The Creature

In my family, our bodies are not our own. They are occupied by a creature.

It crouches at the root of my father’s tongue. Whenever he opens his mouth, curses mixed with smoke hit me and my mother like fists. It coils behind my mother’s eyes, so her tears never stop, catching the light in the dark. Each time she calls “Bao,” my brother’s name, it gurgles, spitting slime that slides from the corner of her eyes. Dampness spreads through the house, and mold creeps up the ceiling. It has also claimed one of my ribs, where it crashes and growls. On the street, whenever a car speeds past, I want to grab a brick and hurl it, shouting at the driver: Why so fast? Three years ago, my brother’s blood seeped into the cracks of the asphalt. The driver who fled was never found.

In math class, the teacher drones on about quadratic equations, spit flying. In the sparse hair on his head, I can see the creature. On my deskmate’s finger, callused and misshapen from gripping a pen, I can trace its marks. The class monitor bends over his homework, shoulders uneven, the creature weighing down one side, silent, yet there.

It hides everywhere: on the lamp post where a dog lifts its leg; in the apples at the fruit shop downstairs, dark spots spreading on their skins; in the faint blood print on the mosquito net after I slap a mosquito. It is only too lonely. The more it multiplies, the more hollow it becomes.

Until one day, in the folds of my brother’s old school uniform, I found a booklouse.

I leaned closer, and there was the creature, riding on its back, trotting. The way it tilted its head, swaying, was exactly how my brother looked when he carried me on his shoulders through the alley. I closed the uniform, without slapping, without running. Perhaps it is learning to be small.