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Last of Her Name

Mimi Lok
Chapters (13)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Dedication
  4. Last of Her Name
  5. The Wrong Dave
  6. A Reasonable Person
  7. Accident
  8. I Have Never Put My Hope in Any Other but Thee
  9. Wedding Night
  10. Bad Influence
  11. The Woman in the Closet
  12. Acknowledgments
  13. About the Author

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

For my family and all of my sifus along the way

Last of Her Name

LAST OF HER NAME

ENGLAND, 1983

AT AGE TWELVE KAREN knocks her teeth out. Lying in a stiff, tangled heap on the bedroom floor, she opens her mouth to let the blood seep out, and with her tongue she feels one, two, three holes where her teeth used to be. She quietly marvels at the wreckage she’s created: the wardrobe, planted face down on the floor; the rug, splattered with blood and mirror shards; the limp, frayed coil of the skipping rope poking out from the rubble of upturned books and cushions.

Moments earlier, Karen had tied one end of the rope to the door and the other end to the wardrobe in an attempt to recreate a scene from The Return of the Condor Heroes, her favorite mou hap TV show. In this scene, the heroine Dragon Girl demonstrates her skill by sleeping on a single rope suspended four feet above the ground, the hem of her white robes grazing the floor with each soft exhalation. It seemed so effortless, so elegant. How was Karen supposed to know that her slight ninety-pound self would be enough to send the wardrobe crashing to the floor?