Homebase. Shawn Wong
and she was dead serious. She tested his patience.
A few months after they were married, my mother received a letter from her father telling her that China was closed to her, that it was no longer her home. She was now orphaned to this country and to my father. It would still be a few months before he told her about his history and the lives of his grandfathers because, among other things, he had to teach her how to cook.
When I started driving, I used to drive around at night through the hills, through empty streets, just drive around at night to keep from thinking about the pursuit of my own life. To keep from settling down into the dreams of Father and Mother. But in the end my life was nothing unless I pursued their lives, pursued the life of my grandfather, my great-grandfather. I mirrored them at the beginning, shaped everything behind them, told stories about them to myself, read yellowed letters from one to another. I knew more about them than they would have revealed to me if they were alive. I knew more about the love of my father for my mother than most sons know.
II
I AM THE SON OF MY FATHER, MY GRANDFATHERS, AND I HAVE a story to tell about my history, about a moment in the Pacific when I heard myself saying “ever yours.” “Ever” is a word that moves like a song, exposing the heart in its tone, never hiding, never patronizing. The word speaks directly, creates form, and has its own voice.
Great-Grandfather built the railroad through the Sierra Nevada in difficult seasons. Night was a time of peace. On warm nights Great-Grandfather would move away from camp to sleep, away from the night workers. There was a river nearby the camp, and farther upstream, the falls. He always walked beside the moonlit river at night, the cascading water glowing white with the reflection made his footsteps visible. And in the windless night he crossed warm pockets of night air, then cool dark spots, but as he moved closer to the sound of the falls, the night air became moist and only cool. His skin tasted the air. It was an uphill hike to the base of the falls and a steeper climb to the top, where he rested, looking down on the fires of camp. He climbed on large granite stones to reach the top of the falls. He began to sweat. The mist from the crashing falls soaked him and mixed with his sweat. The noise was relief from the railroad iron noise of the day. He rested for a moment, looking down into the river’s valley. The water appeared vague, uncertain, it became the sound of moonlight, rather than the sound of water rushing through the valley. The moonlit mist carved valleys out of the granite, not the river. The moon made sounds in Great-Grandfather’s eyes, made the mist from the falls look like gray smoke floating down the valley, washing out all the details of the canyon walls, losing its night walker in its movement, cooling his exhaustion, and leaving him dreaming a moan out of all his years of living. But he always woke from that easy rest, and demanded that the tradition he passed on be more than a dream and moan of breath. It was his own voice.
Great-Grandfather heard the last anger of his body in late summer, he craved for the violence of bare lighted rooms, that yellow glow to calm himself, that congestion of men without lovers, without families. He knew he was stuck here. In Wyoming, the thunderstorms moved in every day to bring afternoon showers. The raindrops made the dust rise from the ground, filled his nostrils with the smell of moist earth, he felt the ache in his body rise as the dust rises in the wide meadows. His giving in to America, here, was the violence of his soul and he felt it, chased it, and let it overcome him. After the rains, the humidity rose and moist air mixed with the dust the rain had raised. It was a good smell and he bared his chest to that air.
We do not have our women here. My wife is coming to live here. We are staying. Nothing was sweet about those days I lived alone in the city, unless you can find sweetness in that kind of loneliness. I slept in the back of a kitchen by a grimy window where the light and noises of the wet city streets were ground in and out of me like the cold. The bed was so small I could hardly move away from my dreams. And when I awakened with the blue light of the moon shining in, there would be no dreams. That one moment when I wake, losing my dreams, my arms and heart imagining that she was near me moving closer and I float in her movements and light touch. But the blue light and the noise were always there and I would have nothing in my hands.
“I left for San Francisco one month before my brother. In those days, ships were bringing us in illegally. They usually dropped a lifeboat outside the Golden Gate with the Chinese in it. Then the ship steamed in and at night the lifeboat came in quietly to unload. If they were about to be caught, my people were thrown overboard. But, you see, they couldn’t swim because they were chained together. My brother died on that night and now his bones are chained to the bottom of the ocean. Now I am fighting to find a place in this country.”
My father and I used to drive down a dusty road on that tropical island singing “Home on the Range,” the dust pouring through the windows, collecting on the big furry seats of our Buick Super Eight. I followed him on his rounds, checking building sites, riding shotgun, wearing my Superman shirt and a white starched sailor’s hat, and carrying a replica of a long-barreled Colt that made my arm ache whenever I lifted it to take aim. And when my father got sick and we had to fly home, I thought of all those jeep rides we went on, running down a dusty road, holding yourself on with both hands, and when we stopped, the dust would catch us and get in my hair and the corners of my mouth. And instead of making you feel dirty, it dried your back. Before we left, mother pulled the Buick into the garage, scraping the side, pinning us in. I crawled out of the window and went for help.
Great-Grandfather’s wife was a delicate, yet a strong and energetic lady, insisting in her letters to Great-Grandfather to let her come and join him. The loneliness was overpowering him, yet he resisted her pleas, telling her that life was too dangerous for a woman. “The people and the work move like hawks around me, I feel chained to the ground, unable even to cry for help. The sun blisters my skin, the winters leave me sick, the cold drains us. I look into the eyes of my friends and there is nothing, not even fear.”
Upon receiving his letter, Great-Grandmother told her friends that she was leaving to join her husband, saying that his fight to survive was too much for a single man to bear. And so she came and was happy and the hawks had retreated.
She lived in the city and gave birth to a son while Great-Grandfather was still working in the Sierras building the railroad. He wrote to her, saying that the railroad would be finished in six months and he would return to the city and they would live together again as a family.
During the six months, the hawks came back into his vision. “The hawks had people faces laughing as they pulled me apart with their sharp talons, they had no voices, just their mouths flapping open in a yellow hysteria of teeth.” He knew that this was the beginning of sickness for his lover, he sensed her trouble and moments of pain, no word from her was necessary. “Your wounds are my wounds,” he said in the night. “The hawks that tear our flesh are disturbed by the perfect day, the pure sun that warms the wounds, I am singing and they cannot tear us apart.”
She saw the sun as she woke that morning, after waking all night long in moments of pain. The sun was so pure. She thought that this could not be the city, its stench, its noise replaced by this sweet air. She knew that this air, this breath, was her husband’s voice. The ground was steaming dry, the humus became her soul, alive and vital with the moving and pushing of growth. She breathed deeply, the air was like sleep uninterrupted by pain, there was no more home to travel to, this moment was everything that loving could give and that was enough. She was complete and whole with that one breath, like the security of her childhood nights, sleeping with mother, wrapping her arms around her, each giving the other the peace of touch. There was a rush of every happiness in her life that she could feel and touch and as she let go, she thought of their son, and the joy of his birth jarred her and she tried desperately to reach out to wake, to hold on to that final fear, to grasp his childhood trust, but the smell of the humus, the moist decaying leaves struck by sunlight and steaming in her dreams was too much, and she was moving too fast into sleep.
Great-Grandfather had dreams and made vows to his son. “I shall take my son away from these hawks who cause me to mourn. My tears leave scars on my face. There is no strength in self-pity. I will take my son away and move deeper into this country.”
For Great-Grandfather it was not enough anymore to say he was longtime Californ’. He had lost his faith in the land.