I Love a Broad Margin to My Life
Curious Monkey waves the Burlingame Treaty
under the noses of officials at every checkpoint,
and is let through. I, though, am nervous
at Passport Control. When I was arrested
for demonstrating at the White House, I couldn’t
find my I.D., couldn’t be booked
properly. “Overnight in the big cell
for you tonight.” I phoned Earll in California.
He tore the cover off my passport,
and fed it through the fax. I watched
the copy arrive at Federal prison—an illegible
dark zigzag mackle. I’ve glued
the little book back together along
its stitched spine. Crossing any border,
I’m nervous, it’ll fall apart. I’m nervous,
I have relatives in China. My actions and words
can endanger them. And I have relatives who
work at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory;
you lose your job if you have foreign family.
Wittman is all-American; no
relatives anywhere but the U.S.A.
Goodbye, Husband. Goodbye,
Wife of almost all my life.
Goodbye, my one and only child.
Now, they are in my arms.
Now, I turn, they go. Zaijian.
Joy kin. Ropes, veins, hairs
of chi that root the leaver to home pull,
stretch, attenuate as we move apart.
The red string—I can feel it. Can’t
you feel it?—has tied us espoused ones
ankle to ankle since before we met,
before we were born, and will connect
us always, and will help us not to miss
each other too much. Westward East.
Facing west from California’s shores,
Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound,
I, a child, very old, over waves, toward the house of maternity, the land of migrations, look afar,
Look off the shores of my Western sea, the circle almost circled …
Wittman is going to China for the first time.
I have been 12 times, counting
Hong Kong and Taiwan as China.
Long having wander’d since—round the earth having
wander’d.
Now I face home again—very pleas’d and joyous.
(But where is what I started for so long ago?
And why is it yet unfound?)
But I did not wander, never
wandered, and never alone. I have responsible
work to do, the teaching, the writing. I
am writing right now on an airplane,
above thick clouds. I’ve taken the window seat.
Upon the dragon clouds, Mother’s soul
walks toward Father’s soul. He’s holding open
a shawl; he’s hugging her in it. They’re happy,
they’re home, ancestors all around.
The clouds dispel. Ocean and sky on and
on and on. Land. Mountains. Circles
of irrigated fields, squares of plowed
fields. From on high, human beings
and all the terrible things they do and make
are beautiful. Loft your point of view above
the crowd, the party, any fray. All
is well. All always well. Land,
Chek Lap Kok International. Hong Kong.
The soldiers at Passport Control do not
say Aloha, welcome, dear traveller, welcome.
But then, no such hospitableness anymore
at any border-crossing on earth. (Once,
at the supermarket in Ann Arbor, in America’s
Heartland, the butcher called out
to an Asian-looking man and woman, “Where
you from?” The man of the couple answered, “Seoul,
Korea.” The butcher said, “Welcome, sir. Ma’am.
Welcome to Michigan.”) Wittman took the train,
got off in Central, and alighted tomorrow in the Land
of Women. Women everywhere—the streets, the parks,
the alleys, the middle of streets. All the city
was closed today, Sunday. Women on sidewalks,
curbs, stairs up and down hills—
everywhere women. Women of his very
type, beauties with long black hair
gathered up or cascading down,
naturally tan skin, dark eyes
the warmest brown, lashes like black fans.
The women were of one generation—no matrons,
no little girls, no crones.
Thala-a thala-a-a. The one
man, knapsack on his back,
stepped—delighted, curious, englamoured, happy—
among, around women. Women picnicking,
drinking sodas and juices. Women
playing cards. Women combing and trimming
their sisters’ hair. Painting emblems and charms
on fingernails and toenails. A solitary
is reading a book. Another writing a letter.
Mostly the women converse. The sound of their language
is like hens cluck-clucking. They talk, talk,
listen, listen, listen. For them, the city
stilled. Women walked and lingered on streets
meant for cars. What are they saying about life,
about love, these Peripatetics from the Pilippines?
Wittman circled este grupo, ese
grupo. No woman paid him look
or heed. Standing on a box in an intersection,
a sister raised Bible and voice to the crowd
and/or to God. Sisters (and brother
Wittman) tarried and stared, then floated away
on the wavery heat of the tropical sun. They passed
expensive stores, passed luxury hotels—
five stars all. (My mother
on her way to catch the S.S. Taft,
fled the police soldiers by running inside
one of these hotels.) A bronze sign on
a movable stand placed mid-sidewalk
says:
IN CONSIDERATION FOR HOTEL GUESTS,
PLEASE DO NOT BLOCK
ENTRANCEWAY.
The women sat at the curb, like hippies.
Free of husband, free of kids. Like
on vacation abroad with girlfriends.
Oh, let me be hippie with you.
Just like we were last summer!
The women and the hotel people act as if
the other did not exist. A vendor of sweets,
a man, set his wagon down; the women
crowded, haggling, selecting, buying just
the right treat—that candy for me,
that cookie for best girlfriend.
All people smile and laugh when anticipating
dessert. Along another curb, a row of
women stood in political demonstration.
They’d appliquéd a paragraph on a long
piece of cloth. Something about la inmigración.
Something something derechos. Rights.
Los derechos de criadas.
“What is criadas?” asked Wittman.
“Maids. Servants. Maids.” So, these masses
of women are maidservants, and today their day
off, Sunday. And they want their rights.
Tell them, Wittman: “In San Francisco,
we have inmigrante workers too.
We want los derechos too.”
“O-o-oh, San Francisco,” breathe
the women, “O-o-oh, California.”
They like you from San Francisco, and California,
my places, and Hawai‘i, and the Grand Canyon,
also my places. I have places the world
dreams for, hardly knowing they’re U.S.
“Are you organizing
las criadas labor union? Los
Commies a
llow unions? Commies have servants?”
A sassy girl waved a handful of papers.
“We want long long stay bisas
for Pilipina maids.” I get it: visas.
“To stay, to work. For Hong Kong to be
safe harbor. We want health
insurance.” “We too. We want
health insurance too. Universal
human derecho.” Simpático. The women told
the man their grievances: “The bishop’s Pilipina
maid cooked and cleaned house for eighteen
years. She grew old, and is sick in hospital.
The Chinese will deport her.”
Yes, Hispanics like you get deported
in my country too. Operation Return
to Sender. “The bishop went to the bisa office,
petition for her, his housekeeper. Chinese
ask, ‘She fit or not fit for work?’
Can’t work, must deport.
That’s all Hong Kongers care.”
“The other day, a maid fell four
stories. From up there—that high
up. Madam made her wash the windows.
She’s alive. She’s in hospital, but who
will pay? Who will send money
to her husband and babies?” Wittman could pay.
Pay for the hospital, pay for the babies, pay
for the whole village. Rich American karma:
Pay. Pay. Pay. (Karma is Sanskrit
for work. Karma does not mean doomed.
All it means: work.) From a pocket of his Levi’s,
he pulled out the U.S.D.s and the R.M.B.s.
“Here. Yes, yes. Take it. Please.
For you. All yours.” He’s got more;
he’s got enough. “Give it to the bishop’s housekeeper.
Give it to the window-washer maid.”
Giving away money, don’t make
the donee feel poor, and don’t you
be her fish. Our donator finessed
the bills under a brick that held flyers
down. “Use it to lobby for health and visas.
Thank you for taking care of citizen business
though not citizens. No, no problem.
Thank you. Goodbye.
Behind the great
windows of the Bank of China (Hong Kong)—
open but not for business—a priest
in white and gold regalia was lifting a chalice—
not toward any altar, his back to the congregants
(as in Earll’s day), but toward Pilipina maids.
Pilipina maids knelt and sat on
the marble floor, scarved heads bowed
and palms together, attitudes so humble,
you could cry. They give in, they thank.
Old Monkey would’ve jumped into the crowd,
snatched wine and mitre, slurped up the wine,
donned the hat, pissed in the cup. Today
Monkey went quiet. Quiet prevailed.
He backed out of the bank that’s church this Sunday,
and continued his walkabout basking in the alma
and the mana of Yin. In a bright alley, jam-
packed with boxes, mothers and godmothers
filled cartons with toys and dried milk
and canned milk, and children’s clothes and shoes,
and men’s clothes and shoes. Las madres y
las comadres shared tape, string, scissors,
and wrote out postal and customs forms.
They are saviors of families, villages, populations.
Woman’s adventure, woman’s mission.
The lone male looking at them was no bother.
But they hated me, a woman, seeing them.
They looked back at me, shot me with hate.
Turned to follow me with their eyes, hate
firing from their eyes. They hated me.
Hate-stares followed me though I walked
with the attitude that I was at home among my own
Asian sisters. In words, they’d be calling me
names. “You fucking bitch empress. You
make me clean your toilet. You make me sleep
in the toilet.” Though catching stinkeye,
a curling lip, a dissing shrug of shoulders,
I willed a kind and pleasant mien.
May you be happy, you be safe.
May you make much, much money.
May your children and family be happy and safe,
and you return home to them soon.
I must remind them of Madam, their Chinese employer.
But I don’t look like a Chinese matron.
I don’t dye my hair black. I’m not
wearing my gold and jade. They don’t know
I bought these clothes at the Goodwill.
I’m wearing shoes donated after the Big Fire.
They don’t know, most of my nieces and nephews
are Filipino, and 9 great-nieces
and great-nephews, Filipino Chinese
Americans. They don’t know me, I am like them,
my marriage like theirs. Wife works for money;
husband, employed or unemployed, has fun.
Son, too, has fun. Men know how
to play. Music. Sports. Theater. These women
don’t know, I work 2 jobs.
I moonlight, do the work-for-money
and the writing. I wish I
had thought to be a stay-at-home mom.
(How interesting: The girl makes wishes for
the future. The eldress, for the past.)
I, too, send money to villages, the promise
made to family when leaving them. My BaBa,
who arrived in New York City when Lindberg
landed in Paris, vowed: I will not
forget you. I will always send money
home. The Pilipina maids see
me a lazy dowager, and hate me.
Crone. Witch. Aswang. Old woman
going about with long hair down
like a young woman’s, but white. Normal
in Berkeley, beautiful in Berkeley. And in the Philippines
I’m already in costume for Aswang Festival,
day before Hallowe’en, days after
my birthday. Come on, fête me and my season.
On the grass in a city park, our male traveller
feeling his lone hobo self, laid
his body down with backpack for pillow.
In San Francisco, it was 2 o’clock the night
before. Going west from California’s
shores, jumping forward in time, he’d arrived
at the house of maternity, the land of migrations.
Sleeping in public, jet-lagged, soul
not caught up with body, body
loose from soul, body trusted itself to
the grass, the ground, the earth, the good earth,
and rested in that state where dream is wake,
wake is dream. Conscious you are conscious.
Climb—fly—high and higher, and know:
Now / Always, all connects to all.
All that is is good. His ancestresses—
PoPo Grandma and Ma,
so long in America—are here, the Center.
Expired, Chinese people leave go of
cloudsouls that fly to this place.
Breathe, and be breathed. The air smells
of farawayness. Seas. Trash. Old
fish. The Chinese enjoy this smell,
fragrant, the hong in Hong Kong, Fragrant Harbor.
Yes, something large, dark, quiet,
receptive—Yin—is breathing, breathing me
as I am breathing her. My individual
mind, body, cloudsoul melds
with the Yin. Mother. I’m home. But
stir, and the Land of Women goes. Wittman
arose to bass drums of engines—multiple
pulses and earth-deep throbs.
Forces
of rushing people. Monday morning go-
to-work people. The City. (The late riser
has missed the tai chi, the kung fu,
the chi kung. While he was sleeping, the artists
of the chi, mostly women, Chinese
women, were moving, dancing the air / the wind /
energy / life, and getting the world turning.
They’d segued from pose to pose—spread
white-crane wings, repulse monkey,
grasp bird by tail, high pat
on horse, stand like rooster on one leg,
snake-creep down, return to mountain.
They played with the chi, drawing circles in the sky,
lifting earth to sky, pulling sky
to earth, swirling the controllable universe.
Then walked off to do their daily ordinary tasks.)
Wittman, non-moneymaker, fled
the financial district. Already dressed,
the same clothes asleep and awake, he merged
with a crowdstream, and boarded a westbound
train. Go deep in-country.
Find China. Hong Kong is not China.
The flow of crowd stopped, jammed inside
the train. Wittman was one among the mass
that shoved and was shoved onto the area
over the coupling between cars. They
would ride standing pressed, squashed,
breathing one another’s breath, hoisting
and holding loads—Panasonic and Sony
ACs—above heads. The train
started, the crowd lurched, the air conditioners
rocked, almost fell but didn’t. Men
prized through the packed-tight crowd,
squeezed themselves from one car to the next,
and back again. A man, not a vendor,
jostled through, lugging a clinking
weight of bottled drinks that could’ve smashed
the upturned faces of the short people. Bags
smelled of cooked meat. I have food,
I can do anything. I know I can.
I know I can. Hard-seat travel.
Suffer more, worth more. The destination
more worth it. The Chinese have not
invented comfort. People fell asleep
on their feet. They work hard, they’re tired,
grateful for a spot of room to rest. Rest.
Rest. A boy slept astraddle his father,
father asleep too, 2 sleeping
heads, head at peace against head.
Had Wittman and his son ever shared one
undistracted moment of being quiet?
Though tall, he could not see above the crowd
and their belongings. What country was rolling past
unappreciated? The train—a local—made stops.
More people squeezed aboard. On and on
and on, yet on the border of immense China.