I Love a Broad Margin to My Life (12 page)

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I was hoping for something from the Tao

and Confucius. Maybe, beneath layers of paint:

Farmers

farm

all the way to

heaven.

“See the trees?” said Elder Brother, extending

his arms toward the surounding grove, branches

sticking through the roof, branches through

the walls. “I planted each tree. With extra

money, I buy a small tree. I’m growing

forest. I’m a planter of forests.” He must

have been planting all his life; those are

grandmother-size trees looking in on us.

“Do you own this land, these fields?”

“The government took land and fields.” “No,”

said another relative, so quietly, only

I heard, “the government gave land back.”

Every story you hear, you will hear its opposite.

“Did you know our grandmother?

Do you remember Ah Po?”

“Ho chau!” Very mean, a scold.

He told: “I cared for Ah Po the last

5 years of her life. She lay in bed,

shouting for me, and I helped her.” He must’ve

been a kid too young for the fields.

I remember the photograph of Ah Po

lying on her side in her cupboard. Her hair

combed back tight, she was dressed in black,

and she wore shoes on her once-bound feet.

Before sending money, my parents had wanted

evidence that she was alive. What cost to find

and hire a cameraman, and what delay

until her picture reached us, and the money

reached her. It is my American karma,

I am beholden: Constantly send money,

the least we can do. A sweetness would pop

into my mouth; Ah Po was sending candy.

All my brothers and sisters felt it, all

at the same moment. “I cared for Ah Po,

and I cared for Chuck’s first wife.

I gave care to 4 people.” Chuck is

Elder Brother’s elder brother, who left

for America, and married a Chinese American.

Chuck’s the one, all his children married

white demons. First Wife requested,

Send me one of the sons; you have so many.

A son did write letters to her, in English

to be translated, addressing her as Dear Mother. But

she went mad from loneliness, and had to be taken

care of. He didn’t say who the other 2

were he was caregiver to. Maybe Ah Goong, who

went to fight the Japanese, and came back

not right in the mind. All Grandfather’s

generation, and Father’s generation,

and the brothers of his own generation left

for the Gold Mountain, and put the old parents

and old wives into this farmer’s

keeping hands. Elder Brother’s name is:

Benefit the Nation, like the motto that Yue Fei’s

mother tattooed on his back. Be

constant sending money, the least we can do.

Letting go of the buffalo, Elder Brother said,

“Lai, la. Lai, la. Come,

come see the new temple.” We hurried

back through the village. The temple, holding

the east side of the plaza, looked as I’d seen

it 23 years ago. Up high,

on the tympanum:

one big word,
Hong. Soup
.

It looks important, and it looks funny.

The first king of the first dynasty was named Soup.

So the oracle bones say. In famine,

in illness, slow-boil in water: leaves and bark

and grasses, scraps, whatever everybody has.

(Never the seeds for planting.) Drink soup,

be well. The water for making life-saving

soup came from this well

beside me, this well centered in the village

square, this well in front of the temple.

My aunt killed herself, and she killed the baby,

in this well. I looked down into it,

but did not see a very deep hole,

did not see the eye that reflects stars.

The water came to the top of the well; it seemed

to be drawn up through porous stone but

inches away, ankle-deep. My aunt

with the baby couldn’t possibly have jumped into

a well this shallow, and drowned. A crone,

wee, shriveled to my size, gripped

my hand tight in her hand, which was cold

and clammy. She said, “You and I

are very related.” We are ho chun.

I thought, Don’t touch me; I don’t want

to catch your disease. I felt her hard bones

around my wrist, my arm. In her other

hand was a bowl of water. She let go of me,

and with both hands offered me water.

Water from the well. Her hand was cold

and wet because of clear, clean well

water. I touched the water, as cold as

though iced. I touched it with both hands, put

both hands into the water, then

touched my forehead, touched my eyes,

and held my palms against my cheeks, held

my face in my hands. I am blessing myself,

and my aunt, and all that happened.

Earll did as I did, the crone standing before him,

proffering the bowl of water. On this hot

day, we did not drink; the water

was not meant for us to drink. The crowd

was not looking at us, when a Chinese crowd

will gather and look at anything, watch who

wins the haggling, watch the street barber

cut hair, watch anybody write anything.

The villagers were looking away, knowing, we

had shame, we had curse. They gave us privacy.

Gave us face. Are they wondering whether I

am wondering, Do they know? Do they know

that I know? The crone woman—now

where is she?—is she old enough

to’ve witnessed the raid on our house? The people

at the old folks’ club, had they taken part?

Killing the animals, hounding my aunt. The men.

One of those men her rapist, her lover?

She gave birth in the pig sty. She drowned,

and the baby drowned in this very well.

Are these things ever past? Kids saw.

Can you ever get over it? Sex, bad.

Birthing, bad. Woman, bad. So,

lifetimes later, a strange old lady

brings to me and my husband a bowl

of water. She holds it in her 2 hands.

Chinese will serve ordinary tea

with the attention of both hands. I hope

she means to be making ceremony; I shall

take it to be shriving. The bad we did

be over. Punishment be over. Suffering be over.

Is that it then? Wet my hands in the well

water—the bowl like the well, and my wet face

like my sinful aunt’s. Perhaps the well water

had been offered innocently, I the only one

who remembers the past, and believes in history’s

influence. And believes ritual settles scores.

My husband by my side blessing himself as if

with the holy water of his youth was stand-in

for the rapist / lover. Forgiven. Curse lifted.

War over.

Let us be on our way.

“We drive to your mother’s village, la.”

Elder Brother climbed into the van, easily;

he’s ridden cars often. He has a TV

set, a watch, cell phone, camera.

He farms with a buffalo. I hope

he doesn’t feel poor, doesn’t want

a tractor, a car. Maybe he’s Green.

The nearest town, Gujing, calls

itself “Guangdong’s First Green City.”

And “China’s First Green City.”

May my family choose to farm with buffalo

rather than machinery, fully aware of bettering

the health of Planet Earth. Is Gujing

the same as Gwoo Jeng? Place names

on the map of China, if the way “home”

that MaMa taught us is on maps at all,

are nearly the sounds she had us memorize.

Gujing. Gwoo Jeng. We speak

a peculiar dialect. And language revolutions

have changed the spellings of cities and towns,

provinces, mountains and rivers. Villages never

on maps. Translating Chinese words

with other Chinese words, Mother

said that Gwoo Jeng means Ancient Well.

Or many Ancient Wells. We got to Mother’s

village in 5 minutes away. In her day,

it was so far that her bridesmaids

teased her. “Marry a man from Tail End …”

We arrived at a third temple, adorned

and open as if for holiday. People, nicely

dressed, city style, with a television

crew, greeted us on its steps. “You missed

the festival. The ninth month, ninth day

festival. Just yesterday. Ten thousand

old people came. We fed

ten thousand old people.” I was

late for Old People’s Day; we in

the United States don’t celebrate it, maybe

a Communist invention. And maybe only 100

or 1,000 came. In China, numbers are

mystical. 10,000 means many, many.

Multitudes. A countless number of old,

venerably old, lucky old people

came to my mother’s village temple,

and were fed. But I was here before;

this place had not been a temple.

It had been the music building. I loved

the dichotomy: Father’s ground was sacred,

Mother’s, profane. 23 years ago,

I stood in front of a cement bunker-like

structure shut, it seemed, since my mother

left for America. In there, MaMa

and her villagers banged drums and blew horns,

banged and blew all night of the eclipse,

until the frog let go of the moon. They made

musical offerings night after night when

the witch’s broom, Halley’s comet, swept heaven.

But the broom would not leave the sky.

So, kingdoms rose, kingdoms fell.

So, world wars. I stood in front

of the wood door, which no one thought to open

for me, and I did not think to ask. Children

played on the paved entranceway, and in

the stream that flowed beside the music building.

Chinese and Vietnamese make music

on the water for that amplitude of sound.

The kids, likely kin to me many

times removed, paid me no mind.

Backing up, I read the name of Mother’s

village above the door: 5 Contentments

Earthfield. And backing up farther,

I saw in green cursive: Music Meeting.

The words seemed green jade embossed

on white jade. The tablet was set in the fret-

work of a balcony. My father wrote beneath

the photo I took:

5 Contentments Earthfield Music Meeting Ting

A ting is a pavilion. A ting is the vessel for cooking

offerings at altars and at banquets. Ting Ting,

my name, like pearls falling into a jade bowl

bell, like worlds spinning in the palm of the hand.

Warm evenings when the Music Meeting was dark,

my mother’s father had sat right here

where I’m sitting now, on the dirt ground

of this very patio, and talked story.

“Your grandfather talked stories so good

to hear, he made old ladies cry.”

I’m an old lady myself now, come

to China, where old ladies live long,

see everything. Too tough to die.

What could make a hard old lady cry?

“Orphans. Mother dying, father dying

sing advice to their lone child how to

live without them: ‘You’ll never see me again,

not in this form. And I’ll not see you,

nor look after you, nor feed you anymore.

Only notice now and then: When you walk

out the door, and a breeze touches you,

it’s me touching you. Flowers I was wont

to plant will pop up in spring; they’re me,

happy to be with you. And the flowers that come

out in fall—chrysanthemums—me, again!

And once a month, look for your father,

Jack Rabbit cooking medicine in the full moon.

See him? See his tall ears, slanting

to the right? See his cauldron? Father!
Joy kin
!’ ”

Joy kin
is our village way of saying

zaijian
, see again, au revoir.

The orphan, grown, sings: “I feel

the breeze at the open door, I feel

the breeze at the gate. Mother? I feel

a tap on the back of my neck. Ghost Mother?

A snow pea, a green finger, bounding

on its vine, touched me.
Joy kin. Joy kin
.”

Sit very still, and you will feel

the ancestors pull you to earth by a bell rope

that ties you—through you—from underground to sky.

They pull downward, and pull heavenly energy

down into you, all your spirited self.

They let up, and life force geysers out

from your thinking head and your hardworking hands.

My first visit to my mother’s village, my mother

still living then, I looked for her house

among the gray-with-mildew houses, walked

through the mazy lanes saying her name.

Brave Orchid. No flowers, no color

but in girls’ names. Do you know the family

of Brave Orchid? Doctor Brave Orchid,

who gave shots against smallpox.

A woman and a boy, far cousins, were waiting

for me at the raised threshold of a wide-

open door. She said, Good to see you.

I said, Good to see you. “Ho kin.”

“Ho kin.” She did not give her name.

I did not give my name. We

had to talk about how we were related;

we would find kin names to call

each other. She is married to my mother’s

brother’s son. I am the oldest daughter

of her father-in-law’s oldest daughter.

I wanted to call her Sister, but Elder Sister?

Younger Sister? I couldn’t tell whether

she were older or younger than me. Her hair

was black, her skin dark and lined, some teeth

gone. Besides, her father-in-law was not

really my mother’s brother. He was son

of the third wife; my mother was daughter

of the first wife. My grandfather, the one

who sat in the square and told the stories

that made old ladies cry, the grandfather

who could do anything, make wine, make

tofu, make cheesy fu ngoy

that stunk up the house, the grandfather

who was judge of the village, that grandfather

sailed the world, and brought home wives.

The third wife, whose skin was black, whose

jabber no one understood, he brought

from Nicaragua. The boy cousin-how-

many-times-removed standing before me,

looking at me, did seem very dark-skinned,

but he plays out in the tropical sun all day.

The dark woman living in my mother’s house

did not invite me inside. I peeked

behind her, and saw a courtyard that looked

like a roofless work and storage room. Most

of it was taken up by piles of straw. MaMa

said that she spent most of her day

foraging the hills for straw. They use it to kindle

the stove, which was in a corner, gray bricks

blackened with cooking smoke. Laundry—blue

pants, blue shirts, one white shirt—

hung on bamboo poles eave to eave.

It’s clothing that gives the gray village color.

Partway across and up a roofline,

atop clay tiles, shaped on their makers’

thighs, were a row of jade-like figures—

dogs? lions? faeries? kachinas?—maybe

broken, maybe never finished. Extra

bamboo of various lengths stood

against a wall. A wooden stick, milled,

no nodes, no knots, was fastened

across a shut door, high enough

for a person to walk under upright.

On the heavy wood door were posted 2 words:

Family Something. Family Living Room?

Family Forbidden? News had come to us

that this uncle could not pay taxes,

so the government forbade the use of a room.

Don’t let up sending money.

My grandfather had no business being

a trigamist. Poverty for generations. I

looked as far as I could see into

the house, and saw a doorway beyond a doorway

beyond a doorway. A little boy in red

was looking at me from a faraway dimension.

The men of my mother’s family were hiding. They

were afraid that I, eldest daughter of eldest

daughter of First Wife, had come to take possession

of house and land. As I handed the dark woman

and the dark boy many red envelopes

of money (may she distribute it fairly), I said,

“All the turmoil, the not-good, that MaMa

tells me about you—it’s over. No more.

I’ll send money. I won’t forget. I shall

send you money forever.”

But I do forget. Years

go by when I don’t send money, enough

money. I forget China; I forget my family there.

China is too far away. I need

to think it up. I need a time machine.

To imagine hard to make real the people

who appear in letters, stories, dreams, how

to get to them. They forget me too;

I am forgotten. They rarely write

reminding me, Send money. We, all of us,

fall into forgetfulness. Sammosa.

I should’ve said to my Nicaraguan relatives:

You take the house. You keep the land.

House and land, yours. I give you this house.

I give you this property. But I didn’t think

it was mine to give. Who knows who owns

the estate. The collective farm? The Communist

government? Maybe it already belongs

to my enate people. It would’ve done my Nicaraguan

sister good to hear me say, Here,

it’s all yours.

Now, when I arrived

again in my mother’s village, the day after

Old People’s Day, 9/9,

no one of that side of my family was there at

the music temple to welcome me. Not the dark woman,

not any relative with the same grandfather

as me, not one of the men descended

from my step-step-grandmother from Nicaragua.

Who greeted me and shook my hand was the mayoress,

skirt-suited like a woman politician in the West.

She’d be the one in charge if invaders came.

Not the headman, like the president of the seniors,

not the storyteller, like my grandfather.

The mayoress led me, and her assistants, and Earll,

and a couple of Roots officials, and some teachers

and translators, and a TV crew with camera

and mike up the stairs and through the thrown-

open doors. The inside of the temple

was adazzle with light. Impossible brightness that was not

coming from windows or lightbulbs. All

shining, squares and diamonds of fresh red

paper on walls and tabletops shining,

black writing on the red, shining. The villages

grew out of old dark earth;

mold and dust, motes and motes of time,

blacken the adobe and gray the air. Air

pollution hazed the sun; this day

will not count as a blue-sky day.

And yet, the music temple was a surround of light.

The templekeepers had not cleaned up

after the feast of Old People’s Day.

The small chairs, some on their sides,

had not been put away. 10,000

people couldn’t’ve fit. The old folks

ate, were honored in shifts. They’d come

walking, riding on the backs of their children,

riding bicycles, rowing boats, come

here from all over Pearl River

delta. Someone handed me a lit stick

of incense. I, followed by the crowd curious

to see whether this daughter who’d been gone

so long knew and kept the ways—li—

walked step by mindful step toward

the altar, which was the entire back wall.

Holding the stick of incense between palms,

I bowed thrice. 1 goak goong.

2 goak goong. 3 goak goong.

Learned in childhood in Stockton, California.

Maybe means: First, nourish grandfather.

Second, nourish grandfather. Third,

nourish grandfather. Big downbeat

bow on 3. I bowed and bowed and bowed

to ancestors arraying the back wall and

side walls. 18 ancestors,

each dated with years consecutively

from 960 to 1279.

They wore the high headdresses of high

rank. They had my mother’s name: Chew.

Next to
Chew
was a simple word that I

had asked my mother to draw, giving me

the name of the kings in the stories she told.

Almost blind, she’d written that word.

I asked the mayoress, “Please say this word.”

“Sung.” She touched both words.

“Chew Sung.” She swept her arm right to

left across the altar. “The Chew Sung

huang dai.”
Kings. Emperors. Gods
.

“Ten thousand old people bowed to them.”

From the last (1271–1279)

emperor’s picture, the genealogy tree

continued along the left wall to the door.

“Your names are here,” said the mayoress, pointing

to branches nearest the door. A fear

went through me, that fear when I am about

to learn something. I asked carefully,

“Were we soldiers? Were we servants?”

I would’ve asked, “Were we courtiers?”

but didn’t know
courtier
. Most likely,

we were courtiers. “No! No! You emperor!

You emperor!” You who left for America,

became
American, you forget everything.

You forget who you are. Emperor!

Chew Sung Emperor. Emperor of the Northern Sung.

Emperor of the Southern Sung. A teacher of English

took my hand, bowed over it, and said,

laughing, “Your majesty.” So, the stories

about mighty sea battles, gunpowder bombs,

lost wars, 100,000

refugees, the boy emperor falling

off the typhoon-broken ship,

the other boy emperor tied to the back

of the prime minister, the Lum woman who hid

the princes, passed the young dragons off

as “Big Lum” and “Little Lum”—“Forever,

you meet a Lum, you carry her shoes”—

the mass suicide of queens and princesses

at the river, the stone you can see today

to remember the last, lost battle, “Sung”

carved on one side, “Yuan” the other,

and more stones, the Empress’s Dressing Table

Stone and the Throne Stone—all that history,

us. We
were the carriers of the Traveling Palace;

wherever we settle, that’s the Center.

Kuan Fu, the long-lost capital,

is
here
. Found. The Traveling Palace was built

of mud and straw, rocks for furniture. My father

teased my mother, “You lived like Injuns.”

Their stories of the Sung were always about its fall,

the trauma of war, the running as refugees.

The conqueror was Yuan. (I’d thought, Juan in Cuba.

“Cousin Juan threw away BaBa’s

poems. Juan stole the book box.”)

Yuan
means
Mongol
, and their leader was Kublai Khan.

I had to research for myself the glory of Sung.

Sung was the age when the ecosystem was healthiest.

From atop the Great Wall where now you see loess,

you would’ve gazed out at forests of elm,

planted as the Great Wall was being built.

Women were teachers; they even taught their sons

military strategy. General Yue Fei

and his mother were Sung. The Sung mapped the land

and the sky. Its navy patrolled the rivers and seas.

(But the Yuan had a larger navy; the Mongol

women fought on horseback and on warships.

The Sung deforested the Xiang River Valley

for wood and metal to build ships and to forge

weapons.) Movable type was invented during Sung,

and paper money. They discerned true north.

Artists made Buddhas and bodhisattvas.

There was a poet named Poet. Poet

wrote about travels that take but a day

then home again. Painters painted the long

journeys. The long golden handscroll,

“18 Songs for Barbarian Reed Pipe”:

Nomads capture Wen-chi, poetess

and composer, daughter of the librarian. She

is the barbarians’ treasure, taken from her home

of many roofs and courtyards. She rides

a dappled horse escorted by processions of men

on dark horses and camels across the yellow

grass of the steppes and yellow sands of the desert.

They play flutes as they ride. Hooves of the horses

beat percussion. The earth is drum. Falcons

ride on shoulders and wrists. She sees migrating

geese make words in the sky; she reads them as letters

from home. She pricks her finger, and writes with blood

a message from her heart. “Let my heart

be heard from the ends of the earth.” The wild geese

can read words written in the blood of a loyal one’s

heart, and fly them to those who wait to hear.

The nomads, Liao people, women and men,

girls and boys fight, hunt, play

with crossbows and longbows and arrows.

They gallop their horses under the geese, and shoot

them down. Birds become afraid of people.

“I want to kill myself. I am among

nonhumans. I want to kill myself.

I am a prisoner with ten thousand anxieties

but no one to confide them to. I want to kill

myself. I have to make finger gestures,

yes, no. I have no speech.

I want to kill myself. The barbarian

with a pretty face wants to make me his wife.

I will kill myself. Yes, I shall.

I am pregnant with a barbarian child.

I shall kill myself.” At her wedding to the prince

of barbarians, musicians play pipa,

horn, and flute. They have 2 sons, half

Liao, half Han. An envoy comes bearing

ransom. The covered wagon with red wheels

is waiting to carry her home. The nomads stand

in groups and alone, and weep into their long sleeves.

Wen-chi, wife and mother, holds

her baby for the last time. Her husband, whom she

has learned to trust, holds their son by the hand.

The children do not understand to weep.

Liao horsemen and Han horsemen and infantry

in procession escort Wen-chi’s return.

Husband and sons, elder son on his own

small horse, the baby carried in a rider’s

lap, accompany her partway. The prince

rides his wife’s dappled horse, saddled