Since I ran away, father and I talked less and less.
Not until fourteen months later did he call me one Friday morning. As before, there were only bad things happening.
“Lotus, last week, my young cousin Leng died.”
“Cancer?” I naturally grasped the aura of cancer as my fi rst reaction, when hearing another person died in our home village.
Because there had been too many folks having died or dying from cancer. Throat cancer. Breast cancer. Womb cancer. Stomach cancer. Liver cancer. Skin cancer. Bone cancer. Blood cancer. Cancer on lips. Overspread with horror of cancer as it was, even the imaginary death overwhelmed me by the sound of“cancer”.