The Woman Warrior_ Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts - Maxine Hong Kingston [21]
“What do you want to be when you grow up, little girl?”
“A lumberjack in Oregon.”
Even now, unless I’m happy, I burn the food when I cook. I do not feed people. I let the dirty dishes rot. I eat at other people’s tables but won’t invite them to mine, where the dishes are rotting.
If I could not-eat, perhaps I could make myself a warrior like the swords woman who drives me. I will—I must—rise and plow the fields as soon as the baby comes out.
Once I get outside the house, what bird might call me; on what horse could I ride away? Marriage and childbirth strengthen the swordswoman, who is not a maid like Joan of Arc. Do the women’s work; then do more work, which will become ours too. No husband of mine will say, “I could have been a drummer, but I had to think about the wife and kids. You know how it is.” Nobody supports me at the expense of his own adventure. Then I get bitter: no one supports me; I am not loved enough to be supported. That I am not a burden has to compensate for the sad envy when I look at women loved enough to be supported. Even now China wraps double binds around my feet.
When urban renewal tore down my parents’ laundry and paved over our slum for a parking lot, I only made up gun and knife fantasies and did nothing useful.
From the fairy tales, I’ve learned exactly who the enemy are. I easily recognize them—business-suited in their modern American executive guise, each boss two feet taller than I am and impossible to meet eye to eye.
I once worked at an art supply house that sold paints to artists. “Order more of that nigger yellow, willya?” the boss told me. “Bright, isn’t it? Nigger yellow.”
“I don’t like that word,” I had to say in my bad, small-person’s voice that makes no impact. The boss never deigned to answer.
I also worked at a land developers’ association. The building industry was planning a banquet for contractors, real estate dealers, and real estate editors. “Did you know the restaurant you chose for the banquet is being picketed by CORE and the NAACP?” I squeaked.
“Of course I know.” The boss laughed. “That’s why I chose it.”
“I refuse to type these invitations,” I whispered, voice unreliable.
He leaned back in his leather chair, his bossy stomach opulent. He picked up his calendar and slowly circled a date. “You will be paid up to here,” he said. “We’ll mail you the check.”
If I took the sword, which my hate must surely have forged out of the air, and gutted him, I would put color and wrinkles into his shirt.
It’s not just the stupid racists that I have to do something about, but the tyrants who for whatever reason can deny my family food and work. My job is my own only land.
To avenge my family, I’d have to storm across China to take back our farm from the Communists; I’d have to rage across the United States to take back the laundry in New York and the one in California. Nobody in history has conquered and united both North America and Asia. A descendant of eighty pole fighters, I ought to be able to set out confidently, march straight down our street, get going right now. There’s work to do, ground to cover. Surely, the eighty pole fighters, though unseen, would follow me and lead me and protect me, as is the wont of ancestors.
Or it may well be that they’re resting happily in China, their spirits dispersed among the real Chinese, and not nudging me at all with their poles. I mustn’t feel bad that I haven’t done as well as the swordswoman did; after all, no bird called me, no wise old people tutored me. I have no magic beads, no water gourd sight, no rabbit that will jump in the fire when I’m hungry. I dislike armies.
I’ve looked for the bird. I’ve seen clouds make pointed angel wings that stream past the sunset, but they shred into clouds. Once at a beach after a long hike I saw a seagull, tiny as an insect. But when I jumped up to tell what miracle I saw, before I could get the words out I understood that the