“The Lotus and the Storm” by Lan Cao (post 4): Vietnam 1975, Mai, 17, says “I am slowly learning how to carry on calmly, projecting a singular, unified self”

“The sight of her, a big scowling shadow like a darkened, angry girl crouched in a corner…There she sits, this nameless she…These meetings once wiped me out but seemed to give her renewed power. They used to be occasions in which she vanquished me and took over. I would be obliterated and sent into lost time. Her appearance was violent…Now it is more straightforward…an icier, stealthy disturbance…Somehow we have managed to accommodate each other. I still dread her appearance, but it no longer carries with it the threat of total destruction…

“I am slowly learning how to carry on calmly, projecting a singular, unified self…I have come to expect them both. There are two…Both are a cross-stitch of personalities…waiting to be released from sorrow and pain…

“I hear a shuffling sound. A little girl, smaller than I, emerges from a mysterious place…Her face is sweet and soft, framed by fine black hair that curls like mine used to when I was little. The girl reaches over and gives our mother a squeeze on her arm. Mother neither responds nor pulls away. She looks indifferently at the little girl. Cecile, I think…Playmate to the mynah bird. Still miraculously a little child somehow immune to the passage of chronological time. When Cecile emerges, I am edged out, lost inside time, but not completely. I am both in and out of consciousness…” (1, pp. 214-215).

1. Lan Cao. The Lotus and the Storm. New York, Viking, 2014.