The day when I realized Sean Connery was in yellow face the heat had melted my ears
away. The ears my grandmother had said were lucky. The gold piercings in them since I was six
months old fell to the ground and I couldn’t find them. No one in my family believed the heat
was caused by the hole in the ozone or from solar radiation from unseasonable flares. My mother
said my ears melted because I lost my luck and I needed to find it again.
      The litany of accusations of what I probably did wrong consumed them. She kissed a
boy. No, no, no, she kissed a girl. She didn’t wash. Oh no, she washes too much. She never
cleans under her bed. She is always helping the stupid neighbor boy with his math. She doesn’t
study hard enough. She always leaves the rice open. She reads too much. She always eats all the
mangoes when we are sleeping. She lies.
      No one else’s ears had melted. The heat wasn’t that bad they said as they fanned
themselves and sipped on chilled oolong on our screened in lanai. Sharpen the knives my mother
told me. Maybe if you do that well your ears will come back. You know, a knife if sharp enough
can cut you without sensation my father said to me.