Part 4 (1/2)
”Do you knohat people in China eat when they have the an ”They buy into a monkey feast The eaters sit around a thick wood table with a hole in thein the monkey at the end of a pole Its neck is in a collar at the end of the pole, and it is screa Its hands are tied behind it They clamp the monkey into the table; the whole table fits like another collar around its neck Using a surgeon's saw, the cooks cut a clean line in a circle at the top of its head To loosen the bone, they tap with a tiny hae here and there with a silver pick Then an old woman reaches out her hand to the monkey's face and up to its scalp, where she tufts some hairs and lifts off the lid of the skull The eaters spoon out the brains”
Did she say, ”You should have seen the faces the hed at the ”? It was alive? The curtain flaps closed like s
”Eat! Eat!” my mother would shout at our heads bent over bowls, the blood pudding awobble in the middle of the table
She had one rule to keep us safe froood, it's bad for you,” she said ”If it tastes bad, it's good for you”
We'd have to face four- and five-day-old leftovers until we ate it all The squid eye would keep appearing at breakfast and dinner until eaten Sometimes brown masses sat on every dish I have seen revulsion on the faces of visitors who've caught us at meals
”Have you eaten yet?” the Chinese greet one another
”Yes, I have,” they anshether they have or not ”And you?”
I would live on plastic
My ainst the hairy beasts whether flesh or ghost because she could eat theood people fast My hosts nor was she one of those the wo” after ” in Cantonese) The village crazy lady was somebody else, an inappropriate woman who that my mother left China My father had made the money for the fare at last, but he sent for her instead of returning, one more postponement of home, this time because of the japanese By 1939 the japanese had takenthe Kwoo River, and ees (I used to watchup, huddled together with their heads on each other's shoulder, their ar up the blanket like a little tent ”Aiaa,” they'd sigh ”Aiaa” ”Mother, what's a refugee? Father, what's a refugee?”) The japanese, though ”little,” were not ghosts, the only foreigners considered not ghosts by the Chinese They may have been descended from the Chinese explorers that the First Eevity medicine They were to look for an island beyond the Eastern Ocean, beyond the impassable wind and mist On this island lived phoenixes, unicorns, black apes, and white stags Magic orchids, strange trees, and plants of jasper grew on Penglai, a fairy mountain, which may have been Mount Fuji The emperor would saw off the explorers' heads if they returned without the herbs of immortality Another ancestor of the japanese is said to be an ape that raped a Chinese princess, who then fled to the eastern islands to have the first japanese child Whichever the case, they were not a totally alien species, connected as they were even to royalty Chinese without sons stole the boy babies of japanese settlers who left them bundled up at the ends of the potato rows
Now the villagers atching for japanese airplanes that strafed the le plane, you needn't be afraid,” ht us ”But watch for planes in threes When they spread apart, you know they're going to drop bombs Sometimes airplanes covered the sky, and we could not see and we could not hear” She warned us because it was the sa on years after she crossed the ocean and had us I huddled under my blankets when Pan Aines sounding like insects at first and getting louder and louder
In the mountains my mother set up a hospital in a cave, and she carried the wounded there Soers had never seen an airplane before Mothers stopped up their babies'would not attract the planes The boround, pushed theainst it, as if the earth could open a door for theer passed would sleep in the cave My led their ears
One afternoon peace and surass, their blankets covering the wildfloith embroidered flowers It was so quiet; the bees hummed and the river water played the pebbles, the rocks, and the hollows Cows under the trees whisked their tails; goats and ducks followed the children here and there; and the chickens scratched in the dirt The villagers stood about in the sunshi+ne They sether, idle above their fields, nobody hoeing, Godlike; nobody weeding, New Year's in sue talked about how sio when they walked up the mountain to collect firewood, only now they could dally without the e crazy lady put on her headdress with the s quickly on red stalks In her crazy lady clothes of reds and greens, she greeted the ani branches as she carried her porcelain cup to the river Although her bindings had come loose, her tiny feet es She knelt singing at the river and filled her cup Carrying the bri water in two careful hands, she undulated toward a clearing where the light of the afternoon seeers turned to look at her She dipped her fingertips into the water and flung droplets into grass and air Then she set the cup down and pulled out the long white undersleeves of her old-fashi+oned dress She began tothe sleeves in the air, now trailing theht The little linted off the water cup, caught water drops My ic gourd to check the fate of an ier whispered away the spell, ”She's signaling the planes” The whisper carried ”She's signaling the planes,” the people repeated ”Stop her Stop her”
”No, she's only crazy,” said my mother ”She's a harmless crazy lady”
”She's a spy A spy for the japanese”
Villagers picked up rocks and moved down the hill
”Just take away the mirrors,” my mother called ”Just take her headdress”
But the tentative first stones were already falling around the crazy lady She dodged the, at last, people to play with
The rocks hit harder as the villagers caet herdown the”Give me your headdress,” she ordered, but the woman only shook her head coquettishly
”See? She's a spy Get out of the way, Doctor You saw the way she flashed the signals She comes to the river every day before the planes co water,” said my mother ”Crazy people drink water too”
Someone took the crazy lady's cup and threw it at her It broke at her feet ”Are you a spy? Are you?” they asked her
A cunning look narrowed her eyes ”Yes,” she said, ”I have great powers I can make the sky rain fire Me I did that Leave ed toward the river as if she were about to run, but she wouldn't have been able to get away on her tiny feet
A large stone rammed her head, and she fell in a flutter of sleeves, the ornaers closed in Solass under her nostrils When it clouded, they pounded her temples with the rocks in their fists until she was dead So her head and face, s the little mirrors into silver splinters
My mother, who had turned her back and walked up the mountain (she never treated those about to die), looked down at the mass of flesh and rocks, the sleeves, the blood flecks The planes caers buried the crazy lady along with the rest of the dead
My mother left China in the winter of 1939, al, and arrived in New York Harbor in January, 1940 She carried the same suitcase she had taken to Canton, this time filled with seeds and bulbs On Ellis Island the officials asked her, ”What year did your husband cut off his pigtail?” and it terrified her when she could not remember But later she told us perhaps this lapse was for the best: what if they were trying to trap hitails to defy the Manchus and to help Sun Yat-sen, fellow Cantonese
I was born in the middle of World War II From earliest awareness, my mother's stories always ti Much as I drea babies, I dream that the sky is covered froibles, rocket shi+ps, flying bombs, their formations as even as stitches When the sky seems clear in my dreams and I would fly, if I look too closely, there so silent, far away, and faint in the daylight that people who do not know about them do not see themoved froure out a way to fly between thehosts-Taxi Ghosts, Bus Ghosts, Police Ghosts, Fire Ghosts, Meter Reader Ghosts, Tree Tri Ghosts, Five-and-Dihosts, I could hardly breathe; I could hardly walk, li my way around the White Ghosts and their cars There were Black Ghosts too, but they were open eyed and full of laughter, htened me most was the Newsboy Ghost, who caht Carrying a newspaper pouch instead of a baby brother, he walked right out in the host words to the empty streets His voice reached children inside the houses, reached inside the children's chests They would co out of their yards with their dimes They would follow him just a corner too far And when they went to the nearest house to ask directions hos and then boil theood for rubbing on children's bruises
We used to pretend ere Newsboy Ghosts We collected old Chinese newspapers (the Newsboy Ghost not giving us his ghost newspapers) and trekked about the house and yard We waved the a chant: ”Newspapers for sale Buy a newspaper” But those who could hear the insides of words heard that ere selling a miracle salve reen lish, which I wrote down and now looks like ”eeeeeeeeee” When we heard the real newsboy calling, we hid, dragging our newspapers under the stairs or into the cellar, where the Well Ghost lived in the black water under a lid We crouched on our newspapers, the San Francisco Gold Mountain News Gold Mountain News, and plugged up our ears with our knuckles until he went away
For our very food we had to traffic with the Grocery Ghosts, the superhost customers The Milk Ghost drove his white truck fro until his truck turned the corner, bottles rattling in their frames Then we unlocked the front door and the screen door and reached for the ularly visited by the Mail Ghost, Meter Reader Ghost, Garbage Ghost Staying off the streets did no good They ca at s-Social Worker Ghosts; Public Health Nurse Ghosts; Factory Ghosts recruiting workers during the war (they promised free child care, which our mother turned down); two Jesus Ghosts who had formerly worked in China We hid directly under the s, pressed against the baseboard until the ghost, calling us in the ghost language so that we'd alave up They did not try to break in, except for a few Burglar Ghosts The Hobo Ghosts and Wino Ghosts took peaches off our trees and drank from the hose when nobody answered their knocks
It seehosts could not hear or see very well Momentarily lulled by the useful chores they did for whatever ghostly purpose, we did not bother to lower the s one e Ghost cah the fly screen, pointed at his hairy arhed at how he pulled up his dirty pants before swinging his hoard onto his shoulders ”Coet its food,” we children called ”The Garbage Ghost,” we told each other, nodding our heads The ghost looked directly at us Steadying the load on his back with one hand, the Garbage Ghost walked up to theHe had cavernous nostrils with yellow and brown hair Slowly he opened his redhu to our mother, who efficiently shut the”Noe know,” she told us, ”the White Ghosts can hear Chinese They have learned it You ain So home, where there are Han people everywhere We'll buy furniture then, real tables and chairs You children will smell flowers for the first tiain I taste so”
”Me too, Mother Me too There's nothing there Just randain,” said es
I randive us candy free When I got older and ifts froet ”home” to ask her how she did it Whenever my parents said ”home,” they suspended Ao to China In China my parents would sell my sisters and me My father wouldoil on our bare toes and lie that ere crying for naughtiness They would give food to their own children and rocks to us I did not want to go where the ghosts took shapes nothing like our own
As a child I feared the size of the world The farther away the sound of howling dogs, the farther away the sound of the trains, the tighter I curled myself under the quilt The trains sounded deeper and deeper into the night They had not reached the end of the world before I stopped hearing thee the world randmother only a taste by the time she reaches me
When I last visitedfor the hills and valleys scooped in the mattress by child-bodies I heardWhat did she want? Eyes shut, I pictured ht doorway, my hair white now too, Mother I could hear her ed a third quilt, the thick, homemade Chinese kind, across me After that I lost track of her location I spied from beneath my eyelids and had to hold back a ju by the bed next tofourteen pairs of needles She is very proud of her hands, which canand stay pink and soft while my father's became like carved wood Her palm lines do not branch into head, heart, and life lines like other people's but crease with just one atavistic fold That night she was a sad bear; a great sheep in a wool shawl She recently took to wearing shawls and granny glasses, Ae next to hts war hair, then on the creases at the sides of my mouth, ht warm each of my bony elbows, and I flopped about in ht at full brightness beah my eyelids, her eyes at my eyes, and I had to open the there?”
She reached over and switched on a lamp she had placed on the floor beside her ”I sed that LSD pill you left on the kitchen counter,” she announced
”That wasn't LSD, Mama It was just a cold pill I have a cold”
”You're always catching colds when you coet you another quilt”
”No, no more quilts You shouldn't take pills that aren't prescribed for you 'Don't eat pills you find on the curb,' you always told us”
”You children never tellto find out what you're really up to?” As if her head hurt, she closed her eyes behind the gold wire rihed, ”how can I bear to have you leave ain? She would close up this roo and cleaning the shrunken house, so tidy since our leaving Each chair has its place now And the sinks in the bedrooht up to the ceiling My ainst hard tiray marble for the old Chinese men who boarded here before we ca in thebefore they shuffled out of these bedrooain into the world out there which has no es for my clothes, no quilts hosts of neat little old ht that co disappear and then suddenly drop back into place I could feel that cla down and see how my mother had pulled the blinds down so low that the bare rollers were showing No passer-by would detect a daughter in this house My e animal, barely real in the dark; then she would beco eyes, and I could see her cheeks sunken without her top teeth
”I'll be back again soon,” I said ”You know that I come back I think of you when I'm not here”
”Yes, I know you I know you now I've always known you You're the one with the char words You have never come back 'I'll be back on Turkeyday,' you said Huh”
I shut ether, vocal cords cut, they hurt so I would not speak words to give her pain All her children gnash their teeth