I Love a Broad Margin to My Life by Maxine Hong Kingston Read Free Book Online Page A

styly,
    expensive suit, expensive shoes, expensive
    luggage. “I’ll sweep the graves, I mean, fix them.
    Find my people’s bones, and bury them again.”
    (Oh, to say “my people.”) “Cousin
    was mad; he dug up Po and Goong.”
    Mr. Walking Mountain laughed—heh
    heh heh heh. Chinese laugh
    when telling awfulness. “Cousin dug and cried,
    dug and cried, ‘Out the Olds! Out
    the Olds! Out! Out, old family.
    Out, old thoughts. Out! Out!’
    He dug up our grandparents and scattered
    their bones—ha ha ha—because
    I was rich in Hong Kong and did not
    send money—heh heh heh—
    did not feed him, did not make good,
    did not make good him.” Chinese
    laugh when pained. “I return. I shall
    walk mountain, and follow li. I’ll
    make good the ancestors.”
Jing ho
.
    Make good. Fix
. “Dui dui,”
    said the Big Family. “Dui dui dui.”
    Oh, to hear dui dui dui
    to whatever I have to say.
    The listening world gives approval, dui
    dui dui dui. The train stops
    at stations in built-up places. Where’s
    open country? The planted fields, water
    and rice, rice and water, are but green
    belts around factory-villages. Those are
    50-gallon drums of something rusting
    into the paddy. That apartment and that
    factory
is
a village. Legs of Robotron
    stomp through the remains of the old pueblo.
    Gray pearlescence—marshes and lakes,
    mists and skies mirroring mirroring. Beautiful,
    and alive. Or dead with oil slick? Mist
    or smoke? Why are Wittman and I
    on journey with the dead, and escorts of the dead?
    Toward sunset, there swung past
    a series of pretty villages, yellow adobe
    houses, almost gold in the last light,
    almost houseboats, wood railings
    on the river for laundry and fishing. Half
    the homes hung on either bank. Make
    up your mind, Monkey, get off the train,
    see the rivertown, enter its symmetry.
    Paddle the river straight down the valley;
    stream with the sun’s long rays. Walk
    the right bank and the left bank. Get
    yourself invited into those homes. Sit
    on the balcony facing the river and the neighbors
    on the other side, everyone’s backs to mountains.
    Upon Good Earth, lay the body down,
    open the mouth wide, let song rush through.

RICE VILLAGE
    At the next station, Wittman, nobody else,
    got off. The moment his feet touched ground,
    the Chinese earth drew him down
    to her, made him fall to his knees, kowtow
    and kiss her. Gravity is love force. It bends
    light and time and us. Mother pulls us to
    her by heart roots. I have felt Great Spirit
    before: Touching the green wood door
    of Canterbury Cathedral. Hearing the air
    of Hawai‘i singing ‘Aina. Standing in the fire
    zone, where my house and neighborhood were burning.
    Lofting great balls of pink mana
    at the White House and Bush, and Iraq.
    The interested traveller walked along the railroad
    tracks, then up on path atop bunds.
    In the San Joaquin Delta, we walk and run
    and bicycle upon dikes too, call them levees.
    Many kinds of plants. Crop diversity.
    Rice in all stages of growing and going
    to seed. All seasons happening at once.
    Plains and terraces, levels and hills, greens
    dark and light, blues, and straw, are dotted
    with moving red—the farmers are working dressed
    in red. They can see where one another are.
    They are seen; they are lucky. It’s beautiful
    and lucky to dot red on anything—cookies,
    buns, baby carriers, envelopes, white
    chicken meat, white dogs. On one’s self,
    who blesses the earth good and red.
    Wittman got to their village before they did,
    nightfall ere home from work. The yellow
    adobe pueblo was one conjoined structure.
    Neighbor and neighbor lived with common walls
    this side and that side. Each life impacts
    every life. You’d have to live carefully.
    You’d watch your moods. And your actions.
    Curious Monkey entered through an opening
    in a wall and faced another wall,
    decided to go right, right being
    the right way, usually. The next doorway
    took him to an alley; he could look-see
    into courtyards,