Bridge across the sky, p.10
Bridge Across the Sky, page 10
disheveled hair or clothing
on a few (Yen Yi,
for one), as if
they had tried
to intervene, perhaps
break up the fight,
but no one
with any real damage.
I want to run over
to Boocher, make sure
he’s okay. Ask him
what the hell
just happened.
Sit! my father
hisses.
Newbie…
Teegee, says Sow Fong.
I sit.
Boocher
carries a load
back to the kitchen.
The guards still stand
by the door, as if
they’d made no move
to stop the fight
or apprehend
the fighters.
Mealtime
ends. We return
to the barracks—
where cheers go up
the moment the guards
shut the door. Where Yen Yi
is mobbed by a crowd
shaking his hand and clapping him
on the back.
He rises
to speak.
Thank you.
Thank you all, but it wasn’t
just me. It was a band of us
who took the risk, who did
what needed to be done.
Is this about
what happened with Boocher
in the dining hall? Was it more
than a simple fight? Whatever
it was, Yen Yi
is taking bows for it.
He recites
a list of names.
The men step forward
or raise a hand, to cheers,
and then I understand:
four men ganged up
on one young guy
about my age.
With, of course,
the blessing—the mandate,
even—of my comrades
in the Association.
More cheers.
For those
who are unaware: today
we taught a lesson, a lesson
in consequences, to all
who would seek
to attack us, whether
through the use
of hostile examiners,
instigating guards,
or spies.
I look for Grandfather,
who is now a member
of Yen Yi’s apparatus.
Did his committee
discuss this action? Did they
approve it, passing it up
the chain of command
until it reached
the Association table?
I spot Sow Fong
on a bunk, his head
bent over
a paper story cheat sheet.
Father
is conferring with a group
of cronies. They’re frowning
but nodding,
as if making and agreeing with
important points
about the virtues
that outweigh the flaws
of Yen Yi
and the Association.
I try to catch
Yen Yi’s attention, but there
are too many eyes,
throughout the room,
seeking his.
occasionally
Ten meals go by, all
with Boocher still
on the job. I sit
in my old place
in one corner of the hall,
the place we used to talk,
but he comes near only
to wordlessly
set down dishes.
I can’t say
I blame him. I’m sure
he’s mad at me for what
my people, my Resistance,
did to him. I want to tell him
that I’m sorry, that it wasn’t me
or anything I wanted
or approved of, but I’m
bizarrely mad as well.
Mad at myself
for not defending him
more strongly
to Yen Yi, both before
and after the attack.
Mad at Boocher
for making me so
pathetically mad
at myself.
Mad at myself again
for making it all
about me when it was he
who was beaten up.
Ten meals go by as we each
stew in our anger, mine
with a side of guilt, the only change
from day to day, from meal
to meal, his slowly
healing wounds.
Grandfather tells me only
that he’s no longer involved
in any committees.
He spends his hours
as before: moving along
and up and down
the walls, squinting
at the testimony
of the past
and present.
Sow Fong and I
continue studying our paper stories
in the far left corner of the rec yard.
It’s my fifth month
in detention, and I have yet
to be questioned once.
Yukiko occasionally looks over
but always with the same
expression. What’s with her?
blurts Sow Fong. If she’s not
going to write back, why
does she keep waving?
I begin to wonder
if she actually has
written back, if Boocher,
in his anger, is refusing
to deliver her reply.
I curse him, curse myself
for stooping to a new
pathetic low: I’m now
mad at myself for being mad
at Boocher for entirely
imagined reasons.
two minutes
I’m sitting in my corner seat
in the dining hall, lonely
in the throng.
Sow Fong
never joins me here.
(I’m not cut out
to be a spy.) He’s out there
somewhere, probably telling
a funny story or rehearsing
his own paper tale.
Father is probably
swapping proverbs
and assertions with his crew.
Grandfather, no longer
on a committee, is probably just
masticating, as alone
as I am, though he seems
to need only a bowl of rice
or a poem on the wall
for company.
Occasionally,
I glance
toward Yen Yi
at the Association
table.
Boocher comes over
with a dish of rice,
and I don’t try
to meet his eyes.
He doesn’t move.
I take a few bites. I focus
on my food. He goes on
standing there like
my personal guard
or servant.
Do I need to clear
some obstacle from the table
so he can set
the damn rice down?
When I finally
look up, he begins
to set down the rice
but slowly, passing it
close to my face so that
I see, pinned
by his hand to the bottom
of the dish, a sheet
of folded paper.
I realize
what it must be
and look up at him
with wild glee, but his face
is tight-lipped, even
grim, and I
take the cue.
I wait
a full two minutes
before
retrieving the note.
my own
Dear Yip Jing,
I’m glad
we can finally do more
than stare at each other
through a fence. We heard
about the riot
at your meal, and afterward
the yard stood empty day
after day, though
we did see lights
and movement
in your windows. Then
we heard how it all
came out.
We owe you thanks, because
our food and our conditions
have improved as well,
though they were probably
better than yours
to begin with.
I hear that you
were one of the rioters. How
did you find the strength? What
did it feel like? I dream
of action, but it’s always set
in some world
not my own.
Is there writing
on the walls
of your barracks?
The walls of our rooms,
every inch, are covered
with poems!
There are poems
where poems have already
been written and faded
with the years, poems beneath
the already old paint
on the walls. They speak
of the hopes, the struggles,
and sometimes
the despair of those
who came before us.
They made me want to write
my own, for the first time
since leaving home. Here’s
the first one I wrote
in our new country:
Falling petals,
poems inscribed on the walls
of my heart.
old times
I’m electrified,
on fire, the morning light
that streams
into the barracks through
barred windows. I’m lit
with hope, desire, with
gratitude to the universe,
Yukiko, Boocher.
Boocher, my friend,
who undertook for me, whom I
suspected and failed
to console or stand up for
after his beating
by my people.
I spot Yen Yi
excusing himself
from a circle
of admirers. I follow him
to the upstairs lavatory,
take a seat
right next to his
in the otherwise
empty room.
Just
like old times,
eh, kid?
I tell him Boocher
is no spy. I tell him
why I’m sure: He knows
about the cheat notes
that are smuggled in.
He knows and hasn’t told. If
he were their spy, they’d know
about them too.
Hmmm. Yen Yi nods. Maybe
you’re right. Maybe he’s not
a spy. Maybe he is. But if
he’s not, it doesn’t mean
he can be trusted. If he is,
it doesn’t mean he might not also
keep some secrets
from his employers. With spies,
you don’t get loyalty,
you only get
what you pay for.
So that’s
why you beat him up?
I retort. Because of
“maybe, maybe not”?
Listen,
kid. What’s really
bugging you? Your belief
that Boocher isn’t a spy or that
we should not
have used force? If you were sure
that somebody is a spy, that somebody
is working intently
and through deceit
to send you and your family back
to China, to keep
all Chinese from entering
this country, no matter how desperate
their plight back home—a plight
made worse
by the aggressions
of the Western powers—no matter
how much skill or knowledge
or labor they might have
to offer this raw land,
would you then be okay
with giving him
a beating?
I find
no answer
to make.
No one who holds power
has ever given it up
without a fight.
No one
who holds power would hesitate
for a moment
to use it
to keep
what they have.
If Boocher was not
the spy, then
someone else was.
And he
saw what happened
to the one
we thought it was.
my dragon
Ten minutes later, still drunk
from the wine
of Yukiko’s letter (spiked
with Yen Yi’s rhetoric
of force and aggression),
I’m playing another game of Go
with Grandfather, this time
on even terms, refusing
my usual six stones
of help. Sick
of always defending
against his incursions and lured
by the strange blank slate
of an empty opening board,
I attack his stones
with abandon, refusing to cede
a single point of ground until—
I don’t get even now
how it happened—his groups
are suddenly all quite safe, and I
am the one on the run.
My enormous dragon
of a group—half my stones
on the board afloat
without a base—writhes
and twines but is cut off
again and again
from any escape, devours stones
of Grandfather’s only to find
the life it thought to gain
to be false, flies headlong
into a wall that might
as well have been
a literal
wall of stone.
It’s the most titanic battle
we’ve had—and then
I’m staring (and
trembling? Am
I trembling?) at the truth
of the board: my dragon
is dead.
I get up in disgust, though this
is the result I should have
more than expected
without my usual
six-stone advantage.
I begin
to walk away.
Grandson!
Come back!
Grandfather bangs a stone
repeatedly on the board
like an impatient rich man
ringing for a servant.
We have to talk
about this game!
But there are letters
to be written, too many other talks
to be had. I am reminded,
though, of the courtesies.
Good game, I call back
over my shoulder as I
go out the door.
better
Sorry! I’m telling Boocher
over and over. I’m sorry. I’m
so sorry. I should have
stood up for you more
with the Resistance. But
I’ve told them now. I told them
how I know
you’re not a spy.
Do you think
it will do any good?
he asks.
I have to say
no. He smiles.
That’s the spirit, he says
without a trace
of irony. Do the right thing,
no matter what
the results, no matter
how it might turn
to your own disadvantage.
Sometimes I
forget that too.
He looks
grimly at me.
I imagine the wealth
of hard experience
behind his words. I form
an unexpected resolve.
I reach
into my pocket. Pull out
my next letter to Yukiko.
Look, I say. I appreciate
your delivering
the first one. Let’s find
someone safer
for the rest. I know
you’d get in bigger trouble
if you were caught.
He stares at me
with an expression
I can’t interpret. Is it
mockery, disbelief,
or wonder? He finally
laughs.
Naw, he says.
I’ll do it. It’s best
for me to do it. To find
a new person, for him
to find the way: that
would be the risk. And…
you can trust me.
To deliver. Better
the devil you know,
right?
reach
Dear Yukiko,
There are poems
here, too. My grandfather
reads them over and over,
all day long. I
read them too.
So you can read
and write? None
of the girls in my village
can do either.
Your poem
is beautiful, and different.
It doesn’t rhyme or scan,
but I really like
how short and simple it is. How
you put into words
the way the poems on our walls
make me feel, how you put
those words into a poem
of your own.
I tried
to write a poem
on our walls but was busted
by the Association.
Do they have any reach
into your quarters?
They pretty much rule
in ours. They actually
put me in a jail
within our jail, a room
they stick you in, but I wrote
a poem there! If I can sneak
back in there, and if
they haven’t found it
and erased it, I’ll copy it
and send it to you.
The riot came
from nowhere. It caught
almost everybody
by surprise, and I
had to decide in a second
whether I would be in it.
I’m glad
I made the choice I did,
but I don’t agree with everything
the leaders of what we call
the Resistance do.
windows
Dear Yip Jing,
My father is a scholar
literate in Japanese,
Chinese, and English.
