I Love a Broad Margin to My Life

by Maxine Hong Kingston

  “Cousin Juan threw away BaBa’s

  poems. Juan stole the book box.”)

  Yuan means Mongol, and their leader was Kublai Khan.

  I had to research for myself the glory of Sung.

  Sung was the age when the ecosystem was healthiest.

  From atop the Great Wall where now you see loess,

  you would’ve gazed out at forests of elm,

  planted as the Great Wall was being built.

  Women were teachers; they even taught their sons

  military strategy. General Yue Fei

  and his mother were Sung. The Sung mapped the land

  and the sky. Its navy patrolled the rivers and seas.

  (But the Yuan had a larger navy; the Mongol

  women fought on horseback and on warships.

  The Sung deforested the Xiang River Valley

  for wood and metal to build ships and to forge

  weapons.) Movable type was invented during Sung,

  and paper money. They discerned true north.

  Artists made Buddhas and bodhisattvas.

  There was a poet named Poet. Poet

  wrote about travels that take but a day

  then home again. Painters painted the long

  journeys. The long golden handscroll,

  “18 Songs for Barbarian Reed Pipe”:

  Nomads capture Wen-chi, poetess

  and composer, daughter of the librarian. She

  is the barbarians’ treasure, taken from her home

  of many roofs and courtyards. She rides

  a dappled horse escorted by processions of men

  on dark horses and camels across the yellow

  grass of the steppes and yellow sands of the desert.

  They play flutes as they ride. Hooves of the horses

  beat percussion. The earth is drum. Falcons

  ride on shoulders and wrists. She sees migrating

  geese make words in the sky; she reads them as letters

  from home. She pricks her finger, and writes with blood

  a message from her heart. “Let my heart

  be heard from the ends of the earth.” The wild geese

  can read words written in the blood of a loyal one’s

  heart, and fly them to those who wait to hear.

  The nomads, Liao people, women and men,

  girls and boys fight, hunt, play

  with crossbows and longbows and arrows.

  They gallop their horses under the geese, and shoot

  them down. Birds become afraid of people.

  “I want to kill myself. I am among

  nonhumans. I want to kill myself.

  I am a prisoner with ten thousand anxieties

  but no one to confide them to. I want to kill

  myself. I have to make finger gestures,

  yes, no. I have no speech.

  I want to kill myself. The barbarian

  with a pretty face wants to make me his wife.

  I will kill myself. Yes, I shall.

  I am pregnant with a barbarian child.

  I shall kill myself.” At her wedding to the prince

  of barbarians, musicians play pipa,

  horn, and flute. They have 2 sons, half

  Liao, half Han. An envoy comes bearing

  ransom. The covered wagon with red wheels

  is waiting to carry her home. The nomads stand

  in groups and alone, and weep into their long sleeves.

  Wen-chi, wife and mother, holds

  her baby for the last time. Her husband, whom she

  has learned to trust, holds their son by the hand.

  The children do not understand to weep.

  Liao horsemen and Han horsemen and infantry

  in procession escort Wen-chi’s return.

  Husband and sons, elder son on his own

  small horse, the baby carried in a rider’s

  lap, accompany her partway. The prince

  rides his wife’s dappled horse, saddled

  with snow-leopard fur. He constantly looks

  back at her wagon, which is drawn by 2 oxen

  with up-growing horns. The scroll ends

  at the home with many roofs and courtyards.

  But now people are everywhere, enjoying themselves,

  the streets alive, the teahouse open; the baker

  sells buns to the returning soldiers;

  kids walk with their mothers and fathers.

  And the house comes to life as Wen-chi

  goes up the stairs toward her kinswomen;

  one kowtows to her; the rest shrink

  away from her, cover their mouths with long sleeves.

  They are protecting themselves from her strangeness.

  Wen-chi will help her father compile

  a new library.

  My father wrote

  that her legend reminds him of 2 prisoners,

  Su Wu and Li Ling. In 100 B.C.,

  during the thousand-year war, Su Wu,

  ambassador to the Mongols, went to their country

  to negotiate for peace. The Khan poisoned him, beat

  him, kept him from leaving the desert. His labor

  was to herd sheep to grass and water. Meanwhile,

  in battle against the Mongols, Li Ling surrendered.

  He was a valuable P.O.W.

  because he could be forced to write letters

  to Su Wu, and influence him to favor the enemy.

  The 2 men carried on their correspondence

  for 19 years, on paper and by wild goose.

  “No matter I am in a foreign land.

  No matter the hardship. My heart that loves

  is always with Mother Earth / Land, China.”

  My father wrote on the margin of my writing

  on Wen-chi:

  Su Wu

  Li Ling

  My biographies

  I feel so bad. BaBa

  lived in the Americas for over 60 years—

  left for Cuba as a teenager, not

  meaning to be gone forever—and never became

  at home anywhere. He was a prisoner of barbarians. I

  should’ve brought him with me to China. I’d gone

  10, 12 times (counting Taiwan,

  counting Hong Kong), but never thought

  to ask him to come along. Because his papers

  were fake. He was an illegal alien. We should’ve

  chanced going, if only to join for a while

  the hosts and hosts of people whose joy it is

  to be a crowd walking along the river.

  Without Father, without Mother, I traveled

  to China, the Central Nation, and found out

  that I myself am Empress of the Center. I

  was bowed to; I was addressed “Your majesty.”

  I walked down the steps of the music temple.

  I walked with the crowd, my people, along

  a stream of Pearl River. I felt the crowd full,

  complete; they are all here—Wen-chi

  and her retinues, Fa Mook Lan and her army,

  the Vietnamese princess and her

  celebrants, Chu Ping and the dragon boat

  racers, the Long Marchers, John Mulligan

  and the shopping cart soldiers, and old people

  from long ago and from yesterday. All

  these people belong to me. The ground

  I’m walking belongs to me. I feel ownership

  of the fields before me, and the hills I see and the hills

  beyond my sight, and the river and the connecting rivers

  to the South China Sea, and the Indian Ocean, and more

  oceans, and lands the waters touch. I own

  and am responsible for all of it. My kuleana.

  My duty. My business. Up to me. I walk

  my land and territory, and see how, what

  my people are doing. I’ve felt this majesty before—

  at Cal Berkeley, my universi
ty, where I studied

  and taught. I walk that campus of groves and daylight

  creeks, and hills, whence I watch the sun

  set into the horizon and compassing sea.

  Mine: the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory,

  the Radiation Laboratories, the ones in Livermore

  and Los Alamos. And the cyclotron and the stadium,

  both sitting on the Hayward Fault, on the North

  American Plate crunching past the Pacific Plate.

  My failure: U.C. Berkeley sawed down

  and wood-chipped the oak grove and Grandmother Tree.

  The next task: Prevent British Petroleum,

  which endowed 50 million dollars to Cal, from

  building labs along—over—Strawberry

  Creek and up and across Strawberry Canyon.

  Jingyi, the English teacher who recognized

  me—“your majesty”—teaches at Jinan

  University. MaMa had a friend

  who taught there, visited us in California;

  I couldn’t find her at Jinan, moved to Australia.

  I took Jingyi’s hand. Holding hands,

  laughing, we walked from the music temple, walked

  along the river, walked with our village.

  (Ours, though she’s from Xinjiang, where Uighurs live.)

  I joined, a day late, the 10,000

  old people. And the crowd walking

  jam-packed along the Red River in Viet Nam

  (Red River too in Minnesota) and the Perfume

  River through Huế. And the lines of mourners reading

  the names on the Vietnam Memorial, and seeing

  ourselves, like a platoon, like a peace march, reflected

  in the black granite. Crowdstream everywhere

  always walking, moving, moving, migrating,

  connecting, separating, losing the others, off

  on one’s own, finding them, losing them again,

  finding again. We are a curl of the scroll,

  “Along the River during Ching Ming Festival.”

  People dressed in holiday clothes are leaving

  their huts and villas, crossing bridges on foot

  and on horses and camels, rowing little boats

  along the banks and around islands and shoals.

  Ladies are riding sedan chairs from out

  the city gates. Men work the festival,

  selling food and tree branches, juggling

  balls and plates, staging a play, staging

  a puppet show. Men carry loads.

  Men drive wide teams of mules,

  10 mules wide. Poor men beg;

  monks beg. Mid-river, mid-scroll,

  the Rainbow Bridge carries people and animals

  up and over the river. Oh. Oh.

  A ship is blowing sideways into the bridge;

  sailors are lowering the sails as fast as they can.

  Teams of men on the shore and under the bridge

  are pulling on tow ropes. A few people

  at the railings watch for the ship to slide beneath them.

  I remember: I was one of many tiny people—

  the grown-ups tiny as well as the children—

  walking through blue space, nothing

  above and below but sky. We were refugees

  fleeing war, carrying babies, carrying

  bundles of all we own, herding and leading

  work animals and pets, yet we were

  happy and gay, dressed in layers and layers

  of our prettiest clothes, out for a walk

  on a bright and sunny day. Warm sun

  lit scarves and blankets red and turquoise,

  colors everywhere. I looked down

  at my feet; I was wearing high-ankle shoes

  of white light. I was walking on a floor

  that was gold-brown skin, the back of a giant,

  who had made a bridge of himself. His hands held

  on to an edge of a mountain crevice, and his toes

  dug into the opposite edge. My father

  walked alongside me. I was safe;

  I was not scared. I have a sure memory

  of this scene of my life, but could it be

  memory of a dream, a former incarnation, a movie?

  I have searched high and low through archives

  of movies, and cannot find the Rainbow Bridge

  Giant helping people like my family and tribe

  walk across the sky. I found proof

  of happenings which I have no bodily nor

  mental memory of—snapshots of me

  riding a camel, sitting on a red and gold

  blanket between its humps, riding on a cold

  windy clear day atop the Great Wall.

  Behind me and before me, the Great Wall

  rises and falls, rises and falls with the domes

  and kettles of the Qilian mountain range,

  crenellated spine of Dragon. Guard towers

  at interval peaks. With mittened hands,

  I am tufting and petting the tawny liony fur

  on the hump in front of me. The camel’s hair

  and my hair are blowing in the Gobi wind.

  My hair—salt-and-pepper hair, not

  long ago—blows across my face

  and into my eyes. I should’ve said to myself

  out loud, “I am astride a camel;

  we’re traveling the Long Wall. We’ll take the Long Wall,

  then the Silk Road, and arrive in the West.”

  As Empress of the Center, I see from on high:

  all/no space and time, human

  populations and individuals forever

  on the move, migrating like bears and whales

  and cranes, walking, riding, flying along

  and across rivers and oceans, islands and continents.

  “You twain! and all processions moving

  along the streets! I wish to infuse myself among you

  till I see it common for you to walk hand in hand.”

  I rented a bicycle, left my passport

  as collateral, and joined a river of bicyclists.

  Entering, merging, I pedaled, glided apace

  in the steady, balanced surge of fellow cyclers.

  Bells burr burr-ring burr-ring.

  I wheeled along with families of 4, 5,

  couples, babies with net over their faces,

  high-heeled ladies, pets (an illegal puppy

  peeked out of a box), poultry, furniture,

  produce. All streaming along, streaming

  on and on, rolling through intersections,

  through markets, past pancake and corn-

  on-the-cob venders, street barbers, podiatrists,

  bicycle repairers, through the clink clink

  clink of women breaking up rocks,

  past the stadium, site of mass executions,

  swooping left turns in front of honking

  trucks, taxis, oncoming rivers

  of other bicycles. Pulling, drafting, we flow.

  We are blood. No moving over

  to a curb, no getting off. Give in

  to being lost; ride to unknown parts,

  until the cycling mass lets me go.

  Once I was on an airplane beside

  a village girl in the window seat. At takeoff

  I asked her, “Where are you going?”

  “Waw!” She shouted in surprise, and grabbed

  ahold of my hand, “You speak like me!”

  “Yes, I speak Say Yup language.”

  “Are you from the village?” “No, my MaMa

  and BaBa came from Say Yup villages.

  They left for New York. They lived in New York,

  then California. I was born in California.”

  I feel like a child, younger than this girl; I’m

  telling about parents as if I still had them;

  I’m talking in my baby language. “Waw!”

&
nbsp; she exclaimed, loud as though yelling across fields.

  “I am going to New York! I

  am meeting my husband in New York. He’s

  waiting for me in New York. He works

  in a restaurant. He’s rented a home. He sent

  for me, and waits for me.” She did not

  let go of my hand; I held hers tightly

  as we flew the night sky. She looked

  in wonder at webs of lights below.

  “Red red green green,” she said.

  “Red red green green,” my mother

  used to say, meaning, Oh, how pretty!

  The lights were white and yellow too, and gold,

  blue, copper. And above, stars and stars.

  Mother, MaMa, as you leave

  the village family you’ll never see again—

  Grandfather walked her as far as he

  could walk, stood weeping in the road until

  she could not see him anymore when

  she turned around to look. She’s off to that lonely

  country from where he returned broke—“I felt

  that I was dying.”—MaMa, girl,

  you are not traveling alone. I am

  traveling with you, here, holding your hand.

  I know that country you’re leaving for,

  and shall guide you there. I know your future.

  I’m your child from the future. Your husband

  will certainly meet you. BaBa will

  be at the East Broadway station.

  You will recognize each other,

  though he be dressed modern Western style.

  You will have a good, good life.

  You will have many children, and live a long,

  long life. You will be lucky.

  “You are lucky. Your husband has work.

  He’s rented an apartment, and made you a home.

  He saves money. He bought your plane ticket,

  he will be waiting for you at the airport.”

  She listened to the wise old woman teaching her.

  But how to instruct anyone the way to make

  an American life? How to have a happy

  marriage? For a long time in the dark,

  dozing, dreaming, thinking, we sat

  without speaking, without letting go

  of warm hands. The red red green

  green appeared again. I told her,

  “That’s Japan. We’re over Japan now.

  We’ll be landing soon in Narita.”

  “Waw! You speak Japanese too.”

  She admires me too much. Inside

  the horrible confusion of the international

  airport, how can a mind from

  the village not fall to crazy pieces?

  I found a nice American couple making

  the connecting flight to New York, and asked

  them please to take this Chinese girl