transhumance
Home is an artifice. I go back to the house in Wuhu with the
climbing plants and the turtle pond. The flat in Shanghai
with the untiled bathroom. The cul-de-sac where the Halloween haul
was most bountiful; the third space between backyards,
the mysterious wellspring where the grass grew greenest.
In the woods we burned paper money and left plastic bags
stuffed with sweets and oranges. Ba stuck the still-smoking incense
upright into the earth — the way we were always forbidden to do with our
chopsticks because it evoked this very act. We brought Wai Po m&ms?
I said, and they laughed together. As we left the hillside we lit
firecrackers along the path so they would know we had come and
done our duty. Ma fed the remaining bills, Franklins and Maos,
into the trough by the entrance. They’ve living it up over there, she said
as we walked back to the car, on fat wallets and American candy.
The Gold Mountain men wrote lies to their wives
by candlelight. How they never went hungry. How they sang
as they worked, stripping cane, skin from bone on a washboard.
Back in the house with the climbing plants, Ma unloaded, with
all due solemnity, the spoils of our last Costco run: mixed nuts,
soft gels, Pond’s cold cream. I marveled at how she could perfectly recall
the long list of recipients, placing each gift into the hands
of whoever would then valiantly protest, and shove them
back into hers, with a ferocity that looked so much like love.
And the Chinese believe in an ethics of penmanship,
a character of characters, an energy of body to paper to brush.
What must it say about me then, that Ba can’t tell the difference
between my 2s and my Ls, the curlicue ends like a hem left to drag
in the dust, a laugh that shouldn’t escape at the dinner table.
I learned that I am no sojourner, heartlines oriented
eastwards, but rooted — salt of the earth,
sowed in the wrong soil.
