

Passion of Clouds & Rain

A China-to-America Journey

Edna Wu

This is a fictional memoir first published by Evanston Press in 1994 and has been revised for the 2016 edition. Its characters, places, and incidents are either fictional or used fictitiously, and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts is entirely coincidental. Any references to historical events, to real people, living or dead, or to real locales are intended only to give the work a sense of reality and authenticity.

All rights reserved

Copyright © 1994 by Edna Wu; copyright © 2016 by Lin Jin

Except for appropriate use in critical reviews or works of scholarship, this book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission.

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ISBN 9781370960033

Praises for the Book

By focusing on the narrator's self-absorbed quest for erotic and intellectual fulfillment, Edna Wu's "Memoir" offers a new slant to the currently urgent question of how the latest generation of Chinese immigrants can find home in America. One can read this breathless work as a modern-day update of Ding Ling's celebrated Diary of Miss Sophie.

—Jonathan Spence, Yale University

In both form and content, what an unusual combination of prose and poetry, eros and logos, America and China, Edna Wu has given us!

—Michelle Yeh, University of California, Davis

A short modern version of The Tale of Genji, Edna Wu's Clouds and Rain has done more than the Heian classic of Japan did on the subject of sex and passion.

—Fatima Wu, from World Literature Today

To Love

A Skyscraper

On the debris of the guttural ruins

rises the modern Babel

boasts of dribbling the ball of meta-reality

in a labial model

but scrapes from the sky

nothing but air

in the sunlight

remains indeed

a Block

with a phoenix trail of

shadow

\--

=

。

In the new life, a cloud is better than the bright sun.

The rain, akin to self-knowledge, appears perpetual.

— Joseph Brodsky

At dawn you are morning clouds;

At dusk you turn into moving rain.

— Song Yu

Contents

Praises for the book / 2

A Skyscraper (A Dedication Poem) / 3

Acknowledgements / 6

Foreword: A Short Modern Version of The Tale of Genji

by Fatima Wu / 7

Novel: Passion of Clouds and Rain

Part I. On the Wings / 9

Part II. An Ugly Duckling's Swan Song / 72

Part III. Sex ≠ Love? / 122

Part IV. Searching for the Music of the Soul / 169

Part V. A Separate Utopia / 219

The Wings of Imagination, a drawing by Edna Wu /273

Afterward / 274

About the Author / 275

Acknowledgements

Joseph Brodsky's poem "New Life," from which I quoted two lines, was translated by David MacFadyen and the author and first published in The New Yorker, April 26, 1993. The poems "Freedom is Individuality," "Dusk," and "The Family Tree" were written by my daughter Lin Jin. Among my own poems, "Chinese Love," "At Clarion Cemetery," "Birch" appeared in The Pen (The PBC, Newport News); "Follow Me" in Lines and Ribbons (Lavender Letter); and "Nothing but a Kite" in Collages and Bricolages (Clarion). Several of my other poems, which first appeared in anthologies or other poetic collections, have been used in this novel in their revised form. I thank the world renowned historian Jonathan Spence and famous scholar in Chinese poetry Michelle Yeh for their insightful comments. I also thank Fatima Wu and World Literature Today for permitting the use of Fatima Wu's book review for the Preface. The front cover image is from the famous painting by Fu Baoshi in 1954, titled "Nine Songs: Goddess of Clouds."

PASSION OF CLOUDS AND RAIN

Part I. On the Wings

1

"Welcome to America, pretty lady!" The customs officer greeted me aloud.

Pretty? Am I really pretty? All my life, I thought that I was ugly and plain. Fortunately, I had been born in China at a time when women could surpass men through brain power and leadership. Many men nowadays learned to look up to women because of their qualities rather than their appearance alone. A pretty face on a woman showed bourgeois traits. A pretty face on a man was definitely disastrous, betraying sissiness and superficiality. Nevertheless, the customs officer's compliment titillated me. I felt a magical transformation from an ugly duckling into a swan. My wings started fluttering in my heart. Perhaps I am not that ugly.

I saw the flashing figures on the overhead monitor: August 13, 1985.

Susan and Jim were waving to me and calling "Yun! Yun!" as I passed the customs officer. Plain sailing, indeed.

"Can you guess what that officer called me?"

"A Chinese lady?"

"A pretty lady!"

"Why not? You are quite pretty." Both Susan and Jim assured me with sincere smiles. Perhaps the American criteria for beauty are different than in China. Perhaps, as Mencken perceived, the Americans have a libido for the ugly. I was amused.

The first night in America, I suffered from jet lag. Despite heavy and swollen eyelids, I was unable to fall asleep. My memories were jammed. I thought of myself as a traveling angel: Yesterday I was still in China. Now, I am already lying on a comfortable bed a thousand miles away in the western hemisphere. Wow, I can't believe it. This is the other side of the Pacific Ocean.

2

About thirty-six hours ago, I arrived in Beijing. When I was waiting for a bus to Qinghua Yuan in the hot afternoon sun, a young man crossing the street kept looking at me. Is he an acquaintance? No. I frowned and looked in a different direction. I squeezed into the bus only to find the young man right by my side. One stop, another stop, another. . . .

"Qinghua Yuan. Get off!" The conductor was rather rude.

I got off the bus. He did, too.

"Hi, my name is Du Ming. I'm a graduate of Qinghua University."

"Oh good. I am from Wuhan. My sister is living on the Qinghua campus."

"I see. You are visiting your sister. Shall we take a walk along the lake this evening?"

"Why?"

"Well, I just want to get to know you, to understand you."

I knew young men's tricks and always liked to cool them off at once. Isn't being chased for being a woman an insult? To want me as a woman, you must first know my substance.

"You know, I am well over thirty, already the mother of a child."

He did not show the disappointment I had expected. Instead he offered to carry my suitcase to the foot of my sister's building. Of course, if I had let him do it, he would have carried it all the way to the sixth floor. But I carried it myself, step by step, on the endless long stairs. At each landing, I stopped for a gasp of air. When I finally panted to the sixth floor and knocked at door No. 601, my hair was caked with sweat and dust. Fortunately, my sister was already at home, cooking supper.

"Ah ya, why didn't you phone me from the train station? Look at you, like a beggar from the street." My sister greeted me loudly, with both hands kneading dough like a machine. 'Take a shower first. Look, this is my new apartment. After having waited for four years, I finally got it."

"Shower? Do you even have a shower in the bathroom?"

"Yes. I made the shower myself. It is pretty neat and simple. Just have a huge pot of hot water hanging on that hook overhead. Then with the spray nozzle for watering plants, I created the perfect shower. When you go to America, you can try my device. No patent right. My colleague abroad said you must take a shower every day; otherwise you will smell like Chinese food. . ."

My sister spat words out fast like a machine gun, and she never wasted a minute while she was speaking. Her hands moved faster than her words. When I was out from the shower, several dishes were already on the table, with steam rising up, merging into a mushroom cloud under the shoddy crystal chandelier that Sister must have made herself from glass beads.

Dinner was over. It was getting dark. I was wondering how to pass my last evening in China when someone knocked at the door. Sister opened it and I saw it was Du Ming.

"Can we take a walk along the lake?" He looked straight at me.

"Do you know him?" Sister asked me sternly.

"No," I said without hesitation.

Sister gave him an ugly look and slammed the door.

"You'll never get tricked by a man if you don't fool around." Sister was good at churning out her own proverbs. "Listen, Yun. America is a free world and men don't have any moral principles, luan gao (fucking around). Watch yourself, eh!"

I met Du Ming again at the Capital Airport.

"Ah, it's you."

"Where are you going?"

"America."

"I am going to study psychology at Princeton University." Du Ming gave a buoyant shrug. Oh, I see. He put free love into practice even before getting on the plane.

3

Everything in America looked fresh and new to me. The sky seemed bluer, the sun brighter, and even the apples redder and bigger. Too excited to sleep, I had to frequent the bathroom. The flushing of the toilet sounded the same; but the shower worked magically just like the ones in London. The hot water ran endlessly, unlike Sister's big pot that emptied before I could have a good rinse of my hair. My head was still congested with memories of my life in China.

For the past year, I had attended a Fulbright Workshop on American Literature in Shanghai. I lived with three other college teachers in the same dorm. They were Li Jie, Song Ling, and Lan Yu. Singing, laughing, chatting, dining, and window shopping, we hung out together like a gang of carefree teenagers. But a month before the workshop ended, I rushed back to Wuda (Wuhan University) due to a family emergency. Two weeks later, I received a letter from Li Jie saying that Song Ling's parents came and made a big fuss by dragging their daughter away from Shanghai. It was all because Lan Yu got pregnant by Lin Shan, a cool guy from the workshop rather than by her husband.

Lan Yu was a spirited woman who was always different from the others. I remembered how her provocative daily dresses drew stares from the crowds. She got up early and played tennis with that handsome Lin Shan before breakfast. Then, they went to the cafeteria together. They even went to the theater together in the evenings. Rumors swept right into her ears; but Lan Yu said, "Who cares! What I care for is my own life." Lan Yu seemed to be a threat to others, but an eye-opening friend to me. In fact, it was Lan Yu and Lin Shan who helped squeeze my luggage into the train.

Then my thoughts drifted to my department and colleagues in Wuda. What my colleague Li Hua told me faded in and out like film scenes.

Li Hua was interrogated again and again about her illicit affair with her colleague Ma Jun in the English Department.

A small room with three men and one woman....

"Say exactly when and where?"

"It was about 8:45 on Thursday night. We went to the construction site to the west of the campus. We did it in a half-finished room."

"More details. How did you do it? You or he did it first?"

"He pushed me against the wall..."

(Er, hey, hey...insuppressible low giggles from a male interrogator)

"More details. Who took off your pants, he or yourself?"

...

"How many times? Confess, how many times?"

It happened many, many times between them in the past two years. In the sand pits, abandoned air-raid shelters, ghost buildings, and mosquito-infested woods. For love, they went everywhere possible in their small world. Li Hua had two abortions before her nerdy husband sensed something wrong about their marriage. Each time, after an interrogation, Li Hua would tell me how happy she felt about the days and moments when she was with him, not her husband. Even a thread of the same color in his clothing matching her dress would thrill her to ecstasy.

The year-long Shanghai workshop seemed to have turned me into a semi-stranger to my own campus of Wuda. When I was approved by the authorities to go to America, I practically became an extra-terrestrial to the others. Li Hua, the campus-known scarlet letter "A" colleague, could tell me the secrets of her adultery, perhaps because she trusted me as an ET who posed no harm to her in this world. Li Hua was ostracized on campus and needed an escape from the boundaries of China. Yet it was lucky me who got the chance.

Lucky indeed. In 1972, I was among the first of the worker-peasant-soldier students to enter college. An old peasant had laughed, "Study English? What's that to do with planting rice? You'd better go abroad." His words earned me the nickname "Liuyangde" (going-abroader). By and by, nobody remembered my real name any more. Then in 1976, I was recommended to study English abroad, not because I was wise enough to volunteer to be a peasant again after graduation, but because of my fortune in being a fisherman while Wuhan and Zhengzhou universities had fought fiercely for the opportunity like two oysters. What could the Bureau of Education do? They gave the opportunity to that country bumpkin who would never dream of going abroad. That was when Chinese leaders loved to create wonders. A peasant studying English abroad was the eighth wonder of the world, wasn't it?

After two years in Britain, I taught English at Wuda for almost eight years. Then, Susan and Jim came to teach for a year at Wuda when I happened to attend the workshop in Shanghai. They explored Shanghai for fun on weekends like most foreigners did. When they invited me for dinner with them at the Peace Hotel, I said casually that I had been to Britain and wished to see America. As luck would have it, Jim's department chairman heard that a brilliant Chinese lady longed to see America and offered me a teaching assistantship. Others lost twenty pounds while studying to pass the TOEFL or GREs to get to America, but I breezed into a master's program in English Literature at Edinboro University in Pennsylvania.

During my last night in China, I did not sleep well either. The cicadas were screaming into the dense heat of an Indian summer night. I turned over and over on the bamboo mat. I was conscious of my decision to go to America as a desire to escape. But to escape from what and why, I was unclear. Like a madman being chased by his own shadow, I was perhaps trying to escape from myself or something hidden in myself. Being a Chinese meant being attached to a working unit where co-workers were so close to you that they even knew what you ate and shit. Now I touched my belly button, feeling a sudden umbilical cut from the mother's body. I released a long sigh of freedom.

4

The next day, Susan and Jim gave me a tour of San Francisco. When we walked around Sproul Plaza on the UC Berkeley campus, I encountered a bizarre scene. People with bald heads were chanting; a gypsy-like woman was blowing bubbles. Jim said the woman was a famous poet. A batch of young men spreading pamphlets reminded me of Red Guards. A middle-aged man was giving a partisan speech vehemently. I was not shocked because I had been to Hyde Park in London.

When I saw a few black kids on Pier 39 moving like aluminum robots for money, I immediately tightened my vigilance — begging, a common scene in a capitalist country? No. I giggled to myself. I was not going to repeat the same mistake I had made in London; when a blond lady took a plastic spoon away with her food, I thought she was pilfering.

Jim stood in line for a large slice of pizza.

"The pizza on this pier is very famous. Look at this cheese."

The cheese stretched from his mouth to his hand like Chinese noodles. The image of pizza was unspeakable. A couple of years later in America, I learned that pizza exemplifies vaginal power while the hot dog symbolizes phallic power, like the Washington Monument. My mouth was once assaulted by a masculine tongue in the office. Out of anger and comical sense, I scribbled a vulgar verse.

A living Hot Dog

wagging its large tail

in a fleshy vault.

Clouds were choked in the mid-air;

Saliva of rain hung upon the cheeks.

Could a yin and a yang ever talk

When Heaven was bitten by

a sleeping dog?!

5

The following morning, Susan, Jim, and I drove off for Pennsylvania, leaving eggs and meat in the refrigerator. I was concerned but Jim told me, "Never mind—food is cheap in America." I remembered that the American teachers in Wuda were always complaining that they did not have enough food. But the cook said they left food almost untouched after each meal. I was then an interpreter. It took a while for me to convince the cook that Americans do not consider buns, rice, or any Chinese staple as food. For them, food means meat and greens. They eat rice like salt; a spoonful is quite enough for a day.

After breakfast in a country restaurant, the trip became more brisk.

"Susan and I had lots of fun with students in China. You know Xue Ping. He told us he was making love with a girl on the playground every evening. What he really meant was talking or courting."

"You gave us a good laugh too. During our first talk, you told us your hometown was at the foot of Ji-gong-shan, the Cock-crest Mountain," Susan added.

"What is funny about that?"

"You know what 'cock' or 'balls' mean to Americans, don't you?"

I giggled. Although I had taught English in China for about eight years, I never knew the other meanings of those simple words.

"One colleague in our department taught a year in Beijing. You will meet him soon. He told us some funny stories. Susan, you tell her."

"The one about the Ming Tombs? Okay. Two Americans had studied Chinese for a few months and were ready to try it in the street. When they lost their way during a visit to the Ming Tombs, they asked two peasants, 'Qingwen, Shisan Ling zai nar?'

The two peasants looked at each other, stunned.

The two Americans thought their Chinese was not good enough. But as soon as they turned their backs, they heard the peasants say, 'Isn't that strange? Their foreign tongue sounds just like Chinese, as if they were asking where the Ming Tombs are.'"

"Another tale is even funnier. One day an American was dining in a Beijing restaurant. He said something in English to the waiter. That waiter dropped a plate on the floor and fled. Can you guess what the matter was? The English words to that Chinese sounded like 'How long is your penis?' Yun, how do you say it in Chinese?"

So embarrassing. To say any words in English, even four-letter words, sound natural; but it is too ugly to say them in Chinese. In a land congested with puritans, it was not surprising that when Americans teaching in China gathered, they resorted to entertaining themselves with sexy jokes. Chinese men love to entertain themselves by talking "dirty" sex. How about women? I did not know because I had never talked about that subject. But I heard the secretaries gossiping about Zhang San being a lord at home because her husband was impotent. In China, everybody knows it is taboo to talk about sex with the opposite sex. Talking is next to actually doing it.

"Chinese men look lethargic. What the whole nation needs is a sexual drive." Jim sounded like he wanted to poke China awake with a huge Western penis.

It did happen almost daily. I knew that Professor Huang's daughter married an American teacher. A shocking scandal in the province. A humiliation to all Chinese maidens, as he was not only a foreigner, but also a twice-divorced man. Another, another, another. . . .until the University simply did not allow female students to visit foreigners any more.

"Do you know Xiao Dong?"

"Yes. The most brilliant student in my class."

"He is here now."

"I know. His relative in America sponsored him to study history in America."

"That relative is Becky."

"Who, she! The American graduate of my age? Xiao Dong is not quite twenty. Impossible."

"Yes. Anything in the world is possible. We foreigners in Wuda all know. Xiao Dong often stole into Becky's room."

"Becky told me that Chinese men are unenlightened in sex. But once they learn, they are great." Susan sounded as though she had great admiration for Becky.

"Becky came to China with the sole purpose of finding a Chinese man. She used to have a visiting scholar from Beijing as her lover in the States. But that man was married and returned to China about half a year ago."

"But Becky has a husband and she asked for an early return because of her mother's illness."

Susan and Jim laughed aloud over Chinese gullibility.

"Becky got back to the states and divorced her husband, a professor of philosophy. She and Xiao Dong are already married. Yun, you can make a phone call to your student. But don't let Becky know we told you about her."...

About two years later, Susan and Jim divorced and each married a young student from a foreign country. My colleagues in Wuda made a big fuss. Why, Susan and Jim had been admired as the best-matched couple they had ever seen, a sharp contrast to the miserable, ill-yoked spouses in China.

6

I arrived in Edinboro University of Pennsylvania on my thirty-fifth birthday. I often heard people say I still looked like an undergraduate, around twenty. Once, an undergraduate, who wanted to be my boyfriend made me feel embarrassed and ashamed of appearing so fraudulently young to the foreign eye. I always liked to tell people my age. America is a paradise for youth. Everybody tries to look young. Do you really want to be old? I did not feel old, anyway. Last year, when I was studying American literature in Shanghai, I found myself the oldest one in the whole section. And I always stole to bed early for fear of burning out. Now, America has given my face another bout of acne— the beans of youth, the Chinese say.

With earnings as a teaching assistant, I suddenly became very rich, with plenty of money to pay for my rent in a shared apartment and daily food. However, I felt a loss if I did not try experiences like washing dishes, chopping vegetables, and carrying plates just as some self-supported overseas students did. Edinboro was a university town. There were not many restaurants. Since all the graduate courses were offered in the evenings, I started hunting for a day job. Out from a Kentucky Fried Chicken and into a Wendy's, I filled up a few foot-long application forms. After waiting for a couple of days... no calls. Refusing to give up, I decided to comb through the big and small restaurants in town. Managers and bosses received me politely, but said, "Sorry, we don't have any openings now. Leave your phone number and we may call you when we need help." I knew it was hopeless. They would discard my phone number as soon as I left. At the point of giving up, I saw a big sign, "Help wanted," posted on the window of an Italian restaurant. I muttered to myself, "I will go in just to hear what the boss will say."

"Good afternoon, sir. I saw your sign for help. May I help you?"

"Looking for a job? Part time or full time?"

"Yes. Either is okay with me."

"Are you Chinese?"

"Yes, don't I look like one?"

"Well, I really don't know what a real Chinese looks like. I have no Chinese customers. Edinboro is a very small town, you know."

"But Chinese food is known everywhere in the U.S."

"Sure, sure. I can give you a try for a few hours."

I was delighted. I went home, took a shower, and went back neatly in a black skirt and red top. The benign boss looked at me critically. But bound by his words, he had to try me as a waitress for four hours anyway. Only a couple of men came in towards evening. They examined me like looking at a strange pet. I guessed that they were a little quieter than usual. The boss looked at them apologetically and served them food himself most of the time. The uncomfortable four hours was finally over. I just wanted to escape, wanting no pay and no tips. But the boss was very friendly to me. He gave me $15 from his own pocket and said,

"Business is bad. This pizzeria used to be crowded in the evenings."

"Perhaps adding some new menu, like Chinese egg rolls, will help."

"You are a clever girl. Why don't you cook some for me to try first."

I felt a little relaxed. I came on a Monday evening when the restaurant was closed and went shopping with the boss. Following my suggestions, the boss bought ground beef, green cabbage, glass noodles, carrots, gingers, etc....

"Wow, so cheap?" the boss could hardly believe it. "No wonder, selling Chinese food can make a profit."

I put on an apron and started my cooking adventure. In fact, I had not been cooking for years. Right after marriage, I turned my husband into the family cook, hence liberating myself from domestic drudgeries. I never made egg rolls before. But as the Chinese saying goes, "Even if you've never tasted pork, you must have seen a pig." Thinking of the similarity between steamed bao and fried egg rolls, I started cooking without hesitation. I slightly browned ground beef and strained off the fat, then scrambled a few eggs, boiled some glass noodles, shredded cabbage, green onion, and ginger, and mixed all the ingredients nicely with sesame oil and Chinese seasonings in a big pot. After making two dozen large egg rolls, I used green and red bell peppers, pork ribs, and canned pineapples to cook a wok of sweet and sour ribs.

The boss had been watching me intermittently while updating the receipt books. When everything was done, he shook his head vehemently, "Too much work, too much time."

I was sweating all over from the three and a half hours of intensive labor. I took the twenty dollars given by the boss and left without a word. For the first time in my life, I realized that eating Chinese food is eating sweat and time.

7

I went home crestfallen. For quite a few days, I did not go out looking for a job. From morning till evening, I sat before a TV. Gradually a question came to me, "How does everybody else look different from me, a woman from China?" I found that every American on TV looked happy, beaming with a confident and open smile. Hah, here is the key to success ! I cheered myself up and started smiling.

The following day around noontime, I put on my new sneakers, tight jeans and fitted T shirt. I marched into the shining McDonald's located at the town center—the only restaurant I had not yet tried for a job. McDonald's looked too pompously American in my view. The people working there wore neat uniforms as if on a navy ship and the people eating there were nearly all blond or brown haired.

When I arrived, it was rush hour. I went straight inside and stood in line for a long while for a fish fillet meal. I felt nostalgic being in the crowd as rubbing shoulders was such a common scene in China. After eating, I read the newspaper left by a customer and waited patiently till the rush hour was over.

I marched to the counter and asked to see the manager.

The cashier was startled and thought I had something to complain about and called the manager immediately.

"What can I do for you, Miss?"

"I see how busy it is here. Can you offer me a job?"

"A job, here? Do you need money for school?"

"No, no, not for money. I want to see and learn how Americans cook."

He laughed but said,

"All right. But you'll need a two-hour training. Can you do it this afternoon?"

"No problem. I want to be trained right away."

The manager led me through the back kitchen into a conference room. He inserted a tape into VCR and said, "Please watch carefully how they cook, how they speak, and how everybody works as part of a team."

"Can I rewind it sometimes to learn better?"

"Sure, you can watch it as many times as you wish."

I watched it the whole afternoon with great interest. The tape taught how to cook every single item sold in McDonald's in a most efficient way. It reminded me of the Chaplin movie "Modern Times". Wow, the Tyler streamline production method was used in industry as well as in American restaurants. I marveled and I thought of Darwin's survival of the fittest and the method of selecting the superior promoted by the great Chinese mathematician Hua Luogeng. On the way home, I thought: In fact no matter what you learn or do, if you keep selecting the better or more efficient means by eliminating the inferior or less efficient in the process, you will surely be a winner.

After a shower that night, I saluted to myself in my brand new working uniform before the mirror. I smiled confidently like the captain of an ocean liner. I vowed to succeed as the first non-American employee of the Edinboro McDonald's.

8

The employees at this McDonald's were very young. Several of them were high school graduates, no more than twenty. The manager, the oldest of the crew, was perhaps in his early thirties. The owner seldom came to the restaurant, only once or twice a week during the rush hour. The manager was in charge of everything, from scheduling shifts to division of labor. My arrival, if not exhilarating, must have added some fun to the young crew who seemed to be waiting for a laughingstock. I fried chicken nuggets for no more than an hour when a blond girl pulled my loose hair from behind and said,

"Hey, your hair has to be bound and tucked into your cap. You don't want to fry your pig tails, do you?"

The whole crew laughed their heads off. I tried not to take offense. I bound my hair and tucked the long fringes under the cap immediately and said good naturedly,

"Thank you. Getting my hair fried is okay, but I am afraid my customers will not like it."

Frying nuggets and fish filet need no practice as you just put it in and get it out by a timer. Next, I fried apple pies and french-fries, which needed some judgment. When I moved to the front hot range to flip meat patties and prepare all sorts burgers according to orders, I faced great challenges. But within three days, I had mastered the whole range of cooking required in this McDonald's. The real problem was my slowness in handling work slang such as "one drill on six." After practicing for a week, I finally managed to pass orders freely like other crew members. Then, I was sent to clean the dining areas and bathrooms. Finally, I was assigned to do general dishwashing after the restaurant closed its business at midnight. Everybody was surprised at how well I had performed every single assignment.

"Look, how fast and clean Yun is washing those pots and pans! How neatly she has every item arranged on the shelves!"

I was soon recognized as their Big Sister. Surprisingly, I was awarded four music albums from the McDonald's corporate headquarters because I won the honor of Speedee, the employee of the month. I enjoyed working with the crew and captured my pleasure and experience in a long poem.

The warm air of McDonald's

bellowing a greeting song.

I came to bathe myself

in the team spirit of a crew of young.

I'm grilling the filet;

You're passing the nuggets;

She's dressing the B. L. T.;

He's taking up the Big Macs.

Mind your jargon: one drill on six.

"Thank you" and "Please,"

Your mouth should never sneeze.

We are as fresh as the tossing salad.

Beeping buttons and shrieking alarms forever

keep us on the alert.

One to another as sweet as Danish,

Creating an atmosphere tastes like Vanilla

creamy and rich.

When rush hour comes,

Everyone is charged,

Like Chaplin in Modern Times,

Plus Juggler's fingers.

When business is slow,

We recover ourselves from the robot role.

It's time to relax a little

And crack jokes a few.

What? You want me to teach you a bit?

You want to learn how to say

"I love you" in Chinese?

"Wo ai ni"—but do not say it

To every young Chinese girl you meet,

Or you'll get an indelible slap on your face in the street.

Uproarious laughter drives dullness

of having-nothing-to-do away.

The embarrassment of seeing a boy kissing a girl in public

is no longer in the way.

I am awarded a "Speedee"

for keeping the lobby neat.

I laugh at myself for unwittingly westernizing a homely

saying "as clean as a hospital" into

"as clean as McDonald's feet."

It is not strange to feel there are no strangers here;

Outlandish chat everybody is eager to hear.

Wherever I go, wherever I stay,

With a gluttonous smile,

The McDonald's Clown whispers to me:

Down to earth price

Fireside taste

Served with a cup of free team spirit.

9

I worked at the McDonald's during the day and studied postmodernism at night. One Wednesday, from 2:30 to 3:30 in the afternoon, business was exceptionally slow. Slipping into a postmodern self, my vision was getting darker and darker as I almost nodded off in the break room.

I watch the witch-pot of oil

bubbling.

I see the grill of Hell

sizzling.

I hear the nuggets singing

a swan song.

My heart is cleft by the toaster's

long shrieking.

Why is your image so ugly?

Why is your vision so dark?

Why is your tone so mournful?

Why can't your mood be a lark?

If I have time to see the patterns of rose,

If I have mind to hear the shades of Beethoven,

If I can afford to chase the wind along the beach,

If I am free to transcend all and each,

Maybe I will be different;

Maybe not.

I finally figured out that for all the black humor, a postmodern person was trapped in a catch 22 set up by oneself, with a dark vision from nowhere and a helpless agony without causation. Meanwhile, my mastery of cooking and diligence had been so well recognized that my daily working hours increased from four to six hours, then to full time, then to overtime. I could be called to duty whenever the restaurant got too busy or a crew member was absent or sick. Overworking not only tired out my body but my mind.

There's a minute when

I was reciting Dickinson,

"How happy is the little stone",

A bird cautioned me:

"Oh, stop! Your time is sold."

There's a moment when

I was watching

red petals of ketchup

with golden mustard filaments,

a square yellow cheese carpet

on minced green lettuce velvet,

A severe eye whipped me:

"Oh, stop! Your mind is sold."

Why do my legs feel like an elephant?

Why does my mouth munch like a machine?

Why does my brain numb like a tomb?

Why does the quick resemble the doom?

A hush voice startled me:

"Hush—stop all your inquisitiveness.

You know you are sold."

It was a hot summer night. I pondered over the pleasure of physical labor to a healthy existence and the necessity of selling time for survival. But when the selling of time comes to the point of selling oneself, it turns the self from a living creature into a cog on a wheel with the deprivation of spiritual or intellectual existence, one must stop. I decisively quit my job.

10

About two weeks ago, when I was cleaning the tables in the dining area, I found a twenty dollar bill under the table where an elderly lady was sitting. I picked it up and offered it to the lady, "Ma'am is this yours?" The lady checked her purse and smiled sweetly, "Honey, I thought it was. But it isn't." I handed the bill to the manager at the counter. The manager asked the few customers whether anyone had lost a $20 bill. Nobody claimed it. So he gave it back to me and said, "It is yours."

"Oh no. It is not mine. I cannot take it."

"Well, what shall we do? Perhaps you can donate it somewhere like the Cancer Society or Children's Hospital."

"A good idea."

The elderly lady was known as Mrs. Shirley, the manager of a furniture store. She chatted with me from time to time in the following days and offered me a comfortable room in her beautiful house. For free board, I would feed the dog, wash a couple of plates a day, and vacuum the house once a week. This seemed like no work for me at all.

Since I quit working at McDonald's, a sudden relaxation of my muscles must have puffed up my appearance.

"Yun, you look more like an American now," Jim complemented me.

Susan brought me some used dresses and a jacket. She told me that their Chinese friend Peak Pine quit smoking because he did not want the repetition of the Opium War in China.

"A war on tobacco this time. China has become the largest world cigarette market today," Jim added. "But look, how the Chinese love McDonald's food. Look at our Yun."

"Yun, I am serious. Why don't you go back to China and open a McDonald's chain there? You will be rich."

Even Mrs. Shirley said smugly, "Yun looked better in three days after moving in with me."

In fact, I started to gain weight at McDonald's. Every work hour, I got forty cents worth of free McDonald's food; adding a little money of my own, I could get a large meal of Filet-O-fish, Big Mac, French fries, apple pie, and a coke or a chocolate milk shake per shift. After a day's hard work, I gorged on every morsel of my food heartily like a typical blue-collar worker. Watching a big screen TV and munching food, nothing could make one feel happier. Coming to America was like landing on a strange planet, bound to encounter new viruses. As America is a paradise with better food and living conditions, I was not immune to their viruses wrapped in sugar coating.

Peak Pine was a man of fifty. Jim and Susan said if any Chinese could succeed in America, it was Peak Pine. Peak Pine only knew a few words of English. He came to America with nothing but two hands and a strong will. Before he left for Pittsburgh to embark on his next adventure in America, he came to say goodbye to me. He was wearing a pair of thick glasses. Peering at me from the top of his glasses, he whispered,

"Yun, you have been shot by an American bullet."

"What?"

"An American sugar-coated bullet called obesity."

For the past ten years, I had a stable weight of 106 pounds at 5 feet 2 inches tall. But in less than two months in America, I gained 25 pounds and my pants waist expanded by 2.5 inches. All my dresses from China became tight and small. The hours of intense work at McDonald's gave me no time nor mind for controlling my weight. Worse still, the idleness and rich food at Mrs. Shirley's made me balloon up. I gained another ten pounds in ten days. I became worried as well as obsessed. If I starved myself from one meal, I would have a revenging comeback with two meals in one at the next. So depressed, I could hardly write my course papers. After binging on boxes of crackers, I searched all the cupboards and emptied all the old cereals. For the first time in my life, I experienced self-loathing.

Mrs. Shirley was going away for a week. Before she left, she reserved a Thanksgiving dinner for me at a nearby hotel and stuffed the huge refrigerator with food as I would be alone for the holiday. On my first Thanksgiving Day in America, I first had a bellyful in the hotel buffet and went home only to find myself opening the refrigerator and eating the whole cold turkey breast, followed by pumpkin pie and peanut butter ice cream. Perhaps to compensate for the lack of company, I gorged myself until I was eating with tears, tears over my incurable gluttony.

I couldn't go to sleep that night. I thought and thought until I was truly tired of self-abandonment. At daybreak, I put on my sneakers and started jogging.

When you are stuffed like a turkey

and satiated as a cat,

You want to curse yourself

or slap your mouth.

A lump of guilt and regret wishes to turn into a laxative.

But brooding on time only breeds a crab too pensive;

An active slimming course costs you nothing expensive.

Just run—run—run

Around the track

one circle—another—another.

Sweat? —Oh, good

Out of breath? —Slow down for a while,

Continue to run—run—run—

Run. . .

Till you feel utterly exhausted.

Running is a mill,

Grinding away all your fatty extra,

Leaving only the quintessence for

a body of the acrobatic Spring and

a mind of a cucumber Summer Night.

11

I kept jogging every morning. My weight became stabilized at 116 pounds, perfect for my height and size. Thinking back, I laughed at myself: How a waif from starvation suffers in the world of plenty!

I remembered the days of famine in China; there was almost nothing to eat. People ate tree bark, leaves, grass roots, and seaweed. Even worse, some villages had no fire for weeks for there was nothing to cook. Hungry ghosts haunted the new graveyards. Even in the best of times, food in my memory had always been rationed. Three ounces of oil and twenty-eight pounds of rice was the monthly ration for an adult. There was no expectation of a chunk of meat. Ground meat was used for seasoning. A roast chicken would be considered a special banquet and meat dumplings were a festival treat. Routinely, I would relish tofu, bean sprouts, and greens. I had a keen appetite and enjoyed all sorts of food. I had never thought of overeating, because I simply did not have the luxury of overeating or pigging out.

It was not surprising that in the sea of affluence, I almost drowned. I almost died a Du Fu, a great poet of the Tang, who had starved for days before a county mayor recognized him and gave him a feast. He died, bursting with food, without knowing that the feast could be fatal, a sugar-coated bullet.

Obesity belonged to the privileged few in 1980's China, while in America was already a plague for many. But either in China or America, "being slim" has been a noose around the neck of young women. Song Bin and I were accepted into the master's English program by Edinboro University at the same time. Bin was ten years younger than me and about half a head taller. While I was tortured by obesity, Bin went the other extreme. She had a boyfriend in Boston and wanted to be super-slim. She hardly ate any food but drank a lot of black coffee. She must have lost 30 pounds since she came to America. Her cheekbones looked higher and shoulders thinner. She reminded me of Fang Li.

.... A loud groan came from the room next door, scary because I had never heard such a sound in real life. I pushed the door ajar and saw Fang Li sprawling on the floor, an alcohol bottle tumbling by her side. A horrible sight! Was it really Fang Li, a student of mine about four months ago? I had recommended her as a teacher of English in Wuda on the basis of her glowing health and intelligence. I suddenly remembered the gossip that she was only eating an ounce of rice a day simply because she had been rejected by a man for "being too fat." ....

Funny indeed—a man may be handicapped by his short height and a woman by her weight. Bin told me that girls in Boston, unlike the bumpkins in the Pennsylvania area, are very slim. Why, if you are fat, you cannot even find a job there. I thought if I were a boss, I would put "no weight discrimination" in the job ad. But meanwhile, I took my weight problem as a personal battle. Once you came out a winner, you could eat all your favorites but with a habitual moderation. I coined a new maxim for living, "eating with moderation shows the strength of self-discipline; starving for the love of a man is losing oneself."

My husband was extra-slim. Marrying someone you do not love was another philosophy of mine. Yet, it was true that I had never liked "skinny" men.

My ancient girl,

my ancient girl,

What kind of man do you love?

I love a man with a mind

as broad as the word "tolerance."

I love a man with a heart

embedded with unblocked vessels of kindness.

I love a man who is shape-blind,

preferring the healthy plump to

the starved slim.

I love a man who loves not for me or for himself.

I'm no queen; he's no king.

I am a fool; he is an idiot.

We are safely locked in the

Casket of mad marriage.

12

Battling with obesity is obviously not easy. But psychological encounters such as hole-envy are even harder-to-dodge bullets.

After arriving in America, the first freedom I gained was being able to talk about sex. Did Freud talk about a girl's envy for a penis? It was drizzling and I was thinking in my cubicle about what we had discussed in class. Perhaps there was something true in it. When Mei went to kindergarten at the age of three, for quite a while she refused to squat for a pee. She said the other kids did not. She even tried to pee a rainbow, although she achieved nothing but wet pants. I laughed as I suddenly remembered a professor who had died while peeing an arc against an electric pole. Nevertheless, there was no evidence of Mei's envy for penis. When sexual differences became clear to her, she absolutely refused to act like a boy or wear boy's clothing.

Years later when I asked her, "Are you willing to be born as a boy in your next life, Mei?"

"No. You know Mom, the three most brilliant kids in my class are all girls."

Once during an after-dinner chat, Jim said there was a "flasher" in this town of Edinboro. What does that mean? Oh, a flasher is a naked man wearing a long coat who reveals his penis to women in a flash. I've never heard of such a pervert in China. Actually, I had.

Li Jie, my roommate in Shanghai, was the most decent person I ever met. For her prudishness, she earned the nickname "Puritan." But it was from her that I heard the most bizarre stories about the People's Liberation Army (PLA), from which she was honorably discharged. One day, a woman soldier was called to have a heart-to-heart talk with her platoon leader. Every word she heard was political jargon. When she lowered her head absentmindedly, she was shocked to see a huge penis flashing out of the open flap of the platoon leader's pants. What does this "flash" signify? A begging for a hole, isn't it? One PLA soldier was shot to death during his troop's stay in a Tibetan area because he had poked a sheep and made the sheep give birth to a horrible creature. Another soldier frequented a women's toilet at midnight, spraying semen into the sanitary napkin stained with menstrual blood. . . . So many male perverts.

Does anyone hear about female perverts? Yes. A woman died in Kaifeng putting a light bulb into her vagina. No woman would believe such a rumor. Moreover, a bulb was shaped more like an egg than a penis anyway.

I was trying to recall my first sight of a penis when George, a fellow graduate student, popped into my cubicle.

"Yun, have a piece of cake. Today is my birthday. I am twenty-three now."

"Congratulations! I am thirty-five. You young boys make me feel like a grandma in the department."

George grinned at the free telling of my age and said, "We all love grandmas. Truthfully, I love my grandma at home most. I wish she could look as young as you. Hey, shall we have dinner together at the Golden Wok?"

"Why not? I'll treat you today for your birthday."

Lately, chubby George was quite attached to me, but I would not encourage him simply because he was twelve years my junior. I seldom experienced equal communication with a man of my own age, let alone a youngster. Nevertheless, I loved George like my little brother, and I sometimes secretly enjoyed an "incestuous" pleasure in the relationship.

Parting from George after dinner, I went back to my cubicle. The rain was getting heavier. What am I thinking? I started scratching my confused thoughts in a poem I called "Electroencephalogram: A Birthday Tale."

It is the fading coal,

the lingering image of a comet's bygone tail.

Your birthday is coming, not passing;

Today is your birthday—carpe diem.

Multifarious you keep popping up:

the Hawaiian tourist,

the dignified suit without a tie.

No, not me.

You, the cherub,

the sight of innocence.

How you smile, ripples of an autumn lake,

endlessly soothing, not enchanting

What a grieved look.

Even you, at your age, have internal fractures?

You are frowning, still incapable of

producing an aged wrinkle.

....

A little girl in a comic book

puts her "calf love" in a tangible orange

with a sisterly hand.

How innocent is he to return a banana!

Twenty or thirty years ago,

her eyes first opened wild,

looking at the difference in between an infant's snowy limbs,

her hand holding a mouth organ in

the shape of a cute yellow banana

with two rows of tiny holes.

Are you really innocent?

What's so funny about eating a hot dog?

Damn Freud, who deprived us of

illicit pleasures even in decoding the dream of a pizza.

....

Little brother,

your older sister may give you a birthday present

—only you guess it:

priceless in the way it touches no tinge of money,

but with a taint of imagination.

It's the breath of breeze.

It's the touch of the fleshy dawn.

It's the warm ring of the setting sun.

It's not from a male or a female.

It's not the riddle of the Sphinx.

It's perhaps labial but nonverbal.

....

How I wish I could have an automatic imagination recorder in my pocket. Now nothing but a few crumbs gleaned.

Ha, Golden Wok!

I'm watching you with your earphones on

like a toy airplane pilot.

You chuckle.

Isn't this birthday tale amusing?

....

My scribbling seemed endless. Incidentally, I saw the notice that a female graduate student in the English Department had been assaulted two days ago in the building. Even though I was strong enough to kick a man who lacks self-control the way Alima kicked Terry in Herland, it was wise for me to go home before eleven at night.

I ran all the way home like a mad woman. Soon I was standing under a shower. There were two criteria for testing the degree of a person's adaptation from China to America: taking a shower at bedtime or in the morning; and dreaming in English or Chinese. I was still in the process of transition. For three months, I had gradually gotten used to taking showers in the morning. But today, I was so preoccupied that I slipped into the old habit again.

The shower head was small but shaped like a huge penis and I felt shy as the water was flowing down along the curves of my body and rushing into the hole under my feet. Where does the water flow? The heart of the earth, I hope. Rubbing soap around the edge of my own hole, I thought about why Long had been so curious about a woman's hole. Before our wedding, Long begged me to let him see the mysterious hole. After our marriage, he was, perhaps, too excited to insert his power into that hole. He complained that there was no hole at all. I read about stone women in classical Chinese tales. Perhaps I happened to be one. We went to the hospital and the doctors laughed for I was still a virgin. I was not mad at Long because he had promised to be with me all my life even if I was a stone girl. Why had he suggested that I have a contraceptive ring before leaving China? Of course he did not trust my chastity that much; nor did I. Long also mentioned that a long spousal separation was not too difficult for a woman to bear. What did he mean? I smiled. A woman has ten fingers. Does a man have his own hole to release?

13

I curled up like an old cat in bed, with bright eyes searching into darkness.

It must be 1981 when I first discussed sex with a Chinese colleague.

"Hey, I read something from the encyclopedia about Freud today. Do you know anything about him?" Xiao Fan was riding on a rusty bike. Xiao means "young" or "little" in Chinese. Actually Fan was well over fifty, almost the eldest in the department. Everybody called him Xiao Fan, because he was the most knowledgeable and never wore out his childlike inquisitiveness.

"I heard something about him in Britain." I was riding a shining Five Rams, a lady's bike.

"Above all the talk about ego and id, to put it simply, Freud simply means that the sexual drive is like a man anxiously looking for a toilet. Nobody can really repress sex."

My mind zoomed to 1973.

"Hereby, I announce the decision of the university. Feng Li and Shen Yi are expelled from the university because they made illicit love defying our repeated discipline...." The voice of PLA Representative Wang was decisive.

Hardly a week later....

"You know Representative Wang is going back to the army tomorrow?"

"What for?"

"Wang tried to force Shen Yi to have sex with him when she was found having an affair with Feng Li. He threatened her: Do it with me or be expelled from school. . . ."

I thought of my days in England from late 1976 to early 1978. Strange, puritanical purge extended to a foreign land just like on the soil of China.

"Hui and Ping are being sent back to China tonight."

"Why? We are allowed to study in Britain for two years. Not a year passed yet."

"Oh, you are still in the dark. Hui was caught fondling Ping's breasts the other night by our mentor Comrade Zhang."

My mind had a close-up of Li Hua, the adulteress who made her final bitter confession to me the night before my eternal departure from Wuda.

"Li Hua, how come your hair is turning gray and your neck has become so wrinkled?"

"I feel more angry than ashamed. Yes, we made love behind my husband and his wife. But I cannot understand why I am being punished by teaching in a lower position while he is not."

"I thought you really loved him."

"No longer. The inequality has turned my love to anger."

Li Hua continued, "Can you believe what Chair Meng said to me? He said, 'If you want to have an extramarital affair, why not with me?'"

Now I am still in shock whenever I recall that conversation. Chair Meng had been my secret admirer. I can hardly believe he was that cheap. A man is looking for a hole, no matter where.

Tiredness finally wrapped over my warm, lazy body. I dropped onto the bed almost senselessly. The following morning I could not bear the sight of that phallus-like shower head and my host was kind enough to buy a new one, shaped like a sunflower. I was inspired by the new sight and new experience.

A peacock's tail,

A phoenix's trail,

A crystal chandelier,

A screen of silver beads threaded with golden hair.

It fans over your perspiring body

like a palm of feathers.

It caresses your lonely face

like a mother's gentle finger.

It admires your naked shame

with a thousand watery eyes.

It patters on the string of your worn-out nerves

like a wondrous seven-star needle.

In ecstasy,

you become the hub of a white chrysanthemum

pedaling its willowy petals.

In despair,

acid tears join the streams

rushing over your body and

empty into the sea through the sink

Throw back your hair, flying as a swallow

greeting the sun-rays.

Tiptoe your feet, swirling as a sea gull

dispersing the rain.

Stretch your arms and lean against the wall,

Watching a bunch of arrows pierce through your soul.

How painful it is,

How blissful it is,

to hail the rebirth

In a shower of metaphors,

In the metaphors of a shower.

14

Another month passed. Not a soul spoke Chinese to me. I must be forgetting my mother tongue. Do you ever dream in English? I don't know. But that night I had a significant dream.

I was talking to a Chinese colleague

who knows no English.

I chattered and giggled,

muttered and chuckled;

he looked puzzled, dumb like a fool.

I suddenly realized what a fool I am--

I was speaking English.

I made a conscious effort and switched to Chinese.

Another minute I lost my conscious control again;

I was mumbling in English.

The listener protested;

I swerved to Chinese

with a screeching sound.

Then I slipped to English again.

My acquaintance disappeared like a stranger;

Like a stranger, I was left in monologue alone.

I did not know when.

I did not care.

I was, head over heels, shuttling between

Beckett and Nabokov, Nabokov and Beckett

When the alarm clock rang.

I must have a subconscious wish to write freely in an adopted tongue as playwright Samuel Beckett switched in writing from English to French while novelist Vladimir Nabokov turned from Russian to English in their newly-found land.

15

Time weighed heavily on me. Idleness turned me into a dreary hermit. Fall gradually vanished with withering yellow leaves. Winter came with dancing white flakes. I was jogging slowly along the street in the evening until I stopped by the beautiful scene and had a momentary pleasure:

Crystal-knit maple branches—

ice-woven webs;

A snow-hugged ridge—

blown away white clouds.

Boundless is my pleasure.

I knew I was merely simulating that boundlessness. Life is full of boundaries and so are human emotions. But an active life is just a process of dissolution and reformation of states—material, spiritual, and emotional.

I stopped jogging at the street intersection through the downtown area. I was immersed in the atmosphere of Christmas. All the trees were decorated with lights. Suddenly street lamps lit up and even these had transformed into septangular stars. I gazed upon one image until my soul merged into it.

I AM

a seven-petaled snow flower,

bearing the configurations of the heaven.

I multiply as if in a kaleidoscope,

weaving the velvety patterns of

a quilt.

Beneath

I copulate with the root of wheat,

penetrating with no protuberant organ but soft fluid,

to make man pregnant with seeds,

while I'm happily vanishing,

rising with inaudible clouds

to the moon,

where I crystallize patterns again,

with nothingness in stillness,

till another fall

to the earth.

Back at the house, I found my only company—my shadow—more visible in the dim light. Mrs. Shirley had again flown away to join her children and grandchildren in her ex-husband's residence in San Diego. I filled a bowl with dog food and opened the side door. I put the bowl outside and instantly withdrew my hand as if I had been bitten by a snake. Most Americans love dogs and some prefer dogs as their life companions. This German shepherd was too fierce for me. The lonely lady next door took her TV as a substitute lover. I could not do that either.

I got to know two other female Chinese graduate students outside my department: Hong Ling majored in education and Jiang Li in library science. Hong Ling's baby was only two months old when she left, Jing Li's boy was no more than three, and my girl was about six. How we laughed when we first met, not only because our husbands had to take care of the kids like moms, but also because the men's bikes were simultaneously stolen in spite of the fact that one was in Wuhan, one was in Xi'an, and one was in Shanghai. A bike in China, like a car in America, is a person's extended legs. They were truly grounded at home.

For Christmas, Hong Ling went to New York to stay with an old Australian professor who had sponsored her to America. Jiang Li went to Pittsburgh to work in a restaurant since she did not have financial aid. Jim went away to join Susan in Spain. There was not even a soul to call in the States. For the first time, loneliness soaked into my marrow.

Actually, a modern person's loneliness in a crowd is very much a personal choice. Jeff, another graduate student, first invited me to go to Florida with him. I declined, but Rose went. Another admirer of mine kept calling me every week and asked me to rent a room for him in Edinboro so that he could come and visit me from Iowa. When I mentioned this to Jim, he laughed, "That snarling cat! Tell him to walk to Edinboro." Last week when the snarling cat joked that he could not wait to slap my butt, I finally had enough of his vulgarity and hung up on him.

The following evening was Christmas Eve. Christmas was an occasion for family reunion like the Chinese Nian (New Year). What is the Nian? A horrible beast. All of the Chinese have an orgy on the eve of Nian's coming, because they know that there will not be any tomorrows. They will all become excrement in the belly of Nian. Nevertheless, Nian never comes. The Chinese still indulge themselves in merry-making but the meaning has changed. Nian means New Year, the beginning and re-beginning of time, space, memory, love, hatred, revenge. . . .

16

As the Chinese saying goes, "A festival doubles a person's nostalgia and longing (Ren feng jia jie bei si qin)." Did I miss my parents? Yes, but not that keenly. A married daughter is like water poured outside—no longer belonging to the family. Meng, my ex-lover, already remarried. I felt a speck of pity for him—a man who had struggled for almost twenty years to free himself from the coffin of a marriage, had now fallen into another one. Someone said Meng still looked tortured, like the man in Kafka's Trial, after he fulfilled the ordinary Chinese man's dream of marrying a nurse-secretary. I should dutifully miss my husband Long, an honest, dependable man. The word "Long" means "dragon" in Chinese. I tried hard to think of him sweetly and even thought of writing an ode to the Silent Dragon. But the inspiration refused to come. The dream I had last night was perhaps truer than my conscious thoughts.

Oh, what a dream!

I ran here and there

I searched the cupboard

I looked between the linen sheets

I am so free

I have no link with anybody.

Am I married?

Where's my husband?

Who's my husband?

Bliss? Fear?

Wandering in pondering. . .

Ah, there he came

or rather, I found him

I found him calm, serene, emotionless

and motionless

We were jointed silently in candle taste.

I twisted my mouth. Though the wax was hard to chew, I gnawed it willingly. During those years of flowers and butterflies, Jiang broke my heart and I broke at least three men's hearts, although not out of gender revenge. Fang wrote me a poem each week for three years and he was almost killed in a train crash during a special trip to see me. He worshiped me as the moon. Yet, he lost me to a slight shortage of confidence and patience. When I finally wrote a letter responding to his love, he was already married. His bride mocked him as "an abandoned orphan" at their wedding.

My second suitor was nicknamed "True Man" in the department. He was dark and tall, quite macho looking.

It was the year of 1974 when True Man was courting me.

"Hey, look at True Man at the foot of the building. He has been staring at our window for days."

I looked down and saw his dazed look.

True Man had behaved strangely towards me lately. One moment he was trying unsuccessfully to tell me a joke. Another moment he was asking for some sort of silly help. I felt threatened by his masculinity.

The following noon my best friend Qin asked me to take a walk along the lake. Qin sounded very mysterious and she finally told me that True Man had asked her to ask me whether I could be his girlfriend. I was already 24, theoretically mature about that delicate human relationship. Moreover, I had been class president for the past two years. So I talked with True Man directly.

"What do you know about me?"

Silence.

"How old are you?"

"Twenty-two."

"See, you're two years younger than me. In addition, our personalities seem to be very different . . ."

"Are you going to inform on me to the department?"

"Why should I?"

I thought I had handled the situation perfectly. Who knew that a True Man would never forgive a rejecting woman! True Man started his war against the fair sex. He played with the emotions of a young faculty member and led her to a nervous breakdown. Then he set two first-year students at war for his so-called love. Whenever he saw me talking to any man, he would spread tons of rumors about me.

The third suitor was that "Snarling Cat". He was among the first batch of master degree candidates in Wuda. After I married, he audited my English class like a good student. He sometimes visited me at home and sometimes caught me in my daily walks around the playground. Whatever he did, he was wallowing in an unfulfilled dream. His visits made Long feel extremely uncomfortable. I never showed strong disgust toward him. Perhaps, being adored on a pedestal is a pleasant feeling for any being.

17

How could you marry Long? I had been asked this question hundreds of times by my acquaintances.

When I returned from England, I was twenty-eight, already too old for men my age. Nevertheless, I was the only repatriated young graduate at Wuda. My uniqueness must have aroused some men's attention. Several senior professors offered to be go-betweens. I interviewed one suitor after another, after another, none to my taste. Intelligent but arrogant; honest-looking but stupid... Professor Ma started to tease me, "Yun, don't be that choosy. Do you know bachelor Zhou's story? Twenty years ago he was a tall handsome young man and attracted a lot of girls. He interviewed one after another. If a girl was beautiful and lively, he thought she must be a flirting type; if a girl was quiet, he thought she must be too dumb. When he grew much older, he was determined to catch one blindfolded. When the girl came with me to see Zhou, he asked her, 'Have you seen any tigers in town?' The girl decided to marry me. Do you see my point, Yun?"

I was then sharing a room with a young faculty member in mathematics. She was about my age but looked younger and prettier. She told me she had missed two young men in her life. Now each suitor was worse than the previous one. If she married any of them, the two men she had rejected would laugh in her face. Moreover, she had never felt passion for any man. I felt no great passion for any man either, but I was smart enough to see that a Chinese woman over thirty needs marriage to achieve greater freedom in public. The old maids in my university were isolated in their cells for fear of hearing gossip such as "too ugly to attract a man," "too neurotic for a man," "too choosy—it serves her right," "a whore," "a slut," "a simpleton," "a stone woman," "a yin/yang creature." Most of them aged prematurely.

Being a much more practical person, I listed all the suitors logically like math problems and weighed each one's qualities. I set myself a deadline of two weeks to "solve the personal problem." I wrote a letter to my sister in Beijing. My sister was shocked to see the list of suitors and wrote back, "You have changed much after your stay abroad. The farmer image of you two or three years ago was much more lovable." That helped me make the final decision. I turned down all the suitors and married Long for his simplicity, honesty, and dependability.

Oh, God—how I had suffered from my free choice!

18

I started reviewing old mail. In a letter, my sister said, "As I saw from the very beginning, you and Long are an ill-matched couple." What an irony. I scanned all the letters from Long. There was not even one word of love or about missing me. Every sheet was laconic, like a business telegram. Once I had asked Long whether he loved me and he retorted, "Can't you see?" Yes, he cooked three meals a day for me. But I could not tolerate him being mute like my mother.

To help overcome my sadness, I focused on my daughter Mei and wondered whether she had received the big box of chocolate and the beautiful dress I mailed a week before. I wished Long had a home. I took out Mei's picture, which had been taken at the Beijing Zoo before I left the country. Mei was so cute riding on a pony; her expression was naughty and dreamy just like her mother. But when I set my eyes on the Mei's picture recently sent by Long, my tears began to flow. I could not believe that the expressionless dull little thing was my Mei. Even a child could not be growing up healthy in a place with an unlit lamp.

Thinking more about Mei, my mood brightened a little. I released a sigh of comfort. If I have accomplished nothing in academia, I have produced a child—the masterpiece of a woman.

My mind flashed back to the delivery hospital.

"Two fingers wide."

"Four fingers wide."

The nurse who had shaved me was measuring with her eyes. With scissoring pain, I could almost hear the unbuckling of the bones at the exit of my womb.

"Please, give me a Caesarean operation and let it out. Ah. . .ah. . .ah. . . I am dying. . . ." The nurse cast an indifferent eye on me. She must have seen countless mothers crying and moaning like this.

I was tortured in hell for the whole night without any anesthesia or pain killers. When dawn came, the nurse finally announced, "Her hour has come" and wheeled me to the delivery room.

The actual birth was pretty easy. The baby came headlong out almost by herself, just as my mother said later, "When a melon is ripe, it falls by itself."

After all, having a child was easy. I was lying in bed, almost forgetting the throes of birth. Marrying at age 28, I was a model for late marriage. Before the wedding, I made my husband promise that we would not have any kids for three years. But after five or six months, I felt a yearning for a child, like a call deep from the ravine in my body. So Long and I stopped using contraception. But I simply could not get pregnant. There must be something wrong with one of us, most likely Long since he looked vulnerable. Long thought it was his fault, too, and said that if I wanted a divorce, we could get one. I was moved, "Let's be happy together without children."

Then, all of a sudden, I had strange symptoms, as though I was hungry all the time but food could not cure the eagerness or sourness of my body. By the time I was diagnosed as pregnant, my morning sickness was gone. "Believe me, my baby never stopped me one minute from working," I used to brag. But it was quite true. I was never absent from teaching; the water began to flood my pants when I proctored the last of the final examinations.

The ward I stayed in was huge, containing at least eight new mothers. For twenty-four hours a day, the noise inside boomed like a cinema. Since I was told to be immobile, I could only get acquainted with the two patients on the either side of my bed.

The woman on my right had twin girls. In a minority national region, a mother giving birth to twins would be burned to death as a witch. Never mind, we Han people love twins, particularly girls—one mirroring the beauty of the other. I have one baby. But all babies look alike; the nurses can make a mistake about whose is whose. Also, somebody can deliberately swap babies. I was tense for a minute and then relaxed with a smile. So what, babies are born equally new. It really does not matter whose is whose.

"Why, the lady on my left is already gone! Did the doctor say a mother must stay in the hospital for three days?" Actually, why not go home? My mother tumbled out of the delivery bed and cooked dinner for the whole family.

"She was too ashamed to stay here. Her baby was born with a birth defect. He has a large transparent spot through which one can see his intestines. The young couple escaped without taking their baby."

Good heavens! What does my baby look like? She may have six fingers on a hand, or be holeless in the bottom, or . . . . I was tense and then relaxed again. No matter how she is, she is my flesh and blood. I must keep her. I must keep her.

I was lucky. My baby was perfect, almost too beautiful. People say monthlings should be ugly; only ugly monthlings grow into great beauties.

19

A card fell to the floor. Picking it up, I saw it was the only Christmas card from China. The strokes of the characters were familiar. No doubt, it was Meng's handwriting. Meng, now again Chair of the English Department at Wuda. I felt waves of sadness. Meng used to be my semi-secret lover in China. Our relationship was semi-secret because we were bold enough to associate with each other openly but nobody was really sure about whether we were having an illicit affair. The fact that we had never been caught spoke for our innocence. Nevertheless, we did make love once.

In early 1985, Chinese lovers' activities were still being monitored by every human eye around them. Wang Ming and Xu Hua were caught and humiliated by the whole campus; Hu Gang did not get a promotion because he had dated one girl but attempted to marry another; Meng was toppled from his position simply because of his struggle for a divorce and his close association with me.

I had been puritanical, but the tyranny of public opinion angered me and turned me into a rebel. I was more touched by the last scene of Qingwen and Baoyu than ever before in the Dream of the Red Chamber. At the time, my husband Long was at University of Beijing for a year of advanced study. One night I pushed a graduate student out when he attempted to assault me in my apartment. The following night, I invited Meng to come over and we made love. Why does a woman reject one and take another? That graduate student was younger and had a much more attractive body. But I made what I would consider to be a political gesture, an act of willful defiance.

Meng and I were more peers than lovers. We collaborated in research work on Emily Dickinson. I had more time and always did more. But when it came to publication, we became resentful towards each other. Meng did not want to place his name behind mine because he was a man and my senior. Finally, we had to use a two-character pen name and each character represented one person—a significance shared between us only. But one could not say there was no love between us. In the mornings, Meng jogged a long circle to watch me shadow box on the basketball playground; one night after a school meeting, Meng went to sit by me in the cinema when the film was almost over; and I had created all sorts of academic excuses just to see him in the small room he shared with his son, a gentle boy. When his son reached the age of desiring a girlfriend, he said to me that my relationship with his father was admirable.

But Meng and I did not really talk much about love. Meng's praise of a woman's feminine virtues often upset my stomach. When Meng talked about people's gossip about us, he would say, "If we marry each other, we will become too strong for the department." The men of the department, perhaps sensing the coming threat, had tried to stop us in every way.

The summer before I went to America, Meng and I taught night school together. When we were bicycling home in the darkness, Meng always liked to ride ahead, calling back to me: "Follow me!" "Who follows whom" had indeed been the focus of rivalry between us. Meng succeeded in obtaining his divorce but I could not marry him. Like Cowherd and Weaving Maid, we were eternally separated by the Pacific Ocean. Three years later, I received a call from Meng, who was visiting Columbia University. He said his second marriage was not happy. Well, he had married a secretary and gotten back his position of Chair, which led to his full professorship. What else did he desire?

Examining the official card again, I remembered that I had sent Meng a personal card upon my arrival in America. I did not write a word but the card was designed with a thousand words of "love." We each failed to conquer the other. His pet phrase of "Follow me" buzzed in my ears until I jotted down a few lines.

The sun was bright.

How I admired his height.

I beheld his motion lovingly

in my maiden sight.

He asked, "Would you follow me?"

I walked silently

side by side.

The moon was beautiful,

Said the burning sun,

holding all things below

with his golden threads.

"Would you follow me?" he invited.

She circled him, pondering

in equal distance of light.

Not behind;

nor ahead.

The sun says he knows no wane.

The sun says he sheds no rain.

The sun says he has no black holes.

"Follow me!" he commands.

"No. I prefer to wander alone!"

faded out the Blue Moon.

No front;

nor back.

20

My thinking glided from Meng to Jim. Jim seemed to be a surrogate for Meng. I was more attracted to him than to Meng because of his sensitive temperament. But Jim and I were not equals—he was my sponsor, advisor, and professor, while I had stepped down from the comfortable position of a faculty member to the plight of a struggling foreign student. While I often reminded myself to be grateful to Jim, I had a tendency to resist him. After Susan for Spain on sabbatical, Jim asked me to go to Pittsburgh for a weekend. I declined. When I told Mrs. Shirley about it, the old lady said rather disappointedly, "Why refuse him? He got you here from China, didn't he?" Then Mrs. Shirley laughed, "Jim was born in the month of the scorpion. I can tell he's a horny man. Well, when I was young, I never minded going to bed with my boss."

I felt that I was being punished—I had to feed Jim's dog daily during his absence. The autumn storm in Pennsylvania was furious. My umbrella had blown over twice. While desperately folding the tearing umbrella, I fell and hurt my knees badly. The night that Jim was leaving for Spain, I went to his house to say goodbye. We talked intimately but always with tiny strings of resentment. One moment Jim seemed to be aroused by me, and asked, "Do you like fondling of the body a little?" I knew perfectly well what he meant but pretended not to understand him. I soon regretted not having gone along with him, because I felt the same desire. We finally shook hands in a comradely fashion and parted.

Now on this lonely Christmas, I was thinking of him acutely and lovingly because he was away.

Hate is close and tense.

Love, remote and dreamy,

has beauty immense.

Lukewarm is a slimy shore.

Indifference cataracts the eyeball—

Seeing is no-seeing just as before.

Between Jim and me were feelings of love, hatred, and resentment, but we could never become indifferent to each other. The foundation of our friendship was solid because of our mutual caring. I sent him a Christmas card with the words:

A card?

No. A feather,

Flying over a thousand miles

To greet you on Christmas.

Light, the present,

Deep, the feelings,

Sweet, the heart,

From a friend

As near as your presence,

As distant as the ocean cliffs.

21

I did not will myself to sleep that night. I fell asleep when my mind lost its consciousness. I opened my eyes to a ray of sunshine from between the curtains. The snow had stopped. Well, what shall I do today? I had so much time and so little to do. I put on my boots and ambled to the campus library. It was open but hardly a soul was inside. I went to the magazine section and met a professor from the education department. Her name was Cynthia. Her sharp features showed her to be a woman of intelligence and willfulness. We chatted for a while and then I went with her to her house nearby for tea. Cynthia had a four-bedroom house that she had just bought for herself. It had a study, sewing room, painting room, and bedroom with a queen-sized bed. Coming from an overpopulated world, I felt guilty occupying too much space, never dreaming I would one day have a house. I was always content with a studio. I read, wrote, typed, exercised, and slept in the same room. I also liked a huge bed, with my books, papers, and dictionaries spread over half. I was a clean person, but messy. Everything was so convenient in my own messy way. I would lose track of my things when they were tidied up.

Cynthia served high tea in the style that I had become familiar with in Britain.

While munching little biscuits and sipping hot tea, we talked.

"Do you live in this house all by yourself?"

"Yes, I like to be by myself."

"Never married?"

"Well, I was married some years ago. But I divorced my husband."

"Because he was not faithful to you?"

"Not at all. I divorced him in order to make him independent. He was a weak man and relied on me for everything like a child on his mother. After we divorced he was forced to stand up in the world. He married another woman and has two kids now. We have always been friends, now better friends, as he has finally grown up in emotion and responsibilities."

"Do you still see each other?"

"Well, occasionally. His wife and children are quite demanding."

"How about yourself? Are you going to marry again?"

"Not really. I'm over forty now. In this country, a woman of my age can hardly attract a man of similar age and intelligence. Men like to marry younger women. It's universal, isn't it?" Cynthia betrayed a hidden sadness.

Cynthia seemed to be talking not about her former husband, but about mine. If loneliness was the fate of one who set free a spousal dependent, I was not going to do it. I was selfish, incapable of setting a man free at the expense of annihilating myself.

22

When spring came, Mrs. Shirley asked me to move out. I was surprised because we had been getting along well, like mother and daughter. Before I came, Mrs. Shirley had only fragments of sleep, for fear of burglars. Now she snored soundly every night. Before Christmas, our phone rang constantly. Each time we picked up the phone, however, there was no response. One night a man rang our door bell, delivering a pizza we had not ordered. I saw Mrs. Shirley break into tears. I learned that a young man in Mrs. Shirley's office was attempting to take over her position by playing tricks on the old lady. At other times, Mrs. Shirley would offer to read my transfer applications to other universities. The wisdom she passed to me was "Dare to sell yourself." When Mrs. Shirley was deserted by Mr. Shirley, she had established herself as a saleswoman. She had not gone to college but everybody around thought she had an advanced degree. Well, she was no less competent than any PhD in her job anyway.

"Why are you driving me out?"

"Well, you are not a considerate person. You have stolen my son from me. Every time Tim comes, he talks with you as though I do not exist in this house."

I remembered Mrs. Shirley's wistful looks when I had make-up on, ready to go out. And I recalled a conversation with Jim not long after I came to live with Mrs. Shirley.

"Yun, I saw Mrs. Shirley today. Can you guess what she told me? She thinks there's something going on between you and her son Tim. Yun, you do not like that type of feminine man, do you?"

Actually, I liked feminine men more than macho men. I was somewhat attracted to Tim. But it was a pleasant, harmless attraction between a man and a woman. It was like getting on the train and being attracted by a passenger of the opposite sex, but parting from one another easily at one's own destination. Once, a letter from a train passenger was forwarded to me. This passenger was a young intellectual from Suzhou. His letter told me that he was so impressed by my personality that he tried to find me at my university. Nevertheless, he did not know my name correctly and did not even know which department I was in. It must have been like searching for a needle in the sea. Refusing to give up, he took a train to Nanyang, my hometown. Without knowing my street number, he lived in a hotel for three days waiting for a miracle to happen. When the letter finally reached me, I felt flattered. But he did not even leave his address in the letter. What each person gained is a beautiful memory.

Tim was obviously attracted to me. When he was shopping with me and his mother, he would forget some of the items on his list. In the past, he seldom visited his mother. Now he visited two or three times a week. I knew nothing would really happen between Tim and me. It would be just a pleasant memory of attraction. The mother was obviously jealous. Freud had explored a son's love for the mother but failed to give enough attention to a mother's sexual attraction to the son. Mrs. Shirley reminded me of Ying's mother-in-law.

One day Ying dropped in to my apartment in Wuda, crying before she could say a word. To my surprise, Ying had aged overnight, with strands of gray hair. What happened? She was only twenty-seven, a young lady who loved singing and laughing.

"Yes, something terrible happened but nobody will believe it."

"Don't cry. Tell me—I will believe you."

"My mother-in-law came to see us two weeks ago. You know we only have one room and one bed. So at night my husband Gang would sleep on my left side and his mother on my right. About a week ago I was half awakened at midnight by the movements a married woman is familiar with, you know, on my left side. I thought Gang was masturbating but when my arm accidentally touched my right side, it was vacant. I was fully awake by then but too scared to pull the light string. So I lay there quietly, heard his mother climb down from him, use the night pan, and then return to her side of the bed. I felt so wretched that I did nothing but weep during the next few days. When Gang asked me what had happened, I felt too horrible to mention it. When I finally told him the truth, he accused me of being mad. When I told our school leaders, they all regarded me as a mad woman, having hallucinations. . . ."

"I believe what you said is true. According to Freudian theory, sexual love between mother and son is quite possible."

Upon hearing that a theory supported her, Ying calmed down.

"Now that I think about their relationship, I recall many clues that Gang gave me early on. Gang said his father died young and he resembles his father most among all her children. So his mother loves him best. Once he was in the hospital, his mother held his penis to help him pee into a bottle. He and his mother see each other twice a year. If he is not going to Dalian to visit her, she would come to see us. I begged Gang not to associate with her anymore. He felt insulted. It would have meant admitting that there was something going on between him and his mother. What should I do now?"

"Well, you can get a divorce. You complained several times that Gang always takes liberties with young girls at school. I think that is a worse behavior than being intimate with his mother as a gesture of sympathy for her."

"He knows a secret about me. I told him that when I was seventeen years old, I was raped by a man."

"That was not your fault and that is over."

"That man did it more than once or twice. He did it to me whenever he had an opportunity."

"What do your parents think about Gang's abnormal behavior?"

"They do not support our divorce. My father wants me to keep it to myself."

I had a slight suspicion that the man who had frequently abused Ying was her own father. I knew Ying wanted to hear "Be quiet, then. Perhaps human beings have to compromise in order to live together." But I said firmly, "If I were you, I would get a divorce."

Soon I placed an ad in the local newspaper and found a new host family, the Greens. When Tim drove me to the Greens, we both felt bad. There were not even pleasant memories to cherish any more as they had been torn by a mother's jealousy.

23

I was lucky to live with the Greens—a happy, healthy, typical American family. The word "typical" perhaps was incorrectly used. It only reflected how I felt. In fact, Meggy (Mrs. Megan Green), said she would never change her citizenship from Canadian to American. She sometimes fought with Art (Mr. Arthur Green), an associate professor of Political Science, about American politics.

Meggy was a marvelous woman, well-balanced among her roles of woman, mother, and wife. She wanted to have me move in because she was working on her master's degree in psychology and was too busy to take care of the house. She was preparing to enter a doctoral program. Art marveled several times, "I have no idea how she got grants and loans to restart her education when Chris got to elementary school." They had three children: the eldest daughter, thirteen, was a beauty from a fairy tale; their second daughter was a cute girl with a generous nature just like her mother; Chris, the youngest child, was a gifted boy. As soon as I stepped into their house, Chris asked, in the manner of a scholar, "Why do the Chinese use chopsticks? And why do pandas eat bamboo?"

Meggy liked to chat and laugh with me. She said Art looked better when he reached middle age—Yun understood that in her eyes, Art had once been lanky and ugly. Meggy had loved an army officer. Every time she saw him, her body would tremble. Her love for that man was just too much. But when Art drove all the way from America to Canada to see her, she knew they were going to get married.

"Any happy marriage has to be living and growing. The wedding is just the beginning. Both sides have to keep their creativity for romance in life; otherwise, the marriage will become stagnant and miserable." I loved to listen to Meggy's little theories.

Meggy was not only saying but also practicing them. No matter how busy she was, she would remember to invite Art to a good restaurant, or a movie, or the beach. When they were away for a romantic time, I would baby-sit. Actually, the children were all self-sufficient and they never needed any help from an adult, who was merely there to make them feel safe. When Meggy returned, she would give her children a treat at McDonald's. The children loved that. They wished their parents would leave them alone more often.

The Greens were a sociable family. They liked to invite friends over for dinner and they often went out. The Greens and other faculty families in Edinboro had organized a gourmet club. They met monthly at different houses to eat, drink, and talk. When the Greens went, they often took me along. At one party, after eating, people sat around talking about their first love. One said his first love was his nursery teacher. Another said his was an elementary teacher. Another said hers was a sick young boy in her neighborhood. When everyone else let their cats out from their hearts, people remembered me and urged me to confess my first love.

"Well, well, I do not know whether I fell in love with anyone before the age of twenty-four." Everybody laughed, including the kids. Some of the schoolchildren already had boyfriends or girlfriends.

At another party I saw the French professor Marie, sitting with a young man. Marie kept stroking his thighs or nudging him affectionately and looked at him from time to time with lusty desire. Meggy told me that the young man was Marie's husband, a student from Saudi Arabia, twenty-three years her junior. I remembered that while I was working at McDonald's, this young dandy had come in with two little kids; he was wearing flowery shorts like a big kid.

Marie was really something, Meggy said. When she wanted a child, she simply had an affair with an officer in a barrack. Have you seen her child? A handsome boy. She married this dandy boy, defying all public opinions. The boy was barely twenty, and only wanted money from her. She bought him a sports car and got him into an French literature program at the University of Pennsylvania. Of course she also rented an expensive apartment for him. Then every weekend, she would drive to Philadelphia to have a little romance. When she was not there, that boy was just hanging around with young girls on campus. Who expects him to study, anyway? One day, a famous French scholar, a single man, was coming to give a talk in Marie's department and was to stay in her house for a couple of days. I thought Marie should develop a relationship with him. Can you guess what? She drove all the way to get her dandy back and introduced him to that scholar while playing a most faithful wife.

In early May, some friends from Peru and Brazil came to the Green's for a party. At the end of the party, a man from Peru kissed everybody goodbye on the cheek. When coming to me, he stopped and shook my hand, perhaps because Meggy had introduced me as a Chinese or because some uneasiness in my eyes stopped him.

I recalled a hug-disaster in my life. In 1977 when I was in Britain with a group sent by the Chinese government, we were frequently invited by British leftists to their organized activities, due to the influence of Red China. Once, our group was invited by the miners and steel workers of Sheffield to spend a weekend with them. We followed their hosts to attend a meeting. At the meeting, the workers asked the Chinese students to sing a song. We sang "The five-star flag is fluttering; our song is soaring into the sky. . . ." Before the fall of the last musical note, a young worker came over to me and said my singing was beautiful and gave me a big hug. Then the workers started to sing one song after another. They started with "We shall overcome. We shall overcome. . .", but pretty soon got around to singing love songs. Steven, a known British communist, became very angry with the workers and called them "the unenlightened" and the workers called him a "petty-bourgeois." The party ended unpleasantly. When I got back to London where I was studying, I was criticized by my group leader. He told me that Steven was shocked that a young man gave me a "big embrace" at the party. I protested, "The Embassy has told us that hugging is a Western custom. Moreover, he hugged me—it was not my fault." Nevertheless, when I returned to China, Meng told me that the Education Bureau in Beijing knew all about my scandal in Britain—I was caught embracing my professor in public. Meng said that with a smirk as if every virtuous woman was a cracked egg, attracting flies.

The Chinese revolution had deprived the Chinese of physical touch, feelings, and love. Were my Chinese ancestors all prudish? Who said that in classical Chinese there was no character for "kiss" 吻until the 18th century? Even if they did not record this crude human behavior, they did it all the same. Only the modern Chinese, born in new China and growing up beneath the red flag, had lost the tradition of love. I pondered the difference between the classical character and the simplified character of love.

I love the old Chinese character "love"愛

for it has a heart of its own

When the heart vanishes into pure friendship

it becomes Platonic love 爱

maybe too puritanical —

it is part of me

which is strangling me —

bars of bone in the chest

protect as well as jailbird the heart.

Art was also an interesting person. Apart from teaching, he loved wood carving. I said, "Art is wonderful, giving eternal wings to the shriveled and bringing delicate beauty out of wooden ugliness." We had a lot to talk about. One day, he showed me a collection of poems by his friend T. E. Porter. I read them with interest and translated them into Chinese overnight. The process of translation added wings to my already awakening poetic sensitivities. I could chant almost anything into a poem. The Greens' white cat passed me. I said the "cat" was really fat; Meggy said my pronunciation of "cat" sounded like "kite." Well, cat—kite.

Though I have wings,

though I can fly,

higher than a sparrow,

almost out of sight,

yet with an invisible string,

to the ground I am tied—

soaring like an eagle,

Nothing but a Kite.

24

Jim told me that Edinboro should only be a gate for me to America. As soon as my wings were strong enough, I should fly to a larger university. I applied to the University of Illinois because it did not require an application fee. Like those penniless students from mainland China, what I was really seeking was financial aid. I felt like a mute, begging in America.

There's something

I do not have the courage to ask on the phone

but I have the audacity to write

There's something I cannot give in person

but I can send day and night

There's something in me

that is mysterious and desperate

—wild, wild

like prairie fire

burning—burning—burning. . .

There's something like a baby

clapping its hands and

kicking its feet

in my cerebral womb

There's something like embryos of seeds

bursting off their skin

ready

to shoot and boom

There's something like a voice above

cracking a battle-cry:

It's time to gather your wild geese

in black and white!

But my Pedestal or Guillotine:

Can I succeed

with a tongue I do not know

how to twist

under the scrapings of Time and Money's blade?

The weather was getting hot and the spring semester came to an end. The Greens were driving to Vancouver for a month-long vacation. When the family shouted a goodbye to me, I had the feeling that I would not be able to see them again. My transfer applications had been mailed the month prior. Seeing Art, the self-labeled Nobody, driving a van of cheerful faces off the street, my heart started to chant.

The moment I said goodbye,

A significant glance met my eye.

I know I don't know why I know.

You know maybe you unconsciously know.

A wave of future nostalgic feeling surges

ahead of time;

The Greens' friendly kindness in memory

flashes alive.

Adieu, everybody and Nobody!

This is no "See you later, alligator"—

"After a while, crocodile"

but, indeed, "Long Time No See"

A preconceived baby in my heart

enigmatically cried.

25

I was left all alone in the grand three-story house. My own dwelling was in the attic. Ironically, I was reading The Mad Woman in the Attic. My attic was as spacious as four bedrooms, with an uneven ceiling and a few beams. It was like a watch post. I sat by its small window, watching people hustling and bustling along Wood Street. Everybody in town was busy, except me. The lazy leisure alone would turn a woman into a neurotic. I tried to resist. I was searching for company. The chirping sparrows were such low gossipers, not up to my taste. The three trees around my attic window caught my attention.

Birch

Bushy, boasting

the peak of maturity

Babbittry

signifying decline

a sight of gross

Banality

A Nameless Fork

Who are you,

Prufrock?

Half-dying

Half-dangling on

the string

But you do look tough

rough, the traumas

the scars, the crippled limbs

the amputated arms

You are too dry to wring a tear

Pinpoints of wisdom in a callous body

Apathy hammered out of pathetic poetry.

Cypress

The empress hides herself;

but I know she is there;

Dashing youth—

handsome vitality.

I am longing to keep you my

life confidant, yet

I am afraid of you, too.

You are by my side'

You are sneaking away.

I read my poems aloud, but the three trees, in the sultry evening glow, showed absolutely no response, not even a stir of their leaves. Facing such a mute audience, I was unable to solo for long.

The telephone was ringing. I raced down the stairs. Too late. I sat there waiting. As expected, the phone rang again. It was him, the snarling-cat. He invited me to Chicago to spend summer vacation with him. He had already arranged for an apartment for me and found me a job in a Chinese restaurant. How did he get the phone number of my new place? How did he know that I am so lonely? Nevertheless, it was tempting. The following day I went to find out the fare by Greyhound to Chicago. It was really cheap.

To go or not to go? I was tormented in the hot summer night. When the cooling dawn came, I decided, with a conflicted mind, not to go.

Brain massacre is over;

Stagnation nursing the mind.

I wonder whether I am the conqueror or the conquered.

If I am a victor,

why does my heart become so numb,

utterly impossible to elicit any pleasure?

In its recess,

a cryptical voice keeps chirping:

Ha! Ha!

You're still a blue-bird in a cage,

a pheasant guarded by a watchdog.

Yes—but. . . my feeble heart

mutters with dignity

This is not unwilling to escape the cage;

When there's no shrine for me to beam love,

A cage is better than a snare for a dove.

With a self-mocking smile,

the heart of the winner adds:

The key to the other world is truly

in my hand.

26

I went to my department as it was the last day of the summer session. I met Dr. Shaw and chatted with him for a minute. After Jim left, Dr. Shaw became the advisor for graduate studies. Perhaps because he regarded it as his responsibility to take care of foreign waifs in the department, he invited me to visit Youngstown with his wife and son. I happily accepted the invitation but meanwhile felt a little guilty because of my naughtiness in his class—a funny episode about my C+.

"I am glad my turn comes at last. I was very sleepy and almost dozed off a minute ago. . ." I started my oral presentation with this statement. On the one hand the statement was true; on the other I intended it as a joke to alert every listener. The whole class laughed and was fully awake. It was one of the oral presentations I enjoyed most. Every idea I was talking about was my own. Through Dr. Shaw's introduction, I had taken to feminist methodology. I told my audience that from a feminist point of view, Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford is but a feminine novel. I analyzed the fables and drew a sketch of the hierarchy in that cute town of Amazons. I said "gentility" and "vulgarity" are the key words of irony. On the surface "gentility" belongs to women and "vulgarity" is a stigma of men. But ironically, "gentility" derives from gentleman and "vulgarity" associated with the vulva. Moreover, Captain Brown, like the Party Leader in the Chinese Women's Red Detachment, is the captain while Miss Matty, with her soft candle glow, remains a doormat in the ship of society. "Shooting Cupid" is the strength as well as the weakness of these gentrified spinsters . . . .

The whole audience seemed to be mesmerized by my talk. Tom offered me a ride home. He said, "A superb presentation, Yun. I hate to hear those biographical recounts without much thought."

The following day, Song Bin congratulated me and said mine was the best among all the oral presentations. I felt flattered. But, alas, I got a C+ for the oral presentation. Worse still, mine was the lowest in the class. Even Bin, whose talk could send one easily to sleep, got an A-. Dr. Shaw soon cleared up my bewilderment: (1) You showed no respect for the other students by saying you almost dozed off when they were making their presentations; (2) by saying it was unnecessary for you to give the author's biographical information, you belittled the others who did according to my instruction; (3) your talk well passed the assigned 20 minutes. What could I say? He was absolutely right. I was so vain and so selfish that I forgot other people's dignity and feelings. A "C+" for punishment was obviously too lenient. Still I was naughty. I wrote a humorously smug note to him:

Dear Dr. Shaw:

Thank you very much for giving me a "plus" for my presentation. A "plus" is a sign of ascent. Unlike a "minus," it gives one hope and encouragement.

Your student,

Yun Yu

Actually, I appreciated Dr. Shaw's teaching most among the professors at Edinboro. When he played the music of Salome in class, I felt my body and soul trembling like Tulliver in The Mill on the Floss. I enjoyed his profound knowledge and eloquent speeches. However, I felt funny about having a man, who had a strong interest in women's works and feminist theories, remain a patriarch in class. There seemed to be some amorous feelings between Bin and Dr. Shaw. She admired him for his academic masculine traits; he liked her for her delicacy and gracefulness. Jim once said that Bin's beauty could be classified as "aristocratic." But I was rebellious and rustic.

27

I had a wonderful day at the Youngstown mall and dined with the Shaws at the Red Lobster and Peking Garden. Everything Dr. Shaw did was proper, with style. His wife was equally considerate. She bought canned lychee and a bag of fortune cookies especially for me. I was touched and thought of my parents at their nicer moments.

They dropped me off at my house. No sooner did I get in than I tore open the bag and broke a fortune cookie. The slip from the cookie said: You will be famous and rich in your life. I laughed—the Chinese always tell pleasant lies. Nevertheless, it was a sign of good luck. And good luck never travels alone. That evening, I received a call from the English Department of the University of Illinois and learned that I was offered a teaching assistantship to complete my master's degree there. I phoned Dr. Shaw and he advised me to go as U. of I. was a much better university. But later when I requested a reference letter from him to support my doctoral application, he rejected me outright because I left Edinboro when I had already accepted a teaching assistantship there. For this incident, I had enormous respect for Dr. Shaw: friendship is friendship; principle is principle. Indeed, one would rarely meet such a righteous man in China, where private friendship tends to distort principles.

Once there is a place to go and a goal to strive for, one's spirit is instantly up-lifted. While jogging, I passed the Edinboro cemetery where I released my free spirit like a blast of fresh air after a summer rain.

Isn't it wonderful to have a corner of your own?

Populated with wuthering trees

and dumb tombstones.

I run, I jump, I stretch my arms.

Who says I am a beggar living on alms?

I rub my withering skin

to breathe the wind of my second youth.

I chant and dance

to the vibration of my imagination's tunes.

Flippant graves whirl around me;

Startled chattering birds can never appreciate thee.

Bristle my heart to seek love for myself;

Nobody can reach my narcissistic shelf.

Monologue or soliloquy is a sign of a lunatic;

Who cares since I am living in the attic.

Maximum freedom is gained in a foreign void.

No taboo the sound and fury of my thinking needs to avoid.

Part II. An Ugly Duckling's Swan Song

In spite of the title

It is the other way around.

Not a duckling grows into a swan

But a swan, plucking off her white feathers,

Returns to an ugly duckling.

A song of debasing,

The music of perversity.

Drop, drop, tears of blood stitch the line.

Sob, sob, quivering nose beats rhythm and rhyme.

Freaks of mirth spark blackness of humor.

Sullied heart smiles to the lotus

Growing out of the filthy silt.

I came to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign full of spirit and confidence. But unfortunately, I encountered cultural shocks and suffered a nervous breakdown. The university psychiatrist Doctor Engel told me that talking was therapeutic. Did I have anybody to talk to? No. I was too embarrassed to confide in anyone, not even my sister in China, who might laugh her head off upon hearing such absurd happenings in America. Doctor Engel then urged me to write to an imaginary sister.

1

Dear Sister, you asked me how I have been getting on at Champaign. Well, it was a nightmare, but already past, a memory almost too painful to repeat. I do not know how things have all turned against me. I was accused of plagiarism; my body has been debased; my poetic mind lost; and my brain scattered. If you really want to know the story of a neurotic, please read patiently and make the connections yourself.

These days I have been extremely moody. One moment a nameless anger stirs up my wild spirit to an insurmountable height.

A

Wild spirit—

An impatient rocket at the end of a long countdown

Shoots to the holeless

Sky

A

Wild spirit—

A frantic spinning drill

Lets hot-blood, from the heart of the earth

Gush

A

Wild spirit—

A shriek in the wilderness

Slashes the stub of Babel to the root of grass

A

Wild spirit—

If you are not a suicidal meteor,

you need Hurricane's eye.

Another moment I am seized by the melancholy of an unrequited lover.

I hold a cup,

standing before the mirror.

My heart groans mutely

under an infinite, protean weight.

Black bile oozes,

trickling along my rugged blood funnels,

dripping from the tips of my fingers into the cup.

My chapped lips command:

Please laugh or aloud you cry!

My ears crane their necks but cannot hear.

My eyes, whipping their lashes, still cannot see.

My hi-fi nerves fail to feel.

Whoever can make me laugh or cry,

I will give him a mountain of gold.

Ethereal mountains of gold, silver, and diamond

echo, mock, and guffaw,

for no gods dare to claim my reward.

My lips kiss the bitter mouth of the cup,

sucking all the poison of melancholy.

I smash the cup disdainfully:

If you cannot laugh or cry,

die,

die,

die!

2

Do you remember about half a year ago when you received my first letter from University of Illinois, you wrote back: "You the little ugly duckling has finally grown into a swan." I thought so, too. I started writing little English poems when I was in Edinboro. One could hardly call my scratches poems, as they are all written in a rough, spontaneous manner. You know I never showed interest in poetry when I was in China.

I happened to take a course on British Romanticism last semester. Perhaps writing little verses had already loosened me to flippancy. I was enchanted by the professor of that course. His voice was musical. His youthful appearance led me to take him as the incarnation of Byron or Shelley. He finally became my muse and led me to write the poem, "Oh, Oh, Oh—A Romantic Parody." You begged me many times to send you that poem. I was too shy then to send it. Now I have turned so ugly that I no longer mind anybody probing my heart with a scalpel.

1

Oh Orlando,

What are you to me?

My eyes delight at the presence of Adam.

My ears enjoy the sweetest melody.

A spring bee sporting in the wind

to seduce the belated peony to bloom

Only makes me feel withering

like the tassels of a broom.

My marital filaments

floating in the air,

Who knows who

will notice and care.

I do not mind whether you're free or bound,

Though I do see other flowers lurking

in the background.

I may have power to hypnotize

but have no power to create

a romance in paradise.

Never dare I dream a night in heaven,

Only cherishing the moments when we happened to

Sit side by side, so close that

I could hear the synchronous beat

of our hungry drums.

Then, the moments in my memory

double,

triple,

multiply

to fill the pauses of brooding in my life.

Is this the convergence of subconscious and conscious love?

Is this of the first and last, and midst and without end?

2

Oh Dryle,

What a strange name to me!

Having sailed over the sea of dictionaries and

drained all the fresh water of my brain tank,

I could only arrive at the port of "Delai'er."

I know what this signifies—

It can never be assimilated into Chinese,

As my name "Yun" can never

be submerged into English

without hiccups and pain.

Yet still,

I wish,

I wish,

I wish,

I wish my wish could be fulfilled for one wink.

Then I would die.

I would turn into an ash butterfly.

Like the meanest flower guarding the tomb,

A bat hovers over the dome of doom.

3

Oh, you are a Tyger;

I am a Tyger, too.

I presage we'll fight each other;

You believe we can become one.

Then we must be a fearful symmetry:

The marriage of Tygerness and Lambness

between Heaven and Hell.

(Are you scared? Maybe.

Maybe it's not too late to escape:

Let one stay in the jungle of the light and

The other hide in the forests of the night.)

This poem has the camouflage of William Blake's poem "The Tyger" and Virginia Woolf's novel Orlando. The androgynous Orlando (that professor) and I are both age 36. We must have been coincidentally born in the year of the tiger. You remember that I was born not only in the year of the tiger but also in the month of Leo, don't you?

After I wrote the poem, I drew a red flower on a stem crossing the ashen body of a strange creature resembling a dragonfly.

What is it?!

A peony or a rose?

A butterfly or a bat?

The eyes are those of a tiger.

The antennae are phoenix feathers.

The body is that of a dragonfly.

The stem is a broomstick.

It echoes.

It emanates.

It is beaten black and blue.

It bleeds.

Every part of it blurs into the crying vortex

while you are zipping your eyes,

and collages into a beatific union

when you open your vision.

3

Dear Sister, you suspected that I had fallen in love with my professor. Perhaps I did. But it was on a different level—he was my idol of Romanticism and my muse. As if he had given me a magic wand, no matter what I touched with the wand, it became a poem. When I saw the bald pine tree in our desolate back garden, poetic lines threaded out like from a silkworm:

Winter is encroaching

upon the self-abandoning garden.

Flowers flip their petals to touch the final dews.

Trees squander away their color

to beg passersby's last glimpse of beauty.

There, Bald Pine stands in solemnity,

with noises of Babel puffing from inside:

Many bygone silvery winters

envied my perennial green

and happy birds nestled in my crotch.

Now, pheasants have flown away.

Butterflies no longer flutter around my knees.

Even squirrels are seeking new playgrounds...

Foggy rains lash my withered bark,

tearing sinews of my heart.

A flash of glow-bugs makes me duck my head.

Suddenly I've found the vines of Morning Glory

creeping around me.

Her tiny palms are tenderly green.

Her tulips are white and pink.

She has twined around my trunk like a serpent.

In full bloom she hymns to the bellows of my aging lungs:

My dear Baby,

Don't be forlorn.

Riding on the emerald wings,

Breaths of love push you along.

Lotus petals flank your hollow trunk.

Fingers of Muse pluck up a passionate song.

At Christmas,

you won't feel alone.

My blushing bells will jingle, jingle

all night long.

I scribbled one or two poems every day. My poetic aspiration was by no means confined to the theme of love. For instance, one day when I watched it drizzle from a window in my office at the English Building, I seemed to see the scene of a storm I watched there the other day.

Watching a Storm

A violent downfall;

Yet I see no cats and dogs.

On one eave of a low building

hangs a tuft of beautifully permed hair

of a wild tornado.

The shining, flat, supple bodies of bespectacled cobras

undulate hurriedly on the drifting ripples

of the grassy icicles

along the concrete roads,

From all directions and

towards one direction,

Like icebergs of raging wheels

floating to Tiananmen Square

on that April morning.

The orgy of thunder and lightning

carelessly reveals

the subtle shades of autumn colors:

Premature apricot yellow,

Adolescent orange orange,

An elusive serious dark blue of the ancient political animal,

The nude redness of a wet, meaty lip in its prime.

I have often thought,

(but who has put it so well,

so perceptive and worldly wise):

No money can buy the colors in a storm.

I prefer downpour to drizzling.

Drizzling, a mere misty veil.

Downpour, a sauna of purgation,

a vapor of howling rampage,

ushers in

a softer and fresher Apollo.

Sister, I believe you will like this poem. On that morning of April 5th in 1976, you were beaten by a policeman and your boyfriend was stuffed into a gunnysack and dragged to prison. I wish I could have scribbled a poetic line on the democratic Wall in Tiananmen Square. But even if I could write poems, being a gullible fool then, I would not have climbed on a freight train to Beijing like you.

4

Perhaps you are tired of reading my poems. Please, take your time. Read them slowly, better one or two a day or a week. I must send you the seven-section poem called "A Fashion Show." I received enthusiastic applause after I read it at the poetry club.

1

My clothes were aged with premature wrinkles.

I did not comb my night-ruffled hair.

My face, naked, dims and glows as it is.

"Good morning, Miss Yu!" A human

Voice greeted me.

Startled by a singing rooster at dawn,

I put on my best dress with feminine delicacy.

After nipples puffed to ripe mulberries in the shower,

Fingers of carrots meddled with Hair half an hour.

Magnified Eyes, contoured Lips, and

tapered Nails stole an hour and a half.

"Good morning, Miss Yu." A human

Voice still recognized me.

2

I tightened my glistening belt,

Put on the brightest color,

Imitated the perfect carriage, and

Held the composure of my gender.

"Miss Yu, you look so sad."

I did not know what I was wearing—

A carefree body in a careless float,

Passing like wind driving fallen leaves.

"Miss Yu, you do look smart!"

3

Necklace is chain.

Earrings are hooks.

Bras and tights are

bandages and coats of chain mail.

They crystallize Snow White in a glass coffin and

Deep freeze a tender shoot of an antique bamboo

in early spring.

You're so lucky to be a woman,

privileged

to enjoy the shimmering of the world

without embarrassment.

You're so lucky to be a woman

to indulge in self-affliction

without any resentment.

4

I used to dress for outsiders,

Saving the best for sightseeing.

I used to dress for my secretly chosen fiancé,

Groping this or that way to fathom his inscrutable taste.

Now I dress up for nobody

but myself.

A serene night,

I put on my best,

Standing before a life-long mirror.

Turning on the rambling music,

Languidly I move my floating limbs like

a fairy of starfish.

Darting here and there,

an inebriated poet

spills nectar out of a celestial boat.

A hundred princes are

vying to kiss my shadow.

A thousand emperors are

gilding themselves at

the dusty aureole of my big toe.

I, like Daiyu, in a

Dream of the Red Chamber,

Listlessly flip my ample sleeves

like a coin.

Let all male flowers flee

like flies,

twirl

like ballerinas of frost,

in a musical gust

of the romantic wind.

The beatific ecstasy

knocks me into a swoon,

hugging the fluffy white rabbit

of the solitary moon.

With a heart-expanding smile

in my best look,

I murmur hypnotically:

Oh, I feel so good,

so good,

so good. . . .

5

I love clothes.

I buy the fashionable thing.

I use makeup.

I wear necklace and ring.

Off the dressing table

everything but me

retreats to oblivion.

I dive into my professional obsession

like a loon, and

Forget all, but turn into a well-ornamented

Dynamo

puffing irresistible power.

6

See how natural and careless I look!

Who knows I've worked on it for three hours.

Then my sartorial care never stops.

I constantly caress every ripple to

make it more careless and natural.

The genuine geranium and the man-made rose,

who can tell

which is artificial?

which is real?

A baboon is so natural as to

dangle her prime femaleness

between her legs,

Only to turn true seers away.

7

At a dazzling party,

Every body is painfully dressed,

Men in suits and ties, and

Women on high heels

emitting halos of gold.

I surpass them all

with an intruder's

shabby coat.

In a routine day,

People forget to polish their leathers,

ignoring how they look.

Everybody is shrouded with a shred

of one overall.

I put on my best suit

parading through them

like a blooming atom bomb.

Plain as the plains,

Humble like a ravine,

Higher than Everest,

Fashion kills the fashion wind.

Sister, each model in this fashion show represents a fragment of the multifarious me. The way a person dresses reveals her personality, but not always. You know I have a style of my own. Even during those bleak days of the Cultural Revolution when everybody had to wear baggy slacks, I liked to dress differently. Do you still remember that Old Zhao said his impression of me was as a girl in blue pants with two faded patches on the knees and one on the hips? I did not know patched pants could be very fashionable until I came to America. If you think feminists do not care about what they wear, you are 50% wrong. Some of them do care a lot. Daring to dress is a feminist statement. However, taste is of vital importance. When I see some Chinese ladies dress gaudily, I can smell the emptiness of their minds. I am glad that the Chinese aesthetic taste has been individualized lately.

5

Sister, excuse me for my digression. What was I talking about? Pain. Talking to you is such a relief that I almost forgot my pain.

Right, I fell in love with my professor, purely because he was to me the image of Romanticism. I never associated him with any ordinary sense of love. When I thought of him, I would feel uplifted and poetic. He obviously appreciated my sensitivity. When I got back my paper on Shelley's "Ozymandias" with the request "May I have a photocopy of this essay, please?", I felt thrilled as though I had received a love letter. He liked all my interpretations of poems, except the one on the celebration of female beauty in Keats' "To Autumn." It was an intentional misreading of Keats' poem; nevertheless, my interpretation fits into almost every image and every line perfectly. You know our Chinese way of reading poems. During the Cultural Revolution, everybody read themselves or their own situations into Mao Zedong's poems or poetic catchwords. That was how we made his poetry known from door to door. Even today we quote Tang lines or Song phrases for spring couplets to paste on the doors and gates. Do we ever care much what their authors originally meant? What we care about is how an ancient line can still convey the new meaning of today. Undoubtedly, the theories of Stanley Fish were far behind the Chinese readers' practices. I was aware of our bad habit of raping a poem to produce a child of our own, but I did not wish to yield to my professor, as he seemed to be trying hard to subdue me.

Still autumn for the master,

Already winter for the pupil.

Please don't be so kind as to be cruel!

Can I type it after your approval?

Half an hour for you, an hour and a half for me.

Three papers to be written and typed this climatic week.

The headlong denouement is crushing on my fading smile.

A matter of survival?

Time, Time, please become an elastic string.

Fractured Grecian Urn, Earthen Pot, please turn into

a barbed wire in a bush,

To trip the trumping feet of the Clock.

To love is to be subdued.

To fight is to be a loser.

To be a student is to be minced/geared into the iron-faced

academic Machine.

6

Reading the above verse, you will see how hard it is to be an English Literature graduate student in America if English is not your mother tongue and you do not even type it well. But I managed to get through every paper in time.

With a deep sigh of relief, I started to address Christmas cards for the professors who had taught me that semester. I loved them all and each of them had fed me with magnanimity.

Anu came in, a beautiful Indian girl, with long glossy dark hair and eyes of wisdom. Seeing I was busy with Christmas cards, she said:

"I used to do that in my first year but I outgrew it a long time ago. People here do not give a dime to human care. Why bother doing it?"

Compared with this Indian girl, I was aged but still innocent as a baby about human relationships.

"You like Dr. Dryle, don't you? He is okay, but not that handsome. Perhaps you have not heard that he is gay."

"Gay? What does gay mean?"

"Homosexual. Everybody else in the department knows. He and Dr. Marlowe are lovers."

"Really? Marlowe, that old man?" On the verge of saying that ugly old man, I swallowed the word "ugly."

"Yes. That old man is a fox. Be watchful."

Anu, like an angel sent by God, after revealing the truth, left me in the cold.

I suddenly felt my whole existence was threatened. Dryle and Marlowe, impossible. Yes, possible. It must be true. My brain was racing fast. I remembered during our last talk, Marlowe said, "Dr. Dryle often praises you for your poetic talent. He likes your poetry. Why don't you take him as your lover and write some love poems?" Dear me, I did not know then he was jealous, he was warning me, he was giving me signals. What shall I do? Dryle is my thesis advisor and Marlowe the director for graduate students.

I was paralyzed in the office for two hours. When I got home, I asked Edward, head of my host family, how a man can be homosexual. He took my question rather lightly.

"Not only a man but a woman can also be homosexual. Don't tell me you haven't noticed Margaret and Ruth are lesbians?"

Just then Margaret and Ruth came in. Edward called to them:

"Hey, tell Yun. Aren't you lesbians?"

The two women, one in pants and the other in a miniskirt, said earnestly, "Yeah, we two have been living together since last year." Ruth kissed Margaret.

I did not know what to say. When I said I was shocked to hear that two of my professors were gay, Edward said, "Not merely two. I know the Director of Computer Science is also gay. In fact, this place is known as Little Berkeley. Perhaps one-third of the people on campus are homosexuals. I can take you to their bar if you want."

I was dumbfounded by such a revelation of daffodils—Besides the lake, beneath the trees, / Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. I excused myself by saying that I had a headache and went to bed.

I wept that night, my heart broken. It was the first time that I realized I loved Dryle so personally that I could not tolerate reality.

Blake's sooty waif weeps, weeps

in drippings of cold,

To Keats's choir of the mourning gnats

and treble soft singing of the crickets.

The red-breast whistles in a cursing world

Where the twilight of Autumn winds up

Before the morning glow of Spring fades out.

An unfledged swallow twitters in the air,

Asking Shelley with audacity of love:

Should she warm her body under the eaves

Or frost her head in the West Wind?

For one moment, I thought of Oscar Wilde and Lord Byron and tried to convince myself that true artists are gay because they love beauty in themselves too much. Dryle must be innocent. Dryle is Billy Budd and he is seduced by that ugly Claggart Marlowe, who clawed upon him like a serpent twisting around a young sapling. At another moment, I felt Dryle had deceived me with his innocent façade. He was the sinner of an unpardonable crime. I was tired and my brain lost its waking function. I had a nightmare in which I saw Dryle, with old shoes hanging from his neck, being paraded through my farm, and a crowd was chasing after him with scissors. I woke up in agony. This had happened in 1979 when I was on a Youth Farm. One day my classmate Mali was paraded, with his hair scissored like a madman. He had allegedly attempted to rape his roommate Tieming. How could a male ever rape a male? But it was happening. I had seen Court announcements about men sentenced to death for taking liberties with young boys and men put in jail for the crime of "Jijian"—"raping a rooster." This had been a mystery to me until I saw a German movie. God perhaps never expected that the human anus would be upgraded for sex. I did not know why Dryle had broken shoes around his neck in my dream. This is normally reserved for the parading of a whore.

7

The following day, Edward took me to the mall to buy Christmas gifts. I moved along with him like a robot. I could not get over Dryle, my idol of Romanticism. That night I wept so much that my tears composed a Christmas gift.

My Christmas Gift—

A Pair of Tearful Eyes

In this gift-giving season,

Pain-philter dissolves my body into acid water

within a dead bay.

Nothing left but a pair of tearful eyes.

I want to offer them to some-body with the embers of my love;

But no-body wants them at such a merry-making time:

Can they decorate the Christmas tree?

The betrayed eyes swell into a pavilion

In the middle of a stagnant lagoon;

Tears drip from its uplifted eaves,

Pattering rhythmically on withered lotus leaves.

The rejected eyes spring into a twin-tower on the tip of a cliff.

Torrents of tears, from one canopy tumbling

over the nose bridge,

Eagerly merging into the corrugated reservoir of the other,

Gathering at the tilted antique dragon jaws,

Unsluice their pearly cascade into the heartless pillow ravine.

The abandoned eyes hover like two stemless leaves,

Searching for the happy, happy bough of the heaven.

Ah, sweetness in acerbity is sweeter,

Is bitterness in honey the bitterest?

Bitterness is truth, truth bitter.

This is all I know, and nobody else needs to know.

The eyes are my poetic self. I felt wretched for the destruction of my muse. It was not he but I who was betrayed and abandoned.

8

Dear Sister, if you think disillusionment would save a lost soul and reality would teach me some cool rationality, you are wrong. I was totally weighed down by pain. I wept day and night and my mind would not take in one word of my forced reading. I was trying to drill into Wordsworth's "The Ruined Cottage," which was selected as a major poem for my master's thesis, but all I got was a vision of my body expanding and collapsing into that ruined cottage.

To shake off the vision, I took a walk into the woods behind the campus. That was the day before Christmas Eve and nobody had time to view the bleak nature detached from the fireplace.

A lake girdled by a tar belt.

Trees sheathed by dead vines.

Humidity holds the Nightingale by her throat.

Woodpecker, for whom do you knock the death knell?

Teeming head weighs down the jogging feet,

Dragging along no flesh and bones but a ton of rotten meat.

A gray fish wags its tail in a ditch.

"I am not you, how could I know you don't

enjoy a fill of melancholy?

Since you fall in love with drab water,

Be content with your tamed fins.

Why do your dorsal eyes still look at my wild wings?"

A red serpent with black golden rings tempts

Billy Budd with the apple of her wisdom eye.

If Billy never opened his innocent mouth,

how could the apple slip into his throat?

Laggard, droning his envy for beauty,

blows liquid of ugliness into the ear of the unbloomed Budd.

Queen-moon sees this and changes the shape of her face,

turning into a silver-ringed dark cloud.

With an angry cry, she swoops down upon the earth,

Unluckily only to smack the lips of an lightning rod.

Meteors pour down from her milliard eyes,

All in vain, only stirring dust from the mirror of the lake.

There is no sympathy or pity for you to fish.

The coiled serpent, rolling in the apple of her eye,

breathes virus from its darting fang,

playing an incantation on the Aeolian harp:

Never be hanged into heaven

But perish by the single-sexed love-sin.

Self-righteousness gave me momentary feelings of anger and hatred. Love allures, often making one lose one's head whereas anger and hatred pump up strength. Anger and hatred are not the hotbed of frustration. Frustration belongs to the coward.

9

Something in my life I never wanted to know—the truth of reality.

Damned Anu, why did you tell me the truth when I was not ready to face the sun?

Oh, poetry, you have become my enemy. You poisoned me, almost murdered me. You are so repulsive. I shall never. . . .

But dear Sister, you must be aware of my self-dramatizing. You know malice is not really in my nature. The truth is I love him, especially at a wrong age and in a wrong place. Although our culture has taught me that love is the detonator—once lighted, you destroy and you are self-destroyed—my love for him refuses to be killed. It seems to be infinite; when I die, it will haunt me in my afterlife.

When I dragged my feet home, Edward told me our neighbor needed a babysitter overnight for their two kids because she was going to a party with her boyfriend. I accepted. Doing something perhaps could free me from my crazy obsession.

After the kids went to bed, I sat alone by the telephone table thinking. I could hear the splitting of my nerves, exactly like a horrible scene in a movie—numerous fragmented thoughts, images, shouts attacking me from all directions at once. I was going mad. The last nerve of rationality in my hand dialed a number—I was not conscious of whose.

"Hello, is it Yun?" Luckily, it was Edward.

I burst out crying.

"I am coming over."

It was already past midnight. When Edward came to me, I grabbed him like a mad woman. We tumbled to the floor. He did not say anything but kissed me, caressed me, and invaded my body that had abstained from sex during the past twenty months.

After Edward left, I had a long, long sleep until the kids woke me up at eleven in the morning. I quickly cooked some pancakes for them and tidied the house up. Their single mom came home, looking tired but still happy.

I went home and saw Edward smiling. He looked gentle and affectionate, saying he was going to buy a dishwasher so that I no longer needed to wash dishes a couple of times a day. He was cleaning the house himself and his kids were tidying up their own rooms. Edward had never said a word of seduction to me; I never felt sexually threatened in his house. But my body had been profaned by him. The profaning of the body stopped my symptoms of madness. I really do not know how to make out all these absurd incidents. I did not loathe Edward; instead I felt sorry for him—I had borrowed his body to keep myself from falling apart.

Edward cooked a wonderful Christmas dinner. Everybody was in a cheerful mood. I looked placid. My mind was degrading in the lull of an aftermath, too numb to recall a past nightmare. After all the kids fell asleep, Edward tiptoed to my room. He lay down by my side and asked me what was torturing me. I told him of my love for Dr. Dryle as the idol of Romantic poetry and how I could not cope with his destruction.

"Dryle? A friend of mine knows him. I heard he used to be a priest."

"A priest? How could a priest be gay?"

"A priest is also a human being."

Edward wanted to make love but I refused.

"When you need to masturbate, please let me help you." Edward left.

I lay awake for almost the whole night, rethinking the relationship between Dr. Dryle and Dr. Marlowe. Extramarital sex is a sin. Since I was a sinner now, the ugly reality became more acceptable. I had been thinking too much. I felt dizzy, as if my bed was sinking into the earth. All colors and all boundaries blurred. The dawn was arriving. The shadows of dancing flakes outside the window led me to musing.

For

Musing

On Christmas

White, white Edelweiss

Red, red Rose

Is Edelweiss really white? Is Rose really red?

Can a rose be white? Can an edelweiss

be red?

Is Edelweiss ever flamed? How often is rose chilled?

Is

Edelweiss always white? Does Rose have to

be sullied?

Snow-adorned Edelweiss Red-sullied Rose

Folks!

At the white Christmas

Let our frosted lips touch

the red wine distilled from the

sullied roses.

Ch

ee

rs!

Queen-Moon

Merry Christmas!

10

Dear Sister, you are right that I would soon overcome my cultural shocks. By the beginning of the spring semester, I was ready to accept Dr. Dryle and Dr. Marlowe regardless of their sexual orientations. Quite unexpectedly, I got my grade report and discovered a C for a course on pedagogy. I thought it was a recording mistake, as I had received an A- for one major paper and B+ for another. But I found out that there had not been a mistake. The C was due to the fact that I did not do what the course had required for a little paper (instead of listing reference books guiding a reader to a bibliography on George Eliot, I compiled a selected bibliography). This is the second C in my life (not even a plus this time) and the only C for a course. I was upset and thought it necessary to let Dr. Dryle know as he was my thesis advisor. Well, I was ironically tricked by my own trust. When Dr. Dryle saw my little paper for that course, he said that a C was too high because I had plagiarized a portion of a bibliography from a book every professor knew.

I was puzzled. How could one plagiarize a bibliography? Is it like plagiarizing a dictionary?

Being Chinese, I never regarded plagiarism as a serious crime though I was aware of how Americans felt about it. When I was sitting at the writing center, I heard people talking about Kim, a graduate student from Korea, who had just been just expelled from the department because his essay had some plagiarized phrases and sentences. I remembered hearing that Wang transferred himself from English to Economics because Dr. Marlowe caught him plagiarizing. Now nearly every university knows the problem with Chinese students in America. If a professor is really strict, he or she can easily find a way to flunk a Chinese. I had heard all of this but never believed that I was committing plagiarism. Thinking hard, I remembered that day when I borrowed numerous books on George Eliot from the library, I had skillfully flipped to the back of each book and typed the items I wanted on the computer. I did not even check the authors or titles of those books. Still I could not accept the accusation of being a plagiarist.

I went to Dr. Walden and asked him whether he gave me a C because I had plagiarized. He absolutely refused to make an accusation in that direction. He insisted that he gave me a C simply because I had not written what he had assigned. Perhaps he was too kind to kill a Chinese graduate with that verdict. Plagiarism is too severe a crime for anyone to survive in the academic world. Not only in the academic world— when I got home that day, Edward was laughing at the stupidity of a presidential candidate on TV. Can you imagine how stupid he is? In his campaign speech, he plagiarized the inauguration speech of a former president. Who? What has he plagiarized? How can he plagiarize since every word is known to the nation and his speech is open to the public? That is exactly how he tried to defend himself. Read the paper, listen to the radio, the whole nation is talking about his plagiarism. I did not want to read the news or listen to the radio. I did not want to know who he was. If a statement was good for the nation in the past why could he not use it again? Doesn't history often repeat itself?

I felt I was wronged by the private intellectual ownership of a capitalist world. I had no tears and my eyes were dry like sand. That night I had a funny dream.

An extra-terrestrial came to me and led me to a balloon-like room. Instructed by brain waves, I put on a pair of magic shoes and shrouded myself with a cellophane veil. Pressing a button, I traveled in the universe with the alien. Chinese ancestors believed angels could travel by stepping on two clouds. If they lived today, they would see that science has enabled men to pass angels at last. The veil sealed me into a cocoon. It must have been insulated as I could see the stars and moon and everything zooming by but felt neither cold nor lack of oxygen. I felt comfortable as if lying on a sofa in the living room. The brain waves told me I could switch the light on and read a book if I was hungry.

I was amused. But pretty soon, the alien guided me to his planet. It was an inquisitive world indeed. As soon as I arrived, numerous extra-terrestrials asked about our world. I told them the urgent problem for our planet was overpopulation.

"That! We solved it about two thousand years ago. Do you feel our world is crowded?"

No. Their streets were wide, flanked with flowers and trees. From one house to another there was at least an acre of space. And there were no skyscrapers. Most of the buildings were shaped like balloons or torpedoes.

"Put on this astroscope."

"Wow." I saw so many balloons and torpedoes floating on air like paramecium, layer after layer, paving a ladder to the ninth heaven.

"Since we designed these houses that can float or anchor anywhere in the sky like ships on the sea, people can have as many children as they like. Of course, there is order, like navigation routes on your high seas. Due to vibrations, these houses will never crash into one another. Have you seen one fish run into another in the water?"

"The higher you live, the thinner the air. How do you breathe?"

"Breathe? Nobody does that primitive act any more. At the time of a baby's birth, we give it a lump of concentrated oxygen, enough to last 120 years."

"What do you eat then?"

"We eat words."

I remembered that the brain waves had instructed me to read a book if I felt hungry.

"Words? Do you still have problems such as indigestion, constipation, and diarrhea?"

"Of course. If you eat the words you do not understand, or you are word-gluttonous, or eat only certain words, you will have personal problems."

"Personal problems? Does anyone in your world have a problem with plagiarism?"

"That is not a problem. We applaud plagiarism as the highest virtue. Look!"

I looked in the direction he was pointing to and saw a large crowd of people standing in a place like Tiananmen Square. When my guide took me there, I saw two huge slogans hanging on the stage: (1) All books under heaven are indebted to plagiarism; and (2) Plagiarism is beauty. All the aliens were having a friendly contest to see who could be elected the King or Queen of Plagiarism for the year. The judges, I was told, were the most studious bookworms of the country. They had to know all the famous classics as well as gutter literature to identify the original sources of a word, phrase, or quote. It was a tough job, I guess. I could only identify the first slogan, which was stolen from my father, but I failed to identify the other.

Perhaps I had stared at the slogan for too long and I had the overwhelming urge to go to the bathroom.

"Where is the ladies' room?"

"The public restroom is over there. We do not separate ladies from gentlemen in things like producing excrement."

I went there and saw piles of papers. A warning sign said: ONE BOOK AT A TIME. And an eye-catching slogan with the words "One person's excrement is another's food" was hanging on the front wall. I see, defecating for them is producing books. Fortunately, my stomach felt okay again.

I came out, resuming my questions.

"Since you do not eat food like earthlings, what do you do every day?"

"Create, producing books. That's why we spend most of our time in the bathroom. The only power is the brain—thinking. Have you noticed that everybody in our world wears a little device on the wrist?"

"Yes, a wristwatch. Very common on our Earth."

"No. We do not need watches. Our people do not have any concept of time. What everyone is wearing is a brain-recorder which shows whatever you are thinking—in fact, thinking is never in words alone but is always accompanied by images, emotions, and dialogues. Books or written words can never capture real thinking accurately. We finally solved this problem. One can revise one's own thinking by pushing a rewind button here. The device can record and retrieve whatever you feel you would like to share with another person, like a book. However, according to our statistics in recent years, people are getting too narcissistic, only reviewing their own thoughts. That is why we have learned something from China in your world and reward plagiarism as an incentive for people to read and use others' ideas."

"But I haven't seen any books around."

"Oh, you mean the books from your Earth. The books from other planets have all been recorded onto minitapes and transmitted through brain waves. They are available from sunrise to moonset. Come and put on this brain-video. Have you started reading? Do you hear the sound effects, taste the succulent flavors, sweet, sour, bitter, salty. . . . I see you enjoy munching apples and chewing gum. Don't be too greedy, or you'll be satiated soon. Be careful, or you will become overweight. . . ."

The alarm clock rang. My pillow was wet with drool.

11

The dream made me feel better. But when I saw Dr. Dryle about my draft on the images of women in Romantic poetry, I was thrown into an abyss. He had asked me to show him all of the reference books I had borrowed for my project and then compared them with my writing. After doing so, he found I had mixed my own thoughts with those of others. He was very angry and ordered me to stop my project and change to a new topic. For this new topic, I was forbidden to read even one reference book.

Only one and a half months remained before the deadline for my master's thesis, but I had to start anew. I remembered a story I had heard in Edinboro. A graduate student near the completion of his dissertation was ordered by his Chair to switch to a new topic. He could no longer finish his dissertation and committed suicide. Before he died, he said he would haunt that Chair when he became a ghost. Perhaps he could never become a ghost because no professor could ever be haunted by a student.

Although I felt the merciless edge of a tyrannical sword, I had actually received a big favor—no more research, no more plagiarism. I chose Wordsworth's long poem "Michael" as my new project. I read "Michael" forward, backward, vertically, horizontally, and diagonally. I named my thesis "Three Visions of Michael: Archetype, Individualist, and Poet." With Michael's unconquerable spirit, I wrote furiously and finished surprisingly fast. Dr. Dryle crossed out the lines about my association with the Enclosure Movement in England on the grounds that I could not have known this without a secondary source. You know, Chinese children learn in primary school about the Enclosure Movement during the 18th and 19th centuries that seized land from villages and farmers despite resistance and bloodshed. Never mind. I completed my master's in English literature by the end of April.

12

Dear Sister, I left out a good many of the ugly things that happened during those nightmarish four months. I surrendered my body to Edward again and again. There was a perversity in me that led to a deliberate demoralization. I never cared what Edward was thinking about me. When we were having sex, I merely treated him as a clinical instrument. Nevertheless, there was a visible change in Edward. He started writing poems about daisies and crab apples. One day, he took me to a film and said the tickets had been given to him by one of his colleagues. I suspected he had bought them especially for me. I enjoyed that comedy enormously. It was called "The Gods Must Be Crazy." On my birthday he bought me a rosebud. I did not even put it in a vase. It soon died of thirst. Naturally, I could feel Edward's resentment towards me.

He started reaching out to all sorts of women. Poor Edward was busying himself with making appointments, inviting friends for dinner, and looking for romance. He changed women like a model changing outfits. There was no end to his new, short-lived lovers. It was hard for me to detest him. He told me that his love was fragmented and he liked all sorts of women. He must cling to women to disperse his restlessness and uncertainty about human feelings and even life. He tried to offer his harmless body (he had a vasectomy after his third child and did not have any sexually transmitted diseases) to as many women as possible. Young girls, single women, separated, divorced, or unhappy wives all needed him in their distress. He told me that any woman who had made love with him once could turn to him at any time, even his ex-wife. I could see why women loved him like Baoyu in The Dream of the Red Chamber.

I remembered that at the last grand party for Edward's birthday, all of his lovers or would-be lovers came. An elegant and intelligent-looking lady, who had two master's degrees and was pursuing her PhD in philosophy, came to my room and asked, "Who is that gross woman Edward embraced a moment ago?"

"Peggy, I guess. She was his girlfriend when I first came."

The elegant woman was tortured. She told me how Edward had caught her eye the other day and she had such a passion for him, but he seemed to have ignored her. It was true that Edward loved intellectual women but he felt more comfortable with "gross" women like Peggy. Edward was a down-to-earth man and never pretended he was not.

Edward also had his spiritual side. I remember that on Easter, he had woken at three o'clock in the morning to watch the sunrise over the lake. He was not very lucky that year. It was chilly at the beach. He made a fire and waited patiently. When dawn finally came, he first saw a crow (a bad omen in Chinese) and then a beaver (a symbol for hard-working) at sunrise. The following night, he stayed over with Lucy and came back with a little kerosene lamp. He said he was with Lucy the whole night, talking about romance. Did you make love with her? No, she did not want to and gave me this lamp to remember her by. Whenever he talked about his latest girlfriend, Edward would adopt the tone of Ah Q, a self-deceiving psychological comforter, "Well, great progress, but not ready yet. It takes some time to warm up." I would say, "Prince Charming, you have to take some initiative. Don't be too shy."

He had a trusting nature and confided to me almost everything about his private life. He said his wife had divorced him because he had had an affair with their babysitter.

"After your divorce, why didn't you marry that babysitter?"

"Don't you know Pamela? She was our babysitter. She looked beautiful with her long hair back then." Pamela later cropped her hair like a boy and turned lesbian.

I remembered that whenever Pamela would come to the house, she would pounce on Edward like a long-time-no-see lover. They would become tangled together, playing like a puppy and a kitty. Pamela said many times that she loved Edward because he was the best man in the world.

"Then, why did you turn lesbian?"

"Well, after having sexual experiences with many men, I found myself truly enjoying relationships with women. Perhaps it is a family influence or a biological thing. My brother is also homosexual."

I finally recovered from my cultural shock caused by homophobia. I also came to accept my fate to be punished as the scapegoat for China's plagiarism. Do you remember the funny discovery I told you about during our study in Shanghai in 1983? I told you that I had read nine articles on American black humor and found seven of them expressed the same thoughts and three of them have paragraphs in the exact same wording. It was impossible for me to find out the original author until I came to America. The Chinese habitually committed plagiarism largely because of their conceptual lack of individualism—this lack is perhaps a birthmark of socialism. Since 1980s, China has grasped some Western capitalist straws for revitalization; yet it repackaged those straws with the label of "Socialism with China's Unique Features." Obviously China is weaving those plagiarized straws into gold bars.

13

Dr. Marlowe had been sick this semester. Sometimes, Dr. Dryle would say, "Sorry I could not finish reading your draft in time. This weekend I had to take care of Dr. Marlowe in the hospital." I remembered once while I was talking about the love and tolerance of a mother, Dr. Dryle snorted suspiciously. His mother must not have loved him. Perhaps his father was a loving being. He clung to Dr. Marlowe like a son to a father. He had been merciless to me. Apart from enforcing righteous academic principles, he must have felt that my "problem" and my "plagiarism" were endangering his career. He wished to remove me as quickly as possible. But behind his cruel mask were the vulnerability and insecurity of a child. Although I was becoming a wreck, I had sympathy and cared for him.

One day I had lunch with Alex, a poet residing on campus. His office was located next to Dr. Dryle's.

"I heard him shouting at you. What's the matter? You should report his behavior to the department."

I shed tears. "No, nothing. I have been a mother. I have no roots here. Once I am gone, I am gone. But this will perhaps be his academic home for life."

"I have served in the army and done all sorts of odd jobs. I do not trust those who have been in schools all their lives. They simply do not know much about life. I mean, they do not understand humanity. Hard to grow up just in books. . . ."

During my last talk with the department, the Chair asked, "Why did your choose him as your advisor?"

"He offered."

"Why didn't you change to another professor when you had problems with him?"

"Changing horses in midstream could have been worse. I am going away but he has to stay. I must say that he has done nothing wrong in advising me. He is extremely responsible. No matter how busy he is, he has read every draft carefully. Without his help, it would have been impossible for me to complete my thesis in such a short time."

I did not know whether there were rumors about me in the department. I had never breathed my trouble to anybody. By the end of that semester, a graduate student asked me whether she should put Dr. Dryle on her doctoral committee.

"By all means do it. He is a responsible advisor. And his expertise will help you with your work."

"But my brother advised me not to... said he is a queer person, a gay."

"I don't know about that. He seems to me a very sincere, disciplined scholar. Anyway, his personal lifestyle has nothing to do with your dissertation, has it?"

On the last day of the semester, I packed my things, ready to leave the English Building once and for all. Surprisingly, I saw that old, shriveled Dr. Marlowe standing in the sunlight, smiling at me. He was not that ugly; he looked like a benign father. He came close and embraced me with emotion. What emotion? The generosity of a victor to his defeated? Not likely. His eyes showed genuine paternal love. I did not have to tell him I was leaving. He knew, of course, being so intimate with Dr. Dryle.

My first impression of Dr. Marlowe flashed through my mind.

I had arrived at Urbana on a sunny afternoon. It was nice of Susan to drive me here (she had gotten back from Spain, divorced Jim and married a graduate student. The story of their romance will be carried in The Atlantic this year). I was eager to see the director of graduate studies. But I was one minute late for my appointment because I had been talking with Susan outside. His secretary simply announced, "Dr. Marlowe is ready to go home. You will have to wait for an appointment tomorrow." Susan marched directly to Marlowe, trying to put in a word for me. Of course, Marlowe was annoyed. Dear me, seeing an authority in America is like seeing an emperor. The anarchist way of catching your boss during mealtime won't do in America. It is a free land but extremely well disciplined. If you want to play the game, you must learn the rules.

The following day, I met him at his office punctually. When I mentioned that Susan wanted to apply for the job advertised in the department bulletin, he chuckled maliciously.

"Do you think she will have a chance here? I am on the committee."

I did not apply for doctoral study at University of Illinois. Do you think I would have a chance with Dr. Dryle on the committee? I slipped a gift copy of my Master's thesis under the door of Dr. Dryle's office and left the English Building.

ON FINISHING . . .

It's finished

I'm Finished

We are not

Shall I fix a Chinese feast?

How about a drink?

Yes, I know you won't come

It's not good enough for a toast of red wine—

Just acceptable, tolerable, okay. . . . Not okay

Hold the charioteer of your land sliding brain

Use that soft glow of the multi-colored snow

To capture the collapsing beauty of

An Avalanche

free-zing

pure

ruthless

submissively-

wild

A-musing

murky

bitterless

lugubriously-

mild

So little to feel day to day

So much to ruminate before night

What accidentally gained cannot be lost

Adieu!

No see?

Not again?

She's soundly lunatic,

saintly insane,

deadly mad,

madly dead

Forget it

forget me

forget you

forget her. . . us.

14

We Chinese are a loving and tolerant people. We tolerate perhaps because we are weak. Everything can be forgotten; every sin can be forgiven. But my own plagiarism will be the scarlet letter "P" on my chest.

It is time to leave

Flowers bloomed and gone

Green of trees comes back

Drizzle again, storm again

Window with a view, yet nothing new

The suitcase, bottom up

Every dress worn, no difference, nothing to show

Urbana-Champaign has lost its glamor

Go, go, go. . . the sparrow chirps

Go, go, go. . .the cold wind whistles

It's time to part! An old ragged car blows its horn.

I got into a shabby car and left gloomy Urbana. Where am I going? One night Mr. Ma, my college advisor in China, representing humility and tolerance like my husband, appeared in my dream. He said to me: "Come home! It is a waste of your life to be away from home, your real career." Yes, if I had not left China I would have been a full professor by now, and perhaps Chair of the department. The other night I had an entirely different dream. Two tall buildings on fire. Nothing collapsing. Fire dragons dancing on the roof touching the sky, tongues of flames licking upwards in the air. I did not know why I was running away. I did not know why I was stopped by a large crowd of strangers, like a scene in a Moses adventure. They shouted to me: "Turn your back and look." Aren't they magnificent? Only a coward runs away.

It was true if I returned to China now, I would be thought a coward. Perhaps the rest of my life, I would have to swallow the shame of being a failure. I had never recognized failure in doing anything before. I was grateful to Dr. Miller. He asked me one day what I was planning to do after completing my Master's; I said, return to China.

"Why go back to China? I read a couple of your papers. They are good and have a style, too. You should get your PhD. If you are not happy with U. of I., there are many other universities in the States. I will write recommendation letters for you. Please try and never give up."

Stepping out of his office, I saw an ad for the Comparative Literature Department at University of Pittsburgh. During a visit to Pitt two years before, Jim had said to me, "A great university. I hope you can do your PhD here." It was my fate. Now the old car was shipping me to Pitt.

15

Dear Sister, you asked me why I always called myself an ugly duckling in China. I never told you the story of my childhood. Do you still remember how we became sworn sisters on the Youth Farm? It was truly laughable. That day, I heard a girl wailing in the barn. I went in and watched you for a long time. Instead of persuading you to stop, I lay down by your side, howling together with you. When we had our fill of crying, we asked each other why we were crying. I said I did not know, perhaps something about the mystery of life; you said, yes, the pain of living itself. We took a walk and you told me how your parents loved you and had high expectations of you. You cried partly because you felt you had not done anything meaningful in life. Then we took many walks along the mountain path and talked about our dreams, shared our secrets, and pictured our futures. Once or twice we said how wonderful it would be if one of us were a man so that we could marry each other. But I never said a word about my childhood, because it was different.

My life is a dust ball rolling, rolling, rolling. When it rolls in the middle of the busy street, all traffic stops.

I was born at the wrong time in the wrong family. If my birth had occurred twenty years later, my parents would have known the advantage of having an only child. With a brother and a sister ahead of me, I lost all of their love. With three sisters and one brother after me, I was born a free babysitter. I drank no milk, nor do I remember the warmth of a maternal arm. Upon opening my eyes, I saw injustice and the hardness of life everywhere.

"Ma! . . . My little. . .little sister fell into . . ." When my mother ran over and found a baby howling in the smoldering charcoal fire, she cried helplessly. When my father came, he slapped my face like lightning slashing the clouds.

"Yun" means cloud—that's me, either a dust ball along the street or a cloud wandering in the sky. The three-year-old me was certainly too dumb to stop my sister Min from tumbling off the bed or to drag her from the fire.

"Why can't I ride on the back seat of your bike, Baba?" Seeing my brother straddling the front bar, I was deeply hurt by a strong emotion that a five year old could not name. No answer, but the sting of an eagle eye and the face of a sullen sky were too much for a little soul. I did not know where my courage came from. I threw my tiny body right in the middle of the boulevard before the February 7th Memorial Tower of Zhengzhou, screaming, rolling like a ball of dust. Policemen were stunned, the traffic lights lost their authority, and all trucks, buses, cars screeched to a stop.

16

The windless summer evening was suffocating. Yet, my heart was light like a breeze. After washing dishes and seeing that the little ones had a clean bath, I finally pulled a fragment off an old mat, and like an ant towing a leaf, I chugged to my earthly paradise along the sidewalk.

Already many people were there; some sat on small stools or armchairs, while some lay on their mats on sidewalks. What fun people had in a time when nobody knew air conditioning or even electric fans! The old and young were equally relaxed and idle, waving their palm leaf fans.

Grandpa Liu was always the center of attention. Naked to the waist, blowing a pipe out from his stubby beard like an old goat, he was telling an old story about Bao Gong, a man of law and justice.

I was fascinated by Bao Gong, though his face was painted rather scarily in black on stage and he was always flipping his bushy long beard and staring through his round eyes. Grandpa Liu convinced me that only Bao Gong dared to throw off his black official cap and chop the evil governors' heads off, even if they were the Emperor's relatives. He earned his fame as "Bao the Blue Sky." A child or a woman could stop his sedan chair in the street, crying for justice.

"Do you know anything about Bao Gong's birth?"

I did not know why I was so curious to find out his roots.

"Of course I know." Grandpa Liu's goat beard was erect with pride. "Bao Gong was born a flesh ball. When the ball tumbled out of his mother's womb, rolling on the floor, his father cut it open with a long sword and found a dark-skinned ugly baby inside. His father thought it a disgrace for the family and sent a servant to throw it into the wilderness. . . ."

My mind wandered away. Whether little Bao was fed by wolves in the mountains or by farmers in a small cottage, and how he became the Minister of Justice at Kaifeng Court, I did not care anymore. I was lost in my own thoughts: If the Emperor himself was an evil tyrant, what could Bao Gong have done? Black—ball, ball—black. A sort of weird ugliness stroked my heart gently. Ah, people call me an ugly duckling because I was born black with a sense of justice. For the first time I felt I had a secret link with somebody. And I began to doubt my own parentage.

Another day, something unfair happened. Over a toy? No, the children in my family never had toys to play with. Over candy? No, I was never spoiled enough to have such an extravagant craving. Anyway, something struck me as unfair, so I refused to eat supper. I wept in big sobs in the dark corner of a room, rather than crying openly like a child. I was thinking about where my blood parents were. Late that night, my father shouted at me, "If you think you are wronged in this family, you can leave." Yes, I must leave. What do I have in this family? I suddenly realized that being a citizen, I should have some identity. I howled, "Give me my Book of Food Rations and my Citizenship Certificate and I will go." I ran away from home several times and each time I was brought back by the police.

I felt my school was boring too; today a Red Army veteran told us how they had chewed grassroots during their Long March and tomorrow an old poor peasant would teach us how to swallow bitter wild plants as they did in the dark society. So I played hooky and fought with boys in the neighborhood. No doubt I became the ugliest among the seven children in the family. Not only did my parents often curse me, but the neighbors also joined the chorus.

After washing off a day's dust, I watched myself intensely in the mirror and started to compose a tale.

Once upon a time, a little rabbit was born. Her parents did not like her because she was ugly. Her brothers got better food and her sisters wore more beautiful clothes. She had nothing but leftovers and hand-me-downs. All day long she was alone, playing with mud. One day after a big storm, the lake looked murky and then crystal clear. The rabbit happened to see her image for the first time. She marveled: My parents always say I am ugly. Why do I look so much like my father? Why do I look so much like my mother? And why do I look so much like every other rabbit? If they are not ugly in the first place, how could I ever have been born ugly?

17

The image of my father was, no doubt, of a tyrant. Many bits of evidence flash in my memory. The whole family sat around the dining table waiting for his appearance like waiting for a dinner bell—but this bell never had a fixed time. If one dish was burned or salty, my father's finger would fly to peck my mother's forehead. A scene—an indelible imprint—on my mind:

A Cock-pecked Wife

He has a finger

A finger of Baton

directs the traffic of a hen

with seven chicks

crossing the tightrope of life

A finger of Eye

flares up at first sight of No

A finger of Cock

pecks the wrinkled brow of the Other

When His carrot-face grows

black, or purple

Of course, a tyrant has the complete freedom to brag about his merits. Even his shortcomings or defects would become something worth glorifying, if they were recounted by his own mouth. My father was a peasant. He was used to being thrifty and hardworking. "Splitting a penny to use it twice" would be an apt description for him. He was the sole breadwinner for seven children and a wife, and he could not afford to have anyone in the family lose a penny. The children were naturally always penniless. If my mother lost a yuan during her shopping, she would be scared and such a secret was usually too heavy for her to bear alone. She would tell her daughters, "Bad luck. I lost a yuan today. Do not let your father know." No one wanted to be an informer anyway. Who liked to see the pots and bowls hit the floor again?

Once my father came back from a provincial convention and announced, "Bad times indeed! So many thieves are milling around the railway station. One even stole seven yuan from my hip pocket." My father said this with such good humor that we all laughed. My brother was even curious to learn how a thief possibly could steal from a pocket so tight to his hip.

My father joined the Communist army to fight the Japanese when he was fourteen.

"Back then, I was herding pigs for a landlord in the village. One day the son of the landlord bullied me and I gave him a good beating. I dared not return to them anymore and ran away to fight the Japanese devils. . . ."

He related many tales about his battles. Once he was carrying a wounded Japanese devil after the battle and the tough devil almost bit his ear off. Though he won the war against Japan, he seemed to admire their unyielding spirit a lot.

Many times he escaped when his comrades-in-arms died in an enemy-surrounded house or village. He was known as the Flying Tiger. He jumped from roof to roof as if stepping on two clouds. He won numerous awards and was promoted time and time again. After recounting his glorious past, he would say wistfully: If I had a better education, I would be somebody in the Central Party Committee now.

Surely, his glorious past implanted the image of a legendary hero in children's eyes. But I felt uneasy listening to his never-finished tales. Too many repetitions and too much revision will make any tale lose its color and authenticity. The first time, I was as thrilled as the other children. After the third time, I simply slipped away as my father was starting. Later, even before he started, I made faces and snorted in disgust, making myself even uglier. After seeing Lu Xun's "New Year's Sacrifice" in a movie house, I said to my father before he started the old tale again, "I am so foolish I did not know the wolf would come out on snow days. I let Ah Mao sit outside. . . ." All my brothers and sisters laughed. My father was puzzled like a twenty-foot-high Buddhist statue, too tall to touch his own head. He clenched his teeth, "Get out, you ugly thing!"

18

Dear Sister, I did have a safe trip. In an old, shabby car, it took two days to jolt from Urbana to Pittsburgh. I could not tell whether I was safe till the minute I got out of the car. I had felt sexually threatened the first day and night. But my driver, Marios, turned out to be a rare noble man. I must tell you our story as well as his story.

"Hi, Old Liu. I am leaving Urbana soon."

"When?"

"I am going to buy a Greyhound ticket. Hopefully the day after tomorrow."

"Where to?"

"Pittsburgh. A city near Philadelphia, I guess."

"Well, good luck to you. My friend Marios happens to be leaving for Philadelphia tomorrow afternoon. I believe he can give you a ride."

"Is Marios a man?" I hesitated.

"Yes, a Greek man. If there's one man you can trust in the world, it is him." Liu assured me with hearty laughter.

"Sounds great."

"Here's his phone number."

I phoned immediately. No answer. A few measures of Beethoven were followed by a cheerful announcement.

"This is Marios. I am not home at the moment. Please leave your phone number and I shall call you back as soon as possible." The voice was open and resolute, reminding me of the image of a young Greek warrior.

When he finally came to get me and my belongings the following morning, I was shocked to see a huge dark man, with a scar across his face. I was instantly frightened. Edward had told me, "If you pay the gas and half of the motel, I don't think he will take advantage of you."

It was too late to retreat. I got into the car and he drove me first to his dwelling in the basement of an old building. He asked me to help prepare some food for the journey. He looked clumsy like a bear but did not cook slowly. We fried a large bag of chicken drumsticks and prepared some sandwiches. He had already bought a lot of snacks and soft drinks.

"I have a great appetite. I need a lot food and drinks when I am driving."

I became more nervous. Now I am traveling with a savage man with a voracious appetite for food and perhaps for women.

We set out by four o'clock in the afternoon. As our car was backing out of the yard, a lot of young men waved goodbye to him. No doubt, he was a popular hero among them.

Marios was in an exceptionally good mood. He turned on his car stereo. Again, classical.

"You don't like pop music, I bet."

"No, that's low stuff. I have inherited a sensitive ear from my father, who was a great singer and my grandfather who was a famous composer. Unfortunately, my own voice is not suitable for professional singing. But thanks to my good ear, I can still enjoy music and repair fine musical instruments."

After a while, Marios started whistling. It was the most beautiful whistling I had ever heard in my life. It was not thin, but a double, triple echoing.

"How can you do that?"

"Eh, a family trait. I come from an aristocratic family in Greece. All the males in my family can do double-whistling."

"You mean your family in Greece is quite rich. Then why did you come to America?" At the point of asking him why he looked so shabby and his car was so old, I held my tongue.

"Well, we used to be. Nevertheless, it is the belief that a man must go out to see the world and get experience that took me to America. I am a man of strong will. When I was small, I was the weakest in the family, always sick and bullied by my brothers. Then I was determined to make myself strong. I did hard training. Look at all these muscles. Look into my eyes. Do you find some strange light? I can see into the distance farther than most others.... Although I dress in rags, I am not terribly poor, compared with poor Americans. I am a mechanic, earning 17 dollars an hour. I give 20 bucks to a single mother with a baby near the campus every week. It makes me feel good to help the helpless a little."

Is he telling me stories? Can he be that good to an unrelated woman? Perhaps that woman's baby is his illegitimate son.

"Who is that man in the house?"

"His name is Edward, the host family I have lived with for about a year."

"No problem. You are a desirable woman."

What does he mean? Is he suspecting an intimate relationship between me and Edward? He is dangerously penetrating.

"That lady in the house has a STD."

"Oh, she's a visitor, one of Edward's women friends. What is a STD?"

"A sexually transmitted disease."

"How could you tell?"

"Well, I just know."

"She is an abandoned woman with three little kids. Edward pities her. Edward has pity for many women."

"No problem. Edward is a ladies' man."

Now I knew "No problem" was his pet phrase.

"Do you know Minghua, the beautiful Chinese graduate student?"

"Sorry, I don't."

"Ha, ha, ha—she calls me 'Mental Disorder.'"

He must be in love with her. A beautiful woman could play around with an ugly man or a dwarf for fun and bless him with all sorts of cruel names, but she will not give him her love.

"'Mental Disorder.' How do you say it in Chinese?"

"Shenjing Bing." A lot of Chinese women call their stupid admirers by that name.

"I guess I am a Shenjing Bing. Now I am sending this car to her in Philadelphia at her command. She bought this old car on my advice for only three hundred dollars. Good engine, though its body looks shabby."

Marios drank some soda and ate a chocolate bar.

He sang a tune I did not understand. It must be in his mother tongue.

"My father died ten years ago. My mother used to have hysterical fits. When I became a man, I came to understand women better. Two years ago I went to London and bought some sexual aids from a sex store for her. Since then, she has changed to a much milder person in the house."

"When I saw signs of sex shops in London, I assumed that they had something to do with underground prostitution."

"No. It is a kind of health shop. There are instruments for men too. I did not buy one for myself as I am still young and there are women who like to use me."

"Use you?"

"Yes. Sex, love, and marriage are separate and different things. I have regular sex with a U. of I. faculty member. We see each other twice a month, nothing except for a physical need. We do not even make conversation. She needs what I need. We are glad to use each other for a healthy existence. Repression of sex is no good, against our biological nature. . . . I am not ready for marriage yet. Marriage is sacred. It is for the sake of our future generations. The mother of my kids has to be refined, virtuous, well-educated. . . ."

He was dreaming of a goddess, perhaps modeled on his view of his own mother.

He did not talk about his philosophy of love. But "Mental Disorder" had laid himself bare.

19

It was well past midnight. He started yawning. I knew we had to spend a night in a motel. Thinking of the motel, I tensed up again.

"You are a desirable woman." He gave me a critical glance.

"But don't get nervous. If you do not want to make love with me, I won't touch you. But I confess I desired your body the moment I saw you."

"Can we sleep in separate rooms?"

"I think it's too expensive to pay for two rooms. If you are worried, I can sleep in the car. I am a tough man and have slept in the car several times."

I thought of Liu's trust for him.

"All right. We can share the room. But you must keep your promise."

That night we slept on the same bed. I did not undress. But it was summer and my silk dress was vulnerably thin. At first I struggled to keep awake to protect myself. I could hear him turning his body like an ant on a hot pan. I was hopelessly carsick. Gradually I lost consciousness. When I woke up, I heard him in the shower.

"It was so hot last night I simply could not fall asleep."

With the air conditioning on, the room was not hot. I knew he had fought with his carnal desire the whole night. He had won the victory, but was terribly exhausted.

The following day, Marios drove silently. Sometimes he whistled, but the tune was unspeakably depressing. I tried once or twice to cheer him up with small talk. It was of no use. He simply said, "I did not sleep well and I am tired."

Do you still remember I sent you a poem on sex and love about eight months ago? Let me copy it here:

Sex Is Love

Who says sex is not love?

To me

sex is love as beauty is truth

When sex and love are separated

sex stinks

love deceives

soul tortures

A momentary release

an eternal trauma

Sex should be the highest form of love—

Love ennobles and purifies sex

Sex electrifies ecstatic love

Sex without love

signifies weakness of human will—

A yield to vulva itching

A capitulation to phallic power

A mere tool for breeding offspring

A victim of the material world

Marios was a post-modern specter sent to instruct me to separate sex from love, but I failed to take his instruction. Even though my body was profaned, my spirit demoralized, and I was driven out of the Garden of Eden as a plagiarist, I still stubbornly held to the last straw: sex, given of one's free will, is love.

Part III. Sex ≠ Love?

I arrived at Pittsburgh like a patient discharged from a mental hospital. I shunned social life and concentrated on getting straight A's. If I was dragged by a friend to a dance, I would sit in a corner, staring. Once or twice I was pushed by the feminist tide in my department and went along with a couple of strong women to a hen party. While they were talking about divorce, love, sex, and fantasies, I remained a dumb onlooker. Between busy hours of course work and teaching, I felt depressed and lonely in an alien world. The Chair had a talk with me and advised me to wear a bra because a graduate student had reported me for dressing too sexily. I seldom wore a bra in the winter because my sweaters were thick enough to hide my pointed nipples. But one must be careful in a sex-alert world like America. In China, some women wear translucent dresses in summer without slips. The dumb Chinese men are blind to those female bodies. Perhaps both sexes enjoy seeing and being seen secretly. But no talking— the words are the real criminals.

1

One day a voice behind me commented, "Great legs." I turned around and saw a well-dressed gentleman. I laughed rather coarsely and he hurried away in embarrassment. Perhaps he was not embarrassed but took me as a crazy woman. I was told that in this situation a woman should smile and say, "Thank you." It was not that easy to fit into a different culture.

Another evening after I crossed the street facing the campus entrance, I was accosted by a dark shadow.

"Hey, it's you. Do you still remember me?" I looked but could not remember him.

"Sorry, you must have made a mistake."

"Never mind. I used to have an Asian girlfriend. She is a wonderful Korean girl. Are you Korean?"

"No. I'm Chinese."

"I love Chinese food. Are you married?"

"Yes, I have a child, too."

"Is your family with you?"

"Excuse me, I must leave. My husband and daughter are waiting for me at home." Having a family seems to protect a woman.

One night when a friend dropped me off at the intersection near my apartment, I heard a man calling from his lowered car window.

"Please tell me how to get to Hugh Street."

I told him patiently.

"I am a stranger in this town. I've been driving around and can't get to the right place. Would you please get in and show me the way?"

I knew the misery of getting lost in a strange place. So I got in. What a fool I was. No sooner was the car moving than the man asked, "Can you do a blow job?"

"What job?"

"Blow."

I knew the word in English as in "the wind blows" or "blow one's nose," but could not figure out what he meant. Nevertheless, I knew instinctively he was a bad man. When he tried to touch my hand, I said sharply, "Let me out." My voice must have sounded foreign and authoritative. The man looked scared and let me out immediately. I ran home, feeling threatened, as if I could see a woman being assaulted every minute, every second in the world. Perhaps not. An old woman in China had told me that it was impossible for a man to rape a woman without her complicity. Perhaps it is true; but a woman must be physically as strong as a man. I recalled once a man had attempted to assault me; I pushed him down to the ground and ran away. Having labored in the countryside for three years, I was strong, although my voice and figure still looked pretty feminine. Well, if you asked me what I feared most about walking alone in the dark, I would say: a man, not a ghost.

2

I had many temptations. When the most handsome man in my department—most women thought so— squeezed my palm in a handshake, I pretended not to take the hint. We lived on the same floor in the same building for a year. I could easily see that he changed girlfriends like an American's good habit of changing clothes. If I was a hidden female Don Juan, I disliked male dandies. When I first moved to Pitt, a graduate student known as a ladies' man often dropped by my cubicle for a chat. Once he made a comment about my gray hair and even volunteered to pluck a white hair off. I was too polite to lose my temper. In less than two weeks, the department was gossiping about us.

—I heard that he invited you to a bar last night.

—No, he didn't.

—Didn't? He does that to every female newcomer in our department.

Strange, he had never invited me. He offered me a ride home once but in a most decent manner. Even so, I felt irritated and could hardly bear the sight of him. I had been wronged by his reputation. A woman's reputation is more important than her career—when I was rational, I believed this. Pretty soon I was known in the department as an "aloofer" who could not get on with life.

Watching Mary and Diana riding on the shoulders of Doug and Bill during a playful game at a party, I wished I could join in. Seeing Tom jump around with two grapefruits as his breasts, I wished I could invent some fun.

How can one get on with life? Is there another way of getting on with life without sexual tantalization? I found some pleasure in talking with elderly ladies and men in church. Gradually, I started enjoying food and fashionable clothes. I even wrote a passage to express my momentary self:

I am a woman. My mind is so minute that if I think of philosophy or math one minute, my brain rewards myself nine times more in the cosmos of love. I enjoy food, I enjoy clothes, I enjoy window shopping. Why, aren't they the elementals of life? Why should I snail down my squirrel movements like a modern kangaroo—her pocket loaded with not her own baby but others' brainchildren?

Did I tell you I am a camel? I eat tons of good food when I get a chance to. "Hello, Yun, do you want to fill up your camel again?" Oh, I am so pleased. I'll go even if tomorrow I lose my chance of being the President. Did I even eat like a parasite? No. I pay with my witty Yuism when I am ruminating straws. The significance does not lie in the eating.

Small verbal pleasures never exercised my intellect much. When I was annoyed or threatened, I felt the circulation of my blood. When nothing could spur my imaginative power, I started to hunger for pain.

Pain

Coma of Love

Let the locomotive of time shoot

bursting through a tunnel

But me snug in the eider down

sucking Dream's mellow

Let the dead die

Let the dreamer lie

Coming to is being dragged through a boundless swamp

Waking up produces pain by the rusty sawtooth

Life devoid of pain bulges into an anchorless balloon . . .

Pain, a lump of quivering flesh dripping red

Pain!

Pain!

My bleached lips gasp

Do the fingernails of pain

twirl the most beautiful music

on the zither of nerves?

If God grant me only one wish

I will thrust my arms and cry:

Pain, please condemn me to the infinite pain

in the eternal grave of love.

3

How can one inflict personal pain upon oneself by not resorting to love? I decided to take on the role of a huntress. It so happened that I caught Bob, or Bob caught me, almost without effort.

"Oh, you got your MA from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I used to teach at University of Chicago and am quite familiar with U. of I. One year, I was invited by their English Department to give a talk. How was your life there?"

"Quite good, except that a professor was annoyed by one of my papers."

"What did you write about?"

"I interpreted Keats' 'To Autumn' as a poetic celebration of female beauty, because of his images of curves, roundness, mellowness, etc. But that professor challenged my lack of discussion of male beauty."

"Ha-ha-ha, male beauty. There's a lot to see on a female body. What can a male body display? Even women like to watch a beautiful female, don't you think so?" A fresh question. Reflecting for a moment, I admitted that I was attracted to any true beauty—either male or female. Chinese classical beauty favors feminine smoothness and delicacy; but in recent years, the Chinese aesthetic judgment has been affected by Western taste for hairy and angular features.

"Shall we continue our talk in my house tonight?"

I liked to talk with him and was instantly enchanted by his eyes. I went to my office and wrote a short poem.

A universal being—

No nationality

No sex

No age

All is love flowing up

to a pair of eyes

That pair

resolute, tender

elite, down to earth

Inquisitive wonder twinkles

in an omniscient iris

Two chameleon stars radiate music

from a cosmic arch.

Reading the little poem a couple of times, I felt a yearning for him.

THE SKY

in utter depression

A sudden swelling of loneliness

Oh, BOB—SOS!

Who is howling so

in the walled little cubicle?

The wind is playing the accordion

Dancing cranes sprinkle feminine pearls

A macho tree giraffes its neck

Higher than Cathedral of Learning's peacock tail

How she wishes she were a tiny bee

nestling on the heart-platform of

your lotus boat.

4

When I went to Bob's house, he showed me the nineteen books he had published and won great admiration from me. Bob and I bantered over different subjects. Almost for the first time, I felt I was talking to someone who was my equal. I felt the need to pursue him like Humbert seeking Lolita.

That night, I dreamt about our meeting again. After showing me all of his published books, Bob unzipped his pants to display his huge penis. I was bold enough to hold it and deflate it.

Bob suggested we have dinner at State College the following night. It was a drizzling romantic night, but it was difficult to find a restaurant on the opening day of the football season at Penn State. Being an epicurean, Bob was unable to dine at a second-rate restaurant. Driving-driving-driving—finally we stopped at a country tavern and had wonderful salmon there. Back at my apartment, I portrayed our experience in a long poem.

Hunting for a Tavern

In the forests of tall stalagmites,

Beasts of cars racing along the glazed trail,

Each hunts with two glaring eyes.

Dear Artemis,

Who are you hunting

A deer, a doe—transfigurations of muse?

Oui, la curiosité tue la femme.

See, that green masterhand

is hunting for a tavern,

with pockets of paper gold.

Found. But ooh, la la,

A deflated balloon.

Who knows today is the carpe diem of football knights?

No reservation? Wait till after nine.

Non, l'impatience tue l'homme.

Driving, driving

Hush— this one won't do.

See, nobody's inside;

Food must be bad.

Who bothers to discover the epiphyllum

Blushing among broad leaves at a chilly midnight?

Driving, driving

Hush— that one will never do —

the elegant atmosphere is too alluring.

Hush— not this one —

the dainty fragrance is still lingering.

Driving, driving— dreary diving —

the appetizer for one's stomach or

hot pepper for one's temper?

Pas exactement!

The landslide of an ideal standard.

Ah, this one—Fast & Cheap.

Why not stop here?

No, a long queue.

L'impatience tue l'homme.

You go in and have a look.

Non, la curiosité tue la femme.

Let's get in this one,

a few shadows blurring in the beaded screens.

The air here distills no celestial tea,

But a nice Jolly Corner, you know,

Which keeps brushing old James' attic membrane.

Ooh, la la,

Hunting in a cemented woods in the rain.

Palate is captured by eager stomach,

Taste tapering into the mushrooms of mist.

Vermilion lips hug an agamogenetic bowl,

Heartily smacking — A-muse.

5

One night we talked about eroticism in literature. Bob asked me whether I had ever seen a porno movie.

"No, I haven't."

"You must see one; otherwise, how can you talk about modern pornography?"

We went to see one on campus. I was surprised to meet a couple of graduate students from my department, all unmarried. The movie was full of repetitions. I was soon bored. Bob and I walked back to his house. Bob suggested we do something real. I said, perhaps tomorrow. I knew that Bob was largely interested in my body. A long fishing rod was waiting for that one thing.

Ah, Bald Eagle of America!

Are you going to pick her

like one of the eye-catching pebbles

along the beach?

Are you going to touch her

as a pink petal in a blossom grove

of peach?

She wishes to evaporate her youth into your blunt beak

She dreams to iron your wrinkled brow

with her warm bosom

In love, she bows her willowy crest below billows

Mind you, dear Bald Eagle

She is no angel but a perch-fairy from the Western Lake

Prepared to be left unforgotten —

a Cold Mirage on China sea.

6

It was Sunday. I jogged with Bob in the woods and then made love to him in his house. Although Bob was almost my father's age, the sex felt quite pleasant. I was aware that my love for the old man was more intellectual than sensual. I employed him as my spiritual emancipator.

"Are you coming next week?"

"Yes, I'm coming."

One may possess her body

One may engage her mind

Who can win her love—an elevator to poetic ecstasy?

She is cool to the degree of cruelty

She woos no lover but a catamite muse

Bone without marrow

A stratified stone

Love—the marrow in the stone of life

Hail!

Love, are you coming to rescue the SOS

in the wailing cemetery of a frozen muse?

Yes, I am coming

I am voluntarily coming

I am walking shoulder to shoulder with you

You are not demanding my following

Yes, I feel happy

I am very happy

You are my ideal image

I am to join you

to meet my own communion

Yes, I am thrilled

I am thrilled to greet

my metamorphosed birth—

A stormy petrel soaring out of a caterpillar

Yes, I am free

I am no longer curdled in a cellar

I am off the palm of Rulaifo—

the thousand-hand-and-thousand-eyed Buddha.

7

I was recalling our conversation. When I mentioned feeling like an equal to Bob, Bob laughed, "How could you be my equal? Perhaps Emma can; she has published 17 books. But her body is ugly." I realized that male scholars seldom mixed academics with the body. A famous male scholar generally marries a beauty nameless in or out of his field. Lying in bed, I felt a tinge of pain. I made up a bedtime story.

BOB

BOB

A cosmic sunbird

Day in and night out

Majestic he looks

Standing on the peak of the Himalayas

Thrusting his saintly chest

Pointing to his sagely head

Proudly he said:

Woo— Woo— Woo—

My crest is still in good shape!

A lonely tiny lark

Half drowned in her dreams of icicles

Shivering

Soaring to the sky:

Wind, my Great Grand Father

Tell me

Where can I find a bosom friend?

Woo— Woo— Woo—

My crest is still in good shape!

The tiny lark panted on a cliff:

Earth, my Great Grand Mother

Tell me

Where can I find a bosom friend?

Woo— Woo— Woo—

My crest is still in good shape!

The tiny lark

Clung to a shuddering twig

The sun failed to rise

Night succeeded by dark dawn

Suddenly

The Sky cracked its gold whip

Chained fire-dragons shook their flaming scales

in wild disco

The drunken trees madly bumped each other's

nipples and hips

"Little lark, little lark

Come, and dance with me!"

The sunbird invited her, bickering with his crest

"I can't dance—"

Lark's voice was vanishingly thin

A careless nod

She fell to the music-box of the woods.

All animals were having a primal singing contest

Howling and shrieking

Meowing and neighing

Snorting and sneezing

The tiny lark picked herself up from dead leaves

Putting on Heron's crown as her red shoe

There she goes!

The whole sky teemed with ominous chuckles of owls:

Haa— haa— ha—

See, she forgets herself

She can dance on one toe!

The whole world became blurred and blurring

Dragons in the heaven flashing and flashing

Crocodiles in the waters splashing and splashing

She ever cared and she cares no more

She waltzed in the daffodils by the lake

She hopped upon the ruddy billows of sea

She tumbled over blazing fire

She glided through deep freezer

Dionysus ran wild

But failed to find her bosom friend

Woo— Woo— Woo—

My crest is still in good shape!

"How can I ever cross to you—

such an infinite distance

with so little between?"

The tiny lark plunged headlong to the despair

of the humming ocean

In the slumber of death

Her sensitive ear

wistfully heard

the fading of her raven hair

The feet of solitude tapped a funeral lullaby:

Nothing could be held

Even color of black

Scratched a few numb marks

Then stealthily left . . . .

8

The following weekend when I went to his house, a young woman barred his door because he was making a telephone call. Bob told me that the woman had been his girlfriend for the past two years. He wanted to have romantic tonight with both of us. I was shocked and refused to engage in a ménage à trois. But I agreed to take photos for them. I did select some good shots with an artistic eye. When I was leaving, Bob asked me, "We are decent people, aren't we?" Yes. They were quite a decent, graceful couple. I could tell the woman loved him in a cute, kittenish way. One should not demand that every woman be a feminist. The feminine has its own beauty. It should be a personal choice, perhaps.

Now I was clear about my own relationship with Bob: two players.

When I loved you

your love carried away my lost body

When I hate you

an intensive care is scorching my own heart

The time, perhaps, will soon arrive

at a numbed indifference —

Blind as Night to galloping clouds

Deaf as Mountains to the bellowing sea

Two mute players part, without pain,

after a sandcastle game.

Bob left Pittsburgh to teach in Brazil for a year. At Christmastime, he sent a greeting card to me and I sent him "Athena's Report to Apollo":

Rain shed its fish eggs

Wind has lost its drive

All gone

When snow melts

Two hoops roll apart

On a chilly ground.

To explain the poem, I also made up a Christmas Story.

Artemis and Apollo join their lights once in a million days. The moment they catch each other's amorous eyes they are parting. Artemis says to Apollo:

"You are passing me because

you love to shed light on too many.

When you are gone, my heart aches,

my feelings jumble, and my fingers juggle.

Please take my heart with you

to recreate the yolk of your round body.

I'll be heartless and be forever happy.

Please take my feelings with you

to renew your morning rays.

I'll be feelingless and no filaments

tangle my feet.

Please take my rosy fingers with you

I'll be fingerless and never touch

Dawn's gray belly."

As she is speaking, her body vanishes

Her face turns into one eye—

the bright eye of Athena.

As Apollo is listening,

He chuckles himself into Santa Claus

in red and white.

He makes toys out of human hearts and feelings

To trigger off merry laughter

beyond the power of solar light.

Green are the wood parasols

Red paints daisy bells

Yellow-dyed daffodils twist their thighs

flirting with the blue sky

A hundred chuckles gurgle in an owl's throat—

seeing Artemis' amorous eye caught by

a hobbling stag.

I loved Bob as my most respected teacher, not only in academics but in the art of love. Bob was a most innocent man, almost like a baby. A couple of months later, I even wrote him a playful verse:

The smooth vase of a nineteen

The urchin twinkle of a twenty

Ah, a pair of dreamers!

Holding to a timeless rose

Swing in the waltz of innocence

Can we ever grow old

When age fled from our Milky Way?

9

When I finally cut off the link between sex and love intellectually and psychologically, I felt a never-tasted liberation.

Friday afternoon when I was looking for an apartment, I met a young man named Sun in front of an ancient-looking building covered with ivy that resembled Medusa's hair. He told me that there was a vacancy on the first floor and offered to move my stuff in with his car. As I did not have a car, I took the offer without hesitation.

After I moved into the old building on Saturday, I felt quite excited. My apartment was extremely spacious, a lot of holes—sun room, study den, closets with doors here and there— and a surprisingly large living room. It was my habit to reward those who helped me with a homemade dinner. I was not so generous that I would give my helper an expensive treat in a restaurant. Nor was I a terrible miser. Being a tolerable cook, I enjoyed cooking to my imaginative diversity.

Sunday evening Sun came to my apartment and we dined together most properly and had delightful little talks in between bites. When we were satiated from the feast, the dishes on table seemed to have been hardly touched. The refrigerator was going to be stuffed like a turkey and I could live on leftovers for at least another week.

Sun was lingering. When he finally lifted a foot to go, he suddenly said, "We haven't had our last course, have we?"

"What course? Dessert? Ice cream? Sorry, I forgot to buy it as it does not generally go with a Chinese menu."

"No. I mean sex."

"Oh? That!" I was astonished, but recovered in a minute. It felt funny to hear a young man, a Chinese, being so frank. I was too shocked to be annoyed.

"Well, I will think it over and let you know tomorrow."

Sun left like a guilty little boy. I tried hard to think about him. Nothing came to my mind—no image, no image at all. He was a plain man, indeed, if not ugly. But he was young. What was his last mumbling? A virgin? A man of twenty-eight still a virgin? How does a male virgin affect the psychology of a woman? I thought of my stupid husband Long remaining a virgin after sleeping with me for a dozen nights. I thought of Meng's wistful words, "I should have made love with you before your marriage. I have never tasted a virgin." Meng's agonized look convinced me that if he did not deflower a woman in his life, he could not shut his eyes on his deathbed.

10

The following day Sun came to my apartment with a schoolbag on his shoulder. His humble and eager look made me feel cruel to say no. Does Ursula Le Guin say sex can be a gesture of pity or compassion, a gift for a friend, a release of tension?

He was a virgin. The budding relationship with a woman should be pure, not profaned. I said, "Tomorrow is my birthday." It was perhaps a lie. How could I have a birthday any time I wanted?

Sun invited me eagerly, "Let's celebrate your birthday at Peking Garden in Harrisburg."

"How far away is Harrisburg? Two hours' drive? Okay."

At about eleven that night, I heard someone knocking at the door. It was freezing outside. Who's coming for a visit at this hour of the night? It was Sun, with a bouquet of dark red roses in his stiff hand. I let him in to warm himself for a second before chasing him back out into the cold. I saw that there wasn't a card in the bouquet. No need, anyway. If he wrote anything about love, he would become a contemptible object of hypocrisy. He was starved. He was begging for sex. His hands touched his tightened pants nervously, but he would have to suffer and wait.

Sun and I dressed up for the special occasion. On the way to Harrisburg, I teased him and encouraged him to talk about anything he wanted. Dirty jokes, scandals. . . Okay. One minute I giggled like a little girl; another minute I guffawed like a vulgar man. Sun felt perfectly relaxed and he even showed me the perfumed picture of a nude blond he kept for his secret pleasure.

"Peking Duck, Sweet and Sour Pork, Mongolian Beef. . . "

"That's enough," I cut off Sun's order crisply.

We ate, drank, and talked. I learned that in his spare time Sun played cards, read and watched pornography while masturbating. With a group of Chinese men, he even went to New York and paid to touch a part of a female body.

"You can't see the face. She is blocked by sliding opaque glass. If you pay $2, you may look at her nipple; if you pay $5, you may look at her beneath; if you pay $10, you may touch. . . finger. . . ."

I was absolutely shocked, then unshocked. This is America, a free world.

I finished my dinner and suddenly had a yearning for something.

"May I have an ice cream cone?" I had forgotten my own wallet in the car.

"Yes, sure!" Sun was happy, like a mixture of a father and a little child.

The spiral chocolate cone came. I took it over feeling like the Statue of Liberty holding a torch. Then the torch started to drip. Its image changed into something I was afraid of seeing—the spraying male organ while a female licks, an image from the only porno movie I watched with Bob. Then the image changed again—a male was sucking the nipple covered with heavy cream in a Japanese movie called Tampopo. Sex=food. I felt unable to eat the ice cream any more.

"Quick, it's dripping. Let me have a bite." Sun's mouth poked over and bit off almost half of the cone. Then Sun and I had mouthfuls in turn. I recalled that two of my best students in Wuda had been rejected by the university as teachers simply because they were seen eating from one bowl on campus. But this was America. There was nothing to fear. And the people around us did not even give a glance.

"Shall we stay in a hotel tonight?" Sun suggested with some confidence.

"I am busy writing a paper tonight. Wait until another time. Moreover, we are so near campus that I cannot tolerate a hotel room; nor can I tolerate our own apartments with detective Chinese eyes around."

Sun was a smart boy. He planned everything for a weekend trip to SeaWorld in Ohio.

11

"I have seen SeaWorld three times before with the guys. But this time, with you, everything here looks fresh and interesting."

"Really? I hooked a trout," I said rather unhappily, because the angling contest had absolutely no meaning. It took skill not to hook one in a small pool overcrowded with fish.

"The dolphin's performance is superb." I took a picture of the jumping angel. A dolphin is said to be a most intelligent mammal. What's the use of her intelligence except in offering onlookers a little more pleasure?

Finally we got into a hotel room. Sun became too excited and his nervousness turned me into a shy virgin. After all, Sun was a man. When he finally gathered his courage to press me onto the bed to kiss me, I pushed him away. After taking a shower, I lay beneath the white sheet, waiting. He was taking a shower. In a minute, he would be invading my nude realm. I was not afraid but felt the mysterious air surrounding the room. He turned off the light before he came to me. A green hand. I hope he does not need any teaching. We made love gently. I turned on the light and discovered how ugly his body was: something like a tree scar snarling on his belly.

"Oh, that? When I was a child I had many worms and had an operation."

"Dear me!" I could see knots of worms wriggling from that hole even now.

"Did you notice my upper body is long and broad? My mother, sisters, and the rest of the family respect me enormously because my heart is larger and I am exceptionally intelligent."

"Your family respects you because you have a larger heart? How could they see your heart?" I laughed in good humor. I forgot his ugliness. We made love again, more vigorously. Nowadays it is so easy for contemporary Chinese to sing that sex is beauty. Nobody feels that the body is ugly anymore. Even if a body is ugly, that ugliness merely belongs to that individual. It will not infect the other.

During springtime, dawn visits the window early but the lovers always wake up late. I was finally stirred by a lusty stroking. We released our last gust of wind and rain. When the roused waves relaxed into gentle ripples, Sun smacked his lips and chewed a Tang poem deliciously:

A spring dreamer never knows the coming dawn,

only to be wakened by the warbling birds.

After a nightful din of the wind and rain,

Who can tell how many flowers have fallen?

"You see, this poem is extremely sexy. Meng Haoran was not merely depicting nature; he alluded to the fall of numerous deflowered maidens after a spring orgy of the wind and rain. . . ."

I was known for my poetic sensitivity but had never gotten such an insight from that poem. I was enlightened by his reading. Right, he is right. Lin Daiyu from the Dream of the Red Chamber laments the fate of falling flowers and buries them beneath pure earth, to avoid their dismembered petals being tramped into the mud. But I could not help laughing at the situational irony—he, not I, had been deflowered by the night.

"Why are you laughing?"

"Nothing."

12

We had patches of pleasure week after week. We experimented with all sorts of love making: oral and anal, you on top of me and I on top of you.... Apart from those bodily experiments, we created a whole discourse on sex and love of our own. When we felt the roof was too confining, we made love in the forest and by the lake.

"If caught by the police, we have to pay a $300 fine."

"Really?" This country was not really as free as China. I was thinking about the crops pressed down here and there in the fields and intertwined bodies in the bushes of Zhongshan Park in Beijing. But passion always involves an act that is illegal. The restriction at least gave us illicit pleasure.

Physical love is never enough for a relationship. We enjoyed talking about every subject we knew: poetry, art, pornography, mathematics, scientific inventions, astrology, the fate of China. . . . Some mornings Sun snuck into my apartment with hot dumplings that he had steamed himself. Some nights I cooked Chinese delicacies to see him off on a trip. We felt that nothing was trivial or vulgar. Love and family life were never left out of our topics.

"If I get this job in Florida, would you come and see me every month?"

"If my airplane crashed, could you put a bunch of fresh flowers on my tomb every year on Chinese memorial day?"

"I know some day I would become a character in your novel. Please be kind with your pen."

Writing a novel? Something like Lady Yu and Her Lovers? I knew his desire to have our romance perpetuated in words.

"I wish I could marry your younger sister, if you had one."

"I have three sisters, all married and each with a child."

"If you are pregnant, please do not have an abortion. I will support our child. I want to have a child with you."

"Sorry. I have a child and I am too busy to have another one."

"I'll take care of it, or perhaps we can put it with a foster family. . . ."

"Nonsense. You are young and you should get married and have your own child."

"Have you heard the campus gossip about my fiancée?"

"Yes."

"Why haven't you asked me about it?"

"Why should I, since it's your own business? However, I am curious to know why you sent her away."

"Well, she is quite pretty, a smart girl. She came to Pittsburgh to marry me. God knows why she behaved so strangely when she arrived. She kept phoning a 'foreigner' who had taught in her college in China. The neighbors and my pals all egged me on to send her back to China. Finally, I did. She was disgusting, wasn't she? She merely wanted to use me to come to the U.S. Once she was here, she tried to get in touch with her previous lover, I guess. But, you know, most Americans are virtuous people and they refrain from stealing a woman who is already engaged. So her lover refused her."

"What happened to her when she was sent back to China?"

"She was disowned by her family. She lost her job. . . ."

I was no longer listening. I knew that the girl must have been ostracized by society. No men wanted her and no women had sympathy for her. She wept day and night. Finally, she drank DDT poison and died.

"No. I've never heard that she is dead."

"Yes, I know she is dead. You killed her." I felt extremely sad. Why can't a girl have a moment of fantasy before yielding to the ugly reality? You think you men are righteousness personified. You sent her to her death. But look at yourself. You are debasing yourself with a married woman without a shred of shame. I knew that when I leave him, he will marry a young girl—a virgin.

I was struck by our last conversation and could no longer be with him. Before long, Sun had a young girlfriend.

Perhaps that girl constantly tormented herself over her impending fall to ugly reality and often released her ambivalence in fits of temper. Sun wanted to go back to me, but I cleverly shunned him. At a party, I told his girlfriend that a human being should be judged by his qualities, not by mere looks. Although Sun had not found a job yet, he had intelligence and capability. Sun told me one day that his girlfriend left him because she had heard that he and I had spent a night together in Ohio.

I looked into his eyes sternly.

"I never went with you anywhere. I've never been to Ohio."

"You. . .," Sun was stunned.

The following day Sun and his girlfriend were formally engaged. I was neither happy nor unhappy—I repaid him as his former lover but failed to avenge that innocent girl he had abandoned to death. Revenge is simply not in the nature of a woman who has been a mother.

Reflecting upon my relationship with Sun, I felt a pleasantness that accelerated the fluid of my body but produced no intensity for poetry. I recognized the beauty in bodily contact itself; every contact with a new body was not a simple repetition but a new book. No matter how dull a book it was, if you read into it, you would learn something.

13

After I had separated myself from Sun, I made "accidental" love to a couple of men on campus. While I was teaching an intensive Chinese course during the summer, I mentioned in one class that I had not seen the Statue of Liberty. When the summer session ended, a student in his late 20's named Tony offered to drive me to New York for sightseeing. Tony was not the most brilliant student, but was certainly the most decent looking and considerate student in the whole class. I happily accepted. Since Tony worked at Kentucky Fried Chicken, we could not start our trip until five o'clock in the afternoon. Tony had maps and a guidebook ready, and I prepared some snacks. We were as excited as two little kids when his truck finally rolled on the highway. Before dark, our truck safely arrived at a beautiful house on the top of a hill.

"This is my friend's house. He used to be a primary school teacher, but now he's a businessman. Since he often goes on trips, he asked me to check on the empty house from time to time." True, this house must be owned by a businessman. I did not believe a teacher could afford to buy it. The house was like a model on display in a Washington museum. Nature was captured right in the house. On one side you could see a gentle waterfall, and in the center a botanical garden with a tree shooting up to the transparent sun roof. There were no stairs in the house. One had to climb a ladder to get to the second floor. When I climbed up with keen curiosity, I saw a study with books and magazines, a storeroom with hunting guns and sporting equipment, and a bedroom with a king-size bed. Closets, like kids playing hide-and-seek, were hard for me to detect here and there.

I climbed down with Tony.

"Your friend seems to have no family."

"Right. After his girlfriend died a year ago, he has been living alone."

"What a beautiful house. I've never seen one with such aesthetic taste before."

"This is an experimental design by an architect."

Tony and I chatted pleasantly over coffee and a simple dinner. Then everything was quiet, almost too quiet, as if we were camping in the deep woods. But we had the comforts of civilization. While Tony was reading the newspaper, I fumbled with my stiff fingers over the keys of a grand piano. I did not really play, but the random music sounded beautiful. Perhaps any noise would be beautiful in such an environment. Then Tony and I watched TV for a long time. Tony lay in a recliner while I sat on a sofa. There was no awareness of sexual tension between us. The night had a lyrical taste.

After each of us took a shower, I realized there was only one bed in the house. I said I would just sleep in the living room. Tony smiled, "We can share the bed. The bed is huge, big enough for each of us to occupy a side."

I was sleeping in my high fashion dress on one side of the bed—I had bought that beautiful dress for five dollars on sale; it was too fashionable to wear for work but quite comfortable for sleep. Tony was sleeping on the other side. Our backs faced each other. One could never lie on one's side for too long, and I turned my body. Tony immediately turned his body and stretched an arm around me. I was silent and motionless. Tony stripped off my dress and carried my two legs on his shoulders. I could see in the dark that my body had been transformed into a valley. His penetration was vigorous and had good rhythm. I could not help making, like those female singers of pop music, sexual utterances of pain and joy. Nevertheless, there was no true orgasm, merely an unconscious simulation. The masculine poundings were becoming too heavy and mechanical, and I had to give him hints to stop.

When he was lying down by my side as if nothing had happened, I asked, "You did not discharge, did you?"

"No. I am not ready to be a father yet."

"How could it stay so hard for that long?" My husband generally held his no more than one minute and my lovers held on longer but never to the point where it became unbearable.

"I practiced."

"How did you practice?"

"By reading books and having girlfriends."

"Have you had a lot of girlfriends?"

"Yes. When I was in the service in Germany, I waited on any girl on my hand and knees, but now I do not. I don't have a girlfriend at the moment, although girls are always interested in me."

"Don't you know I am ten years older than you?"

"Age is not a problem. But I feel a bit uneasy because you are my teacher and you have a husband." Americans were not amoral in love.

"Of course, we are not going to continue this relationship."

We slept soundly till daybreak. Before exchanging a word, we made love again. I did not feel great pleasure. The pounding was too vigorous. By now I knew I enjoyed the subtlety and sensitivity of the tongue and fingers much more than the real masculine weapon. We did not kiss each other. I could make love more easily than kissing. I shunned kissing unless a person could truly produce a reciprocal passion in me.

We had a wonderful time in New York. A few days later, Tony went to Taiwan to improve his Chinese.

A year passed and my memory of him faded. One day, the department secretary told me that a young man had been looking for me.

"Is he Chinese?"

"No, an American. He waited for a long time. Then he put something in your mailbox and left."

I unfolded the little packet and saw that it contained a tape of Luo Dayou's songs entitled "Comrade and Love," with a few handwritten words: Love, from Tony. There was a telephone number but I knew I would never call.

14

When my body was set free from the prison of love, my mind became more open and larger and my behavior became less conventional. I was sharing a spacious apartment in a building covered with ivy. My roommate was a divorced woman in the Physics department. When we were bored during the weekend, we would invite single male graduate students to come dance in our spacious living room. It was sheer beauty and joy for me. I was glad men were always eager to be invited. The young men around me stopped playing cards and borrowed books on social dance from the library. I heard that they practiced with each other and argued about the accuracy of each movement like calculating a math problem. Their appearances also showed visible improvement—a newly acquired taste for elegance. Some men came with their young girlfriends. Those young girls, however, were too shy to dance freely and gracefully like me and my roommate. One weekend we danced to the boom box. Another week, my idea was to have each person bring a Walkman. We danced like a hurricane, as the music each soul heard was intimate and loud to oneself and the dimly-lit living room swirled with drunken shadows. The most enjoyable part was our conversation. Young men and girls were anxious to hear my philosophy on love. I was usually sitting high in the only armchair and all the listeners sprawled on the floor in a half circle. It was like a Milky Way of stars facing the Queen Moon.

I became famous among the Chinese on campus. People gossiped about me and the salon in my apartment. I liked the term "salon" because in Chinese it meant the Sandy Dragon. I could imagine that the roomful of people danced like a dragon, with their bodies each resembling a grain of sand, undulating fluidly. Many graduate students phoned, wanting to come to my dancing party. Some of the boys started to visit me, willing to serve me in any manner they could. A young student in the Finance Department phoned me many times and said he was sick. I knew he meant lovesick. A married man suggested that we go to a movie together. A sad graduate student, who had been abandoned by his wife when she came to America ahead of him, wanted to talk with me in the woods. Naturally, there was nasty gossip about me, particularly among the women. Well, what could they gossip about, if not calling me a "Yu Lejin" or something like a whore? I had never been bothered by these prejudices. Nevertheless, I stopped because I was warned that one of the dance guests was actually a spy from the Chinese Embassy. I was a practical woman and knew what the consequences would be once I went back to China. Yu Lejin had sought asylum in Germany.

Although I was a fascinating devil among the Chinese students, I had a very innocent facade in my own department. Being a good scholar, I benefited not only from ancient Chinese philosophies but also from small sayings of wisdom. For instance, "A hare never eats the grass around her own hole." What does it mean? Does the grass imply some material interest? No. As far as love affairs are concerned, it means that you do not get involved with anybody in your workplace. The purpose of the grass is protection. Oh, I see. That's why you are "the last puritan" in the department. Beyond the hole, a hare can graze freely.

But my little philosophy of life was always smarter by half. When I became a believer in the separation of sex and love, I did not expect to be tripped up so soon.

15

Life was damned funny. No matter how smart I was, I never felt I could walk properly in America without a linguistic crutch. Herein is the thread of my never-intended-to-be-serious but turned all-too-genuine romance with Preuss.

I had started learning English when I was already twenty-two years old. A certain closure in my brain refused to allow me to perfect my skill in a foreign tongue. When I wrote, I needed to have papers proofread by native speakers. This deficiency offered me a larger exposure to romance. My proofreaders were usually males, since women seemed too preoccupied with their own studies. I was not aware of my prejudice against women; I just seldom asked for help from my own sex.

When I finished my paper on a utopian topic, I asked my classmate Preuss to edit it. He seemed to be a nice, patient man. Three days later, he returned my paper spotted with coffee and smells of tobacco. Yet I was happy because his editing was good. Almost anything that feels good is a sign of romance.

Now that everything becomes antique, one can even talk about Preuss and me as if we merely existed in a silly fairy tale.

When we first met, I hardly noticed him. No trace of Prince Charming here. Actually there was a kind of dumbness, heaviness, and slowness in Preuss that I never disliked if those qualities had nothing to do with me.

It was purely for reciprocal reasons that I had cooked diligently for him, and soon my table was covered with the colors and shapes of Chinese delicacies. He phoned, unable to come on time. Bored, I took an evening nap. He finally came around nine o'clock. We had a delightful dinner. At about ten, Preuss said he must be leaving because he was a married man. I replied, I am a married woman, with a daughter, too.

That was that. I never expected Preuss to call me the following day and ask to see me. Why not? Come tomorrow at one in the afternoon.

He came. He smoked silently. I felt a bit strange. Finally he asked me if I'd like to take a walk in the woods. I put on my running shoes, ready to go. He drove into a dead end in the woods, a clearing about two rooms wide. We stood there, staring into a shaft of sky over the clearing surrounded by tall trees. Stepping over to me, Preuss put a hand on my shoulder. I did not shake it off but walked slowly with him. He looked like a contemplative man of few words. His sincere manner and honest face seemed to have commanded my movements. I just followed as if under a spell. He turned solemnly to face me and drew me close to him and kissed me on the lips. I did not resist. I was not even thinking. Then we drove back to my apartment.

"Can we make love?"

"What?"

"Will you make love with me? We can go to a hotel."

"Why a hotel?"

I went to my bedroom and he followed.

The love we had that afternoon was tasteful to me. His strokes were maternal, his touch was sensitive, and his penetration had climax as well as slow lulls. He kissed toothlessly around my neck, shoulders, and everywhere. I did not sense any sexual menace or any stirs of passion. As if drowning in the sea, I was drowsy and helpless. It was pleasant, pleasant, pleasant. . . . I knew it was not the end of our affair. It would continue.

That night I had a sensual dream and I captured its shadow.

To Preuss

An image or an impression

forms on the foams of

a twilight consciousness

smiles echo the smiles

I am so intimate with.

I struggle to wake up from a sweet dizziness

I see you

rising from the voluptuous clouds

The wind touches waves gently

They share with me the tenderness

of lipped fingers

The wind woos a crescendo p. . . p. . . p. . .

The waves rue--rue--rue--

so much pain in the fading pleasure

S . . . s . . . s . . .

The tired tire sighs

in a timely puncture

Needles of love sieve over

yellow petals of Welcome Spring

So deep

piercing into invisible cells

ramificating

reaching the nerves of loins

A Beatific Shudder

I hold my Waterbaby tighter

feeling a nine-month child

wriggling in the Womb of Nature

watching a thrust of passion

through wide-open pores

spray beads of wetness

into the misty air

I dwindle with you into

an Eros in birthday suit

gently brushed by the sensitivity of poetry

quivering, its fingertips

tantalizing me in coziness

paralyzing me

I say

I know why a Fool loves to drown

in the sea —

Love, my archenemy.

17

I did not mind having an affair with Preuss, but I resisted love. I defined my relationship with him as a diversification of life. After all, Preuss was not mute. He started to talk and his little talks were always honest and funny. He told me he had married Karen at the age of eighteen simply because she liked to wear tight pants and was very sexy. Then he grumbled that he had been cheated into marriage because Karen gave a false alarm about her pregnancy. Well, he and Karen had been separated for eight years and gotten back together a couple of years ago. Karen had been a terrible spender in their early married life. No matter how much Preuss earned, he could not catch up with her expenses.

"I was a copilot in the Air Force then. When I was away on a mission, I did not spend money in restaurants but lived on cheap crackers. When I got home, I found Karen had again abused my credit card, leaving me two thousand dollars in debt."

"How did she do it?"

"Well, one can easily buy a lot of things from a store and then send them back for a cash refund."

"I see. Why did she need that much money? To buy clothes?"

"I really don't know. Once I came home and walked in the front door, while her lover stole out the back."

"So one day, I just drove away. Eight years later when I met her again, she was completely reformed. After I abandoned her, she worked hard to raise our two kids. She even paid her way through vocational college and got a diploma as an X-ray technician. . . ."

I had a pretty good impression of Karen. I was not stealing Preuss away from her but wanted to make them happier.

It was quite true that Preuss had changed into a better man after meeting me. He became cheerful, diligent, and considerate at home. He became more innovative in their marital relationship. During spring break, he took Karen to a cabin in Yosemite for romance.

Karen was a reflection of his happiness. One day Preuss said, "Karen is beaming with sweetness these days; perhaps she has a lover in her hospital. I want to follow her this afternoon."

"If this is true, then you have become equals. Why do you need to follow her?"

"Well, just for fun."

When a man is following his wife, it is not for fun. I knew a handsome, intelligent man who had been abandoned by his wife because he followed her into the woods to expose her secret lover. A woman of dignity certainly cannot live with such humiliation.

Preuss never mentioned his feelings towards me, except to make a passing comment like "You have a good pussy." If Preuss had not candidly confessed that he dreamt of women 90% of the time, I would have felt insulted. Preuss admitted, "I simply cannot concentrate on anything. If I am reading, I am fantasizing in the back of my mind."

A man of Preuss' level could hardly make me cling to him. After we parted each time, I instantly turned to my study.

One day Preuss popped into my office.

"What a nice spring day! Let's go to the woods."

"I want to finish reading this book."

"Come on. Take it to read in the woods." He dragged me out of my cubicle.

He drove into a dense bush and wanted to make love. I was having my period and it was considered taboo in Chinese culture to make love during that period.

"Never mind. American women feel more horny during their period." Perhaps this was true for all women.

We made love in nature for the first time. A beach towel was dyed red.

"I had a sexual fantasy dream when I woke up this morning. I kept thinking of you and simply couldn't get over it." Preuss was satisfied now.

17

A week later I told Preuss that my husband and daughter were arriving in New York and asked him to pick them up from the airport with me. I felt happy and excited over Long and Mei's coming and hated myself for being unable to turn into Roc and carry Mei back from Kennedy Airport on my giant wings. But I did not expect Preuss to become ghastly pale. He stammered that he could not let me leave him. "I am not leaving you. You have your wife and children around you and I will have mine. Now we are perfectly equal," I said with ease.

There was a change in Preuss. He threw himself into pathos and mumbled about splitting his love between Karen and me. I simply told him to stop his foolish indulgence, as I saw no conflict between Karen and me. One day he declared he wanted to marry me. "Madman. Do you want to be called Preuss Yu?" I teased him. He nodded quite seriously.

The following evening I received a call while having dinner with my family.

"Who is this? Karen, Preuss'wife?"

"Yes. We must have a talk.."

"Okay, bring Preuss with you."

We went for coffee. Karen was not mad at me. She actually said that she knew about my relationship with Preuss and she did not want to be left out. "Join us then. We three can enjoy some pleasant times together," I said candidly. Karen even suggested renting a large house so that my family and her family could live harmoniously together in a utopian manner. Perhaps it was possible. I had seen a movie about communal love.

After our conference...

"How could you tell your wife about our relationship? Now you won't have a moment of peace."

"Well, last night Karen and I pledged to each other our mutual honesty in everything. So I told her about you."

Karen kept phoning me and telling me how she loved Preuss. I understood and said I had no intention to take Preuss away from her and promised not to have sex with him anymore.

For quite a few days I tried not to go anywhere with Preuss. One day, when I was feeling miserable with a backache, Preuss came to see me in my office and suggested going to a spa. I had seen a poster for a spa that included a photo of a group of youngsters. Perhaps the spa was a pond of hot spring water. I went along with him. Well, the spa turned out to be completely different from what I'd expected. It was enclosed in a private room. We played alone like fish in a huge tub. The rushing water aroused our desire and we made love.

It was truly relaxing. The pain in my back was gone. But that evening Karen called me.

"Can you believe that Preuss made love with a woman named Vivien in the town spa? I happen to have a friend who works there. She phoned me and I went over and found their used condom." I knew she had been following us.

"Well, I was that woman." I hung up the phone.

Preuss was barred from his home. He broke the window the next day, smuggled his own belongings out, and went to rent a room. Preuss actually looked quite cheerful. He was liberated. He felt free again like a new baby. He immediately invited me to visit his realm of independence. It was a large house. Because of its out-of-the-way location, the rent was cheap. His housemates were bums, lazy people seeking the essence of life. They looked all like amateur artists and were vegetarians. Preuss started a diet of greens and brown rice. He lost some weight and looked taller. When I went over, he cooked for me and we made love three times in an hour.

"Do you really want to marry me?"

"I am not sure. You might be a worse tyrant than Karen."

"You are right."

A few days passed. Karen phoned me again.

"Can you believe that my daughter saw Preuss holding Jacqueline in his arms at the Café Amore? I am pretty sure he is having an affair with her."

"Well, you let him go!" I said in good humor.

I felt bad about Preuss anyway. I asked him whether it was true. It was true.

"My daughter called me an asshole; she could not understand my longing to reach out to different women. The more I stretch out the keener I feel my love for you. I told Jacqueline when we were having sex about how much I love you."

"Good bye." I threw a smudged a card at Preuss.

Goodbye

A short-lived past

dispersing darkness

from the Ice Hole

of Father Night.

18

A theory is good as long as you are not the victim. When it comes to the real test, I could not share love, just like Karen.

The next day when Preuss passed by my cubicle, I refused to speak to him.

At home, my husband had finally decided to divorce me because of my relationship with Preuss. It sounded like a crisis. But I felt indifferent. Long and I went to the County office to obtain the divorce paperwork. I flew to Chicago for a conference. When I came back, Long surprisingly pleaded with me not to file the papers. He was sorry that he was unable to please me as Preuss had and suggested that I go on with Preuss. As long as we did not have to divorce, everything was okay with him. "I should have been more tolerant," he said. Stranger than this, Karen had called me and begged me to continue my relationship with Preuss, even if it meant him having an affair. Karen had Preuss back from his realm of independence but had no heart to see him suffer.

I felt damned funny about Long and Karen, but I was also touched by their love and care. When Preuss and I got back together, Preuss forgot both Jacqueline and Karen. Karen had refused to speak to Jacqueline when they met in church; now they were reconciled. Jacqueline simply faded out of Preuss' life. But Karen could not.

I did not make love with Preuss anymore but met him regularly in the afternoon for summer chats. Preuss was writing a science fiction and was actually involved in his work.

Another two weeks passed. Saturday, while I was preparing for my doctoral exams, Karen came. Dear me, she must have lost thirty pounds at least. Her face had narrowed an inch and her eyes were scorched by excessive tears.

I felt a deep sympathy for her.

"Tell me, Karen. What's the problem?"

Karen told me how she loved Preuss and could not bear a separation from him, not even emotionally. Her tears fell mutely. I understood her.

"I am not taking Preuss away from you. I do not wish to marry him. Karen, a woman must have a center in herself. If he does not love you as deeply as you love him, he is not worth your suffering. Why don't you also reach out to other men? Can't you see that Preuss has become a better man for you? He has stopped drinking and smoking. He writes day and night. In fact, except for literary subjects, nowadays we hardly talk about anything."

Karen dried her tears and said she was going to apply to nursing school.

She began to come to Preuss' office with him. He revised her personal statement and application letters. Karen's face brightened up.

19

After my sixteen hours of comprehensive exams, Preuss invited me to see the videotape Lolita. During the movie, Preuss kissed my neck and shoulders. I collapsed under the voluptuous seduction of the sea. Suddenly Preuss tunneled under the white sheet covering my body like a badger. He kissed my underlips and made violent love with his tongue. I became nearly hysterical and begged him to stop. But he penetrated me with even more eagerness. I screamed and felt paralyzed. Perhaps it was an orgasm, the only one I had ever had in my life.

I was exhausted and left him without a word. For the first time I desired to cling to somebody or something for life before death.

A green leaf

drifting on the open sea

how she yearns to cling

cling to a twig

to a splint of wood

to a ship

she knows her independence breathes

in floating

alone

Yet such a desire to cling

before she turns yellow

brown

vanishing in the death of gray.

When we met again, Preuss apologized for his animal behavior. I told him I had enjoyed it. He embraced me tightly and murmured his love. His whole body was trembling like a little animal, with such tragic intensity. Preuss was not a poet but lived a poem. I held him desperately as if this poetic vision would fade away.

Twenty

fingernails dug deep

into our intertwined trunks

which are melting

shaping the fair Hermaphrodite

yours smells me

mine tastes you

There is no more she; there is no more he

### Suddenly butcher words cut us

asunder

Between two bleeding halves

such a divine loss

No space and time

can

ever make up.

"I accepted a semester appointment at Duke University."

On hearing my news, Preuss must have felt like death.

20

We had a last dinner together. No, it was not dinner, but a linner at Elby's.

"I have a little dream in my life."

"What's that?"

"One is always the complement of the other. My ideal man is my proofreader. If he reads my writing for two hours, I will do two hours of service for him in an area he dislikes or is unable to perform in."

"You seem to demand very little."

"Yes. We'll study, talk, and visit Paris and Rome together if we can afford to. If not, we still can wander in the wild woods or stroll around the courtyard. We jump like elves when we are happy. At the moments of sadness, we hold each other tightly like a crying baby in the arms of its heartbroken mother . . . ."

From Elby's, we drove to a quiet place in the small car Preuss had just bought. Standing on the bridge, I could smell alcohol on Preuss and he was smoking a cigarette.

"Oh, Preuss—"

"What?"

"I had only one purpose today: to make love with you. Life has denied me. I want you, like many women who dare take men as sexual objects."

"I should never have sold my big old car." Preuss and I had made love in that car in the woods.

"This is the first time that I have declared my desire for a man's body, isn't it?"

"Yes, you must have been terribly starved."

"No, it's only another frame of my mind. I feel the impulse to declare my carnal desires."

"I like you because you behave like a man in many aspects. We can talk like buddies."

"Never mind. Let's go home ...."

"Please, don't. After all my efforts to arouse you, we should go to a motel tonight."

I neither said yes nor objected. My mind was re-feeling how I felt outside the car, treading on the dead leaves by the stream a moment ago.

It seems that a woman's feeling has to be hung somewhere

Then let mine silver the distant white clouds

when I separate from man's wine evaporation

walking out of his smoking mist

Oh, how bright the sun shines

stroking the tender fibers of my heart

flirting with my blinking eyes

My vision, like waves of magnet or radiation,

expands beyond the finite

horizon.

While Preuss was asking me about the rain forests in China, I was absentmindedly daydreaming.

"Why are you smiling? About the word 'virgin'?"

"What?"

"You just said China still has some virgin forests."

"Did I?"

"I'll be in my office at eight tonight."

I knew I was not going.

21

When I flew back from Durham for my dissertation defense, I invited Preuss to Peking Garden restaurant for lunch. We chatted like old buddies. Preuss seemed to be too preoccupied to pay much attention to me. When he drove me to the airport, I noticed that he looked like an old farmer, with dirt and thorny seeds all over his shirt.

"How come you look so disheveled?"

"I've been working in the woods these two days."

"Why?"

"Well, I planted some pops there in the spring. Quite unexpectedly, I've got a good harvest."

"Pops? A kind of vegetable for cooking?"

"No. It's one of the mildest drugs."

"Drugs? That's illegal, isn't it?"

"Yes. It was forbidden by law some years ago. But don't be alarmed; I know some professors who take it. A little is not that harmful and it's good for the imagination."

"Are you thinking of Edgar Allen Poe? Why did you do this?" I felt threatened by his illegal activity.

"You know the American dream. In this world, the value of drugs equals gold. A small bag of drugs will make you rich."

"I never want to be rich through devious activities."

"If I did not grow it, someone would have to smuggle it from abroad. For drug addicts, it makes no difference."

"Still, I do not want you to be caught by the police before you get rich."

"Don't worry. I plan to do it for two years. Then I will have enough money for a meager, leisurely existence. I will read books like Thoreau in a cabin and write my novels and plays. . . ."

A noble intention, a criminal act.

"How could you quit teaching composition during the spring semester? Did you discuss it with Karen?"

"Yes. I did. You may think it's foolish, but I need more time for writing and spring is the time for sowing."

"I hope you stop before it is too late. It is not worth taking that risk."

Five days later I got a letter from Preuss. He had finished harvesting and was ready to get back to his reading and writing. And he had decided not to grow anything in the woods any more.

The following night, Karen called me.

"Did you hear that Preuss was arrested?"

"Arrested? For what?"

"For pops."

"What pops? He drank too much beer before driving?" Perhaps every human being has an instinct for self-protection.

"No. Pops is a kind of drug."

"He's taking drugs?"

"No, he grew some pops in the woods."

"Did you know this?"

"How could I know?"

"I'm sorry to hear this. I will visit him in jail when I get back to Pitt next month."

When I returned, I phoned Karen and learned that Preuss had been bailed out by his good friends among the graduate students and professors. Preuss was a good man, and Karen said that he had become an even better man. He confessed all his sins to her during her visit to the jail. I knew it was his last judgment day. Karen had pardoned him as God would have and loved him even more.

The following day when Preuss came to see me, he looked thinner. His pale, calm appearance indicated that every cell in his body had been cleansed. We drove to a stream in the woods. He talked about the books he had been reading lately, Freud, Jung, Kafka.... He said he had a strong interest in feminism too.

"What have you planned for your life?"

"Nothing. I am sick of the world. I just want to stay at home and read. Of course I cook daily for the family."

"Karen is the sole breadwinner then."

"Yes, but she is happy. She would rather have me at home all the time than dissipating outside."

Preuss had been ennobled and womanized at once.

22

I soon moved with my family to Los Angeles. As I entered my second semester of teaching at the University of Southern California, Preuss and Karen were archived in my memory. I sometimes retrieved their file to reflect upon myself. I knew that I would rather die than take a man from another woman. My love and sympathy for women were, most of the time, stronger than for men.

One day I received a letter from Preuss. He had separated from Karen because of her fits of anger and because she watched TV all the time and acted as though he did not exist. Preuss was supporting himself by editing for students on campus. A meager living, indeed, but he was happier. He had found his talent for writing screenplays and wished to come to Los Angeles to meet celebrities in the field. I knew that his dream was an illusion. No celebrities would even want to look at him. The screenplay he had submitted to UCLA for a contest had probably been dropped into a wastebasket. I did not want to hurt him with the truth. Instead, I wrote him a letter encouraging him to go on with his writing but not to be concerned with celebrities or contests. Writing is the best means of self-exploration. A month later Preuss called me, saying he felt no hope in his life and wanted to come to me in Los Angeles. I was tempted by his offer. I was in dire need of an editor for my book and my relationship with Long dropped to the worst it had ever been. Once, I asked something while Long was chopping cabbage. He raised the big Chinese knife in his hand and yelled. Another time, I was leaving to give a seminar at Cal Tech. I was a new driver and Cal Tech was a new place for me. I felt nervous about freeways. Long chased me to the door and said with clenched teeth, "I wish you die under the wheels today." When I got on the 10 Freeway, my whole body was shaking. I pinched my thigh fiercely until blood came out. I calmed down and arrived safely. However, it was immoral to take advantage of the crisis between Preuss and Karen. Karen had loved him under all circumstances and Preuss loved her more than he recognized. So I wrote my last letter to him.

Dear Preuss,

It is the first time that you have said there is no hope in your life. You will see hope when you turn your eyes in a different direction. After you were convicted, you changed into a coward. You hid yourself in the kitchen and used pompous theories to disguise your emptiness. You are always complaining about Karen's faults and wished her to be a feminist, a thinking woman like me. But do you realize that she is a feminist? When you first abandoned her, she found herself a job and raised two children; the second time you left home, she found herself a permanent job with better pay. You told me this, didn't you?

When she showers you with fits of anger or watches TV in a sullen mood, she is protesting against your cowardice. A man should never give up his manhood. A woman cannot be satisfied with an angel in the house.

Please talk with Karen. I love you and Karen equally, but with a shred more admiration for her. Do you remember how thin she became for love of you that summer? She has never abandoned the man she has loved since childhood.

Be brave in life and go back to her. I wish you all the happiness in the world.

My relationship with Long has improved lately. We've separated our money. Let him feel his independence at home. Yes, I am still suffering. But if it is the bitter fruit of my domestic domination, I have to either change or bear it.

Love,

Yun

Ten days later when I came home from school, Mei told me that Karen had called.

"How do you know it was Karen? Did she leave her name or phone number?"

"Of course I recognized her voice. She used to call us like a crazy woman in Pittsburgh. She said she would like to talk to you, but left no number. Perhaps she will call back."

I knew she would not call back. I expected no gratitude or blame. Preuss and Karen definitely got back together. There was no guarantee that they would not split up again. But it was time for me to vanish permanently from their life. Perhaps Karen was right. I was merely a big tease. Being too self-centered and self-scrutinizing, I would not marry anyone else. I had to wear out my marital jail.

God's Punishment

In the spousal cellar,

the stallions of my

innerness

are frozen to

a relief on the wall.

 Part IV. Searching for the Music of the Soul

Like withering blades of grass, somehow my emotions sprang to life again in the rain. On an April rainy day in 1992, I tripped over in the slippery parking lot. A stout professor from the English department helped me pick up my scattered books. Then we had coffee together. He said his name was Ramon Angulo. When I introduced myself, he asked me what the characters Yun Yu meant as he heard most Chinese were quite peculiar in choosing their name characters. Well, "Yun" 云means clouds, and my family name character "Yu"余indicates "extra," "leftover," or "surplus". However, the pronunciation sounds the same as "clouds and rain" in Chinese. He made a quiet smile but still looked stern when he joked, "so, you have brought rain to Los Angeles." Turning to the subject of literature, our conversation became lively. Shakespeare, Virginia Woolf, Allen Poe, and even Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plath, he talked deftly about my beloved literary figures like playing the Chinese zither with his lips. On leaving, he shook my hand formally as if we had just met at an academic conference. But I was enchanted by him.

I declared myself to be a living Romanticist. I felt I could not be attacked by anything except an emotional intensity. Luckily, I drove home without having an accident, though the shining paint along my car's left shoulder was scratched by the stone column at my driveway entrance. The intensity paralyzed me and sent me to bed, curling like a shivering kitten. I called out "Ra—mon, Ra—mon. . ." with a longing and passion that surpassed Rochester's calling for Jane. The sexuality of my long-numbed body started to revive. I felt the tightening of my bra and a thrill shot up from the deep red valley, radiating through and through. Nothing could help relieve such intensity, except an auto-erotic release.

When I became tranquil, I walked aside from myself, re-watching the videotape of my behavior in flashback. I became meditative. In the contact between a man and a woman, sexual sensitivity is always alive, embering or flaming. Is it possible to see a man and a woman simply as asexual beings?

I sat up, reflecting upon my own stereotypes of sexual differences: a man seems to be attracted to appearance and body, while a woman is likely to be magnetized more by soul and intelligence. A man desires a woman to be virtuous and nurturing like a mother and he is content to live with a woman who is intellectually dull; yet a woman can hardly be content with a partner who performs well merely as a good nurse or housekeeper.

Yes, our sexual roles have been reversed since, or even before my marriage with Long. I have been the president, ambassador, legislator of the house, while my husband does household chores, such as cooking, shopping, cleaning, and gardening. If I were really a man, I would be content to enjoy the banality of a happy life. Yet I am in pain all the time. I long more for intellectual communication than for daily food and a comfortable bed. My emotions, which have never been aroused even once by my husband, are deadened by a life without windows.

Life is almost perfect for me

except nobody shares the music of my soul

He is lofty as is he tall

A handsome portrait—

To behold his height

one must step away

Yes, I must be in love with a man

so deep that I have no words to say

so intelligently that I am

unwilling to say

The permissible handshake conveys so much—

so little.

Ramon is Mexican-American, with a Mexican wife and two big boys. The second time I met him happened to be the first day of the LA riots, April 29, 1992. A lot of buildings were being torched, much blood was flowing; the sprawling Land of Angels was splitting up. Are you horrified? Yes, I am. My heart aches for the nation. It must be set free from racial animosity. People should be judged by their human qualities, not by their skin color. Of course, the LA riots are not skin-deep. The skin camouflages a fierce struggle between power and human dignity, between money and poverty.

I was thinking about his calm comments. It was a fight not only between the black and the white but also between the black and the yellow. A couple of Chinese, mistaken as Koreans, were killed in the riots. People now came to see a vicious cycle: yesterday the black versus the white; today the black versus the yellow, tomorrow could be the brown versus the yellow or among the yellows of different shades. I felt ashamed of my own race. I learned from Long that in some shops owned by the Chinese, Mexican employees did the hardest work but got the lowest pay. In turn, however, the Chinese suffered the same treatment in stores owned by another race. I recalled how one night when my daughter Mei and I were taking an evening stroll, we met the parents of Mei's classmate Eric. Eric was the youngest of eight children in his family. His parents still looked young. I learned that most of the Latino families in the neighborhood had four to eight kids. When I said having many kids would lower the standard of living, Eric's father laughed good-naturedly, "Having more kids is our political strategy. A couple of years ago, the Mexican community was seriously talking about taking back California through our biological power. We are becoming the majority in Los Angeles." Now I came to see that quantity was not that important. To improve the social status of a race, each community needs people like Ramon, who had struggled to reap a PhD at Yale without forgetting his own roots.

The flaming buildings and the bloody violence transmitted by the TV intensified my love for Ramon. One moment I dreamt that Ramon went with me to visit China. The authority of Wuda refused to give us an honorable banquet as they had for other visiting Americans. I knew it was simply because Ramon was a Mexican-American. I took Ramon to see my mother and siblings. All of them looked cold simply because he did not disguise his pure Mexican roots. If I came home with Bob, a man old enough to be my father, they might still look up to him because of his Anglo-Saxon complexion; if I came home with Philip, a hunchback, they might still feel accepting, because his Irish blood had overtaken his great-grandmother's native Indian blood. Ramon was my age, handsome and athletic, but I was forced to hide him in my handbag from my own people. Still I could hear the neighbors gossiping: A Mexican? Where is Mexico? Oh, I see, in Africa. Another moment, Preuss and Karen appeared before me. They both advised me not to meddle in the life of another married man—wife, children, and family are sacred.

No! I do not intend to remarry. I am not taking him away from another woman. I am not destroying anybody or anything. But the soul, being colorless and raceless, belongs to the whole universe.

Among lofty mountain peaks and ceaseless flows of the sea, a soul, seized by love, is composing the bosom music—an incomplete music of loneliness and isolation that is searching for a synchronizing rhythm from another soul, an understanding listener.

The intensity of thinking wrung tears from my heart. Love feels its deepest when it cannot be stopped by a despairing realization of an utter impossibility.

An image or a word evokes such paralyzing force. The wind asked me, "Where is a woman's center in love?"

My heart was howling his name over the vast span of a dark ocean.

Even if the impossibility is the bottomless sea, a bird picks up a pebble with her tiny red beak and drop it into the sea with a heart-rending call.

The mountain asked me, "Where is a woman's center in love?"

"Ra—mon, Ra—mon . . . Jingwei . . . Jing—wei—. . ."

The calling for the other gradually changed to a calling for the self. The bird is called Jingwei, the myth says. She gathers her strength after each splash by chanting her own name.

Tears dried, I channeled my feelings into a little verse:

Words form mere icebergs above the sea.

How could they convey the meaning beneath?

Calmness on the chilly white surface

disguises convulsive fire in ice.

An iceberg hides its volcanoes just like the earth.

Journal, May 15

Love is not sex or marriage, but an emotional intensity—a fragmenting, paralyzing, and suicidal force.

I believe it is such an intensity that killed Sylvia Plath.

A creative intensity, parallel to the intensity of love, split Virginia Woolf's nerves.

Intensity is bliss, but also the last sting of the queen bee.

My mind is sprawling like a wild tree

unable to prune itself

My nerves are splitting in all directions

leaving a hollow center where a will used to be

I am thinking of him

Not him but his words

One needs something larger or higher than

oneself to pilot

the boat of life

A political ideal, disillusioned

Love failed

Nothing

but deadly boredom

Ennui. . . .

Before dawn I awoke from an unfulfilled dream, my tears slipping out, washing my face. To get rid of my longing for Ramon, I had a shower and jogged in the morning glow.

Coming back, I wrote a cheerful, disinterested poem.

Dawn

Roosters sing to greet the birth of the sun.

Vibrating with aspiration,

Inspiration comes with foot-tapping on the dewy grass.

Dawn

Flowers crane their necks to suck fresh air.

Renewed by a morning shower,

The poise of nature defies red dust.

Dawn

Flocks of birds vie to offer their opinions.

True democracy

will never outstep the door of Nature.

Mei got up and asked me what I was doing. I started teaching Mei the form of a sixteen-syllable poem I had just written in Chinese and encouraged her to try one.

When Mei brought her poem to me, I was surprised to see my daughter had captured the mood I was trying to smother.

Dusk

The blood of evening glow floods westward.

The sky, dizzily purple,

blurs like a water-smudged rainbow.

Dusk

Swaying blades of grass scoop a soul chill.

The wind knifes right in the face,

attempting to cut off sad recollections.

Dusk

Whither should the noises of the heart go?

Leaden steps

hobble among the peaks of clouds.

Journal, May 16

How I wept over my marital fate in front of my daughter, a twelve-year-old. She wept with me and said I should have divorced her father. Next time she would back me up if I made the decision. If I do not have enough courage, I will never have a chance for happiness in my life. It is really an irony that my daughter should have better insight into life than me. I remembered her comments on the difference between like and love—if you like a person, you part when you begin to dislike him; if you love a person, you stay with him even when you dislike him. My tragedy is that I neither like nor love my husband. A torture for the both of us.

Lately, except for cooking, I had to do everything in the house. Paying bills and taxes, tutoring our daughter in Chinese, having conferences with Mei's teachers, sending Long for doctor's appointments, sending the car to the auto shop, snaking the blocked drains, pruning roses, mowing the lawn, opening and closing the window curtains, calling for roof repair, collecting rent from our two tenants. . . . Oh, I wish somebody could share my load! Long seemed to benefit from his inability to speak English. All the rights, big or small, are yours. When he went to the bathroom and saw the toilet was blocked by paper, he would wait for Yun to plunge it. Mei, if you truly love your father, you should teach him English. How would you two survive if I died? But every time Long tried to learn English, he would become sick or have insomnia. All right, Mei, don't force him anymore. He is a delicate man, not born to wear a blue collar. But he had to stand by the wok in a restaurant nine hours a day, six days a week. When he came home dog-tired, face sullen like the overcast summer sky, I took care not to offend him. He was watching TV, but not English programs. Perhaps he really needed to warm up his Chinese. Being mute all year round, he seemed to be forgetting his mother tongue.

It was Thursday. Long had a day off. But I had to get up before five to rush to the immigration office in down town Los Angeles to get forms for our green cards. He did not speak English and he had a right to sleep soundly today.

Checking my wallet, I only found a fifty-dollar bill. I needed some change for parking. But instead of waking Long up, I drove to find a store. Too early—all the stores were still closed. Finally I found an open fast-food restaurant. The cashier said, "Sorry, we don't have twenty dollars yet. Can't you see we just opened?" Before I gave in to despair, an old Mexican man waved to me. I went over, and he took out a five-dollar bill, "Pay me back tomorrow or any time you come by." All the other men laughed at the old fool, "You gave her five bucks?"

I drove to the freeway, loving Mexicans a thousand times more than money. I remembered how Ramon had expressed his respect and love for his father. Unfortunately, his father was in the hospital, having one of his legs amputated. What disease? Diabetes. It's not a fatal disease. No, but he went to the hospital too late. I see—he has given all his time and care to others.

The son and his father mirrored each other's nobility and generosity. I was very grateful to Ramon for his willingness to edit my manuscript. I remembered that Meng, who had edited a translation for me, fought about whose name should be placed first when it was published. Preuss was okay, but he did the editing for sex and love, and he did not mind being paid. Ramon was surprisingly different. He was willing to help me because, as he said, the academic field today was becoming too exclusive and selfish. His pure motive magnetized me even more, although I could not remove his image as a father.

Journal, May 17

I love Ramon in spite of his condescending attitude towards me. I do not need his fatherly protection, yet I love him helplessly. His noble spirit, his generosity, and his intelligence— are the qualities I love best in a human being. Yet I am unable to articulate my feelings to him.

1968 Unable to say

—Meilin is in the hospital.

—What's wrong with her? She seems to be pining away.

—For Zhang Wei.

—Does he know it?

—Not until yesterday. He went to the hospital, but Meilin's mother forbade him to see her.

1975 Bitter Gourd

How many nights I murmured his name.

How many times I watched his back shadow with mute tears.

I knitted a sweater and a pair of socks with wool pulled from my heart.

The moment our hands clasped and shook on the stage—he was in the role of an army commander and I was Liu Hulan, a revolutionary martyr, a marble statue at the fall of the curtain.

So many rumors circulated about us, even though we never talked privately or exchanged a courting glance.

One day he gave me a picture of himself and asked me to show it to my parents. I kept the picture but never showed it to anyone. Love or marriage is a matter for myself. Why do I need somebody else's approval?

On the day of graduation, he said we could not be together, because I was an emotionless person, like a machine.

My eyes dried up with grains of sand and I simply said goodbye.

I went back to my mother's house. The dam broke. My tears were simply oozing out mutely day and night.

My mother was chopping vegetables.

"Yun, try this crispy cucumber."

It tasted bitter.

"A woman's fate is a bitter gourd," said my mother.

So passive are the plants and trees

silently grow

silently die

In dire want

they wither

shrivel

uttering no complaints

They are immovable

Being planted in an icy shade

they can never march to the sunshine

even though the heart of their leafy crown

yearns mutely towards the heavenly stove far away

Do they know the meaning of existence

for themselves, individually?

Their wild fruit that used to be seedy

now becomes seedless grapes

seedless melons

Losing their original reproductivity

they may look even plumper and fresher

Their beauty accrues on utter self-annihilation

Plants and trees

how impotent you are!

You have the power to grow but

no power to kill your own excessive leaves and twigs

Do trees and flowers in a virgin forest

need self-pruning?

You may howl with the strength of a storm

you may clap your pulpy hands in a morning breeze

but when you are mutilated on a sunny day

you suffer without a groan

Who says you are the female?

Journal, May 18

Last Tuesday he suddenly appeared in my office, tall and handsome, the image of Hercules, like sunshine enshrouding me. He came with Kan, but I knew his genuine purpose was to see me. He could not help gazing at me and then forced himself to look in a different direction. When they were leaving, I shook their hands—a significance only comprehended by him and me.

The first time when we parted he shook hands with me. The second time when he held my hands, I asked innocently, "Is handshaking an American or Chinese custom?" He smiled guilelessly, "I just want to hold your hand." He tightened his grip. I withdrew my hand and said, "Great. My hands are always cool in summer." Ever since then, hand-shaking has become a ritual between us—the only physical touch we could afford without a guilty conscience.

Today I eagerly shook his hand. I love to touch his hand, feeling the communicative sensitivity. Oh, communication is love. A love one cannot spell out, for fear it might fly away.

When he was gone, my officemate said to me, "You look so beautiful in this dress." I looked down at myself but saw nothing.

I bought a large five-bedroom house, for the bank of course, as the lenders would say. Coming from crowded China, I felt uneasy about having three people occupy five bedrooms; on the other hand, I could rent out the two upstairs rooms to subsidize my monthly mortgage payment. As my house was located in a Hispanic neighborhood, my tenants were usually Mexicans. Today my tenant Pedro declared he was broke, unable to pay his fifty-dollar phone bill. "Well, your phone service will be cut off then." Pedro became mad and threw all sorts of bad slurs at me, like "You racist, you Asian Scrooge, you yellow thieves stealing our jobs, you think we Mexicans are liars . . . ."

I was absolutely stunned. I had given him a new pillow the first night because he didn't have one. Pedro said his mother in Austin needed his support, so I exempted him from the required security deposit.

"Please move out, I cannot tolerate your racism." It was the first time I had used the word "racism" to a person.

During my absence, Pedro had thrown his keys at my daughter and run away. A few days later, baby food coupons and magazines like First-Time Parents and American Baby started to come in the mail. I remembered Pedro's heavy-looking girlfriend. He should have told me the truth. Perhaps I could have helped him with more than fifty dollars. I also remembered that three days after Pedro moved in, he was beaten by somebody on a bus. Perhaps he was driven out for some unpaid rent or bills. Pedro had told me many made-up stories, but he was not a born liar. Poverty forced him to work ten hours a day but he ate peanut butter sandwiches all the time. He had an elderly mother, he wanted a girlfriend, he loved music, he collected T-shirts; he had every right to be a man, yet it was hard to keep up a man's dignity. My love for Ramon was transforming me into a more compassionate human being. In China, I once cruelly drove my babysitter away without buying her a train ticket.

This Monday, the passion between Ramon and I was well controlled. We talked about the great minds of the 18th Century. He did not look that handsome, his frizzy hair betrayed dots of gray, and his English had a slight Mexican Spanish flavor. Nevertheless, the rays of his mind and soul bewitched me. My body and soul yearned helplessly for him. I desired to read every single word he had written.

Journal, May 19

When we talked in his office professionally, we both felt elevated. Our minds darted over all sorts of subjects in a most delightful manner. When I parted from him, I immediately felt the heaviness of depression. I realize a human being is born two-faced. He may feel the same way. But one will never tell the other how one feels. Feelings are signals of truth, too fearful.

Journal, May 20

Our friendship—a delicious cake

chilled in the refrigerator

sparingly we eat

Pathos lingers in the mouth

Thrills of thought icily piercing

so sweet

so cool

so cruel

It was a Friday.

He agreed to have lunch with me: "Okay, take me anywhere you want."

I came to the office early. I must have phoned his office a dozen of times before noon. Perhaps he had forgotten about our appointment.

The phone rang punctually at one P.M. A few minutes later he came to meet me in the office. I stood up to go, avoiding his eyes. Yet he looked quite at ease.

"I phoned you a little earlier but you were not in. I thought you forgot about our appointment."

"I did not forget it. I was at home."

"I thought you always worked in your office on Fridays. I am sorry you made a special trip."

"Yes, I came especially to meet you. I like you."

"Oh, thank you."

I was wearing the long silk dress I had brought with me from China. The downward motion of the escalator undulated the light silk, carrying me like the fairy Chang E floating out from the moon. Yet, I was not conscious of my graceful movements. I felt quite shy, though I had planned it as a formal meeting, not something like a date. I took him to a famous, expensive Chinese restaurant at the Landmark Plaza. It was the first time I had ordered Dim Sum, quite a variety. But Ramon seemed to have no interest in eating.

"I never care what I eat."

"Enjoying food is enjoying life."

Last night I read through his award-winning book on John Dryden and I made some comments on the book. Being an aspiring poet myself, I did not agree that poetry can be interpreted by the logic of rhetoric; perhaps I was ignorant of the true meaning of rhetoric. Nevertheless, I did enjoy reading his interpretations of Dryden's poems. The book revealed the power of his intelligence, the sensitivity of his mind, and a rare effulgence of his words.

A pity, the New China Shop had gone bankrupt. It used to contain an exhibition of Chinese high art. Part of my intention was to give Ramon a guided tour through the shop.

Instead I took him to the fountain on the ground floor. We sat on the same bench. What a romantic setting. I even took out a little CD player and put a disc inside.

"Listen to this variety of Chinese classical music. Since you're a Classicist, I think you might like it."

"Yes, it is beautiful."

"Keep it, and the player, too. And these CDs." I took out a black box. "It took so much of your time to help me. When I am gone during the summer, you can concentrate on your own writing."

Journal, May 21

Although I have been helplessly in love with him, my little present and the lunch invitation are from pure friendship and gratitude.

I showed him the poems my daughter and I wrote on Sunday. He could not read Chinese but appreciated their visible poetic form.

He was very placid today, saying very few words. He looked at me and asked whether he could touch the material of my dress.

"Yes, of course."

"Silk?"

"Chinese silk. I've had this long dress for several years. When I was a student, I liked to wear shorter dresses."

"Shall we leave now?" I raised my watch. He held my wrist.

"Oh, I cannot see the time."

He looked at his own big watch, "Ten after three."

We walked through the underground parking lot to my car.

The car screeched and climbed up to Garvey Avenue.

"I am driving now. Why don't you talk about something?"

"I got drunk last night. Sorry, I cannot be lively today."

I remembered Preuss. He drank, smoked, and got arrested for planting poppies in the woods.

"What did you drink?"

"A couple of beers."

Then he suddenly said, "If we go on like this, we will have to become lovers."

"Shall I stop?"

"It is your own choice."

I did not know why I suddenly turned bitter and sardonic.

"Of course, I love you. But I am a disciplined woman. That's why I see you only once a week. You are so busy and I am busy, too. Only people of leisure can afford to play with willows and flowers."

My outburst perhaps marked a resistance to him, since he seemed to see me as a seductive woman. I cannot accept any relationship with him if it is not based on true, sincere love.

Back in my office, my tears showered. I jotted a few lines in Chinese.

Laughing and smiling when we meet

Wallowing in tears after we part

Love is more painful than pain

Longing is heavier than thought

A passion pure and cruel like frost

A self-control more severe than the jail

Without clouds and rain

the friendship won't last long

With clouds and rain

the friendship won't last long

The last four lines in Chinese are a Catch-22. Without getting sexually involved, a woman cannot achieve a full friendship with a man; getting involved, her friendship with him cannot last long.

"Hi, Ramon. I have some tickets for Henan Opera, the opera of my hometown. It is completely different from Western opera. Watching Beijing opera helped Brecht with his experimental drama. Would you like to go?"

"When?" He sounded excited.

"On the twenty-fourth—this coming Sunday. I think it would be a good opportunity to expose your kids to cultural diversity. Your wife will enjoy it, too."

After a moment of hesitation, "Sorry, we can't. Thank you for the offer."

After hanging up the phone, I felt a bit puzzled. Am I trying to invade his territory with Chinese culture? Is he resisting my attempt to re-shape him with my Chinese-ness?

A Latino student came to my office hours and said he is studying Chinese because he married a Chinese wife. I eagerly offered him two opera tickets.

Journal, May 24

I took Mei to see Henan Opera, the Tragedy of Jiao Guiying.

The story of Jiao Guiying is quite touching. She was a famous singing girl. One day she found Wang Kui dying in the snow and took him back with her. They married and pledged loyalty to each other before the Sea God. Jiao supported Wang Kui's study and later, his imperial examinations. But when Wang Kui became Zhuangyuan, the number one scholar in the country, he abandoned Guiying for position, fame, and a young beauty. Guiying hung herself in the Temple of the Sea God. Then the Judge of the Underworld led Guiying's ghost to Wang Kui's mansion to take his life as revenge.

A very common tale, indeed. But what impressed me most is Guiying's love for Wang Kui. Before she killed him, she offered to be his concubine, maid, or the lowest servant, simply to wait on him, but Wang Kui refused her. Why does a woman in love become so subservient?

Journal, May 25

Early in the morning of grief and sorrow,

A lost lady is longing to death for her beloved.

To search for music of the soul,

she dares to tour Hell.

Let her body be torn to ten thousand shreds.

Three years in America could not imprint the numbers one to ten in Long's memory. I kept phoning Professor Martin from six to ten o'clock, only to discover that the number Long had taken down for me was wrong. With an infinite sigh, I wrote the following:

A Dirge to Marriage

To the vast wilderness I howl hatred for him;

Autumn rain accompanies my weeping grief.

Being dumb is more a sin than being ugly;

In the belly of Zaixiang (a prime minister),

there is no space for such a boat.

I watch my tears trickling down in the twilight mirror;

A shower of bitterness hardens my heart.

How can he tolerate such an ill-yoked spouse?

Dragon and Clouds must get disentangled to breathe.

That evening I called Bob and also was disappointed.

He is already senile,

In the year of a candle flickering in the wind.

Gold has corroded into rotten wood.

Yet, his air is still overbearing—

Admirable, laughable, and irritating.

Once Bob had asked me whether I would remember him as a distinguished scholar or as a body. I said, as a body. Who cares about the author of those nineteen books, if I have not known you personally? But he seemed to have misunderstood me. He talked about nothing but my body. An obsession with a fleshy body may destroy a person's own body and soul.

"Mei, this iron is burning hot. Don't touch it."

I unplugged the iron and gave my daughter a warning look.

Mei had passed her fourth birthday but still wet her pants in nursery school. The nap time was two hours long. Grown-ups hated it for being too short, while kids endured it as an endless torture. Imprisoned in a small crib, a child dared not turn her body, let alone go to the bathroom. This repressive experience perhaps made Mei a wakeful person all her life. You could scare her by simply ordering her to take a nap. She was lucky to have come to America to escape naps.

"Why, Mom?" Mei was inquisitive. Children were far too inquisitive.

"Why? Electricity has made the iron hot."

"But it's not red like fire." Mei was not convinced.

That evening Mei refused to let me wash her right hand.

"Dear me! It's burnt." I grabbed that little claw hidden behind her back.

Now Mei was nearly thirteen. She loved mathematics, chemistry, or any subject in science. I, though once a first place winner in a junior high math contest, had long said goodbye to science. My emotions and sentiments grew with age. Twenty years ago, while seeing The White-Haired Girl, my teacher's tears dropped like rain on my shoulders but my nose merely twitched to drive away some sourness before I squared my shoulders. Now a shred of favor, kindness, or generosity would stir my heart like a gentle finger touching the leaves of Shy-Grass. No more rationality, no more logic. Disbelief of science stole into my intuitive body.

My teeth are like my northerner father's, big and uneven. Flanking the front are two sharp ones that the Chinese call "tiger fangs." Everybody in the family knows I have the most unsightly but useful teeth. Long cannot eat anything tough like steak and Mei does not like crispy apples. But I can chew almost anything. One evening when I called home saying I was terribly hungry but did not have time to come home for dinner, Mei joked, "Mom, why don't you bite your desk?"

"I could, if it were not made of plastic and iron."

Mei and I went shopping on Saturday. A new product caught our eyes.

"Look, Mom, you must buy this Natural White. It will whiten your tiger fangs and make you look young." I knew my daughter wanted to use me as an experiment again. Nevertheless, I was persuaded.

I tried it for a couple of days. A hoax! There was no pleasant bubbling sound during the process of oxygenation. Everything was deceptive nowadays. "No, Mom. I don't think so. Don't the directions say that some teeth will take sixty times? Yours are definitely the toughest teeth in America."

The directions specify to only use a thin layer. I had no patience. The layer I applied to my teeth was so thick one night that a tiny drop slipped to my lower lip. I heard a sizzling sound as if an engineer from the Land of Ants was drilling my lip. The sound was pleasant and thrilling, because it was really burning in the flesh. Bones had no feelings.

Journal, May 26

Ramon gave me an autographed copy of his book, under an elegant red cover, with a long handwritten letter. The words in the letter plucked the strings of my heart with their noble fingers. Since I had read the manuscript carefully, the contents of the book already were old friends, as its imagery and power of diction had been absorbed into me. However, the letter further convinced me of the distance between us. He might be too noble, too paternalistic for me. His analogy of his love for children, his statement of enjoying "giving" rather than "receiving," forms a hierarchy between us. No, I did not give anything to him as a "gift"—the music and the CDs are shared with him. As I said, they are nothing but an extension of me.

He is the Rocky Mountains

snow-capped with nobility

a forbidden height

an icy-cruel purity

I wish I could be a snow-lotus

to match his beauty

Yet I am merely a blade of grass

in a corner ostracized by the Land of Angels

turning green and yellow

at the mercy of Heaven

I must trespass

to tap water from stones.

Journal, May 27

Random thoughts on reading tales about women and poems by women throughout Chinese history:

A female is nothing but a body to the opposite sex. As she is said to have no soul, the body is all. The one whose body is sullied must commit suicide.

The body of a woman is all and nothing. To prove her determination, she shaves off her ears and blinds her eyes. Then people can hear through her body. Self-mutilation is a form of speech.

In order to make herself seen and heard, Wang Zhaojun had to deport her body to the barbarians.

Li Qingzhao's body image as a pining yellow flower has surpassed all her poetry.

The barbarians captured Cai Wenji. Her body was not only sullied but fractured by separation of a mother from her children. At the complete loss of her body, her lamenting voice came to be heard down through history by the Eighteen Songs of a Monad Flute. Quite an exception? No. Cai Wenji to men is not a female, but a scapegoat of a nation under foreign invasion.

Plato wrote about the ladder of beauty—from love of the body to love of the soul to love of absolute beauty.

Romanticists hold the body above the mind. After all, the body generates powerful emotions and passion.

Postmodernists separate the body from the soul, love from sex, and sex from the body. One can give sex as a friendly gift, a gesture of sympathy, a release of tension. What's sex got to do with the body, if the act does not bring sexual diseases to the body? If one can take sex lightly, one will not suffer too much from psychological problems.

Partnership=cooperation.

No marital bondage but family.

Love, spirit, and soul are forever individualistic. They belong to the loner—I wander alone like a cloud.

Love no longer needs the fleshy body!

Body and sex are no longer a threat to me.

If we cannot reach a more intimate communication without breaking the tension between sexes, let us share our bodies and then discard them.

Throughout history, a female, like duckweed floating in a pond, searches for a master or a home to anchor herself.

The impossibility of marriage does not imply the impossibility of sexual and spiritual love—only that there is less chance to possess or be possessed.

Does the desire to love stem from the desire to possess or be possessed? No, it is a desire to be with and to share the time with someone.

I only want to share the emotion and soul of a being I love. Emotion and soul grow in the process of sharing.

Journal, May 28

Every Thursday morning when I think of him so intensely, my tears roll out like beads off two strings. The dog outside the window fiercely scratches the window glass.

I have an unquenchable desire to commune with his soul, a desire stronger than death.

Emotional intensity is like a suffocated, overcast summer sky. Only the release of rain can cleanse it. When auto sexuality fails, the intensity wrings water from every cell of my body —nothing but a stubborn loving soul anchored in the sea of the body.

The Thinking of Him

The thinking makes me dizzy

The thinking produces unconscious smiles

The thinking siphons tears

The thinking pushes me to the drowning sea

The thinking leads me to the Land of Death

The thinking paints infinite mirages

but a single hope

Journal, May 29

Ramon and I had lunch at Sichuan restaurant. Today he dressed very smartly—black pants, light gray shirt—looking elegant and tall. I remembered his comments about how I looked last time. He seemed to be concerned with my reaction to him being a Mexican-American. Of course I knew his roots the moment he talked about Mexican culture and people with such passion. Before I moved to Los Angeles, I never had any contact with Mexicans. Through people like Carlos and Ramon, I came to see that the Mexicans share many traditional values with the Chinese: loyalty to parents, love of children, hard work, and generosity to others.

Who is Carlos? My former tenant, a trucker and a soccer player. He said my living room had no life and showed me his own room. Well, it was full of life indeed. About a dozen soccer trophies demonstrated his glorious past. Among his huge posters, I recognized Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley. As his room was extra-king sized, he even had his weight-lifting equipment right at his bedside. On the wall behind the TV, I saw a photo of a woman in a bikini. I recognized her as the lady who visited him once a week. The lady's blond hair looked too artificial, the powder on her face seemed to be falling off all the time, and her over-painted eyelashes made her look like a witch. She came usually on Carlos's payday and often left in an hour.

Carlos was not a bad storyteller. When he first moved in, he told me he had never been married. He did not want to buy a house because he was planning to marry a woman who owned a house. "You know, a man like me is very useful around the house. I can do all sorts of things, lawn, sink, and garden. Whenever you need help just let me know." Before long, Carlos forgot his story and showed me a photo of his four boys and said his ex-wife and the kids were in San Francisco. He was paying $800 a month to support them.

"Why did you come to Los Angeles? Being a trucker, you can find a job in San Francisco."

"Well, a man cannot be tied down by family and kids. I need my individualism."

Carlos did have his individualism. He would never work on Saturdays and Sundays. "Five working days are enough to support a man." Every weekend he would put on a tie and an expensive suit. After he left for a fancy restaurant or church, his strong cologne lingered in the house. Compared with Carlos, I felt my own existence was pitiful: reading, writing, teaching, doing housework. . . no fun at all.

Once or twice Carlos dragged me and my daughter to a swap meet. There he would greet all sorts of Mexican men like old brothers. Carlos neither drank nor smoked. One could hardly find any vices in him. He helped me change the oil in my car and fix faucets. Each time he would expect me to pay for the value of his labor. Once, when Mei sprained her toe while exercising, he dipped her toe into hot water and massaged it like a Chinese healer. Mei's pain was gone the following day. Another time, hot cooking oil left a big blister on my arm. When Carlos saw it, he immediately used an onion to suck the liquid from the blister, saying that if one did not get the liquid out, it would not only take an awfully long time to heal but would leave a black print on the skin. It was true. I could still see the dark spot left by a burn on one of my hands. This time, the blister left quickly and did not leave a scar. Carlos was full of practical wisdom, and he would not take anything for these services.

One day, he and I drove to Pep Boys to buy a part for my car. Carlos said, "You smell fishy."

"Sorry, I was too busy to take a shower this morning."

"No, I mean the smell your husband left on you last night."

I knew what he was driving at and said frankly, "Sorry, I do not like that kind of joke. I am Chinese and I am not used to it."

"All right, but what's wrong with sex? It makes a person sleep well and relaxed. We often talk sex at work."

"Not with me. I have to tell you that we must stay away from sex if we want to be friends."

"Right, I agree with you. Sex often destroys the friendship between a man and a woman. How old are you? Over forty? I can't believe it. Mexican women are overused by men. They age far too early."

Many times when I referred to my husband I used the pronoun "she." It was perhaps an innocent habit because "he" and "she" and "it" were all pronounced the same way in Chinese. But Carlos did not let this pass.

"Ha, ha, you always treat your husband like a wife. You married a weak husband because you are afraid of strong men. Look at my rolling muscles."

Like me, Ramon was quite restrained in his emotions.

He had a highly selective memory—automatically forgetting trivial things. He no longer remembered which way we took to Monterey Park last Friday. I said I hope you won't forget me too soon.

After lunch, we each opened a fortune cookie. His advised him to continue giving and gain knowledge in the process of giving and mine told me to continue expanding my horizons. Such coincidence almost made me superstitious.

After lunch, he went to my office to edit my proposal for the annual meeting of the Modern Languages Association.

Journal, May 30

How I treasured the moment we sat close together before the computer monitor. Our hands and arms touched innocently from time to time like a breeze kissing wild grass, producing thrills of physical sensitivity—such sublimity, perhaps, exists only between lovers. Not only our minds but our bodies yearn for each other. When I think of him, my throat becomes so dry that I feel like an exhausted camel gasping in the desert.

I thought of the passion I captured the moment I was inspired by my idol of Romanticism. Now Ramon, a real man of masculine beauty, had aroused not only my passion but sensitivity and sensuality. Perhaps because his image loomed too large over me, I was awed.

Journal, May 31

"Please, no more gifts. I appreciate your gratitude—especially since this world is generally an ungracious one. Friendship is enough. For me, giving is more important than receiving. As I tell my children, they owe me nothing, but if they ever have children, they will repay me by giving to them what they have received from me. I would expect you too, if you wish, to repay me by helping someone in the future in the same way. I have been disappointed, though not surprised, by the scarcity of generosity among academics. Perhaps that is the way of the world, but I will never subscribe to it. I have been a soldier, a coast guard, and now a teacher and I have learned to stand alone and survive. Those few people in my life who have helped me, I can never repay, except in the small way I am assisting you, for example. . . ."

I have read Ramon's letter at least ten times and each time I feel more deeply touched than before. I got a spanking for my failure to recite a four-line Tang poem at the age of five; yet, how easily I memorized every word of his letter.

I did not stop at recitation. I borrowed books on Mexican history and culture. I was overjoyed to find out in a recently published Chinese encyclopedia that Chinese Buddhist monks visited Mexico as early as 458 A.D. And the unearthed tablet inscriptions in Mexico revealed striking similarities to the Chinese in figures and pictorial characters. Their customs, legislatures, and calendar also had parallels with the Chinese.

Guadalupe had been living in my house free for ten days. She moved in saying that she had a regular job at Glendora Hospital, but she did not. Every day she stayed in her small room, staring at the walls. The second month, she said her wallet had been stolen by a thief and she lost the five hundred dollars she had withdrawn from the bank for her rent and food. By and by she confessed that she did not have a penny in the bank.

"Why don't you apply for Social Security as many others did?"

"Well, I still want to work. I am not that old yet."

"But how can you find a job by staying at home all day long?"

"I've tried, but I don't have a chance."

She was right. Even Carlos had been without a job for three months now. He had moved to a cheaper place, though he often dreamt of having his large room back.

"Why don't you go to your son?"

"My son is in prison."

"In prison? For what?"

"He killed his wife. It happened three years ago. It was reported in the Tribune. Everybody in this neighborhood knew, I'm sure. That year I sold my house and gave my son 50,000 dollars so that he could make a down-payment on a house and his kids would have a nice home to live in. I could also move in to take care of the kids. My God, when my son got the money he bought himself a motorcycle and squandered the rest like water. He had many women running after him. . . ."

"How old was he then?"

"Twenty-two."

"Too immature to have that much money, I guess."

"You're right. He murdered his wife one night. Even though I am his mother, I think a thirteen-year sentence is too lenient for such a wicked crime."

"Have you ever thought that your son was killed by the money you gave him when he was not ready to use it properly?"

"Right, I feel guilty. But I am a human being. I have been good to my husband and he divorced me for my kindness. And I ruined my son for loving him too much. Now I have no friends, no relatives to turn to in this world."

"Where's your boyfriend?"

"Oh, that evil man. He took my car and never came back."

"I know he will never come back here again because he is afraid of paying rent and the fifty dollars he borrowed from me. But once you leave here, you will see him."

"Really?"

"Believe me. You two are natural partners. He does not even speak English well but you are educated. You can run his business."

"Can I?"

"Of course you can."

Guadalupe left the following day with a confident smile.

A seed knows how to sprout once it tumbles out of a glass bottle.

Am I trying to pay Ramon back in the small way that I can?

Journal, June 1

Friday, Simon called me for lunch. I declined because of my previous appointment with Ramon. Simon seemed to be in agony these days. Though I accepted him as a friend, I could not bear seeing his image—pitiful and aggressive simultaneously. I still remember the day he burst out complaining on the phone, making me feel extremely awkward in front of my officemate. Out of compassion I made a special trip to campus to talk with him.

He is, after all, a shockingly frank person. Admirable. In our contact, he has never tried to deceive me; instead, he informed me of his disadvantages: his deaf father, his poor health condition, his intimate relationships with two women, his unsuccessful academic career. . . . In a way, his frankness estranged me.

Nevertheless, he seemed to have fallen in love with me. And he mistakenly thought that I felt the same way. He blamed me for treating him like a stranger when we met in the corridor; he encouraged me not to behave like a rabbit when coming into contact with a man; he told me that a faculty member's sexual life should be separated from professional promotions. . . .

I said, "I am a married woman and I do care about my reputation."

He looked disappointed, not expecting me to be so conservative. But my cautiousness had been purchased at a high price in China. Honestly, even in China, I was not a conservative woman and rebellion was in my nature.

I told him that I do not break codes unless I feel a need to—for instance, if I fall in love with someone.

Then he said he wants to have a friend, not someone he only sees once a week or once a month. And he was thinking of inviting me to a party, but had restrained himself for fear of me declining.

I see I should liberate him from this illusion.

"Ever since we chatted and confided in each other about our personal problems, I indeed have taken you to be a friend. During the LA riots, I was worried about you. If I had your home number, I would have called you. However, I have to tell you that I am not in love with you and I do not wish to lead you in that direction. We can be friends but never sexual friends."

I even told him the reasons, "You have led a bohemian life while I have been a conservative wife—our lifestyles do not fit together." He chuckled. And I could not laugh because I was too serious in telling him the lie. Who cares about his lifestyle if I truly love him? "And your health is scary. Did you say that you could not marry the first girl because of your health?"

Out of ignorance, I tend to associate any unfamiliar health condition with the terrible HIV virus. I was shocked by my own frankness when I declared that I would not enter into a sexual relationship with anyone in America unless I was sure of the person's condition.

Simon laughed and said I was damned practical. "Do you mean you demand a man to show a doctor's proof before going to bed?"

"Not necessarily. What is important is my own trust."

Such a horrible denunciation and suspicion. Perhaps I have been too frank; yet my frankness is a reaction to his.

I feel sorry for the love I cannot afford to give as a gesture of compassion. I do not hate any man who falls in love with me, because being loved is a nice feeling and loving another being is a human right. I will never repeat the first error I committed in my relationship with a man—turning a lover into an alien.

Journal, June 2

Every morning I listen to the Chinese song "Why is the flower so red?" when my thoughts about Ramon become intolerably painful. He seems to have been callous to a sensitive soul. I have asked twice about the novel he wrote, because I wished to read his words to dispel the unspeakable pain.

I am afraid that I have fallen in love again with an image created by myself. I wish I could know more about the reality.

Only the cruel reality can shatter my dream.

Impossibility can restrict but can never kill love.

Only disillusionment can act as the murderer.

I fear that it's coming—the moment I will become disillusioned about him and he about me.

No. I refuse to accept such disillusionment.

For our friendship, I will sacrifice all pleasures, ready to wade through the sea of pain.

For a moment I divided my role between lover and rational psychiatrist. I discovered how one's words can betray and conceal a lover's intention.

—Can I buy something for your son's graduation? (A desire to be his son's godmother, or a token of my gratitude for his help?)

—Can I give two tickets to you and your wife for a vacation in Hawaii? (How I wished I could travel alone with him to paradise.)

—Your wife's name, Liliana, is beautiful. She has a part-time job? A teaching aide in an elementary school? That's what I would like to do—only work a couple of hours a day. (A subconscious desire to replace her.)

In a sense, a lover never tells a lie. Yet, every word is a camouflage, a signal. It throws the speaker off guard.

Words are such clever devices for revising, substituting, disguising thoughts. This psychological revelation gave me an urge to read Freud and Jung again.

Journal, June 3

Wednesday evening after six o'clock was our time to meet for a chat. I had been longing for that moment. But when it finally came, he was not there—a seemingly deliberate absence, a conspiracy to kill me. The other day I joked about his obliviousness to me, that he shouldn't have forgotten me so soon. A swoon came over me—if I had fainted, I would have suffered less pain. I must be experiencing death—who says death knows no pain? I never expected God to punish me so cruelly.

A soul was screaming like a wounded beast

but without its freedom to release agony to the wilderness

A suppressed moan

from a sinner pressed at the bottom of Hell.

I muffled my sobs, for fear of ears beyond the walls of my office. What is more painful than a person in love?

I saw Simon, that poor man, sandy hair flying in all directions, wandering like a lost soul in the corridor—so much so, a parody of myself.

What turmoil of emotions I had experienced

weeping

moaning

humming the saddest tune

singing the most cheerful songs

trying to grade papers

All the desperation to collect a splitting soul.

Is there a substitute?

Is there a transference?

Sappho, where is the Leucadian cliff?

I wish I had a bottle of alcohol or a dose of cocaine

I am too sober

the pain is too keen.

I wish I could dissipate myself in the house of whores. . .

I know I have been love-sick

I have been trying to be my own doctor

I am confident of my power to cure myself

I see myself sinking to the waist in a swamp

I know if I do not stop I will die

Am I too much of a traditional woman?

Why should I have been torturing myself so?

Why should I have been repressing myself like this?

Why should I live in prison or a cocoon woven by myself?

I must stop this pathological development.

I must talk with him and I wish to hear him declare in the same way I declared to that sandy-haired man: I do not love you and I am not going to marry you. I like you, but merely as an intellectual being.

Even if he says he loves me, let me hear that his wife and children are far more precious and sacred to him.

I wish to hear his denial of all possibilities between us. Condemn me; condemn me to eternal abandonment and loneliness.

A long awaited moment

a cruel absence

perhaps a deliberation

murdered a love-sickened soul by shredding its nerves

A baby's cry smothered with a pillow

Choked tears tumbling down without a sound

for fear of strange ears beyond the walls

outside in the corridor.

Prescription from Dr. Yu:

1. Tell him straightforwardly how I feel.

2. Let him tell all the impossibilities, or better—no love for Yun at all.

3. A potion for disillusionment to prevent another stroke of heavenly pain.

Waking up past twelve, I wept again. Three tearful showers are not enough to cleanse my soul. Oh, how I wish I could die.

Did he say he has two grown children and an intelligent wife?

The satiated never knows the suffering of the starved. What a chasm between us. Perhaps he has been living happily in a banal way. Even if his heart were disturbed, he would not have the courage to break the moral bond to his family. On the other hand, the torture of my marriage has honed me too eagerly for a fall into a love-trap.

The heart is a lonely hunter; yet, instead of hunting anything, it is more often hunted or haunted.

The following day, Ramon smiled apologetically. He said his car had broken down on the way. His son was with him and he could not call me. I could well imagine that he drove the shabbiest car amongst the professors. He was not ashamed of being poor. Perhaps only a rough life can forge a tough being, balanced between brain and brawn. I remembered Ramon saying that he had reroofed his own house. I immediately visualized a bear-like giant, carrying piles of tiles, who climbs up and kneels on a burning roof under the hot sun or on an icy roof in dark winter, putting down one tile after another deftly like a Chinese lady working on her embroidery.

The phone finally rang.

"Hi— Ramon. I had a dream last night. I hope you can help me decipher it.

The concrete wall is hard, straight, and high. I am climbing it with great effort. It is too hard because I am holding a ring of keys in one of my hands. The man on the top of the wall waves to me. The moment I give him the keys, the wall becomes soft and yielding. It bends to me like a springy tree trunk so that I climb with my feet easily holding to the nicks between the bricks."

"Well, it sounds very architectural. Did you wear any clothes in the dream?"

"I don't know. But I was certainly not wearing high heels."

Journal, June 5

Again Friday. We met for lunch. His clothes had a sort of crude drabness, and he looked gravely serious and unshaven. If I had not known about his intelligence and generous heart, it would have been hard for me to be attracted to him. But love has blinded me to all appearances. I longed for communication. However, we did not talk much during the meal. He finished his even before I started. I became aware of being watched and realized it must be painful for him to watch me—a waste of time he never had to endure in his life.

"I am going to the library on my way back."

"Why don't you go now?"

He smiled but stayed.

We talked about the pleasure of reading in a place like Walden Pond. He has been to New England and seen the pond.

"Actually I can read anywhere, and wherever I read is my Walden Pond."

The man does everything according to his will and the circumstances seem to create no distraction.

"Do you want to go to Hawaii?"

"No."

"I'm going. Of course, not with you but with my daughter."

How I wish I could go with him to some faraway place to share a moment of solitude.

"Would you like to have lunch at my house someday?"

A slip of the tongue or an unconscious seduction?

"I do not go to any faculty members' homes."

I realized how improper my suggestion was, particularly between opposite sexes. Did I ever dream of having him in my room or in a hotel somewhere?

A slip of the tongue is perhaps a glimpse of the subconscious. I could not articulate it if I were conscious.

"Are you disturbed by me?"

"No."

"I can stop."

Silence. A silence distorted by pain. The atmosphere between us was oppressive. I am not used to oppression; I am a liberated being, or struggling to be one.

It gradually dawned on me that we had become more and more obscure to one another through our mutual attraction and suppression. The ice must be broken if we want to breathe. Sometimes, bodily contact can remove obstacles and lead to intimate communication. Bodily contact can work as an emancipative factor. However, there must be some other means to break the barrier when one cannot afford the price of the body.

That evening I stammered out the truth.

I told him how I had fallen in love with him lately, how I had cried, and how abnormally I had behaved when he failed to keep the appointment.

I said I told him all this because I believed only he, he alone, could set me free from the intolerable pain and psychological chaos I was experiencing.

"You like me, have an interest in me as an intelligent woman; but I love you. There's a distance between like and love. Logically, I am suffering more psychologically than you are. You are a Classicist, used to be self-restrained; but I am a Romanticist, whose emotions build up quickly to an insufferable intensity. . . ."

"Let me say something as a doctor. A person obsessed by love has the desire to possess. . . ."

"No. I have no such desire. I've passed through three stages of love in my life. First, I could not separate love from marriage. At the failure of love, I married a man I did not love as transference. When I was in love the second time, I mixed love with the body. (I did not tell him that to save myself, I resorted to profaning the body.) Now I've reached a new stage. What I long for is communication."

Now I realize that I had been tortured miserably, partly because of a lover's longing to be convinced of a shared love.

"You do not love me, do you?"

Silence. Too much responsibility to admit if it were true; too much responsibility if it were not true. A prolonged silence.

"Do you want to go to bed with me?"

He was so frank. I batted my eyes wide open like a child.

"No. Although eroticism intensifies my emotions and I do not believe in chastity, I fear the involvement of family, children, and the scandal. . . ."

I could not believe what I had just said to him—those stereotyped worries that I had never thought about during my moments of longing.

"You are wise. Then let us keep our professional relationship. You can take me as your brother, if you wish."

"Perhaps I have been too aggressive, acting like a Spenserian seductress or enchantress."

"I am not a victim."

He must feel insulted. No one can make the other a victim without his own complicity.

Journal, June 6

Reviewing my life, I want to laugh. It is unlucky for me, a woman of forty, to still have the passions of an eighteen-year-old. Though I have been loved by quite a few men, each time I fell in love, I was doomed to suffer the agony of unrequited love. Nothing could match the intensity of my passion dragged through the trial of death. It has always taken a long time for me to recover, even by means of transference. Fortunately, my intellectual faculties have been sharpened rather than damaged during each emotional upheaval.

As I regained myself after my confession to Ramon, I felt my gratitude towards him growing. It is for my sake he never articulates his own feelings. What a strong will he has to protect me.

Before I made my confession, he told me about his two-year service in the war. He shot enemies. He was shot at, showers of bullets. Later when he was in the coast guard, he shot a criminal right in the face in self-defense. These experience alienated him from the world for quite some time.

"I went to war voluntarily while the Caucasians generally don't. We love America and believe in patriotism. . . ."

"You mean pacifism?"

"Yes, my war experience did lead me to pacifism. I turned to literature, partly to nurse my soul."

Once he was a high IQ kid at school, preparing to be a great physicist. After the war, he turned to literature to nurse the wounds in his soul. He has indeed turned into a man of gentle love and sensitivity, though the potential for violence lies dormant inside him.

"Yes. The violence in me will break out whenever I need to defend myself."

He is a heroic as well as a dangerous man.

At one point, perhaps as a slip of the tongue, he mentioned cocaine. He immediately said it was a joke. He never took drugs. But I believe he knows the taste of drugs.

Now the coast has been cleared. Not only did his family ties make our coming together impractical, but his lonely habits, drinking, and potential for violence also forbid further development of our intimacy.

Is analysis the process of disillusionment?

Yet, love is a fallacy. I do not feel my love for him is lessened by his stories or my analysis.

Every time I saw Simon, my sympathy deepened. The pain I had suffered lately enabled me to understand the emotional turmoil another person had been going through. Simon invited me for lunch again and I declined. This Friday his gruff voice betrayed a pretend coldness. Perhaps he has seen Ramon and me together. Perhaps he is trying to restore his emotional balance as I have done. Nevertheless, humans are such pitiful beings in the world. Love is privileged play for them, yet the price is too high. Trees and flowers do not have the choice of love. The wind blows the pollen and seeds to mate. Animals, particularly domestic ones, do not have the freedom of emotional love, only biological needs. Their masters simply take them out to mate for the type of offspring they want.

Journal, June 7

That evening when I was leaving, Ramon was fumbling with his files. I was not sensitive enough to appreciate it as a distraction to focus himself.

After all, it seems too childish for adults to play the game of pain. Now I come to see why he laughed when I said in an outburst, "Of course, I love you."

He is no superman; he must be caught in the game, too.

Ramon and I met in his office. He had tried to hide from me for the past two weeks while I was achieving a gradual recovery.

My mood was particularly good today. He looked calm, and gave me a paternal smile. From a few words, such as "my family is the chain around my neck" (he made a strangling gesture) and "responsible" and "self-control," I gathered that in the past two weeks, he had gone through a severe trial. His desire was strong, but his will was stronger. Though he suffered, he came out a winner or a victim of morality.

No doubt, he is patriarchal or, at least, condescending towards me. Yet I am irresistibly attracted to him, perhaps by his power of self-control or his inscrutability. How I desire to read his novel—an epic tale, he said. Yet, he deliberately hides it from me. He said he was afraid that if I read it I would be disappointed. But he also said he would not write anything ordinary. His was a new experiment in classical form. Writing a novel is prostituting oneself in the Emperor's new clothing. Perhaps his novel is too private, as is the one I am writing at the moment. No doubt he is composing a rational narrative, but I will wring out every drop of his hidden emotion if only I can read it. My own novel is an experiment in form, a free style linked by fragments of passion. Perhaps it will be a mate to his, like a key to a lock.

The reader could threaten or manipulate the writer if the reader reads the writer's soul inside out. A novel can be published because the public is insensitive. Even if the public were sensitive, being so distant from the writer, they do not constitute a threat or power that can manipulate the writer. Therefore, even between close friends, it is unwise to be too intimate. "Fences keep good neighbors"—a line from Frost's wise poem blared from the recording that Mei was playing.

That night, after he told his stories about the Vietnam War, I recited Li Bo's famous drinking poem and explained how the drunken poet, the moon, and the shadow form a delightful "unclinging relationship." Their lofty, ennobling ties depend on the moon, which is unable to comprehend the cause of the poet's drinking; it wanders to and fro with the poet; and the shadow, though following him all the time, never enters him. Thus, the poet is forever a loner—only such a loner can fully enjoy the freedom of his soul. When the poet is awake, the tripartite share pleasure; when the poet gets lost in his drunkenness, the tripartite disperse. Yet based on unclingingness, their friendship is immortal. The lover does not suffer the pain of longing or the anxiety of waiting. Human relationships should, perhaps, be modeled after things in nature. Perhaps my subconscious desire for such a relationship led me to reciting that poem before my confession of love.

The moment I was making my confession, another self stood watching me stutter like a nervous patient. This self knew clearly that I was resorting to the last straw—a talking cure. And the process of this articulation is the process of killing the angel of love in a lover. This self was aware that my words were contradictory and confusing.

I felt guilty. But I was not aware of how tyrannical, manipulative, and selfish I had been in the whole process. My confession had been intended to disentangle myself from the bog of love. As an intelligent man, he chose to do exactly what I wanted.

Even though I was wicked and selfish, I tasted the pain of true love.

True love turns every woman into Lin Daiyu who is destined to repay with tears to the man who has nurtured her love—the liquidation of the body. In spite of a full awareness of the trap, I wept hopelessly day and night. When my tears stopped, the music wrung from the strings of Er Hu continued my lamentation.

After my confession, I gradually shortened my tearful indulgence to about an hour each morning.

Articulation helped me gain a new equilibrium.

Monday I phoned him. He asked me how I was doing. I said, "After talking, I found myself better, cured." I did not see him the whole week, as he was busy with students' final examinations. The following week, the last week of the quarter, I gave him the last part of my manuscript, the afterword, to edit. When I finally saw him the following Monday he had not finished editing it, but mentioned that he was going to disappear. I joked, disappear from the earth? He replied, perhaps. I immediately sensed a signal of farewell. Are you traveling anywhere? No, just staying at home. Then, you are only escaping one person—me. Silence. Now I realized how wicked and inconsiderate my confession had been. From his very few words about self-control, I became conscious of how he had been tortured and distracted in the past two weeks.

He had fallen in love with me, perhaps even more strongly than I with him. I apparently wronged him by stating that he only liked me as an intellectual being but I loved him; therefore, I suffered more than him.

"I wanted my candid talk with you the other day to remove the bodily obstacles between our communications. It seems just the opposite happened. I regret that my confession has alienated us. I did not expect to be so wicked."

"No, it is not your fault. It is a matter of personal control. I won't allow myself to do any harm to you and my body does not belong to myself."

"What do you mean your body does not belong to yourself? What kind of harm can you possibly do to me? Like you, I am a caring and responsible being. I restrain myself for the sake of your family and your children."

Then I told him quite humorously that in my life I had fallen in love only three times and each was unrequited.

He protested the term "unrequited" and said—if I were single, if I had space of my own . . . . It can be true that a married man does not have a room of his own, just as Victorian women had been denied this space.

Although I was married, I had always kept my own room and had space of my own. This space, if not for the same purpose as that claimed by other feminists, was a space for my sentimental indulgence. I had the freedom to shed tears upon my pillow and jot down my pain on paper or to transfer my love to reading at any time of the day or night. More than laughing, now I found myself to enjoy weeping, a purging release. As long as a woman is able to weep, she will never be neurotic. Weeping silently is a woman's catharsis.

Yes, a man in love must suffer more than a woman, if he is too strong-willed to loosen himself in a pool of tears.

That was an unforgettable night. Our hearts started to mingle through the interflow of words. The angel of love in both had been killed. One was no longer clinging to the other.

"Bye-bye. Perhaps I'll see you next quarter, since you do not wish to see me anymore."

"Who says I do not wish to see you?"

"You said you are going to disappear."

"Oh, only for two weeks. Afterwards I will always be in my office. You are the person who is going away. Aren't you going to Hawaii?"

"Yes. I am going with my daughter. I plan to write a sort of personal novel—an utter abandonment of the self to suit the nature there."

In my dream, I heard a mermaid singing:

I am the romantic sea

surging with passions

You are the classical coast

chaining me with dead sand

No matter how I lap at your lips

no matter how I scream billows of love

the coast is mute and calm

pinching the sea with its silent principle

Before the beginning of the world

the universe was filled with wanton water

When sand gave shape to the sea

there rose the virtues of humanity

Once the sea was so powerful

it broke the chain of coast

and deluged the whole world

When the coast asserts itself again

it guards the sea so vigilantly

No hope of another deluge

There is no coast without sea

No sea without coast.

I was enchanted by the singing. In the twilight zone I struggled to watch myself in a different dream.

She is thinking of stopping. That voice urges her, "Crawl on, there's light at the end of the tunnel." She gropes steadily ahead. She is going to stop again. That voice calls, "Look, look at that chink." She struggles on desperately. When she staggers to the place where the light has been blinking at her, she sees another dark tunnel leading as if to Nowhere. A sign is posted there: "Tunnel at the end of the light!" Her toes are all swollen; her fingernails, discolored, start bleeding. She stops. Lifting her head, she sees a sky of light above. She grins wryly, "Why are my eyes always looking ahead, not above?"

Looking above is easy, but it has to be purchased with tunnels of pain.

Journal, June 26

It was the last Friday of June.

What a blissful night. He escorted me to the parking structure in his old role of a coast guard. I extended my hand to him for a final goodbye.

"Let me give you a hug."

I did not know how our bodies touched—a moment too sacred even for memory—but I remember how suddenly he tore himself away from me and strode into the darkness. How much can a man control himself? Just look at him.

Even since I fell in love with him, the scene of Tristan and Isolde, of two naked bodies lying divided by a sword in an icy cave has repeatedly appeared before my eyes. As long as we keep the sword in sight, our bodies will be pure. What is the sword? My tyranny? His nobility? Our morality, cowardice, limits of horizon? I do not know. But the sword is shimmering coldly there. Although the angel of sexual love has been denied in me, another kind of love is forever reserved for him in my heart. I seem to have heard the shared music from our souls for one moment. Then it disappeared. What remains is a memory, clinging and unclinging to me.

Coda

The search for music of the soul is what gives meaning to a person's existence. Bo Ya was the best musician of the Spring and Autumn Period (221-722 B.C.). What he played on the string instrument was lofty and profound, above common understanding. Only one person, Zhong Ziqi, could comprehend his musical message. When Bo Ya played one tune, Zhong Ziqi said, "Majestic like the lofty mountain"; when Bo Ya played another tune, he said, "Undulating like a flowing river." Zhong Ziqi captured perfectly the soul of Bo Ya's music. Later, Zhong Ziqi died. Losing his only communicative listener, Bo Ya smashed his instrument and abandoned playing. Thus the Chinese descendants understand the importance of a unique friend, zhiyin知音, in one's life who is able to appreciate the music of one's soul. Bo Ya is a musician of high art. Even a common musician finds the meaning of his playing or artistic existence through the communication between his composition and his listener. Thus the Chinese believe the greatest frustration in one's life is playing a fine tune in front of a cow. It is not because the cow is dumb, but because the audience is inappropriate.

He happened to be born in the year of the cow and he has been so indifferent to my passions. It is such an irony that I should keep playing my tune, composing music with tears and pain from my soul in front of a Classicist who strangles our spontaneous flow of feelings mercilessly.

The lofty art of Bo Ya was not easily gained. Although he learned all the technical skills and mastered all the musical instruments without effort, he did not cultivate the proper state of an artistic soul: solitude of spirit and a single-tracked passion. His master Cheng Lian said to him: I can teach you the skills of playing but am unable to change your temperament. Let me introduce you to my master in the East Sea and he will refine you. Cheng Lian took Bo Ya to the Penglai Mountain in the East Sea and abandoned him there. Bo Ya found himself to be the only soul in Penglai. Every day he heard nothing but the waves, the howling of the beasts, and the wailing of birds, until his mind was submerged in utter solitude. Only then did Bo Ya realize his teacher's intention. He plucked the strings of his instrument and composed the famous song, "Mind Cultivation of Narcissus."

More evidence of universalism in the human observation of nature and in thinking: Narcissus—the showy flower with a cup-shaped corona, came from a youth who fell in love with his own image in a pool, and who, after eventually pining away from unsatisfied desire—was transformed into the flower. Narcissism— self-love, egocentrism, erotic gratification derived from self-love. Therefore, genuine love is essentially love for the self. When Bo Ya finds Zhong Ziqi, his narcissism is satisfied. The sharer of the soul-music is the mirror image of the self. A true poet or any genuine being of artistic temperament must cultivate narcissism in order to achieve the wholeness of his soul. The realization of his achievement can only be proved by the other who is able to appreciate the musical flow from such a soul.

The friend who shares the music of your soul may not have to have sexual contact with you, but you and that person will achieve the highest erotic intensity and passion. A man seldom turns to a woman as a soul-mate (considering her unworthy of having a soul?) but feminizes another male or himself to copulate. One can even abandon the hope of finding such a friend among human beings. Lin Fu is an exemplar; he took plum blossoms as his wife and the cranes as his offspring—an ultimate realization of a person's narcissism through lifelong solitude. He transferred his autoeroticism into nature and enjoyed sexual rivalry with its denizens for the love of plum blossoms: "The sparse twigs of plum blossoms couch languidly in the limpid shallows of the river; their subtle fragrance stirs the soul of the evening moon." Lin Fu had a phobia that roosters in the frosty dawn would steal looks at those plum blossoms ahead of him and dandy butterflies would seduce away their heart.

I decided to transfer my love angst to academic research as I had succeeded doing so in the past. But sexy Hawaii seemed to be the wrong place for such recuperation. The goddess of Hawaii is the volcanic Mount Kilauea that has taught its people the meaning of A-lo-ha— and given them the hand sign of "hang loose." For the first time I realized that the Dionysian eruption from the center of the earth—Mother Gaia—is not dangerous but magnificent. By its powerful overflow, Hawaii gains eight acres of land per year. I suddenly remembered that the continents had been formed by lava from volcanoes under the sea. Even if Mount Kilauea cooled into the snow-capped Rocky Mountains, the melting passions would still be inside. A few weeks later when I met Ramon, I gave him a lava ashtray in the shape of the sign "hang loose." When leaving I wanted to shake Ramon's hand, but he said, "We have passed that phase, haven't we?" Perhaps a man can; but a woman seldom passes a phase that is worthy of the name of true love. But, "Good-bye—because I love you."

Part V. A Separate Utopia

1

Seven months have passed since I said goodbye to Ramon. I do not see men anymore, only unisex beings. People all appear exceptionally friendly to me. "Hi Yu." "Hi Yun." "Hi—".... Seeing is no-seeing just as before. Now it is January 1993. Los Angeles County has been flooded, persistent rain sliding chunks of earth towards those vulnerable houses, swooping them up like little chicks.

What have I been doing these days? Defecating. True, my bedroom or my studio is exactly like the public bathroom I once saw on another planet—the utopia of plagiarism where defecating is their process of produving new books. It is a huge master room with a queen-sized bed, an extraordinarily long desk, computer, printer, typewriter, file cabinet, nine-drawer dresser, and a large vanity. Look at the books, stacked by the desk, sprawling on the floor, hiding under the bed. The recent favorites are like concubines lying on my bed. I am not a faithful queen, changing my concubines quicker than the female Emperor Wu Zetian. Everywhere in my room, you can reach for note pads, scratch paper, dark pencils, blue pens, and red markers. Mine is a forbidden city into which my husband cannot peer without permission. But my daughter Mei is always curious; she sneaks behind me from time to time, watching me defecate. "Stop that, Mei. Can you respect my privacy? When I have finished, I'll show you." Right, it is largely for her I have taken larger doses of laxative than the doctor prescribed to speed up my defecation. Did my guide, the alien, say one man's excrement is another's food?

2

Yesterday it was raining harder than ever before. I heard rumbling thunder. Today, the news reported that one man had been struck dead by lightning. I feel very guilty, because the lightning had been for me—an unfilial daughter. Last night my father's apparition, the God of Thunder with two huge round hammers in his hands, came to visit me. His tiger fangs were sticking out five inches. Flapping over my bird droppings on several white sheets, he flew into a rage.

"How dare you portray me as a tyrant? Without me, could the Chinese have been free from Japanese devils and other foreign monsters? Without me, could the Chinese have a good life today? Without me opening the door first for you with the ping pong policy, how could you come to America? Without me, could you ever have been born?"

He clashed his two giant hammers angrily and left—"Watch my lightning tomorrow!"

I was not scared because I still remembered the late Mao Zedong's quotation by heart, "Fear no death nor hardship." Strange indeed, the God of Thunder was first my father but when he was parting, he changed to Chairman Mao. I knew I was going to be struck dead by lightning the next day because in one of my caricatures done thirty years ago, at the age of twelve, I sketched Mao with two pigtails. Although my brain had been crammed since my childhood with abstract terms such as socialism, capitalism, imperialism, Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism, and Maoism, I could not make much sense of them. But when I saw the huge portraits of Ma-En-Lie-Si-Mao hanging on the wall of the City Hall, I could not help noticing the progressive shortening of the beards until I reached the beardless portrait of Mao.

The rain poured dark ink onto the night. I looked from my window and saw the whole sky become a bankless river. More strangely, the parting Mao, dwindling smaller but more stout, transfigured into Deng Xiaoping. No mistake, I could see two pets running by his side: a black cat and a white cat. It is said he feeds an extra fish daily to the cat that has caught a mouse. "Be careful!" I shouted to him, forgetting my fear when I saw he was wading through the flood like a child straddling on river stones. He laughed over his shoulder, "Lady Idiot, don't you know I am demonstrating my current policy of modernizing China by groping for stones in the river, which is much more reliable than the policy of 'jumping a chasm' in Eastern Europe. With me in power, be at ease."

"You are plagiarizing Mao's quotation for Hua Guofeng." Fortunately Deng disappeared before he heard my mumbling.

I must have been born a bold lover. Although I rebelled against my father for his tyranny, I was attracted to him, perhaps at the age of sixteen. One day he cornered me in a room and hugged me. I struggled away from him. But after that he looked at me with a softer eye. The day I left home for re-education in the countryside, he bought me a red, round apple the size of a baby's head. Once I left home, I never went back. I know my parents love my sisters and brothers more, as they surround them like satellites, buying coal and grain for them, taking them to the hospital, and sharing their festival meals. But whenever my father talked with his colleagues, he would mention my name, the one who had been to Britain and now was in America.

The day before I left for America, all my relatives came to say goodbye. At the farewell dinner party, the seven grand-children, each an only child and the lord of a nuclear family, created great havoc like the seven warring states in ancient China. My nephew threw a large piece of meat across the table at his "enemy" while my niece, a five-year-old, was sowing cooked rice all over the floor. My mother looked at their young mothers and said, "Spare the rod for three days and your child will climb up to throw away your roof tiles." My elder brother raised his hand at his son, but the urchin laughed at him, "Don't put up a show, Baba."

Someone knocked at the door. My mother opened the door and saw it was a beggar. She went to the kitchen and fetched a large bowl of rice and meat. But two older grandchildren stopped her on her way to the door with their toy guns and shouted: "Don't feed those beggars; they are just too lazy to earn a living." The beggar stuck a piece of paper on our door and left. A verse was written on the paper.

The Family Tree

A split in the stem

Of a fruitful bloom,

Yellow siblings have brought the doom.

Scattering themselves in their own gloom,

No more connections to the root.

Falling apart, a cracking crown,

No more quarreling around a withering frown.

Unity flees from a torn family gown,

A line by its splattered abundance weighed down.

After I read it to my mother, she became ghastly pale. I took out ten yuan from my wallet and was about to get the beggar back to write a poem of good luck for us when my mother waved her hand and murmured, "Too late. It's our fate."

My father was blind to all these happenings, as a grandson was riding on his back with two chubby hands around his neck; and a granddaughter, sitting on his lap, was rebuttoning his Maoist uniform in a new order. When I asked my father to tell his past to those spoiled children, he shook his head in silence. Ever since 1966 when he was criticized and labeled a communist renegade and a capitalist traveler, he had stopped talking about his glorious past. However, he wrote me three letters before his death. Each of them told me of his visits to places he had fought in as a soldier during his heroic days. I wrote to ask him to write a memoir and I even sent him a tape-recorder for this purpose. But he died like a bolt from the blue. My husband Long heard that before my father had his heart attack, he was angered by a quarrel over some baby chicks with a neighbor, also a retired cadre and a brave soldier like him. Should a great man have died over such a trivial thing?

My older sister said that she took an express train to Nanyang that day (why so quickly, if you were not thinking about getting a share of his property?) and found out that our father left no money at all. Everybody was disappointed; fighting for socialism over the last forty years had earned nothing, absolutely nothing. Who is going to take care of our senile mother, now a deaf? The state only gives her a pension of forty yuan a month, not quite enough to buy toilet paper in America. All right, each of you six children will give her twenty yuan a month, and I will mail her five hundred dollars a year.

Great, the more children the more secure one feels in old age. I understand why it is so hard for women to have their tubes tied. Did I send a check to China this year? Yes, I did it two weeks ago. I hope my mother will get it before the Chinese New Year.

3

I dare to not only love my father as a woman, but also I love the greatest leaders of the nation. I love Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping passionately. Even though Mao passed away a dozen of years ago, my passion for him refuses to surrender. I still feel bitterness and jealousy when I see him, in my mind, surrounded by sexless women, one of them holding a hammer, one holding a rifle, one holding a bundle of wheat, one holding his Little Red Book. . . all of them have one hand raised up in the pose of the Statue of Liberty. Oh, I see. They are holding half of the sky. I tried very hard to follow Mao's instructions but was never able to catch up with the other women. The day I left the countryside for Britain, I stood by my experimental plot, seeing the wheat withered into dry weed, and cried like an unrequited lover. In London, when Chinese students heard the news of his death, we left school and wept in our bedrooms. Others did it, perhaps, for different reasons. I did so purely for love. I disliked his poem that says women should like guns, not feminine attire; but I loved his feminine sentiments, "I lost my Poplar; you your Willow. . . ." I learned, from the People's Daily newspaper, that the Chinese are building a six-meter bronze statue of Mao Zedong in his hometown, Shaoshan. I cried for him because as his secret lover, I know he would prefer to have his body whipped rather than worshiped without flesh and spirit. I loathed his big talks but liked his small sayings, such as "A person must have some spirit" –he wrote it when he praised the PLA soldiers as a great wall of iron and steel who did not touch even one apple while passing Jinzhou where apples were heaped along the street side. Now I wonder whether the golden apples in Jinzhou can grow fast enough to feed the worms nestling in the Great Wall.

Why do I love Deng Xiaoping? First, Mao is dead. As pragmatic as any other Chinese woman, I have switched my love to fit the historical tide. I used to be a Romanticist and believed first things never die: first smile, first sight, and first sound. My experience with Deng Xiaoping is entirely different. I loathed him as a man; he was a bit short and seemed to grit his teeth even when he was smiling. I never heard his voice, but I could well imagine that a musical sound would not come from such a stumpy body. He looked macho, too masculine for my taste. Moreover, before I got to cultivate nice feelings about him, I heard rumors such as a student who had committed suicide by jumping from a ten-story building because Deng Xiaoping had pulled down the Democratic Wall. Loathing his face, I refused to read any Chinese newspapers for at least half a year. During the June 4th Incident, I saw on TV that blood had been shed on Tiananmen Square; I felt my hatred for him reaching zenith. But intense hatred might disguise or breed love. As the old Chinese saying goes, "A great beauty always loves a great hero." I am no beauty in others' eyes, but every woman should be a great beauty in her own eyes. So I started to pay close attention to him, reading his talks, examining his photos. By and by his image has changed a lot. Do not laugh at me. Deng Xiaoping gradually became the very image of the extra-terrestrial in the American movie ET, the one who cures a child's wound with his inner power and mumbles nostalgically "home, home" like an old granny.

Perhaps I am merely shaping him to become the model of my ideal lover, but I have fallen in love with him hopelessly. Lately, I have been suffering a lot from sexual jealousy. I simply cannot get rid of my nightmares. In one dream I see Deng Xiaoping surrounded by sexy movie stars, pop singers, and fashion models. Some of them are wearing erotic lingerie; some hardly have a thread on. Deng himself, like an emperor, is wearing a fashionable jacket, worth 8 million dollars. He accidentally flips his cigarette butt and the ash falls on his jacket. His guards immediately replace his jacket with a new one, worth 13 million dollars. His goal is to wear a 1.3 billion dollar jacket so that he can personally feel every Chinese in the country become rich. My love for him is bursting, but since we are separated by the Pacific Ocean, I am afraid he will never know it.

In another dream, I see his underlings present him with a stack of documents. He orders me, his personal secretary, to read them and then report on the main points. Of course I report the good news first. "According to the statistics, under your wise policy of 'groping river stones,' our national economy has been increasing at the rate of 12.2% since 1983, well past the speed of the four dragonlets in Asia." Deng is very pleased, casting an amorous eye at me. My heart is thrilled. "But, because I love you I have to tell you the truth—the rate of suicide has caught up with that of America, to about 400 people killing themselves daily."

"Oh, the figure is not as big as I expected. I predict that one percent of the population could be sacrificed for our four modernizations." Deng frowns.

Trying to please him, I jump over a lot of national news to report to him how his daughters and sons have been doing in the country. Although the TV series The Elegy of the Yellow River has been banned, we must recognize the truth in it: our civilization of the Yellow Earth is behind the civilization of the Blue Sea by 300 years at least. Consequently, the famous English Enclosure Movement has just started in China. "Two of your children have taken the western Nanjing Road as their enclosure without spending a cent. The document says they will reap dollars in an astronomical figure; this kind of bureaucrat-monopoly capital can only occur in Red China."

"Is the last sentence your own comment?"

"No, it is printed in black and white. Please read here; it says the bureaucrat-monopoly capital has well surpassed that of the 'Jiang-Song-Kong-Chen' in China before 1949."

"Nonsense! Who is the author of this document?"

"A Canadian scholar."

"Blasphemy. Absolutely unreliable!"

I do not know whether he is referring to me or to the scholar. But after Deng leaves, his guards come in to drag me into a well—the fate of a favorite concubine at the imperial court.

I woke up in a sweat, calling for help from my mother.

My mother had told me once that a leader of a nation has to be a hermaphrodite, half man and half woman, but not too much man and not too much woman.

How is Mother now? You are deaf, unable to hear me anymore. But I remember you, I remember the night my father called all the children up to see you. You looked as though you were dying in a nightmare. Your eyes were staring at the ceiling. With foam at the corners of your mouth, you shouted, "You go, you go! No, I won't follow, I won't follow!" Later, when I asked you what your shouting meant, you smiled gently and said, "Did I say that? I cannot remember." I know you resist the things you do not approve of in your bones.

4

I must confess that recently I have discovered myself to be a pansexual maniac. I can hear sexual utterances in the most decent music. I can see sex in well-clothed paintings. I can feel any dance, like the modern Tango, with its whirlpool-like bed rhythm. That is why I cannot go back to China anymore. I love America as the cradle of pansexualism—sexualizing art, philosophy, literature, sociology, anthropology, mathematics, physics, war, peace, food, defecation. . . . The Chinese on the mainland are still in their infancy as far as true sex is concerned. I shut my eyes and can now see China, a female body tied with her limbs to the four corners of the earth, being pumped almost too vigorously by an extra-large Western penis. She groans with pain and pleasure. She is simulating an orgasm.

A week ago I received a letter from my brother. He said he had made a special trip to the open city Shenzhen to investigate Henan prostitutes in that area as an undercover police officer. He was disturbed throughout the night by about 20 phone calls from pimps. During the peak hours, between ten to midnight and four or five o'clock in the morning, there was absolutely no way to fall asleep. When he cross-examined a young girl from Xinxiang, the girl confessed that she had come to Shenzhen simply to follow her older sister's footsteps. Her sister came to Shenzhen five years ago and made forty thousand dollars by selling her body in hotels for ten months. She went back with the money and set up a business of her own. Although everybody knows her seed money is dirty, nobody minds. She is now the head of an enterprise and happily married. My brother commented that perhaps one has to do the wrong thing at the right place and right time. It was bad luck for the girl to try to emulate her sister, because the girl was not only caught but found to have AIDS.

My sister in Beijing also sent me a letter. She said that although being a university teacher is no way to get rich, the country is thriving day by day. Now we can see Russian blonds waiting on Chinese men in hotels. And a colleague, who just came back from a trip to Vietnam, says that Vietnam is in abject poverty. Their people look up to China as a paradise. They are crazy for our yuan, just as we are crazy for U.S. dollars. Their markets contain nothing but goods made in China. Everywhere you go, you will be accosted by beautiful young Vietnamese ladies. If you can pay three hundred yuan, you can spend a wonderful night with a lady in a high-class hotel without being disturbed by security guards. That colleague heard a dreadful open secret that the Vietnamese are determined to sacrifice two generations of women to get their modernization started.

5

"Mei, are you home? Bring me the Chinese newspaper, please."

"Wait a minute. I am changing my wet clothes."

Poor girl, nobody picked up her from school in such heavy rain. I have been very sick for three weeks now.

"Are you getting better, Mom?" She took a pile of free Chinese newspapers that Long picked up daily from Hong Kong Supermarket.

"Not really. But I want to read something. How was your day today?"

"A boy kicked my cart and called me a mama's girl." I shouldn't have encouraged her to be different by using a small shopping cart for her heavy books.

"Mom, is it true that the Last Judgment Day is coming this year? The Bible says it comes when a child has a baby and a man becomes pregnant. In our school, a twelve-year old girl is carrying a baby now. I read in yesterday's paper that a man is pregnant." I read about that man, too. His baby, about three pounds, was removed dead from his body because he had no womb.

"Nonsense, men have been pregnant all the time; otherwise, how can we read Shakespeare and the Dream of the Red Chamber today?"

"I like your jokes. But I mean real babies, not immortal babies."

My eyes catch the title of a report carried on November 23, 1992 Shenzhou Times, "The Lost Little Suns." While reading it, my heart bleeds, as if the parade of parents who lost their only sons and daughters were passing by my window. The rain is crying for them. The Chinese used to regard commerce as contemptible, but today their concepts of value have so changed that they compare the magnetic power of "trade or business" to an irresistible sea. Now everybody has plunged into the "sea" to fish for money; if you cannot sell shares in the stock market or set up a business or buy from East and sell to West, you can kidnap children or women. Quite a few writers are celebrating the soul of commerce. But how many have splashed their ink for the children and women whose bodies are being trampled on by the iron heels of Modernization?

After scanning through the pile of papers, I feel as if my brain were congested.

"Mei, please come. I want to defecate."

"How can I help you?"

"Get some white sheets ready for what I am going to drop."

Mei puts a new paper tray by the side of my bed and withdraws quietly. A good girl, she knows a person needs privacy during defecation.

It is a privileged feeling to enjoy the freedom of defecating in bed. I remember when Mei was two months old—because I did not dilute her milk powder with enough water, she suffered an unspeakable constipation. I can still see her little purple face, her tightened little fists, and her stiff kicking legs.

6

Defecating in bed is a long journey through dreams.

"Hey, your green card." The customs officer called after me.

How could I forget to take it back? If I lost it, I would indeed become a woman without a country to live in.

Leaving the Capital Airport, I went to look for my sister in Qinghua in the Western suburbs of Beijing. It was a drizzling day. Turning to a smaller street in a residential area, I met a parading crowd holding a huge slogan that read: "Save the children!" Huh, plagiarized from Lu Xun. I felt instantly at home, with my feet planted on the land of plagiarism. The faces of the demonstrators were quite familiar to me. Right, I just read the report about them and their lost children. China has changed at last in the direction of democracy. Not only do journalists report the truth but people have the freedom to demonstrate for individual causes.

The following morning I got up early and visited the model of reform in heavy industry—the Capital Iron and Steel Factory. Their advanced equipment struck me as familiar. I soon learned from a manager that they shipped the entire California Iron and Steel factory here. What capacity! Can you imagine that the Chinese bought that black monster wholesale and hauled it intact to China from the other shore of the Pacific Ocean? I was told by a young worker that China was going to buy Las Vegas casinos, Disneyland, Hollywood, and Beverly Hills in time so that the Chinese-earned U. S. dollars would not be taken back by Americans.

7

The day I arrived in Shanghai, the street to Hongkou Park was flanked by nine layers of people on each side. I elbowed my way inside like a Red Guard, just in time to catch the last truck moving slowly to an execution ground. A criminal, tied zig zag with a rope, had a huge placard on his back that said, "Chief Kidnapper of Children and Women." I let out a cry of relief. Those criminals deserve to be chopped into a million pieces. Craning my neck to see that criminal off, I stepped on somebody's toe.

"Ouch. Ah, it's you, Yun."

She was Li Jie, the "Puritan" of my class when I studied in Shanghai. She said her brother happened to be the guard of that criminal and knew the case pretty well. Then she fumbled in her briefcase and fished out something written by her brother.

The Portrait of a Historical Tide-Rider

Though he does not read much,

according to his ability in human peddling,

one can easily tell,

he once, perhaps, was the Party Secretary of a brigade,

or a chosen model in studying Mao's Thought,

well flattered by his commune members.

But today

the time has changed.

He is put in jail for an unpardonable crime:

Before selling other kids and females,

he sold his only son at a high price,

he sold his wife at a cheap price, and

he sold his aged mother at a sale price.

The howling of his flesh could not buy a returning

glance from the father.

The tears of his spouse could not melt the heart of a True Man.

The mother, sold into a servant in an alien house, was silent.

Only she, she alone

could appreciate the unique heart of her filial son—

before plunging into the "sea,"

the strong found home for the weak.

A naive jailer

poked his conscience with curiosity.

The macho man guffawed, with his open hairy chest:

"In this Era, if you do not seize money,

money seizes your life."

Before marching to the execution ground,

he asked for two roasted chickens.

Satiated with meat and wine,

he slept in contentedness like a baby.

In the whole world,

he alone realized his life-long wish:

Either before or after death

he has kept a clear conscience.

Although he does not read much,

he has grasped the spirit of two eras in the 20th Century.

He has been a never-falling-behind-tide-rider.

"It does not sound like a poem, but I like its satirical humor."

I felt very guilty, as if that poem caricatured me. I knew if I had stayed in China these years, I would not have been a bad tide-rider. Being Chinese means having a strong sense of the historical trend. We follow whatever smells new. But the Chinese are Chinese; something in us will never change. For instance, the thrilling pleasure of watching beheadings and hearing firecrackers.

"Well, you look so smart in slim jeans. What are you doing now?"

"Today is Sunday; I just feel like a change. During the weekdays, I wear formal suits or whatever is suitable for a woman in public relations for a firm run by a Taiwanese. Let's go to a café and chat," suggested Li Jie.

Li Jie became very cynical. She said she had been fired by three employers, and if she did not adapt herself to fashions and cosmetics, she would be fired again perhaps in a month. However, she was planning to start her own business. Then she told me a lot of stories about women in public relations. I cut her short and said I already knew from newspapers in Los Angeles and even drew a four-line sketch about them.

"Show it to me." Li Jie was still like an older sister. If I refused, she was ready to poke my armpit and make me giggle.

"Here, read it yourself."

A Lady of Public Relations

A woman succeeds in trade

By her beauty masquerades.

To realize modernizations by a curve

She surpasses Sai Jinghua in artifice.

"What does Sai Jinghua mean?"

"Literally it means 'surpassing the golden flower.' It is the name of a courtesan who expressed her patriotism through her adulterous affairs with Europeans. She saved Beijing from being completely ruined by troops from eight countries at the end of the 19th Century. Don't tell me Chinese women do not know this?"

"Well, nobody is interested in books anymore. I guess one has to go abroad to study Chinese history."

"Exactly. I learned much more about China and Chinese history in America. Now I am an Assistant Professor of Chinese." Li was not impressed by my academic title. Casting an eye on my T-shirt, she said, "Even a Chinese dog nowadays dresses better than an American." I laughed; American civilization is going inward while the Chinese are bursting outward. After having window shopped around Huaihai Road and Nanjing Road, I was amazed that a dress could cost over 5,000 yuan and a dog of a special breed, 80,000 yuan.

I remembered a horrible tale Long had once told me. A woman with a master's degree from the Chinese department could not find a decent job and was cleaning hotels for a little money. One day an illiterate country girl came and invited her to do business in the countryside; so the graduate went with her. Can you guess what happened? That country girl sold her to a peasant as a wife.

"Is it a story or true, Jie?"

"True—everybody in China knows it. It was reported in an official document. That woman was shut in a dark room for a couple of days and raped by that peasant."

"Absurd, absolutely absurd!"

8

"Have you heard from Song Ling lately?"

"No, she never wrote to me."

"She stopped writing to any of us four sisters in Shanghai after she married an 80-year-old man in New Zealand. Someone said the face of her husband is patched with old age spots, like a leper."

Li uncapped her fountain pen and wrote:

A Woman's Pursuit

A woman only has pursuit

but no longer possesses any value.

Why do you want to be married overseas,

sleeping with that unfamiliar old and ugly?

In his luxurious house, how much space can you occupy?

If you cannot swim, what is the use of

waiting by that blue pool?

I laughed at her self-righteousness and wrote a retort on the side of Song Ling:

A Defense

In the old times, she was called

"A Thousand-Pieces-of-Gold"

but had no right to pursue.

Today she discards the "surface" value

but gains liberty in "essence."

Why cannot I be married overseas,

sleeping with that strange old and ugly?

A fly, with rights endowed by Heaven, can visit

any luxurious house at will.

Why cannot I choose to

sit by that blue pool,

shedding Chang E's tears

to my heart's content?

Li Jie slapped my back with a friendly palm. "You have been poisoned by the West."

"You haven't? Ha, ha—a deserter, running fifty steps away from the battleground, but mocking the one who ran away a hundred steps."

"Our sister Lan Yu is in the midst of her fouth divorce in the past five years. A shrewd career woman, but she has a nickname, 'Female Chen Shimei.' She is not ashamed of her nickname at all. She even wrote a doggerel to pump up her courage."

Who Abandons Whom?

You, cursed males,

in the past thousands of years,

you, wagging your tongue and brushes,

pasted "beauty" on a woman's face,

raped her body and soul

with "chastity."

Since "ugliness" and "evil"

are the true nature of a human,

why cannot a woman have a share?

Ah, beat the drums of the New Era!

Light the torch of the Olympics!

Wait and see—

Who abandons whom, today?!

"What do you say about her doggerel?"

"Pretty good. But the idea has been plagiarized from the woman writer Zhang Kangkang. I saw her little article of the same title carried twice in the Shenzhou Times in Los Angeles."

"Without women like Lan Yu in the first place, how could Zhang Kangkang have written that piece?"

9

After I left Shanghai I went straight to Qufu, the birthplace of Confucius. Several friends in America had asked me to pay tribute to the great sage of the world. When I arrived there, Qufu was crowded as though a country fair was in progress. A poem, scratched on the wall by a person attempting to immortalize his namelessness, informed me that Qufu was holding a beauty contest.

Beauty Contest in Qufu

Hundreds of beauties compete for Miss Qufu.

Confucian bridegrooms groan without bodily ailments.

Seeking codeless self no longer needs the Daoist Mount,

Every woman you meet in town is a Yu Xuanji.

Who is Yu Xuanji? Is she really alive today? Afraid of losing face, I went to the town library to check the name and easily found it in a dictionary of Chinese women poets.

Yu Xuanji is a Daoist poet of the Tang Dynasty. Seeking sexual liberty, she discarded her role of a man's concubine and resided in a Daoist nunnery on a mountain. She had many lovers and enjoyed traveling. Unfortunately, she was executed for beating her maid to death. She might have been wrongly prosecuted by a jealous male.

I hurried back to the crowd to find out who would win the Miss Qufu title. Alas, a few minutes too late. The contest was already over. It was hard to stop anyone in the dispersing crowd. When I went to the ladies' room, I saw a beautiful girl weeping in front of the bathroom mirror. She was definitely too narcissistic. An elderly lady told me that the girl had lost by two points. I felt enormous sympathy for her. I understood why she was crying. I cried when I got my English examination paper back and found a score of 98, rather than my goal of 100.

The elderly lady said she was heading for a Buddhist temple on the southern mountain tomorrow and invited me to go with her. I happily agreed, although I am agnostic. La curiosité tue la femme.

The trip was worthwhile. I learned that most of the young nuns escaped to nunneries because of setbacks in love or life. Surprisingly, a considerable number of them were college graduates. The clearer you see, the more pain you will bear. Life is indeed a sea of bitterness. The two most beautiful nuns I had talked with left their images permanently on my brain.

Beating the Wooden Fish

Although "sex" is no longer a forbidden zone,

she still presses her hand on that fig leaf.

Be cheated,

be abandoned,

be thrown into despair.

The culprit is not Him

but that pure, noble love.

If she can be numb in the face of good and evil,

If she can cut the link between sex and love,

She can also take her natural beauty as "bid"

to plunge into the game, "Who abandons whom?"

Day day new,

Endless pleasure.

Yet, being helplessly out of step with her age,

she does not match her curved long hair.

Being hopelessly feudalistic,

her suicide would pollute

the rolling Yangtze River.

Being helplessly weak,

she can only have her head shaved into a bulb and

beat the Wooden Fish in the Land of Death.

Counting the Buddhist Beads

Father cared too much.

Factory manager raped a female worker—

Bilateral complicity.

Who needed your finger in their pie?

Mother was too sentimental.

Father was crushed by a revenging car;

who invited you to lose your temper

and die of a heart attack?

Daughter was too filial.

Both parents had already passed away.

Love is gone at the loss of the body.

Why did you prosecute their killers?

Since you chose revenge,

why did you stop halfway,

Fleeing to a nunnery to seek a deceptive peace?

Can those thousand-year-old Buddhist Beads really

take off your ten thousand folds of hatred?

10

"Long, are you back?" The noise from the front door interrupts me.

"Did you bring today's newspaper?"

"Mei, take this paper to your mom."

"Mei, would you like to read me some from the paper?"

"What shall I read?"

"Anything you'd like."

Mei selects some short news that would interest a child— contests on flowers and on pets.

"Mom, I need some time for my history project. It is due tomorrow."

"Okay, go and do your own things."

11

I continue my travel through the dream.

Being a scholar, I like to attend Chinese conferences. I learned from a radio announcement that a literary conference was being held on the Miluo River, where poet Qu Yuan drowned himself over two thousand years ago. When I rushed there, I found the conference participants eating Zongzi and dancing disco on pleasure dragon boats. The conference was held to praise Shanghun—the "soul of commerce." How about Guohun—"the soul of the nation"? I asked the beaming scholars on the boats. They laughed, "Guohun? It left with Lu Xun, the father of modernism. Now we have entered the New Era, a postmodern era of money and pleasure." Their rude laughter made me feel out of place and out of time. Most Chinese writers are, like me, tide-riders. They always sing what the era dictates. The very few subversive ones, like Qu Yuan, have to drown themselves with the stone of conscience around their necks. Their tragic deaths have brought about the merry-making of the majority.

I flew to Luoyang to attend a conference of the national floral society. This was a real conference. The speakers looked belligerent, with their sleeves rolled up well above their elbows. The purpose of this conference was to choose a national flower. The representatives from Luoyang insisted on the peony, those from Zhengzhou, the rose, those from Taiwan, the plum blossom. . . . One individual was for the orchid, another for the chrysanthemum. . . . The spokesman for the lotus won the upper hand by plagiarizing from the classical prose, "I Love the Lotus." He said, "The peony stands for rebellion as well as wealth and money. In the Tang Dynasty, the peony was exiled to Luoyang because it disobeyed Emperor Wu Zetian's command to bloom in winter. Today the country needs stability and we cannot afford to elevate the peony. As for the chrysanthemum, it is a flower of the hermit, whose withdrawn spirit runs against the spirit of our Four Modernizations. The rose has not only been overused by Western poets but it is too cheap, blooming every month and every day. Now I come to the point. We must choose the lotus as our national flower: empty stalk like a tube, upward, it stands erect; growing out of filthy silt, it touches no dust . . . ."

"I am strongly against the lotus. It stands for eroticism. Even foreigners know the female character called Golden Lotus. It captures the image of bound feet among Chinese women in old China."

"The orchid reminds people of Qu Yuan, a patriotic poet; but we know patriotism is in fact the product of provincialism. We Chinese must become the citizens of the world . . . ."

"Why do we need a national flower then?" Whistles and curses arose from the audience.

After a three-day and three-night roundtable discussion, the conference finally selected the plum blossom as China's national flower. The representatives from Taiwan jumped for joy. Well, hold your flowers. Their joy reminded the conference Chair of something. He cleared his throat and said to the whole audience, "I am sorry that we cannot choose the plum blossom as the national flower of China, because it will stir up a political issue. The plum blossom has been the national flower of Taiwan all along. Choosing it would mean Taiwan's domination over the mainland; choosing another flower would mean our support for a Two-China policy. I would advise flower-lovers to stay away from politics." I had experienced the excitement, anger, and agitation of a listener. But alas, much ado about nothing, as meaningless as any conference can be.

12

I rushed to the national pet convention in Guangzhou. This time I was determined not to be a mere listener, even though I was a bit late. It was already the last day of a five-day convention. But, of course, the final events were more interesting. One male speaker, in a long robe, talked vehemently about why he believed the rooster should be China's national pet. He demonstrated how the map of China is shaped like a rooster, how Chinese civilization woke up world civilization like a rooster, and this year is the year of the rooster—even America has issued stamps of Chinese roosters. Rooster = hope. Does our nation need hope? Many listeners nodded their heads.

But the spokesman for the dragon would not give up, even though some young intellectuals had proved it a symbol of tyranny. He said that it was wrong for the gullible public to use the panda as a Chinese pet, giving it to different countries for display. The panda used to be a tough animal, eating iron according to its historical record; but it has pitifully degenerated into a squishy mixture of teddy bear and cute kitten, a weak vegetarian. What's the use of roosters in our postmodern era? Roosters are going to disappear by the twenty-first century. Only hens have a right to sit and lay eggs in battery boxes on chicken farms. . . .

Suddenly I saw two cockroaches in the super clean hotel ballroom. I was amazed at how they could survive there. I stood up and recited my speech in an emotional voice:

AN ODE TO ROACHES

Infinity of Emptiness

Roaches, the mystery of life,

old as dinosaurs,

going to survive for another million or billion years.

You are far too intelligent

to confront me—

a million times bigger monster.

What's the use of struggling?

When I smear you I cannot feel any wetness on my thumb.

When I crush you I cannot see anything red.

You should make me feel the cruelty of a slaughter;

yet no horror of bloodshed,

no sign of pain,

no sound of complaint,

no wriggling of the body,

no twist of the skin.

During daylight, you maneuver in dark corners.

At night you swarm around the sink,

absolutely mute.

No one should have noticed your existence;

yet I found out in the encyclopedia

you can chew anything— garbage, soap,

book bindings, even telephone wires!

Not even bombs can wipe out your cockroach babies—

immune to human poison.

Roaches, oh roaches,

old as the dinosaurs,

going to live another million or billion years,

out laugh all human life of meaningfulness.

Perhaps because my speech was a sort of poem, which tells the truth indirectly, the whole audience was persuaded except for one man who had a sober head on his shoulders.

"What is your subtitle?"

I regretted it at once—why should I have told them the subtitle at all? In my dilemma, Zhuangzi appeared with two cockroaches in his hand: one was dusty as if coming from a filthy latrine pit; another black and shiny, undoubtedly coming from the West or a Westernized place. The two roaches chorused, "If you are not a roach, how can you know my life is meaningless?" The whole audience got the insight and voted unanimously for the roach as China's national pet.

Xiao Fan patted my shoulder like an old friend.

"Yun, great job! I love the insinuations of your Ode. Ha, ha, Chinese civilization is older than dinosaurs. We have mutely survived and we are going to live another million or billion years, meaningful or meaningless. . . ."

"That is your misinterpretation. I did not know those implications. My inspiration was just aroused by the two cockroaches I saw in the hotel."

After Fan left, I climbed to each balcony of the hotel to experience a different vision of the horizon.

In front

there seems

a dead line

I know it can't be dead

only the breath-span of my vision

I want to draw a

dead-line for my

melancholy

to prove my power

over

eternity

The higher I rise in

the aloof tower

the line retreats

further apart

I want to pin it dead there

the only way is to stop here

The skyline

I strive to reach

is merely

an optical

disease

The horizon

not straight

a hoop of seasons

renews

nothing

new.

My unexpected success stops my daydreaming.

13

"Dinner is ready!" Long calls from the kitchen.

"Mei, go have dinner with your father. Today is our Chinese New Year's Eve. Sorry, I am too weak to join you. Enjoy your meal."

Oh, it is already dark. The rain is pouring again. The pattering on the roof is trying hard to imitate Chinese firecrackers.

I feel very guilty, as if I have brought the rain to the west coast. Before I came to Los Angeles for my campus interview, I asked the Department Chair, "What should I bring with me?"

"An umbrella."

My colleagues laughed, "Don't you know California has had a five-year drought by now? The state is collapsing. We hope you will have enough water to drink." I retorted, "Don't worry. Don't you know what my name Yun Yu means? Clouds and Rain."

When I stepped out of the airplane with my family on August 15 in the year of 1991, Los Angeles was gray with a misty drizzling. "A lot of accidents today on the freeway. After a long drought, people here forget how to drive in the rain," the taxi driver told me excitedly. When I went to buy a house, my agent told me, "Never mind the roof—in California we have sunny days all the time." Last winter it did rain and I had to spend seven hundred dollars to repair the roof. This winter, the rain becomes wild as if it has collected all my tears for Ramon and is having a hearty release.

But I have not wept in the past seven months. My eyes are burning hot with overwork, my hips sore with over sitting, and my back aching with over dreaming in bed.

14

To live, one must keep thinking the opposite.

The first summer we spent in Los Angeles was truly hot. For the first five days, I felt utterly imprisoned. No cash. The bank said they would not give us cash for a cashier's check from another state. Well, we had to live meagerly on fifty dollars.

Why did I choose the smog of Los Angeles, not the paradise of Hawaii? Human perversity, I guess. I was lying on the floor of apartment C along Garvey Avenue for the seventh night. The traffic was zooming day and night. I dared not open the window. When I popped my head out to see the gray sky in the evening, I would see a middle-aged tree in the car-sized concrete backyard. It still had green leaves below its shoulders but above its neck was nothing but frizzy dry white hair. I was sure it was the masterpiece of smog. Who asked that tree to pop its head above the protected wall? If she were a professor in China, her gray hair would earn more respect from ignorant people. But in America, gray is the color of shame that one is only too anxious to hide. I looked at myself in the mirror, and the gray hairs were too numerous to pluck out. Who said that if one hair is plucked, a hundred will grow?

There was no furniture in the apartment. My husband, daughter, and I all slept on the carpet. It was not bad. I recalled my days in the countryside during the Cultural Revolution. About thirty girls squeezed into a straw-thatched room during the winter. We all slept on the earthen floor covered with rice straws. It was cozy since we were packed tight like sardines. We felt excited to leave home. When I woke up at night, I could hear Li crying for her parents, Zhang mumbling in a nightmare, Yang giggling, Su singing Peking opera, Ma snoring, Wu grinding her teeth. . . . I was not scared. No matter what you heard, they were human noises.

One car zoomed by, two, three, four, five. . . . A screaming police car interrupted my count. Why should I have counted them in the first place? When you cannot sleep, it is better to count jumping sheep.

For the sixth time I ran to the bathroom. I did not eat much tonight. How many times do I have to get up again? Ten minutes later I went to the bathroom again. In earlier times, I had done it in the dark, afraid of awakening my husband and child in the other room. This time, I shut the door and turned on the light to have a closer examination of what was coming out of my stomach. Dear me, everything was still in its undigested original shape: red tomato, green cucumber, white rice. . . . My digestive system had completely lost its function. The waste dropped into the water of the toilet bowl, instantly loosening apart. Not even a bad smell. An ancient Chinese joke says if a human fart does not smell, it foretells a person's death.

I was scared. What kind of disease do I have now?

I had been sick for six weeks and I felt no hope of getting better. It had started with an itchy throat and low fever, then a light cough, then a worsening cough. A cold, or a flu, something came and gone, never worth much attention. Yet it refused to go this time. Perhaps I had overworked myself during the move. Long was really a good-for-nothing. Although he was fired three months ago when his boss learned I got a job in California, he could not help me much. Every box he packed had to be repacked. Although he had more physical strength, he did not exert himself that much. He could not even wring a wash towel dry. It was always dripping, dripping.

I did not bother to draw the night curtain. When the window turned gray at dawn, I got up and tried to type a letter to my sister in Beijing. Feeling weak, I laid down again. Moreover, I was too spoiled by America to work on the small computer on the floor. Kneeling on the carpet or sitting on a pillow was becoming too much for me.

At last, I could draw my money from Omni Bank. About ten o'clock, I went out to search for a suitable used car. I could not drive very well, nor could Long. But we must buy a car. We must drive. Driving is a matter of survival in Los Angeles.

Doctor Yang came. He used to be a famous doctor of traditional Chinese medicine in China, but now is a car dealer.

"What is a salvaged car?"

"A car destroyed at least 70% beyond normal repair. I did that sort of business when I first came here, penniless. It is a deceptive business that my conscience forbids me to do anymore."

"Then we are fortunate to have met you. Pity, I lost a $150 deposit to that evil Mr. Lu. I learned he is also from mainland China. How could he do that to his own countrymen?

Would you please show me the original paper for this car before I sign?"

"Why is it that you said you bought it originally for $6,000, but the paper shows you paid only $4,900?"

"Well, let me see. Ah, I blotched out this but forgot that one. Okay, you are right. You may pay me only $7,000 for the car. You know this includes tax, registration, all sorts of costs."

"Would you like to have lunch with us? Simple noodles."

"Okay. I am tired of restaurant food."

At the lunch table.

"Doctor Yang, do you know the symptoms of AIDS?"

"Yes. Why? Is a friend suffering from this incurable disease?"

"No, I was reading a newspaper before you came. It seems a fatal disease."

"Not seems. It is."

Every symptom Doctor Yang described fit my own condition. After he left I shut my bedroom door, thinking hard.

How could I possibly get this disease? From Preuss? He once said a gay professor had been interested in him. Preuss was a yielding man. No. It must be that disgusting man I met at a party at Duke. When he undressed, his male organ shrank. Still, he crawled upon me and lingered for one minute before I pushed him off. I was sure it was him. So disgusting. He even had the audacity to say, "Big, isn't it." No, it could not be him, because I did not have real contact with him. Was it Philip, the last man I had bodily contact with? A sweet person, who kept saying, "How could I have missed you the past three years?" No, it was not him. How could AIDS burst out so quickly? Moreover, I had started to cough before I met him. If I had AIDS, I must have sinned against him by passing HIV to his body. Oh the poor good man, with five kids.

What should I do before I die? My daughter is only eleven years old and Long cannot speak English. Luckily, Long and I did not have sex in the past twelve months. I had never expected the price of separating sex from love and morals to be that high.

I walked downstairs.

"Where are you going?" Long was cooking again. Three meals a day, a good occupation for a man.

"I want to try our car."

I drove the car around the parking lot twice and raced out of the gate. When I got to the freeway, two cars hooted. It was dangerous indeed. But I got on the freeway; I was free! I knew I could drive if I had the nerve. Two months ago I drove my family in a rental car to see Niagara Falls before moving away from the east coast. On the way, I first drove the wrong way into a one-way street and then had a small collision. The accident only cost American Express $470, but my nerves were shattered. Now I have to finally conquer my fear.

"Long, are you ready to learn to drive tomorrow?"

He was more timid than ever. On the way back from Buffalo, I had merely let him try driving for a half hour on a local road; but he was caught by the police as his nerves made him swerve like a "drunkard" and he got a ticket for 80 dollars.

"I would like to wait a couple of days. I am not feeling very well."

"All right. You may sit in the back and watch me drive first."

15

Daytime was easier for a dying lady. I could still drag my body around to do something. But the night was long and suffocating. I felt so depressed that my brain was congealing into lead.

A walking Tomb

Smog of numb darkness

Breathes out

Darting tongues of a coiled cobra

From the hemisphere tightly

Pressed on the

Ground

A bright ribbon buckles tawny hair

White daisies rim the moss of grief-stone

Inside lies

Bean curd of brain

Condensed in a coupled vacuum

Could two strong horses pull its two halves apart?

A round lead of infinite death

Is sinking

Not in the sea of water

But in the solid mass of cold dust,

hot rocks, slimy petroleum, and

gas of indigestion

Dazedly drowsing in drowning. . . .

The following day I felt very weak. My body seemed to stagnate before I had the chance to die.

I do not know whether I am alive

such gravity of inertia

no more wish to move

absolutely still

a boat in the dead sea

A deadened feeling of self-abandoning

no edge of hunger

no sense of boredom

A strange touch of death

kisses me

binds me like a web of spider

I wish I could hate somebody

I wish I could love somebody

Why don't I have the courage of a criminal?

Was I born to be anchored in the sluggish pool?

Wind, for whom do you

blow blow blow?!

Please slash open my blood vessels

so my life will scream and flow

again

My

life is numb

like a bag of sawdust

The boxer says he prefers to punch a sandbag

not me

Perhaps I need to pay someone to

make my sloth body dangle

one two

one two

one two three

I read my scribble a couple of times and giggled. It was nice that I still had a comic sense before I went to my grave.

16

A month to go before my job started at the University of Southern California. Too much time to ruminate.

As my mood was gloomy, all the sad memories welled up. Although I had been looked upon by some as a free spirit, I was eventually left a lonely woman. I recalled a moment of crisis in my life. That day happened to be the bloodbath of June 4th on Tiananmen Square in 1989. I was called up by the FBI for information that I might have in my letters from China. I told them my father died and I had not received any letters from home in the past three months. It was true. The Chinese Students Association asked me to join their demonstration in front of the Chinese Embassy in Washington. I declined and merely wrote them a $50 check. I was too timid to be involved in real politics. I had said goodbye to Preuss and Long finally signed our divorce papers.

I had been coughing for three weeks. Helen called me and said she was diagnosed with TB, and her doctor had advised her to send all her friends in for a skin test. I went to the clinic. The ppd result was positive. Well, I thought the TB test was largely intended for Chinese immigrants. But ironically, Helen, my friend from England, turned mine to positive. That did not bother me much. Once it is positive, it is positive for life, the doctor says. No more tests for the rest of my life. Anyway, TB is curable.

A Chinese graduate student in my department at Pitt jumped at me and accused me of following her everywhere. Where were you? Were we ever at the same place? I was confused because lately I was so preoccupied with my own troubles that I had not even noticed her. Her undertone accused me of lesbianism. My God, how knowledge had abandoned human beings to dogs. When I was in China I had the freedom to hold a woman's hand and Chinese women love to hold each other's hands or put their arm on each other's shoulders. But I was told in Britain that a woman cannot hold another woman's hand in public but holding the hand of the opposite sex is perfectly normal. Since this was the opposite of the norm in China, I no longer felt comfortable with any public display of affection with either sex. Now I could not even look at a woman. I remember instantly turning myself away from an intelligent woman when she said her mother predicted that a lesbian would seduce her this month. I could not figure out whether her words were a seduction or a warning to me. Nevertheless, the hypersensitivity in America has obviously put every individual on guard.

The Chair had another personal talk with me because a Chinese graduate student had reported that I was doing the same research topic as she. What is her topic? On hell? Go to hell, then. She was paranoid, perhaps over pressed by her doctoral exams. One minute she jumped at me for two books missing from her office; another minute she apologized, saying she'd found her books in her apartment. Her paranoia drove me crazy.

I went home and saw a few roaches in the kitchen. The apartment I was living in looked still new but was already infested with roaches. Life suddenly revealed its utter meaninglessness to me. I studied hard in China because I believed I was studying for revolution; I worked hard in the rice fields because I believed I was producing food for the people; I taught hard in China, because I had a country. Now there was nothing. The utopian belief in revolution was gone with the wind. Gullible people who had slaved for revolution now were kowtowing at the foot of money fetish. Rumors circulated—anyone returning to China would be examined for counter-revolutionary activities, even in thoughts, and there were spies on campus. It had been three months since I had received a letter from China. Where is home? Where is my motherland? Where is my father? My father died four months ago. Father, could you forgive me now for not going home to see my grandmother when she was dying of cancer? I could have gone home if I was not caught up by the zest of making revolution on the farm.

Apart from the mechanical writing of papers for classes, I spent most of my time staring at roaches. They were crawling on the bedroom walls now. When I walked in the living room I could feel the army of roaches following me. If I cooked in the kitchen, the roaches lay in wait for any crumbs or droppings. About two months ago, I phoned the landlady to have the exterminators come. They came but the fumes did not work except to give me a headache. I launched war against roaches at midnight by suddenly turning on the light. There were simply too many for me to step on or swat at. I recognized my defeat. I even started to compromise with the roaches, admiring their spirit. Finally I lifted my fingers and wrote down the ode that I later recited at the national pet convention.

After scribbling the ode to roaches on the toilet tissue, I went to bed for more sleep, with gloves on and cotton balls in my ears to avoid the roaches' revenge against me. In the twilight zone of my brain, Zhuangzi whispered to me, "If you are not a roach, how can you know a roach's life is not meaningful?"

Terror

Is

Not a thunder-bolted crown

Not a lightning-cleft heart

But caterpillars of

An incurable numbness

Crawling on the tired body of

Life.

Right! Living itself is meaning. If I am to die, my husband and child must live a better and healthier life.

I got up from the floor and went out to buy a Chinese Daily Newspaper. I made many phone calls trying to find a job for Long. Fortunately, we had come to Los Angeles where the Chinese can survive without speaking a word of English.

I saw an ad for a house which said that owning was cheaper than renting an apartment. Great, my daughter and husband must move out of this coffin-like apartment.

I phoned the realtor, a friendly Shanghainese named Wang. He persuaded me to buy a five-bedroom house in an up and coming neighborhood. His reasoning was watertight, logical, and I was always gullible. So I took the house immediately. In the following days, I was busy signing papers for a mortgage, buying furniture, getting my daughter settled in a nearby elementary school. What a good busyness— I completely forgot that I was dying. I did not notice when my cough, which had lasted for two months, was gone.

As soon as I moved into the house, I met with an insurance agent to buy a $200,000 life policy. If I had the nerve to run into a car the day I died, my dependents would get $400,000. Fortunately, I did not know the insurance company had to check blood for HIV; otherwise, I would not have dared to buy life insurance at all. When the health report came, I was completely relieved. I did not have HIV and I felt perfectly recovered from my sickness. Ready to start my new job!

17

"Mom, are you dreaming again?"

"No, I was just thinking of the past."

"My birthday is coming. You promised to have my poems edited and published by the Mom Press. Are you still going to do it for me?"

"Yes, of course. Bring all your poems here. I will ask a real poet to write you a foreword."

My daughter has been replacing me now. While I was away on my last conference in New York, Mei insisted on sleeping in the queen-sized bed in my crowded "bathroom." She has been writing poems almost daily since the day I stopped writing. In the evenings we often take a walk. She always hangs on my arm like a lover.

"Please keep some distance from me. I need to breathe."

"Why can't you take me as your boyfriend?"

"My boyfriend?"

"No, Mom. I want you to be my boyfriend."

I understand she is growing into a lady now.

"Do any boys like you in your class?"

"Yes. But I do not like them that much. Mom, you taught me that men are weak, lacking in emotion, stupid, . . . ."

"I never said that."

"But that is what you think of my Dad."

Have I? Did I? Do I? I want to tell Mei that her father is an honest man, a kind man, an industrious man, almost the best man in the world. But I know Mei will not believe me. It is hard to believe the truth if you have been brought up with quasi-lies.

How did I get to know Long?

It was like a pastoral utopia; waves of wheat were beating the banks of fields; bees and butterflies played hide-and-seek in the blooming yellow rapeseeds. A group of six college graduates were harvesting wheat.

"Hey! Yun, look at Long. He has been gazing at you from time to time."

"Hey— Long! Concentrate! Don't cut off your fingers."

Of the six young people, only Long and I were unmarried and we became a target of diversion.

The moon was like a sickle. I went to a pond to wash my sweat-soaked clothes. He was there, too.

"May I help you with the basin?"

He was a shy man. It was almost the first time I had heard his voice. It was hard to refuse.

He hung my clothes one by one on the line in the yard.

The following day was a Sunday. All the married graduates went home.

We were left alone in the dorm. He disappeared in the morning. When he came back in the evening, he brought me peaches, apricots, and a bunch of white tulips. He said his home was in a village about ten miles away. I was moved by his tender care, as no man had shown me much tenderness before. I felt the love trauma left by Jiang hurting me again. That night I wrote a letter to Fang and agreed to marry him. But a week later, his letter informed me that because it had been too painful to live when I rejected him last month, he had saved himself from insanity by marrying the girl he had rejected earlier. What a life!

When Autumn Moon Festival holiday came, Long invited me to his village. According to the custom, an agreement to go would admit a romantic relationship or an informal engagement. I did go with him. His family looked extremely poor compared with the other villagers. Other houses had tiles or cogon grass but his was covered with rice straw. His father had to patch the roof after each rain. Everybody knew that I was the daughter of a senior cadre, at least at the rank of the county mayor. My status made some young men hesitate to ask for my hand. That Long had the nerve to love me made him different from the others.

At that time, I suffered setbacks in my career as well as in love. I was selected to teach at my university Heda after graduation. But an official document about Chaonong sent everyone back to the countryside. Before I went to college, I was a sent-down girl in the Dabie Mountains and so I was sent back there. Then, I was a woman with high aspirations. I hated to waste my youth not doing something for the people and the country. Being unable to teach the English I had learned, I volunteered to quit my state-assigned salary job and stay in the countryside to teach the peasants how to read and write. Long supported whatever I chose to do. He said to me: "Now you are strong enough to support yourself by physical labor. When you get old, I will support you." He was assigned by the state to teach in a junior-high school in the same county. I was moved by his simplicity and honesty. I thought of Jiang and suspected that the reason he had given for abandoning me was not true. The truth was that I had to go back to teach in a small town and he would serve as a garrison guard in the city.

Although we did not talk much, I wrote a couple of poems for Long, and he wrote a couple back. His seemed fresh and new. I started to grow fond of him. Even though he did not look very intelligent, he was no doubt an un-carved wood, preserving its original wholeness. In those hard times in the countryside, I labored in the fields during the day and taught peasants at night. I often ate nothing but plain rice. Long would come to see me every weekend, bringing me a sack of carrots or cabbage. He would sit by my side, warming my frostbitten hands. The first night he kissed me, I cried. I was torn between a desire to marry him and a strong will to make revolution.

One night I dreamt that an old granny came to see me. She asked me whether I still wanted to study. I said eagerly, "Yes, particularly English. I have a BA in English and I love English. But I just don't know how to use my English to serve the people." She disappeared without leaving me an answer.

Three days later I was sent by the authorities to have a physical checkup in town. Then I was informed that the Educational Bureau in Beijing had decided to send me to study English in Britain. The day I left the Dobie Mountains, Long looked every sad. In his dream he saw me change into a rabbit and run away from him. His colleagues tried to persuade him to give up on me and marry a local girl. He would not listen but volunteered to go teach Chinese in Tibet for two years. When Jiang heard the news that I was going abroad, he wrote a letter to me, implying that we could resume our courtship. But I wrote him back, and told him that I would not abandon Long, who had loved me and supported me when I was a peasant.

Nevertheless, I was tortured by my attachment to Long since I did not really have any passion for him. We did not seem to have a common language. Apart from my respect for his virtues, I found no connection between us. I struggled and struggled and finally decided to break up with him after I returned from Britain. But when I saw how much he suffered—his head swung helplessly like a madman—my heart melted. Considering all his virtues, I signed the marriage certificate.

18

As expected, my marriage has been miserable from day one. We could not talk. He never wrote me another poem. Perhaps the two poems seemed original and fresh because he had not read any poetry in his life. We could make love, we could have a child, but I refused to kiss him. I simply could not. Mei has witnessed my suffering. I do not tell lies. But since I chose the bitter fruit, I should try to make it more tolerable for swallowing.

My brain starts to blur into the future.

"Ladies and Gentleman:

Today we have Yun Yu, a distinguished woman from the Earth, to give us a talk on her philosophy of marriage. Let's give her a warm welcome."

Thunderous applause.

"Well, every word I am going to tell you today is not from books but from my personal experience." Applause.

"If you want a dependable, secure marriage, you should never marry a man or a woman you love. Marriage has nothing to do with love. Marriage should be a form of cooperation for survival. That is what my husband Long and I have found out. Like the Mosul Community on the border of the Sichuan province in China, marriage, or simply a family, does not have any authority over personal life such as sexual love, political stance, or professional career. You may think of it largely as economic cooperation. Well, it is. But it does not mean the money made by the husband and wife has to be combined. Each has a bank account so each feels economic independence. I pay for the house and my husband pays for food. This week I give Mei thirty dollars; next week he gives her ten. We have no quarrels over money. I have a lot of extramarital lovers, while my husband has none. When I asked him to take some and told him life would be pretty dull having contact with only one person and one body, he replied with a smile, 'It is my personal choice.' So our equality lies in our equal freedom of choice. It took a long time for us to be open-minded and tolerant of each other, but we finally succeeded. Now I still do not love my husband. Love is enclosure. Because I do not love him, my wild passion enables me to reach different beings in our world. Sometimes, I feel sorry for my husband. He loves me and his love blocks him from all other women. If our marriage is a mistake, it is his mistake, not mine. Last week at the banquet for our thirtieth wedding anniversary, I told him: 'Feel free to have a divorce anytime you want.' I will not call my marriage happy, but it is tolerable. As I advance in my career, financial status, and social rank, I tend to have more lovers. I tend to forget him or hate him. But when I am sick or having misfortune, I know I am falling down on a soft mattress, not on a hard rock." Loud laughter burst out from the audience.

About six months after my talk, that planet sent me a huge medal—a sort of Nobel prize from their planet. Their letter of thanks said that their rate of divorce had dropped nearly thirty percent after my talk.

19

Happiness again sobers me.

"Mei, what are you doing? Are you going to show me your poems?"

"I am coming. I have been revising a poem but I am afraid you will not like it."

"Please read it to me."

Freedom is individuality.

If

Individuality is selfishness,

Then

Freedom is You.

Why

Can't I Be Us? Because

You steal, invade, and take over

Till I disintegrate and disappear

To make another replica of You.

I am selfish, too.

But we can never be two,

Unless Me equals You.

A feeling of relief swept over my heart. "Mei, I am happy for you. You have grown up and you are your own person now."

You are right, Mei. I am guilty of being selfish. Before you were five, when you needed a mother to cling to most, I abandoned you to your grandma, your aunt, and your father for my own career. The day I left for Shanghai, you grabbed me, calling me a bad mother.

She's only three

Her little fingers circled my throat

like a gold necklace

only locked too tight

Tighter and tighter it went

I was forced to beat her buttocks

She refused to let me go

My nail pricked her tender skin

like a thorn

She released her baby chain

With tears in her

raven eyes she

said, "A bad mother, people say!"

Walked away like a demonstrator

with her aunt

A scarlet badge

seared on my professional heart.

"Mom, I love you. I feel very lucky to have you as a model. But I feel I need my independence now."

"Yes, it is time you set sail on your own wings."

"Goodnight, Mom."

"Goodnight."

20

After so much defecation, I feel my body being purified, my heart becoming tender, and the world turning rosy. To love is beautiful; to live is meaningful.

My first memory of the world is of green fields and the golden sun. My father was shouldering my older sister and me in two baskets with a long pole. My mother was riding on a donkey. Everybody was laughing. My sister and I flying up and down in turn, like a seesaw.

A big part of my life fits perfectly into the cliché, "being born in New China and growing up under the Red Flag." But unexpectedly, an ideal system, once established, had bred its own grave-diggers. I went to elementary school in 1957. One day my sister came back from her boarding school and whispered to me: In the West everybody is equal before the law and no parent has the right to beat a child. My thin body trembled like a reed in the wind. Although I did not even know where the West was, I wrote my first big character poster.

My father gave me five cents to buy vinegar. I ran very fast. When I got to the store I found my pocket had a hole in it and the five cents was gone. My father beat me. Down with his tyranny!

Two years later, one summer afternoon, my father mumbled two words to me like a mosquito.

"What?" I asked.

He mumbled again.

"What?"

"Where are your ears?" He slapped my face.

Being too short to get to his face, I slapped his pot belly. He kicked me and I yelled, "Better leave a scar on my leg so that I can renew my hatred for you like a farmhand to a landlord whenever I see it."

Having trampled landlords in China to the ground, my father was so enraged by my comparison that he beat me black and blue with a club. At dinnertime he told the family a joke with a glib tongue.

One day the master wanted to set up his mosquito-net for the summer and asked his servant to buy some Zhugan (bamboo sticks). An hour later, the servant came back with a basket and showed the master the Zhugan (pig liver) he had bought.

"Where are your ears?" asked the master.

"Here." The servant took out the pig ears he had hidden in his large pocket.

"How did you know I'd also bought the ears, Master?"

The whole family laughed. But I refused to forgive him. From then on whenever he beat me, I always beat him back. I became known in the county as "the girl who dares to beat the mayor." Soon my father stopped beating children because all my brothers and sisters learned to beat back.

One day in 1958, I pointed to the three huge characters on the wall and asked my big brother what they meant. He ran a step forward and turned a somersault, shouting: "Big—Leap— Forward!" Soon my family cracked our cooking pots and we ate in public dining halls. I finally got the chance to experience how Oliver Twist wanted more. I loved the campaigns of killing flies and sparrows. I still remember the laughable scene in which Uncle Du, with a magnifying glass, tried to find maggots in dried manure. When he failed, he offered me fifty cents to buy twenty maggots from my small box. I refused because I had promised to hand in fifty maggots to my teacher the following day. Oh, how I loved the sparrow meat cooked with bean curd by my brother. But later he told me, because all the birds were killed, the crops suffered from insects. The following year we did not have enough grain to eat. We ate all sorts of tree leaves. I remember the trees were still sprouting in the fall. And we forgot the taste of meat. But we felt stronger without meat; we were told that all of the meat went to pay our debt to the Russians. The Russians were much poorer than us. In one of our plays, it was said that they only ate the stars and the moon.

How could one only see the Cultural Revolution as horrible as "flood and monsters"? It was also a once-in-a-thousand-years good time for the youth. We traveled free all over the country. My older sister fought back at her high school and asked her principal face to face why he had written a black letter to our parents. No more classes, no more exams. We danced, we sang. Every day was exciting like a festival. We learned what books could never have taught us.

Why did my mother shed tears the day I left for the countryside? I knew I was born flimsy. The first time I carried a shoulder pole, no more than fifty pounds, my face turned ghastly pale. When I was sent to the clinic, the nurse could not find my pulse. I gained the name of "Bourgeois Miss." But three years of hard labor forged me into a strong horse. During the last harvest before I left the farm, I beat everyone in carrying bundles of rice. When I climbed the creaking ladder to the top of the high stacks, I stood, with a pointed shoulder pole in one hand, looking down at the exhausted young men on the ground. My heart started to throb, "The times have changed; men and women are equal. What a man can do a woman can also do." What a man cannot do a woman can also do.

I enjoyed outdoor classes during my college days. In Luoyang Tractor Factory, I saw for the first time a worker who stood in one spot screwing bolts on the assembly line all day long and all year round—how fearful to be a screw on the revolutionary machine. Even now when I want to show off my English vocabulary, I will ask an American, "Do you know the word 'Paulownia'?" Ha, ha, you don't know. I learned this English word during my open-door school days in a village surrounded by Paulownia trees.

You think that I oppose the current Chinese Reform because of my sentiments for the victimized women and children. No, you are wrong. After 1949, China had been distilled into a pond of purified water and its people pinned to the age of innocence. Reform has at least opened the dams and washed the nation to the open sea. Stirring, risky, promising. Life, like love, is an adventure in its natural form. Great order comes out of great chaos.

China, to other people, may have been a hell, but for me it has been a utopia. I love China, its past, present, and future.

21

Why don't you return to China? Good question. It won't be a riddle if you have read Henry James' Portrait of a Lady and understood why Isabel chose to marry Osmond.

At the Immigration and Naturalization Service counter, I inquired on how long it would take me to become an American citizen. "Six years? Why so long?" The young officer looked at me and said with a funny smile, "For psychological adjustment." Perhaps he was joking with me but I took his words seriously. I had been suffering an inferiority complex in America because of my "alien" status. In China every citizen is taught to become the master of the country by strangling the master of the self; whereas in America, there is no master of the country but only the master of each individual. But I did not realize this then. My eagerness to obtain American citizenship was actually my attempt to cure my psychological problem caused by that lingering illusion of needing to conform to the master of the country. I might feel intellectually superior to some poorly educated Americans, but I felt positionally inferior to all Americans, regardless their skin-color, age, or gender. When I left the INS building, a black woman shouted at me because I had parked my car in the wrong place and blocked her way. I apologized to her like a concubine to the master. But she kept screaming. I finally shouted back, "Fuck you!" She was first stunned and then laughed in an amused friendly manner. See, Americans really teach women how to fuck. Then we chatted for a while. When she learned that I had a daughter, she said she was teaching Modern Dance at the YWCA in Covina. "Take your daughter there and I'll teach her how to sway her hips."

22

Why do I feel the world is so beautiful tonight? Am I dying? I can feel my love fragmenting at the moment, just like the love of that funny Edward at Urbana. I seem to be waiting for somebody. Is it Ramon?

Perhaps.

perhaps the eagle is not in good shape

perhaps the seagull is away again

perhaps the penguin is shunning an imagined death

perhaps the swan is no longer able to visit the earth

perhaps the open-mouthed frog is waiting for

another line of raindrops

perhaps the sensitive plant feels nothing when over-touched

perhaps it is time for the dandelion

to outgrow her downy naiveté

shaving all her hair of anxieties off

to become a true bald soprano

perhaps that is the last signpost in the sea:

care ceases when the light of waiting burns out.

Oh, I love Ramon, I love Simon, I love Edward, I love Marios, I love Bob, I love Sun, I love Tony, I love Preuss and Karen, I love Dryle and Marlowe, I love Mao and Deng, and I love Meng in spite of our rivalry. I must restate that when I made love with Meng it was not merely a form of political rebellion.

Door and blinds shut

In utter claustrophobia

At the moment Heaven and Earth merge

On the spot where the sun and the moon meet

Eyes slanting down

Hands groping up

A sudden spray of twilight

From the sea of dark blue air

A huge baby whale

Hurled itself to suck the single Amazonian breast

My fingers caress its twitching tail

Its diaper wets

I've found no whale but a penguin

Under its swallowtail

The same whiteness

Touches our reciprocal thrill.

I love all harmless sexual attractions. Even for a stranger in the street.

Accidentally I catch his eye or he catches mine

An inexpressible communion flows

as if falling in love at the first sight

I deliberately turn away

Then curiously I turn to see he is still gazing at me

My heart throbs

huddling itself behind my marital shield

Yet irresistibly my body melts

by the melodious voice of the merman

Nothing more than the voluptuous sea

that can so easily seduce me

I love his gentle, amiable face

though wrinkled, beaming with tenderness

He loves reading, having read too much

furrowed his brow carelessly with the increase of knowledge

I used to loathe baldness so much

Now I love him to the touch

Although I hate hairy bodies

seeing his naked arms and legs

covered with yellow grass of a long drought

I have a longing to touch them no matter how rough

His eyes betray a stronger desire to caress me.

I am entirely different from this stranger. My skin, my hair, my voice, my tongue. Yet it must be the difference that has bewitched me. But difference is a lovable monster. I painfully shun him.

We finally saw each other, on and off, for a few weeks. When I was alone, I chanted his name like a witch. I was certain he heard me. When we were parting, we knew we would never see each other again. He is mine as I am his—a fantasy that tickles life with needles of pleasurable pain.

Perhaps you think that I love all men indiscriminately. Actually I am very choosy. When I love a man, I appreciate his words. My lover must be a poet, a player with words that excite my spiritual orgasm. Then I ignore all norms, even morality. I play with him in primal language in the intertwining of our yin and yang birds. My love requires a lover's service or obligation. My lover is my proofreader in the making. Once he sees my body concealed in civilized trappings, he is obliged to read my words. I am unable to produce a thrill without the artillery of a shared language. Even though his contribution to this shared language is utterly different from mine, I love the difference.

Once you read my body, you must read my words. I loathe a man who is only interested in the transparency of the skin.

For most people, forbidden love is the sweetest. For me, each love is forever original and personal. I do not want voyeurs to steal our pleasure. I can only make love in the freedom of the dark sea. Without the sense of freedom at the right moment, I would be too rigid to spread my limbs apart.

I am a charioteer, forever pulling apart in two opposite directions. When I am climbing up, my feet are stepping down. I am a tree, whose branches are stretching into the sky and roots are striking down into the earth.

Who says I am yin, a passive object? That is not me. I have never seen a better mover than me. Most men are attracted as well as threatened by difference. They kill the other out of jealousy, like the crazy Emperor Gao Yang (550-559A.D.), who chopped off courtesan Xue's head, dismembered her, and then used her thigh as the musical instrument pipa to bewail his love for her. I never kill the other; I depart from one to the next.

Perhaps I have defecated too much; a few sheets are spotted with nothing but yellow tears and red blood. I seem to have been purified, but purification is not necessarily a good thing. As the Chinese saying goes, "If the water is pure, there is no fish. If a person is complete, he or she has no friends." Am I approaching a fearful completion or enclosure? I hope I will not be petrified into a bird-of-paradise flower that can never fly in spite of its yearnings.

Though I have wings

though I can fly

higher than a sparrow

almost out of sight

yet with an invisible string

to the ground I am tied—

soaring like an eagle

Nothing but a . . . .

23

I rose up, took a shower, and wrapped my body in a colorful silk robe. I lay down and my consciousness started blurring again. In the twilight, I climbed to the Airplane Tower, the highest building on Heda Campus, where a student jumped to death in protest against the removal of the Democratic Wall. I tiptoed on the flat roof, with arms flung up in the twin sleeves of ribbon. For a moment, I froze in a dramatic pose. Like a bird, I was overlooking the busy streets of Los Angeles, galaxies of twinkling cars. Gradually they became a sea of bicycles in Beijing, then a farmers market with haggling men, women, and children. All of a sudden, it came to me that human world is but a sea fraught with murderous Shamu, revenging Moby Dick, star fish, sea turtles, small fish babies, tempting red corals, and tangling green sea weeds. With a strong urge for swimming, I plunged into the blue sea of air. My robe was stripped off by the wind. My nude body became light and transparent. I saw people below were laughing, with fingers pointing at me, "Look, Yunzhongjun (雲中君Goddess of Clouds)." I heard celestial music from Qu Yuan's "Nine Songs: Goddess of Clouds" with words:

Serenely dwelling in the palace of clouds,

She shines along with the sun and the moon.

Riding in the chariot driven by dragons,

She in regal splendor roves across the heaven.

Descending through clouds, I eventually hit the ground. I woke up with a sudden jerk, only to find myself still lying in bed. I feel very hungry. I must be emaciated. Food, food— again, an old Chinese custom: a person should have a last fill of food before traveling to a different world. What do you want? Corn tortillas, tacos, pizza, hot dogs, cheeseburgers from McDonald's, salmon, rainbow trout, turkey. . . . Are you sure you do not want some Chinese food? I have had Chinese food most of my life and I must absorb something different before I go.

Now I am staring at the large tray of things I am craving. Among them, a Boston pear teases me to a chuckle. Two months ago, I gave Edna and Sam a basket of juicy pears as their engagement present, a kind of present that can never make me feel regret or tip over my psychological balance. When I feel good about Edna and Sam, I would think in English and call my present "pear"—the auspicious wish of a permanent "pair." When I feel bad about Edna and Sam, I will think in Chinese and call my present "li"—a malicious omen of separation. East and West. Li and pear. Li—separation; pear—pair. Separation and pair; pair and separation . . . .

I continue to stare at the edible profusion of colors and shapes—staring is reading, reading is eating. I eat and eat until I burp. When I close my eyes, I hear Mei crying. Don't cry. I am not dying yet. I will teach you some Chinese songs tomorrow.

A few drops fall on my face. Is the roof leaking again? Why, it smells like Long. Is Long shedding tears? He approaches me closer and closer. I can see his quivering lips. Do you still know how to kiss? We have not kissed each other for more than thirteen years—since the day we got married. I suddenly have a desire to kiss him. But today I am too exhausted. I will kiss you tomorrow . . . .

The Wings of Imagination

When the lines end, the wings of imagination spread.

AFTERWORD

More than twenty years have passed since my initial publication of Clouds and Rain in 1994. Despite its limited circulation, numerous scholars have found this book and critiqued it in their papers, dissertations, and classrooms. My daughter, who always believed this book will appeal to popular readers, urged me to revise it in chronological order with consistent first person narrative in this new version, Passion of Clouds & Rain. Writing this novel gave me great pleasure in exploring the enigmatic nature of love, sex, and relationships, as well as in experimenting with a narrative style that blends prose and lyrics to reflect the aesthetic beauty of life.

Thank you for reading and being a Zhi Yin.

Edna Wu

October 1, 2015

About the Author

 Edna Wu (Qingyun Wu) is a professor of Chinese at California State University, Los Angeles. Her major academic and translation publications include Female Rule in Chinese and English Literary Utopias (A 1996 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Book), A Dream of Glory (Fanhua Meng), A Novel about the Chinese People's Liberation Army: The Third Eye, and The Remote Country of Women.

To learn more about the author, read reviews, leave comments, or to order books, please visit:

www.ednawu.wordpress.com

Facebook / Edna Wu

Edna Wu is available for select readings and lectures. To inquire about a possible appearance, please visit her website.

