bed. She snatched the curtain that she’d embroidered—
the marriage of Phoenix and Dragon, and “Good Morning”
in English script—and fled. My last Chinese
journey, a year and a half ago, the new
superhighway from Guangzhou to my villages—
4 hours. No more stopping for farmers
threshing grain and sun-drying fruit
and vegetables on the fine strips of new road.
I opened the car door; a man looked in.
I gazed, looking for the familiar; I watched
his gaze adjust, brighten. We recognized
each other, older—Elder Brother,
Younger Sister. Leading the welcoming crowd,
we walked through the village. “I’ve just been
elected president,” he said, “voted in
for the second time president of the Old People’s Hui.”
Some old men sat in chairs along
a sunny wall. Elder Brother presented them,
“The Old People’s Hui. Our clubhouse.”
Red paper announced names of donors,
all Hongs, all Americans, and the plan
to build a bench, right there, over
the mud and trash hole. Of course,
our village would choose Elder Bro the leader;
he’s energetic, optimistic, like me,
like most of our family, who give public
service (though shy and rather be private).
In war, he’d be the one taken as headman.
The old women, 4 of them, sat on the earth
in the shade of a wall across the way. They’d
played here as girls, and now rest,
still friends, laughing, remembering. They look
like homeless street people in the United States;
Chinese, maybe Chinese-American,
women, old like these women, clad
like them, faded pants and shirts, hair
home-cut, bobby-pinned back from
their ears, such women are scavenging
garbage cans. They don’t beg, don’t
panhandle, only quietly delve
through public trash. I overheard a white
man tell his son, “People like that
shouldn’t live.” Elder Brother nudged me,
“Give lei see. Go ahead.
Give, la. Give, la. Give
to her; she’s important. She’s of
the Hui. Give to him too; he’s important.”
I bent over the fanny pack at my belly.
Please have enough. Gotta keep count,
save some for later farther journey.
MaMa’s spirit took me over.
I am my mother, bent over my purse,
digging through the mess for lei see,
anxious that I’d forgotten it, lost it,
run out. Stolen. Not enough.
Old squirrel rummaging in her pouch,
counting how much to save, how
much to give away. Keeping track
who got lei see already. Worked so
hard for money; what’s it for but to give
to family? But let me give lei see
gracefully. Not let worry show. The time
has come, the occasion is rightnow that I saved
for, saved red paper, saved clean
new bills, artfully folded the money,
creased edges, tucked flaps. Carry
lei see with you wherever you go,
be ready to give it away. Aha. Whew.
Here’s the secret compartment, here’s lei see.
Take out just so many, keep
enough for descendants of second and third wives
in Mother’s village. Lei see dai gut
to you. And you. You too.
You’re welcome. Most very welcome. Thank you.
You prosper too. You do prosper.
People showed me their cell phones; last
visit, they showed me PVC
pipes. The inside of my ancestral home
was changed, the dirt floor covered, tiled.
Earth indoors no more.
Chickens used to peck the dirt clean,
and kitties played, and cats warmed themselves
by the stove. That brick stove that my mother rebuilt,
and cooked at. Read novels while cooking.
Food burned, and her mother-in-law scolded.
On my earlier visit, a pig had peered in at us,
forehoof taking a step inside,
but decided, too crowded, too many
noisy people, stepped back, and left.
This visit, I didn’t see a chicken,
duck, goat, or cat, or pig in the house
or lanes and alleys. A TV sat
to the side of the altar; the symmetrical array
of emblems, calligraphy, and family photos that took
up the center of the wall faced the front door.
You walk in, and the first thing you see,
all you see, is altar up into the loft.
I have entered my playhouse. The last
time I was here, it was not so obvious
that my family kept a shrine. But then they
were concluding the 10 years of Great Calamity,
the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution,
and the altar was plain, a mere outline,
a space framed with red paper. The light
bulb was hung before it. No icons
nor idols but family photos. Us.
“Which sister are you?” “This is me;
I’m the eldest sister.” I’d gone to the other
end of the earth, and found pictures of myself;
they’d been thinking of me. The altar now
was resplendent with words inkbrushed on fresh
red paper. Elder Brother and his wife,
Elder Sister, sat beside my husband
and me on a row of chairs and stools along
the altar, our backs to it. Other relatives sat
to the sides, as in the inglenook back home.
Seats were covered with patterned fabric,
which decorated the altar too. Everybody
talked, said that he or she was happy,
life was good, all was well. The many
people not here, also well.
(Rude and bad luck to state otherwise.)
Ah, here come 2 cousins home
from the army. They’ve been gone all day
at their job, and are home from work. The Chinese
army is not like your American army;
they are boy scouts, do good
deeds, give help. My soldier cousins,
being young men preoccupied with making their way,
making their lives, were not much interested
in me, some old relative. Mumbling,
they shook hands because I stuck out
my hand. Elder Brother said to me,
“Greet our grandma and grandpa, la.”
Amid the people, my people, there sat
on a little bench a bowl of incense
in sand. “Up there. Ah Po and
Ah Goong are up there.” I stood
to look where he pointed. My grandparents
are up in the loft? Their ashes? Their ghosts?
Above the altar? Up higher than the loft?
In heaven? Someone handed me a stick of incense.
Earll was beside me, also with lit incense.
In unison, holding the stick like the stem of a flower
between prayer palms, we raised it toward
the ancestors, bowed, bowed again, bowed
the third requisite bow—I felt at my back
a heat, a wind, a spirit, blow in
through the open door—and planted the incense
in the sand. Thank god for Zen practice.
I had not lost li, though gone to the West.
They had not lost li—tra
dition,
manners, the rites—though Cultural Revolution.
I asked to see the water buffalo.
“We saw the baby buffalo last time.
Is he still with you?” Yes, oh yes.
Again, my family, followed by people all
along the way, people somehow also
family, walked through the lanes and alleys
of the village to muddy paths that went past
a dump pile. Elder Brother apologized,
“So dirty.” I said, “It’s okay.”
I compost. What shocked me was the bits
of plastic trash mixed in with the leaves,
peelings, manure, and earth. Reds and blues
that do not occur in nature. Not a flower
in sight. My family are practical farmers;
they don’t plant ornamentals. We entered
a huge old structure of stone and brick.
Foliage, small trees, grew inside,
up toward the broken roof and blue sky.
There, tethered to a column—long rope
from ionic base to nose ring—was
the water buffalo, grown, immense, dark.
Great curved, ridged, backward swooping,
sharp-pointed horns. “Lai, la.
Lai, la.” With one hand, Elder
Brother gestured come, come closer;
his other hand had ahold of the nose ring
controlling the water buffalo’s head. A swing
of its head, a stomp of a hoof, we’re goners. It
was uneasy; it didn’t like being pulled
taking pictures of the city cousin and cousin-in-
law bumbling into country life.
Pet-pat it—where? on the nose?
the face? the shoulder? What if it swung about
to look at what touched it? I tried
sending it friendly thoughts. Remember me?
I remember you. You were a baby
with big long soft ears that stuck
out, like your horns stick out now.
I love your deep bright eyes, and eyelashes.
So, this is the animal that doorgunners chased
from helicopter gunships, and shot
to pieces. “His balls explode, and I watch
that two thousand pound creature jump
ten feet off the ground.… Everybody
laughs.”—John Mulligan, Viet Nam veteran.
It had happened just south of here, not long ago.
I’m sorry, Buffalo. I am sorry.
I asked, “What is this place?”
The columns. The dais. The faded red words
on the still-standing walls and on the column
that staked the buffalo. I make out
the word moon. The word live. The word
teacher. I know too little Chinese.
“This place was the old temple. The typhoon
wrecked it.” His free hand—he wore a watch,
a silver watch—pointed to the broken walls,
and roof that let in swaths of sky. “Home
for my buffalo now.” So, is this what’s become
of the Hong temple? Are those the steps where
the guys hung out and teased the girls, and made
my mother drop her water jar, which broke,
and she got a scolding? Is this the same temple
I’d seen them restoring after Cultural
Revolution? The one we sent money for
changing back from a barn? The Communists banned
religion; temple became barn. The typhoon
had wrecked the old temple. Or were
Red Guards the Typhoons? I had gleefully
sent money; I would make my own cultural
revolution—get the names of women,
women donors, up on the temple walls,
and change the patrilineage. Time-faded,
whitewashed, red writing on the column
and walls could still be deciphered:
Great Teacher
Great Leader
Great Commander-in-Chief
Great Helmsman
Long Live Chairman Mao
Conservation of Electricity
Production Safety
I was hoping for something from the Tao
and Confucius. Maybe, beneath layers of paint:
Farmers
farm
all the way to
heaven.
“See the trees?” said Elder Brother, extending
his arms toward the surounding grove, branches
sticking through the roof, branches through
the walls. “I planted each tree. With extra
money, I buy a small tree. I’m growing
forest. I’m a planter of forests.” He must
have been planting all his life; those are
grandmother-size trees looking in on us.
“Do you own this land, these fields?”
“The government took land and fields.” “No,”
said another relative, so quietly, only
I heard, “the government gave land back.”
Every story you hear, you will hear its opposite.
“Did you know our grandmother?
Do you remember Ah Po?”
“Ho chau!” Very mean, a scold.
He told: “I cared for Ah Po the last
5 years of her life. She lay in bed,
shouting for me, and I helped her.” He must’ve
been a kid too young for the fields.
I remember the photograph of Ah Po
lying on her side in her cupboard. Her hair
combed back tight, she was dressed in black,
and she wore shoes on her once-bound feet.
Before sending money, my parents had wanted
evidence that she was alive. What cost to find
and hire a cameraman, and what delay
until her picture reached us, and the money
reached her. It is my American karma,
I am beholden: Constantly send money,
the least we can do. A sweetness would pop
into my mouth; Ah Po was sending candy.
at the same moment. “I cared for Ah Po,
and I cared for Chuck’s first wife.
I gave care to 4 people.” Chuck is
Elder Brother’s elder brother, who left
for America, and married a Chinese American.
Chuck’s the one, all his children married
white demons. First Wife requested,
Send me one of the sons; you have so many.
A son did write letters to her, in English
to be translated, addressing her as Dear Mother. But
she went mad from loneliness, and had to be taken
care of. He didn’t say who the other 2
were he was caregiver to. Maybe Ah Goong, who
went to fight the Japanese, and came back
not right in the mind. All Grandfather’s
generation, and Father’s generation,
and the brothers of his own generation left
for the Gold Mountain, and put the old parents
and old wives into this farmer’s
keeping hands. Elder Brother’s name is:
Benefit the Nation, like the motto that Yue Fei’s
mother tattooed on his back. Be
constant sending money, the least we can do.
Letting go of the buffalo, Elder Brother said,
“Lai, la. Lai, la. Come,
come see the new temple.” We hurried
back through the village. The temple, holding
the east side of the plaza, looked as I’d seen
it 23 years ago. Up high,
on the tympanum:
one big word, Hong. Soup.
It looks important, and it looks
funny.
The first king of the first dynasty was named Soup.
So the oracle bones say. In famine,
in illness, slow-boil in water: leaves and bark
and grasses, scraps, whatever everybody has.
(Never the seeds for planting.) Drink soup,
be well. The water for making life-saving
soup came from this well
beside me, this well centered in the village
square, this well in front of the temple.
My aunt killed herself, and she killed the baby,
in this well. I looked down into it,
but did not see a very deep hole,
did not see the eye that reflects stars.
The water came to the top of the well; it seemed
to be drawn up through porous stone but
inches away, ankle-deep. My aunt
with the baby couldn’t possibly have jumped into
a well this shallow, and drowned. A crone,
wee, shriveled to my size, gripped
my hand tight in her hand, which was cold
and clammy. She said, “You and I
are very related.” We are ho chun.
I thought, Don’t touch me; I don’t want
to catch your disease. I felt her hard bones
around my wrist, my arm. In her other
hand was a bowl of water. She let go of me,
and with both hands offered me water.
Water from the well. Her hand was cold
and wet because of clear, clean well
water. I touched the water, as cold as
though iced. I touched it with both hands, put
both hands into the water, then
touched my forehead, touched my eyes,
and held my palms against my cheeks, held
my face in my hands. I am blessing myself,
and my aunt, and all that happened.
Earll did as I did, the crone standing before him,
proffering the bowl of water. On this hot
day, we did not drink; the water
was not meant for us to drink. The crowd
was not looking at us, when a Chinese crowd
will gather and look at anything, watch who
wins the haggling, watch the street barber
cut hair, watch anybody write anything.
The villagers were looking away, knowing, we
had shame, we had curse. They gave us privacy.
Gave us face. Are they wondering whether I
am wondering, Do they know? Do they know
that I know? The crone woman—now
where is she?—is she old enough
to’ve witnessed the raid on our house? The people
at the old folks’ club, had they taken part?
Killing the animals, hounding my aunt. The men.
One of those men her rapist, her lover?
She gave birth in the pig sty. She drowned,
and the baby drowned in this very well.