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C. Exigua
By Jackie Wang
Illustrations by Caroline Bren
Birds of Lace Press
2011
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The Tongue
The tongue detaches itself and fops out of your mouth.
There is no pain, no bloodjust an enormous emptiness in that now-
cavernous space formally known as your mouth. The mouth senses
that its missing that most important thing, the strongest muscle in
the body and all the other things they say about it. Its the meaning-
machine, the thing that shapes the sounds. You try talking without
your tongue. The sounds just kind of tumble out of your mouth
unformed and the best you can do is try to shape them with your
throat but that just sounds like gagging. The tongue fops around on
the foor like a fsh drowning in air and then it starts to roll. It rolls
across the tile, gathering dust and dirt and dog hairs as it makes its
way toward the door. The door swings open and the tongue rolls
through the doorway, struggling to make it over the little ridge at the
base of the doorframe before fopping onto the doormat. The tongue
stops, exhausted, and continues to roll onward, gracelessly fumbling
across the sidewalk. An unsuspecting ant that is just minding their
own business walks into the tongues path and the tongue rolls over
it while the ant yells, whyyy meeeee. The ant does not dieit is stuck
to the tongues saliva, bonded to the tongue for the duration of the
journey.
You follow the tongue, a few steps behind it, as not to disturb.
The tongue cannot see. Every now and then it tightens and forms
a pointed tip that it uses to prod its environment. It pokes around
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blindly to get a sense of its surroundings, to feel for obstructions. The
tongue continuously produces saliva so that it gathers more for the
journey as it rolls along. You watch the tongue. The way it movesit
has so much personality! It should have its own TV show. Can you
imagine that tongue sitting at a desk wearing a bow tie, in front of
a fake backdrop of New York City, heckling celebrities? Its shtick
would be to inch across the table creepily, hurl itself onto the faces of
said celebrities, and lick them sensuously. The audience would roar.
Everyone would love the tongue. Imposter tongues would crop up
but none of them would be able to accurately emulate the gestures
of the Tongue. So specifc. So one-and-only. So much personality!
All this time, that tongue sat in your mouth and you had no idea
that that tongue was destined for greatness. That tonguea tiny
fragment of youis perhaps even bigger than you are. All this time
you housed a star, and you couldnt even see it until it detached itself
from you.
Meanwhile, on the surface of the tongue the ant creates a
makeshift national fag and jabs the stake into one of the tongues
taste buds. The tongue is its own nation and since the ant was the
frst to declare it, the ant has full ownership of the land. The ant
declares itself king. A grain of sand also riding on the tongue shoots
the ant king and the ant king puts one of his 3 right hands over his
heart, mumbles something in ant-speak about dying with honor, and
falls backward dramatically. Several grains of sand gather around
the ants body and toss it overboard, off of the tongue. The Sands
have risked their lives to dispose of the despotic ant monarch. The
Sands brush their hands off and chuckle in that job-well-done-boys
kind of way, but when they turn around there is an army of Dirts
holding rifes pointed at them, ready to start a war with the Sands.
The Sands scream, You can destroy us but you will never destroy
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the revolution! and hurl themselves overboard as a gesture of heroic
suicide. The Dirts begin to draft a constitution in order to establish
their new nation. The leader of the Dirtsby far the dirtiest of the
packgets up, points to a fellow Dirt and yells, Youre not dirt!
Youre a crumb! and orders the imposter to be hanged. As the
crumb is awaiting his execution, head in noose, he breaks out into a
moving speech: But what is the difference between a speck of dirt
and a crumb? Do their hearts not both beat in rhythm? Are all men
not born equal? Prick a crumb and you will see, he too bleeds! A
snobbish guffaw erupts from the audience. Everyone knows that
neither dirt nor crumbs have blood, sneers a Dirt.
The tongue has had enough of their senseless bickering.
Right before the stand is about to be removed from beneath the
feet of the crumb, the tongue hurls itself into a puddle, and all
particlesdirt, sand, hair, and bugs alikeare washed away.
The tongue splashes around in the water while giggling. So much
personality, that tongue! And to thinkthat tongue was your tongue.
Youre practically famous by association. As the tongue continues
to move along and collect more particles, a society begins to form
on its surface again. This time, the Sands and Dirts and Ants have
decided to work together and organize themselves horizontally,
creating non-hierarchical worker councils and unifying under a
common proletariat agenda. A large-scale assembly is held and all
the particles that live on the surface of the tongue gather to discuss
their needs. They collectively decide that the tongue is the tyrant and
must be assassinated if the proletariat-particles are to be truly free.
The particles must rise up and seize the means of production! Before
the situation can escalate, the tongue jumps into another puddle of
water, washing the egalitarian utopia away.
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You bend down and cup the tongue in your hands and lift it
toward your face. You pet the tongue, you examine the tongue. You
try to put the tongue back in your mouth, but it squeals, pushes your
mouth open and escapes through your teeth, fopping onto the foor
like a giant slug falling from the sky. The tongue gets up, brushes
itself off and begins to walk away. You get the hint. Your own tongue
hates you. You thought that maybe you could still be friends even
though you are two separate beings now. You thought that maybe
you could carry the tongue around in your mouth most of the time,
and occasionally let it out to play and roam freelylike those free-
range chickens that actually spend most of their time cooped up.
Limited freedom, you could call it. Total freedom is a burdenis
this confguration not the most ideal for both you and the tongue?
The tongue wants nothing to do with you, but still you follow it. It
gathers particles as it moseys along, but every time it comes across a
body of water it rinses itself off, cleansing itself out of fear that the
regeneration of civilization will begin again on its hide.
Where is this tongue going? Its so strong-willed and
determined, but toward what goal, toward what place, does it move?
It doesnt even hit you until you approach the entrance of the public
beach. The tongue is trying to get to the ocean. As it moves across
the sidewalk that leads to the sand, a little girl holding a bright green
plastic bucket and wearing a red-white-and-blue sailor themed
bathing suit points to the tongue and says to her mother, Ewww
mommy, whats that? I think its just a slug, honey, the mother
replies. It looks like a tongue! says the little girl. The mother
grabs the little girls wrist and drags her away from the tongue. You
try not to attract public attention to the tongue, but its diffcult to
be subtle about the whole thing when theres a fucking swarm of
seagulls hovering around the tongue, trying to gobble it up. You bat
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the seagulls away with your arms and feel like youre in a Hitchcock
flm. The tongue is lucky you followed it to the ocean; otherwise itd
be bird food by now. The tongue struggles to wade through the sand
while you stand over it, slapping the seagulls away.
30 or so feet away from you there is another girl inching
slowly toward the ocean, surrounded by a cloud of seagulls, crouched
over something you cannot see. Could it becould it be another girl
who has lost her tongue? But you have to focus. You have to protect
your tongue so it doesnt get scooped up by a seagull. When the
tongue arrives at the damp, packed sand, it becomes considerably
easier for the tongue to move. Covered in sand it crawls as quickly
as it can to the water, diving in without hesitation, becoming part of
that infnite expanse, that unending and open space, not like the tiny,
damp cave it formerly lived in. But you are not ready for your tongue
to leave you. You run into the water with your clothes on, trying to
fnd your tongue. Oh little tongue, please come back, please come back, you
think. What a curious thing it isthat all this time your tongue sat it
your mouth, functioning as the favor detector while it was actually
some kind of fsh or sea creature waiting to get free.
Splashing around next to you is the girl you saw swatting
seagulls while she inched slowly toward the water. She seems
desperate and sad, like she is searching for something she has just
lost, like she has been crying but its hard to distinguish tear-water
from ocean-water. As the waves toss you around you try to scream
something to her but without your tongue your sound is just noise that
doesnt indicate anything specifc. But somehow, she understands.
She yells back at you, her sound equally as unformed as yours. The
back and forth sounds something like, ahhh! and ahhhhh! and
ahhhhhh. You both abandon the search for your lost tongues and
swim back to the shore. And you sit on the sand, cross-legged and
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facing each other, sopping wet but the way the sunlight hits that
wetnessit looks like she is sparkling. You look at each other and
she opens her mouth and points. Empty. You open your mouth and
point. Empty. But that emptiness is suddenly tolerable when its
shared, becomes this thing that binds you to this other person. That
mutual vulnerability makes you feel so closewithout even being
able to talk to heryou feel like you know her, and you lean in to
kiss her and she kisses back and you part your lips a little but there
are no tongues to wiggle around in each others mouths. There is
just air. You blow some air into her mouth and her cheeks puff up
like a blowfsh. She does this to you and you push the air back and
forth, taking turns puffng and receiving. Its a new form of open-
mouth kissing but it probably couldnt be called French. Perhaps it
could be called the Chicago kiss, Chicago being the windy city and
all. As youre sitting with your new lover in the sand, the two tongues
return like children who have had enough time playing around and
now want nothing more than to curl up and sleep in the mouths of
their mothers.
The tongue came back. It wanted a taste of freedom, but
that freedom was too big (and too salty).
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The Redemption
There was something about her face. It wasnt a particularly
ugly face, but there was something about it, something that made
people vomit. Since nobody could look at her face without vomiting,
no doctor was willing to take on her case. It wasnt a single attack of
vomiting that occurred when looking at herthe vomiting would
last as long as peoples eyes were looking at her face, and would
stop as soon as they pointed their eyes elsewhere. Her mother was
the only person who could look at her face without vomiting. When
the mother was giving birth to her, the father was there like a good
father to help with the delivery. But as soon as she popped out and
he got a glimpse of her face, he started vomiting. He ran out of
the delivery room with his hands over his head. The doctor and
nurses also started vomiting and ran out of the delivery room as
well, but since everyone was wearing teal green surgical masks, the
vomit did not project; it oozed out from the bottom of their masks.
The newly delivered babyumbilical cord still attachedwas left
all alone with the mother, who didnt understand what was wrong
with her baby. The father divorced the mother. The mother stuck
with her baby even though it meant she would be forced to lead a life
of isolation with the baby.
When the baby was no longer a baby, it was hard for her
to fnd a boyfriend. Not because her face made everyone vomit,
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but because her mother never let her leave the house under any
circumstance. The mother was the girls only contact with the world,
although she knew what was out there because she had the internet.
But still, it was hard for her to imagine that there was any other way
to live, that there was a world outside the house. The mother had
committed her life to providing everything for the girleducation,
friendship, clothingand created a rigid home-schooling regimen
for the girl to follow. This took up so much of her time that the
mother had to quit her job as a dental assistant as her girl advanced
in her studies. The mother was a well-loved dental assistant because
she was chatty and jocular, making the whole experience more
enjoyable for the terrifed patients. The dentist offce was headed by
one male doctor and a number of assistants and receptionists that
were all women. The female coworkers would often ask the mother
to see a picture of her daughter, but she always made up excuses
because she knew showing a picture of her daughter would make
them vomit. The ladies eventually became suspicious of the mother
and thought that maybe the mother didnt really have a daughter. So
the mother went to Wal-Mart and took a generic wallet-sized picture
of a girl from a picture frame. The mother put the picture in her
wallet and showed her coworkers the next day. They commented on
how beautiful she was, but added, She looks nothing like you! The girl in
the photograph had blond hair and blue eyes, while the mother had
black hair, brown eyes, and olive skin. The mother hadnt thought
to take a picture that looked similar to her, probably because she
doesnt look at herself often. Rumors began to circulate around the
offce about the mother being a liar. It was a good thing that the
mother was being forced to quit her job, because things could have
easily escalated. When the mother said she would be leaving the
offce, her coworkers all signed a generic card that said, Well miss you!
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and handed it to the mother on her last day.
When the mother was out of the house she always locked
her daughter inside. The mother had all the doorknobs reversed so
that people could be locked in, not out. The girl made a habit of
browsing the internet while the mother was out, fguring out a way
to bypass the child block with proxies. Naturally, after being locked in
the house all day every day, the girl had a very rich internet life. The
mother had destroyed the built-in webcam on the computer so the
girl would not be able to video chat with anyone online. There were
no photographs of the girl because the person developing the photos
would surely vomit upon seeing her face. This made the mother sad.
She wanted to document the growth of her little girl. One day the
mother took the technological plunge and bought a digital camera.
She didnt know how to work it at frst, but with a little practice she
got really good at it. The mother took many pictures of the girl,
but when she brought her SIM card to a self-service digital photo
processor at her local CVS, she fucked something up and a photo of
her little girl got jammed in the machine. An amiable worker from
the photo department offered her assistance (let me help you, maam)
and began to walk over to her. She yelled, No! No! Stay away! But the
employee was the only one who knew how to un-jam the machine.
He opened the front door of the machine and saw that there was
a partially printed picture stuck inside. He pulled the picture out
and partially vomited upon looking at it. The mother grabbed the
picture from his hands, shoved it in her purse, and ran away. As she
was driving back home she realized that she had forgotten her SIM
card and that the employees would surely vomit if they were to look
at its contents. Oh well, the mother thought.
When the mother got home, the girl was gone. Dammit!
Had the mother been so stupid that she forgot to lock a door on the
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way out? The girl had been waiting for this moment forever. When
the mother left the girl was chatting online with one of the many
guys she knew on the internet. Several of them lived in her town.
When the girl realized the door was unlocked, she asked one of the
internet guys to meet up at a nearby caf. The girl didnt know how
to navigate the outside world. Luckily, the caf was located on Main
Street in the tiny downtown area less than a mile away. When the
girl stepped outside, the sun hit her eyes, giving her a headache so
intense that it made thought impossible. She persisted, knowing that
the caf wouldnt be so bright. Things went more or less smoothly
until she saw her frst passerby about 4 minutes after leaving the
house. It was a sweaty jogger. He had short track shorts, hairy legs, a
sweatband around his head, and a sports-appropriate walkman that
blasted high-energy tunes into his ears to help him maintain stamina.
When the jogger looked at the girl as they passed each other on the
sidewalk going in opposite directions, the man immediately vomited
upon glancing at her face. The girl thought, Wow, that guy is really
working up a storm. She thought it was the high-intensity workout that
made him vomit and still didnt know that it was her face that made
people vomit. Like I mentioned earlier, she isnt an ugly girl. There
is just something mysterious about her face that triggers a vomiting
reaction. You could say its analogous to the brown note.
As she walked up to Main Street, everyone around her
started vomiting. She still did not get it. She thought there must be
some fu or virus going around. She was worried about catching it,
but too excited about being out in the world to turn around now. She
walked into the caf and squinted her eyes to look at the menu. She
didnt know the exact protocol for ordering things, but she watched
how other people did it and fgured it out. When she approached
the cashier at the register he immediately vomited upon looking
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at her. He ran to the bathroom with his hand over his mouth and
another employee came up to the counter to take his place, but she
immediately vomited and ran away as well. Soon she had cleared out
all of the employees, who were in the bathrooms cleaning themselves,
taking turns at the sink. All the customers left as well. The caf was
empty like a post-apocalyptic nightmare. There were puddles of
vomit everywhere. The girl wondered, Is this what the real world is like?
As the girl walked home, the people in her path projected vomit
in every direction. When she fnally got home, smelling strongly of
puke, her mother was a nervous wreck. Where were you? The mother
asked. The girl said, I just went out for a walk. The mother replied, I
told you never to leave this house under any circumstance. This back-and-
forth went on for some time until the mother fnally cracked. There
is something I have to tell you, she said. There is something about your face
that makes people vomit. It has always been this way. That is why Ive had
to shelter you from the world all this time. Something suddenly clicked
in the girls mind. What she had experienced earlier that day now
made sense, and she replayed every scene in her mind with this new
understanding. The man jogging down the street, the cashiers at the
caf, everyone walking near her on Main Street. She had triggered
their vomiting.
Early the next morning the mother walked sleepily in her
slightly see-through white nightgown to the end of the driveway to
fetch the newspaper. It was a ritual that she found stabilizing. She
needed to get out of the house early in the morning in order to start
her day on a good note. She thought about how her daughter could
never go outside, and how depressing that must be. My poor little girl,
she thought. The mother instinctively started making a pot of coffee
and popped two portions of instant oatmealone for her, one for
her daughterin the microwave. The mother poured herself a cup
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of coffee and sat down to read the newspaper. As she was fipping
through the pages to glance at the headlines, she immediately noticed
the headline: Main Street swept by wave of mass vomiting. The
mother involuntarily spit her coffee out all over the paper. She read
the article, which attributed the mass vomiting to a chain reaction
caused by a single vomiter. One person vomits, then another person
vomits, and so on, potentially ad infnitum. But the mother knew
that it was her daughter who caused the vomiting.
Meanwhile, the daughter was awaking upstairs. She
immediately ficked on her computer screen to see if the man she
was supposed to meet at the caf had emailed her. Apparently last
night he sent her an email that said, Sorry I missed you. I arrived at the
caf, but the whole place was deserted and reeked of vomit. Maybe we can try
again sometime soon? Let me know. Im not creepy, I swear! The girl didnt
reply. She shut the computer off, feeling sad about being fated to
be alone forever. What did she do to deserve this incomprehensible
condemnation? Maybe there was something she could do to fx her
condition. Maybe there was a solution, a way to live in the world
without making everyone vomit. The girl quickly began to hatch a
plan.
Potential Solution #1: Paper Bag
The girls mother was kind of a hippie. She tried to bring
cloth bags with her every time she went to the grocery store. On the
days that she forgot, she was wrought with internal confict over the
moral dilemma: paper or plastic. Plastic would surely strangle many
birds and would never decompose. But paper required trees to be
cut down, the trees that produce the worlds oxygen and provide
a habitat for a number of species. Guided by some vague mantra
about the lesser of two evils, the mother picked paper without really
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knowing why. The girl took a paper bag brought home by her mother
and cut two eyeholes and one mouth hole out of the bag. She went
up to her mother and said, Mother, is it okay to go outside if I wear this bag
over my face? The mother agreed, albeit reluctantly. It was hard to see
her little girl grow up and leave the nest. The girl put the bag on her
head and ran out of the house. Freedom, she thought. As soon as this
thought entered her head, the sky began to rumble. Torrential rains
were coming. The girl thought, A little rain never hurt anyone. It began to
pour when the girl walked by an elementary school. Children fooded
out of the building with umbrellas and raincoats. The paper bag on
the girls head got soaked. It began to disintegrate and quickly fell
apart completely. The girls face was exposed, and the children that
were walking on the sidewalk toward her to meet their parents all
started to vomit. The rain dispersed the vomit, spreading it thin like
pee in a pool. Realizing what she had done, the girl put her hands
over her face and ran home wailing. After bursting through her front
door she slammed it behind her. A stillness descended around her.
She was soaking wet, but she was safe in her home.
Potential Solution #2: Plastic Surgery
Nope, not possible. No doctor could surgically alter her face
because they would puke during the entire operation.
Potential Solution #3: Heavily Caked Make-Up
The girl asked her mother to get a large selection of
foundation for her to try to cover-up her face. The mother followed
through, but this solution did not work. Her face plastered with
make-up resembled her original face too closely and still triggered
vomiting amongst onlookers.
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Potential Solution #4: Really Long Bangs
What if the girl grew really long bangs to cover her face?
Unlike the solutions previously posed, this solution would be all-
natural. The girl waited in the house patiently as her bangs grew to
the appropriate length. When the day arrived that her bangs were
fnally long enough to cover her face she left the house triumphantly.
She had fgured out the most promising solution to her problem.
Best of all, she wouldnt have to cut off her face. As an added plus,
everyone knows that bangs look really sexy when they cover the
face. As the girl was walking on the sidewalk toward Main Street,
a woman pushing a baby stroller was walking toward her. At the
precise second that the girl and the woman pushing the baby stroller
were about to intersect, a gust of wind came and blew the girls
bangs out of her face. The woman projected vomit that landed in
her baby carriage. Horrifed that she had caused a shower of vomit
to rain on an innocent baby, the girl glanced into the baby carriage
to assess what damage had been done. Upon looking, she realized
that there was no baby in the carriage. The woman was pushing an
empty baby stroller. The woman quickly dashed away pushing the
carriage that was now flled only with vomit.
Resignation
Alas, the girl gave up. There was no solution for her. She had
exhausted every single possibility, and there was no use continuing
to try. She contemplated suicide, but couldnt do it after considering
everything her mother sacrifced to give her a chance to live. So
the girl resigned herself to this sad fate. She would continue to
exist, but cloistered and hidden from the world. Her mother would
continue to support her until the day she died. When her mother
died, she would have to die too because she could not live on her
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own. When the girl realized this, she retreated further and further
into the internet worldthe only world where it was safe for her
to interact with people without causing them to involuntarily vomit
up their last meal. The girl began to talk more and more frequently
with the man she was supposed to meet at the caf on that frst day
shed ventured into the world. They talked daily on the internet for
years. The trust that had been established between them was strong,
but there was one enormous gap in their relationship. The man
didnt know what the girlwho was now a womanlooked like.
The woman repeatedly refused to send pictures of her face even
though the man sent her many. After talking to each other on the
internet for 5 years, the woman fnally broke down and confessed to
the man that he couldnt see her or see a picture of her because her
face made everyone except her mother vomit. Remember the day you
were supposed to meet me at the caf and arrived to a scene of vomit splattered
everywhere? I caused it, the woman said.
The man was not repulsed when he heard this. In a way, it
was a relief for him. He was understanding and sincere in his love.
He convinced the woman to send a picture of herself anyway. He
told her that he would look at it once and was ok with vomiting if
it meant he could see what his true love looked like. The woman
agreed to send the picture. As soon as she clicked send she was
nervous as hell, her palms sweaty and her body shaking. Right after
as the man looked at the picture, he sent her a message that said,
Good news! I looked at the picture and didnt vomit. My god, you are beautiful!
I have to see you in person right now! Immediately, the two of them ran
out of their respective houses toward each other so that they would
collide somewhere in the middle. She was too excited to wait for
him to get to her house and didnt care who she made vomit in the
process of consummating her love.
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These two lovers, they run toward each other as fast as
they can and when they get close to each other, time slows down.
They are moving in slow motion, their hair swaying slowly from
side to side. Everywhere around them, people are projecting streams
of vomit into the air in slow motion, vomit of all shades of the
rainbow, quite a colorful backdrop for the meeting of these lovers.
Agonizing facial expressions are frozen on the vomiting bystanders
faces. But since their presence is relegated to the background and so
much emphasis is placed on the lovers, you likely wont notice the
expressions on the faces of these extras. Meanwhile, the woman and
the man take one last giant leap into each others arms and begin to
kiss passionately. Vomit. The camera makes dizzying circles around
them vomit, emphasizing the monumental quality vomit of their love
vomit and the culmination of this narrative in such a cathartic vomit
release. She is saved. Vomit.
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Take Me to Goggle Town

Jump, jump! they screamed.
In their bathing suits they stood on the rocks that edged the
water. I was standing on the jumping rock looming over them like
a king or pope waving from his balconyI stood so unkingly and
shaking, what kind of pope king shakes before their followers? I was
never meant to lead, was always the girl at the back of the line,
trailing behind, running to catch up and they, always several paces
ahead, never waiting. I am always behind them. We had just crawled
out of the water and were dripping river, little amphibious creatures
living between the wet and the dry, with lungs and plastic snorkels
as prosthetic gills. Carolee was wearing a blue two-piece and had
blue tinted swimming goggles hanging around her neck. Whenever
she put the goggles over her eyes everything turned blue. The world
turned blue. Everyone was a blueberry head when her eyes were
behind the goggles.
She loved itloved the way she could color the world a
single shade just by wearing the goggles. Blue everywhere, the most
pleasant disease. Was she bad for doing it? Afraid, she closes her
eyes and pulls the goggles off. She opens them and the colors reset,
unchanged by her meddling. She is always relieved by the reversibility
of her tinkering habits. Sometimes she would walk around the house
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with the goggles, the rubber strap clinging to her head over her long
brown hair. She would bend down to pet her little white fuffy dog
and say, Franois! Youve turned blue! Did somebody dip you in
Kool-Aid? Oh Franois! We must take you to the vet immediately.
Whats that? You dont want to go? You get carsick you say? Okay
Franois. Perhaps I can perform an emergency operation right now.
I think I can heal you. Do you trust me, Franois? Carolee closes
her eyes and takes the goggles off. When she opens them, Franoiss
fur is white again. He is healed.
Carolee was my best friend. I dont know where she is now.
We stopped being friends after that day at the river. I stopped being
friends with everyone who was there that day: John, Lacy, and
Adam. Living on the same block as I, these were mostly friends
of convenience, bodies of proximity, because as a child its all so
amorphous and open. Youre less discriminating. But out of all of
those who went away after that day, Carolee was the only one who
mattered. The day I lost Carolee was the day I found color was the
day I began to understand the sweetness of color, Carolees sweet
love of painting the world. When I used to go over to her house I
didnt get it, didnt understand how looking through tinted plastic
could amuse her infnitely. She walked around. She touched things.
It never got old. She picked up an orange, squinted, held the red
side of a pair of 3D glasses to her slightly opened eye and said, Not
so orange are we now, Reddie! And she laughed to herself, and I
watched her and thought she was crazy, thought that here was a girl
who really didnt know anything at all, knew nothing about the way
the world worked. I would sit around her house, bored and wanting
to play other games, games other than the color game. I was tired of
the color game. It never stopped with her.
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When light was gone the world was emptied of its colors,
hollowed out by the black blanket that covered everything nightly.
Carolee did not resistshe let the darkness drown out her precious
colors because she was able to revel in the colors of her dreams. In
her dreams she found new colors, brighter colors, colors that could
burn you with their glow, could seep into your blood, could touch
you. Even when she was in her dark bedroom, ready to sleep, she
never stopped thinking about the colors. She prayed for vivid dreams.
Every night she asked God for a different dream in a different color, in
the color of something she came across that day. Send me a dream
in the color of the yellow E magnet on the refrigerator. Thank you,
God. Love, Carolee. Or: Tonight I would like a dream in the pink
of Mothers earring. Yours, Carolee. Or: Its been a while since
Ive dreamed in green. I saw a leaf while walking to the bus stop that
was the most gorgeous green Ive ever seen. Since you are God, you
know what Im talking about. Thanks for sending me so many colors.
Warmly, Carolee. Or: God, surprise me tonight. Show me a color
Ive never seen. I really do appreciate all the colorful dreams youve
sent me. Will you send a beautiful color to my mother tonight as
well? She seemed quite sad today, so maybe dont send blue. Maybe
send a bright color, or a beautiful and soft one. I fear that my mom
is missing color in her world lately. If you are busy you can send one
to her instead of me. I can do without color for the night if it means
my mom will get a little more. Thanks again. Love, Carolee.
Her bed was right next to her windowsill because she liked
to be woken up by the sunlight. Every morning when she woke the
frst thing she did was rise to her knees and peek out the window to
look at the tree in her front yard. She would press her face against
the cool glass, trying to absorb the world outside with her skin, to
turn even her skin cells into a surface that could look, that could feel
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and map and touch all at once. The tree outside her room grew the
brightest red berries youd ever seennot edible for humans but
the birds loved them. Red, for Carolee, was always seen with the
chirping sound of the birds that hung around her tree. She imagined
the birds bringing the berries to their chicks and dropping the sweet
red pearls into their mouths.
When I would sleep over at Carolees house we always stayed
awake talking. I remember how on one night the moon pushed
through her blinds and illuminated part of her face, while the other
side of her facethe side that I saw while lying next to herwas
shadowy and somber. But beneath the shadows I could detect a
certain expression, a certain gleeful look on her sleeping face, a look
that indicated COLOR, and DREAMING IN COLOR, that let
you know that she was dreaming up colors unknown to the rest of
us. When I slept at her house I was always the last one to fall asleep
and it was the loneliest thing, to be awake in the darkness in a room
that was not my own, having to play dead because I was in bed next
to her. One night before she went to sleep she talked about colors.
She spoke of the colors every time I spent the night but this time
was different. We were side-by-side on our backs next to each other,
holding hands like we always did in those days.
Today I saw the most beautiful maroon, she said.
Where did you see it?
Its the color of the yarn my mom is using to knit a new
blanket. Tomorrow I will ask her to show it to you. Its the most
wonderful maroon Ive seen. I touched it and felt tickled because
it was so soft. I asked my mom how it could be so soft and she said
its made of bamboo. I said, whats a bamboo? and she said its the
plant that pandas eat.
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I knew what she was thinking. She was imagining a forest of
maroon yarnmillions of strands of maroon yarn dangling from
the sky and covering everything. Imagining: herself walking through
the maroon yarn forest, parting the maroon yarn strands with her
hands, occasionally stumbling upon black and white pandas with
spools of maroon yarn hanging out of their mouths. The soft maroon
yarn brushing against her face as she wanders through the dense
yarn forest. Everywhere, maroon. Everywhere, soft. And Carolee, a
lover of maroon but never marooned, for she always had her colors.
At that time I didnt know what to say to her. I could have
told her what bamboo really was, told her that it was stiff and hard,
that it wasnt maroon at all, that they dye it, that its yellowish with
green leaves. I could have told her how it really was. But I didnt.
Even at that age I knew that for her thats the way it really was.
That night the conversation didnt end there. She told me
other things about the colors.
I think I am gaining control of the colors without the
goggles or glasses. I think I can change the colors just by thinking
it, but sometimes I dont even know I am thinking it until I see the
colors change and move. But it has to be me that is doing it because
nobody else can see it.
But why you? Do you think we can all change the colors if
we want to?
I dont know. Maybe its something you have to train
yourself to do. But also, I think its possible that God has given me
special powers because he knows how much I love to play with colors.
Maybe hes tired of me always asking him to send me certain colors
and hes giving me the power to control them myself. Last night
before I fell asleep I told myself that I wanted to dream of the bright
gold-orange of sunsets and I had a dream that I was walking down a
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road that was surrounded by nothing except a sky that was the color
I hoped for, like I was walking through a tunnel of sunset. No houses
or grassjust sky and the road I was walking on. I didnt even ask
for it from God. I just thought of it before sleep and it came to me.
That was just the beginning of it. First it started with the
goggles, then the pair of glasses that she covered with saran wrap
of different colors; then she started manipulating them on her own,
dreaming up new colors, seeing the colors change before her eyes,
warble, shift with moods, fare up at the sound of yelling, soften with
the sound of her brother practicing violin heard through a wall,
pinken with her familys laughter, greenen with the musty smell of
grass after rain, yellow whenever her grandmother came around,
brighten with the sound of singers echoing in a chapel, redden in
times of danger, grow shiny at the sound of her mothers crooning
as she cooked and bathed. She was living in a near-hallucinatory
state and all the sounds and smells and colors and textures were
constantly interacting with each other, dancing all around her. She
was so tuned in that she could sense what you were feeling, could
see your true color, so to speak. She knew when you were upset or
annoyed or overjoyed because she saw the color of your emotions
surrounding you, covering you like a cloud.

Dear God

I would wonder what she asked for, and how she could keep
asking without running out of things to say. But there was enough
there were as many things to ask for as there were colors. The
average human can see a million different hues. How many could
Carolee see?
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Dear God
Give me a pale sigh. A lavender footstep. An earth-toned sign.
One day we got into a fght. We were playing a board game
and arguing about the dice. When it was my turn to roll, I threw
the dice across the table and they tumbled off the edge, landing on
the ground in an unlucky position. I said that I had to re-do it but
she thought we should count the roll anyway. But if we counted
the roll I would lose my next turn and she would get two turns. I
tried to hide my anger but I lost it when she said, I can tell youre
upset because youre turning red. I snapped back that she was full
of it, that she was a faker and saw color just like everyone else
simple and straightforward, stable and unchanging, subdued and
unremarkable. She said, Maybe the same thing is in front of us but
I just have another way of looking!
I will never forget that.
Dear God
Send salmon pink fngernails, golden skin, ruby tongues, silver hair. Bring me
beet-stained fngers, raspberry stained lips, sunburned shoulders, blue veins in the
wrist and pearl teeth for eating those bloody beets.
She could watch black and white flms and fll in the missing
data. Over time she was able to look at a color and break the color
up into hundreds of composite colors, separating the colors that
together form the color she was looking at, like a number broken
up into a factor tree, splitting the colors up to see the more basic
elements. But the whole red-blue-green threefold system of color
perception did not hold up for her. Her vision did not follow the
same rules of human perceptionthe three dimensional rule.
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Perhaps her vision was more like a bird, who use four channels to
perceive color, adding extra ultraviolet dimension, allowing them
totheoreticallyperceive 99 million more hues than humans.
Or perhaps she was a manic depressive or autistic child who saw
things more vividly in agitated psychological states. Was it spiritual-
supernatural? Physiological? Psychological? Well never know.
Dear God
Show me the color of blood oranges, cherry-toned peppercorns from Brazil, the
green of avocado fesh, the yellow of egg yolks, the purple of red onions and the
orange of redheads.
Watching her watch the world and thinking of what I dont
see, what I cant see or perhaps just forget to seefrom this I know
that there is such a thing as negative hallucination, of walking into
a room full of brightly painted knickknacks and emptying them
with my peculiar eye, an eye that erases as it apprehends the objects
occupying the frame, that fattens and renders black and white. By
the time I broke my head and broke free of this way of looking,
she was already gone. I never got to share it with her. I sometimes
wonder, where is Carolee now? Nothing pains me more than to
think that maybe she doesnt see colors the way she used to, maybe
her vision has fattened and grown dull with age, much like emotions
do as we leave childhood behind. I dont like to think that.
During the frst night of living with her absencean
absence that widens everyday, that always invents new memories
and regretsthat night I dreamed that I heard a gentle wheeze,
a barely audible hiss that prompted me to look up from my bed. A
red balloon hovered over me and began to grow, fattening without
being fed and threatening me with its expansion. I tried to close my
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eyes because I was afraid it would pop, but I couldnt. Something
was forcing me to see. As the balloon loomed above my bed Carolee
opened the door to my room. I told her to run away but she stood
in the doorway and handed me a giant needle. I said, I cant do it!
and she replied, but you have to. So I took the needle from her
and stuck it into the balloon. When the balloon popped, colorful
buttons burst out and continued to pour from the sky or ceiling or
somewhere above, pouring until the whole room was flled with
buttons, and I was flled with color.
The dream came to me later that day, the day we all went
to the nearby river to splash around and take turns leaping off the
jumping rock. I never liked to jump off of it but I had something to
prove because I felt like such a nobody around other kids. Standing
on top of the rock, I looked down at all the kids below hollering
Jump! because it was my turn to take the plunge. But Carolee did not
chantshe was covering her eyes. I didnt know why, but she was too
afraid to watch. I looked down at the water and walked away from
the edge, wanting to turn back and step down but instead, a surge
of impulsive and childish courage overtook me and I ran toward
the edge. At the last second I hesitated and tried to stop myself,
but I could not stop. My feet slid out from beneath me, my body
fell backward, and my head smacked against the rock, the collision
rattling the little brain inside my little skull as the world suddenly
ignited, pushing outward in all directions like an explosion. Colors
ablaze I descended, crashing into the blue-green.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jackie Wang is a writer and performer. Her writings on literature,
art, flm, music, theory, politics, and culture can be read on HTML-
GIANT, BOMBlog and her personal blog serbianballerinasdance-
withmachineguns.com. She has recently published an essay in the
anthology Other Tongues (Inanna Publications) about hybrid identities
and writing temporalities. She is currently working on a novel about
mother-ghosts, adolescent queer desire, kidney stones, and fantastic
parthenogenetic birth stories.
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
Birds of Lace is a feminist press born in 2005 and based in San
Francisco, CA. Releases include Anna Joy Springers The Birdwisher,
Rohin Guhas Relief Work, Niina Pollaris Fabulous Essential and Chris-
tine Vi-Van Nguyens Blood and Jasmine When I Dreamed Her. For more
information please visit birdsoface.wordpress.com.