The First Post

1.

I've just pitched the idea to Cathreen and she does not look happy about it.

"You think I'm funny character?" she says.

"I think we both are. Look at all the ridiculous things that have been happening to us," I say. I tell her I'll post the essay online.

"Give me money," she says. She calls her sister to complain.

2.

This started when I slammed her hand in the door--two days ago. Today her hair caught fire in the bathtub. I had filled the tub for her and lit candles to relax her from the bad mood she had woken up in. The pain from the injury, she says, is shocking, though she doesn't mean this like surprising, she means it like electricity. The doctor says she has to wear a soft cast and keep her arm in a sling for two weeks; her hand has swollen up and, last we saw it, was badly bruised. When I tell people what I have done, I know they are thinking I beat her. Other people's ideas frighten me.

3.

Now she comes into the room and asks, "Are you going to use my name? You going to write down everything I say? You didn't get a permission from me." She says her family will read it, though they will have to struggle through translating it into Korean, and my family will read it. I tell her art has to be honest. "Let me read first before you put it," she says. I read it to her. "Not funny," she says, "your story."