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Warm evenings when the Music Meeting was dark,

my mother’s father had sat right here

where I’m sitting now, on the dirt ground

of this very patio, and talked story.

“Your grandfather talked stories so good

to hear, he made old ladies cry.”

I’m an old lady myself now, come

to China, where old ladies live long,

see everything. Too tough to die.

What could make a hard old lady cry?

“Orphans. Mother dying, father dying

sing advice to their lone child how to

live without them: ‘You’ll never see me again,

not in this form. And I’ll not see you,

nor look after you, nor feed you anymore.

Only notice now and then: When you walk

out the door, and a breeze touches you,

it’s me touching you. Flowers I was wont

to plant will pop up in spring; they’re me,

happy to be with you. And the flowers that come

out in fall—chrysanthemums—me, again!

And once a month, look for your father,

Jack Rabbit cooking medicine in the full moon.

See him? See his tall ears, slanting

to the right? See his cauldron? Father! Joy kin!’ ”

Joy kin is our village way of saying

zaijian, see again, au revoir.

The orphan, grown, sings: “I feel

the breeze at the open door, I feel

the breeze at the gate. Mother? I feel

a tap on the back of my neck. Ghost Mother?

A snow pea, a green finger, bounding

on its vine, touched me. Joy kin. Joy kin.”

Sit very still, and you will feel

the ancestors pull you to earth by a bell rope

that ties you—through you—from underground to sky.

They pull downward, and pull heavenly energy

down into you, all your spirited self.

They let up, and life force geysers out

from your thinking head and your hardworking hands.

My first visit to my mother’s village, my mother

still living then, I looked for her house

among the gray-with-mildew houses, walked

through the mazy lanes saying her name.

Brave Orchid. No flowers, no color

but in girls’ names. Do you know the family

of Brave Orchid? Doctor Brave Orchid,

who gave shots against smallpox.

A woman and a boy, far cousins, were waiting

for me at the raised threshold of a wide-

open door. She said, Good to see you.

I said, Good to see you. “Ho kin.”

“Ho kin.” She did not give her name.

I did not give my name. We

had to talk about how we were related;

we would find kin names to call

each other. She is married to my mother’s

brother’s son. I am the oldest daughter

of her father-in-law’s oldest daughter.

I wanted to call her Sister, but Elder Sister?

Younger Sister? I couldn’t tell whether

she were older or younger than me. Her hair

was black, her skin dark and lined, some teeth

gone. Besides, her father-in-law was not

really my mother’s brother. He was son

of the third wife; my mother was daughter

of the first wife. My grandfather, the one

who sat in the square and told the stories

that made old ladies cry, the grandfather

who could do anything, make wine, make

tofu, make cheesy fu ngoy

that stunk up the house, the grandfather

who was judge of the village, that grandfather

sailed the world, and brought home wives.

The third wife, whose skin was black, whose

jabber no one understood, he brought

from Nicaragua. The boy cousin-how-

many-times-removed standing before me,

looking at me, did seem very dark-skinned,

but he plays out in the tropical sun all day.

The dark woman living in my mother’s house

did not invite me inside. I peeked

behind her, and saw a courtyard that looked

like a roofless work and storage room. Most

of it was taken up by piles of straw. MaMa

said that she spent most of her day

foraging the hills for straw. They use it to kindle

the stove, which was in a corner, gray bricks

blackened with cooking smoke. Laundry—blue

pants, blue shirts, one white shirt—

hung on bamboo poles eave to eave.

It’s clothing that gives the gray village color.

Partway across and up a roofline,

atop clay tiles, shaped on their makers’

thighs, were a row of jade-like figures—

dogs? lions? faeries? kachinas?—maybe

broken, maybe never finished. Extra

bamboo of various