Kingston - I Love a Broad Margin to My Life

The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts
China Men
Hawaii One Summer
Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book
To Be the Poet
The Fifth Book of Peace As Editor:
The Literature of California: Native American Beginnings to 1945
Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
Published by Alfred A. Knopf Copyright 2011 by Maxine Hong Kingston All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. www.aaknopf.com Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material: Coleman Barks: Excerpt from Song of the Reed from The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks.

Reprinted by permission of Coleman Barks. Irving Berlin Music Company: Excerpt from Sittin in the Sun (Countin My Money) by Irving Berlin, copyright 1953 by Irving Berlin. Copyright renewed. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Irving Berlin Music Company.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kingston, Maxine Hong.
I love a broad margin to my life / by Maxine Hong Kingston. 1st ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-59533-1
1. Kingston, Maxine Hong. 2. 3. 3.

Chinese American authorsBiography. 4. Chinese American womenBiography. I. Title.
PS 3561.152 Z 46 2011
818.54dc22
[B] 2010028819 v3.1 To the Ancestors andmy contemporaries andour children

I am turning 65 years of age. In 2 weeks I will be 65 years old.

I can accumulate time and lose time? I sit here writing in the dark cant see to change these penciled words just like my mother, alone, bent over her writing, just like my father bent over his writing, alone but for me watching. She got out of bed, wrapped herself in a blanket, and wrote down the strange sounds Father, who was dead, was intoning to her. He was reading aloud calligraphy that hed writtencarved with inkbrush on his tombstone. She wasnt writing in answer. She wasnt writing a letter. Who was she writing to? Nobody.

This well-deep outpouring is not for anything. Yet we have to put into exact words what we are given to see, hear, know. Mothers eyesight blurred; she saw trash as flowers. Oh. How very beautiful. She was lucky, seeing beauty, living in beauty, whether or not it was there.

I am often looking in mirrors, and singling out my face in group photographs. Am I pretty at 65? What does old look like? Sometimes I am wrinkled, sometimes not. So much depends upon lighting. A camera crew shot pictures of meone of 5 most influential people over 60 in the East Bay. I am homely; I am old. I look like a tortoise in a curly white wig.

I am stretching head and neck toward the light, such effort to lift the head, to open the eyes. Black, shiny, lashless eyes. Talking mouth. I must utter you something. My wrists are crossed in my lap; wrinkles run up the left forearm. (Its my right shoulder that hurtsRollerblading accidentdoes the pain show, does my hiding it?) I shouldve spoken up, Dont take my picture, not in that glare.

One side of my neck and one cheek are gone in black shadow. Nobody looks good in hard focus, high contrastblack sweater and skirt, white hair, white sofa, white curtains. My colors and my home, but rearranged. The crew had pushed the reds and blues and greens aside. The photographer, a young woman, said, Great. Great.

From within my body, I cant sense that crease on my left cheek. I have to getwin compliments. You are beautiful. So cute. Such a kind face. You are simple.

You move fast. Chocolate Chip. A student I taught long ago called me Chocolate Chip. And only yesterday a lifelong friend told Earll, my husband, hes lucky, hes got methe Chocolate Chip. They mean, I think, my round face and brown-bead eyes. I keep count.

I mind that I be good-looking. I dont want to look like Grandmother, Ah Po. Her likeness is the mask of tragedy. An ape weeps when another ape weeps. She is Ancestress; she is prayed to. She sits, the queen, center of the family in China, center of the family portrait (my mother in it too, generations of in-laws around her)all is black and white but for a dot of jade-green at Pos ears, and a curve of jade-green at her wrist.

Lotus lily feet show from the hem of her gown. She wanted to be a beauty. She lived to be 100. My mother lived to be 100. One hundred and three, she said. Chinese lie about their age, making themselves older.

Or maybe she was 97 when the lady official from Social Security visited her, as the government visits everyone who claims a 100th birthday. MaMa showed off; she pedaled her exercise bike, hammer-curled hot pink barbells. Suddenly stoppedwhat if So-so Security wont believe shes a century old? Heres a way for calculating age: Subtract from her age of death my age now. 100 65 = 35 I am 35 years-to-go. Lately, Ive been writing a book a decade; I have time to write 3 more books. Jane Austen wrote 6 books.

Ive written 6 books. Hers are 6 big ones, mine 4 big ones and 2 small ones. I take refuge in numbers. I waste my time with sudoku. Day dawns, I am greedy, helpless to begin 6-star difficulty sudoku. Sun goes down; Im still stuck for that square that will let the numbers fly into place.

What good am I getting out of this? Im not stopping time. Nothing to show for my expenditures. Pure nothing. 8 days before my birthday, I went to John Mulligans funeral. He was 10 years younger than me. (I have a superstition that as long as I, any writer, have things to write, I keep living.) I joined in singing again and again a refrain, Send thou his soul to God. (I have a superstition that as long as I, any writer, have things to write, I keep living.) I joined in singing again and again a refrain, Send thou his soul to God.

Earll, though, did not sing, did not say any of the Latin, any of the prayers. He muttered that the Catholic Church divides you against yourself, against your sexy body. The Church is a gyp. John Mulligan shouldve been given a pagan ceremony; Woman Warrior, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Cuchulain had come to him in Viet Nam. John carried them, tied to him by silver cords, to the U.S. The priest, who came from the Philippines, kept reminding one and all that the benefits he was offering were for Christians only.

But he did memorialize John being born and raised in Scotland, and coming to America at 17. Summarily drafted to Viet Nam. You didnt have to be a citizen to be drafted. The war count, as of today: Almost 2,000 killed in Iraq. G.I.s. 7 days before my birthday, I had breakfast with Mary Gordon, whos always saying things I never thought before: Its capitalistic of us to expect any good from peace demonstrations, as if ritual has to have use, gain, profit. 7 days before my birthday, I had breakfast with Mary Gordon, whos always saying things I never thought before: Its capitalistic of us to expect any good from peace demonstrations, as if ritual has to have use, gain, profit.

I agreed, Yes, its Buddhist to go parading for the sake of parading. Can you think of a writer (besides Chekhov) who is holy and an artist? Grace Paley. She smiled. Well, yes. Obviously. Oh, no. Oh, no.

Thoreaus too Protestant, tidy, nonsexual. He goes home to Mom for hot chocolate. No sex, no tragedy, no humor. Come to think of it, Thoreau doesnt make me laugh. A line from