Rewriting Stella
Page 15
predicting where the floods hit. Most fertile
producing regions lack the depth of sluice
required to drain the torrents that arrive.
Crops die. If lucky, families still survive.”
136.
The Chairman looked across the room to see
if PhDs in Sci-Tech Ministry
agreed with bleak assessment nominee
from Land just gave. “Yes, Chair, we too foresee
more difficulty in predicting floods.”
“And let us not forget that cities lay
right in the path of water, silt, and mud
and thus must fund walls keeping them at bay,”
old Housing added in, stress lines around
his worn eyes boring deeply into face.
Then Finance nodded his assent, “We’re bound
to grow our infrastructure spend apace
with that uncertainty. Our budget share’s
increasing year on year.” Foreign Affairs
137.
sunk lower in his chair, “We’ll face a storm
in all the Western press if we move now.
‘Another million people’s lives deformed,
so urban wealthy can face fewer brown-
outs’, it would read. Three Gorges Dam was hard,
and we built that ’fore foreign coverage peaked.”
“With due respect, we’d all best disregard
what other nations think. We’re oft critiqued
by people on the sidelines who can’t know
the trade-offs that we face within this room.
You’ve shown them that we’ll interfere with no
internal matters elsewhere. Let’s assume
they’ll give us the same courtesy. Our trade
alone’s enough to calm their stump tirades.”
138.
Retort was worded deftly, with respect.
Still, disagreement slowed replying tongues.
“I’d like to know,” filled Chair in, “what effects
on brownout rates will be.” They knew he swung
with what the numbers said, true engineer.
“Our baseline’s at completion eight years out:
four days per month of rationing is feared.”
“Thirteen-point-three percent or thereabout
of lost productive time,” worked out the Chair.
“With this in operation, we’ll reduce
that down to half day monthly.” “Everywhere?”
“For Sichuan,” said man made to look obtuse
for failing to include that in report.
“Now tell me what the plan is to transport
139.
the million farmers on the valley floor.”
“We want to make a pension fund for all
and give them roughly what they made before,
and also build some housing so the sprawl
in nearby towns and cities is controlled.
They’ll move in waves as flats are built and bought.
Town commerce we expect to boost twofold
with all those pensions spent in single spot.”
“They’ll need it,” countered Agriculture, “since
the prices of most staple goods will rise.
So in addition to the dissidents
you’ll have townsfolk complaining ’bout supplies.
To wipe out such a huge productive tract
has sizable statewide food price impact.”
140.
“You need not worry, Chairman, of protests.
I’ll have the force to keep the peace, and plan
well in advance to verify no jests
that castigate the state can breach our ban.”
Security, to none’s surprise, looked smug.
Unlike the other Ministries, it could
dispatch whatever kind of state-backed thugs
it needed to enforce what it thought good.
“The media concerns me not a bit,
you’ve mostly proven that you’re able to
deal with disquiet in electorate.
We’ve covered power and floods and food, but you,
Environmental colleague, you’ve said not
a word’s dissent.” (All feared that he’d been bought).
141.
Like rain accumulates, a silence grew
into a separate entity in room,
exerting power. He had till now eschewed
the chance to take the microphone. “A bloom
will always sprout once fire has passed. This case
is hardly different. Yes, we’re sad to lose
such land. But there are plans to interlace
the crafted shoreline with some docks to cruise,
to rent a kayak or canoe, to tour
around and savor nature as we’ve shaped
it. Less is this about a loss endured,
and more about envisioned new landscape.”
A dozen bobble nods turned men to mimes,
so Chair adjourned discussions for the time.
CHAPTER 10
142.
At dinner, huíguōròu caused pleasant wave
among the Tanzanian houseguests. They
back home for meat of any kind oft craved,
its treat had price reserved for holiday.
The mother asked quite perfunctorily
if Stel enjoyed the dishes that she’d made,
while serving her, like one chunk more will be
noshed proof assent was not a masquerade.
They gobbled it delightedly, with rice.
The father watched, his eating slow. “You’re fast
already,” satisfied that his advice
on chopstick use was used. “You’re overcast
tonight,” Stel boldly noted, having seen
him shirk from holding court at meal. His queen
143.
stole glance at him. He caught his swiveled head,
and reined in plain reaction of surprise.
Asserting so directly was unbred
from Chinese culture long ago. “The wise,”
he counseled, “surely never aim so straight,
but rather tack across the wind until
they’ve circumspectly sailed tact’s twisted strait
toward port that has the goal they want fulfilled.”
He paused for full effect, then shoulders slumped
and second sigh suggested he’d forgive
the trespass of a foreigner. “I’m stumped.
I’ve one decision likely to outlive
me, be my legacy. Yet I’m not sure
how much I trust that what they’re selling’s pure.”
144.
That mildest mental smarting stunned Stel’s need
to ask another question. Abu’d caught
a favorite term of his, and took the lead:
“They’re crucial, legacies. Or get forgot.”
“Hmm. Nevermind,” the now-flush man replied,
a forearm sweep dislodging napkins from
the table. Fallen trash ’round every side
of dining table was eyesore Stel numbed
herself to, cryptic luxury of waste.
Why tidy sundry rubbish minuscule
on table? Best to batch it in one place.
Ab thought about excusing self for school.
With drops of fast-slurped soup still on her lip,
Stel also then retired to sistership.
145.
Recipient of reprimanding, Stel
felt shamed, self-righteous in two equal parts.
Back in the room with Ai, she failed to quell
disgruntlement frustrating tired-out heart.
“I’m understanding nothing! What’s allowed,
what’s not, why kids are so competitive…”
She liked her walks and dinners, which were how
she learned abou
t the place she’d come to live.
With this, each one was ruined, one by Ai
and one by Jiang, and neither felt Stel’s fault.
Recalling no days past disqualified
by cultural transgressions, her default
was to cast blame on present cast. (It’s tough
to see one’s own outsiderness in stuff.)
146.
Ai kept her head in textbook as Stel spun,
integral integrals were left to do
now that derived derivatives were done
and Ai was on page twelve of forty-two.
Stel watched her roommate’s focus, flashbacks struck
to Tanzanian times she’d planned escape,
To work so hard to get here, then get stuck
in hamster wheel? she thought. Best to have scraped
by back at home. “Ai, you’ve reflex routine
from home to school to home, where homework’s long
enough to make you drink tea for caffeine!
You’re thirteen! Hasn’t something gone quite wrong
to turn your childhood freedom into trance?
It’s like you’ve never given play a chance.”
147.
“I think I also nothing understand,”
said Ai, her right hand shutting textbook. “You
four weeks before said in your old homeland
that people have no monies. Here we do.”
She swung her chair to face. “My father say
that is because we study hard for math
and science from first school, and that free play
is for the toddlers. Not for kids.” That path
Stel’d seen well-treaded during supper talk.
Stel steamed. She partly blamed herself in that
she couldn’t tell which tale was poppycock:
that juvenescence in the state’s format
would drive the engines churning out more jobs,
or simply crinkle humans down to cogs.
148.
“I get it, Ai. Each person’s part of ‘we’.
That comes through clearly in the way you speak.
Where I come from it’s also family
that makes decisions for you. Trying to eke
past poverty with powd’ry soil is tough.
You have to come together, take good care
of elders, cousin-brothers. Not enough
community means if your crops are bare,
you’ll starve that season. What was different for
my childhood’s that I lacked that base support,
no parents or relations to restore
stability when crisis hit. When short,
I did without. I’m lucky that I’m here.
I know that. Still, here’s differently severe.
149.
At home I found a thing I wanted lots.
It filled the time between the daily chores.”
She reached down, petted BLING. “We found these spots
nearby to go and climb, explore outdoors.
Acacia trees, savannas, forest on
the outskirts of our local peaks were game.
It meant that half our homework was foregone,
success was body’s learning. We became
upgraded per own plans by time we slept,
my dusk self more like me than when dawn broke.
But here it feels like everything except
our dinner time is yet another yoke.
Here, every day is last one’s copycat.
I want to be a person, not a stat.”
150.
She’d worked herself into a tizzy, paused,
then gained momentum in the fall back down.
Continuing, Stel said, “We really caused
some things to happen; tried to help our town!
Our teacher’d lost a golden ring. Those climbs
we took on so to train ourselves to solve
what we had thought was actually a crime,
a theft. Then it turned out to not involve
a criminal at all! Well, not that part,
at least. Her husband poacher stole some eggs
from some rare bird, a big one, each like art.
It injured him, and yet he still bootlegged
them through the middlemen in town. Jerks pay
a lot to own what nature free displays.”
151.
Her monologue brought forth a tangled knot
of memories, joys, regrets from how she chose
that night to give back Gumi’s gold jackpot
despite misogyny owner disclosed.
Here Stel sat with another woman who
faced different pressures, though to still conform,
and bent her sense of self toward others’ view
of how she should behave, and others’ norms.
Ai lacked the same gift sitting in her hand,
an artifact to launch her on own way.
Stel wondered, had she kept it as spite planned,
if she’d be freer. Youth’s naïveté
chose ‘right’. Now vocalizing Gumi’s wrongs
made Stel wish ring in hand where it belongs.
152.
Ai’s stare made Stel unsure if words shared sank
in; language gaps oft caused chats to seesaw.
“It seem impossible,” Ai said, the swank
of Stella’s story struck her. “What you saw
is like the Journey West, one of our four
great novels.” She looked over at the wall,
at grassland poster on the closet door,
and said, “Your story is like that, a ‘tall
tale’ is, I think, right word. They happen in
the places far away of city. Not
a can-imagine thing. Small kids here win
school competitions, tests. It is what got
Chinese to growth and jobs.” “The Chinese, sure.
But where’s the Ai in that? It’s premature
153.
to say your life is bound to turn out just
the way society expects it to.
Competing at this rate means you’ll combust
before you ever find what to pursue.”
“I know what to pursue. It is the good
of home place, build it up more,” Ai explained,
“first, engineer. If very good, I could
enroll in Tsinghua.” “What if unconstrained?
How do you know that engineering’s where
you’ll find your love?” “Choice not existing, Stel.
I get good money, then can maybe care
for parents, have my family.” “No, rebel
a little! I had nothing till I found
my independent self,” Stel stroked her hound
154.
to calm again. “You’re right,” Ai said, “than me,
you had much less. No parent and no friend.”
“You have no friends now,” Stel said flaccidly.
“Ha! Here you miss so much,” Ai did contend,
“we talk, QQ, like SMS. We each
to other offering support. You look
for what you know. You think that it has reach
here. Maybe you can’t see.” Had Stel mistook
reality through blue-tinged glasses? Sure,
the students that she knew back home obsessed
sometimes about their grades too. But they were
less categorically so plagued, so stressed.
Or were they? Did she really comprehend
what built belonging ’pon which folks depend?
155.
She’d soured at stench of conflict in the air,
and stormed a bit when Ai’d claimed she was wrong
about her observation. She compared
this country’s ways with what she’d known lifelong,
experience and eyes and mind were all
the tools she had to craft perspectives from.
A want for peace caused her to reach for small
anthology beside her bed. Succumb
to swirling thoughts of nature, pleasant swoon
to poems that freed esprit from city’s pull.
Its spirit leans like a thin hook, read “Moon”,
or opens round like Han-loom fans, eyefuls
were dreamed. Whose slender shadow’s nature is
to be full—Abu popped to mind. It’s his
156.
approach to life this poem described. How strange,
that classic China threaded long ago
the link between the moon’s endless phase change
and how human ambition’s to outgrow
our born-form size. Its closing line was: seen
from everywhere in human world. She saw
Abu as moon, directing figurines,
conducting constellations. Image gnawed
at her, this conjured hidden power it claimed.
Of course she wanted him to reach his dreams.
But something felt still empty in this fame.
As Ai said, who was she to claim esteem’s
obtained in one same way for everyone?
Was knowing selves quite ever fully done?
157.
An only-partly satisfying sleep
expectedly brought forth another day.
Stel stayed composed, avoiding slip toward weep,
but raggedness pervaded vertebrae.
Per yesterday’s agreement, she arrived
back at the courtyard tree to meet the boy
who sought an English partner, a contrived
transactional camaraderie. BLING toyed
with sticks on ground, and snapped his jaws at bugs,
on constant prowl around the premises,
preferred to being kept as housebound slug.
The boy walked up. “Hello!” (The genesis
of language partnership.) “Um… how are you?”
he asked, as textbooks all instructed to.
158.
“I’m fine, and you?” Stel said, suppressing laugh
at awkwardness rote language forced them toward.
“I’m fine,” he said, “my name is Qin,” his half
of scripted conversation she abhorred.
“And what is your?” “It’s ‘what is yours?’ And mine
is Stella.” “I from China. Where is yours?”
Stel guessed that he learned quickly from the line,
despite its incorrectness. Reassured
this might be useful use of time, she eased.
“I come from Tanzania.” “Where is that?”
“In Africa. What is it in Chinese?”
“Fēizhōu. Nǐ shìgè Fēizhōu rén,” voice flat
on neighbor syllables in high first tone.
Reminded how hard tones are, Stella groaned.