A HISTORY OF PORRIDGE

*After Mary Cornish’s “Fifteen Moving Parts”

In her sleep, a Suzhou maid forgot to tend fire 
the stove had died but the ember kept a tint in her cheeks 
beneath the ash, a spark of warmth 
where the nests split, her head rest 
winter brings the resolution of death for refugees 
out the wooden gate death grazed the desolated mass, flown, swam 
caked in mud, ragged skeletons of tens and forties  
weak enough to beg but not enough to knock, all starved, shellshocked 
in her dream, the maid saw her parents’ rice bellies 
budging with rice water, sprawled on deserted fields with crushed grains 
they never made it to these shelves of convenience,  
she was a famished orphan, too spent to weep  
before these golden gate and jaded plaque, they tore into her, screaming “you burnt me!” 
she woke up in cold sweat, in cold ash, in penury and vice.  

            A Suzhou maid forgot the pot she left in Peiping in the commotion of the night run, an heirloom blue and white porcelain with chrysanthemum flower motifs from the Qing dynasty, the pot she used to stew morning bird nest in crystal clear sugar water for her master.   
            The ember kept the interior of the kitchen below freezing, everything else was pitch-black. 
            A spark of warmth was what she forgot in Peiping, all these years of running with the grand house she had sworn loyalty to.              Nests split, tiles cracked, even the red wood columns by the gate accumulated dents and 
scratches.  
            For refugees, they had lived beyond means, not knowing when the music would stop, her master never skipped a cup of bird nest in the morning.  
            Flown, swam, walked, crawled, animals scurried home after dark, but the household couldn’t stop running, the migratory path stretched from North to South of China.  
Forties, thirties, twenties, tens, the days trickled down until they ran out of money for this lavish lifestyle.  
            Starved, shellshocked, first the maids, the guards, the cooks, and then everyone else, the master would rather drink poison over this bitter end, but soon they would look no different from the wretched swarm of uprooted farmers with no fields left to tend outside the gate.  
            Rice bellies deflated, carving out the ribs, twigs for limbs, ragged shadows crouching lower than rabid dogs on the streets.  
            Deserted fields with crushed grains in all of China, feeding the crows with fine, pearly white grains, farmers scrambled off hallucinating, walking as they slept, dreaming about the bowl of rice they left behind.  
            Shelves of convenience were where her master hid the jewelry, she had seen him slipped the key into a false bottom of the opium tray.  
            Too spent, for a fifteen-year-old she had missed out so much of life she wouldn’t know how to live if not running. She should have died with her parents.    
            You burnt me, she said, this life burnt me from inside out.    
            In penury and vice. A Suzhou maid stared at ghosts in the dark.

Thao Vu writes from Blacksburg, Virginia. She was a graduate of Eastern Nazarene College (Quincy, MA) in Psychology, National Taiwan University (Taipei, Taiwan) in Business, and is currently working on her debut novel through the MFA program in Creative Writing at Virginia Tech (Blacksburg, VA).