Read I Love a Broad Margin to My Life for Free Online Page B

in Oakland
    and redwoods in Muir Woods and eucalyptus
    in the Berkeley grove, and around Shakespeare’s
    plants in Golden Gate Park. All my places.
    Yosemite. The Sierras. A few handfuls of me
    off the Golden Gate Bridge, which I skated across.
    And my last ashes on Angel Island, where
    my mother was jailed on her way to my father and America.
    Thinking about death and far from home, Wittman,
    a skinny old guy with nothing to eat, looked
    lonely. Chinese cannot bear
    anyone being lonely. Loneliness is torture.
    (What’s the word for
lonely
? “Nobody,” they say.
    “I have nobody.”) Passengers this side and that side
    proffered food. Buns,
bow
. Pickled
    vegetables. Candied vegetables. Chicken fingers.
    Beef jerky. They said, Eat, la. Eat, la.
    Chinese can’t eat unless everybody eats.
    “Daw jay,” he said, “Dough zheh. Jeah jeah.
    Je je nay. Je je nee.”
    Thanking in variations of accents and tones.
    An old lady (that is, a person
    of his own age), wiped the rim of her vacuum
    bottle cup, poured, and with both hands
    handed him tea while saying, “Ngum cha.
    Ngum, la.” Being given tea,
    accepting tea, you drink humbly, but think:
    I am being welcomed, honored, adored. Out of all
    who exist, we 2 tea drinkers
    together. Be ceremonial and mindful, we
    are performing Tea, performing the moment of eternity.
    The tea woman, in the facing seat, held
    a box in her lap. The size of a head.
    The Man Who Would Be King’s head.
    Pointing with his chin as Chinese do,
    Wittman impolitely asked, “What
    do you have in there?” Can’t be nice with small
    vocabulary. She answered, or he understood
    her to answer: “I’m a-train-riding
    with my husband, carrying my old man home,
    ashes and smashed bones.” “Aiya! How did he die?”
    “Martial arts killed him.” Or “Bitter work
    killed him.” Kung fu. Kung
fu
.
    “Aiya-a-a,” chorused the Big Family.
    Everyone listening, the widow told her life.
    It went something like this: “Not so
    long ago, a
loon
time, an era
    of
loon
, this man, this very
    man now ashes and bones, swam at night
    from China to Hong Kong. A boat family,
    who harbored in the Typhoon Shelter, gave
    him bed on the water, and shared him 2 meals.
    Day, they rowed him to a station for signing up
    to live in a safe place / haven / sanctuary /
    refugee camp. I.I.” Illegal Immigration.
    “Aiya-a-a.” “O, Big Family,
    hear me. For
loon
years, he—I too—
    I was I.I. too—lived
    up on top of the barbwired hill.
    We met at the fence at the farthest edge. He
    looked off the shores toward his lost country.
    I looked off toward
my
lost country.
    His was that dark mass that looms right there
    forever across the Straits. Han Mountain.
    He’d say, ‘They can see us. They can see us better
    than we can see them.’ Hong Kongers
    are rich, they waste money on electricity,
    keep lights open all night long.
    I could not see
my
country, Viet Nam.
    Too far, and China in the way.
    We married. We wrote: ‘We marry.
    Free or in prison, forever, we marry.’
    If only we could write ‘legal immigrants,’
    and be legal immigrants.”
          Why always
    Illegal Immigration? Oh, no one
    ought be made alien to any country.
    No more borders. Nosotros no
    cruzamos la frontera; la frontera
    nos cruza.
      The Vietnamese Chinese
    woman addressed tout le monde, including
    her husband, a ghost, who was standing behind
    Wittman. He was a ghost in the listening crowd,
    and he was the ashes and bones in the box.
    “You were a good man, Old Rooster.
    You worked hard. A farmer works hard.
    He’ll always work hard, his life hard,
    though he leaves the farm. Though farm /
    ground / earth / floor be taken from him.”
    The chorus intoned: “Aiya. Hai, la.”
    “Taken by the government.” “Taken by business.”
    “Taken by brothers.” “Deem the land.” “One
    day mid-harvest, a middling harvest,
    you, Old Rooster, gave up the fields,
    and went to ‘seek your fortune.’ ” She said
    in English,