Part 10 (2/2)
”Who'd want tolike a duck Disobedient Messy And I know about college What e? I was a doctor I went to medical school I don't see why you have to be a mathematician I don't see why you can't be a doctor liketo people co out of anesthesia But I didn't say I wanted to be a hosts say I want to be a luht as well tell her so to chop down trees in the daytiht”
”I don't see why you need to go to college at all to beco their girls to typing school 'Learn to type if you want to be an A school? The cousins and village girls are going to typing school”
”And you leave ain, and I'll take her withlist was scrambled out of order When I said them out loud I saw that sorown the out anyway in the voice like Chinese opera I could hear the drus and brass horns
”You're the one to leave your little sisters alone,”them off somewhere I've had to call the police twice because of you” She herself was shouting out things I had meant to tell her-that I took host children's houses, and haunted houses blackened by fire We explored a Mexican house and a redheaded faypsies' house; I had only seen the inside of the gypsies' house in hs, where we found hobo nests My mother must have followed us
”You turned out so unusual I fixed your tongue so you could say charers”
”They don't say hello to et old, people will say hello to you”
”When I get to college, it won'tAnd it doesn't ly; she can still do schoolwork”
”I didn't say you were ugly”
”You say that all the time”
”That's e're supposed to say That's what Chinese say We like to say the opposite”
It seeuilt for ot very confused and lonely because I was at that rew No higher listener No listener but myself
”Ho Chi Kuei,” she shouted ”Ho Chi Kuei Leave then Get out, you Ho Chi Kuei Get out I knew you were going to turn out bad Ho Chi Kuei” My brothers and sisters had left the table, andme
Be careful what you say It comes true It coically, logic the neay of seeing I learned to think that mysteries are for explanation I enjoy the simplicity Concrete pours out of my mouth to cover the forests with freeways and sidewalks Give etables no more cohts into dark corners: no ghosts
I've been looking up ”Ho Chi Kuei,” which is what the irants call us-Ho Chi Ghosts ”Well, Ho Chi Kuei,” they say, ”what silliness have you been up to now?” ”That's a Ho Chi Kuei for you,” they say, no matter e've done It was ,” which they say affectionately, irls, and only in an angry voice The river-pirate great-uncle called even my middle brother Ho Chi Kuei, and he seereat-uncle even shouted ”Ho Chi Kuei!” at the boy I don't know any Chinese I can ask without gettingin books So far I have the following translations for ho ho and/or and/or chi: chi: ”centipede,” ”grub,” ”bastard carp,” ”chirping insect,” ”jujube tree,” ”pied wagtail,” ”grain sieve,” ”casket sacrifice,” ”water lily,” ”good frying,” ”non-eater,” ”dustpan-and-broom” (but that's a synony and it is ”centipede,” ”grub,” ”bastard carp,” ”chirping insect,” ”jujube tree,” ”pied wagtail,” ”grain sieve,” ”casket sacrifice,” ”water lily,” ”good frying,” ”non-eater,” ”dustpan-and-broom” (but that's a synony and it is Hao Hao Chi Kuei, which could rants could be saying that ere born on Gold Mountain and have advantages So had it so easy, and so,” or ”Bamboo Nodes” Bamboo nodes obstruct water Chi Kuei, which could rants could be saying that ere born on Gold Mountain and have advantages So had it so easy, and so,” or ”Bamboo Nodes” Bamboo nodes obstruct water
I like to look up a troubleso and then say, ”Oh, is that all?” The si at your mother and father It drives the fear away and makes it possible soirls or kill each other for no reason
Now colors are gentler and fewer; smells are antiseptic Nohen I peek in the base like a bottle iht, but a voiceless girl dancing when she thought no one was looking The very next day after I talked out the retarded ain or heard what became of him Perhaps I ht at all but child-sight that would have disappeared eventually without such struggle The throat pain always returns, though, unless I tell what I really think, whether or not I lose aucheries all over a party I've stopped checking ”bilingual” on job applications I could not understand any of the dialects the interviewer at China Airlines tried on o to New Society Village someday and find out exactly how far I can walk before people stop talking like me I continue to sort out what's just ination, just
Soon I want to go to China and find out who's lying-the Communists who say they have food and jobs for everybody or the relatives rite that they have not thein the to The relatives there can send it on to the reood harvest, to the children and grandchildren of randfather's twoes and Mexican villages and Filipino villages and, now, Vietnaes, where they speak Chinese too The women come to hether sick or well 'I 'I can't die,' they say, 'I' a hundred'” can't die,' they say, 'I' a hundred'”
What I'll inherit soreen address book full of names I'll send the relatives er My randson of her father's third wife He has been asking for fifty dollars to buy a bicycle He says a bicycle will change his life He could feed his wife and children if he had a bicycle ”We'd have to go hungry ourselves,” my mother says ”They don't understand that we have ourselves to feed too” I've been o to China and see those people and find out what's a cheat story and what's not Did rand us along all those years to get our money? Do the babies wear a Mao button like a drop of blood on their jumpsuits? When we overseas Chinese sendthe commune? Or do they really pay 2 percent tax and keep the rest? It would be good if the Co care of themselves; then I could buy a color tv
Here is a story , but recently, when I told her I also talk story The beginning is hers, the ending, randmother loved the theater (which I would not have been able to understand because of rade vocabulary, said e and set up their scaffolding, ht enough roohts, not er was that the bandits wouldperformances Bandits followed the actors
”But, Grandmother,” the family coone” They took the chairs to plays
”I want every last one of you at that theater,” irls, everybody I don't want to watch that play by h all by myself? You want me to clap alone, is that it? I want everybody there Babies, everybody”
”The robbers will ransack the food”
”So let them Cook up the food and take it to the theater If you're so worried about bandits, if you're not going to concentrate on the play because of a few bandits, leave the doors open Leave the s open Leave the house wide open I order the doors open We are going to the theater without worries”
So they left the doors open, and h, that night the bandits struck-not the house, but the theater itself ”Bandits aa!” the audience screamed ”Bandits aa!” the actors screarand into a ditch They crouched there because randmother could run no farther on bound feet They watched a bandit loop a rope aroundher off Suddenly he let her go ”A prettier one,” he said, grabbing sorandmother and mother made their way horand as they went to plays They went to many plays after that
I like to think that at sos of Ts'ai Yen, a poetess born in AD AD 175 She was the daughter of Ts'ai Yung, the scholar famous for his library When she enty years old, she was captured by a chieftain during a raid by the Southern Hsiung-nu He made her sit behind him when the tribe rode like the haunted from one oasis to the next, and she had to put her ar off the horse After she becaift to her Like other captive soldiers until the tiht desultorily when the fighting was at a distance, and she cut down anyone in her path during the ht froes and encaave birth on the sand; the barbarian wo her twelve-year stay with the barbarians, she had two children Her children did not speak Chinese She spoke it to them when their father was out of the tent, but they ihed
The barbarians were pri rivers and dried thepoles and horses' es and holes They slipped feathers and arrow shafts into the shorter reeds, which becah whirling whistles that suddenly stopped when the arrows hit true Even when the barbariansthe air with death sounds, which Ts'ai Yen had thought was their only ht she heard music tremble and rise like desert wind She walked out of her tent and saw hundreds of the barbarians sitting upon the sand, the sand gold under theon flutes They reached again and again for a high note, yearning toward a high note, which they found at last and held-an icicle in the desert The music disturbed Ts'ai Yen; its sharpness and its cold made her ache It disturbed her so that she could not concentrate on her own thoughts Night after night the songs filled the desert no matter how many dunes away she walked She hid in her tent but could not sleep through the sound Then, out of Ts'ai Yen's tent, which was apart fro, as if to her babies, a song so high and clear, itabout China and her family there Her words seemed to be Chinese, but the barbarians understood their sadness and anger Soht they could catch barbarian phrases about forever wandering Her children did not laugh, but eventually sang along when she left her tent to sit by the winter ca the Southern Hsiung-nu, Ts'ai Yen was ranso Ssu so that her father would have Han descendants She brought her songs back froe lands, and one of the three that has been passed down to us is ”Eighteen Stanzas for a Barbarian Reed Pipe,” a song that Chinese sing to their own instruments It translated well
ALSO BY MAXINE HONG KINGSTON
China Men
Tripmaster Monkey
Hawai'i One Summer
The Fifth Book of Peace