“Transfer everything in here for me,” my sister ordered and tossed two identical leather wallets into my lap, one with saddle stitches unravelled around the frayed edges, the other brand-new, still cocooned in a velvet pouch. The last rays of sunlight ricocheted against her outlines, sweet like honey. The dark circles under her eyes took on a sage hue after absorbing tiny golden particles from the setting dusk. I emptied the contents in her wallet——coins, bills, credit cards, ID cards and badges. Each compartment churned and peeled back, layers after layers of an onion that cried out her name.
“Do you want to come?” she asked, pulling into the parking lot of Pinoy Market.
“Nah, I’m alright,” I shook my head and stretched in the seat.
Her entire life in this town sprawled out on my lap. I had heard it all, or at least most. My sister was married at twenty-one. At odd hours, I listened to her weep over the phone, the girl once sat in front of me on an ‘84 Honda Chaly, drenched in sweat as she chirped away about the world beyond dial-up internet. The AC blasted a crummy piece of paper to the carpet.
I picked it up and unfolded it. The yellow paper was tearing, the prints faded, the text barely readable. The lone receipt occupied its own category. November 29th, 7:26 pm, my sister ordered a chicken teriyaki set and two waters for takeaway at Bento Express. I could not recognize the signature, whoever she was with, the unmemorable name had been washed out of my memories. No difference, she still worked double shift twice a week, cleaned and cooked for the household plus the in-laws every other day, as expected of her since the day she landed.
I folded and slid the receipt back inside a discreet compartment, my thoughts roamed, waiting for her to come back, she who bore spring onions and baguettes poking out of a plastic bag. Synthetic lights poured down from the windshield, pallid but smooth. We drove along in pure silence, until she chugged a CD into the slot. There was no cover, no print coat on the A track where someone had simply scribbled in blue marker——for H.
“Remember this?” She hummed along, tapping onto the slow beat.
I nodded.
The guitar drifted and Don Mclean’s tenor caressed us into the night.
I never understood my sister’s way of communicating important things, as though they were unimportant. I could not love like her, anyway. The perfect love taught in Sunday school, to die for but not to have. I knew no regrets, no abstinence, no responsibility, no moral compass, no greater goods other than what felt good to me.
Everything I had ever loved, I claimed and destroyed.
Thao Vu writes from Blacksburg, Virginia. She was a graduate of Eastern Nazarene College (Quincy, MA) in Psychology, National Taiwan University (Taipei, Taiwan) in Business, and is currently working on her debut novel through the MFA program in Creative Writing at Virginia Tech (Blacksburg, VA). Her favorite revenge story is Pedro Almodóvar’s The Skin I Live In (La piel que habito).
