I Love a Broad Margin to My Life - Maxine Hong Kingston [20]
sat beside her. “Heart Man, marry me.”
He ought to kiss her. But they don’t have
that custom, do they? He was a virgin for Mongolian
women. Aged, married too long,
the body refused to spring and pounce and feast,
to make the decision for sex. He reached for and held
her hands. “Moy Moy.” Oh, no,
shouldn’t’ve said her name. Can’t fuck
Younger Sister. “Thank you for wanting me
to marry you.” Her hands felt trusty. “Marry”
said, and “marry” heard many times tonight.
Taña appears. She’s sitting on the other side of him;
that’s her, warm pressing against him. He
could see her in the dark, her whitegold
hair, her expression; she’s interested, curious,
pissed off. He tapped her bare foot
with his bare foot. She’s solid.
A red string ties her ankle to
his ankle. No string connecting him and
the other woman. He spoke to the not-hallucinated
one. “You’re the most beautiful Chinese
woman I’ve ever met. I dearly want
to kissu, suck lips with you.”
Say anything; Taña doesn’t know
Chinese. “Thank you, you want to marry me.”
A rule of the open road: Keep thanking.
“However, I don’t want more marriage.
Our son, my one son doesn’t have any marriage.
No one. Will you marry him?” Wittman
dismayed and amazed himself. Forever, then.
Forever husband. Forever father. Never
lust after a woman again but wish her
for his lonely son. I wish for Mario
a life’s companion. “My son, Mario,
makes good money. He knows power
tools and car mechanics. He can cook.
He has some college. He is kind
and intelligent, and I want for him a kind
and intelligent person.” The old Chinese
customs aren’t so bad; fix him up
with a wife, a daughter-in-law of my own choosing.
Moy Moy’s holding of his hand became
a handshake. “Dui dui dui,”
she cooed. “We will agree on a place to meet.
He will be waiting for me there. Ho, la.
Good night, la. Good sleep, la-a-a.”
(You do not need vocabulary to understand
the Chinese. Just feel the emotion
in la-a-a and ahh and mo and aiya.)
Moy Moy left. Taña, also, left.
I am alone in the dark, so dark that
nothing exists but my thoughts, and thoughts
are nothing. Came all the way to China,
and failed to fuck another besides my long-
wedded spouse before I die.
The next thing,
dust was falling like ash, like glitter. Far
away, so faint, maybe imaginary, crowed
a rooster. Another, closer, rooster answered,
took up the opera, and another, and another,
each rooster louder, the loudest blaring
right outside the window. Wake up
in a village in China. Go use the community
toilet. Wash up in the town square,
brush teeth, swab down with the guys.
The women clean themselves indoors.
“Ho sun.” “Ho sun.” “Ho sun.”
“Ho sun.” Good morning. Good
body. Good belief. Good letter.
A happy civilization, glad to see
one and all, every morning. “Help me
farm rice?” asked Brother Lai Lu.
He took Wittman’s hand. 2 men
are walking China hand in hand. They walked
to the field for planting on this hopeful day.
They wrapped seedlings in cloth, settled the bundles
in baskets, tied baskets to waist, and waded
into the paddy. Oooh, the mud, the pleasureful
mud, my free and happy toes. You trace
in water a square, and at each corner embed
one rice plant. Oh, my hands
rooting and squishing silken luscious mud.
Look up: A line of rising and bending
people—kids too—are coming toward
our line. (The kids are all boys.
The girls have been adopted out to the most loving,
well-educated parents in the West. Chinese
girls will take over and improve America.)
Children, everybody growing mai.
Plant toward someone who’s planting toward you,
and make straight rows. Perfectly quiet,
we’re sighting and pacing one another, and organizing
the water into small and large rectangles, stitching
a silvery quilt over Mother Earth.
Every jade-green spikelet has its jade-
green water double. 2 infinite
blue skies. Slow white clouds
form, move and change, and wisp away.
Me, the one amid all of it taking
note. In the silence, critters peeping,
buzzing, chirping, humming, seem to be
my own