A waiting room

It was raining, soft, speckled drops on your windshield as you took me down that freeway towards our other homes.  You are generous with your words, and your hugs, and I know you are different because you seem more free.  Or is it more eager to show that you are free?

It is a waiting room, this great case that we are in, under a globe of unknown.  We know that we draw out the grief when we leave, but there is no other option, is there?

I have been reading about Frida, and about the stories between those plasters of color and the rumors sucked in between newspaper stained hands and the terror that was the unknown.  When do we get held down — that polio-twisted leg, the metal plates in your back, the physical ramifications of a car crash too many regrets ago?  And should we then nurse all that we are losing (the shaking arm, the frozen tendons, the way your back refuses to unbend itself and just lie flat), or move towards the today that is stretched in front of us, like a terrorizing, exhilarating canvas of possibility.  I cannot tell you how to live.  I do not know what it is like to live in your body.  I just want to love you, without you thinking I forgot to.

This is what I mean

The first person to ever say to me, “My brother passed away,” was my seven-year-old student.  She was in line for food at the cafeteria, and she steps hesitantly towards me to say those words.  That was today.

When I let her eat with me in the classroom, she draws pictures of flowers, and then of me and her.  When I ask her what helps her feel better, she says, “Just forget it?” and shrugs her shoulders.  She doesn’t know how old he is, but she knows that ‘they shot him.’  I find out he was only 19, and that it was on a street corner, that looks like so many other corners.  He was in a car, waiting in front of his friend’s house.

You sweet thing, you know the sheering tear of loss before any of us do.

So tell me, as though this day could not stretch out to bear more silent terror.  What do you tell a group of seven-year-olds why their school is on lock-down?  Yes, right in the middle of our reading time.  I walked calmly towards the door to lock it, and tried to balm over the situation with, “Don’t worry.”  ” You’ll be okay. “  “I’ll protect you.”  ” Our classroom is the farthest from the school entrance.”

This is not okay, this is not okay, this is not okay.

Wings of stone

Little Carlos Nava, here you are — memorialized on this wall in the straining light that comes from the rising sun as it lifts its head straight over East 14th.  Do they know, that even his grandmother, as she stood frozen in that horror of that day, did not notice that you had fallen with the bullet in your body?  Not until it was too late, and her screams were mixed with the screams of everyone else.  It was 1 pm.

I pass this spot every day, as I drive towards the rising sun to work.  There used to be candles and teddy bears and a large picture of you on a makeshift poster board — the largest memorial I have ever seen.  And then it was cleared, and there was just the Little Ceaser’s sign.  I remember when I walked there a year before, asking the owner to donate pizzas for the 5th grade graduation.  That was not too long ago.

Now, that sidewalk is the altar on which your face appears in a mural of remembrance.  It first came up as a sketch, though we all knew its intent.  And each day I drove past, its presence materialized with each new stroke of color.  Little Carlos, you are the angel that watches over the long stretch of this street — a vigil that is night and day, a reminder that is everything sobering in this reality.  Your face is somber, and from behind your head, rises the wings of a Monarch butterfly, that survivor, that wanderer.  The orange and black morphs into feathers of stone and we know your memory is as strong as the statue of the Aztec god in the corner of your mural.  In your hands, you hold a sign, small and humble that reads: One Village.

I am only a beholder of all of this.  I do not understand death, or how it is that it was you who had to find death.  I only know that the young bear so much of the weight of this breaking world.  I know this.  I am sorry.

What I Know About Writing

Three years ago, I sat on the floor of the Staten Island Ferry Station with a good friend — and I pulled out a chapbook I had just bought from Boston the night before.  I remember picking it out from the piles of everything else, and had  then found it impossible to put down.  So, here we were, reading poems about Cambodia and about aching and about the love in the arms of another as we waited.  It was winter, blustery, and cold.  She had just told me about her discovery that she had bipolar disorder — told her story that at each turn, was more shocking and embarrassing.  All at the same time, I was so grateful to be with her, sitting thigh to thigh, mulling over words that soothed and wouldn’t let us go.

She was a poet, and I had not claimed that name for myself yet.  I remember writing though, about how she was like a kite taut against the sky, not letting go of her grasp on life.  I did this, as the Statue of Liberty loomed close and then distanced itself in the wind outside.   And when I read those words I wrote years ago, I am brought back.

What I know about writing is that it makes me slow, it makes me look, and it makes me become aware with every pulsing in my body.  It centers me, like a magnet that pulls — and then makes me remember the importance of every detail and the sincerity in every effort.  Writing is a marinating process.  All that simmers in my experiences finds breath when it is down in words, real and realized, and I am forced to remember these moments.

 

 

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Thank you for reading and staying with me.  This is the last of the Round Robin writes.  They have been brought to you by 10-12 minutes of unedited writing, every single day for the past 9 weeks.

Picture #9

He tells me, “You know what I really like?”  And then he leans close, his mouth to my ear, and whispers, his eyes on the person next to us, “I really like it when I see old people eat ice cream.”  And we watch her, her hair cut short and the white hairs sprinkles in the auburn of the cropped sides of her head, her back turned towards us, licking her ice cream cone.  He continues, “It makes me think that 40, 50 years ago — they were once kids, enjoying ice cream like they are now.”

And I think about the way my grandfather smelled, when he drew us close to him so he could give us a hug, how his breath hung with the scent of cigarettes.  I do not remember him without his mouth full of laughter, his eyes creased with glee, and him speaking gruffly in Hakka, and then laughing at his own jokes.  I remember only picking up the edges of his conversations, matching word with word, but all in all, knowing that my tongue was dry and I did not know what to say to him.  Did I only see him a number of times, the number of times that I can count on both my hands?  But I grew up to learn that he was not always full of laughter, that his cigarette breath was not one of endeared memory, that he was a man who once left his family for the temptation of risk and gambling, for women who hung onto the arms of men late in the night.  He must have bought my mother and her five siblings ice cream cones in the humid sun, as offerings of apologies.  Though these are the details I do not know.  Did he ever sit, enjoy it himself — and think about what he lost but still managed to get back.

I suppose I will never know the extent of how my family broke apart and somehow tied itself back, before I was old and conscious enough to wonder about my grandparents’ separation.  All I remember is that when my grandfather fell into a stroke, his head hitting the floor of the little home he lived in, it was my grandmother — the woman he had left and left unloved, it was she who moved into his home to care for his ailing, frozen body.  I do not understand that, only that any other option was nonexistent.  This is my history, but perhaps not my legacy.  But there are many questions that I still have — like why it is that my mother once hid from her brother, when she saw him unexpectedly in the mall on a summer visit back.  And we hid behind that large column until he passed out of those sliding doors.  And I wonder when a family starts to unravel, and whose fault it is, and why it takes so many long, long, dry years for all wounded members to begin to even realize they need healing.  If we remembered what it was like to lick sweet, sweet ice cream from a dripping cone — maybe we could pick the simplest of feelings, keep them, and begin to patch up all the other broken ones.  Maybe, one day.

Muddy

It was our last night there, so that called for a last round of lamb sticks and Beijing beer poured into plastic mugs.  We headed out to town, and that was when the waters came down.  The sound overhead was soothing, steady, and heavy — and we ignored it because this was our last moments together before the inevitable would tear us apart and spit out on opposite sides of the globe again.  Here we were — three Chinese natives, and a good friend I met when I was in Cambodia, under the pouring storm, and enjoying the last of salted boiled peanuts.

Was it really three summers ago when we rode in that smog-laden city of Beijing, when we found ourselves in that foster home in that strangely gated community, when we learned how to hold a blind child, guiding her along as she clutched our elbow?  We learned how to breathe, how to ride on that tandem bike and jump into the pool, how to spend endless hours learning that we are so different, so similar, so tied together. We are now on opposite ends of the world — and I guess that was bound to happen.  Perhaps even that was what drew us together — that need for the wind in our lungs.  Only Rosa and I are here, bound together with only a block apart, in the pulsing neighborhood in East Oakland, teaching the young ones still deeper east.  Last I heard, Isaac had married a French girl, moved to France, and was looking to be a cook.  Isn’t he now a father?  Jude, still traveling in planes and serving drinks and seeing the world, finding home again in Macau, or is it Germany now?  And Didi — that free spirit of a girl.  Who would have known that one day, after that fateful summer in Lang Fang, she would join my friends and I on a camping trip in the Pacific Northwest? She came with us on that trek northward, and then flew out of Portland, for Spain.

When we left that restaurant, those many nights ago, the relentless rain was in the streets, making rivers up to our thighs.  And so, we divided ourselves by personality — three of us sharing a bottle of beer outside the edge of awning, and the other two inside, staying dry and worrying about how to get home.   After many long hours, when it was soon early morning, we paid a restaurant driver to drive us back in the open back of his truck — us crouching in the back with the backlights shedding diffused yellow light on the swirling water, holding on as the vehicle gingerly made its way through the flooded streets.  We then waded our way through, shoes in hands, laughter in our mouths, and came back to our home, devoid of electricity and full of sleeping children.

There is still a Polaroid photo of the five of us that I slipped inside an embroidered frame and left on my bookshelf.  We took it that last night, five materializing shots each — leaning against each other, together.  I had once walked with Isaac under a street lined with illuminating street lamps, and he asked me about my next year.  I do not remember why, I only remember saying,”I don’t know, I don’t know.  Each year is a surprise.”  I miss that tree lined street, lighted with that pale yellow light.

Off again, on again

Dear Andres, you sweet little thing — don’t you know how hard I see you try.  You often tell me, Tomorrow will be better? and I nod, give you a smile, and a pat as your back as you walk out the door.  These are the things you are good at: pretending, and pushing my limits.  You nodded at both suggestions when I asked you about them, when we had those serious talks with you at the edge of the classroom.  Your eyes were large, and I could tell you were trying hard not to cry, even though you are big for your age, and one year older than everyone else.  Here are some other things you are good at: trying again, raising your hand when you are so eager to show me that you are really not full of spite and eyes that roll, and coming to me when I ask you.

It breaks my heart a little every day, because you have so much to fight against.  You want to be free, I know this because you sneak in one slide down that tall slide in the new playground, even after the line-up whistle has been blown.  But I know you do it because you want so badly to sneak in a little of what you can’t have.  Today, when you threw those words at De’Andre — hitting him in the face with loaded remarks about his race, so hurtful that he threw one back at you — something inside me rose to the top, erupted, and I was so livid that my voice became heavy with sadness.  I speak sternly with both of you, more sternly than I ever have, because I cannot stand that my seven-year-olds, so full of promise, know how to live breaths of racist lives.  You are too young — do you know this?  Of course you do not; you only know how to mirror what is around you.  I know this because you nodded when I asked if it was because you heard people say this and that about those whose color skin you are not familiar with.  And both of your arms filled with tears that threatened to fall on the desk.  I am just grateful that you are seven, and that you have infinite clean slates inside of you.   You are still so eager to try.  I know this because each hour is a fresh start, and you remind me of this every time.  I try to ignore the fear that one day, you will run out.  I do not want to believe this, though each year on these streets carries such weight for both directions.

I do not know what propels you, what makes you lower your head when I shake your hand, and then what makes you the first one to hear my instructions, to follow, and to lift your head in search of praise.  I want to know, and I want you to feel the slam of love when you walk in those doors.  I want to see that you are full of all things possible.  You are, you are.  I want to remember this.

A big mistake

When you left me there, to
ease myself with the pounding of the waves,
I knew you carried that torn-up feeling
for years.  What you didn’t know
was that I lived, and that I knew
the rhythm of life, because
when you are deep enough,
the underwater hum is a
strong enough soothe.  It is
easy to forget that you left and
easier to remember that you had
to, so when you call, with pining in
your voice, please don’t.  I never harbored
any of that guilt you have
against yourself,
against you.

Gone

When I turned seven, three days later I started my second grade year in a brand new school.  We were living across the Bay, and I soon forgot what it was like to wake up to the fog rolling in and only burning off after lunch.  But in that day, I did not that I was not as far as I felt.  For the first three months, I was tardy almost every day.  I would slink into class, find my spot on the rug, and try to remain as inconspicuous as always.  But my teacher always saw me, and would bring attention I hated and loved.  The only feeling I remember feeling was miserable.

Many years later, I found that journal I learned how to tell my feelings in.   I learned how to write page long descriptions, remember periods and forgetting to capitalize my I’s.  The second entry reads, “i have no frends. :’(  i hate my life.”  The next entry was: “Today i made three frends…” and it ended with, “They even sed they lyked my shoos.”  There were many stomach aches and tired feelings those days.  That was the same year my aunt went to the hospital because her back that fell out, and the same year my little sister fell one weekend and had to get stitches across her forehead.

I do not remember my time before that move, only that my mother often referred to me as wild, and as someone she had to calm.  I still longed for her though, sitting and scribbling words on paper.  It was harder to make friends than I remembered.  They called me Snot, because for those first few weeks of school I had a runny nose that wouldn’t stop.  At that age, I was not conscious enough to know that I needed to blow my nose before any of that mucus showed.  So I resorted to calling my table partner Fat, and to sticking out my foot to trip those who walked past me.  I spent a lot of time with my head buried in my arms, when all I wanted to say was… sory for plaing around.  Each day, my teacher would linger and open her arms out for a hug.  But then, I would go home, fall asleep, and the next day — I always remember being hungry.  There were too many hours before lunch.

My fingers

You told me once, that you loved how I talked with my hands.  You wrote, in that tender card you gave me before we ever knew what it was to touch each other’s hands, that the way I moved with my hands in the few times I spoke was the magnet that drew you in.  I remember blushing as I read those words, and letting that airiness flutter around and then settle in my spirit.  Did I tell you then, that I loved the same about you?  But I said nothing, just held each sincere word in my hand and later buried them in a deep place in my heart when nobody was around and it was just me and the setting sun.  I could not offer back the same softhearted compliment, almost as though its similarity took from its truthfulness.

I wish I had told you then, instead of never.  Because now, sitting on this BART train ride, the metal roar of the tunnel as it whirls underneath the churning waves of the San Francisco Bay — I am filled with the ever expanding longing as I watch a stranger hold a package of developed photos in his slender hands.  I cannot help but look.  He wears a beanie, like you often did — and he looks down, intent on what is before him.  Was it not you who always did everything with such earnest and wholehearted ardor?  I know you are not like him in probably most any way — but it is the slightest of details that makes me draw all similarities, as though I was penciling in a matching game like in my elementary school years.  And because you are not here, it is this stranger’s demeanor that leaves me grieving over all that was not what we ever wanted.

I am jealous for all the elbows you will touch, as you give a simple greeting to even those not closes to you.  I want to be in all those conversations where your hands move the air before you.  But there are so many things that I didn’t say to you, then, and now, I have no more words.  Please, please, just let me have this aching memory.