Uncertain Journeys

—————————UNCERTAIN J O U R N EY S ——————————————————

carlin liu zia

new york

CITIES & MEMORY 3 In vain, great-hearted Kublai, shall I attempt to describe Zaira, city of high bastions. I could tell you how many steps make up the streets rising like stairways, and the degree of the arcades’ curves, and what kind of zinc scales cover the roofs; but I already know this would be the same as telling you nothing. The city does not consist of this, but of relationships between the measurements of its space and the events of its past: the height of a lamppost and the distance from the ground of a hanged usurper’s swaying feet; the line strung from the lamppost to the railing opposite and the festoons that decorate the course of the queen’s nuptial procession; the height of that railing and the leap of the adulterer who climbed over it at dawn; the tilt of a guttering and a cat’s progress along it as he slips into the same window; the firing range of a gunboat which has suddenly appeared beyond the cape and the bomb that destroys the guttering; the rips in the fish net and the three old men seated on the dock mending nets and telling each other for the hundredth time the story of the gunboat of the usurper, who some say was the queen’s illegitimate son, abandoned in his swaddling clothes on the dock.

As this wave from memories flows in, the city soaks it up like a sponge and expands. A description of Zaira as it is today should contain all Zaira’s past. The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls.

—Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

for you

uncertain journeys 

A PART


( CURIOSITY CURIOSITY ) 1. let’s begin on the fourth of june in 2016 and let’s begin with a phone call: curiosity curiosity

[crackle] hello? hello? hi grandpa! hey, how are you, carlin? we got connected! i’m great, how are you? i’m fine; how are you doing with your, class, everything? yeah! classes are good, i’m taking two, right now, i emailed you, and then i’m taking one in the second half of the summer. so, yeah, looking forward to that. uh huh. are you taking—are you going on to the second summer session? yeah, i will be uh hah and then— that’ll be in july—that will be in july?

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uh, yep! yeah so this goes through, i think it’s june 30th, and then the next one starts that next week and goes for, all of july and then a couple days into august. i see, good, good. yep! well, how do we go about this thing? heh-heh. so i’m—it’s working! i’m on the website part of it right now, so i can see my little bubble talking and then your little bubble. and then it’s automatically recording! so, i think it’s gonna work for what we’re doing. okay, as i told you, you know, we can do this try first, just kind of get some idea how we go about and how we get connection. and when we get back on the 14th, then i can use landline, which may be a little more clear, or use cell phone; and since both will have unlimited time, so we can keep talking as long as time allows, as long as we have more need. but in the meantime, i’ve been thinking about, you might think about this, how to organize the information that you like to talk about. and i was thinking about now in addition to the little detail on how i come about to this country, and what was like when i first come to this country, perhaps you would also be interested in knowing how, the condition, how it was when i was growing up.

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yeah definitely. i think we should go all the way, if you’re up for it? alright. if we go all the way, then it’s almost like a little short biography, or a short memoir. yeah! that’s what i was thinking. i’m so happy to just sort of from your side of things, to just go with what you remember. to just get down as much as possible from what you remember. and then later we can go back, i can go back, and sort of organize things more or put it all together. yeah once we get enough information, then you can start really compose and start the formal writing, put things together, and organizing, you know, that, better logical shape or things like that. uh? yeah putting pieces together—i mean it could be that in months you remember a thing from your childhood or something about that, or we discover a piece of information—sort of as it comes we’ll just try to keep it all in one place and then i’ll get to work! yeah this is why i think if i was gonna do something, then the best—i don’t want—i want to get my memory recorded as much as i can, for the benefit of the younger generations and future generations, right? absolutely! i think it’s so important and i’m so excited!

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yeah yeah you keep on hearing people say, you know, oh their great-great-grandparents immigrated to the united states—now, what were they like? yeah! what—were—they—like—? [laughs] so this way, if you think of certain questions and you give to me, then i can start to jog my memory, and after i put enough things down on paper like what i did last night, then it will be worthwhile for you to start do some writing, organizing. and we probably could do for instance, i’ve been thinking about—what is the best way to organize the thing. and i had thought about a setup: perhaps just organize everything that i can think of, we can talk about in four different segments. first would be before the chinese-japanese war starts, which was about 2-3 years before pearl harbor, and that would put me up to about when i was 12 years old, just about i believe. and then when the japanese attacked the chinese, then we moved. we moved from our hometown, which incidentally you saw the place where i lived. you remember those three story, very dilapidated, the condos? yeah we moved out there because the japanese attack. my father managed to hire a sampan—you know what sampan boat is? like a rowboat? no— we were all put in there by the farmer and hidden in that boat, and we rowed overnight to avoid the japanese. and it

UNCERTAIN JOURNEYS // 17

got us to a big ship in the yangtze river and it took us to shanghai wow so that was the second stage in my life, you might say. because of the war, the japanese attacked chinese, so we left home, went to shanghai. so i finished my sixth grade in shanghai and started my middle school and high school in shanghai. from then on, we never returned back home, you know, we just stayed in shanghai. so that’s the second stage. and then of course, couple years later when pearl harbor starts, then the situation in shanghai changed again because the japanese now at that time was in the war with the american and british. previously, you know, japanese was simply in the war with china, japanese was not in the war with europe obviously. when pearl harbor start, the japanese really is hooked up with the germans and the german is fighting in the european front and the japanese try to conquer the asian front. so that becomes another period, right? yeah definitely and then pearl harbor was over. and then the peace came along—i mean world war ii was over after 1945. and when the second world war was over, then of course we had world peace, and then that’s the year i entered college. so from ’45 to ’49 i finished my degree, but by ’49 the chinese government, which at that time was the nationalist government, was chased away by the communist, and then

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to taiwan. well wait a minute—’45 i entered college, so by the time i graduated was ’49. yeah. so after ’49, right after i graduated, basically almost a month and a half, i get the process going and come to this country. and then of course after that i remained here, so that’s another part of my life all the way up to now. yeah! yeah that’s crazy. so the pre-japanese war, as you were growing up, sort of, before you left home. and then from when you left home to college? or through college do you think? that other section? no, the second section is the few years between the japanese war and pearl harbor. yeah. also during pearl harbor. and then after the end of world war II, i went to college in shanghai. and then at that time the communists were sort of starting to move—? yeah and in four years time, college life and everything, i finished college, and then come over here. great, yeah that sounds awesome. yeah all these things i can dig up the information, in fact some of these history you can find them in the—what’s that, on google, you know like an encyclopedia, wiki, w— oh, wikipedia! yeah! wikipedia!

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and i’m also totally, i’m happy to sort of do more background research as well, those sort of historical stuff, rather than you having to recall—i think maybe what’s more important than specific dates and things would be you remembering events based on what that meant in your life and for your family and moves and relationally, and then later we can piece together when historically that coincided. i don’t know what do you think? i think that’s right—i think i would put a skeleton of events on first and then it’d be worthwhile to have the correct dates and we can always look up and verify, as accurate as possible. so i think what we can talk about either way, whichever period we want to start chatting about it, see whatever little events that i remember that still stick in my mind and kind of link them together to make a little story, make a story out of. yeah that sounds great! cool, so yeah, i’m happy to do that for organization, with your timeline thing, and then once we sort of get into it and see where your memories are accumulating and maybe distributed, then maybe we can decide where exactly to make the splits, but i like the general idea as a place to start. i think, basically, talking about what my childhood was, and then my adulthood was, and my college days, and then coming over here as a young adult, you might say.

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but like, grandpa, the thing is, the story doesn’t end there, you know, the story doesn’t end when you get to the us it’s just, that’s like another part of it— but really i’ve thought about it, is the war events really changed my direction a great deal, right? every event caused, made a big shift in the family, in my own life, so to speak. otherwise, without those war events, i can conceive i’d be just growing up like a normal condition would be, just like a normal upper-middle class chinese back at home, that’s all, probably. yeah. so this war events really a driving force, change one’s life a bit. definitely. “just a bit”! okay, so what—you think about it more, see how you want to go about it, you want to talk about any different order or whatever, whenever we talk about it. since you record them you can transcribe them, and then you can reshuffle them, you can reorganize them any way. yeah definitely, that’s what i was thinking—i was wondering if you wanted to go about it in terms of just you sort of are thinking about things in between our conversations and then you want to come into them with sort of an idea of what you want to talk about already? and that can sort of be all over the place chronologically in terms of what comes to mind for you. or, i mean i guess we can kind of do a combination of these two things, but another option would be that i come up with a list of

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questions that i can sort of prompt you with and see where that goes, or just kind of go boom-boom-boom? whichever you want. yeah, okay, so why don’t we do this: let me think about it, recall some of the things i thought might be interesting to keep, to write down. and so when we get back to raleigh, then we can make a connection like this, and we start talking, i may say “well, i seem to remember this this this this this” and i just mention that and go from there. and maybe you say “oh well what about this, and what it’s like,” and that may trigger my more memories, and record them. okay? okay that sounds great! looking forward to it. how about we email some for timing about when you guys are going to come back and when you want to do the first, sort of, full-on call? i have class monday/wednesday in the afternoon and then tuesday/thursday in the evening. but i can— maybe weekend is better for you? yeah, weekends are good, and maybe even like thursday afternoons could do a chunk. in terms of distributing my work schedule and stuff. but let’s plan for weekends. do you want to do— when i get back, then i’ll send you email. first few days chances are i will have lot of things to do, getting refill for medicines and catch up with all the mails and all of those things. and after maybe few days i settle down and either

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the first weekend after we get back or following week i’ll send you email to suggest what time you might be available and try to aim at either saturday or sunday as the first choice. in the meantime if you said you know “i could do this thursday at certain time in the afternoon” if i don’t have any other things to do, that would be fine too. yeah sounds good. okay cool so i’ll wait to hear from you email-wise how those first couple days home are shaking out, but then maybe pencil in that weekend the 18th/19th? okay sounds good. give grandma a hug for me good talk to you you too! yeah you take care i’m very excited for this. you too, okay, safe travels and everything okay bye okay bye, love you yeah we love you bye

A PART


( GARDEN GARDEN )

1. these are my great-grandparents among the roses in one of the courtyards segmenting the family home in changzhou. this is my grandfather’s hand and our thumbnails are the same squat spades. we’d been recording his life story for almost a year when my grandfather added that he had a file somewhere of all the letters his father had sent after my grandfather had left home in 1949. when i visited raleigh that june, a year after our first phone call, we located the manilla envelope in the metal cabinet under the basement stairs and there they were, there was the house, there was the garden.  garden garden

A PART


ARDEN ( GCURIOSITY )

1. garden curiosity

alright, okay, what questions you have? let’s talk—i’ve been thinking about, i’m trying to recall how our old home look like, and see if i can sketch it out, how different room connects and so on and so forth. when i get a sketch i’ll make a PDF, a scan, and send it to you that sounds great but i have to think about roughly what kind of scale it is, so that it will look reasonably, in proportion mm, mhm, yeah otherwise, yeah. so i’m trying to think, you know, in old times in china, roughly how big that room might be, you know, just imagine in my own mind, okay and you were small, also [laughs] well it’s true! how big you were yeah, when you’re small, you look a distance much bigger [laughs] yeah [laughing] and that’s okay too. well i guess i’m wondering, i sort of have two places where we could start. one being, sort of more in hometown sort of age, and then one sort of transitioning into the move to shanghai, which, do you want to start sort of earlier on and go from there?

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yeah, you know, did i ever mention to you how the japanese bombed us when i was in grade school? you have not mentioned that yet! well you know of course—yeah i guess we talk a whole lot about before, about my childhood, it was more or less in the, maybe third or fourth grade or something like that, but at any rate, when i was in the fifth grade, which would —that would be what, my age would be eleven, right? and i was born in ’26, plus 11, so that’s ’37, right, and that year was the year that the Japanese, uh, start attacking China.

They created what is known as, in English, known as the Marco Polo Bridge Incident Okay If you go to let’s say Google or Wik—what’s that called— wiki, wiki— Wikipedia?

Yeah, Wikipedia. If you look the Chinese Japanese conflict you will get a whole lot about, the history, about how in 1937 Japanese created incident at a location north of Beijing; in English it’s called Marco Polo Bridge Incident, and they claimed the Chinese soldier attacked them or something, or maybe their, a Japanese soldier was attacked

by Chinese people, whatever. Then under that pretense they start formally attacking China; that’s how the war started. And when that started, and then later formally I think was in August-something, August 13, then they have

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a full march through into China from Manchuria, remember at that time they basically occupied Manchuria; Manchuria was under their occupation for some time. So once that war started, they start bombing—you know, just kind of threat to China, because China was defenseless, there was no air force or whatever, all they had was some anti-aircraft guns on the ground, which didn’t do very well.

So that Japanese, very small airplanes, single engine airplane —you know like what you saw on the Pearl Harbor, that kind of stuff? That dive down and then drop a bomb, that kind of stuff? They use that aircraft to attack China and all that stuff. Then they started bombing the different important places along the railroad between Shanghai and Nanjing.

And at that time, that is really considered the most important major railroad because Nanjing was the Capital of China, and Shanghai being the largest city, and a major international trade city, so the traffic between Shanghai and Nanjing by railway—and remember those days there was no, very little commercial airline transportation—so main transportation is relied on the railroad. And so when they start the war with China, the important thing for them to do is try to damage your railroad transportation, so that if you get main lines all interrupted, then the Chinese military will have very little defense, it will be made very easy for them to, marching through.

And our hometown was in the middle of that railroad, almost like mid-point between Shanghai and Nanjing Mmm

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And so therefore, the railroad had, right from beginning, put a major repair shop, a service shop for railroad, in our city, because that midpoint, easy to serve the trains that need service and repair, right? So as a result, this also became a target by the Japanese aircraft, to bomb it. and so that year of course i was in the fifth grade, in the elementary school, and i remember vividly we will have one, couple times, usually comes shortly before noon, and we’ll have an air raid alarm all the city. all the teachers immediately, you know, gather up all the kids—we maybe have thirty kids or so in the classroom—and they’ll walk out of the classroom—the classroom was just, you know, one room and one side has a covered walkway, like a corridor, right? but it’s not interior corridor, it’s right by the corridor is open space, open courtyard. so the walkway basically, passage, is covered walkway, and one side is the wall to the classroom, other side is open. so we would be marched by the teacher, out of the classroom, and everybody stooped down, one after another, lining against the wall, in that corridor. and the idea being that if the building is bombed and fall down, then, you know, we may be able to escape a major injury because of the protection of the wall. and then i remember staying stooped down and, at that position, but raise head looking through the open, you know, open sky, to see where the plane is, and you—i would see usually two, two or at most three, they’re just zooming around, circling around, look like flies, you know. and all of a sudden, you know, one

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plane will [plane sound!] you know, dive down, go very low, and you can see the bombs being dropped, and then the plane will climb up and the bomb will come down in few seconds you’ll hear the big [explosion sound!] you know, explosion. so, luckily our, inside the city, our school, so there was not really bombed, but it was very scary, and they did not want to bomb the civilian, really, their main target was railroad, but railroad is not too far outside the city limits so, in those days the city was fairly small so you almost feel it was next street being hit. that was very scary experience for a kid like that, you know. then sometimes they will bomb you in the evening, and then in that time, during that time, then we would, you know the city would tell the citizens that when air raid alarm sounds, siren sounds, then you would have to turn off all the lights, and if you have lights on then be sure you pull up your curtain and cover up the window, so that the outside, the airplane above the city, the japanese airplane, cannot see any light below in order to avoid being bombed. but those kind of measures are really minimal. if they want to bomb they can certainly just blind bombing, and kill your people, but luckily they did not do that. and of course those days the technology is not high, that good, so even japanese aircraft i doubt they have those kind of night vision radars and all that stuff, because all that technology was developed during world war ii, and especially after world war ii, so those were very scary

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experience for a kid of, like, you know, eleven year old, something like that. and so, after that kind of situation for a few months, you know, from august, july, the incident, the, you know, socalled marco polo incident, was in china we all, everybody know, occurred on july 7th, seven-seven right, july 7. and then after that occurred, then they blamed china for this, blame china, you know there’s some kind of a, there was some level of negotiations, but you know, invariably, it never succeed, because obviously, japanese had already decided that their intention is to invade, so they formally start invading august 13th, that again is eight-one-three, august 13th, eight-one-three, is a date that all the chinese remember, and that’s the date that they formally marched into china, the army, from manchuria. and so, probably the bombing was, i would say, oh, some time in september, and so, after several bombing like that, and then they start marching very quickly from northern china, and through the, follow the railway between beijing and nanjing, so they coming along—the japanese army, follow, you know taking all of these major railroads, and they can use railroad to transport their soldiers very fast, so they quickly took over these major important cities, and so i think it’s by early october they were very close to us, i think they already took nanjing, and coming quickly towards east, toward shanghai. of course before they reach shanghai they’ll reach our hometown first, so that’s when my father decided it’s time

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we should leave. and so we all packed up, and at that time the japanese already occupied outside the city. and so, my father hired a rowboat—the flat bottomed rowboat? the kind with the little hatch on top? the fishermen use to— you see those in the chinese painting? mhm and so he hired a little boat, fairly large sized boat, but it’s like that, and so we all stayed in the hatch, lying down. and the boat people, the family owned the boat, they of course will do the rowing, and guided the boat from—at that time in front of our house is a river, which is connected to grand canal and all that, and eventually will connect to the yangtze river, so we actually boarded our boat right in front of our house. and that boat will take us out of the city, and they knew the japanese were around, and they didn’t want to be seen by the japanese, so they would anchor the boat in some kind of, you know, near the shore, among the bushes, like that, hide it, in other words, to avoid being seen by the japanese army patrolling. but at the same time, they also know, our local people, knew that the japanese army only occupied some of these big cities, and even though daytime they patrol around the countryside, around the city, but they at night they’re afraid of guerrillas so they do not come out; they stay in their own compound, the japanese military compound. and so they know that, and at night they can freely go through these transportation routes.

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so that’s how they did. they took us, put on the boat, and at night, i think it’s almost two nights or something, row us, row the boat, until we reached the yangtze river, and by the time we reach the yangtze river, the river on which our boat was rowing, we could see it’s also just open wider and wider, and when we got to the junction of that river and the yangtze river, we could see a big passenger boat, which belonged to some foreign country, which of course they fly the foreign flag, and obviously the japanese would—they’re not to attack it because they don’t want to create a war with these other foreign country. and that most likely was either british or american boat. and so we could see that it was parked right in, near shore, but because the boat was bigger it could not get to the shoreline, anchored in the deeper water. and so our little boat will row us all the way up to the edge of that big boat, and then they help all of us up to the boat and took all our luggages, belongings, whatever we could carry, onto the big passenger boat, and so then, that very day, after, apparently that boat knew how many passengers they expect, when they get everybody’s on board then the boat, the passenger boat start to sail, along yangtze river, and in i think a day and a half or something like that, or maybe one day, then we reached shanghai. and so that’s how we departed from hometown to shanghai and after that point, we, you know, our whole family basically just stayed in shanghai; did not—my parents, my other siblings, everybody, was stay in shanghai at that time. on that boat, the ones that we traveled with my parents, father and mother, and my oldest brother and his wife—and they

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were married i think a year or so before that—and then my sister, my fourth brother, my fifth brother, and me. my second and third brother were not with us, because they were already in college, they were not at home. so our house, in the hometown, that’s where i grew up with, was basically, was during that era, was basically left open, left empty, maybe even, just being looked after by some of the servants who remained back there, they were probably, you know, given some money, asked them to stay there to keep the place secure, and, so the house was not re-occupied by anybody until, i would say, after the communists took over, they succeed—until after communists succeeded the revolution, which would be in 1949. at that point, my second brother, he of course by then already graduated during the world war ii and came back to changzhou, our home—back to east from inland china, where the university moved to—and began to work, and so he became the chief mechanical engineer for a big textile company in our hometown, and i think it was during that time, he moved back into our old home, and he was really the last person ever occupied that home. and by and by after the communist regime decided to nationalize all the private property, and they took over our home, chopped it up into all the different rooms, allowed all those country folks, all the people who did not have property in shanghai, to occupy those places, claim that’s their own home, you know, so, that’s how, uh, the situation, if you remember when you were in shanghai, we

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showed you the apartment that we were in, were all chopped up, each floor was occupied by different family? mhm yeah, our hometown, big home was also like that. and in fact in 1980 when i first went back, invited back to give a lecture, and auntie may went there with me and i managed to get her inside our home, at that time my second brother still lived there, so that’s the reason we could go in there, to see only a part where we can have access to it. the other parts were all blocked up, doors were locked, because on the other side were some other family there, so, yeah. so, that was kind of a history of how we moved, how i moved with the family from changzhou to shanghai, before pearl harbor. yeah. do you remember— and then we stayed in shanghai—when we first got to shanghai we stayed in one location, until my father bought the property, the flat that you saw. and we stayed in that all the way through, yeah that’s how it is. but, on the other hand, i believe, after the communist took over all those— but that’s another part of the history there.

my father did, my parents did go back to the, our old family estate. of course they could not occupy everything

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they just occupied one section of it, and that’s where my father died during cultural revolution.

grandpa, do you remember what that conversation was like? when your father told you and your siblings and your mother, that you were leaving, your home? what was that conversation? say it again? my father? yeah, do you remember, the conversation with your father, when he told you that you would be leaving changzhou, and leaving your home? oh leaving for united states? no, leaving for shanghai, the first time, leaving oh, leaving our home in changzhou, to shanghai mhm, yeah um, no, i don’t remember any much conversation—you know, i was still very young, you should realize, only eleven years old, right, so all—all i know is father and mother said, well, we’re going to have to move; we’re going to shanghai. and so i don’t even bother to, you know, as child like that, we have servants at home, and so forth, so i don’t even bother with maybe even asked, told to pack my own bag or anything, you know, it’s all, my parents took care of it and they basically probably told the servants what to do, they all pack up things for us and then the luggage was

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hauled into the boat, and then finally they said, well, it’s time for us to go, and so we just boarded the boat and left. and so, i’m sure the older, my sister, my parents, they have different feeling—feelings—they have different feelings than i do i am sure. and i as a eleven year old kid, you really don’t—really don’t understand very much, other than the fact that, you know, we were being attacked by the japanese; we hated the japanese because they obviously, the propaganda by the government, aiming at the students, young people, you know, whip up all the sensations that, oh, we are being attacked, and we have to love our home country, we have to fight back, and all that kind of propaganda, see. so other than that, so’s well, you know, unfort—we’re, we’re gonna have to escape; this is war, and that’s about it. and my parents really did not have any, uh, special word for us, other than the fact that, well, be careful, and listen to us; obey whatever you’re told to do, because, you know, we have to sail at night, secretly, so to speak, carefully, avoid the japanese detection, and that of course is what the main—

—oh i—was wrong, come to think of it. earlier—i made a mistake.

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earlier i told you, i said, we had a river in front of our house, so actually we boarded the boat from there, and that was wrong. because there was another intermediate step. when we first escaped, we actually escaped from the city where our house was sitting, where we were living in; we escaped to the countryside. and i can’t even remembe—i don’t even know what part of the countryside would be; my hunch is on the—it probably is on the, uh, south west or west side of, of changzhou, because—we went to the farm, and the farm was owned by my grandfather, you know, he owned the land. and so on the farm there were many tenant farmers, and i think there must be a particular family that you might call is the, you know, asked by my grandfather to manage the farm, so sort of, you know, they’re given the land to tilled and they’re paid to manage the farm and so that collect all the rice and so forth, the produce, from the rest of the farmers, and deliver it to us as their payment every year. And so there must be, this particular family, they’re located on the farm, so we escaped to that, to that location first. and we were, at that location, maybe a month and a half or so before we get the boat, and sailed from that location to the big passenger boat in yangtze river. yeah. that is a segment that i forgot to mention earlier. so we did not actually leave home directly,

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because, i remembered, one of the things that impressed me, i never forgot, was that we were living in that farm, on that farm, with that family—of course they vacated a certain space for us to stay—maybe two, three rooms—and then of course like a typical farmhouse it was like kind of a straw, clay, stucco wall, with sort of a some are the thatched roof and some are the tile roof? you see some of those things in pictures and photographs and paintings and movies, things like that. and we were in that kind of a facility, and of course being very well served and fed by those families, but, i remember the one day, that word passed around from village to village, so, you know, we were staying in one of the villages, that, oh, the japanese army, about four or five people patrol is coming in our way. of course when we heard that that was very scary, right, because they were lot of, either facts or rumors, i think it was some are rumors some are facts, that the japanese would rape the women, and when they see pretty women, when they patrol or they maybe hit you, all the kind of a, scary stories. so i, as eleven year old boy, now that was kind of a scary thing to hear about it. and so, i remembered one morning, we got word, said, oh, the japanese have a—four, five japanese walking, patrolling, is already in the village—next village, which might be, you know, a mile, two mile from the village

UNCERTAIN JOURNEYS // 43

where we were. and when i say village, usually maybe a cluster of five to ten houses. those kind of farm houses. and maybe two, three farmers live there, occupied, do the farming of the land around it. and so we heard, the message came, said, there were four, five japanese soldiers with a rifle and bayonet and walking towards us. and so we all, get scared, so everybody said, i remember my parents would say, well, be careful, let’s stay indoors, don’t go out, don’t let them see, and get seen or shot, and if they pound —knock on the door, don’t answer, and all that. and so, i remembered my mother and my parents, my sister and the older brothers, they were all staying quiet in the room, and, but i was curious, so i crawl into a storage room where, you know, they store all the wheat straws and so forth, dried wheat straw as fuel? and in that room, there’s a peephole through the wall—heh!—i remember climbing up, quietly stayed on top of the pile of straw, and looking through the peephole to see, at very far distance, whether the japanese soldier are coming! and i stayed there for quite a while until i did see the japanese soldiers walking by at a distance along the path, you know, the farm path, and didn’t come to our village, and just walked right by. and so when, after they walked by, then i came back, said, oh, the japanese soldiers gone, they, you know, i saw, and so forth, yeah. and, that, that incident is still, is vivid in my mind [light laugh]. mm. wow.

44 \\ garden curiosity

you know, it was truly, ignorant—i was ignorant as a young boy. lot of curiosity, to see what they look like, and ignorant of any danger. whereas adults would be afraid, that’s why they all hide, they keep quiet. but i was ignorant enough, curious enough, want to see what happened. what do you remember about what they looked like? what do i remember what? do you remember what they looked like? you said you were curious just to see what they were doing? yeah, what do you remember about, about seeing them?

I think they were just patrolling. You know, you should realize, during the war, it’s just a military thing. They do not—if they want to occupy China, or any country, there’s no point to move the army, and keep army within the compound, right?

Mm They have to show their presence, and, just like police patrolling, so they want to patrol, they want to patrol the area where they have occupied, and maintain the order as they wish, and they want scare away, so to speak, any guerrillas, because they’re afraid of resistance forces! And in reality, naturally, there are a lot of Chinese, farmers and so forth, they’re resentful, because our home country is being occupied, being attacked, so Japanese definitely is the enemy, so the Chinese people will resist. And many

UNCERTAIN JOURNEYS // 45

farmers, you know, in their middle age, or teens, or in their twenty-thirties, they're strong, they’re young, they're healthy, and they will fight, they will fight back. And some they may have—they may not have a rifle, they may not have a weapon, but, you know how the guerrillas they attack, they will attack you at night, they will put a little, homemade bomb here or there, you know, things like that.

So that Japanese army, they do patrol, they want to see if there's any suspicious thing going around, so that, it’s really for their own security, and that’s the reason they were out.

But at night they’re afraid, because it’s dark Mhm So they don’t come out. But the daytime, they try to walk around, see what things are; if they see something suspicious, then they will investigate.

Yeah And if they see something hidden in the bushes, then they might suspect that might be a hidden bomb or time-bomb, whatever, and they will do, they will look into it, you know. If they see some people hiding in the bush, obviously they’ll grab them. And then they’ll try to interrogate them and find out whether indeed they are organized resistance force or they are just a poor individual who gets scared, hid in the bush when they pass by. Yeah.

And very often they uncover those things and you hear about that. That’s why, you know, the, for people like us it’s

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just, just be quiet, be careful, and not expose yourself to them, that’s what it amounts to.

Mm. So when you said that if that happened, like if the Japanese patrols found things, that then you would hear about them—um, how, how were you hearing about them? do you remember? like through— how do i what? how were you hearing about the japanese patrols that did find people, or that did investigate things; were you hearing about that like hearsay or newspapers or through the japanese...? yeah all those news in those areas, there’s no newspapers, there’s no radio broadcast. so all the news are past by word of mouth; you know, the farmers, they communicate, right, from one village to the other; they probably see each other at least once, if not more than two, three times. you know, usually these villages are few miles apart, and when they plow the field, they work in the field, they will see each other, and so, then, one farmer may pass the word to the other, and the other will pass to the third one, so through that kind, you never know, sometimes the story may be distorted, or the information mis—mis—made a mistake in passing the information around. so under that kind of circumstances, you really can only—whatever you hear you never think of 100% as true, you always think, well, is this true, could that happen, you think about that way, you know. so it’s just a—somebody exaggerated or

UNCERTAIN JOURNEYS // 47

somebody made a mistake, and if it seems reasonable then you believe it [laughs] that’s how, that’s how you know those days that the news passes around. so you were there for a month and a half? in the fall? yes, i think we were there probably for about, about, you know, four, three, four weeks. i would say probably about a month, roughly a month, before we left. yeah. so what were your days like when you were there? what? was it just sort of—like what was your average day, while you were there? was it just sort of, wake up, eat, sit quietly — oh the average day over there? uh, yeah, we—myself as a kid, would just, feels, you know, if it’s good day will play out outdoors, and do whatever things i can find; there’s no equipment or anything. you might do some games, which might be, what, jumping ropes, or jump the blocks, you know, all the—ground was all dirt, right, so you can easily take a broken branches from the tree or something and draw a lot of marks on the ground and you do some sort of game. and then after it gets dark, there’s no electricity, all you have is the oil lamp, so you don’t stay up very late, and you just go back to sleep, and when you get up, do the things again; so when we heard the japanese patrol is coming, why that’s a big event! [laughs] that’s why i was so

48 \\ garden curiosity

curious to stay there, try to look through the peephole to watch what they will do, you know. but you know, in general, day to day, you just, watch the farmers, what do they do, and it was interesting, you know, how do they plant things, how do they harvest things, how they cleaning up things, and, uh, more of observing, and that’s, you watch the day pass by. mm

( HANDS HANDS )

1. a storyless figurine on my grandmother’s sewing table against the walls in the basement that my father helped his father panel, ripping boards with a circular saw my grandfather mounted into a table saw, upside down in a box he made. when my cousins tessa and sara and i were small we wore dresses our grandmother had made—crimped smock collars and tiny flowers on light cotton. when we were emptying the attic my aunt found a tiny singer sewing machine in an old clear plastic jane parker hamburger bun bag (made with pure vegetable shortening!) labeled in my grandmother’s spidery writing: Bought at a yard sale for $1.00. Intended for Tessa. i have never seen my grandmother sew, but in the cabinet drawers below her former station i feel like see her making process anyway. alphabetized files: ACI (my grandfather’s hands hands

50 \\ hands hands

professional association) spouse names; chicken scratches; cremation; crochet/ knitting; cross stitches; estate planning; gardening tips; health information; household tips; needlework catalogs; paper cuts; smocking stitches. among the textures i devour, each glint, it surprises me to hear my grandfather recall his childhood with such class markers as service. he does not shift from his standard matter-of-fact tone, but it’s this i am having the most perplexing time wrapping my head around and giving enough space to/exposing enough —yes, it feels like confession? something somehow i’m embarrassed about— this reality of his/our family circumstances. and i think i expect him to discuss it with the same wonder as i hear it, because it is such a different lifestyle and world than the one he and gm have had in america, than i have seen, experienced of them. the house in raleigh is modest, and especially lately as “the doctor” buys up the area and renovates/tears down and rebuilds into these lavish and giant homes. the trashcan under the kitchen sink has always been a 3 gallon plastic tub with that flat lid. the soap has always been watered down. yet my grandparents quietly paid half of each of their four grandchildren’s private college educations. i grew up thinking i was solidly middle class. my mother made so little as a boarding school teacher, this i knew, and we lived for free on campus and ate most of our meals in the dining hall. we never traveled. we only splurged on ben & jerry’s when it was on sale. it’s incongruous to me that gp names these details of his childhood and family circumstances as matter-of-factly as anything else, when i expect more—not “ceremony,” not “reverence,” not “nostalgia,” maybe “chagrin”? that’s not quite it either… when gp calls the japanese bombings a very scary experience for a kid like that, is he the vehicle or the tenor, and how universal a kid can he really be or is he? can i be, am i?

A PART


ANDS ( HGARDEN )

1. my grandmother sits in her white deck chair in the family room, eating a tangerine. her broad fingers plow the thick peel, and pick the strands of soft lace that cling in the wrinkles of each segment. she lifts one to her face, her hand shielding one eye and the other squinting behind the plump orange crescent. don’t waste your film on me, she says, playing as though if she can’t see the camera we can’t see her. her hands are always bent and her knuckles are enormous, but it’s my grandfather who has arthritis. she has been eating nine gin-soaked golden raisins every night for the last ten years, but his is rheumatoid anyway. she says her hands are as they are from gardening. her garden is beautiful in spring, but today it is still brown and sodden from yesterday’s late march rain. she pronounces a trio of ch’s—it’s always threes with her, and always aspirated—as she stoops to remove daffodil husks from the green shoots. (she doesn’t have much farther to stoop from her usual posture.) i see now how the angles of her fingers and wrists align for this gesture, crushing the spent inches between thumb and palm and clearing them away with a twist between a tug and a snap, a practiced and easy movement, patient in its impatience like her scoffs. hands garden

2. i want to be able to sit with the customer service representatives at epson, fidelity, whoever makes his hearing aids, who answer my grandfather’s phone calls about resetting the connection between his computer and scanner, moving x shares at rate p into the giving trust account, if the recent volume decrease might be the result of a defect because yes he’s tried changing the batteries and boosting the dial. i want to see their faces as they listen to his slow, steady sentences, his methodical and humble explanations, as firm in logic as gentle in tone. i want the epson person to wonder about the letters this old man is trying to scan and email, who sent them and from where and why is he resending them now and to whom. i want the fidelity

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person to wonder not so much what he did but how he lived to accumulate these funds. i want the hearing aid company to have a solution. i want them to be patient with him and to, in whatever spirit of faith they keep, feel in their chests somehow an appreciation and respect for this man and his long life and his daily persistence, attending to his tasks and asking pertinent questions to analyze his own possible missteps so that next time he can do it himself. this is all absurd, of course. they take hundreds of inquiries a day and have their own lives extending outside the bubble of each call, but still, it’s that i feel it in my own chest, a faithful wish for them to sense him on the other end of the line and accompany him for these minutes, in his basement office, peering at his computer screen and/or manual and/or source of the issue as together they troubleshoot, their lives and purposes having come tangent and present with his. i want them to smile, before they hang up and for a moment after.

(

VESSELS VESSELS

1.

)

vessels vessels

grandpa, do you remember anything else from that time, in the village? in the countryside?

you mean from that period? from leaving home to shanghai? mhm yeah that’s about the extent of things that i remembered, yeah, still in my mind, yeah. how we left, first to the countryside farm, live in the farm for a while, and then how we got from the farm to the boat, and how we sailed in the boat from yangtze river to shanghai. once we got in shanghai of course we were safe— wait so— until pearl harbor. after pearl harbor the japanese took the shanghai foreign concession. yeah. wait so how—i might have missed this—how did you get from hometown to the village, and then how did you get from the village to the boat? from hometown to village, uh, i don’t remember if we used a boat. it probably was a land trip, so therefore, the distance was not very far. and so i think the farm was not too far from the city, and so that we could, we either walked—the men walked, my sister may even walked with us, you know of course we will stop and things like that— or else, we probably were—we hired—maybe several rickshaws, or the cart—have you ever seen a cart? onewheel cart? with, like wheelbarrow people push?

yeah

56 \\ vessels vessels

with the seats on both sides of the big wooden wheel? i’m not sure i’ve seen that you know, you see some of those in chinese paintings sometimes, and that’s a very classical cart; often those carts are used by the farmers to ship the produce; sometime you even can see on television that the countryside, the farmer pushes the cart like wheelbarrow, and with a strap over their shoulder to help carry the load; and on both sides the single wheel is a platform, on the platform you can put your produce on it. how you push that from the farm field to the city, the market, and sometimes you can, they will put people sitting on those two platform, on both sides, and push them just like cargo, and that becomes a transport for people, for short distance obviously, you know, whoever is pushing the cart has to stop, they may walk a mile or two and then they have to stop and rest a little bit. so we may, we maybe either used that as a means, or rickshaw, and took us to the farmhouse, farm village. to escape the bombing and all that stuff. and then the farmhouse was the one that had the river right behind it? yeah the river was not too far from the farmhouse, so that —those canals were dug, as you know, in the eastern part of china, the well-known is the grand canal, right. the grand canal is the one that, dug by the emperor from— that it becomes the north-south major river passage, and you remember the yangtze river, all the major rivers, runs east and west, so therefore the grand canal always intersects

UNCERTAIN JOURNEYS // 57

these big rivers. and, but, there are a lot of small streams— either man-made or natural—connected to these grand canal, and then these small streams were further, uh, linked into a series of smaller streams or ditches in order for the water to get in to provide water for the farm, you know, for growing rice and vegetable, things like that, so eventually it becomes irrigation ditches. so if you—these irrigation ditches eventually all lead into a small creek, a small creek leads into a larger river, and these larger river are really a transportation network, and so if you get on a boat on those river, that river will link into grand canal and then you can go all over places. and so the farmers actually will have to use, ship their produce by those carts that i was talking about, because irrigation ditches couldn't do anything as transport, and get those produce, products from the farm, into a location where they, where a bigger river is, and eventu—once in the bigger river, you, then they have all those boats there, flat-bottomed boats, and then you load on those boats— that’s how the people or produce are transported from those locations, through grand canal to all areas in the country— and so that’s how our boat got us over to the yangtze river. yeah. cool. yeah. are you recording some of these things on your tape? yep, i’m recording all of it! oh, good.

A PART


A N D S ( HCURIOSITY )

1. I imagine a boy. He is sitting in the last large hall in the recesses of his family home, buffered from the cobbled street by other halls like this one and smaller adjacent rooms and open courtyards in between and a story-and-a-half high outer wall. He is not yet school-aged, but his six older siblings, five brothers and a sister, are old enough that they are there instead of here… He watches as the carpenters his father has hired build a partition wall to section off part of the large hall into a separate room for the three youngest boys to share. The wall will have double doors that swing. The men stand on either side of a log and saw with their tool like a slice of the moon, one on each handle, back and forth down its length. They plane the posts that will reach floor to ceiling every five feet along the wall to frame the clay blocks that will be stacked and plastered. He watches them work. He watches and watches. hands curiosity

I imagine him a few years later. He is old enough for school and loves it so rises before the servant’s call at seven. The weather is cooling so he wears a thicker sweater, a pocketed cardigan, under his dark and padded gown. He eats breakfast and by seven thirty he is clambering into the rickshaw for a servant to transport him across the city to school. He takes a prepared lunch —rice, a meat, a vegetable—in three round tins, which stack and hold together by a single handle and stay warm because someone wraps them in a woven cotton cosy. In the schoolyard when the bell rings the girls line up on one side and the boys on the other as they’ve been instructed, and then the girls go into the classrooms and sit in the front rows, and the boys wait and then follow and then fill in the back rows. At lunch he plays soccer with other boys using a small rubber ball about half the standard size.

In the afternoon the rickshaw picks him up and brings him home. They stop at his favorite street food stand and he buys a baked sweet potato. He dances his fingers on the hot snack when the vendor slides it into his hands off the long

62 \\ hands curiosity

bamboo fork used to retrieve it from a shelf inside the clay kiln. Once home, he sits down to do his schoolwork. (It does not take very long because there is not very much of it; he is still young.) He is still young so both of the desks in the room he shares with his two next older brothers are too big for him. But he sits at one anyway, the one facing the window. With his left hand he dips a brush into the round ink pot, bigger than his right hand resting beside it. Above him, a hanging lamp with a pale scalloped glass bonnet over the eggplant-shaped bulb, but there is plenty of sunlight. To his right, a four-poster bed. To his left, the post and plaster wall he saw being built in his earliest memory.

He finishes his homework and finds his mother for a game. They play with bone tiles: match the number on the top tile with one from your set, or draw a new one from the pile, with the goal of playing all your tiles. He wins this game of chance. Dinner and he gets each dish last, because he’s the youngest and that’s the easiest way for his mother to manage the household; but there is plenty for everyone.

When his older brothers get a bicycle the boy will find a way to ride it around the courtyard, his legs far too short to straddle the seat so crouching on the left pedal and reaching his right leg through the triangular frame to push along, a gallop, a syncopation.

He sits in the second large hall, his parents’ bedroom, and watches his brothers skip and stomp about and sing along to the Chinese opera coming through the radio from Shanghai. In five or so years when the family moves there to escape the Japanese troops invading Changzhou, the brothers will go to the opera for the first time and see live the successors to the stars they’ve yet known only from the small picture books their parents bring home, the newspapers, this radio.

But mostly they will go to school and sometimes to the movies.

(

VESSELS H ANDS

)

1. and in later, there’s another thing, i don’t know if i mentioned to you, i even have a thing here, i can eventually i can show you, we can take a picture or something. to demonstrate her consideration, she’s very considerate person, and—was—and a loving mother as i say—and after—this occurred way way later on, this story should be told later, after i came to this country, i did not get a chance to go back to visit because of the cultural revolution for twenty five years, right. so when i first went back, to visit, in 19—what was that, 1970, nixon was ’74, i went back ’76, yeah. 1976. and when i got home, she was standing right in front of the door, waiting for me. of course i was so happy to see her, we embraced, we, all that stuff. and let me think about it, when was that. vessels hands

and then, what she did, i got it, oh yeah. it was during that visit, although it was not the first time, because the first time the cultural revolution was still going on, it was— then later the cultural revolution was over and china really opened up. my classmate invited me back to give a series of lectures, to visit for a whole month, and that was 1980. and that’s when i went back—let me think, if that timing is right—but at any rate, she gave me two things: one was my scarf for my boy scout. a black collar with a white border with a boy scout insignia on one of the corners— you know how the boy scout scarf is hold on your neck? you fold diagonally as a triangle and then you tie a knot around your neck, right?

64 \\ vessels hands

mhm and that was mine. and i, you know, i’d completely forgotten when i was even in the boy scouts, when i was young, and when i left home all those things were left home, right. and she apparently saved it. and then, another thing she gave it to me was—i played basketball when i was in college, for the university team, even though i wasn’t good enough to be a [laughing] i was playing reserve. and so i had a basketball jersey, you know those jerseys like a sleeveless undershirt mhm and my number was 13, so the number 13 is still on it okay and she saved that one. in the front was my university’s name, in chinese. and what she did: she took that jersey, stitched the bottom so it becomes a bag, and the two straps over shoulder, those two straps as a handle mhm and she gave me those two things. she told me: she said, well you know, when cultural revolution came,

UNCERTAIN JOURNEYS // 65

we lost everything. we were not allowed to take anything more than just the whatever little things for personal care or little money that you can do— you can take— you were only allowed to take what you can carry.

and she said all the luggage and everything, you cannot carry them because she was, you know, she doesn’t have the strength. and so she took my boy scout scarf, folded four corner together as a bag. and then the other shirt [halflaugh] stitched together as a bag. she says that was all that she could carry. to take it, to go from changzhou to shanghai or something, because my brother went back home to bring her to shanghai. at that time i think my father has died already, so she was alone and my brother in shanghai wanted to bring her up. but because of the cultural revolution you have to struggle to fight your way to get on the train, and you cannot take, allowed to take anything but whatever you can hand carry. and so she took those two things.

66 \\ vessels hands

and she specifically told me she said, i want you to have it because that’s what i keep on remembering me by looking at these things and so i did not want to give that away. so she took that with her and all the way until she finally saw me she said now i can give this back to you and you take back home as as memoribia— memoribia whatever. that, in that—quite sentimental, isn’t it? mhm. yeah. quite, very touching story that she told me, and she did that and, so, she—that shows her character, that shows her concern. another thing she did, i still have them here, that is when i left home, to come to united states, things were so uncertain, you know, you don’t know what the communist is going to do with the country, how the country is going to be, and how long i’m going to be in

UNCERTAIN JOURNEYS // 67

this country, united states, and all that. so she give me, i think it’s four golden coins, the british crown? i don’t know if you ever seen those things—they look like size of our five cents nickel, but it’s pure gold, or very, almost, almost pure gold. it’s the currency in the old days in england because it, you know, has a, i don’t know whose head on it, whether it’s george 2nd, 4th, but anyway, or queen. those were really, in china, when, before communists came over i’m sure, over the years, my parents, you know, took some of their money to buy some of those things, like you keep them, as kind of like your life savings, right, as a treasure to keep. so she gave me four of those. she said you know we don’t know what’s going to happen to you when you go to united states and if you ever run out of money maybe you can use this to get some money to support you. so she gave me those four coins. and of course i didn’t need them i kept them. and she said well if you can

68 \\ vessels hands

be sure keep them. don’t sell them or— because it should be kept in the family

mm

so i still have them. and i told your dad and auntie may, i said, when i pass away each of you will get two, and i hope you each eventually will give one to each of my grandkids. [half-laugh & how can i tell you so i still have them. and that shows her care, her concern, in words her love, and another thing she told me was very touching the sound too. this was after—in fact it was the first visit when i saw of a smile? ] her; that was 25 years after i left home. and, oh again, at that first visit we could not travel, she did not travel with me, it was the second trip, it was 1980, because by then the things are loosening up, the cultural revolution was over, so what i did was i was able to—of course i live in the hotel, i live in the hotel that used to be the biggest hotel in china at that time, and so therefore i ask her i said, how about while i’m here, seven days, two weeks, whatever, living in the hotel here, you come stay with me in the room, so we can visit, we can talk, so that’s what she did, she came to the hotel and stayed with me in the hotel room so at night we can talk and something like that, daytime of course, you know, she will stay there comfortable and wait—i may do things, visiting and so forth. and it was one of those occasions we were alone, we talk about, and she told me

UNCERTAIN JOURNEYS // 69

she said you know after you left home it was things got so bad and the cultural revolution everything else she said we really don’t know when we will ever see you again whether we ever will see you coming home and she says so therefore many times i would look at the full moon she said thinking about you know the moon sometime all kinds of the figure in the moon look like a man’s face? and she said you know i look at the moon looked like there’s a face in it on it she said

mhm

70 \\ vessels hands

well you know just like a mirror i just think in my mind she said well maybe that is paul and he’s also looking at the moon.

I, when I heard that, I felt so touching, that, she was really speaking from her heart, and what she did all by herself, thinking about me, right? And find a way to, you might say, satisfy her, her, desire to see me. It uh, so she was that kind of person. And like for instance, another thing I never forget, was when, maybe the third time when I saw her, yeah, it was 1983, I saw her three times after Communist took over, when I went home. So when I saw her in 1983 she would be probably close to 80 or 81 or something? I know she died when she was 83, and so she knew she won’t live too many years, she doesn’t know when I will see her, when she will see me again. And when I left home, say goodbye to her, come back, she told me she said she said Paul I want to be sure that you would keep in touch with your sister.

She said she lives all by herself in northern China with her family and all the rest of the siblings are boys and they’re all scattered

UNCERTAIN JOURNEYS // 71

mostly in Shanghai and she said well only your sister and one brother is in Beijing the two are in the north and she said so when I pass away and she will be she could be very left alone she said I want you to be sure once in a while write her a letter and contact her keep in touch.

So, you see, the kind of things she does is she thinks about her children all the time, and she thinks about us, even we’re adults, we’re grown ups, we’re, you know by then my sister probably is in her sixties, or close to 70, and, but, she thinks about the other people, very considerate. The same way she treats our housekeeper, and I know they all liked her very much, because she treats them very well. And whatever she does for the family, like you know, special occasion for the festivals, so forth, whatever we have, she made sure all the housekeeper, servants, they got the same thing, so there’s no separation, she treats them like a family member.

wow

yeah. okay i got ahead [laughing], many stories later on that’s okay yeah.

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mm. you jotting down the notes? [laughs] a little bit i am, yeah. your notebook is getting full, right [laughing] it’s getting very full [laughing] it’s wonderful. i would love to see the things. you’d like to see what? all of the things the things i brought home? yeah, the scarf and the bag and the coins yeah, well next time you come here i’ll show it to you. i put them in a special box, put a note on it, i told auntie may, i said, these are special things, you know, came from the family, and she said well be sure put a note on and explain where it is and mark it, so i said yeah i will do. those are the, really the treasures, family treasures, right, and we have to keep them. yeah, i agree and i have many other things, my father, mother, give to me. my mother gave me those gold coins, and like my father gave me my watch and so forth. i saved them all, you know eventually i want it to be kept in the family so

and

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that all my grandchildren will get something to remember where this came from, you know. yeah.

2. this morning i came down to soho to write at the studio where i’ve been freelancing and rather than walk south from broadway/lafayette i took the b one more stop and walked back west because my friend anna is in the second of her two weeks quitting notice at the coffee shop on grand street a block down from the studio and she gives me free things. i left home early enough that the pastry window in the 103rd st station bodega cart was still well stocked but the train was less crowded than i expected and after the museum of natural history i took the doorside seat in a column of three. at columbus circle i looked up when a quartet of feet and one cane crossed behind my mary ruefle. an old mother figure and an adult daughter figure, and the latter guided the former to the empty seat beside me then smiled and tapped my shoulder no as i rose to give her mine. she motioned to an empty seat by the window between two other women, but the one beside the mother figure slid sideways and she and i acknowledged each other as the daughter figure settled next to her companion. they spoke in chinese and i thought i recognized, something something hǎo and rén, or at least, whenever i’m with someone and we see another person give up a seat, even if it’s not for one us, i call that person nice. i’m insatiable. anyway, i kept reading until somewhere around herald square i came to the end of a piece: “These thoughts and more like them prevented the spontaneous expression I should have liked so much to make before R—— was gone. R—— did not hesitate, that is for certain — he sailed like a cloud into the post office,

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nod or no nod (why wasn’t I paying more attention?) and I was struck fast by the crocuses, the flag unfurled over us all, when the decision came over me to begin my way home, immediately and with brio, that I might lose no further step with the day, which was beautiful, and with the future which had shown itself to be quick but kind, allowing me these little moments to catch up with it, and keep pace with it when I could.” i think i feared reading on then, or i didn’t want to or i couldn’t or—i pocketed the book for later and there next to mine were the old woman’s hands, their surfaces taught and smooth, their backs brittle but full underneath, edematous, my grandfather’s. and it doesn’t matter and it does that they are chinese. i looked up and her eyes were closed. the carriage emptied south and by broadway/lafayette the surrounding benches were clear and we remained sitting there together, accumulated neighbors erased into a snug tercet. i wanted to speak to them.

3. a horizontal 4x6 on the 2227 wheeler rd. fridge held by flexible magnets (two 24-hour power outage hotline squares, a blank emergency contact numbers pad, an empty university of florida alumni association frame: go gators, but no exclamation?), plenty, but also an overlapping 4x6 of my oldest cousin and my grandparents, itself secured by the thought of the emergency numbers as well as an upside down realtor and a hyde park souvenir, this one hard and shellacked like pin-button. the photos are at least 15 years apart but my grandfather might well be wearing the same thin wire frame glasses in both, large rounded octagonal lenses and a double bridge glinting almost imperceptibly. (or actually imperceptibly, if the frames are different…) the older photo is a larger family portrait and must

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be from december 1994, though there’s no blurry orange date & time stamp on either front bottom corner or anywhere on the back. i checked, sliding the magnets up, down, over, so i could replace them exactly as they were. i am conscientious about most things i touch in this house, but this time because despite a spare four inches of off-white fridge metal to the left the photos are overlapping. i say december ’94 because there’s a christmas tree on the left and because there are only three grandchildren in matching teal turtleneck pajamas, a sailboat and sandy beach and voyaging duck in primary colors on each chest. it’s ’94 not ’93 because the youngest cousin isn’t a baby, which means i’m in my mom’s womb in the rightmost glossy inch and a half, behind the wallpaper in whatever room where my grown oldest cousin and grandparents stand. her hand on my beaming father’s right shoulder is the only glimpse of us. in the more recent picture there’s a framed drawing behind my grandmother’s right shoulder depicting a mother holding a toddler, in the kind of posture where the toddler is barely standing and the mother has crouched down, her chin level with her baby’s but her head a few inches taller, and holds one hand on the child’s back and one on the child’s high belly.