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 Contents  Cover Half Title Dedication Title Page Contents Mouth 1 2 Kidney 3 4 5 6 7 Appendix 8 9 10 Eye 11 12 Brain 13 14 15 16 17 Dermis 18 19 Liver 20 21 22 Larynx 23 24 25 26 Marrow 27 28 29 Tendon 30 Tongue 31 Stomach 32 33 34 35 36 Heart Acknowledgments Copyright    Guide  Cover Table of Contents Beginning    Pagebreaks of the print version  Cover Page i v iii 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 339 340 341 iv         For my mother and hers, and hers To the angry girls, to the ones figuring it out:you are always enough   CONTENTS Mouth 1 2 Kidney 3 4 5 6 7 Appendix 8 9 10 Eye 11 12 Brain 13 14 15 16 17 Dermis 18 19 Liver 20 21 22 Larynx 23 24 25 26 Marrow 27 28 29 Tendon 30 Tongue 31 Stomach 32 33 34 35 36 Heart Acknowledgments mouth This house eats and is eaten. Memories mar the wood, pencil in the heights of children, and wear the scuff marks of well-loved feet. There are echoes that do not stop echoing, trapped in nooks and old curtains, until they’re found again—still screaming or laughing, voices dead or gone. What parts are undigested lie waiting. There is no real organ here to rot, only soft wood that termites consider and wasps hollow. But shut the door tight and something can still die. The body becomes full of things it did not ask for. So, when a door opens, it is this: the first page of a menu. 1 I am a tourist in the country where my parents were born. Even my clothes have been here before me. All made in Vietnam by Vietnamese hands, then sent overseas where a Vietnamese American girl (that’s me) picks it off the rack and one day brings it to a place she can’t call home but the clothes can, if inanimate objects could claim shit. I’m not bitter or confused, at all. My fingers tighten on the cart I’m pushing out of Đà Lạt’s airport. People stream around me, laboring under giant backpacks, which really is the only thing that would make it more obvious I don’t belong. Like hell I’d do one of those “finding yourself” trips though. I only have this summer to make up the money for UPenn. Lying to Mom about getting a full scholarship was the only way to stop her from taking out loans, when she works seventy-two-hour weeks at the nail salon already. My Walmart on weekends and scooping out “Ice Custard Happiness!” part-time every summer at Rita’s was just enough to cover SAT registration and college application fees after my little sister’s club expenses. That leaves Ba. His money is the thing that’s gonna make it happen, and I have to see him. That’s his condition. “There he is!” Lily yells, bounding off the cart to sprint toward the idle cars. Ba steps out of a beat-up truck, opening his arms for my sister. He’s still slight, tanned a reddish brown, with black hair trimmed thin. Lily’s already telling him everything he’s missed in the past, oh, four years of sparse calls. “Jade,” he says when I finally catch up. “Dad.” There’re too many sounds in my mouth. This untrained tongue. I don’t know how to say hello or I miss you in Vietnamese. We’d never said either much, and I don’t miss him. I hate him. Ba squeezes Lily’s shoulder, but his eyes stay on me. I’m almost as tall as him now. “Where’s your brother?” “He stayed in Saigon with Mom,” I say. Bren barely remembers Ba, or so he claims, so he’d rather hang out with our cousins on Mom’s side for the rest of the trip. We stare at each other before I toss both suitcases into the back, shuffling aside wood planks.