Bedrooms

1. I've unlocked my knees to join [[him -> him]]. 2. They said the stars are an index and most places end up faulty for at least [[somebody -> somebody]], except for the stars. 3. There is a [[man -> man]] pouring soya sauce from a plastic jug into multiple glass contours on the mats in his bedroom.

1. For many times, we had made each other promise to never sleep on a bedframe again. We had heard the Japanese did it, they used a foam pad as the mattress [マットレス mattoresu] with a bottom futon [敷き布団 shiki buton]. We saw that our postures were straightened. 2. And how when we ate on the floor, our [[stomachs -> stomachs]] were a little lighter immediately after a meal. 3. Then we had decided to read aloud, The Art of War taking [[a bath -> bath]] together every night. Bathing had kept us from touching our phones, which we would swallow full in our mouths and wrap our stomachs around if we could.

1. Later this worker is going to transfer the bottles into a framed box and put it on the back of his bike, ride an hour into the place he works, a small clay pot kitchen his uncle owns. 2. When he arrives a waitress he likes called [[Cherry Fong -> Cherry]] is cleaning the tables, a cloth tied around her hands. She gives him a nod as he smiles. 3. In the back, in the kitchen, [[the cook -> cook]] and his uncle are stretching and swinging their arms around, clapping their hands together behind their backs.

1. He very often cooked tofu but didn't use recipes. For the agedashi tofu 揚げ出し豆腐 he used mapou tofu sauce 麻婆豆腐. I told him, when he poured the sauce in, this wasn't in the way of the Japanese. I said this meal inflames bellies, it doesn't feel peaceful - this is the way of Sichuan, I've read. 2. He settles his inflamed stomach down using soy milk. And I worry in my head secretly that he's been [[having too much of it lately -> having]]. 3. He has [[stopped having meat -> stopped]] now too.

1. He prefered Masakatsu Takagi. 2. We were never to touch each other in a way that wasn't to the path of [[productive cleansing -> cleansing]]. 3. Soon he started to close his eyes whenever he bathed, and didn't look to see how I was doing. I became grossly offended by it. I tried to step out of the bath, show him my [[nudity -> nudity]].

1. Cherry was a waitress but she didn't think she was very pretty and nobody treated her special. 2. When she was younger her parents told her about the Yellow River 黄河, and how it was the only place on earth where fish could become dragons. 3. When she turned seven, her parents bought her her own [[goldfish -> goldfish]], because they couldn't keep dogs in their small apartment.

1. First they clap their hands together behind their backs and make a noise through an O in their mouth. 2. Next they clap them over their heads. 3. This prepares them for the day. The worker comes in with the boxes of soy sauce bottles. He [[grins about this -> grins]].

1. He made a slight comment today about drinking soy milk on the site, and all the men there were laughing at him telling him to call them when he wakes up as a female, that he'd make an attractive one! 2. Our bath [[tonight -> tonight]] he is curled up in himself.

1. He says, the way of Taoism. I look at his knotty face, he has developed an accent as he says 'Tao'. 2. He says Lao Tzu said: you must first avoid eating flesh meals. 3. I say you must at least [[eat fish -> fish]], and he gets upset by this.

1. I ask him what's the matter and he responds very quietly that he's sad he'll only be a [[human -> human]] for another few months. 2. In bed that night he's begun to curl up the opposite way of me, his limbs are loose as he sleeps. When I touch him he flinches. I microwave a hot water bottle in the kitchen and notice how the stars aren't seen. When I return to bed, I hug the bottle up against me instead because he's stopped. 3. By the time I wake in the [[morning -> morning]], all the water is gone from the bottle.

1. I serve him salmon and he's disgusted by the red of it, I try a barramundi. 2. His own white skin, he says, it looks like his own white skin. 3. A week later, in Qingdao, sea creatures were falling from the sky. We saw this on the news before [[I left for work -> work]].

1. I'm searching for a wet patch in the bed, but there is none. 2. Sun now coming through our muted white blinds. 3. I begin to suspect it is him that's drinking the water. I ask him why he needs to drink the water from the bottle, why not get a glass? He tells me, I need water to survive, I become desperate for it in the night. You need water that much? I ask him. [[He says yes -> swimming pool]].

1. And he had stopped working at the construction site. All his friends, he said: they didn't understand him, because of their Western ways. Though I told him, 'darling we are both Western too.' 2. One day I decided not to go to work, [[I'd wait outside for an hour and see what he did -> wait]] while I wasn't looking. 3. One day I decided [[to drive him to the swimming pool -> swimming pool]].

1. Now this became what she saved for: to one day take her goldfish to the Yellow River in a plastic bag and empty them there, to see them become dragons after they leapt the falls. 2. There was a big happy man who waited outside their apartment block. He didn't want to be charged for parking, so he stood next to his car all day from nine to three. When she left for school in the mornings, she told [[him about it too -> big man]]. 3. When she turned seventeen and started working at the clay pot kitchen, she still believed this. Told her parents this is why she wasn’t going to study, that she wanted to go straight to work, that she needed to go there as soon as she could. Her parents decided to tell her the [[truth -> truth]].

1. For half a day, she rides the worker's bike to an MTR station, taking her to the airport, she rides on a plane to Shanghai. She pays a driver at the receiving airline to drive her for ten hours. She eats eel on the plane, she hears her stomach fumbling over itself in the backseat of the driver's car. They don't talk the entire way but the driver is talking to themself, [[the radio is on -> radio]]. She asks, are we anywhere near Qingdao? The driver clicks his tongue. 2. When they arrive, [[she can hear the falls -> the river]].

1. The father said, only carps become dragons. That is how the story goes. 2. Cherry Fong didn't care though, she researched that carp lived in the Yellow River, because they were important to the food chain. And decided she'd still go and try her luck. So she continued to save, even working at the claypot kitchen where the boss always snarled at her: [["Are you done dzu pa?" -> done]] 3. Cherry Fong, the day after her father said this, took her own goldfish in her palms and let them flap around, she stared at them with black eyes and put them into a plastic bag, the three of them. She went down the four flights of stairs in her [[slippers -> plastic]].

1. The big man listened to Masakatsu all day, the album <i> Pia </i>. 2. He hoped one day soon his kid could take the bus to school, but worried he'd get on the wrong one and end up at Big Wave Bay on the other side of the island. He thought all day about what he'd do with his time. 3. One day he saw the little girl from the apartment block come out with her [[plastic bag of fish -> plastic]].

1. He said: What are those movements supposed to do, what if one day [[your arm detaches from your body and it goes flying into somebody's meal? -> one day]] 2. The two men laugh, they look outside and yell at the girl: [['are you done yet dzu pa?' -> done]]

She came through the front gate and immediately emptied the plastic bag, the three fish flailing at the feeling of concrete floor. The big man watched this. When she went back upstairs again, he took the fish in his hands and poured water on them, trying desperately. He was able to fit one of the smaller fish into a bottle, the rest of them died on the concrete floor. Later, the big man was waiting outside the car, and it was one hour until the child finished school. He was exceedingly hot, and very thirsty and he drank up the water, forgetting about the fish inside.

1. Yes, she'd say. 2. Cherry is always polite, but she's been saving the anger for a [[day -> one day]] to recompense. 3. When she arrived home late every evening, she'd count the cash she'd been given altogether. Her parents watched a dating show in the living area. The walls here were too skinny. She put [[Amy Winehouse -> Amy]] on to count her money. There was never enough.

1. A few days later, the worker parks his bike with the box of soy sauce bottles, and hears the cook and boss yelling from inside. 2. He rushes inside, [[Cherry Fong -> rushes]] is in the kitchen, watching the cook and the boss wailing on the floor. 3. There is a loose arm, bleeding from it's top socket floating in a frothing [[brown sauce -> brown sauce]]. There are two more loose arms on the frying pan, but they have shriveled. The last loose arm is on the chopping board.

1. Cherry immediately goes for the front till, pushing past the worker that smiles at her but never speaks. 2. The two men aren't able to hit her if they have their arms are off. So she takes everything that's in there. Then as soon as she has fit it all into her apron pocket, she runs out the door and takes the [[boy's bike -> half]].

1. The worker puts the boxes down and begins to cry, but Cherry Fong seems fine. She rushes to the front desk. 2. He removes the best arm from the brown sauce pot and turns the heat off for the frying pan with the other two arms. He asks: now do you remember whose arm was whose? 3. The cook and the boss fight over for the arm in the brown sauce. But the worker chooses his uncle in the end, [[the boss -> the boss]].

Regardless, the cook and the boss bleed to death in the clay-pot kitchen, as the worker sits trying to sew the arm back onto his uncle. Later in the day, he wonders where Cherry Fong's gone.

When she got there, she followed tourists up the wet mud, it was foggy, and she had to put her coat on. The rocks were slippery in some places, and the sky was gray. There were many tourists at the top, taking photographs and looking out at it. She had hoped to be alone, and there was something else, the water was not clear, it was muddy. And perhaps, she thought, it was not named the Yellow River because of the sun's brilliance here, but because of the way the water was, full of dirt, disgusting, undrinkable. But still she sat, and waited the entire night, even when the tourists would leave, waiting for a dragon to come out from the moisture, and [[she spent days doing this -> dragon]].

When I crept back inside again, I saw him bathing on his own. He was not reading anything, when I called out to him, he didn't respond. When I lifted his arm I realised that nothing was there to lift. I asked him where's your arm? He told me, it grew back into me, because I wasn't using it enough. I turned his torso around. Where's your other arm? I asked, he said: same thing.

We stopped at a swimming pool near Echo Park. I told him well swim then, you like water so much then swim. He took his trunks off, so that he wore nothing, completely naked, and when he jumped in, I searched for him to come back up again, but [[nothing came back up -> dragon]].

1. I ask him, what will you be then if not human? 2. He says, I will be no colour, I will be just whatever is on top of my skin. I will be no features, I will be defined by [[scales -> fish]]. I will have no arms that will distract me to use my phone.

1. He said, think about it like this. Do [[fish -> fish]] ever touch? I mean, consciously.

1. He doesn't look still. He says: I respect if you have finished bathing. The shutters are open, I close them. 2. But I have to stay in the water, he says. 3. Five hours later, after I've slept for four I return to the bathroom to find him still sitting there. I touch the water which has gotten cold, and his body is [[cold -> cold]].

1. And if I look closely his body looks like almond, it's creped around the muscle and bone on him. 2. I say, you have to get out, you have to sleep. I only suddenly notice how thin his arms have gotten. I said, you have to eat something, how will you lift heavy things [[tomorrow on the construction site -> work]]?

Somewhere on the Yellow River, on the third day, a carp came up over the moisture and fell back down again. Then, a girl thought she saw a long spiny creature come up from the haze.

1. And they begin beautiful almost always. But places get small quickly and in tiny spaces, only there did things become apparent to her: that she needed to let herself shrink for the tiny thing in her belly, so that when it came time, she was the one to quit work and stayed in the brick home, and came out to the front step where the lawn began, and he drove to work, so when she went back inside and sat on the carpet with her heavy stomach, she'd think: 2. First about her [[past-self -> past]] 3. Then about her [[future-self -> Amy]]

1. Somewhere far away in a bedroom, a girl is listening to 'Tears Dry' on a carpet floor. 2. Her [[eyes -> eyes]] have been cut on the sides then sewn up again to unlook like her mother's. So that when she cries, sometimes tears stayed inside. 3. Her [[nose -> nose]] has been broken to be resculpted. A beautiful procedure of delicate bones, a close friend had asked her, do you smell less. She never kept that friend.

1. From when she was an infant, her family was on the [[South Beach Diet -> south ]]. 2. And so the family counted their days and weeks by Phases, and their days were consumed with eating and punishment. 3. One evening, the child's parents [[were away for a wedding -> away]].

1. For a few years she used the sticky tape that helped her eyes look the way she wanted them to, and it felt good like that. 2. Eventually when she'd saved up the money, and her friends helped chip in too, [[she got them done -> sew]].

1. These days you could just go to the clinic to get them done, and she had just turned sixteen, which meant she could ask to not have her parents informed about it. 2. She had her eyes open for it, [[she hoped they wouldn't forget to sew it back up -> sew]]. 3. A few years later, [[she came back to the same surgeon -> back]].

The first step is two weeks of 'very small carbohydrate consumption. You should not eat [[bread -> bread]], rice, potatoes, pasta, baked goods, dairy, fruit, and sugar. Do not consume alcohol. You may eat as many eggs as you want. You may eat most cheese, sugar-free desserts and some types of nuts. You may drink coffee. Agatston has said that this way you will lose about two to three kilos (4-6 pounds) in two weeks. In the second step, you can start eating fruits, some cereals, fiber baked goods, pasta, whole wheat bread and some starch, but in small amounts. The goal is that you continue to lose weight but not more than half to one kilo (1-2 pounds) per week. Once you reach your target weight, you should move to the third step. In the third step, you define your diet for a longer period, preferably for life. Here you can actually eat what you want. There are no restrictions on what types of carbohydrates you eat. However, it is expected that the amount of carbohydrates will not exceed certain limits and your aim is to not starting to gain weight.' quote from: www.docsopinion.com/health-and-nutrition/diets/the-south-beach-diet/

1. When her parents had been out of the house for at least half an hour, she went to the grocery mart up the road, walked for twenty minutes. 2. When she got there, first thing [[she bought was white bread in the packet -> bread]]. 3. And she bought the pasta that you can put in the microwave.

1. When she got home, and checked that the parents weren't there, she ate the bread she bought without anything on it. 2. Then there was pleasure, and she felt the white rip apart in her mouth, twirling it around her tongue, she ate the whole pack using [[different mouth procedures -> procedure]].

When she looked in the mirror a few weeks later, her muscles tensed. This was not her mother or her father, this was her and she felt good.

1. It was when her mother passed away, she was numb in a different sort of way. Instead of weeks of numb in the face, she was numb in a part she couldn't locate on her body. 2. In the third month, she got the hump back in her nose, they called this situation [['ethnic preservation' -> ethnic]].

1.</style> <img src=https://ai2-s2-public.s3.amazonaws.com/figures/2017-08-08/a50d3d44f681d7bf6a773f0fd472864a4ff5030c/7-Figure4-1.png </div> 2. [[It did not end at the surgery -> did not]].

1. Then it's the bathroom 2. Be sick 3. Phone call 4. [[Siren -> stretcher]]

5. Stretcher 6. Back of the white van 7. [[Stomach big round -> big round]]

On the radio: Qingdao had fish raining from the sky.

1. The ethnic preservation process took her to lessons of language and then back to China - nowhere in particular because to her, it seemed all the same, no name sounded familiar. 2. Weeks spent in motels, Guangzhou, down to Kowloon, up to [[Qingdao -> radio]], up to the Yellow River. Appreciating the curves of landscapes, and the way it naturally fell, skins of grass and dirt and sand. 3. [[It was the Yellow River she stopped at to look -> dragon]].

And there she thinks to herself: even what looked healthy could be faulty, and regardless, she never ate bread again and she ate vegetables and animal flesh for the rest of her life, and she fed her children the same, and they fed their children the same. And everybody lived in South Beach Phases 1, 2, 3.