Flood Stories

(i) 

Ma tells me that I was born during a flood, that when I was born, I brought so much rain to Kowloon that the hospital lost power -- not for a minute or for an hour but for an entire night. I know it’s one of her favorite stories because it has all the elements of the soap operas she likes: a beautiful woman (Ma), a dramatic setting (Kowloon at midnight during a typhoon), and a failed romance (a wrinkled photo of Ba with his face thumbed in and the color rubbed out so it looks like he has a halo. Once, when I said this aloud, Ma laughed and told me that Ba was far from a saint. I said, obviously; according to Sister Elizabeth, we’re all sinners. Ma had nothing to say to that). Mostly though, Ma loves this story because there isn’t really an ending. It’s the sort of story that’s all beginning, and in this case, it begins with me. 

(ii) 

Ma tells me that the first body I ever broke was hers. They had to tear me open to get to you, she says. She tells me that as the pressure between her legs grew, so too did the storm outside. Eventually, both the pain and the storm grew so great and so hungry that they went thieving in the night: The pain stole Ma’s mind and the storm stole the light. What do you mean? I ask. What do you mean when you say the storm stole the light? Ma says: The storm swallowed all the lights in the hospital. Everything turned black, blacker than your nostrils. At first I thought that the darkness was coming from between my legs. That perhaps my baby was hungry too. But then one of the nurses found a flashlight, and soon we realized that it wasn’t you. Not then. I was the hungry one. My body wouldn’t let you go. 

(iii) 

Ma tells me that she named me Ten, after the storm signal. Ten means that a storm will gown Hong Kong in wind, turn windows into glitter, and unhem the harbor with rain. Ten means an inevitable flood, the way I was inevitable because Ba was inevitable. (Can’t you prepare for the inevitable though? Ma says that I should ask Sister Elizabeth, but Sister Elizabeth just frowns and says that God is inevitable and so is God’s love, which makes me roll my eyes. Ma doesn’t believe in God. Doesn’t believe in anything except me and floods and stories without endings.)

(iv) 

Ma tells me that when the doctors finally pulled me out of her belly, I was too small and too loud. She says: You were so juicy and red! Like a mouthful of fruit. She likes to tell me this when we’re about to fall asleep or when she’s cooking dinner or when she’s nickeling my back, and we end up turning the story into a game. Like a spot of bloody drool, I say, and Ma gives me a marbled grin, the gold in her teeth catching the light. No, she says, silting my skin with a coin. Like gunk hocked up on the side of the road. My turn: No, like a smothered rose, after it’s been stomped on. Ma nods. Yes, like a bruise on concrete. My baby. 

(v) 

Ma tells me that I’m her great-aunt, except reincarnated. According to Ma, this great-aunt never let her children go outside. Until she died, all they had to eat and drink was ink. At night I dream of a boy and a girl shitting black ink in strokes as thin and jittery as beetles’ legs. When I tell Ma, she laughs and asks me what characters they make. I say I don’t remember but I do; I’m just confused: Is it the character for ten or is it a cross? When I draw it out for Sister Elizabeth, she just tells me to pray and so I do. I pray until I grow hungry. 

(vi) 

Ma tells me that after my birth, she stayed in her bedroom for an entire month to prevent dying of cold or exhaustion or inevitability. She says that she ate pig livers everyday and she drank so much jujube soup that her breasts swelled until they spilled sour moonlight across her body. She says that I loved the taste of her, that my mouth quickly became a leaking purse around her nipples, and that in this way, she transferred her hunger to me. 

(vii) 

Ma tells me that hunger tastes bitter. Bitter like what? Bitter like nothing. Bitter like knees licking the ground. 

(viii) 

Ma tells me to be careful because hunger weaves in and out like the stitches across her belly. When she says this, I place my hand over the place where she’s been knit back together like a doll or like the sky after it’s been unzipped by lightning. Hunger, Ma says, tastes like a secret. You’ll always spit it out. 

(ix) 

Ma tells me that one day, I’ll understand. (I already do.) 

(x) 

Sometimes I want to ask Ma whether her hunger is like mine. Is it like the hunger I get when I look at you? The sort of hunger that I’ll need to pray about. That makes me want to fit my mouth around your thighs and elbows and feel you press against me from inside. The sort of hunger that sounds like buckles of thunder or the hum in the air before a baby is born. 

Ma tells me yes. It’s the sort of hunger that feels like drowning. Like giving birth to a story. One cleaved of its ending, red-faced and milk-sore. Tongue tipped towards the sky, ankles swirling with storm.

Celeste Sea lives in Washington, DC. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Sine Theta Magazine, Maudlin House, perhappened mag, trampset, and SmokeLong Quarterly. Find her on Twitter @celestish_ and online at https://celesteceleste.carrd.co/.