The Storm We Made

by Vanessa Chan

Plain women like her didn’t get to feel the joy that having physical beauty bestowed.

“Same as white lady, same as white lady.”

jfc

But kindness did not excuse mass violence, kindness did not bring Abel back, kindness wouldn’t keep her safe. She consoled herself by telling herself she was getting something out of it, the red coupon that helped keep her family alive.

Maybe they have forgotten us, Jujube thought, these Western fronts, places with names that rolled strangely on her tongue, places she could find on atlases but couldn’t visualize. Maybe people like her, Jasmin, and Abel did not matter—here in a tiny tropical corner in the East, being brutalized by people who looked almost exactly like them.

i know it as mancala

“Grown-ups can’t see it because it’s magic.”

fuck this poor kid

Women do not worship gods; they yearn for broken toys they can mold and imprint on.

Was this power, to hold a man’s fate in this way?

Jasmin ran as fast as she could across the grass outside the house.

dumb child

Brother Luke had taught the boys at school that absolution came only from god. But where was god when Akiro broke him from the inside, where was god when Brother Luke sold little boys to save his own skin, where was god now when his options were to murder or await a fate worse than death?

“Freddie, do you come get me every night?” he asked. “Always,” said Freddie.

She told Puan Azreen, who worked at the secondary school, that Mrs. Alcantara was looking more disheveled by the day, that her hair smelled oily and unwashed.

rude?????

Loving without seeing, she thought, was simply delusion.

A live band played in the corner, and Cecily paused to admire the stillness of the trombone player, waiting his turn at the music. She had a soft spot for the ignored.

“Let me introduce you to my new husband.” She craned her long neck, and Cecily felt a jolt of recognition; it was the same movement Mrs. Yap, no, Lina, used to make when scouring parties for people and gossip. Cecily extended the stem of her own neck as she stretched through her body, finding herself curious to know more about the man who had transformed a gangster’s wife into a Chinese ingenue.

its gotta be fujiwara

It couldn’t be Fujiwara. She’d seen only his sleeve when Mrs. Yap, no, Lina, had tugged at it. Not even his face.

AHAHAHAHAA

His stories were always about a woman whom he said she reminded him of.

totally about cecily