My Sister Will Be Hungry
My Sister Will Be Hungry: Part IV
I began, in my sophomore year of high school, to devise a repertoire of meticulous tricks in preparation for every one of my trips home. I fancied myself an illusionist, pouring soy sauce on a white plate, tracing the outlines of my imaginary meal with a chopstick—it was a private comedy, a thrilling act of forgery, and I was both excited and offended that no one ever discovered my acts of deception. Perhaps, I thought, they were too distracted by my mother, who ate with a ferocity unmatched even by feral animals. She possessed an intimate understanding of hunger, told stories of catching and skinning frogs to feed her brothers. It used to embarrass me, how she would swallow her food as if someone were trying to steal it. Now I was glad her habits would cover mine.
At school it was easy to stay unnoticed. I did as I pleased, lived in a room no one else entered, and recorded my progress in dry-erase marker on the surface of a full-length mirror. Occasionally, a dorm-mate would remark on my continued absence from the dining hall. For the most part I was left in peace.
My Sister Will Be Hungry: Part III
My mother learned English from her grandfather. He gave her a very tattered Oxford English Dictionary, a relic of his time spent studying biology in Britain, and designed an ambitious plan of study: every morning, she had to copy a page of definitions letter by letter, and every evening, he would check her transcriptions by reading them aloud. The day he killed himself, she didn’t finish her writing practice, and she dreaded his return from work until she found out it was never coming. A few weeks later, his dictionary was confiscated and burned by Red Guards.
She would repeat this story to us every time we were disobedient. You’re going to kill me, she’d say. Just do the dishes. Come out of your room. Finish your food. Finish your food. Finish your food.
My Sister Will Be Hungry: Part II
I tell Audrey a story on the way home, the usual one, about when we were little. Back then, she’d cry over the silliest things: smushed flies, roadkill, belly-up carnival goldfish. One day, I recount, she found a mangled feather boa on the sidewalk and mourned it too. My mother thought it was awfully white of her, inventing tragedy where none existed. Her dumb little gweilo daughter, pampered and hungry for problems.
“Funny how I’m the one who ended up vegetarian,” I say, but Audrey doesn’t laugh, just unlocks the front door and then closes it behind us, her expression inscrutable. I wonder if it’s because I’m leaving tomorrow, for the first time since the last time. If I had a sister like me, I wouldn’t miss her much. But Audrey is kinder than I am, more forgiving.
My Sister Will Be Hungry: Part I
There is a photograph my mother is fond of showing people whenever she explains how far I have fallen. I am insolent now, uncharacteristically so, and she is unused to seeing my anger so unhidden. “See how happy we were?” she laments, phone in hand, zooming in on the expertly cropped image. In it, we are standing soldier-like behind a table overflowing with food. The corners of our mouths are upturned in the same way. “10th grade, Thanksgiving break,” she explains. “She had just gotten back from boarding school.” And then, invariably, she turns to me and asks, “Do you remember that? What a nice girl you were? Do you remember?”
I do, no matter what I try. I do.