Anguli Ma by Chi Vu Page A

anything to do with her?” Thảo asked.
    â€œShe’s vanished! Into this emptiness!” Đào’s chest was in a lot of pain now, and her face was hot and wet.
    â€œListen to me. Don’t turn your face to the wall like that. Please,” Thảo said.
    ÄÃ o was crying uncontrollably, and the echoes of her sobbing seemed to bounce around the walls of the room. Outside, the choppy weather ceased.

    ÄÃ o’s dream reached out towards her past and her future. She was standing in her front yard. The last truck had dispersed its horror of fumes, the night was silent and the highway empty. Her small hands took a while to locate the keyhole, but eventually she got both the security door and then the wooden door opened. She stood there in the moonlight, not wanting to go in.
    She did not turn on the lights. When her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she could make out the water cascading down from her bench tops; the sink was overflowing. Đào’s possessions were darker with wetness, they seemed crumpled and distorted. The bags of cotton-knitted material had filled with the rising water and were disgorging their contents – a shoulder piece, a lower leg, a torso panel. She had somehow deserved all this, and so, if this was her destiny, Đào would follow the path laid out before her to its very end.
    She rummaged in her kitchen drawer for a torch, to cut through the endless darkness. There was a strange peace in her every breath. She switched the torch on, and a ball of light drifted ahead of her, reaching the different walls and surfaces of her house. Up to this moment, she had only had tentative thoughts, each one a terror of being scolded or ridiculed. Now, her thoughts were free from fear, and somehow free from herself as well. She was surprised to find this strange peace and comfort filling her lungs evenly, without effort or strain. Each cycle of breath in and out made her sink and rise, sink and rise, ever so minutely.
    The moon was heavy and round in her backyard, throwing golden highlights on the concrete and the stunted pot plants. Đào opened the garage and inside, once again, she could smell rotting meat. Her torch shone slowly across the far wall, revealing the stain marks of rivulets of rain leaking through the roof, and delicate blooms of mildew. Throughthe tiny side-window, the moon’s light fell into the garage at a striking angle.
    On the other side of Anguli Ma’s bed was one of her bowls. She stooped down to collect it from the floor. Inside the bowl were what seemed to be plump, longish fruit. She picked up one of the pieces, and discovered that it was joined to a second one, as though sewn together by a thick thread. She lifted them higher, and saw that they pulled another up, and another. It was a beautiful garland, each part of it a sinewy chunk of dried flesh. It was a necklace made of fingers, with knuckle joints and nails intact.
    ÄÃ o let out a gasp as she recognised whose they were. She was tossed in the murky waves, churning, churning, churning in violence.
    An idea awakened in her mind and Đào was horrified by it. Yet, she obeyed it. Lifting the gory lei high above her, she put her head through. The girl’s fingers dangled heavily around her neck. Đào felt the weight of it, the flesh and the nails of it. She stepped back to look at her own monstrous visage in the mirror. Sinh’s nails twinkled at her décolletage. Đào’s own fingers were like jewels amongst the stony, desiccated fingers; her living fingers and those of the dead intermingled.
    Equipped for vengeance, the woman crouched down. She was ready to catch the offender when he eventually returned to her, with his head shaven and wearing the simple garb of a beggar. When he comes, she will be old, but ready. She will not even hear the words of an enlightenedbeing. She will make a wreath of his fingers that will hang outside her garage