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I Love a Broad Margin to My Life

Page 7

by Maxine Hong Kingston


  the son, the Berkeley education, that

  complex life is dream. Stay

  and see the rice through to harvest. How

  long does it take for rice to grow through

  its seasons? A year? Two years? Now

  that I’ve found this lost possible self—Chinese

  rice farmer—let me stay with it. Keep

  doing this most basic human task

  til satisfaction. When used to that life

  and don’t see it anymore, then leave.

  BAD VILLAGE

  Once more, away,

  out on the open road, Wittman enjoyed

  his walk with fellow travelers. Millions errant,

  looking for work, some on paid vacation.

  The driver of a pony cart slept atop

  his produce; his pony knew the way. A buffalo

  or ox pulled a tumbrel of logs and rocks;

  woodcutter and wife dozed side by side.

  A bicyclist carried one bar of steel

  under an arm. Another bicyclist was delivering

  a circus of chairs. Motorbikers covered

  faces, and entire heads, with gauzy scarves,

  no helmet law. 100

  big white ducks or geese rode

  on the roof of a bus, feathers ruffling; they

  did not try to fly away. A stake

  truck and a flatbed truck, both

  honking hard, drove head-on

  at each other, veered to drivers’ right,

  and passed. They’re right-laners, like us.

  People walking carried twigs, furniture,

  baskets, pots, live fish in buckets.

  Wittman changed his walk to be like other

  Peripatetics. Cut out the American

  attitude. Quit the truckin’, the I’m-walkin’-here.

  Send the strength away from macho shoulders,

  and will it down to butt seat chakra.

  Walk bent-legged, loose-kneed,

  loose-seated like kung fu.

  Hands behind relaxed back. Oh,

  it feels so good, giving in—bent old

  China Man at long last. A pickup

  truck bounced, braked—off popped

  a giant pig, a hog. PLOP! Burst?!?

  But it got to its feet, jiggled, breathed loud,

  coughed, coughed, and screaming, ran off.

  Some men in the laughing crowd gave

  chase, Wittman too. They were running

  after a big fat naked person.

  Her pink Caucasian ass and hams rolled

  and pumped. Hurrying ahead of the hooting, joking

  crowd, she screamed, grunted, wheezed. Internal

  injuries. Ran toward people who were assembling

  a market. Help me. Help me. Please. She

  was It, the big fat naked dumb one. Caught.

  The redoubling crowd herded the sow back

  to the truck. She climbed the ramp. Her owner kicked

  her legs out from under her, thanked the people,

  and drove off. No pig basket for

  her. So what if she’s hurt? On her way

  to slaughter anyway. Wittman reentered

  the village that the sow had led him to. Today

  was market day; farmers were arriving with this day’s

  harvest. Cooks were boiling up noodles

  for breakfast, throwing in handfuls of meat and choy.

  There was an empty stool in a hovel restaurant;

  he sat down amid the slupping, slurping men,

  and let himself be served what everybody else

  was having. (You’re charged extra for the seat; sitting

  is a luxury.) (No ladies. Ladies cook

  and eat at home.) The men sat close,

  knee to knee, thigh to thigh, but not

  quite touching. Did bump elbows.

  They ate fast. 2 fingers tap-

  tapped the table—another luxury, a table—

  got refills. Tap tap. Thanks

  thanks. The cook himself came around

  with the tea. Some people lift-lifted it

  toward the others. Sociable Wittman lift-

  lifted, nod-nodded to one and all.

  Tap tap. Thanks thanks. Abruptly,

  eaters pushed away from the table, paid,

  and left. Lazy guys stayed on,

  lit cigarettes, talked. One man

  folded himself up on his stool, arms

  wrapped around knees, and slept. Chinese

  can sleep anywhere. Our American

  did not understand any of the speaking,

  he’d traveled that far. Can’t stand to be

  left out. Act as though you get it.

  They spoke a spit dialect, like Daffy Duck

  and Sylvester the Cat. And they held long notes,

  ho-o-o, who-o-o-o. Laugh when they laugh.

  They didn’t seem to be talking about him; they

  weren’t referring to him with their squinty sly

  eyes. The spitter with yellow tobacco fangs,

  Sylvester, looked straight at him, and asked

  something. Yes, nodded the agreeable American.

  Yes. Sylvester and Daffy glanced at each other.

  Complicity. Good, they seemed to say, let’s

  go, let’s do it. They stood, paid,

  waited for Wittman to pay, saw his wallet,

  watched him pay with a bill that made

  the proprietor use up all his change.

  He walked deliberately step by step up to

  the suspected muggers, and said in English, “Don’t

  you mess with me, bro. You’re gonna get what for.

  You’re gonna get what’s comin’ to ya.

  You mess with me, you messin’

  with the Man.” He reached inside his shirt

  for his gat. The bravos vamoosed. Onlookers,

  who will gather at any commotion, gave way.

  And spread the word: armed man, American

  with a gun, come to town. Whichever twisty

  turning meandering path he took, Wittman

  felt people keeping slant eyes on him.

  And so, as the bad stranger, he arrived at

  the meat market. The halves of a boiled hairless

  dog hung by meat hooks through

  its eye sockets. Paws in begging posture.

  German shepherd? Labrador retriever?

  Parents have brought children to watch the butcher

  do something to it with a knife. At another

  stall, a tub of piglets, like human babies,

  some dead, some but stunned, alive

  and moving, bloodied. A customer chose a snake

  from jars of live snakes, haggling price

  all the while. The snake man squeezed

  the sides of its head, the jaws opened,

  the fangs shot milk, which he caught in a bowl.

  Just when you’re feeling relief, they aren’t harming

  those snakes, he killed one, drove

  a nail through its head. (So this

  is the ancient culture that Chinatown defends

  against the Department of Public Health and PETA?)

  Wittman stayed in that town. Don’t turn away.

  Face what’s real. Fix my reputation.

  He found a hotel, a house with door wide

  open, showing a front room with cots as

  furniture. The crony witch widow woman

  pointed at each bed, choose, choose,

  you choose, first guest, no

  other guest. Ah, but there’s more;

  she led him to a ladder, indicated up

  up, you up. The loft was the private

  one-bed room, fit for a rich tourist.

  He paid her, held out money, let her take

  however much the charge. Then up ladder

  again, and fell into the rag nest bed.

  Sick. Gave in to illness, every

  part o
f his body ill. Ceiling and walls

  waved, buckling, fluttering. He’ll tilt

  and roll off the edge of the loft into

  darkest China. Hot. The roof? Fever?

  Time spirals in China. In America, it shoots

  straight out, like the line on the heart monitor

  of the dead. The line faded between forever

  and instance, awake and asleep, actual and dream.

  It seems, at some twilight, the widowlady

  witch fed him a brew, a medicine or a poison.

  So kind or wicked of her, too old

  to be climbing ladders, yet climbing the ladder

  to take care of him. The ladder was missing.

  No escape. He had memory of it: one pole

  taller than the other, for climbing up to the mesa-

  like rooftop, and down into the kiva,

  when I was an Indian, a San Ildefonso

  Indian, former life. I’ll make the witch

  happy, recognize her, she and I were

  girlfriend and boyfriend. I know

  she recognizes me too, ministering to me so

  nicely, palming my brow. I hear voices.

  I can understand them; they’re plotting to steal

  my money. All she had to do was ask.

  I fanned out my money, take, take.

  But she wants my life. Do I have a soul?

  I can’t feel my soul. I think soul

  is something we have to imagine. Want

  soul, imagine one. Like imagining I have

  it in me to be a husband, a father. Imagine

  the peaceful dark, and you go into the peaceful

  dark. Imagine the white light, and you enter

  and become the white light.

  May all beings be safe from danger.

  May all beings be safe from danger.

  May all beings be safe from danger.

  May all beings be safe from danger.

  A gold ribbon arises and flies and winds

  around the woman on the ground floor and around

  the man in the loft, and shines through walls

  and curls and twirls around every neighbor

  and neighbor’s neighbor and the big pig

  and her baby pigs and the dogs and snakes and geese

  waddling the earth and geese flying in air, and

  spans oceans all the while looping

  dolphins and whales and sharks and small fish

  and the flying fish spangling and leaping like the ribbon

  itself lacing and embracing each and every

  living thing all the way to the other

  hemisphere to hug my own true love

  and our own dear child and all people

  our own people and returning to include me.

  Aloha kākou. May there be love

  among us, love including me.

  Oh, I am loved. I am loved.

  With such good feelings, the pilgrim recovered

  from illness-at-the-world and illness-at-China.

  The pig chasers, the would-be thieves, the dog and

  snake butchers, the witchy innkeeper

  took their places as ordinary people, as ordinary

  as himself. Wittman got up, well, and traveled on.

  Now, I, Maxine, could let Wittman die,

  let him die in the China of his dreams,

  and proceed on this journey alone. He’s lived

  a full life, life enough, China

  enough. Loved wife and child; they

  loved him back. Planted rice. Read

  some good books. Felt happiness, felt

  gratitude. Enough. But I don’t like

  traveling by myself. I ought to learn to go

  places on my own, good for my character,

  to be self-reliant. (A translation of my name,

  Ting Ting, Self-Reliance. I should

  live up to my name, Self-Reliant Hong.)

  Why I need a companion, Monkey, along:

  He’s unafraid and unembarrassed to butt

  and nose into other people’s business.

  He likes chatting with them and partying with them.

  (I would rather hide, and spy, and overhear,

  find out who people are when I’m not there.

  Responsibly, sociably among them, I’m wont

  to correct them, teach them, tell them Be happier.)

  And he’s able to enter the many places

  in this world that a man is allowed and a lady

  is not. And Wittman, a fiction, is free to befriend

  anyone, and tell about them; he has no relatives

  to be held hostage. I don’t want to leave him dying,

  sick and poor, destitute of health and money.

  No airline ticket home. Passport

  and identity stolen. The life of lowest poverty

  is a meditation practice, a discipline, another

  tale. Let me take him to one more

  village, give him the commune of our bohemian

  dreams.

  ART VILLAGE

  Ming Ming. Bright Bright.

  Double bright. He arrives at Ming Ming

  in a rainstorm. Wind is driving the bamboo

  and ginger and cane flat. No moment

  between lightning and thunder. A logo

  flashes. Ming Ming. A word we know,

  sun and moon together, bright. 2

  suns. 2 moons. Bright Bright.

  Following the way the sign points, the wet

  traveller runs to a village mired in mud,

  into a courtyard that’s a sty of mud. Ming Ming

  seems to be a ghost town, yet

  another ghost town whose denizens left

  for a global city somewhere. He bursts in

  to find an art studio, and artists painting

  indoors during rain. They shout and laugh

  like Welcome! Look at what the mew dragged in!

  Like Get the man dry clothes and hot tea!

  The nude model throws on her robe, and dashes

  away to do their bidding. The men set

  down brushes and palettes. Take 5.

  They pull up stools and crates around the stove.

  Wittman takes off his clothes, soaked

  to the skin, and dons the robe the model brings

  along with tea and wood and coal. “Thank you.

  Thank you,” the guest says in English,

  his natural language, the best for giving

  heartfelt thanks. “You well come,”

  says a goateed artist. No, not

  goatee. Let’s give him a soul patch.

  “Well, well,” says a fellow with a ponytail.

  “Koo. Koo. Koo.” Cool. Cool.

  “How are you?” “I am fine.

  Thank you.” “You well come.”

  “I come from Heilongjian. And you?”

  Black Dragon River. The artists, communal

  around the fire, brothers, smoking Peace

  brand cigarettes and being served tea

  and pastries, delight in trying out the Brave

  language, the lingua franca taught in schools.

  The cats are hip and up-to-date.

  They wear their colors on worn, torn denim.

  Some long hair. Some skinhead.

  Black beards. Purple beard. 5

  o’clock shadow, designer stubble. The old man

  bewhiskered like that handsome Commie, Ho Chi Minh,

  is home among his own kind. The artists

  get to the extent of their English. Pots and buckets

  plink and plunk; the roof drums. The paintings

  are hung and stacked on the dry sides of the room.

  Mr. Soul Patch brings to his lips

  a xun, around which his hands fit perfectly,

  and blows a music, old from long, long

  ago. Our first male ancestor,

  Bao Xin Gong, made the xun

  of earth, mad
e it earth-shaped, and gave

  forth this sound that is the sound of time, from

  far off to now to far after, the sound

  of the animate winds, the yin wind and the yang

  wind, the sound of the first man and this man

  breathing song. Hear it, and it belongs

  to you, and you belong to all of it.

  The music ends on a long long

  outbreath. The musician coughs and coughs,

  spits a lunger onto the dirt floor,

  rubs it in with his foot. Lights up

  a cigarette. Urges the guest, Go on, go,

  try it, blow. Wittman holds the earth xun

  in spread hands, fingertips over some

  holes, brings it up to his mouth. Pásame

  la botella. The sound he gives out

  is low, definite, smooth, clear, loud.

  “Koo.” “Koo.” “Tell me about xun.”

  The artists—they are masters of many arts

  in this commune of makers—speak with numbers.

  7,000. Xun was unearthed? invented?

  7,000 years ago? In the year

  7,000? 40. The xun in your hand

  is 40-something—generations? years?

  Cough cough. Pat-patting the lungs,

  the heart, me, myself. 40. The musician

  who takes up the xun will die in his 40s.

  All artists die young. We sacrifice.

  The painters, the model too, have coughs. The smoke,

  inhale, cough, exhale, cough, cough.

  The elder artist can’t help lecturing

  the younguns about their health. “No wonder

  you Chinese chronically cough and spit.

  You, with every breath, you’re drawing microbes,

  germs, disease from that old, used instrument,

  into your respiratory system. Those xun

  players died young because they caught an illness

  from this infected instrument, which they passed on to you.

  You guys shouldn’t be living in your studio.”

  Points at the beds, the stove, the tables loaded

  with cans, bottles, tubes of chemicals, food.

  “You’re handling poisons all day,

  and breathing fumes all night. I know.

  My wife’s an artist. We’ve been poor,

  but she keeps her workplace, her art lab,

  away from where we eat and sleep. She wears

  a face mask, a respirator. Just like

  Chinese do in traffic. And, come on,

  don’t smoke. Don’t smoke. If you

  knew your history, you wouldn’t smoke.

  Only 3 grandmothers ago,

  BAT, British American Tobacco,

  forced our people to buy opium, and tobacco-

  opium mix. We had two wars

  Chinese versus Anglos,

  Opium War I and Opium War II.

 

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