult to tell in the dimness, but there seems to be frost on the plants around me, caking the bushes. I blink hard, stop dead, perhaps I have taken a wrong turn, and in the moment of my pause I hear the approach of something, perhaps an animal. It is clear to me now: my son is running from this thing, and he is trying to lead me, in all my stupidity, to safety. Best to stand here, let whatever it is that follows us take me, to sacrifice myself would be noble. But just ahead, the sun breaks impossibly through the foliage. Shards of light fall on a madrone tree, a mammoth one, clinging to what appears to be solid stone, the base of it broad enough to cradle me if I choose to lie on it. Its dying branches spread out in intricate networks, branches sprouting from branches, like those old hollow dolls which house smaller and smaller dolls. Each branch stretches in an uncharted direction, each indicating a distinct destiny. I hear my son call again, Come on, come on -- he is far from me now -- and my sister, equally far, in a different place, calling my name, the sound of it as bright and direct and heartbreaking as when we were young. And with that I remember, one day in the park, my father smiling at me with his washed-out, kindly face, my sister yelling all our names as she chased insects and smudged her knees with the green from the grass, my mother reading me stories of magical monkeys and demons, these tales always about journeys fraught with incidents, seemingly never-ending, and my mother’s stomach would rise and fall with her breaths, as if she was instantly pregnant, back to normal, pregnant again, back and forth. Unable to move, I stare at this tree, the wind stopped, all sounds erased, even the steps of the unseen stranger, even the crashing surf of my headache. And then, ever so slowly, I can hear the ground pulse beneath me, thousands of heartbeats piled on top of each other, whispering: 

When nothing is left of my body but ashes, even then, my love and hate will always burn.