Rewriting Stella

Home > Other > Rewriting Stella > Page 13
Rewriting Stella Page 13

by Tuttle, Dan;


  kept topic live, uncomfortably. “No, fine,”

  Ai finally said, “air normal good,” phrase tone

  as if to sprout what someone else had sown.

  89.

  “We’ve walked a longer way, I think,” Abu

  said after half an hour had passed. They turned

  an umpteenth corner, gasped. There, Xanadu

  rose up before them: four-tiered tower wormed

  its way into the sky ’cross river’s flow.

  The corners of its shingled roofs curved up,

  its arches carved as if whole studio

  connived to etch the wood with verve. “My pup

  would love to walk here,” Stella said, in awe,

  as eyes took in surrounding bamboo groves.

  “The Jinjiang River,” Ai explained. Flies gnawed

  at limbs exposed. It didn’t matter. Trove

  of urban nature stood nearby! Stel knew

  this park would civilize days in Chengdu.

  90.

  They savored for some minutes sculpted view,

  and learned the park’s name ‘Wangjiang’ meant ‘view toward

  the river’, noting Ai’s dad’s name too used

  the character for ‘river’, jiāng. Reward

  for long day warred was dinner. Family

  eponymously styled meal, shared each dish.

  Its aromatic spice uncannily

  oozed through all rooms. “We celebrate with fish,”

  said Long, the father, mentioning that luck

  was likelier to come to those who feast

  on fish on Lunar New Year. He’d instruct

  the kids on how their chopsticks could carve beast

  that lay on platter, flesh finely preserved

  through death that severed soul before ’twas served.

  91.

  “I’ve only had one fish before,” said Stel,

  who liked the taste but hassled with the bones,

  “and that was recently.” Her undersell

  of pleasure with the food was pure homegrown

  proclivity to mildness. Serving plates

  lived in the table’s center, one with rice,

  one vegetable, enough to satiate

  the mouths that dined. “Tomorrow will be Twice-

  cooked Pork,” the mother shared. The dad waxed on

  about the local lore on eating meats.

  The kids felt their brains overtaxed. Upon

  conclusion of the meal they moved toward sheets,

  to fix the snowglobe’s drifting images

  as memories under REM’s night diligence.

  92.

  On way to school next day, they chatted more.

  Ai shared how schedule of the day would shift,

  from eight to ten they’d brave Chinese, the core

  class underlying scholarship year gift.

  “I like with other country people friends,”

  said Ai, “school good with this. It have like you,

  Nigeria, and Guinea.” Dividends,

  Stel later learned, were oil well IOUs,

  “And Congo, Zim, and Mozambique.” There, ore

  and timber were raison d’être for loans.

  “Their kids have been here longer?” “Yes.” Offshored

  extracted natural treasures formed the bones

  of Chinese economic beast: a frame

  for them, while crossbones left export states maimed.

  93.

  The second day of gleaming school would hurt,

  its shimmer overshadowed by a stone.

  For ‘stone’ was how their teacher’s name converts

  to English from the ‘Shi’ with rising tone.

  From moment that they sat in class, no word

  of English would be said. They’d need to learn

  in Chinese. From her body, they inferred

  some minor guidance. That class overturned

  their every notion of what classrooms were:

  to sit there, grilled by tutor on a book

  was more intense than back home, where deferred

  engagement’s silence was quite widely brooked.

  They’d need to think as fast as when outdoors

  when faced with crises journeying outpours.

  94.

  “I don’t know if I want to study like

  you did for months for your exams,” said Stel

  at lunch when they took rice and rest. “A tyke

  knows so much more than we do.” “We’re compelled,”

  Abu replied, “to catch up. Now we’re last.”

  “Of course we’re last. We just arrived,” she sighed,

  recalling how she’d donned cloak of outcast

  when Grandmum died, then switched it and shanghaied

  Abu’s rewarded trip. “I’m here because

  it isn’t home, but not because I want

  to be top student. Accolades and buzz

  are up to you.” Then silence set détente.

  Ai came and sat, arriving late. One peek

  at face showed she’d need to their glee upkeep.

  95.

  The second night was different from the first.

  Once finishing their dinner, all retired

  to study in their bedrooms, none coerced

  by parents. Textbooks in which they’d be mired

  were long and hefty, mostly in Chinese,

  its square-block prints intimidating on

  the page. Their dictionary lacked the ease

  of those of alphabetic tongues: now gone

  were simple days of finding stuff in books.

  Instead they had to look at tone and sound,

  then find the section where the shapes and looks

  identically matched character they’d found.

  Stel first had problems finding the right ‘ji’

  from hundred-something possibilities.

  96.

  The third day came at even faster pace,

  with expectations ratcheting by day.

  Assignments nearly needed hyperspace

  to lengthen doing time. To disobey

  a deadline was to cause yet greater strife.

  The fourth day passed, then fifth, then weekend loomed.

  Stel felt like soldier marching to the fife,

  repeat exhausting motions self subsumed.

  Her solace sought in countryside, she put

  keen BLING on leash and went to Wangjiang Park.

  She’d left at dawn, to not be underfoot

  at home and force an escort. There, hallmark

  of Chinese public spaces first she viewed:

  a hundred elder folks in dancing mood.

  97.

  The light was soft, no colors yet unveiled.

  Its ambiguity made silhouettes

  of hundred figures, rearmost ranks dovetailed

  into the fog, as if wood statuettes.

  A tonic fresh, damp, cool, mild zephyr blew

  as if from where their limbs impacted air,

  colliding in slow motion jiu-jitsu

  in time whose silent signature was shared.

  Their movements mimicked those of fluid koi,

  whose golden scales brought beauty to the slow

  deliberation muscles each employed

  to sync in elegant adagio.

  Calm humors governed how they stretched and spun

  as if a hive mind moved each form as one.

  98.

  Demonstrably in synchronicity

  with tempo of environment and trees,

  the figures’ acts cured all toxicity

  pollution’s urban reek had brought in breeze.

  To watch rehearsed, premeditated moves

  conducted amid silence ushered awe:

  the ardent daily practice of those who’ve

  selected dedication showed grandmas

  could still produce a dance worth audience.

  A
sound that Stella knew instinctively

  arose above what often smoggy, dense,

  and pressing air did squelch: distinctively

  contrasting, tweet and call and song and chirp

  of birds did city audio usurp.

  99.

  It helped, as well, to perk up BLING, who’d been

  somewhat at odds with Ai’s dog Huhu, ‘fox’,

  huge Chow whose fluff popped inches off its skin,

  of disposition wholly orthodox.

  Hu picked up BLING sometimes at home like log,

  would fetch then drop him in the toy pile throng.

  At least familiar sound of birdcalls jogged

  BLING’s memory back to places he belonged.

  He heard them well, too, Stella thought. His ears

  kept getting bigger, like old men she knew

  at home whose lobes had grown throughout the years

  and stretched as Masai jewelry taxed tissue.

  They watched atop a round tomb, stone endowed

  with script homage to poetess Xue Tao.

  100.

  The name struck Stel as more familiar than

  majority of Chinese words she’d heard.

  She couldn’t place it. Pictures of sampans

  (which non-historians often misword

  as ‘junks’, inaccurate because they fly

  but single sail that’s striated, have oars

  at aft, while junks sail three to catch the sky

  as elevated sterns cut waves, perforce)

  adorned the nearby decorations, scrolls

  that told of times when Taoism was born,

  when message moved by riverboat’s pushed poles,

  when Journey West, Red Chambers’ Dreams tales warned

  of what were acts of virtue and of vice,

  through folklore’s pedagogical advice.

  101.

  She came upon a scrap of paper left

  by student of some sort, with characters

  that copied poem on wall, handwriting deft,

  then translated to English. There, picked were

  four stanzas, short in word but long in view.

  Befuddled for a sec while reading it,

  Stel marveled how line’s sturdy curlicue

  through top-to-bottom blocked squares could transmit

  a complex scene beyond what pencil’d tipped.

  Dew-rinsed (it read) their pure notes carry far.

  Windblown: as dry… (the paper there was ripped)

  and fasting leaves are blown. Her own memoir

  of dryness in savanna coursed through mind,

  and with these mental images entwined.

  102.

  Chirr after chirr, as if unison.

  But each (the poem continued) perches on

  its one branch, all alone. This croon is one

  that moves when million cries converge at dawn

  from insects ’round the world, just here as there.

  “Cicada” was its title. Stella’d not

  yet come across in China tokens shared

  between this culture and her life. Poem’s plot

  exalting nature favorably compared

  to week’s experience. She checked the date

  and disbelieved translation. Sign declared

  that Xue Tao lived right there in Sichuan state

  twelve hundred years ago. Foundation for

  ennobling nature dwelled in culture’s core.

  103.

  The figures still in tai chi’s trance, full sun

  now muscled through the morn’s obscuring clouds.

  With Stel’s associative mind overdone,

  she walked back home through routine civic crowds.

  Back at the flat she found Abu and Ai

  at breakfast with sweet milk and honey soup.

  Abu explained today he’d fortify

  his Chinese studies so as to recoup

  the time he lost to sleep this week. “Can you

  tell me some more,” Stel asked of Ai, “about

  this Xue Tao person?” Oddball impromptu

  request piqued Ai’s mom’s interest, who walked out

  to get their dishes, then said, “I’ve her book

  for you, some day.” Stel knew not she’d get hooked.

  CHAPTER 8

  104.

  Hit pause on Chengdu narrative one sec,

  return to rural story of town Fan

  in Sichuan’s river valleys. There, redneck

  provincial farmers lived, no better than

  some hundred years ago—so urban lie

  would lead naïve believe. Its cause was wealth.

  Self-centered cities gradually untied

  from rural lived reality and health.

  Though living largely like they had in past,

  the family Ye was hardly misinformed.

  They talked about the radio, amassed

  the facts on how their nation had reformed,

  and shouldered on their shoulders burdens to

  produce the Chinese city-dwellers’ food.

  105.

  Clan Ye was small, though hadn’t started so.

  The years eroded what were once great tracts

  dynastically their ancestors’ chateau-

  equivalent that, filled with artifacts,

  was jewel-like in the valley. Over time

  with each successive generation, land

  was split among the sons, a paradigm

  that smaller populations could withstand.

  Aft’ eighteenth century that system failed,

  Qing emperor de-throned successive coups

  for power. Meanwhile beneath the peasants ailed,

  decades’ upheavals endlessly renewed.

  We zoom in now to Shushu, uncle who

  together with Aunt Ayi tried make do.

  106.

  “This season’s rapeseed harvest’s looking good,

  I think we’ll make fair money from the oil,”

  he said one night, “the crops have well withstood

  the floods that suffocated others’ soil.”

  Then Ayi nodded, serving him more rice.

  The nod came slow, heart melancholy since

  their son had left, by nearby town enticed.

  She saw it not as act of dissidence,

  but rather chase of opportunities

  that salaried employment offered. His

  departure had spurred clear disunity

  among his parents, fueled the fire. “What is

  important,” she replied, “is that we sell

  the harvest quickly, no one can foretell

  107.

  what’s going to happen when those plans come true.”

  He shook his head, “You’re listening too much

  to village rumors’ groundless ballyhoo.

  You have no proof that anyone will touch

  our valley. Things have changed. This twenty-first

  new century has finally brought some peace

  to life. We’ve markets, no more empty purse

  to wrestle with. The famines and caprice

  of government last century are gone.”

  He knew she spoke of gossip that town Fan

  was marked alongside neighbors in plans drawn

  for demolition. Party business. Man

  saw little indication hearsay was

  more true than speculative village buzz.

  108.

  But Ayi wasn’t feeling passive, “I

  heard we’re the target from Lao Lin today.

  Her son-in-law, you know, electrified

  the hills in Anhui province. Underway

  are plans for projects similar out west.

  That no one knows the details simply means

  it’s normal Party politics. Protests

  would break out if we knew we’re smithereens.”

  As revolutionary long ago,

  then victim o
f vicissitudes of ill-

  informed, dogmatic government, Shu’s foe

  was instability. The Party filled

  strife-quelling role now. He’d faith it would act

  to move the country forward, not ransack.

  109.

  “Remember sixties’ scarcities?” he, mad,

  said, “stockpile cabbage every winter ’fore

  the frost, and eat it boiled? Every comrade

  did, choiceless in the sacrifice, uproar

  curbed by policing neighbors. Ample food

  was grown by the cooperatives, and ‘sold’ –

  or so the branding went to best delude –

  to distant fat officials, who controlled

  rich stockpiles. We starved, they ate. Then we’d have

  to melt our iron down in garden smelt,

  give tithe in low-grade, useless steel. What gaffe!

  And yet since 1990 we’ve all felt

  such massive progress. Things have changed. It’s not

  our government today that hatches plots.”

  110.

  He picked a piece of Kung Pao chicken out

  of their shared dish upon the tabletop

  and as he chewed more creases coursed throughout

  his face, traumatic memories of sharecrop-

  ping days removing liveliness. “Although

  we’ve witnessed since things that should be outlawed,

  corruption, graft and such, the top’s outgrown

  overt power grabs that launched mini jihads

  to crush our country’s culture. We’ve moved past

  false Revolution and the Great Leap’s wrongs.”

  Pre-hardship days, his faith in state had passed

  as pleasing to her, patriot ’mong throngs

  of lookers-on whose kowtow words were cheap.

  “I worry now,” she said, “you’re blind, asleep.”

  111.

  Zoom out from Fan and back in to Chengdu,

  where Stel sought early bedtime. Morning thrill

  had left a pleasant, woke-mind residue

  of harmony with nature ‘midst the mill

  of city life. The scene had dreams precooked,

  prepared for exploration when brainwaves

  slowed down to better study overlooked

  phenomena unconscious deigns to save.

  Unbridled newness in her universe

  exhausted, overpowered vague intrigue

  of weekend exploration. Soon sleep’s nurse

  would put the healing salve on week’s fatigue,

  abet left cortisol’s anxiety,

  flush open mind to life’s variety.

  112.

  Or so she wished. In next room minds burned bright,

  both focused on the smashing of some rules

  prescribed in books into brains’ bits and bytes

  as mandated in homework from the school.

  Abu zoomed in on Chinese dinner fare,

 

‹ Prev