Invisible Girl by Tess Hudson

Author:Tess Hudson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MIRA Books
Published: 2013-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-One

Maggie watched the film in Hop’s living room, her fingers gripping the tweed couch cushions, her mouth dry, her chest tight. And as she watched it, she realized she was witnessing more than the destruction of her mother’s village. She was watching her entire lineage, her relatives, being shot and burned, their children herded like sheep to slaughter. Her people.

Her whole life, as a Malone in Hell’s Kitchen, it had been the Irish side that had dominated, save for the Buddhas in their apartment. St. Patrick’s Day at the Twilight was a national holiday. She and Danny always got to skip school both on St. Patty’s day and the day after when a hangover pallor meant no one would make sure they got up for school or ate their breakfast—at least after their mother had died.

When Maggie had looked in the mirror in her teens, she’d failed to see how exotic she was, failed to grasp how her face was hypnotic, how soon it would be something that changed a room. When she walked in, it was as if any party or any gathering quieted for just a split second. She’d seen her Vietnamese features, but she hadn’t loved them, not yet.

As she’d grown past the awkward phase, she’d understood her features were different. As American culture had started to embrace black as beautiful and recognize, however feebly, ethnicity as a new form of beauty, she, too, embraced herself, the way her eyes turned up at the corners, the slight flattening of the nose, her long silky hair.

But now, watching the film, her mother’s legacy was so much more than prettiness. It was more than the fat Buddha belly on the cash register. It was this. This massacre, the way her cousins and relatives—whose names Maggie would never know—had been killed, slaughtered, murdered. She felt herself, while sitting on Hop’s couch, hold her head a little higher in her grief. They would be avenged.

When the film was over, Hop stood and brought the bottle of scotch over to the coffee table. No one said anything. Bobby stared at the television screen, even though Hop had turned it off. Danny’s eyes were shut. Maggie felt as if a hive of bees had swarmed in her belly. For the first time in a long, long while, she wished she could take a drink. If she was honest about it, if Bobby hadn’t been there, she would have. Fuck her damn sobriety.

The grief she’d felt when Con had told her that her father was dead was now crushing her. She felt as if she were being strangled.

“I’m sorry,” Hop said, blotting his forehead with a bandanna again as he poured himself a drink. “Wish I didn’t have this fucking thing. It’s been nothing but a curse.”

“Hop?” Maggie asked.

“Yeah?”

“Is there anything else we should know? Con says my father divided up the story. No one piece to any one man.”

Hop’s hands started to tremble. Maggie felt sick to her stomach. If someone like Hop was scared, things were going from bad to much, much worse.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.