I Love a Broad Margin to My Life - Maxine Hong Kingston [35]
Confucius said, Whoever plays the music
controls the world, spinning like a top
on the palm of his hand. (He ordered the killing
of 80 musicians.) Elder Brother said,
“My elder brother of Boston went
back just this morning. He’s upset
over his kids. Every one of them married
a white demon.” He laughed a big, relishing
laugh, not the laugh that Chinese
make after telling a tragic awfulness. I
translated for Earll, “A generation of nephews
and nieces married white demons!” Elder
Brother looked at my husband, did a double-
take—a white demon! He saw me laughing,
and gave 2 thumbs up, and cheered, “Okay!”
Thumbs up with strong farmer’s hands.
He and Earll walked hand in hand
through the fields. I stayed with the women—
our families have many more girls
than boys—and watched the 2 men now giant,
human, against sky and land, now
as nothing, transitories in the infinite.
To amble the earth that you work daily is to give
yourself and guest entertainment and rest.
Earll understood his Elder Brother-in-Law
to be naming his happinesses. Ah,
generous fields of rice. Ah, great
water buffalo, and baby buffalo. Ah,
kinship. But for skin dark from the sun,
and arms and legs brawny from labor, this “brother”
looked like my real American brothers. None
of the women looked like my sisters and mother.
In Earll’s presence, they marveled, “He doesn’t
understand us. We can say anything
we want.” They dared one another,
“Say whatever you like to say.” I listened
hard, but didn’t catch their secrets. I saw
the brick stove where my mother cooked,
reading a novel all the while, and let
the food burn. She’d foraged for straw
to heat that stove. I saw my parents’ cupboard
bed. She snatched the curtain that she’d embroidered—
the marriage of Phoenix and Dragon, and “Good Morning”
in English script—and fled. My last Chinese
journey, a year and a half ago, the new
superhighway from Guangzhou to my villages—
4 hours. No more stopping for farmers
threshing grain and sun-drying fruit
and vegetables on the fine strips of new road.
I opened the car door; a man looked in.
I gazed, looking for the familiar; I watched
his gaze adjust, brighten. We recognized
each other, older—Elder Brother,
Younger Sister. Leading the welcoming crowd,
we walked through the village. “I’ve just been
elected president,” he said, “voted in
for the second time president of the Old People’s Hui.”
Some old men sat in chairs along
a sunny wall. Elder Brother presented them,
“The Old People’s Hui. Our clubhouse.”
Red paper announced names of donors,
all Hongs, all Americans, and the plan
to build a bench, right there, over
the mud and trash hole. Of course,
our village would choose Elder Bro the leader;
he’s energetic, optimistic, like me,
like most of our family, who give public
service (though shy and rather be private).
In war, he’d be the one taken as headman.
The old women, 4 of them, sat on the earth
in the shade of a wall across the way. They’d
played here as girls, and now rest,
still friends, laughing, remembering. They look
like homeless street people in the United States;
Chinese, maybe Chinese-American,
women, old like these women, clad
like them, faded pants and shirts, hair
home-cut, bobby-pinned back from
their ears, such women are scavenging
garbage cans. They don’t beg, don’t
panhandle, only quietly delve
through public trash. I overheard a white
man tell his son, “People like that
shouldn’t live.” Elder Brother nudged me,
“Give lei see. Go ahead.
Give, la. Give, la. Give
to her; she’s important. She’s of
the Hui. Give to him too; he’s important.”
I bent over the fanny pack at my belly.
Please have enough. Gotta keep count,
save some for later farther journey.
MaMa’s spirit took me over.
I am my mother, bent over my purse,
digging through the mess for lei see,
anxious that I’d forgotten it, lost it,
run out. Stolen. Not enough.
Old squirrel rummaging in her pouch,
counting how much to save, how
much to give away. Keeping track
who got lei see already.