Don't Answer Your Name In Vain
Tommy, Ortis, Lesley, Bashabi, Ping, Ying, Jun, Yee And Hong? Yes, that's me.
Don't answer your name in vain. Souls have been known to be taken by unscrupulous, wandering ghosts - hunger for identity.
But take it, I say, take it. I don't like my name: Hong means magnificent, grand, full of the pomposity of the time, while I was an introvert girl reading surreptitiously snatched forbidden books, shutting my eyes when my name appeared as adjectives in:
The Next Five year Plan
The Mass Movement to criticize Confucius
The Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution
…
"Rushing me to the hospital your dad had to dodge gunfire from rival gangs, each claiming to be more loyal to Chairman Mao," Mother hissed, "all around us were ruins, and smashed up bricks, walls.The hospital's name had been changed from number 2 to Red Flag, the streets we passed were called East Wind, and Fighting the Imperialists. What could your name be other than what it is? Would you rather that I call you 'delicate porcelain'?"
Mother's name was once "elegant flower." Until aged about 10 she was sick and poorly. A family friend arrived with a sack of rice to the family who was on its last bowl, running from city to city, from hunger and civil war. "Elegant flower is sure to evoke" said the friend, scolding mother's mother,"the wrath of god. With that name", he rose to leave, "you could do worse."
At my grandmother's funeral I heard all her siblings names called, each bowing in front of her grave:
"Friendly stone,
handsome stone,
beautiful stone,
bright stone,"
and lastly, my mother: "Cold stone."
The eldest daughter, she was the one who led them to beg. She was the one who scolded them when they did wrong. She was the substitute mother. When her mother had to go out to work
she had to be the hardiest, she had to be the 'cold stone."
Don't answer your name in vain. Souls have been known to be taken by unscrupulous, wandering ghosts - hunger for identity.
Out there was a wandering ghost, calling herself "elegant flower".
An impostor.
Don't answer your name in vain
Don't answer your name in vain.
Liu Hong
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