Lily Hoang - Unfinished - stories finished by Lily Hoang

May

Two sisters, and at night, May watches her sister from bed. Ana floats up and disappears into air.

May is a rock, a piece of marble: cold and blank.

At night, when her sister makes her way downstairs, edging her ghost-bird body around corners without stepping on the creaky floor, May lies in bed, twisting and knotting the blankets between her thumb and forefinger. She doesn’t let herself sleep until her sister has safely returned.

At night, when her sister returns to their adjoining beds, May becomes the more active of the two sisters. In her dreams, she becomes stones, monoliths — leftovers from the last ice age and those that came before. Leftovers who have survived wars, heavy footfalls, storms.

When May dreams, she enters their history, and she eagerly lets her body serve as a blockade to save soldiers from bullets, flaming arrows, and swords.

Ana

Two sisters, and she is the older. She is six years old, and she is prepared for battle.

During the day, the sisters play with their dolls and ribbons. The parents smile, but they are concerned that Ana has no interest in books or logic. May, on the other hand, reads like words are food, both of which she consumes with great aptitude.

At night though, the training begins. Ana leaps from wall to wall. May times her. Although Ana cannot do the mathematics, May can. Ana determines herself to be faster than an airplane. She is no fool to believe she can be outrun a bullet, but if all else fails, she will be able outmaneuver it.

May

Two sisters, and she is the younger. When the mother takes Ana May to the park, people stare, not at Ana but at May. She can hear them talking. They say the mother is irresponsible, a bad mother, to let her daughter become so large.

There are some things May cannot logic herself out of.

Ana

Two sisters, and she is the older, and when the mother takes Ana May to the park, Ana wants to run across the heads of the people who are mean to her sister. She imagines it like cartoons, but in real life, she can’t do a thing.

She hears the people wonder how it is that there is one pretty little sister and one ugly fat sister. She hears them say that they must not belong to the same family.

But Ana knows better than to believe any of it. Ana May belong together. Together, they are a warrior, unpenetratable, but right now, now when they are around all these people who will one day want their protection, their vulnerability is exposed. These people who will one day want their protection, with each word, they devastate Ana May.

May

Two sisters, and the younger is called Fatty, Fatso, Piggy, Freak, Beast.

Ana

Two sisters, and the older is called Acrobatty, Weirdo, Gumbo, Circus Freak.

May

Two sisters, and when the younger goes out, she is always hungry so she eats and eats, and the people shake their heads in disgust.

Ana

Two sisters, and when the older goes out, she hides her body behind May’s body, and when the people discover her, they point with their index fingers, as though they’ve just spied a corpse or a leech.

Ana May

Two sisters, and no one loves them the way they ought to. These people do not deserve the two sisters’ love in return.

May

Two sisters, and she is the younger. When fall arrives and it is time for her sister to go to school, she, the younger, must stay at home with the mother. During the day, while her sister is at school, the mother encourages May to move about the house by cracking cookies into small bits and scattering them along the floor. May becomes a vacuum cleaner, sweeping up the ground with her tongue.

She can taste where each bit of dust comes from. She understands legacy. The mother, however, simply sees a little piggy, eager to eat anything, even off the floor, with no regard to sanitation.

Ana

Two sisters, and when the older goes to school, she learns how to read and write, but she has already known these things. Two sisters, and they are entirely different from other children. The other children are slobs and fools. They cannot speak or color properly. Ana’s teachers call her a genius. She is wiser than all of them combined, and she is no where close to as smart as May.

The other children stare when Ana speaks, when she strings words together. They don’t like her, this girl who thinks she knows everything. No one likes a know-it-all. They call her “brainiac.”

When Ana walks home from school she leaps as quickly as can, from telephone pole to rooftop, so the other children cannot see her cry.

May

Two sisters, and when the older returns from school, the mother doesn’t notice anything wrong with her daughter, but her sister does.

After days of the older returning from school with a face bloated from tears, May says, “Enough of this.”

Ana says, “Yes, enough of this.”

May says, “From this day forth, no more creeping and crawling.”

Ana says, “From this day forth, no more creeping and crawling.”

May says, “And from this forth, I will no longer be a rock.”

Ana says, “From this day forth, you will be like all other little girls.”

May says, “From this day forth, you will be like all other little girls.”

The sisters make a little slit on their forefingers and rub their blood together.

Ana May

From that day forth, Ana learns to walk with a slight slouch and May becomes a little ballerina. But they never forget.

The Parents

They are not cruel or uncaring parents, but they are happy when their children become like all other children. They were worried about Ana and her jumping around like an ape. They thought perhaps she was part monkey, but then she became like all other little girls. They were worried that May was destined to be an obese lump, destined to never find love because who could love a girl like that? The parents did not want to admit it, but even they found her gross. But then, she became like all other little girls.

The World

Meanwhile, countries are tossing bombs at each other, but Ana May does not care. They are two happy children, playing games like normal children.

Ana May

Two sisters, but really they are bored playing games like hopscotch and Scrabble. They are bored out of their minds, but the people ignore them now. They are normal children, children to be adored for being utterly unremarkable.

The World

Meanwhile, the people use their technologies until all the icebergs are puddles of lukewarm spit.

Ana May

Two sisters, and now that it is hot, they don bathing suits all day. Little boys walking by whistle not only at Ana but also at May. May, trim as paper, winks.

The World

Meanwhile, meteors shower Mars and Jupiter and Neptune. Entire planets evaporate, leaving only a colored film of dust to float into the people’s hair and lawns.

Ana May

Two sisters, and they let the remnants of Mars, Jupiter, and Neptune tattoo their faces with light.

May

Two sisters, and the younger predicted all of this would happen.

Ana

Two sisters, and the older devised a strategy that could have prevented all this.

The World

Meanwhile, the apocalypse is knocking. Is anybody home?

Yes, the people are home.

Please, come on in. Can I offer you some fresh lemonade?

It’s sweltering out there.

Ana May

Two sisters, and older says, “It’s time.”