1.One day I wake up and my hair has turned whiteand I am no longer Chinese.I want to ask my mother about this change in my appearancebut she has been dead longer than I have been alive.You have to take the good with the bad she used to tell mebefore trying to drown me in the bathtub.My father sat in the next room in his imported black underwear,smoking a perfumed cigar, and jerking offin front of the television that he had dragged in from the street.It never worked. It still doesn’t, and the blue stains on the chairare why I never sit there. 2.My mother, if thatwas what she wastold me drowningwas the mostefficient wayto leave the house,no footprints,hard to tracenever beforeMy mother told meI must drown youmy idiot childmy beloved offspringmy grievanceI am giving youmy only chanceto breathe water smoothlyto swim awayfrom this couchwhere death awaits you 3.You will grow upmy mother saidyou will be a poetwhen you grow upnot a beanstalklike the fortune teller told meA poet who ties words togetherone sound adhered to the nextThis is the music you will singto an empty hall or crowded hellto a room full of eager beaversYou will grow up and be a poetsinging songs, singing and wringingno one will listen to youjust as you never listened to memy mother said to a vacant roomblind at the end of the darknessshe had pulled down around her 4.When I asked my motherwhy I didn’t speak Chineseshe said when you were a babyyou refused to learn itWhat about EnglishYou refused to learn that too 5.I hear my fathersmiling on the phoneJust before your mothercrashed down the stairsfrom a strokeyou likely causedshe saidthe fortune teller had been all wrongnothing of what he said about my sonhad turned out true 6.My father saidthe plane flewwithout fuellike a birdriding waves of sunlightstreaming through its windows 7.My father loved to leave mein a movie theaterby myselfbeginning when I was sixseated aloneby the aisleHe paid the usher a dimeto make sureno one kidnapped or molested meMichael Ansara, Jeff Chandler, and Ruth Romanwere my cartoon heroesliving and dying in a gray worldin a double-featureall glamor gone in their second run.My father hated me and told me soin so many waysI have almost lost countThe last timewas when he was at homedyingThe growth had become a ballstuck inside himand swellingWhen I brought him medicineto relieve the painhe said“You’re too stupid to give me thoseI will wait for your brother to come home”