Invisible is so close to invincible. In
my sloppy cursive, they almost look the same.
I was taught to be invisible. Not just
me. But my whole people. This whole people that I seldom yet constantly claim.
Even after 40 years of China's one-child policy, this whole people are one
fifth of the world's population. Han Chinese (that's me) are the largest ethnic
group in the world. Only a people taught to be invisible can be the largest
ethnic group in the world and still seem like a minority. Our faces blur, not
only to western society, but also to ourselves.
Ourselves. For me, “ourselves” is culturally
American and Chinese. In the classrooms where I teach, when Chinese families
show up with their children, I eavesdrop on mainland accents of a language so
old and familiar, yet foreign. When I try out my broken Mandarin, there’s an
excited chatter of acknowledgement. "Ah! Ta hui shuo pu tong hua!" A
bit of pride showing. And my westernized ego can't help but suspect that they
are proud because "this Chinese language of ours is so great that this
American-born woman can speak it."
Invisible. This not being able to tell
our faces apart is caused by systemic racism, by unfamiliarity, by lack of
understanding, isn't it? Is it also because we're taught to be invisible?
On a train traveling north from Guilin
to Beijing, there is a couple from a small nameless town. She is pregnant. She
is also ill. Though Chinese couples show little physical affection in public,
he has a hand on her elbow, she's rocking, and not only with the rhythms of the
train car or the hard seats beneath them. She's rocking for her baby. She's
rocking to the sound of an unknown voice calling. Were it years before, she
might have heard the voice of Buddha, or heard the voice of her grandmother's
grandmother, or God. Maybe God. But because it is today, she hears and rocks,
but has no name for the voice. If she'd heard God, or her
great-great-grandmother, she might have told her husband. She'd have told him
where she was going.
In the hard-seat train car, the
cheapest of the four classes of seats, the chickens are more at home than the
bodies of people. Yet quietly, the people sit upright, or they squat on the
floor. Cigarette smoke floats, instant noodle bowls trash the tracks, and a
pregnant woman rocks. If she had known the voice, she might have told her
husband. Maybe. Then he might have known, at a train station near Wuhan, to get
off, to find some water. To ask for a doctor.
She rocks and rocks and rocks to sleep.
A forever kind of sleep, the kind that forces her husband to grasp her body,
more than just her elbow, her waist, her neck, her head as they swing low
toward the ground. Her belly compressed and flattened in a way no pregnant
woman folds. He wails. A cry for help? No. No one hears you, invisible one. We
cannot see you, and we cannot hear you either. We cannot smell you or the urine
in your wife's dress. We cannot feel your bodies even as they splay across your
neighbors' laps, and across our own.
The man wails, not to God, not to his
ancestors, they are no longer here. He wails. Not to his wife, she is no longer
here. Not to the fellow passengers, who don't look his way, who shift and
compress more tightly to adjoining train cars, sitting among the chickens. Not
to anyone, just the small fetus, its sex still unknown. He wails to that fetus,
who is still fighting the way all life fights.
If they were in a different country, if
they had more money, if she had told him where she was going, maybe he would
have held that almost-baby. It would be a girl. Conflicted though he might be,
he'd still love her. And he'd raise her to be invisible, like her mother.
Invincible. If you cannot see me, you cannot hurt me either. Invincible?
One in five people is Chinese, even
more are Asian. But we cannot imagine one of these people could carry a major
Hollywood film. That's why, we say, we found the best actor for the role,
regardless of race, we say.
My four-year-old daughter is hilarious,
curious, imaginative, and talks circles around kids two years older. And she
has not a performative bone in her body. She could care less if you know her
powers. She's happy to hold them quietly and let the dumb kid sitting next to
her get wowed and oohed for his hammy over-the-top participation.
My almost-two-year-old son is equal
parts goofy and serious. He understands jokes. He is protective of his sister
and mother. He also talks circles around some kids twice his age. If he doesn't
feel like doing something, he doesn't do it. He doesn't care if the anonymous
grown-up claps and laughs.
For their mother, this is a difficult
thing to watch. Because the dark secret behind years of invisibility is wanting
nothing more than to be praised for accomplishments. My culture values keeping
the embarrassing parts invisible at all costs, and showing only the
praiseworthy parts.
Look at how good I am, and tell me, and
then I will shake my head, no. It's nothing, I am nothing. Compliment my
children, and I will say, He is nothing. She is nothing.
I promised I would not let my children
hear me say these things. She will know when I'm proud of her. He will hear me
say it aloud. And I'll be curious about what things make them feel proud of
themselves.
They are little tiny balls of truth.
All babies and toddlers are, aren't they? Everything they do and feel is real
and unfiltered. Can I get out of her way? Can I just observe him grow? Can I
hold my tongue, my impulses for long enough to let them be invincible their
way?
 |
| Hyde Park, Chicago |
She's doing a tiny dance with her feet
under the table, Dance for us! I don't want to right now, she says. He's
singing to himself, Sing for us! I no want to sing, he says. The three-year-old
me is dancing and singing, but for whom? She is smiling, but for whom?
For God? The voice of my
great-great-grandmother? For swarms of adoring fans?
For grown-ups, husbands, boyfriends,
cool kids, poor kids, unpopular kids, for boys and girls, who might like me
more, if they only knew the praiseworthy me? I dance for everyone but me. Was
there a time when it was only for me?
Do it for you, my daughter. Little,
big, powerful you. Do it for you, my son. Little, big, powerful you. And I'll
try to do it too. As long as you can see you. Invincible you. You will never be
invisible.
