In the autumn I moved to New York, I recognized her face all over the subway stations—pearls around her throat, she poses for her immigration papers. In 1924, the only Americans required to carry identity cards were ethnically Chinese—the first photo IDs, red targets on the head of every man, woman, child, infant, movie star. Like pallbearers, they lined up to get their pictures taken: full-face view, direct camera gaze, no smiles, ears showing, in silver gelatin. A rogue's gallery of Chinese exclusion. The subway poster doesn't name her—though it does mention her ethnicity, and the name of the New York Historical Society exhibition: Exclusion/Inclusion. Soon, when I felt alone in this city, her face would peer at me from behind seats, turnstiles, heads, and headphones, and I swear she wore a smile only I could see. Sometimes my face aligned with hers, and we would rush past the bewildered lives before us—hers, gone the year my mother was born, and mine, a belt of ghosts trailing after my scent. In the same aboveground train, in the same city where slain umbrellas travel across the Hudson River, we live and live. I've left my landline so ghosts can't dial me at midnight with the hunger of hunters anymore. I'm so hungry I gnaw at light. It tunnels from the shadows, an exhausting hope. I know this hunger tormented her too. It haunted her through her years in L.A., Paris, and New York, the parties she went to, people she met—Paul Robeson, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Gertrude Stein. It haunts her expression still, on the 6 train, Grand Central station, an echo chamber behind her eyes. But dear universe: if I can recognize her face under this tunnel of endless shadows against the luminance of all that is extinct and oncoming, then I am not a stranger here. Copyright © 2017 Sally Wen Mao. Used with permission of the author. |
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