I Love a Broad Margin to My Life - Maxine Hong Kingston [33]
Nothing to fear. I could live here.
I could live here a long time,
and be content. As a girl, I knew
I could take solitary, if only I got
to see movies. Older, all I need
would be books and pencil and paper. But here I am,
and I don’t feel like reading. And I don’t
feel like writing. Can’t write, hands
tied in back. Rest. Perfect rest.
And no more contending against shyness.
No more “sounded and resounded words,
chattering words, echoes, dead words …”
—Walt Whitman, lover of everyone and everyplace.
Yes, I could live like a cloistered nun,
but not have to pray for the good of the world.
Too soon, the jail door opened.
The cop whose wife is gonna kill him held
it open for Alice Walker. Now there’s
a pair of us. I gave her my seat
on the bench, sat on the floor. She sat
various positions, cross-legged, almost
lotus, sat hunkered, arms hugging knees.
I’m glad, we’ve both had Buddhist practice, and know:
sit, be quiet. Breathe out.
Breathe in. I spoke, asked her
to undo my handcuffs, and if they
won’t untie, to help me unbutton and lower
my pants, I had to pee. She got them off.
Kwan Yin, 2 more of your
10,000 hands, ma’am, reporting for duty,
for mercy. Being locked up with Alice,
I saw her: now a girl perched on a wall,
now we’re under the dark moon and she’s
shaman crone, now the sociable lady
on her book covers. She moves about in time.
Her time and ages circle through her. Now
her clothes flowed loosely on her thin body,
draped the edges of the bench; now roundly,
plumply she filled her blouse and long sweater.
I must look like that too; being small,
I could be a child still growing, or
I could be a shrinking old woman.
The light changes, the skin wrinkles, the skin
smooths.
The door opened again, we’re a crowd
again, loud-speaking, loud-singing women.
“This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.
Oh, this little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.
This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.”
The singing connected the women in all this block
of cells; love and peace roused again.
“On the children of Iraq, I’m gonna let it shine.
Oh, on the children of Iraq, I’m gonna let it shine.
On the children of Iraq, I’m gonna let it shine.
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.”
A nice woman cop came in, and asked us,
please to sing quieter, explained that they
couldn’t hear to process us. We quieted,
pianissimo, “this little light of mine.”
But impossible to keep it down. Crescendo. Waves.
“Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.”
Fortissimo. The door opened; a policeman
called a name, and took a woman away,
for booking. When my turn came, I couldn’t
find my I.D. “The big cell for you
tonight.” Tonight, overnight, I will
be with criminals, not sisters trained
in nonviolence. I asked the cop across
the desk from me—one prisoner and one cop
per desk; a woman was shackled to her chair
with old-style steel handcuffs,
couldn’t be locked up because of illness—
I asked my arresting officer, please to bring
my bag of possessions, and let’s go through it
again carefully for my I.D. Slowly,
he examined each thing. I talked-
story, “D’you know what I’m working on now?
I’m writing a Book of Peace. Once
in old China, there were books—reveries—
about how to end war. Those books were burned,
their authors’ tongues cut out. My dream
is to write such a book for our time.
People who read it, I hope, will vow
not to use guns, not to use cluster bombs,
not any of the new weapons, plasma bomb,
neutron bomb, earth-penetrating bomb.
D’you mind letting me rummage
through my purse myself? Thank you. Thank you.
I seem to remember a secret compartment somewhere.
It’s a trick purse. I brought it—pink,
sequins—especially for this demonstration.
And now it’s fooling me. The hiding place
has disappeared. Let me try again.
Okay, it’s not on this side. Let’s try
upside down, backwards, unzip—
voilà!—here it is! My I.D.!”
And so I was charged with STATIONARY DEMO
IN A RESTRICTED ZONE—WHITE HOUSE