tonight, we ate lamb

by toki lee

cover photo by linh vu

There is a lamb and two brothers. This is how it goes: the brother kills his own because of the lamb. This is how it always goes. Sometimes, the other one kills him. Sometimes, they kill each other. Sometimes, they both kill the lamb and laugh at how silly they were for killing one another.

But there is always someone dead. There is always blood on the floor. There is always blood on your hands. 

“victim mentality” by linh vu: “this piece i created is the representation of how Asian women are usually viewed around the world (submissive, soft, etc.). some fight against the stereotype and just do whatever they want. some submit themselves into the stereotype that it starts to harm them badly. but even then, they still believe that this is what they deserve, this is how life supposed to be, and move on like nothing happened. on another level, some of us, especially those who are living in a loop, are stuck in the same mindset that we deserve bad things, and that we don’t deserve happiness. we recognize that things are messed up, but we accept that is our reality, when it doesn’t have to be like that.”

In the story of Abel and Cain (victim first, they tell me), I become the murderer, the victim, and the witness. I become a moral, immortalized in a narrative I can never escape from. I am no longer a human, but a lesson to learn from, a cautionary tale for others like me. 

There is a precept and two figures. These figures are not related to each other. Here’s how the story goes: one of them gets killed. One of them always gets killed. The murderer realizes that to die for the status quo is better than to live against it. 

Here's how it goes. Sometimes I get killed — this is the normal part, the part everyone expects. When I am ten, a man yells slurs at my parents’ shop from across the street. I am too young to know exactly what it means. When I am twelve, a stranger compliments my skirt, then tells me that I look just like the girls on PornHub. When I am fourteen, someone remarks how they used to kill kids like me in the Vietnam War. To Cain, a lamb is the same as a goat, a sheep, or a sacrifice. It doesn’t matter if I’m Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese — I am still killed. 

Other days, I kill myself. I have a ritual for it. When it’s 4 AM, and all I can do is gaze at white girls on Instagram through blurry eyes, always seen as desired and beautiful. Then, the white boys, who have the freedom and mobility I can only dream of. The group that hurts the most, though, are the white people who identify with neither. They’ve managed to escape one colonial system and build another that never identifies me as nonbinary or trans, simply because I’ve lived outside it.

My mother says she’s grateful I don’t need eyelid surgery, but that’s never stopped the beast from hunting. 

Sometimes, Abel kills Cain before he can even strike. The ivory tower of Babel comes crashing down. This is unlikely, they tell me, because Cain always kills Abel. 

The lamb never dies, however. I try to kill it, but I can never stab the stake through its heart. It stares back at me, and tells me that it will live for as long as God prefers it. Cain kills me, but God forces his hand. The lamb splits me open, but the wool reaps enough benefits that it must stay. 

You tell me you want a new story, a story where the lamb and God never exist and Cain and Abel are still brothers, still friends, still on the same side. You tell me you want a story where I don’t die at the end. 

Wouldn’t we all.