Part 2 (1/2)
”I got straight A's, Mairl who saved her village”
I could not figure out asand fine, or else my parents would sell me e made our way back to China In China there were solutions for what to do with little girls who ate up food and threw tantruht A's
When one of irls is feeding cowbirds,'” I would thrash on the floor and scream so hard I couldn't talk I couldn't stop
”What's the matter with her?”
”I don't know Bad, I guess You kno girls are 'There's no profit in raising girls Better to raise geese than girls'”
”I would hit her if she wereall that discipline on a girl 'When you raise girls, you're raising children for strangers'”
”Stop that crying!”to hit you if you don't stop Bad girl! Stop!” I' to re, I thought, because then they will only cry irl,” I would screaht as well have said, ”I'irl”
”When you were little, all you had to say was 'I'irl,' and you could -story about ers shook their heads at irl,” they said, and ood part about irls,” but I learned new grievances ”Did you roll an egg on my my face like that when I was born?” ”Did you have a full-hts?” ”Did you send face like that when I was born?” ”Did you have a full-hts?” ”Did you send irl? Is that why not?” ”Why didn't you teachme beaten up at school, don't you?” picture to Grandirl? Is that why not?” ”Why didn't you teachme beaten up at school, don't you?”
”She is very ers would say
”Coo out with Great-Uncle?” On Saturday”Get your coats, whoever's co Wait for irls' voices, he turned on us and roared, ”No girls!” and leftat one another The boys cah Chinatown, the people must have said, ”A boy-and another boy-and another boy!” At lad that he was dead-the six-foot bearish e-Berkeley in the sixties-and I studied, and I e the world, but I did not turn into a boy I would have liked to bring myself back as a boy for s That was for my brother, who returned alive from Vietnam
If I went to Vietnam, I would not come back; females desert families It was said, ”There is an outward tendency in feood of my future husband's family, not my own I did not plan ever to have a husband I would show irls have no outward tendency I stopped getting straight A's
And all the ti to turn myself American-feminine, or no dates
There is a Chinese word for the feues!
I refused to cook When I had to wash dishes, I would crack one or two ”Bad girl,” loat rather than cry Isn't a bad girl alrow up, little girl?”
”A luon”
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 the
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 coht call e and childbirth strengthen the soman, 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 kno it is” nobody supports et bitter: no one supports h to be supported That I am not a burden has to coh to be supported Even now China wraps double binds around my feet
When urban renewal tore downlot, I onlyuseful
From the fairy tales, I've learned exactly who the enenize theuise, 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 er yelloillya?” the boss told er yellow”
”I don't like that word,” I had to say in my bad, sned 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 utted him, I would put color and wrinkles into his shi+rt
It's not just the stupid racists that I have to do so about, but the tyrants who for whatever reason can deny my fae my family, I'd have to storm across China to take back our fare 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 Aht to be able to set out confidently, ht 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 ithappily in China, their spirits dispersed a me at all with their poles I mustn't feel bad that I haven't done as well as the soman did; after all, no bird called ic beads, no water gourd sight, no rabbit that will jury I dislike armies
I've looked for the bird I've seen clouds s 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 juet the words out I understood that the bird was insect-size because it was far away My brain had er to find an unusual bird
The news fro to do with birds I was nine years old when the letters made my parents, who are rocks, cry My father screamed in his sleep My mother wept and crue in the ashtray, but new letters came almost every day The only letters they opened without fear were the ones with red borders, the holiday letters that mustn't carry bad news The other letters said thattheir trials and had confessed to being landowners They were all executed, and the aunt whose thumbs were twisted off drowned herself Other aunts, an writing to us again fro for ot four ounces of fat and one cup of oil a week, they said, and had to work from 4 AM AM to 9 to 9 PM PM They had to learn to do dances waving red kerchiefs; they had to sing nonsense syllables The Coave axes to the old ladies and said, ”Go and kill yourself You're useless” If we overseas Chinese would just send et a percentage of it for the said to sendon the sidewalks, and mean people put dirt in their bowls
When I dream that I am ithout flesh, there is a letter on blue airht ocean between here and China It randmother and I will lose each other
My parents felt bad whether or not they sent ry at their brothers and sisters for asking And they would not simply ask but have to talk-story too The revolutionaries had taken Fourth Aunt and Uncle's store, house, and lands They attacked the house and killed the grandfather and oldest daughter The grandmother escaped with the loose cash and did not return to help Fourth Aunt picked up her sons, one under each arht in cotton clothes The next day she found her husband, who had also s and ya they tied the faggots on each other's back nobody bought from them They ate the yams and some of the children's rice Finally Fourth Aunt saas wrong ”We have to shout 'Fuel for sale' and 'Yams for sale,'” she said ”We can't just walk unobtrusively up and down the street” ”You're right,” said my uncle, but he was shy and walked in back of her ”Shout,”these sticks home for our own fire,” she said ”Shout” They walked about miserably, silently, until sundown, neither of them able to advertise thee of ten, mean as my mother, threw her bundle down at his feet and scolded Fourth Uncle, ”Starving to death, his wife and children starving to death, and he's too da by himself and afraid to return empty-handed to her He sat under a tree to think, when he spotted a pair of nesting doves Duht the birds That here the Communists trapped hi food for his own fa his body in the tree as an example They took the birds to a co that my family was not the poor to be championed They were executed like the barons in the stories, when they were not barons It is confusing that birds tricked us
What fighting and killing I have seen have not been glorious but sluh school and always cried Fights are confusing as to who has won The corpses I've seen had been rolled and dumped, sad little dirty bodies covered with a police khaki blanket My mother locked her children in the house so we couldn't look at dead sluet out; I had to learn about dying if I wanted to become a soman Once there was an Asian man stabbed next door, words on cloth pinned to his corpse When the police ca questions, my father said, ”No read japanese japanese words Me Chinese”
I've also looked for old people who could be irl who died in a far country follows e her, she said Between the head line and heart line in ht palm, she said, I have the mystic cross I could become a medium myself I don't want to be a s” in a wicker plate frohtened audience, who, one after another, asked the spirits how to raise rent hs and skin diseases, how to find a job Andaway under fluorescent lights
I live nohere there are Chinese and japanese, but no e at rant villagers can give a good Chinese far frolory and a place ”That old busboy is really a swordsoes by, ”He's a swords ax in his closet” But I airl who couldn't be sold When I visit the family norap my American successes aroundthe food From afar I can believe my fa for treasures in the flood, be careful not to pull in girls,” because that is what one says about daughters But I watched such words come out of my ownof poor people snagging their neighbors' flotage with long flood hooks and pushi+ng the girl babies on down the river And I had to get out of hating range I read in an anthropology book that Chinese say, ”Girls are necessary too”; I have never heard the Chinese I knowin another village I refuse to shy h our Chinatohich tasksthe food From afar I can believe my fa for treasures in the flood, be careful not to pull in girls,” because that is what one says about daughters But I watched such words come out of my ownof poor people snagging their neighbors' flotage with long flood hooks and pushi+ng the girl babies on down the river And I had to get out of hating range I read in an anthropology book that Chinese say, ”Girls are necessary too”; I have never heard the Chinese I knowin another village I refuse to shy h our Chinatohich tasks s and the stories
The soman and I are not so dissimilar May my people understand the resemblance soon so that I can return to them What we have in coe are ”report a crieance-not the beheading, not the gutting, but the words And I have so ook” words too-that they do not fit on my skin are ”report a crieance-not the beheading, not the gutting, but the words And I have so ook” words too-that they do not fit onwhile, four tis out the old circles crossed with seven red lines each-”joy” ideographs in abstract There are also little flowers that look like gears for a goldto the scraps of labels with Chinese and American addresses, sta Kong in 1950 It got crushed in the middle, and whoever tried to peel the labels off stopped because the red and gold paint ca silver scratches that rust So that the tube pulls apart When I open it, the s heavy-headed out of the Chinese caverns where bats are as white as dust, a so, far back in the brain Crates froapore, and Taiwan have that ser because they are more recently come from the Chinese
Inside the can are three scrolls, one inside another The largest says that in the twenty-third year of the National Republic, the To Keung School of Midwifery, where she has had two years of instruction and Hospital Practice, awards its Diploh oral and written exay, ”Medecine,” ”Surgary,” Therapeutics, Ophthale This doculish and Chinese naether in a circle; one, as the Chinese enu baby in lavender ink; one, the school's Chinese seal; one, an orangish paper stan; one, the red seal of Dr Wu Pak-liang, MD, Lyon, Berlin, president and ”Ex-assistant etranger a la clinique chirugicale et d'accouchement de l'universite de Lyon”; one, the red seal of Dean Woo Yin-kaer than the president's and the dean's; and one, the nunature is followed by ”(Hackett)” I read in a history book that Hackett Medical College for Women at Canton was founded in the nineteenth century by European women doctors
The school seal has been pressed over a photograph of e as twenty-seven She looks younger than I do, her eyebrows are thicker, her lips fuller Her naturally curly hair is parted on the left, one isp tendrilling off to the right She wears a scholar's white gown, and she is not thinking about her appearance She stares straight ahead as if she could see randchildren She has spacy eyes, as all people recently from Asia have Her eyes do not focus on the ca; Chinese do not sn lands-”Send money”-and posterity forever-”Put food in front of this picture” My mother does not understand Chinese-A at?” she asks
The second scroll is a long narrow photograph of the graduating class with the school officials seated in front I picked out h forty years younger She is so familiar, I can only tell whether or not she is pretty or happy or sroup picture she straightened her hair with oil to th bob like the others' On the other wolance, pinched shoulders My irl with the small nose and dimpled underlip is soft My irl at the end who lifts herchin to pose like Girl Graduate Myeyes; the old woman teacher (Dean Woo?) in front crinkles happily, and the one faculty raduates are girls whose faces have not yet fore She is intelligent, alert, pretty I can't tell if she's happy
The graduates see elsewhere when they pinned the rose, zinnia, or chrysantheirl wears hers in the ht nipple My mother put hers, a chrysanthemum, below her left breast Chinese dresses at that time were dartless, cut as if wo doctors, unaccustomed to decorations, may have seen their chests as black expanses with no reference points for flowers Perhaps they couldn't shorten that far gaze that lasts only a few years after a Chinese e hat they held-reaches of oceans beyond China, land beyond oceans Most eather the to catch lies In A as boulders, never once skittering off a face, but she has not learned to place decorations and phonograph needles, nor has she stopped seeing land on the other side of the oceans Now her eyes include the relatives in China, as they once includedin his raph that he sent from America
He and his friends took pictures of one another in bathing suits at Coney Island beach, the salt wind fro their hair He's the one in the middle with his arms about the necks of his buddies They pose in the cockpit of a biplane, on a motorcycle, and on a lawn beside the ”Keep Off the Grass” sign They are always laughing My father, white shi+rt sleeves rolled up, s he wears a new straw hat, cocked at a Fred Astaire angle He steps out, dancing down the stairs, one foot forward, one back, a hand in his pocket He wrote to her about the A on straw hats come fall ”If you want to save your hat for next year,” he said, ”you have to put it away early, or else when you're riding the subway or walking along Fifth Avenue, any stranger can snatch it off your head and put his foot through it That's the way they celebrate the change of seasons here” In the winter he wears a gray felt hat with his gray overcoat He is sitting on a rock in Central Park In one snapshot he is not slare of the desk lamp