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. He fell into deeper depressions, not from mourning his wife’s death, but from his loss of faith in the country. He had been defeated when he vowed not to lose ground to the harsh land and cruel people.
The country that accepted Great-Grandfather and his son now rejected them. He sent his son, my grandfather, back to China. The railroad was finished and the Chinese were chased out of the mines. They were allowed to live, but not to marry. The law was designed so that the Chinese would gradually die out, leaving no sons or daughters.
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