I Love a Broad Margin to My Life by Maxine Hong Kingston Page B
Authors: Maxine Hong Kingston
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Wittman
dismayed and amazed himself. Forever, then.
Forever husband. Forever father. Never
lust after a woman again but wish her
for his lonely son. I wish for Mario
a life’s companion. “My son, Mario,
makes good money. He knows power
tools and car mechanics. He can cook.
He has some college. He is kind
and intelligent, and I want for him a kind
and intelligent person.” The old Chinese
customs aren’t so bad; fix him up
with a wife, a daughter-in-law of my own choosing.
Moy Moy’s holding of his hand became
a handshake. “Dui dui dui,”
she cooed. “We will agree on a place to meet.
He will be waiting for me there. Ho, la.
Good night, la. Good sleep, la-a-a.”
(You do not need vocabulary to understand
the Chinese. Just feel the emotion
in
la-a-a
and
ahh
and
mo
and
aiya.
)
Moy Moy left. Taña, also, left.
I am alone in the dark, so dark that
nothing exists but my thoughts, and thoughts
are nothing. Came all the way to China,
and failed to fuck another besides my long-
wedded spouse before I die.
The next thing,
dust was falling like ash, like glitter. Far
away, so faint, maybe imaginary, crowed
a rooster. Another, closer, rooster answered,
took up the opera, and another, and another,
each rooster louder, the loudest blaring
right outside the window. Wake up
in a village in China. Go use the community
toilet. Wash up in the town square,
brush teeth, swab down with the guys.
The women clean themselves indoors.
“Ho sun.” “Ho sun.” “Ho sun.”
“Ho sun.” Good morning. Good
body. Good belief. Good letter.
A happy civilization, glad to see
one and all, every morning. “Help me
farm rice?” asked Brother Lai Lu.
He took Wittman’s hand. 2 men
are walking China hand in hand. They walked
to the field for planting on this hopeful day.
They wrapped seedlings in cloth, settled the bundles
in baskets, tied baskets to waist, and waded
into the paddy. Oooh, the mud, the pleasureful
mud, my free and happy toes. You trace
in water a square, and at each corner embed
one rice plant. Oh, my hands
rooting and squishing silken luscious mud.
Look up: A line of rising and bending
people—kids too—are coming toward
our line. (The kids are all boys.
The girls have been adopted out to the most loving,
well-educated parents in the West. Chinese
girls will take over and improve America.)
Children, everybody growing mai.
Plant toward someone who’s planting toward you,
and make straight rows. Perfectly quiet,
we’re sighting and pacing one another, and organizing
the water into small and large rectangles, stitching
a silvery quilt over Mother Earth.
Every jade-green spikelet has its jade-
green water double. 2 infinite
blue skies. Slow white clouds
form, move and change, and wisp away.
Me, the one amid all of it taking
note. In the silence, critters peeping,
buzzing, chirping, humming, seem to be
my own mind idling and making it up—
but a frog jumps, a dragonfly zooms.
Tadpoles—schools of tadpoles—hurry by.
A mudsnail gliding and sliding. And me
planting rice, helping to feed a fifth
of the world’s people. All, all related.
This planting food together is heart
center. Hour after hour, eon after eon,
doing the same thing, plant, plant,
sink, loft, into water, into sky,
I am one of the human race that has always
done this work. Stay, let this life be
my whole life, and these people my people.
That other life, the one in America, the wife,
the son, the Berkeley education, that
complex life is dream. Stay
and see the rice through to harvest. How
long does it take for rice to grow through
its seasons? A year? Two years? Now
that I’ve found this lost possible self—Chinese
rice farmer—let me stay with it. Keep
doing this most basic human task
til satisfaction. When used to that life
and don’t
see
it anymore, then leave.
BAD VILLAGE
Once more, away,
out on the open road, Wittman enjoyed
his walk
dismayed and amazed himself. Forever, then.
Forever husband. Forever father. Never
lust after a woman again but wish her
for his lonely son. I wish for Mario
a life’s companion. “My son, Mario,
makes good money. He knows power
tools and car mechanics. He can cook.
He has some college. He is kind
and intelligent, and I want for him a kind
and intelligent person.” The old Chinese
customs aren’t so bad; fix him up
with a wife, a daughter-in-law of my own choosing.
Moy Moy’s holding of his hand became
a handshake. “Dui dui dui,”
she cooed. “We will agree on a place to meet.
He will be waiting for me there. Ho, la.
Good night, la. Good sleep, la-a-a.”
(You do not need vocabulary to understand
the Chinese. Just feel the emotion
in
la-a-a
and
ahh
and
mo
and
aiya.
)
Moy Moy left. Taña, also, left.
I am alone in the dark, so dark that
nothing exists but my thoughts, and thoughts
are nothing. Came all the way to China,
and failed to fuck another besides my long-
wedded spouse before I die.
The next thing,
dust was falling like ash, like glitter. Far
away, so faint, maybe imaginary, crowed
a rooster. Another, closer, rooster answered,
took up the opera, and another, and another,
each rooster louder, the loudest blaring
right outside the window. Wake up
in a village in China. Go use the community
toilet. Wash up in the town square,
brush teeth, swab down with the guys.
The women clean themselves indoors.
“Ho sun.” “Ho sun.” “Ho sun.”
“Ho sun.” Good morning. Good
body. Good belief. Good letter.
A happy civilization, glad to see
one and all, every morning. “Help me
farm rice?” asked Brother Lai Lu.
He took Wittman’s hand. 2 men
are walking China hand in hand. They walked
to the field for planting on this hopeful day.
They wrapped seedlings in cloth, settled the bundles
in baskets, tied baskets to waist, and waded
into the paddy. Oooh, the mud, the pleasureful
mud, my free and happy toes. You trace
in water a square, and at each corner embed
one rice plant. Oh, my hands
rooting and squishing silken luscious mud.
Look up: A line of rising and bending
people—kids too—are coming toward
our line. (The kids are all boys.
The girls have been adopted out to the most loving,
well-educated parents in the West. Chinese
girls will take over and improve America.)
Children, everybody growing mai.
Plant toward someone who’s planting toward you,
and make straight rows. Perfectly quiet,
we’re sighting and pacing one another, and organizing
the water into small and large rectangles, stitching
a silvery quilt over Mother Earth.
Every jade-green spikelet has its jade-
green water double. 2 infinite
blue skies. Slow white clouds
form, move and change, and wisp away.
Me, the one amid all of it taking
note. In the silence, critters peeping,
buzzing, chirping, humming, seem to be
my own mind idling and making it up—
but a frog jumps, a dragonfly zooms.
Tadpoles—schools of tadpoles—hurry by.
A mudsnail gliding and sliding. And me
planting rice, helping to feed a fifth
of the world’s people. All, all related.
This planting food together is heart
center. Hour after hour, eon after eon,
doing the same thing, plant, plant,
sink, loft, into water, into sky,
I am one of the human race that has always
done this work. Stay, let this life be
my whole life, and these people my people.
That other life, the one in America, the wife,
the son, the Berkeley education, that
complex life is dream. Stay
and see the rice through to harvest. How
long does it take for rice to grow through
its seasons? A year? Two years? Now
that I’ve found this lost possible self—Chinese
rice farmer—let me stay with it. Keep
doing this most basic human task
til satisfaction. When used to that life
and don’t
see
it anymore, then leave.
BAD VILLAGE
Once more, away,
out on the open road, Wittman enjoyed
his walk
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