I Love a Broad Margin to My Life (3 page)

                    I’m standing on top of a hill;

I can see everywhichway—

the long way that I came, and the few

places I have yet to go. Treat

my whole life as formally a day.

I used to be able, in hours, to relive,

to refeel my life from its baby beginnings

all the way to the present. 3 times

I slipped into lives before this one.

I have been a man in China, and a woman

in China, and a woman in the Wild West.

(My college roommate called; she’d met

Earll and me in Atlantis, but I don’t

remember that.) I’ve been married

to Earll for 3 lifetimes, counting

this one. From time to time, we lose each other,

but can’t divorce until we get it right.

Love, that is. Get love right. Get

marriage right. Earll won’t believe

in reincarnation, and makes fun of it.

The Dalai Lama in
How to Expand Love

says to try “the possibility that past

and future rebirth over a continuum

of lives may take place.” We have forever.

Find me, love me, again.

I find you, I love you, again.

I’ve tried but could not see

my
next
life. All was immense black

space, no stars. After a while,

no more trying to
pro
gress, I returned—

was
returned—to an ordinary scene that happened

yesterday, and every sunny day: Earll and I

are having a glass of wine with supper—bruschetta

from our own tomatoes and basil—under the trellis

of bougainvillea, periwinkly clematis,

and roses. Shadows and sunlight are moving at Indian

summer’s pace. The Big Fire burned

the grove of Monterey pines. We planted

purple rain birches, Australian tea

trees, dogwood, the elm, locust, catalpa,

3 redwoods from seed, 4 pepper

willows, and 7 kinds of fruit trees.

The katsura and the yucca are volunteers.

That Texas privet and the bamboo, survivors. Here,

I feel as I felt in Hawai‘i, as I felt in Eden.

A joy in place. Adam and Eve were never

thrown out; they grew old in the garden.

They returned after travels. So, I,

like the 14th Dalai Lama, have arrived

at my last incarnation? I don’t feel a good

enough person to be allowed off the wheel.

I am guilty for leaving my mother. For leaving

many mothers—nations, my race, the ghetto.

For enjoying unconsciousness and dreams, wanting

sleep like thirst for water. I left MaMa

for Berkeley, then 17 years in Hawai‘i.

Couldn’t come home winter and spring breaks,

nor summers. She asked, “How can I bear

your leaving?” No, I’m not translating right.

“Can I seh doc your leaving?” Seh doc

tells the pain of losing something valuable.

How can she
afford
my leaving?

Seh doc
sounds like
can write
.

Sounds almost like my father’s name.

Father who left her behind in China for 15

years. I too left her.

“Lucky,” she bade and blessed, in English. “Lucky.”

She and Father stood at the gate, looking

after me. Looking after each child as

we left for college, left for Viet Nam.

Her eyes were large and all-holding.

No tears. She only cried when laughing.

Me too. I’m in tears laughing.

From the demimonde, Colette wrote, lying

to her mother, All’s well, I’m happy.

Our only son did not leave us;

we left him in Hawai‘i.

Generations. Karma. Ah Goong

walked my mother to the end of Tail End

Village. Whenever she looked back, he was still

standing there weeping and looking after her.

I’ll watch over Wittman Ah Sing

go through the leaving of his wife. A practicing artist

herself, Taña understands the wanter

of freedom. Let him go. If they stay put,

husband and wife lose each other anyway,

artist and artist dreaming up separate

existences. Go on roads through country you define

as you go. Wend through taboo mazes.

“But, Wittman,” says Taña, “ ’til death us do part.”

(Say those words, and you vow once again.)

“No, Taña, not death, only away awhile.”

Married so long, every word and moment is

thick with strata and fathoms and echoes.

35 years ago, they climbed

the Filbert Steps, walked in and out

of garden gates, pretended this house

and that house were home. They’d wed atop

Coit Tower. Look! Where it comes again.

Our wedding tower lifts out of the fog

and the forest edge of the City. “I need

to get to China, and I have to go

without helpmeet. I’ve been married to you

so long, my world is you. You

see a thing, I see it. The friends you

like, I like. The friends you can’t

stand, I can’t stand. My

perception is wedded to your perception.

You have artist’s eyes. I’d wind up

seeing the China you see. I want

to see for myself my own true China.”

Taña says, “So, you don’t want to be

with me, and we become old, old

lovers and old artists together. You,

my old lover. I love you, old lover.”

Wittman feels a rush that is Taña’s benevolence

for him suffuse him. He has to try harder

to leave her. “I love you, Taña. Thank you,

my wife, for our lifetime,

and our past lifetimes. We don’t

have to get divorce papers. We quit

being householders is all. The chi

connecting us will stretch infinitely.”

On such agreement, the long-married can part.

His birthday morning continues fair. The Bay

is busy with sailboats, and the ocean outside

the Golden Gate calmly opens forever.

All seems well, as though Water Margin

protected us. I have a soul, and it expands large

as I look out at the Pacific; I do

remember to look every single day.

Suddenly, I get scared. Some

fanatic is delivering by freighter or yacht or barge

or cruiser a nuke. BANG! The end.

The separating couple drive to Reno—not

for divorce but to give their son, Mario, a chance

to say Happy Birthday, Dad, and Goodbye.

Spelling each other at the wheel, they cross

stateline at South Shore Lake Tahoe,

travel Highway 50, the Loneliest Road

in America. Objective correlative everywhere—

lonely Sierras, lonely turkey buzzards, lonely

railroad tracks, ghost towns, lone

pines. You can stay on Highway 50

all the way across the U.S.

of A., but they turn off in Reno.

Husband and wife walk its streets hand-in-

hand; they keep ahold of each other;

they could divorce in an instant. They arrive

in the middle of Mario Ah Sing the Real’s

Magic Show. (The father a mere monkey,

a trickster; the son a magician of the actual.)

There he is—our dear, only son.

Father and mother feel shock, thrill

at sight of him—grown, a man, a strange-

looking man. It’s the Hapa eyes;

he’s got the epicanthic fold
and

the double lid. The better to see you with,

my dear. Mario spots his parents

heading in the dark for the last empty table.

And his patter changes. He is strange-

sounding
too, his voice deep even as a

hairy baby. “… Raised in Hawai‘i, no

picnic. Too much da kine. Da

bad kine. You dink it’s all

aloha, you got another dink

coming, Haole. Take dees, Haole.

Take dat, Ho’ohaole.” He socks,

he punches, takes socks, takes punches that

clobber him against invisible walls. The audience

laughs “But. Yet. On the other hand—”

shaking out each sleeve of China Man gown.

Nada up his sleeves. “—the wahine are beautiful.

I love the wahine, and some of them have loved me.

They swam out to meet my ship.” He

chants spooky-voice mele, calls

upon his ‘aumākua—and a hula girl

appears out of nowhere / somewhere. She

hula hula up to him, her hands

making the “ ‘ama‘ama-come-swimming-to-me”

moves. Mario the Real snags a rope

of flowers in air, raises them above her head,

places them around her neck and shoulders. See?

No strings, no mirrors, no

hologram. Upon being circled, the Little

Brown Gal (in the little grass skirt)

says, “Aloha-a-a, Mario,” and on the long

out-breath becomes air. The flower

lei falls to the floor. The audience applauds.

“Aloha to you too,” says Mario. “A fine how

do you do. Hello goodbye.” He confides

to one and all, strangers and family alike:

“I’ve just been dumped. My wahine alohaed me.

Auwe! It hurts. Aiya!

My chi is broken. Aiya!” He lifts

his elbows; his arms dangle—broken wings.

The poor parents just about cry.

Oh, our son, our only child hurts

so bad, he presents his pain

for all to see. Oh, the guilt—to’ve raised

him among Hawai‘i’s violent people and heart-

breaking girls of every race. “Auwe-e-

e-e. Ai-ya-a-a.” And pidgin-speakers

teaching him to howl and yowl and keen. Our fault.

We should’ve stayed in California, mainland,

home after all. Having a kid

gets you running the hamster wheel.

But the audience is aiya-ing and auwe-ing.

He has an audience, and they’re with him, mourning along.

“My penultimate gal, Lori, girlfriend-

before-last, had the ring I gave her assayed.

Assayed?! I’d give her a fake?!

‘No, no,’ she said, ‘not fake.

It’s good—twenty-five hundred

dollars. Oh, Mālei. Oh,

Mai’a mālei, I love you.’

No, you don’t, Lori. You don’t

love me. You had me assayed.” The poor

parents should’ve broken him out of magic.

But he keeps truck with the Little People

(who live in the rocks at the edges of old gardens).

The sharma thrush was his ‘aumākua. The pair

that lived in the Surinam cherry hopped in the grass

behind his feet, sang on branches above

his head. All day they sang him night-

ingale songs. All year they flashed him

Hallowe’en colors. Now he plays

clubs and lounges—like night all the time.

Mario the Real uncoils a length of rope.

“This cowboy rope belonged to a paniolo

I rode with on the Big Island. Most likely

any old rope will do.

I throw it into the air like so—and something

or someone catches it. I can feel him or her

or it grab ahold. I better go

exploring, and see … ” He shinnies up the tense

rope, lifts one foot, sets it down,

then the other, sets it solidly down,

and pulls himself into the invisible.

Mario does not reappear for a curtain call.

The audience waits a stretch of dead time, then

disbands, wanders, examines the rope, which

collapses on the floor, an ordinary thing.

Such relief when the missing son (Oh,

too many dead sons!) in regular

T-shirt and jeans exits the side door

into the parking lot in daylight.

Those who’ve seen a baby erupt into being

will ever after fear that he’ll as suddenly

slide, slip, crash out of life. Now

you see him, now you don’t.

Father and mother both have nightmares—

war, the war, the wars happening at this

very instant. A missile drops from the star-

warring sky. A rocket shoots up

out of the mined earth. Harming our child,

who is all the ages he’s ever been. Shrapnel

rips through his face, his baby-fat cheeks,

his goateed chin. His mother holds

his head. His father holds his hands—

they’ve been chopped off. The magician’s hands

chopped off. Don’t try to comfort me,

that it’s only a dream, only a dream.

I answer for what I dream. Kuleana hana.

Our son was born year of the Rabbit.

The character
rabbit
under the character
forest

under the radical
home
equals the word

magic
. It’s all right that he didn’t graduate

from a 4-year college, didn’t become

an engineer. Admire the magician most

of all the artists. He makes something out of

nothing, can himself become nothing.

                                        The Ah Sing

family is together again; the parents hug

and kiss their grown son; he hugs and kisses

them back. You are safe. You are safe.

“Happy birthday, Dad. Howzit feel

turning sixty?” The father takes a deep

breath, and answers his son, “Old. I feel

old. I
am
old. No. No.

I don’t mean my looks. People of color

revenge: We always look good.

I feel time. It’s like a wind

cutting through my skin and insides. When

I was your age, time and I moved

at the same rate. I was
in
time. I went

with the music. The ancestors say: In China,

time moves slow like yearly rice, andante.

Chan / Zen has been working for 2,500

years to stop time—get that now-moment

down. I want to be where no-beginning–

no-end. I’m not good at staying put.

The older I get, the more tripping out

and flashbacks. I live again feelings

I’ve already gone through. Pink

embarrassments, red guilts, purple guilts.

I see
your
life too.
Your
life flashes

before me. I look at you, my son,

and you are every age. I saw you being

born, face first. I saw your face,

eyes, mouth tight, then maw!

You were mouth, all mouth—red

tunnel into a universe. Then I saw

your whole body, your hairy little wet

body—you were so small, how

can you make your way in the world? How

could I, myself small, safeguard you?

I saw you—I see you—sit up—an owlet

in a nest, blinking big eyes at me, at everything,

ears perky, hair perky. You

were not a cuddle baby. You kicked and punched

out of swaddling, out of diapers, out

of the little gown. You sledded down the stairs

in your walker, bawled at the bottom—alive! You

said, ‘My eyes are little, but I can see

so-o-o much!’ Your toddling down-

hill faster and faster, and not falling.

Your announcing, ‘I am Second Bull

of Second Grade.’ Oh, I just now

got it—you were in a fight. You

came out second. I saw you

take your time running the bases—you hit

three men home. Grand slam!

Your popping up out of the ocean—

alive! Rell Sunn the Queen of Makaha

was watching too. Your concentrating for an hour

on the written driver’s test. Your telling us that

you obey the law, you registered for the Draft.

I am constantly remembering you.” Meaning,

I am constantly
loving
you. I am constantly

worried about you. Old people suffer,

too much feeling, shaking with feeling,

love and grief over too many dear ones,

and rage at all that harms and hurts them.

“Mario, I’m going to China. No,

no, I don’t mean I’m going to die there,

home with the ancestors. I’m curious to know

who I am alone among a billion three

hundred million strangers who look like me.

I am Monkey of Changes.” Hero of the talk-

stories that he raised his son on.

“I regret I missed the Revolution, and ongoing

revolutions. I was kept busy claiming

this
country. ‘Love it or leave it.’ ‘Chink,

go back to China, Chink.’ I had to

claim my place, root down, own

America. This land is
my
land.

Why should
we
leave? We who made

everything wonderful, why should
we
leave?”

It’s easy to talk yourself out of leaving.

Easier to move in, stay, than to move out, go.