Part 4 (2/2)
”The last ti,” she said ”Now you're old”
”It's only been a year since I visited you”
”That's the year you turned old Look at you, hair gone gray, and you haven't even fattened up yet I kno the Chinese talk about us 'They're so poor,' they say, 'they can't afford to fatten up any of their daughters' 'Years in America,' they say, 'and they don't eat' Oh, the shame of it-a whole family of skinny children And your father-he's so skinny, he's disappearing”
”Don't worry about hier Papa's going to live a long time”
”So! I knew I didn't have tooyour leftovers Aiaa, I' so old Soon you will have nothat all hty”
”I thought you were only seventy-six”
”My papers are wrong I', and you're seventy-two, seventy-three in Chinese years”
”My papers are wrong, and I'hty What do nu dead any day now The aunt down the street was resting on her porch steps, dinner all cooked, waiting for her husband and son to come home and eat it She closed her eyes for a o?”
”But our family lives to be ninety-nine”
”That's your father's faest sister was an orphan at ten Our parents were not even fifty”
”Then you should feel grateful you've lived soto be an orphan too In fact, I'm amazed you've lived to have white hair Why don't you dye it?”
”Hair color doesn'tto Teacher Ghosts, those Scientist Ghosts, Doctor Ghosts”
”I have to hter Have you noticed that? I always tell people, 'This is hter and Oldest Son died in China? Didn't you tell me when I was ten that she'd have been twenty; when I enty, she'd be thirty?” Is that why you've deniedYouup stories You are all the children there are”
(Who was that story about-the one where the parents are throwing money at the children, but the children don't pick it up because they're crying too hard? They're writhing on the floor covered with coins Their parents are going out the door for Ae behind the hat she was about to say: ”I work so hard,” she said She was doing her stare-at what? My feet began rubbing together as if to tear each other's skin off She started talking again, ”The tomato vines prickle h loves My feet squish-squish in the rotten tomatoes, squish-squish in the tomato mud the feet ahead of me have sucked And do you know the best way to stop the itch from the tomato hairs? You break open a fresh tomato and wash yourself with it You cool your face in tomato juice Oh, but it's the potatoes that will ruinover potatoes”
She had taken off the Ace bandages around her legs for the night The varicose veins stood out
”Ma? You don't have to work any in the tomato fields?” Her black hair seems filleted with the band of white at its roots She dyed her hair so that the farmers would hire her She would walk to Skid Row and stand in line with the hobos, the winos, the junkies, and the Mexicans until the farm buses came and the farmers picked out the workers they wanted ”You have the house,” I said ”For food you have Social Security And urban renewal ood in a hen they tore down the laundry Really, Maht to retire too”
”Do you think your father wanted to stop work? Look at his eyes; the brown is going out of his eyes He has stopped talking When I go to work, he eats leftovers He doesn't cook new food,” she said, confessing, ave us et our custo money, as if o old people had another seventeen years in us? Aa”-she flipped so aside with her hand-”White Ghosts can't tell Chinese age”
I closed my eyes and breathed evenly, but she could tell I wasn't asleep
”This is terrible ghost country, where a huhosts work, no ti since the day the shi+p landed I was on my feet theup my own clothes I shouldn't have left, but your father couldn't have supported you withoutmuscles”
”If you hadn't left, there wouldn't have been a me for you two to support Ma etting tired
”I didn't need muscles in China I was save me are tiny You would not think the same person wore them This mother can carry a hundred pounds of Texas rice up- and downstairs She could work at the laundry fro a baby froes, to the display here the ghosts tapped on the glass ”I put you babies in the clean places at the laundry, as far away frohosts' clothes as I could Aa, their socks and handkerchiefs chokeddust Tubercular handkerchiefs Lepers' socks” I thought she had wanted to show off ht unsteadiness ere back at the laundry, anddirty clothes into mountains-a sheet mountain, a white shi+rt mountain, a dark shi+rtunderwear mountain, a short underwear ether in pairs, a little hill of handkerchiefs pinned to tags Surrounding her were candles she burned in daylight, clean yellow diaed her, mysterious masked mother, nose andthe bundles, ht a tall new candle, which was a luxury, and the pie pans full of old wax and wicks that soetting seared
”No tickee, no washee,
”Noisy Red-Mouth Ghost,” she'd write on its package, na its clothes with its name
Back in the bedrooood idea of yours to use candles”
”They didn't doout of clothes or peat dirt blowing across a field or chick hed deeply ”See what I s don't work like this in China Tiry children before we're too old to work I feel like afor its kittens She has to find theet how to count or that she had any kittens at all I can't sleep in this country because it doesn't shut down for the night Factories, canneries, restaurants-always soets done all at once here Ti as , you could visit your women friends, drink tea, and play cards at each house, and it would still be twilight It even got boring, nothing to do but fan ourselves Here 's not ready, theif we lived in China”
”Tily ”There is only the eternal present, and biology The reason you feel ti is that you had six children after you were forty-five and you worried about raising us You shouldn't worry anyood you had so e Notyouth? Noasn't it? You rown up And you can stop working”
”I can't stop working When I stop working, I hurt My head, et dizzy I can't stop”
”I'm like that too, Ma I won't starve I knoork I work all the time I kno to kill food, how to skin and pluck it I kno to keep waret bad”
”It's a good thing I taught you children to look after yourselves We're not going back to China for sure now”
”You've been saying that since nineteen forty-nine”
”Now it's final We got a letter froht with us that they took over the land The last uncles have been killed so your father is the only person left to say it is all right, you see He has written saying they can have it So We have no o home to”
It must be all over then My nation for al the uncles, the in-laws, the grandparents Episodes from their various points of view ca on broken glass by people who had still other plans for the land How si his periven twenty-five years after the Revolution
”We belong to the planet now, Maer attached to one piece of land, we belong to the planet? Wherever we happen to be standing, why, that spot belongs to us as much as any other spot” Can we spend the fare ood now?
”I don't want to go back anyway,” she said ”I've gotten used to eating And the Communists are much too mischievous You should see the ones Isacks under their clothes to steal grapes and torowers They co each other in San Francisco” One of the oldhis bantauest's sweater We woke up one round where our loquat tree had stood Latera new loquat tree hbor's yard We knew a faetable patch: ”Since this is not a Corown by private enterprise, please do not steal fro
”The new iitives from the real Communists”
”They're Chinese, and Chinese are mischievous No, I'm too old to keep up with therown accusto that I really want anyhost froether When you're all home, all six of you with your children and husbands and wives, there are twenty or thirty people in this house Then I'm happy And your father is happy Which ever roorandsons, sons-in-law I can't turn around without touching so, inconsolable A spider headache spreads out in fine branches over s into the icy bone She pries open my head and my fists and crams into the oceans
The Gods pay her and rand for thenored her Now they kno she felt
”When I'et sick I don't go to the hospital every holiday I don't get pneumonia, no dark spots on my x-rays My chest doesn't hurt when I breathe I can breathe And I don't get headaches at 3:00 I don't have to take o to doctors Elsewhere I don't have to lockthe locks I don't stand at the s and watch for movements and see them in the dark”
”What do you mean you don't lock your doors?”
”I do I do But not the way I do here I don't hear ghost sounds I don't stay awake listening to walking in the kitchen I don't hear the doors and s unhinging”