I Love a Broad Margin to My Life - Maxine Hong Kingston [39]
Can you ever get over it? Sex, bad.
Birthing, bad. Woman, bad. So,
lifetimes later, a strange old lady
brings to me and my husband a bowl
of water. She holds it in her 2 hands.
Chinese will serve ordinary tea
with the attention of both hands. I hope
she means to be making ceremony; I shall
take it to be shriving. The bad we did
be over. Punishment be over. Suffering be over.
Is that it then? Wet my hands in the well
water—the bowl like the well, and my wet face
like my sinful aunt’s. Perhaps the well water
had been offered innocently, I the only one
who remembers the past, and believes in history’s
influence. And believes ritual settles scores.
My husband by my side blessing himself as if
with the holy water of his youth was stand-in
for the rapist / lover. Forgiven. Curse lifted.
War over.
MOTHER’S VILLAGE
Let us be on our way.
“We drive to your mother’s village, la.”
Elder Brother climbed into the van, easily;
he’s ridden cars often. He has a TV
set, a watch, cell phone, camera.
He farms with a buffalo. I hope
he doesn’t feel poor, doesn’t want
a tractor, a car. Maybe he’s Green.
The nearest town, Gujing, calls
itself “Guangdong’s First Green City.”
And “China’s First Green City.”
May my family choose to farm with buffalo
rather than machinery, fully aware of bettering
the health of Planet Earth. Is Gujing
the same as Gwoo Jeng? Place names
on the map of China, if the way “home”
that MaMa taught us is on maps at all,
are nearly the sounds she had us memorize.
Gujing. Gwoo Jeng. We speak
a peculiar dialect. And language revolutions
have changed the spellings of cities and towns,
provinces, mountains and rivers. Villages never
on maps. Translating Chinese words
with other Chinese words, Mother
said that Gwoo Jeng means Ancient Well.
Or many Ancient Wells. We got to Mother’s
village in 5 minutes away. In her day,
it was so far that her bridesmaids
teased her. “Marry a man from Tail End …”
We arrived at a third temple, adorned
and open as if for holiday. People, nicely
dressed, city style, with a television
crew, greeted us on its steps. “You missed
the festival. The ninth month, ninth day
festival. Just yesterday. Ten thousand
old people came. We fed
ten thousand old people.” I was
late for Old People’s Day; we in
the United States don’t celebrate it, maybe
a Communist invention. And maybe only 100
or 1,000 came. In China, numbers are
mystical. 10,000 means many, many.
Multitudes. A countless number of old,
venerably old, lucky old people
came to my mother’s village temple,
and were fed. But I was here before;
this place had not been a temple.
It had been the music building. I loved
the dichotomy: Father’s ground was sacred,
Mother’s, profane. 23 years ago,
I stood in front of a cement bunker-like
structure shut, it seemed, since my mother
left for America. In there, MaMa
and her villagers banged drums and blew horns,
banged and blew all night of the eclipse,
until the frog let go of the moon. They made
musical offerings night after night when
the witch’s broom, Halley’s comet, swept heaven.
But the broom would not leave the sky.
So, kingdoms rose, kingdoms fell.
So, world wars. I stood in front
of the wood door, which no one thought to open
for me, and I did not think to ask. Children
played on the paved entranceway, and in
the stream that flowed beside the music building.
Chinese and Vietnamese make music
on the water for that amplitude of sound.
The kids, likely kin to me many
times removed, paid me no mind.
Backing up, I read the name of Mother’s
village above the door: 5 Contentments
Earthfield. And backing up farther,
I saw in green cursive: Music Meeting.
The words seemed green jade embossed
on white jade. The tablet was set in the fret-
work of a balcony. My father wrote beneath
the photo I took:
5 Contentments Earthfield Music Meeting Ting
A ting is a pavilion. A ting is the vessel for cooking
offerings at altars and at banquets. Ting Ting,
my name, like pearls falling into a jade bowl