I Love a Broad Margin to My Life (11 page)

I did the calligraphy myself.

Harmony
also translates as
peace;

its roots are
mouth
and
growing grain
. The mouth

speaks peace. Peace is food; peace nourishes.

Confucius said, Whoever plays the music

controls the world, spinning like a top

on the palm of his hand. (He ordered the killing

of 80 musicians.) Elder Brother said,

“My elder brother of Boston went

back just this morning. He’s upset

over his kids. Every one of them married

a white demon.” He laughed a big, relishing

laugh, not the laugh that Chinese

make after telling a tragic awfulness. I

translated for Earll, “A generation of nephews

and nieces married white demons!” Elder

Brother looked at my husband, did a double-

take—a white demon! He saw me laughing,

and gave 2 thumbs up, and cheered, “Okay!”

Thumbs up with strong farmer’s hands.

He and Earll walked hand in hand

through the fields. I stayed with the women—

our families have many more girls

than boys—and watched the 2 men now giant,

human, against sky and land, now

as nothing, transitories in the infinite.

To amble the earth that you work daily is to give

yourself and guest entertainment and rest.

Earll understood his Elder Brother-in-Law

to be naming his happinesses. Ah,

generous fields of rice. Ah, great

water buffalo, and baby buffalo. Ah,

kinship. But for skin dark from the sun,

and arms and legs brawny from labor, this “brother”

looked like my real American brothers. None

of the women looked like my sisters and mother.

In Earll’s presence, they marveled, “He doesn’t

understand us. We can say anything

we want.” They dared one another,

“Say whatever you like to say.” I listened

hard, but didn’t catch their secrets. I saw

the brick stove where my mother cooked,

reading a novel all the while, and let

the food burn. She’d foraged for straw

to heat that stove. I saw my parents’ cupboard

bed. She snatched the curtain that she’d embroidered—

the marriage of Phoenix and Dragon, and “Good Morning”

in English script—and fled. My last Chinese

journey, a year and a half ago, the new

superhighway from Guangzhou to my villages—

4 hours. No more stopping for farmers

threshing grain and sun-drying fruit

and vegetables on the fine strips of new road.

I opened the car door; a man looked in.

I gazed, looking for the familiar; I watched

his gaze adjust, brighten. We recognized

each other, older—Elder Brother,

Younger Sister. Leading the welcoming crowd,

we walked through the village. “I’ve just been

elected president,” he said, “voted in

for the second time president of the Old People’s Hui.”

Some old men sat in chairs along

a sunny wall. Elder Brother presented them,

“The Old People’s Hui. Our clubhouse.”

Red paper announced names of donors,

all Hongs, all Americans, and the plan

to build a bench, right there, over

the mud and trash hole. Of course,

our village would choose Elder Bro the leader;

he’s energetic, optimistic, like me,

like most of our family, who give public

service (though shy and rather be private).

In war, he’d be the one taken as headman.

The old women, 4 of them, sat on the earth

in the shade of a wall across the way. They’d

played here as girls, and now rest,

still friends, laughing, remembering. They look

like homeless street people in the United States;

Chinese, maybe Chinese-American,

women, old like these women, clad

like them, faded pants and shirts, hair

home-cut, bobby-pinned back from

their ears, such women are scavenging

garbage cans. They don’t beg, don’t

panhandle, only quietly delve

through public trash. I overheard a white

man tell his son, “People like that

shouldn’t live.” Elder Brother nudged me,

“Give lei see. Go ahead.

Give, la. Give, la. Give

to her; she’s important. She’s of

the Hui. Give to him too; he’s important.”

I bent over the fanny pack at my belly.

Please have enough. Gotta keep count,

save some for later farther journey.

MaMa’s spirit took me over.

I am my mother, bent over my purse,

digging through the mess for lei see,

anxious that I’d forgotten it, lost it,

run out. Stolen. Not enough.

Old squirrel rummaging in her pouch,

counting how much to save, how

much to give away. Keeping track

who got lei see already. Worked so

hard for money; what’s it for but to give

to family? But let me give lei see

gracefully. Not let worry show. The time

has come, the occasion is rightnow that I saved

for, saved red paper, saved clean

new bills, artfully folded the money,

creased edges, tucked flaps. Carry

lei see with you wherever you go,

be ready to give it away. Aha. Whew.

Here’s the secret compartment, here’s lei see.

Take out just so many, keep

enough for descendants of second and third wives

in Mother’s village.
Lei see dai gut

to you. And you. You too.

You’re welcome. Most very welcome. Thank
you
.

You
prosper too. You
do
prosper.

People showed me their cell phones; last

visit, they showed me PVC

pipes. The inside of my ancestral home

was changed, the dirt floor covered, tiled.

Earth indoors no more.

Chickens used to peck the dirt clean,

and kitties played, and cats warmed themselves

by the stove. That brick stove that my mother rebuilt,

and cooked at. Read novels while cooking.

Food burned, and her mother-in-law scolded.

On my earlier visit, a pig had peered in at us,

forehoof taking a step inside,

but decided, too crowded, too many

noisy people, stepped back, and left.

This visit, I didn’t see a chicken,

duck, goat, or cat, or pig in the house

or lanes and alleys. A TV sat

to the side of the altar; the symmetrical array

of emblems, calligraphy, and family photos that took

up the center of the wall faced the front door.

You walk in, and the first thing you see,

all you see, is altar up into the loft.

I have entered my playhouse. The last

time I was here, it was not so obvious

that my family kept a shrine. But then they

were concluding the 10 years of Great Calamity,

the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution,

and the altar was plain, a mere outline,

a space framed with red paper. The light

bulb was hung before it. No icons

nor idols but family photos. Us.

“Which sister are you?” “This is me;

I’m the eldest sister.” I’d gone to the other

end of the earth, and found pictures of myself;

they’d been thinking of me. The altar now

was resplendent with words inkbrushed on fresh

red paper. Elder Brother and his wife,

Elder Sister, sat beside my husband

and me on a row of chairs and stools along

the altar, our backs to it. Other relatives sat

to the sides, as in the inglenook back home.

Seats were covered with patterned fabric,

which decorated the altar too. Everybody

talked, said that he or she was happy,

life was good, all was well. The many

people not here, also well.

(Rude and bad luck to state otherwise.)

Ah, here come 2 cousins home

from the army. They’ve been gone all day

at their job, and are home from work. The Chinese

army is not like your American army;

they are boy scouts, do good

deeds, give help. My soldier cousins,

being young men preoccupied with making their way,

making their lives, were not much interested

in me, some old relative. Mumbling,

they shook hands because I stuck out

my hand. Elder Brother said to me,

“Greet our grandma and grandpa, la.”

Amid the people, my people, there sat

on a little bench a bowl of incense

in sand. “Up there. Ah Po and

Ah Goong are up there.” I stood

to look where he pointed. My grandparents

are up in the loft? Their ashes? Their ghosts?

Above the altar? Up higher than the loft?

In heaven? Someone handed me a stick of incense.

Earll was beside me, also with lit incense.

In unison, holding the stick like the stem of a flower

between prayer palms, we raised it toward

the ancestors, bowed, bowed again, bowed

the third requisite bow—I felt at my back

a heat, a wind, a spirit, blow in

through the open door—and planted the incense

in the sand. Thank god for Zen practice.

I had not lost li, though gone to the West.

They had not lost li—tradition,

manners, the rites—though Cultural Revolution.

I asked to see the water buffalo.

“We saw the baby buffalo last time.

Is he still with you?” Yes, oh yes.

Again, my family, followed by people all

along the way, people somehow also

family, walked through the lanes and alleys

of the village to muddy paths that went past

a dump pile. Elder Brother apologized,

“So dirty.” I said, “It’s okay.”

I compost. What shocked me was the bits

of plastic trash mixed in with the leaves,

peelings, manure, and earth. Reds and blues

that do not occur in nature. Not a flower

in sight. My family are practical farmers;

they don’t plant ornamentals. We entered

a huge old structure of stone and brick.

Foliage, small trees, grew inside,

up toward the broken roof and blue sky.

There, tethered to a column—long rope

from ionic base to nose ring—was

the water buffalo, grown, immense, dark.

Great curved, ridged, backward swooping,

sharp-pointed horns. “Lai, la.

Lai, la.” With one hand, Elder

Brother gestured come, come closer;

his other hand had ahold of the nose ring

controlling the water buffalo’s head. A swing

of its head, a stomp of a hoof, we’re goners. It

was uneasy; it didn’t like being pulled

into a commotion of visitors. And cameras flashing,

taking pictures of the city cousin and cousin-in-

law bumbling into country life.

Pet-pat it—where? on the nose?

the face? the shoulder? What if it swung about

to look at what touched it? I tried

sending it friendly thoughts. Remember me?

I remember you. You were a baby

with big long soft ears that stuck

out, like your horns stick out now.

I love your deep bright eyes, and eyelashes.

So, this is the animal that doorgunners chased

from helicopter gunships, and shot

to pieces.
“His balls explode, and I watch

that two thousand pound creature jump

ten feet off the ground.… Everybody

laughs.”
—John Mulligan, Viet Nam veteran.

It had happened just south of here, not long ago.

I’m sorry, Buffalo. I am sorry.

I asked, “What is this place?”

The columns. The dais. The faded red words

on the still-standing walls and on the column

that staked the buffalo. I make out

the word
moon
. The word
live
. The word

teacher
. I know too little Chinese.

“This place was the old temple. The typhoon

wrecked it.” His free hand—he wore a watch,

a silver watch—pointed to the broken walls,

and roof that let in swaths of sky. “Home

for my buffalo now.” So, is this what’s become

of the Hong temple? Are those the steps where

the guys hung out and teased the girls, and made

my mother drop her water jar, which broke,

and she got a scolding? Is this the same temple

I’d seen them restoring after Cultural

Revolution? The one we sent money for

changing back from a barn? The Communists banned

religion; temple became barn. The typhoon

had wrecked the old temple. Or were

Red Guards the Typhoons? I had gleefully

sent money; I would make my own cultural

revolution—get the names of women,

women donors, up on the temple walls,

and change the patrilineage. Time-faded,

whitewashed, red writing on the column

and walls could still be deciphered: