Rewriting Stella

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Rewriting Stella Page 21

by Tuttle, Dan;


  The night outside tried darkening each min

  and lost against the powered city lights.

  This urban nexus Stel found self within

  itself was geared to strip and disunite

  its residents from natures, Nature, Earth,

  so threatening one’s compass of self-worth.

  278.

  Ai came back in and Stella snapped from trance,

  recalling their last walk in Wangjiang Park.

  Ai needed only briefest fleeting glance

  to see that Stel was feeling rather dark.

  Ai couldn’t help or handle, left the room,

  itself an act that left Stel bleeding more

  until a minute later she saw whom

  Ai’d gone to fetch as wiser, old mentor:

  her mother came in, sitting down beside

  her and her BLING on floor, and put her hand

  in tenderness on Stella’s head. She spied

  the telltale signs of loneliness there spanned.

  No inquiry on how Stel’d been depressed,

  the mom began to tell of how US

  279.

  had shaped her early views, had been her home.

  “Dad shipped to San Francisco in an age

  of rapid change, an era polychrome

  in US history. There burned outrage

  pre-Summer Love, in 1968.

  Young folks had flooded west to occupy

  the neighborhood where Ashbury and Haight

  met; dad said seemed like everyone was high,

  the place was looked down on as youth’s excess.

  I later learned it was prime time; chicks rose

  together naturally so to progress

  toward tiny slice of rights. How? They exposed

  the world to inner, private selves they’d hid

  and tried stuff parents wanted to forbid.

  280.

  I’ll skip the gory details, but those terms

  ‘sex, drugs and rock and roll’, we’ll say suffice.

  By twelve I heard these artists who confirmed

  that somehow we’d been hiding paradise

  inside, our truth left unexpressed. Once I

  heard Janis Joplin say, after they see

  me, when their mothers feed them all that lie

  of cashmere sweaters, girdles, just maybe

  they’ll have a second thought, that they can be

  themselves and win, or something close to that.

  Folks missed our Chinese ‘home’ relentlessly

  but, born there, I felt me in habitat

  that welcomed people simply ’cause they were

  themselves, too, people. What was popular

  281.

  was being more yourself. It made sense in

  my head and when I listened to those tracks,

  but making real-life friends had really been

  impossible because English syntax,

  pronunciation, grammar, and accent

  are hard—I only later pieced background

  together ’bout what those zeitgeist cracks meant.

  To live in multifamily home compounds

  the challenges because you always speak

  your native tongue. I learned so slowly. I

  was living times of cultural mystique

  as voiceless fringe observer on standby.

  I was too timid, young. Where’d I fit? Gee,

  nobody tells you how society

  282.

  should be approached as outsider. Myth you

  will melt in melting pot’s convenient crap.

  No clear way in, I balked and I withdrew.

  That’s reason why we signed to host a chap

  or lass, a foil for Ai from far away:

  I grew from when life forced me to define

  who I was separate from the noisy fray

  and want to offer others so inclined

  the chance when young to do the same. You’re there.

  You’ve fallen off the highs new places give,

  you’re questioning yourself, hyperaware

  of all these differences in how you live

  when thrown into the unfamiliar. Well,

  don’t compromise yourself, my little Stel,

  283.

  ’cause Joplin says you’re all you’ve got.” She paused

  her consolation, drew in lengthy breath,

  and looked how Stel’s face crinkled, pinched lines crossed

  on eyes closed tight, as if to stay the death

  of little voice that thought she’d stay a kid

  somehow through thick and thin of drawn-out years.

  Sad silent sensed sepulture slowly slid

  child’s spirit ’neath the earthen biosphere,

  to grave where personality’s rejects

  accumulate in boneyard pile. Host loathed

  to feel partition’s pain from vivisect-

  ing psyche, molting needed for her growth.

  We shed to pyre defunct intangible,

  in pain whose need cannot itself then dull.

  284.

  With dampened cheeks, one Stella’s head raised just

  enough to vocalize selected phrase

  while staying low enough to hide her fussed

  frown countenance rubbed salty with malaise.

  “What changed?” she asked with softness, reaching for

  the threads of hope that psyches tightly cling

  to as their trusted future guarantor

  that something better time shall this way bring.

  “I found a couple people not unlike

  me, those who liked what revolution meant

  but never looked for center stage or mic,

  that era’s silent ninety-nine percent,

  the ones who felt the cause as strongly but

  lacked ways to join the larger syndicate.

  285.

  By day I went to school, then after hung

  with friends before my uncle got home, talked

  about freewheeling liberal yardsticks flung

  at us by radio. By nightlight, gawked

  at literature less racy, stuff to ground

  rebellious days in commonality,

  like that serenity when we astound

  ourselves with nature in totality.

  Duality, I think, kept me afloat:

  I found enough community in folks

  around me, then could crawl into remote

  redoubt in mind where no one’s voice could coax

  me into thinking anything but what

  I thought myself. My body had to shut

  286.

  them off each day for some amount of time.

  That’s when I started reading namesake, Xue—”

  “Wait, namesake? Your name’s Xue Tao too?” Stel chimed

  in, interrupting. “Partly. Well, halfway:

  they couldn’t change my family name, but first

  or given name was up for grabs, so ‘Tao’.

  So anyway, I found I was immersed

  when reading what she wrote, and seeing how

  she picked out tiny things and magnified

  their relevance to larger life. Escape

  is necessary. If the countryside

  is too far in reality, then shape

  it in your mind and spend time there at play.”

  Tao did not see if her story’d allayed

  287.

  the downness Stella felt. Words sometimes take

  a time to percolate past hardships. That

  duration’s unpredictably opaque.

  One hoped her redirection could get at

  the quickest way to move on: alter aim.

  The mother Tao delivered wisdom thus:

  allow Abu his quest’s default goal (fame),

  but don’t be dragged into his ego’s fuss.

  Five years in flux for Stel would pass before

  she’d master it. But seeds were plan
ted, so

  sewn into soil for sprouting far offshore,

  and years from then just north of Mexico

  would germinate and grow. But let’s not zoom

  too far till Volume Three’s tale is exhumed.

  288.

  The memories pockmarking young teenage stage

  that anchored its significance to Stel

  predominantly came before this page.

  Remaining months unfolded parallel

  in daily repeat action mirroring

  the schedule that the schoolkids had to date.

  In retrospect, first months were dearer thing

  than staid routine that followed. Naught elates

  quite like experiencing firsts of sense:

  from touch, taste, timbre, tone, tradition, tongue

  come neuron fireworks that light immense,

  expansive mental caverns dark when young.

  Caves luminesce as we senesce, but lose

  flash-bangs originalities suffuse.

  289.

  Attentive readers might predict Abu

  would further build his mental citadel

  so to remediate chance will’s askew

  of his ambition’s dictates. Grit’ll quell

  the staunchest mental dissonance, and he

  had pride and culture backing up that pluck.

  Indeed, that grit made glue constructively

  to bond his cinder castle. He felt luck

  had fatefully delivered chance to rise

  beyond low berth of birth, and duty now

  was to deny distracting worldly ties

  to study till his technical know-how

  would cobble ladder stretching over walls

  that being born in poverty installs.

  290.

  In rounding out the cast, the least was known

  about the way that Ai’d push China, or

  the way that China’d pull her. Fates had blown

  sweet-smelling change – or hint thereof – before,

  at least to mother. Would Ai also lift

  beyond the Party fence? Some things condemned

  deserved retrial, not ongoing short shrift,

  like equalizing women country’d penned

  into subservience by custom. Where

  would badass women fit in China’s mold

  of gender once the pathbreakers declare

  the obsolescence of how males controlled?

  These hints of thoughts were tiny seeds today

  with mother’s tending blossoming someday.

  291.

  The rapeseed, rice, and peanut fields of Fan

  remained free of deluge, at least while Jiang

  held seat as Party Chairman. Other plans

  would be drawn up to keep production strong

  across the province. Hydro’s human cost

  of yet another million displaced, old,

  and blameless lifetime farmers would have crossed

  the moral line. Perhaps, as deaths are tolled

  and rural demographics shift, the math

  could look much more attractive, decade hence.

  At least for now, however, elders’ path

  to tenure would require no self-defense.

  As Ai predicted, honoring the past

  alongside present built a world to last.

  EPILOGUE

  I bypassed ping-pong, karaoke, phones,

  smoked sceney cigarettes, and net cafés,

  for no one arc could more than draw the bones

  of frantic Chinese change then underway.

  Ai strived like Tao to be gen’s unicorn,

  covert in power she’d play as untamed shrew.

  Deep change included me, as I was torn:

  be true self more as Stel, or as Abu?

  We spent five years of walking tightrope line,

  me showing him the world, him gripping fears

  low grades would cause his scholarship’s decline,

  support withdrawn then sinking Pioneers.

  The pressure waves gave him delirium;

  I’d try restoring equilibrium.

  Half decade chained to desk’s lost time to live.

  That’s maybe hypocritical from me.

  I learned from him the aid that structure gives,

  from daily dedication to studies.

  Abu was brilliant at conformity:

  school offered ladders up, like Ai believed.

  Mold self into whatever form need be

  to climb them? Fine. Just work. Now more. Achieve!

  Obeying sickened me as years amassed,

  yet never seemed to shake his deep-held faith

  grades righted status, led to fortunes vast.

  He ’llowed himself be haunted by that wraith.

  New tools, hard times showed novel path to power

  as I’d find life in adulation’s shower.

  VOLUME THREE

  PROLOGUE

  I’ve written this, and feel I sit atop

  a secret, an admission owed to you.

  You ever feel your past is but a prop,

  a cutout crafted to disown past rue?

  Solidity of character at stake,

  I feel compelled to clarify how I

  myself discovered young Abu’s namesake

  so we can trust each other eye-to-eye.

  Craved to be Superwoman, Mister Scrooge,

  alive with power of strength or power of cash,

  attuned to information subterfuge,

  I twisted truths with hashtags, mished and mashed.

  By end of tome, I hope that you see me

  chalk-drop once blackboard’s proof reads QED.

  CHAPTER 15

  1.

  America, America the great!

  The jewel! The shining cities on its hills!

  Its ports where eager, huddled masses wait

  to have their immigration dreams fulfilled

  were elevated literarily

  from Ellis Island out to Galveston,

  these junctions where the traveled wearily

  were processed toward their futures: gal, sis, son,

  guy, bro, and daughter, generations tied

  by universal freedom sapien hope.

  But legacy of welcome nationwide

  that day was overturned by misanthrope.

  The entry lines for refugees stood still

  by madd’ning stroke of Boy’s base-blessing quill.

  2.

  The protests galvanized support across

  a nation wide in differences. They spanned

  full spectrum’s ideology. The laws

  allowing refugees from Muslim lands

  were well-established by both precedent

  and joint agreements in the Global North.

  So unilateral stay’s circumvent

  caused indignation then to bubble forth.

  Beyond the confines kept by TSA

  these folks from every walk of life converged

  with signs BUT SUDANESE ARE DOPE!; BLESS THEY

  WHO’VE SUFFERED; FREEDOM’S NOT RELIGIOUS PURGE;

  and hundred more expressing love for kin –

  however distant – seeking their way in.

  3.

  Amid that clamor they touched down, naïve

  to shock that hit the landed world mid-flight.

  Youth taxied, shuffled out, and were received

  by immigration battery. Nonwhites

  were separated out to special line

  without an explanation to the crowds

  arriving, joyful refugees combined

  with citizens and tourists. Rights allowed

  them when they’d boarded plane half-day before

  mercurially changed: resettlement

  was cloud-high hope on boarding, once ashore

  their glass-shard dreams were shattered. “Rebels sent

  to harm us,” propaganda presses pressed,

  and so they tu
rned guests’ welcomes to arrests.

  4.

  The ban how it was written was quite clear:

  rescinded visa if you came from X.

  The country set was bluntly engineered

  so sample from their populace reflects

  a hundred het’rogeneous backgrounds,

  a host of histories and dialects,

  with single commonality pack’s bounds:

  each mostly Muslim, crossing every sect.

  Stel’s life was changed when Syria on list

  of countries banned meant Abu’d be detained.

  They’d spent since childhood nearly bound at wrist

  yet she’d be free and he’d stay there enchained.

  Pushed off to different lines for processing,

  Ab was lost in Boy’s pand’ring law messing.

  5.

  As citizen of elsewhere, Stel could pass

  through entry gate that stopped Abu. His dual-

  held citizenship meant he’d be harassed

  despite its extra richness as a fuel

  for culture’s melting pots. Stel got her bags,

  emerged to crowds of colors Benetton,

  diversity she’d not seen outside mags.

  Most all held protest signs, from tenets on

  acceptance, love, and shit that Jesus said,

  all tidal props that flooded her whole view

  voiced neighborly respect to Muhammad.

  Meanwhile concealed by crowds, suits countersued

  and fought for rights on laptops, slinging suits

  to stay the staying system at its roots.

  6.

  Not understanding those dynamics, I’d

  not linger, jeopardize ability

  to live here. Ab’s been misidentified

  by heritage, he’ll get mobility

  and join me in the homestay soon, Stel thought.

  They’d faced much greater struggles times ago,

  this was misunderstanding overwrought

  like streaking satellite dubbed UFO.

  She left the airport ’cause she’d confidence

  they’d reunite in barely time at all,

  with help from Hill or Pentagon. Hid prince

  not that night, nor the many after, called.

  From moment Stella stepped on US soil

  it tore part self from hip, left seething boil.

  7.

  Frenetics of arrival overwhelmed,

  Stel didn’t grasp in full the consequence

  of what was rotting into grosser realm

  around her, as lies trumped mere common sense.

  Events of import that historians

  craft out of static flowing headline tales

  don’t offer victims solace. Boy’s deed stunned

  public to apoplectic. Life unveils

  significance of tragedy with time

  in textbooks generations later read

 

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