I Love a Broad Margin to My Life

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
Published by Alfred A. Knopf

Copyright © 2011 by Maxine Hong Kingston

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

www.aaknopf.com

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

Coleman Barks: Excerpt from “Song of the Reed” from
The Essential Rumi
, translated by Coleman Barks. Reprinted by permission of Coleman Barks.

Irving Berlin Music Company: Excerpt from “Sittin’ in the Sun (Countin’ My Money)” by Irving Berlin, copyright © 1953 by Irving Berlin. Copyright renewed. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Irving Berlin Music Company.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kingston, Maxine Hong.
   I love a broad margin to my life / by Maxine Hong Kingston. — 1st ed.
          p. cm.
   eISBN: 978-0-307-59533-1
   1. Kingston, Maxine Hong. 2. Authors, American—20th century—Biography. 3. Chinese American authors—Biography. 4. Chinese American women—Biography. I. Title.
     
PS
3561.152
Z
46 2011
   818′.54—dc22
   [B]                                2010028819

v3.1

To the Ancestors and

my contemporaries and

our children

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Glossary

Notes

A Note About the Author

Other Books by This Author

I am turning 65 years of age.

In 2 weeks I will be 65 years old.

I can accumulate time
and
lose

time? I sit here writing in the dark—

can’t see to change these penciled words—

just like my mother, alone, bent over her writing,

just like my father bent over his writing, alone

but for me watching. She got out of bed,

wrapped herself in a blanket, and wrote down

the strange sounds Father, who was dead,

was intoning to her. He was reading aloud

calligraphy that he’d written—carved with inkbrush—

on his tombstone. She wasn’t writing in answer.

She wasn’t writing a letter. Who was she writing to?

Nobody.

This well-deep outpouring is not
for

anything. Yet we have to put into exact words

what we are given to see, hear, know.

Mother’s eyesight blurred; she saw trash

as flowers. “Oh. How very beautiful.”

She was lucky, seeing beauty, living

in beauty, whether or not it was there.

I am often looking in mirrors, and singling

out my face in group photographs.

Am I pretty at 65?

What does old look like?

Sometimes I am wrinkled, sometimes not.

So much depends upon lighting.

A camera crew shot pictures of me—one of

“5 most influential people over 60

in the East Bay.” I am homely; I am old.

I look like a tortoise in a curly white wig.

I am stretching head and neck toward

the light, such effort to lift the head, to open

the eyes. Black, shiny, lashless eyes.

Talking mouth. I must utter you

something. My wrists are crossed in my lap;

wrinkles run up the left forearm.

(It’s my right shoulder that hurts—Rollerblading

accident—does the pain show, does my hiding it?)

I should’ve spoken up, Don’t take

my picture, not in that glare. One side

of my neck and one cheek are gone in black

shadow. Nobody looks good in hard focus,

high contrast—black sweater and skirt,

white hair, white sofa, white

curtains. My colors and my home, but rearranged.

The crew had pushed the reds and blues and greens aside.

The photographer, a young woman, said, “Great. Great.”

From within my body, I can’t sense that crease

on my left cheek. I have to get—win—

compliments. “You are beautiful.” “So cute.”

“Such a kind face.” “You are simple.”

“You move fast.” “Chocolate Chip.”

A student I taught long ago

called me Chocolate Chip. And only yesterday

a lifelong friend told Earll, my husband,

he’s lucky, he’s got me—the Chocolate Chip.

They mean, I think, my round face

and brown-bead eyes. I keep

count. I mind that I be good-looking.

I don’t want to look like Grandmother,

Ah Po. Her likeness is the mask of tragedy.

“An ape weeps when another ape weeps.”

She is Ancestress; she is prayed to. She

sits, the queen, center of the family in China,

center of the family portrait (my mother in it too,

generations of in-laws around her)—all

is black and white but for a dot of jade-green

at Po’s ears, and a curve of jade-green

at her wrist. Lotus lily feet show

from the hem of her gown. She wanted to be

a beauty. She lived to be 100.

My mother lived to be 100. “One

hundred and three,” she said. Chinese

lie about their age, making themselves older.

Or maybe she was 97 when the lady official

from Social Security visited her, as the government visits

everyone who claims a 100th birthday.

MaMa showed off; she pedaled her exercise

bike, hammer-curled hot pink barbells.

Suddenly stopped—what if So-so Security

won’t believe she’s a century old?

Here’s a way for calculating age: Subtract

from her age of death my age now.

100 − 65 = 35

I am 35 years-to-go.

          Lately, I’ve been

writing a book a decade; I have time

to write 3 more books. Jane Austen

wrote 6 books. I’ve written 6 books.

Hers are 6 big ones, mine

4 big ones and 2 small ones.

I take refuge in numbers. I

waste my time with sudoku.

Day dawns, I am greedy, helpless

to begin 6-star difficulty

sudoku. Sun goes

down; I’m still stuck for that square

that will let the numbers fly into place.

What good am I getting out

of this? I’m not stopping time. Nothing

to show for my expenditures. Pure nothing.

8 days before my birthday, I went

to John Mulligan’s funeral. He was 10

years younger than me. He died without

finishing his book,
MIAmerica
.

(I have a superstition that as long as I,

any writer, have things to write, I keep living.)

I joined in singing again and again

a refrain, “Send thou his soul to God.” Earll,

though, did not sing, did not

say any of the Latin, any of the prayers.

He muttered that the Catholic Church divides you

against yourself, against your sexy body.

“The Church is a gyp.” John Mulligan should’ve

been given a pagan ceremony; Woman Warrior,

Robert Louis Stevenson, and Cuchulain

had come to him in Viet Nam. John

carried them, tied to him by silver cords,

to the U.S. The priest, who came from the Philippines,

kept reminding one and all that the benefits

he was offering were for “Christians” only. But

he did memorialize John being born and raised

in Scotland, and coming to America at 17.

Summarily drafted to Viet Nam. You

didn’t have to be a citizen to be drafted.

The war count, as of today:

     Almost 2,000 killed in Iraq. G.I.s.

     Not counting Afghanis,

              Iraqis,

              civilians,

              mercenaries,

              children, babies,

              journalists.

7 days before my birthday, I had breakfast with

Mary Gordon, who’s always saying things

I never thought before: “It’s capitalistic

of us to expect any good from peace demonstrations,

as if ritual has to have use, gain, profit.”

I agreed, “Yes, it’s Buddhist to go parading

for the sake of parading.” “Can you think of a writer

(besides Chekhov) who is holy
and
an artist?”

“Grace Paley.” She smiled. “Well, yes.”

Obviously. “Thoreau.” “Oh, no. Thoreau’s

too Protestant, tidy, nonsexual. He goes

home to Mom for hot chocolate. No

sex, no tragedy, no humor.”

Come to think of it, Thoreau doesn’t make

me laugh. A line from
Walden
hangs over one

of my desks:

     I love a broad margin to my life.

Sitting here at this sidewalk café with Mary,

deliberately taking time off from writing

and teaching duties, I am making a broad margin

to my life. The margin will be broader when we part,

and I am alone. Thoreau swam, then sat in the doorway

of his “Shelter,” “large box,” “dwelling-house,”

alone all the summer morning, rapt

in the sunlight and the trees and the stillness.

Birds flitted through the house. “… Until

by the sun falling in at my west window,

or the noise of some traveller’s wagon on the distant

highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time.”

I have a casita of my own, built instead of

a garage after the Big Fire. Its width

is the same as Thoreau’s (10 feet), its length

a yard longer. He had a loft; I have

a skylight. I want to be a painter.

Sometimes, I hear the freeway, now and again

the train, and the campanile. Thoreau heard

the band playing military music; his neighbors

were going to war against Mexico. He made up his mind

not to pay taxes.

        Trying broad-

margin meditation, I sit in

the sunny doorway of my casita, amidst the yucca

and loquats and purple rain birches. Some I

planted, some volunteered. Birds—

chickadees, finches, sparrows, pairs of doves,

a pair of towhees, and their enemy, the jay. Hawk

overhead. Barn swallows at twilight.

I know: Thoreau sat with notebook

and pencil in hand. Days full of writing.

Days full of wanting.

Let them go by without worrying

that they do. Stay where you are

inside such a pure hollow note.

                                    
—RUMI

Evening, at an Oxfam Relief benefit

for Hurricane Katrina refugees, I read aloud

what Gilgamesh of Uruk (Iraq!) heard about a flood.

The Euphrates flattened a city “… bringing calamity

down on those whom now the sea engulfs

and overwhelms, my children who are now the children

of fishes.” Earll auctioned away a 100th

anniversary Mardi Gras doubloon handed down

from his family. A bakery donated an immense cake

with candles, and people sang Happy Birthday to me.

6 days ahead of birthday: A small

white man sat abandoned at the stairs

to our garden. Summer sportcoat. It’s autumn.

He carried a heavy suitcase.

Two bigger suitcases, trunk-size,

sat on the sidewalk. “Here B

and B?” he asked, and handed me papers.

Lists of bed-and-breakfasts, the top one

with our cross-street but no address number.

A neighbor must be running a secret B & B.

“Widow B and B.” A widow used to

live next door, but her house burned

down, and we bought her vacant lot.

And there’s a Viet Nam widow down the street,

and a faculty-wife widow 2 doors up.

“I got reservation. My name is Fred.

I came to see about my Social Security.”

Where are you from? You can go to your local

Social Security office. “I came from

airport. I paid shuttle thirty-one

dollars.” But it doesn’t cost nearly that

to be driven here from OAK or

SFO. “Shuttle van brought

me here, to B and B.” Earll phoned some

home-inns in the Yellow Pages, and drove Fred to

a B & B, which cost $125

a night. “One hundred and

twenty-five dollars a
week
,” Fred

corrected. No, no, a
day
. He

looked ready to cry. “Get me

a taxi.” The innkeeper called motels, and found

Days Inn at $90 per night,

and a hotel at $60 per night.

Fred told us of his life: He had been educated

at San Jose State. He lived in a basement,

and studied engineering. He’d made $900

a month, then in San Francisco $1,200

a month. Housing was $30 a night.

“There’s no work for engineers in San Francisco

anymore.” Social Security will give

him $600 every month.

Earll also—$600 per month.

“In Iran, I live for a long time

on six hundred dollars.” We took

Fred to BART. Go to San Francisco.

At a big hotel, ask for a “youth hostel.”

Earll gave him a hug goodbye.

We picture the little lost man, from Iran,

getting his bags stuck in the turnstile,

leaving 1 or 2 behind as the train

doors shut. Should’ve warned him, he has to

compete with the Katrina refugees’ $2,000

housing allowance. Should’ve offered him water.

In Fred’s reality: Widows rent out rooms.

At B & B on the computer, hit

Print—voilà—room reserved,

room confirmed. Taxi drivers know

the place for you, and will take you to it.

Everywhere wander people who have not

the ability to handle this world.