Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures Read Online Free Page B

swirled in front of her. The click had occurred only after she had finished speaking, hadn’t it? Or had it just clicked off? Had the other line been open all this time, and had it just clicked off? Ming’s stomach was tight. Was her father listening now, or had he listened? Wait…the telephone silencehad that hollow sound right now. Was she fooling herself—what was a sound with no one speaking? Then, as she tried to discern the nature of the silence, as she wished that she could reach across the quiet to take Fitzgerald’s hand, Ming’s father said in Cantonese, “Little daughter, you have an important trip tomorrow. Sleep, please.”
    â€œGoodnight then, Fitzgerald,” she said in a buoyant public voice. “He was pretending to interview me, Dad. Thanks again, Fitz, take good notes for me.”
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    At two o’clock Ming called back. “So?” she asked.
    â€œWe were friends before, and now it’s the same,” said Fitz.
    â€œAnd?”
    â€œAnd you are very honest. I shouldn’t come to Toronto, though.”
    â€œThat’s fine,” she said, “I don’t know why you wanted to follow me around.”
    â€œYou need to focus on your interview. I don’t want to distract you.”
    â€œI’m curious as to why you think that if you had come, which I agree that you should not, you would have been distracting. We have an agreement. Nothing romantic, and so I’m confused that you would think that I might be liable to be distracted by you. ”
    â€œThen we agree,” he said.

    At three-fifteen, Ming called Fitzgerald again, tried to keep her voice clear. She needed to tell it, the way a scab must, at times, be picked off the body and made to bleed before the finger is satisfied.
    â€œAt first it was Karl’s hand on my knee as he explained the periodic table. I didn’t think much of it, although it felt strange—he’s my cousin, after all.”
    When she wrote her first perfect exam paper and showed it to Karl before showing her father, he pecked his lips on hers. It was brief initially, but the congratulatory kisses became longer and slower. In the wetness of lips, Ming could see Karl’s weakness in his desire, and began to enjoy this power at the same time that she began to enjoy the kisses. Physical pleasure did not do away with her habit of rinsing and spitting ten times (she counted) immediately after Karl’s departure, or the “letters to self” detailing why she was a filthy slut. She discarded these in the garbage at the bus stop on her way to school. One afternoon before she wrote her entrance exams for Dunning Hall Girls’ Academy, Karl told Ming that he was busy, and might not be able to tutor anymore. Terrified of losing her new academic success, Ming pleaded with him to make time for her, and he agreed to come over that afternoon. She had begun to pretend while they were kissing that they weren’t really cousins, that she was adopted, or he was. That day, she didn’t stop his hand when it slid up her leg, underwear tight at the waist with his strong hand pulling on it. Although this was frightening, she wasmore scared of losing him, and she liked it that he fumbled, that he wasn’t sure where to go. Later, when he slid the condom off, it looked exactly like a snake shedding its skin. Only then did it occur to her that he had been prepared, that he had brought a rubber. Ming told her parents that she wanted to become a doctor, which was also Karl’s ambition. Pleased, they doubled their severity in urging her to study.
    Karl was accepted into medicine in his third year of biology. To celebrate, there was a twelve-course family banquet, the pan-fried lobsters sizzling and turning on the Lazy Susan. Ming’s uncle proclaimed a generation of success, with Ming as the next doctor. She learned of Karl’s failed second-year application from his sister, who