"What the fortune teller didn't say" When the old man and his crow picked the long folded parchment to tell my fortune at five, they never told about leaving, the burning tarmac and giant wheels. Or arriving -- why immigrants fear the malice of citizens and dull shutterings of those who hate you whatever you do. My mother did not grip my hand more possessively. Did I cry and was it corn ice-cream she fed me because the bird foretold a husband? Wedded to unhappiness, she knew I would make it, meaning money, a Mercedes and men. She saw them shining in the tropical mildew that greened the corner alley where the blind man and his moulting crow squatted promising my five-year-old hand this future. Of large faith she thrust a practical note into the bamboo container, a shiny brown cylinder I wanted for myself, for a cage for field crickets. With this fortune my mother bought, only the husband is present, white as a peeled root, furry with good intentions, his big nose smelling a scam. Sometimes, living with him, like that black silent crow I shake the cylinder of memory and tell my fortune all over again. My mother returns, bearing the bamboo that we will fill with green singing crickets.