I Love a Broad Margin to My Life (10 page)

against the barricade, and felt tears rise.

The other women were crying too, and cheering,

and dancing. Now the police saw, we had

unambiguously broken a law. Time

to start the arrests. All the police came

to attention, the Rangers blocking the left side

of the steet, the TAC squad the right, and the city

cops in a blue line facing us, the width

of the street between. On the White House

roof, a man in uniform aimed a high-

powered long-range sharpshooter

rifle at us. He aimed it, put it down,

aimed, put it down. A van drove

into the cordoned area; I think the insignia

on it said Federal Prison. 2 or 3

cops unfolded a tarp, and taped it on to

the side of the van, covering over the words.

I got afraid. They’re hiding the place where

they would take us. They would disappear us.

They’re going to drive us through the streets

of the capital in an unmarked white vehicle.

No one would know what became of us. Keep

singing. Keep loving. Say in unequivocal

words, “I love you.” Hear, “I love you, Maxine.”

The Metropolitan Police, the men, stood

in one-line formation. The women, we,

the demonstrators, drew one another close.

We were a bouquet knot of pink roses.

How can it be that all the cops are men,

and all for Peace women? I can’t live

in such a world. I don’t want to keep

living out the myth that men fight

and women mother. We regressed—the junior

high dance. One boy crossed

the wide floor, chose one girl,

escorted her back to the other side, where

he arrested her. “My wife

is gonna kill me,” said a black cop;

“I’m arresting Alice Walker.” “Don’t hold

hands with me,” said a white cop,

shaking off his partner, who was smiling up

at him; “Don’t take my arm either.”

They had each one of us stand by herself

alongside the van, and took our pictures.

“Quit smiling. What are you smiling for?

This is an arrest.” This is your mug shot,

not your prom photo. I was smiling from

happiness; my government will not disappear me;

the tarp was but backdrop for shooting pix!

And the beautiful pink aura was still upon me.

My cop and I did not speak. A woman

officer in casual uniform, no gun,

took my purse, hair clips, pink poncho,

my earrings, and put them in a plastic bag.

Ready for handcuffing, I presented

my hands, wrists together, in front,

but my arresting officer signaled: in back.

I won’t be able to write, to touch, to catch

myself, and will fall on my face. I turned about,

held my arms behind me as high as I could,

bending way forward, making my gestures

large for the witnesses to see. Handcuffs

in this age of new plastics work like the ties

for bread and trees. My arrester could

have tightened the cable-tie so that it cut

into the skin. The hands turn blue, burst.

These police were kind to tie us loosely.

Our belongings taken, our pictures taken,

handcuffed, we were made to get into

a paddy wagon, about 8 per wagon.

There are cages, like dog cages, between

the front seat and the side benches. I sat

in the middle of a bench, my shoulders touching

women’s shoulders beside me, my legs touching

women’s legs before me. Women outside

pounded, drummed on the van. Through the windshield,

we could see them applauding us. Somebody said,

“There’s my daughter.” The van started up;

the crowd parted, let the van through.

It got quiet. We were driving away from

the magic. The rose light went out.

I had nothing apposite to say, but

had to talk. “Now I’m on the trip

my father went on. In a paddy wagon to jail.

I’m reliving his arrests. I’m knowing his feelings.

Scared. Helpless. He wondered what would become

of him, maybe deportation. They’re driving

him to the border, never to see his family again.

Oh, but my father wasn’t committing civil

disobedience like us. He committed crime,

ran gambling, half the take in the city.

It was his job—go to jail, regularly.

Once a month, they raided the gambling house,

and took just one guy, my father.

He was all alone in the paddy wagon

riding through the streets and out of town.

It was okay. By the end of the night, he

was home. They let him go. He gave them money

and whiskey and cigarettes, and they let him go.

He gave them a fake Chinese name,

a different Chinese name every time;

he doesn’t have a record.” BaBa

used to say, “I want the life

you live.” Now I’m living

the life he lived.

A few women squirmed

out of their handcuffs, marveled at how

loosely they’d been tied. Arriving at the prison—

an immense spread-out building on bare land

fenced off from other bare land

in the middle of nowhere—they put their handcuffs

back on. We were taken to an office,

which had a wall that was a bank of jail cells.

We were separated, I in a cell by myself.

It was like a toilet stall; an unlidded

toilet faced the door. Also for sitting

was a little bench. Being little, I could

sleep curled up on it, just right.

At last, the solitary confinement of my dreams.

Nothing to fear. I could live here.

I could live here a long time,

and be content. As a girl, I knew

I could take solitary, if only I got

to see movies. Older, all I need

would be books and pencil and paper. But here I am,

and I don’t feel like reading. And I don’t

feel like writing. Can’t write, hands

tied in back. Rest. Perfect rest.

And no more contending against shyness.

No more “sounded and resounded words,

chattering words, echoes, dead words …”

—Walt Whitman, lover of everyone and everyplace.

Yes, I could live like a cloistered nun,

but not have to pray for the good of the world.

Too soon, the jail door opened.

The cop whose wife is gonna kill him held

it open for Alice Walker. Now there’s

a pair of us. I gave her my seat

on the bench, sat on the floor. She sat

various positions, cross-legged, almost

lotus, sat hunkered, arms hugging knees.

I’m glad, we’ve both had Buddhist practice, and know:

sit, be quiet. Breathe out.

Breathe in. I spoke, asked her

to undo my handcuffs, and if they

won’t untie, to help me unbutton and lower

my pants, I had to pee. She got them off.

Kwan Yin, 2 more of your

10,000 hands, ma’am, reporting for duty,

for mercy. Being locked up with Alice,

I saw her: now a girl perched on a wall,

now we’re under the dark moon and she’s

shaman crone, now the sociable lady

on her book covers. She moves about in time.

Her time and ages circle through her. Now

her clothes flowed loosely on her thin body,

draped the edges of the bench; now roundly,

plumply she filled her blouse and long sweater.

I must look like that too; being small,

I could be a child still growing, or

I could be a shrinking old woman.

The light changes, the skin wrinkles, the skin

smooths.

The door opened again, we’re a crowd

again, loud-speaking, loud-singing women.

“This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.

Oh, this little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.

This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.

Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.”

The singing connected the women in all this block

of cells; love and peace roused again.

“On the children of Iraq, I’m gonna let it shine.

Oh, on the children of Iraq, I’m gonna let it shine.

On the children of Iraq, I’m gonna let it shine.

Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.”

A nice woman cop came in, and asked us,

please to sing quieter, explained that they

couldn’t hear to process us. We quieted,

pianissimo, “this little light of mine.”

But impossible to keep it down. Crescendo. Waves.

“Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.”

Fortissimo. The door opened; a policeman

called a name, and took a woman away,

for booking. When my turn came, I couldn’t

find my I.D. “The big cell for
you

tonight.” Tonight, overnight, I will

be with criminals, not sisters trained

in nonviolence. I asked the cop across

the desk from me—one prisoner and one cop

per desk; a woman was shackled to her chair

with old-style steel handcuffs,

couldn’t be locked up because of illness—

I asked my arresting officer, please to bring

my bag of possessions, and let’s go through it

again carefully for my I.D. Slowly,

he examined each thing. I talked-

story, “D’you know what I’m working on now?

I’m writing a Book of Peace. Once

in old China, there were books—reveries—

about how to end war. Those books were burned,

their authors’ tongues cut out. My dream

is to write such a book for our time.

People who read it, I hope, will vow

not to use guns, not to use cluster bombs,

not any of the new weapons, plasma bomb,

neutron bomb, earth-penetrating bomb.

D’you mind letting me rummage

through my purse myself? Thank you. Thank you.

I seem to remember a secret compartment somewhere.

It’s a trick purse. I brought it—pink,

sequins—especially for this demonstration.

And now it’s fooling me. The hiding place

has disappeared. Let me try again.

Okay, it’s not on this side. Let’s try

upside down, backwards, unzip—

voilà!—here it is! My I.D.!”

And so I was charged with
STATIONARY DEMO

IN A RESTRICTED ZONE—WHITE HOUSE SIDEWALK
,

and let go. To appear in court for trial,

or else: A warrant will be issued for me, a wanted

felon, throughout the United States. The 24

women (25 counting a girl caught

up in the fun; her mother took her away,

bawled out everybody), the freed women

waited for one another, made sure

no one left behind. Where’s the nearest

bus stop? No buses. Where’s the subway?

“Far. You ladies don’t want to

walk there. Dangerous.” “Will you please

call us a taxi? 6 taxis?” “Cabs

won’t come out here, ma’am. Please clear

the waiting area. Leave the waiting area

immediately.” Then we were out on a road

in the middle of flat fields with nothing growing.

No stars in the sky, too lit

by the prison. Someone cell-phoned Code

Pink colleagues to come get us. The journalists—

journalists arrested too—turned on their equipment,

and recorded us exulting, the most beautiful day

of our lives. We rode back to the city

in cars festooned in pink ribbons, rode

showy through the capital of the U.S.A.

The good citizens cheered us, honked horns.

Not one disagreeing person

yelled or honked in anger. 12 days

later, Iraq War II, Operation Iraqi

Freedom, Shock and Awe started.

A-Day, hit Iraq with 300

to 400 satellite-guided missiles.

On the second day, round-the-clock bombing,

another 300 to 400

smart bombs. That was the plan, spoken by

an “author of Shock and Awe.”

“You have this simultaneous

effect, rather like the nuclear weapons at Hiroshima,

not taking days or weeks but in minutes.”

We had used all our arts—

sung, danced, walked about as goddesses.

Full body puppets on stilts, in pink

and red garments of flowing silk, bent

down in mercy to children. We staged

a theater of peace, recited poems—and did not

stop our country from war. I wanted to lie down

and die but did not. I do believe: Because

the world protested, the tonnage of bombs was not as

massive as planned. And we hit fewer civilians.

The peace we have made shall have consequences.

All affects all.

On parade in Viet Nam,

the dragon on hundreds of pairs of feet walked

and ran along the river—a river once red

with human blood from slaughter that these very

people around me eyewitnessed, and had part in.

We, dragon, ran and walked until

the village we’d left came into sight; the river

circled and returned us home. We rested in tents

and ate joong. I pointed, said, “Joong,”

hoping Chinese and Vietnamese

feed rice, beans, meat, 100-

year-old eggs wrapped in leaves

to the same ancestor, Peace, and to the dragons

who live in and
are
the river. But

they called this food something else,

and their story was about a beautiful princess

captured by / run off with a dragon.

All the village every year give

chase after her, and come home happy,

and in union.

Follow the rivers and streams north,

deltas of Viet Nam turn into deltas

of China. There be my root villages.

23 years ago, from Guangzhou,

we had to hire a van and driver,

and a guide, get on 2 ferry boats—

drive, ferry, drive, ferry, drive

some more—the Pearl River’s side

rivers winding and hairpin turning

at islands and bars. Had to stay overnight

in the one hotel, farmgirl maids

yell-talking, loud laughing, no sleep.

Drive on the next morning, and arrive

at Roots Headquarters for Long Lost

Overseas Relatives Finding Relatives.

Word, my father’s name, my name,

had been bruited about this land. My cousin,

Elder Brother, heard, and was there to meet

me, recognized me, and greeted me, “Hola,

Younger Sister, our family is running in harmony.”

“Hola, Elder Brother, our family is running

in harmony.”
Harmony
. China has announced
Harmony

its official theme.
Harmony
posted on walls.

Lights flash
Harmony
up on buildings;

the night rivers reflect
Harmony
. Our son,

a musician, has tattooed on each arm: