Girl / Guāi 乖
In Lisbon I bought boba from a girl who looked twelve, maybe
a small fifteen. We speak Mandarin and I hear her obedience.
乖 we praise the child who does what she is told / works
the family business / fills out forms her parents can’t read /
earns her keep / makes herself useful / dutiful / demure.
乖 we praise the child who follows rules / anticipates needs /
keeps quiet / keeps to herself / keeps secrets / keeps unseen
and unheard / respectful / well-behaved / docile / obedient.
Google translates 乖 to “good.”
Only an obedient daughter is good.
My father said I was a bad daughter
when I did not obey absolutely.
The girl in the boba shop is maybe still good / a pleasure
to have in class / does what’s expected / doesn't ask why /
feels indebted to her parents for keeping her alive.
乖 we praise the girl who will make a good wife / good
daughter / good carer / good maid / good server / good
worker / good breeder / good ant / good lamb / good corpse.
乖 we praise the woman who lets everyone else eat first /
supports her husband / supports her child / supports her parents / supports her
in-laws / saves nothing for herself.
In high school I asked my mother why she was deferential
to an old man who insulted her / why she sent money to her
brothers / why she felt guilty / why she did not leave.
I don’t remember her answer or if she was silent.
乖 we praise a woman who is silent.
乖 we praise a woman who complies.
A dead woman is silent.
Is a dead woman good?
乖 I was praised only
when I did something I did not want to.
Obedience is to bury yourself.
Cockroach
At 9 I went to a school in a rough neighborhood in Las Vegas.
It was called Paradise. My first day a 7-year-old said
fuck you ching chong bitch. You can tell a rough neighborhood
in Las Vegas by people walking. No one walks in the heat
unless they have to. You can tell by how run-down and
low to the ground houses are, like they're embarrassed to be
there, too. Windows have bars like prison cells. The
low cell houses sit beside apartments that look like roach
motels. I lived in one and it was the first time I saw a
cockroach—
a big brown shining thing scuttling
across yellowed linoleum, not cute like the kids’
sheet music for La Cucaracha would have you believe.
A college professor studied cockroach intelligence.
What an aggro word, cockroach.
A man must have coined it.
As if it's not bad enough he wants me
barefoot in the kitchen, he sends a cockroach my way
like a dirty martini.
My father once said I should learn to cook
because I was a girl. Now all I make are smoothies
sweetened with honey.
Maybe if Kafka had been a woman
he would have turned
into a bee
and flown
far away.
Origin Story: Triptych
1. Infant
I don’t remember the first time I lost my mother.
I can only imagine: infant wheeled
through airports infant crying
in grandmother’s lap infant diaper change
in economy class bathroom.
Birthed from Latin infant
means not speaking unable to speak.
In other words I cannot ask her
what it was like: each separation a loss.
In other words the past is a kind of infancy.
After returning I’d sit in mother’s lap
staring at photos of myself
who could not speak: infant in blue
stroller infant in yellow
sweater infant in blood-red
coat.
Now grown I scan photos of my mother
from when she was younger than me.
Is death a kind of infancy?
The dead cannot speak either.
In dreams we babble a nonsense language
infants together cradled by stars.
2. Kid
In the first dream I’m a little kid
on my first yellow school bus.
A man with a greasy ponytail snatches
my mother from the sidewalk pushes her
into a dirty blue car. He looks like a shadow
of Disney’s Gaston. I watch them disappear
from the bus window wake from naptime
gasp-sobbing so I can't speak.
My animal panic scares my bullies
into patting my shoulders with kid gloves.
Kid was once a crude word for children
sold into labor in British colonies—children
bought and worked like livestock—little goats
born to be seized and consumed. Kid
nabbed. Kidnapped.
Now I am old enough that my friends have children.
The babies scream when their mothers turn
away for a moment—primal fear of loss.
In the second dream I follow my mother
up the long spiral of a crumbling stone castle.
In one version she stands outside
helpless as a tower collapses around me.
In the other I am frozen watching her
buried beneath gray stones.
3. Stone
Like stones I skipped a grade and then another.
When a skipped stone slows it quickly sinks.
Does the stone feel itself slowing?
Does it know when it sinks?
Did my mother skip me because she knew
how soon she would die?
When I stopped I thought I might die too
stoned and moss-sunken.
The sea by San Francisco is filled with worn
headstones of the forgotten.
Stone comes from an old Germanic word
meaning to stiffen.
My father accuses me of being stiff
which is to say he does not like me with boundaries.
After he remarried he kept my mother’s red
urn in the attic for years.
I thought of stealing ashes to wear around my neck
in a precious stone like a neighbor
who made her Siamese cats into a string
of diamonds one after another.
One day I was away he buried her
in my garden beneath a mound
of small white stones. He only told me
after the large cactus yellowed and died.
I avoided thinking about it for months.
Is it okay to replace the dead with living?
