The Evolutionary Revolution Lily Hoang Les Figues Press June 2010, Paperback 243 pages 978-1-934254-14-1

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A Caveat

We cannot be held responsible if some of these events are not quite in order, if some of the facts are slightly out of place. We did not live through this, and what few facts we do have are difficult to verify.

We have tried our best to make this clear and simple. We have tried very hard to reconstruct this history as it happened, but it’s impossible to do so without some errors so we apologize in advance, before it becomes too murky. We have tried, and while we hope that is enough, we’re afraid it isn’t, that the inevitability of the future is already set, that maybe the prophet wasn’t talking about the Evolutionary Revolution, that maybe the prophet was talking about something we can stop, if only we can get things right. We are trying. We’re trying very hard, but we can’t do it all on our own, if only we could have help, if only we could get you involved. We’re weak and few in number, but that does not mean that we do not try, lord only knows, it does not mean we do not continue trying.

A New Baby Boy

Stanley was born a single boy, but when he was in his Mama Sylph’s belly, he had a twin sister. The doctors didn’t know about them being attached, but his mama did. Mama Sylph picked out the name Sylvia for her. She loved the idea of twin babies, attached by a small piece of skin, little wrinkled blobs of baby attached like friends. It was her idea, them being attached like that, but Stanley didn’t like the idea of a sister so he made her disappear.

Sometime along the twenty-ninth week, fetus Sylvia disappeared from his mama’s belly. Mama Sylph was at the doctor’s office getting a sonogram. Both babies were there. They were holding their small hands. Mama Sylph swore she saw Stanley gentle rubbing Sylvia’s hand, soothing her, and then, just like that, Sylvia disappeared. No heart beat, no remains, nothing.

It wasn’t uncommon for fetuses to be miscarried, especially with a tentative pregnancy like Mrs. Sylph’s, fragile twins and all, but the doctor had never seen anything like this. There had to be remnants somewhere, bits of baby floating in Mrs. Sylph’s body somewhere, but there was nothing. There was nothing anywhere, almost as if Sylvia had never existed at all, almost as if someone had gone in and erased her from the manuscript, only it was more than just erasure. You can see the imprint of remains after erasure. No, it was more like someone had just hit the delete key while typing and had deleted all of Sylvia.

The doctor didn’t tell Mrs. Sylph about this sudden change in her body. He thought maybe it was in his own head, but later that night, he went over her file, and in all the other sonograms, there’s another small, distinct body. Up until she gave birth, Mrs. Sylph expected to have conjoined twins, and when just one small wrinkled glob of baby came out instead of two, and after it smashed its eyes and cried, suddenly, no one remembered he should have had a sister. Even the pictures forgot.

A Rumor Dispelled

The sea has not become any more or less salty since that one decisive moment. We would like to think differently, that eventually, we can actually correct the mistakes someone else made at some other point in time, but we can’t. This is the state of things. We must accept it. The sea is full of salt, and it will remain so until we can invent a mechanism to remove it, and even then, the mermen will make sure the memory of salt remains, if only as an afterthought, if only as a final act of revenge.

Beautiful Sylvia

Everyone loves Sylvia Sylph. Even people who have never met her. Her mama thinks it’s her eyes. Mama Sylph always tells Sylvia, Baby girl, it’s those magic eyes of yours. You hypnotize people when you look at them. It’s a magic power, baby girl. Don’t use it for bad. You’re beautiful, and beauty is powerful. People will follow you so be careful, my baby girl. Be careful.

Mama Sylph gives Sylvia this speech, word for word, on the first day of every month of every year of her life. Still, Sylvia never listens to her mama. Most teenage girls don’t.

Sylvia Sylph has boyfriends, lots of them. None of them have another boy attached to them. This is something Sylvia notices but has only mentioned once. Once, when she was kissing her very first boyfriend, a boy she trusted so much her skin tingled, she asked if he had a conjoined twin left at home somewhere. He never talked to her again. Oh, he tried to spread nasty rumors about her too, but Sylvia has that special smile that stops movement. This first boyfriend, he disappeared on the very same day he tried to say terrible things about Sylvia Sylph. She didn’t miss him. She cried a little the next day when the principal came over the intercom to tell the whole school he’d been lost, but the second Sylvia started to cry, the whole school gathered to pull the tears away from her face. They grabbed at her face earnestly, eagerly trying to help her. She looked at them, still a little devastated, and they shoved her tears into their own eyes until she had no more sadness left in her at all.

Moving Day

It’s true the Sylph boys didn’t leave the house often, except when the carnival came to town, but that was just to make a little extra money for the family. Mama Sylph wasn’t cold or uncaring, displaying her boys like freaks for people to touch in amazement. She was practical. It isn’t cheap, buying clothes for two-headed boys, especially the way they were connected. For a while, the government helped the Sylphs. They gave them money for food and clothes, but then, the people in their picket fence neighborhood started to throw rocks into their windows, so the Sylphs had to move to a different place, a place where no one knew the boys.

Everyone knew their little sister Sylvia though. She was stellar hot.

The day the Sylphs moved from their picket fence neighborhood in the town they’d always lived, Papa Sylph was sad. The Sylph boys don’t remember this, but Mama Sylph does, and she never talks about it. The day they moved away, Papa Sylph carried each and every box to the moving van, never letting his boys or his wife lift even the smallest container. Sylvia hadn’t been born yet. She was in fact at this point only a forethought in her mama’s fallopian tube.

After Papa Sylph packed the very last box into the van, he kissed his wife with sympathy, gave both his boys a hug and a high five and tussled their hair, and even rubbed his wife’s belly, just for good luck, and then Papa Sylph walked into the house one last time. He walked through every room, snapshotting memories that hadn’t yet been created. Then, he went into the bathroom, took a leak, and injected a syringe full of air into his veins.

Mama Sylph didn’t cry that day, that day they moved away, but she swears she felt a new heart beating next to hers, a smaller, fainter heart, and she knew she would name her baby Sylvia, her husband’s favorite name.

Of course, Mama Sylph had no way of knowing her husband once had a twin sister, a conjoined twin sister named Sylvia, but we think the fetus, little fetus Sylvia still in her mama’s fallopian tubes did. We think she knew it all along.

Stanley Sylph Makes an Enemy

Stanley Sylph was a good man. No one would ever think of saying a bad thing about him, except, of course, that he abandoned his family. No one disliked him, but everyone would have agreed the only thing Stanley Sylph ever did wrong was his last act, his legacy, his suicide. Everyone would agree his suicide was a cowardly act, a pathetic act enacted by a cowardly, pathetic man. So despite his affability, he is tainted by the one act in his life he had no control over. Indeed, Stanley Sylph was a controlled man up until that final moment when he walked into the house for the last time. Then, something changed. Something must’ve changed.

We want to believe Stanley Sylph didn’t want to do it. We want to think he’s a stronger man than that, but we can’t. We can’t because his suicide was planned. He knew he would die by his own hand before he walked back into the house, that this ruffle and that hug would be his final ruffles and hugs, that he would never experience another high five, that he would never kiss his wife again. It must’ve been a hard moment, that moment of final good-bye.

We mourn the way he died, not that he died with a syringe in his arm, but the way it happened. We pity him. And he must’ve pitied himself because he prepared his own needle full of air, because he hid it in the cupboard above the stove, because he knew Betty wouldn’t bother to check up there, because she was too lazy to use a ladder. We pity the day he went to go buy that syringe. Or maybe he stole it. That would be much more pathetic. We like Stanley Sylph as a pathetic man. It’s easier to kick him now that he’s dead, and we like easy things. Yes, he must’ve stolen the syringe, being so desperate and not wanting anyone else to know of his final choice. We think he stole it from someone even more pathetic than him, a homeless man, a drug addict.

But no, this is too much. Stanley Sylph was a good man, and we cannot disgrace his legacy anymore. None of this is true, although we want it to be. We want to remember Stanley Sylph as a weak man who abandoned his family, but the truth of it is that he had no control over what he was doing. Someone manipulated him, someone very small, barely even alive inside Betty’s unprotruding belly. We want to think Stanley Sylph committed suicide because that’s much more palatable than acknowledging that our darling Sylvia could have killed her own father. But that’s the truth. If you asked her, she’d look at you blankly. She’d say nothing. But the truth is she didn’t like him, her own father. She was the only person who’s ever disliked Stanley Sylph, and this made her dislike—no hate—him even more.

And poor Stanley, he had no idea Sylvia even existed. He should have. He should’ve felt her immediately, but he was preoccupied with leaving his childhood home and he was worried about his boys. He tried, lord knows he tried, to make people love his boys, but there were too many of them and their minds were too closed to embrace difference, and his boys, they would never be accepted. Yes, he should have felt his daughter hatch, but in his head, Stanley Sylph kept imaging his boys— his boys with one body and two heads—on a rotating stage, people prodding them to make sure they’re really connected, and the day two strong men, one on each boy, would pull and the skin would divide, and there would be pain, so much pain. Stanley Sylph was focused on too many other things to account for his behavior so when he stole the syringe from the homeless man, he didn’t even know it happened, and when he tussled his boys’ heads for the last time, he did it haphazardly, but when he touched his wife’s belly, the last time he’d ever touch her skin, he felt the heartbeat. By then, it was too late. It was inevitable, but by then, he was already as good as dead.

The Proposal

Years before the Evolutionary Revolution, mermen decided unanimously to divide themselves in half, to single themselves from double-headed form to single-headed form. It is rare that mermen decide on anything, much less in agreement. The weight of this decision was further intensified as mermen had been double-headed forms since their creation, but still, they came up with their unanimous decision only moments before the final proposals for evolution were due to be reviewed and either accepted or denied by the Evolution Council. Given the rapidity of the agreement and the impending time deadline, they scarcely had time to negotiate the specific terms of separation. Their decision and proposal, so hastily made and drafted was full of mechanical errors and outright improper word choice, was not something that would easily pass the Evolution Council. So they rapidly forgot that they had requested a bodily change. Mermen were not only forgetful beings, but they were also drunks. The moment the proposal reached the Evolution Council, they began to drink, and they drank passionately, so passionately in fact that moments later, they had forgotten their reason for celebration, before they forgot everything.

It should be noted, however, that although they couldn’t remember things as important as petitions to Evolution Councils, they never forgot any wrongdoing enacted upon them. Ever. Their lives were perpetual missions of revenge, for with every successful act of revenge, the merman being revenged would think the act unworthy or too worthy, thereby setting forth a whole new chain of revenges and so more revenge and more revenge and so on and so forth.

Another Rumor Dispelled

Contrary to popular belief, the mermen’s building of walls made of bone did not cause the ocean to become salty.

Nor did the fall of man cause to sea to become salty.

Although these are related, one event did not cause another did not cause another.

It is impossible to say whether one reaction could have spilled into another reaction which may have caused something else entirely unrelated. And no one can say for sure if that unrelated thing was the thing that made the sea salty, but whatever it was, the sea has remained salty ever since. Whatever it was, it must have contained a very concentrated amount of Sodium Chloride.