Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng

by Kylie Lee Baker

The ten jagged faces scattered across the floor suddenly look sinister in their asymmetry, hideous broken mouths, skewed eyes, gnarled teeth. One of these o...

She remembers his pale hands, the crunch of a skull shattering, the taste of her sister’s blood. This sharp fire feels much better than God’s forgiveness ever could.

Her words taste jagged, and she knows she’s talking in the way her aunts don’t like, that her eyes are probably fever bright. This is why Cora is always quiet—when something actually matters, it matters too much, and everyone can taste it in her words. It scares them, how much it matters to her.

Cora realizes, belatedly, that she’s not sure if she’s actually conveyed the essence of Delilah, or if she’s just made herself sound insane. Delilah was a study in contradictions, and that was why Cora never talked about her when she was alive. It seems impossible to explain her now when they’ll never actually meet her, see how she is, was.

Cora is struck with the sudden urge to run, violent and primal, a deer who senses a whisper of a predator shuffling through distant tall grass.

All this time, Cora thought Delilah was leading her to her killer. She thought she’d have her chance at vengeance, or closure, or something meaningful. That secret was supposed to arm Cora, give her a choice, let her be the kind of person who forgives or the kind of person who calls the fires of hell or someone, anyone besides just Cora Zeng.

Cora Zeng decides in that moment, with the whole block staring at her and headlights searing her vision and a hungry ghost looming behind her, that this is the kind of person she will be. The dirty street urchin who eats dogs and cats and bats raw, the communist spy who wants to kill Americans, the virgin in a schoolgirl skirt that will seduce him and ruin his life—all of his crooked fantasies can be true for all she cares. Because a bat eater is the kind of person that white men want to hurt, the kind of person who tangles their fear and hate together and elicits their rage, the kind of person who scares them. And Cora knows all too well that you can’t fear someone who has no power over you.