Siren Queen

by Nghi Vo

The way the beautiful Black woman spoke, however, I started to wonder. If I couldn’t be ordinary, maybe I could be something better instead.

Men lived forever in their bodies, in their statues, in the words they guarded jealously and the countries they would never let you claim. The immortality of women was a sideways thing, haphazard and contained in footnotes, as muses or silent helpers. “But things are different here,” my mother always said. She had never set foot in China, would pass all her life on American soil, but she knew how different things could be. She clung to that, and so did we.

It was not quite a scar, not quite a brand, but more telling than either.

She wore her glamour like a stole tossed around her shoulders, and she cast it like a net over everyone who had seen her.

Women disappear, and even if you are famous, it can happen without a sound, without a ripple.