The Many Daughters of Afong Moy

by Jamie Ford

“Your history is whatever I tell them. In America, a lie becomes the truth with sufficient repetition. I merely tell the crowd what they need to hear to be satisfied.”

“We don’t have to grieve only those we know. Sometimes we grieve for that which was lost, that which was never allowed to be.”

“It’s clear that you’re looking for something very important.” He paused. “Perhaps you are searching in the branches for what only appears in the roots.” Faye pondered this for a moment. “That’s not the Buddha, that’s Rumi.” “So it is.” The monk smiled and nodded. “And I think both of them would tell you to look deeper.”

One of those strangers was Dorothy’s father, though he didn’t stick around when Greta got pregnant, so Dorothy never knew him. She just knew his type, because that’s who her mother continued to pursue, as though looks, the mere resemblance of someone she’d lost, might be enough of a facsimile to fool herself into happiness, or at least a measure of contentment. Her mother hadn’t been looking for love, she’d been looking for a tourniquet.

“Some prisons have armed guards, bars, and iron gates, and some have a white picket fence and a garden.”

We loved with a love that was more than love.

Faye rubbed her forehead. “Is there ever a way to remember?” “You have to calm your ocean,” Shi said warmly. Then the ground shook from distant explosions. The tea rippled in their cups. “You are welcome to go downstairs and meditate on this for a while. The less you seek your answer, the better your chances of finding it.”

Perhaps because the death and horror and mayhem around her couldn’t get through the emotional scar tissue that had built up over time.