No Name Woman by Maxine Hong Kingston

"You must not tell anyone," my mother said, "what I am about to tell you. In China your father had a sister who killed herself. She jumped into the family well. We say that your father has all brothers because it is as if she had never been born. "In !"# just a few days after our villa$e celebrated seventeen hurry%up weddin$s%to make sure that every youn$ man who went &out on the road& would responsibly come home%your father and his brothers and your $randfather and his brothers and your aunt&s new husband sailed for 'merica, the (old )ountain. It was your $randfather&s last trip. *hose lucky enou$h to $et contracts waved $oodbye from the decks. *hey fed and $uarded the stowaways and helped them of* in Cuba, +ew York, ,ali, -awaii. &We&ll meet in California ne.t year,& they said. 'll of them sent money home. "I remember lookin$ at your aunt one day when she and I were dressin$/ had not noticed before that she had such a protrudin$ melon of a stomach. ,ut I did not think, &She&s pre$nant,& until she be$an to look like other pre$nant women, her shirt pullin$ and the white tops of her black pants showin$. She could not have been pre$nant, you see, because her husband had been $one for years. +o one said anythin$. We did not discuss it. In early summer she was ready to have the child, lon$ after the time when it could have been possible. "*he villa$e had also been countin$. 0n the ni$ht the baby was to be born the villa$ers raided our house. Some were cryin$. 1ike a $reat saw, teeth strun$ with li$hts, files of people walked 2i$2a$ across our land, tearin$ the rice. *heir lanterns doubled in the disturbed black water, which drained away throu$h the broken bunds. 's the villa$ers closed in, we could see that some of them, probably men and women we knew well, wore white masks. *he people with lon$ hair hun$ it over their faces. Women with short hair made it stand up on end. Some had tied white bands around their foreheads, arms, and le$s. "'t first they threw mud and rocks at the house. *hen they threw e$$s and be$an slau$hterin$ our stock. We could hear the animals scream their deaths%the roosters, the pi$s, a last $reat roar from the o.. 3amiliar wild heads flared in our ni$ht windows/ the villa$ers encircled us. Some of the faces stopped to peer at us, their eyes rushin$ like searchli$hts. *he hands flattened a$ainst the panes, framed heads, and left red prints. "*he villa$ers broke in the front and the back doors at the same time, even thou$h we had not locked the doors a$ainst them. *heir knives dripped with the blood of our animals. *hey smeared blood on the doors and walls. 0ne woman swun$ a chicken, whose throat she had slit, splatterin$ blood in red arcs about her. We stood to$ether in the middle of our house, in the family hall with the pictures and tables of the ancestors around us, and looked strai$ht ahead. "'4 that time the house had only two win$s. When the men came back, we would build two more to enclose our courtyard and a third one to be$in a second courtyard. *he villa$ers pushed throu$h both win$s, even your $randparents& rooms, to find your aunt&s, which was also mine until the men returned. 3rom this room a new win$ for one of the youn$er families would $row. *hey ripped up her clothes and shoes and broke her combs, $rindin$ them underfoot. *hey tore her work from the loom. *hey scattered the cookin$ fire and rolled the new weavin$ in it. We could hear them in the kitchen breakin$ our bowls and ban$in$ the pots. *hey overturned the $reat waist%hi$h earthenware ju$s/ duck e$$s, pickled fruits, ve$etables burst out and mi.ed in acrid torrents. *he old woman from the ne.t field swept a broom throu$h the air and loosed the spirits%of%the broom over our heads. &5i$.& &(host.& &5i$,& they sobbed and scolded while they ruined our house. "When they left, they took su$ar and oran$es to bless themselves. *hey cut pieces from the dead animals. Some of them took bowls that were not broken and clothes that were not torn. 'fterward we swept up the rice and sewed it back up into sacks. ,ut the smells from the spilled preserves lasted. Your aunt $ave birth in the pi$sty that ni$ht. *he ne.t mornin$ when I went for the water, I found her and the baby plu$$in$ up the family well. "6on&t let your father know that told you. -e denies her. +ow that you have started to menstruate, what happened to her could happen to you. 6on&t humiliate us. You wouldn&t like to be for$otten as if you had never been born. *he villa$ers are watchful." Whenever she had to warn us about life, my mother told stories that ran like this one, a story to $row up on. She tested our stren$th to establish realities. *hose in the emi$rant $enerations who could not reassert brute survival died youn$ and far from home. *hose of us in the first 'merican $enerations have had to fi$ure out how the invisible world the emi$rants built around our childhoods fits in solid 'merica. *he emi$rants confused the $ods by divertin$ their curses, misleadin$ them with crooked streets and false names. *hey must try to confuse their offsprin$ as well, who, I suppose, threaten them in similar ways%always tryin$ to $et thin$s strai$ht, always tryin$ to name the unspeakable. *he Chinese know hide their names/ sojourners take new names when their lives chan$e and $uard their real names with silence. Chinese%'mericans, when you try to understand what thin$s in you are Chinese, how do you separate what is peculiar to childhood, to poverty, insanities, one family, your mother who marked your $rowin$ with stories, from what is Chinese7 What is Chinese tradition and what is the movies7 If I want to learn what clothes my aunt wore, whether flashy or ordinary, would have to be$in, "8emember 3ather&s drowned%in%the%well sister7" I cannot ask that. )y mother has told me once and for all the useful parts. She will add nothin$ unless powered by +ecessity, a riverbank that $uides her life. She plants ve$etable $ardens rather than lawns/ she carries the odd%shaped tomatoes home from the fields and eats food left for the $ods. Whenever we did frivolous thin$s, we used up ener$y/ we flew hi$h kites. We children came up off the $round over the meltin$ cones our parents brou$ht home from work and the 'merican movie on +ew Year&s 6ay%9h, You ,eautiful 6oll with ,etty (rable one year, and She Wore a Yellow 8ibbon with :ohn Wayne another year. 'fter the one carnival ride each, we paid in $uilt/ our tired father counted his chan$e on the dark walk home.

'dultery is e.trava$ance. Could people who hatch their own chicks and eat the embryos and the heads for delicacies and boil the feet in vine$ar for party food, leavin$ only the $ravel, eatin$ even the $i22ard linin$%could such people en$ender a prodi$al aunt7 *o be a woman, to have a dau$hter in starvation time was a waste enou$h. )y aunt could not have been the lone romantic who $ave up everythin$ for se.. Women in the old China did not choose. Some man had commanded her to lie with him and be his secret evil. I wonder whether he masked himself when he joined the raid on her family. 5erhaps she had encountered him in the fields or on the mountain where the dau$hters%in%law collected fuel. 0r perhaps he first noticed her in the marketplace. -e was not a stran$er because the villa$e housed no stran$ers. She had to have dealin$s with him other than se.. 5erhaps he worked an adjoinin$ field, or he sold her the cloth for the dress she sewed and wore. -is demand must have surprised, then terrified her. She obeyed him/ she always did as she was told. When the family found a youn$ man in the ne.t villa$e to be her husband, she had stood tractably beside the best rooster, his pro.y, and promised before they met that she would be his forever. She was lucky that he was her a$e and she would be the first wife, an advanta$e secure now. *he ni$ht she first saw him, he had se. with her. *hen h left for 'merica. She had almost for$otten what he looked like. When she tried to envision him, she only saw the black and white face in the $roup photo$raph the men had had taken before leavin$. *he other man was not, after all, much different from her husband. *hey both $ave orders; she followed. "If you tell your family, I&ll beat you. I&ll kill you. ,e here a$ain ne.t week." +o one talked se., ever. 'nd she mi$ht have separated the rapes from the rest of livin$ if only she did not have to buy her oil from him or $ather wood in the same forest. I want her fear to have lasted just as lon$ as rape lasted so that the fear could have been contained. +o drawn%out fear. ,ut women at se. ha2arded birth and hence lifetimes. *he fear did not stop but permeated everywhere. She told the man, "I think I&m pre$nant<& -e or$ani2ed the raid a$ainst her. 0n ni$hts when my mother and father talked about their life back home, sometimes they mentioned an "outcast table" whose business they still seemed to be settlin$, their voices ti$ht. In a commensal tradition, where food is precious, the powerful older people made wron$doers eat alone. Instead of lettin$ them start separate new lives like the :apanese, who could become samurais and $eishas, the Chinese family, faces averted but eyes $lowerin$ sideways, hun$ on to the offenders and fed them leftovers. )y aunt must have lived in the same house as my parents and eaten at an outcast table. )y mother spoke about the raid as if she had seen it, when she and my aunt, a dau$hter%in%law to a different household, should not have been livin$ to$ether at all. 6au$hters%in%law lived with their husbands& parents, not their own/ a synonym for marria$e in Chinese is "takin$ a dau$hter%in%law<& -er husband&s parents could have sold her, mort$a$ed her, stoned her. ,ut they had sent her back to her own mother and father, a mysterious act hintin$ at dis$races not told me. 5erhaps they had thrown her out to deflect the aven$ers. She was the only dau$hter/ her four brothers went with her father, husband, and uncles "out on the road" and for some years became western men. When the $oods were divided amon$ the family, three of the brothers took land, and the youn$est, my father, chose an education. 'fter my $randparents $ave their dau$hter away to her husband&s family, they had dispensed all the adventure and all the property. *hey e.pected her alone to keep the traditional ways, which her brothers, now amon$ the barbarians, could fumble without detection. *he heavy, deep% rooted women were to maintain the past a$ainst the flood, safe for returnin$. ,ut the rare ur$e west had fi.ed upon our family, and so my aunt crossed boundaries not delineated in space. *he work of preservation demands that the feelin$s playin$ about in one&s $uts not be turned into action. :ust watch their passin$ like cherry blossoms. ,ut perhaps my aunt, my forerunner, cau$ht in a slow life, let dreams $row and fade and after some months or years went toward what persisted. 3ear at the enormities of the forbidden kept her desires delicate, wire and bone. She looked at a man because she liked the way the hair was tucked behind his ears, or she liked the =uestion%mark line of a lon$ torso curvin$ at the shoulder and strai$ht at the hip. 3or warm eyes or a soft voice or a slow walk%that&s all%a few hairs, a line, a bri$htness, a sound, a pace, she $ave up family. She offered us up for a charm that vanished with tiredness, a pi$tail that didn&t toss when the wind died. Why, the wron$ li$htin$ could erase the dearest thin$ about him. It could very well have been, however, that my aunt did not take subtle enjoyment of her friend, but, a wild woman, kept rollickin$ company. Ima$inin$ her free with se. doesn&t fit, thou$h. I don&t know any women like that, or men either. >nless I see her life branchin$ into mine, she $ives me no ancestral help. *o sustain her bein$ in love, she often worked at herself in the mirror, $uessin$ at the colors and shapes that would interest him, chan$in$ them fre=uently in order to hit on the ri$ht combination. She wanted him to look back. 0n a f arm near the sea, a woman who tended her appearance reaped a reputation f or eccentricity. 'll the married women blunt%cut their hair in flaps about their ears or pulled it back in ti$ht buns. +o nonsense. +either style blew easily into heart%catchin$ tan$les. 'nd at their weddin$s they displayed themselves in their lon$ hair f or the last time. lit brushed the backs of my knees," )Y mother tells me. "It was braided, and even so, it brushed the backs of my knees<& 't the mirror my aunt combed individuality into her bob. ' bun could have been contrived to escape into black streamers blowin$ in the wind or in =uiet wisps about her face, but only the older women in our picture album wear buns. She brushed her hair back from her forehead, tuckin$ the flaps behind her ears. She looped a piece of thread, knotted into a circle between her inde. fin$ers and thumbs, and ran the double strand across her forehead. When she closed her fin$ers as if she were makin$ a pair of shadow $eese bite, the strin$ twisted to$ether catchin$ the little hairs. *hen she pulled the thread away from her skin, rippin$ the hairs out neatly, her eyes waterin$ from the needles of pain. 0penin$ her fin$ers, she cleaned the thread, then rolled it alon$ her hairline and the tops of her eyebrows. )y mother did the same to me and my sisters and herself. I used to believe that the e.pression "cau$ht by the short hairs" meant a captive held with a depilatory strin$. It especially hurt at the temples, but my mother said we were lucky we didn&t have to have our feet bound when we were seven. Sisters used to sit on their beds and cry to$ether, she said, as their mothers or their slaves removed the banda$es for a few minutes each ni$ht and let the blood $ush back into their veins. hope that the man my aunt loved appreciated a smooth brow, that he wasn&t just a tits%andass man. 0nce my aunt found a freckle on her chin, at a spot that the almanac said predestined her for unhappiness. She du$ it out with a hot needle and washed the wound with pero.ide.

)ore attention to her looks than these pullin$s of hairs and pickin$s at spots would have caused $ossip amon$ the villa$ers. *hey owned work clothes and $ood clothes, and they wore $ood clothes for feastin$ the new seasons. ,ut since a woman combin$ her hair he.es be$innin$s, my aunt rarely found an occasion to look her best. Women looked like $reat sea snails%the corded wood, babies, and laundry they carried were the whorls on their backs. *he Chinese did not admire a bent back/ $oddesses and warriors stood strai$ht. Still there must have been a marvelous freein$ of beauty when a worker laid down her burden and stretched and arched. Such commonplace loveliness, however, was not enou$h for my aunt. She dreamed of a lover for the fifteen days of +ew Year&s, the time for families to e.chan$e visits, money, and food. She plied her secret comb. 'nd sure enou$h she cursed the year, the family, the villa$e, and herself. ?ven as her hair lured her imminent lover, many other men looked at her. >ncles, cousins, nephews, brothers would have looked, too, had they been home between journeys. 5erhaps they had already been restrainin$ their curiosity, and they left, fearful that their $lances, like a field of nestin$ birds, mi$ht be startled and cau$ht. 5overty hurt, and that was their first reason for leavin$. ,ut another, final reason for leavin$ the crowded house was the never%said. She may have been unusually beloved, the precious only dau$hter, spoiled and mirror $a2in$ because of the affection the family lavished on her. When her husband left, they welcomed the chance to take her back from the in%laws/ she could live like the little dau$hter for just a while lon$er. *here are stories that my $randfather was different from other people, "cra2y ever since the little :ap bayoneted him in the head." -e used to put his naked penis on the dinner table, lau$hin$. 'nd one day he brou$ht home a baby $irl, wrapped up inside his brown western%style $reatcoat. -e had traded one of his sons, probably my father, the youn$est, for her. )y $randmother made him trade back. When he finally $ot a dau$hter of his own, he doted on her. *hey must have all loved her, e.cept perhaps my father, the only brother who never went back to China, havin$ once been traded for a $irl. ,rothers and sisters, newly men and women, had to efface their se.ual color and present plain miens. 6isturbin$ hair and eyes, a smile like no other, threatened the ideal of five $enerations livin$ under one roof. *o focus blurs, people shouted face to face and yelled from room to room. *he immi$rants know have loud voices, unmodulated to 'merican tones even after years away from the villa$e where they called their friendships out across the fields. have not been able to stop my mother&s screams in public libraries or over telephones. Walkin$ erect @knees strai$ht, toes pointed forward, not pi$eon%toed, which is Chinese%feminineA and speakin$ in an inaudible voice, have tried to turn myself 'merican%feminine. Chinese communication was loud, public. 0nly sick people had to whisper. ,ut at the dinner table, where the family members came nearest one another, no one could talk, not the outcasts nor any eaters. ?very word that falls from the mouth is a coin lost. Silently they $ave and accepted food with both hands. ' preoccupied child who took his bowl with one hand $ot a sideways $lare. ' complete moment of total attention is due everyone alike. Children and lovers have no sin$ularity here, but my aunt used a secret voice, a separate attentiveness. She kept the man&s name to herself throu$hout her labor and dyin$/ she did not accuse him that he be punished with her. *o save her inseminator&s name she $ave silent birth. -e may have been somebody in her own household, but intercourse with a man outside the family would have been no less abhorrent. 'll the villa$e were kinsmen, and the titles shouted in loud country voices never let kinship be for$otten. 'ny man within visitin$ distance would have been neutrali2ed as a lover%"brother ... .. youn$er brother," "older brother"%%one hundred and fifteen relationship titles. 5arents researched birth charts probably not so much to assure $ood fortune as to circumvent incest in a population that has but one hundred surnames. ?verybody has ei$ht million relatives. -ow useless then se.ual mannerisms, how dan$erous. 's if it came from an atavism deeper than fear, I used to add "brother" silently to boys& names. It he.ed the boys, who would or would not ask me to dance, and made them less scary and as familiar and deservin$ of benevolence as $irls. ,ut, of course, he.ed myself also%no dates. I should have stood up, both arms wavin$, and shouted out across libraries, "-ey, you< 1ove me back." I had no idea, thou$h, how to make attraction selective, how to control its direction and ma$nitude. If made myself 'merican% pretty so that the five or si. Chinese boys in the class fell in love with me, everyone else%the Caucasian, +e$ro, and :apanese boys%would too. Sisterliness, di$nified and honorable, made much more sense. 'ttraction eludes control so stubbornly that whole societies desi$ned to or$ani2e relationships amon$ people cannot keep order, not even when they bind people to one another from childhood and raise them to$ether. 'mon$ the very poor and the wealthy, brothers married their adopted sisters, like doves. 0ur family allowed some romance, payin$ adult brides& prices and providin$ dowries so that their sons and dau$hters could marry stran$ers. )arria$e promises to turn stran$ers into friendly relatives%a nation of siblin$s. In the villa$e structure, spirits shimmered amon$ the live creatures, balanced and held in e=uilibrium by time and land. ,ut one human bein$ flarin$ up into violence could open up a black hole, a maelstrom that pulled in the sky. *he fri$htened villa$ers, who depended on one another to maintain the real, went to my aunt to show her a personal, physical representation of the break she had made in the"roundness." )isallyin$ couples snapped off the future, which was to be embodied in true offsprin$. *he villa$ers punished her for actin$ as if she could have a private life, secret and apart from them. If my aunt had betrayed the family at a time of lar$e $rain yields and peace, when many boys were born, and win$s were bein$ built on many houses, perhaps she mi$ht have escaped such severe punishment. ,ut the men%hun$ry, $reedy, tired of plantin$ in dry soil%had been forced to leave the villa$e in order to send food%money home. *here were $host pla$ues, bandit pla$ues, wars with the :apanese, floods. )y Chinese brother and sister had died of an unknown sickness. 'dultery, perhaps only a mistake durin$ $ood times, became a crime when the villa$e needed food. *he round moon cakes and round doorways, the round tables of $raduated si2es that fit one roundness inside an other, round windows and rice bowls%these talismans had lost their power to warn this family of the law; a family must be whole, faithfully keepin$ the descent line by havin$ sons to feed the old and the dead, who in turn look after the family. *he villa$ers came to show my aunt and her lover%in%hidin$ a broken house. *he villa$ers were speedin$ up the circlin$ of events because she was too shortsi$hted to see that her infidelity had already harmed the villa$e, that waves of conse=uences would return unpredictably, sometimes in dis$uise, as now, to hurt her.

*his roundness had to be made coin%si2ed so that she would see its circumference; punish her at the birth of her baby. 'waken her to the ine.orable. 5eople who refused fatalism because they could invent small resources insisted on culpability. 6eny accidents and wrest fault from the stars. 'fter the villa$ers left, their lanterns now scatterin$ in various directions toward home, the family broke their silence and cursed her. "'iaa, we&re $oin$ to die. 6eath is comin$. 6eath is comin$. 1ook what you&ve done. You&ve killed us. (host< 6ead $host< (host< You&ve never been born." She ran out into the fields, far enou$h from the house so that she could no lon$er hear their voices, and pressed herself a$ainst the earth, her own land no more. When she felt the birth comin$, she thou$ht that she had been hurt. -er body sei2ed to$ether. "*hey&ve hurt me too much," she thou$ht. "*his is $all, and it will kill me." With forehead and knees a$ainst the earth, her body convulsed and then rela.ed. She turned on her back, lay on the $round. *he black well of sky and stars went out and out and out forever/ her body and her comple.ity seemed to disappear. She was one of the stars, a bri$ht dot in blackness, without home, without a companion, in eternal cold and silence. 'n a$oraphobia rose in her, speedin$ hi$her and hi$her, bi$$er and bi$$er/ she would not be able to contain it/ there would no end to fear. 3layed, unprotected a$ainst space, she felt pain return, focusin$ her body. *his pain chilled her%a cold, steady kind of surface pain. Inside, spasmodically, the other pain, the pain of the child, heated her. 3or hours she lay on the $round, alternately body and space. Sometimes a vision of normal comfort obliterated reality; she saw the family in the evenin$ $amblin$ at the dinner table, the youn$ people massa$in$ their elders& backs. She saw them con$ratulatin$ one another, hi$h joy on the mornin$s the rice shoots came up. When these pictures burst, the stars drew yet further apart. ,lack space opened. She $ot to her feet to fi$ht better and remembered that old%fashioned women $ave birth in their pi$sties to fool the jealous, pain%dealin$ $ods, who do not snatch pi$lets. ,efore the ne.t spasms could stop her, she ran to the pi$sty, each step a rushin$ out into emptiness. She climbed over the fence and knelt in the dirt. It was $ood to have a fence enclosin$ her, a tribal person alone. 1aborin$, this woman who had carried her child as a forei$n $rowth that sickened her every day, e.pelled it at last. She reached down to touch the hot, wet, movin$ mass, surely smaller than anythin$ human, and could feel that it was human after all%fin$ers, toes, nails, nose. She pulled it up on to her belly, and it lay curled there, butt in the air, feet precisely tucked one under the other. She opened her loose shirt and buttoned the child inside. 'fter restin$, it s=uirmed and thrashed and she pushed it up to her breast. It turned its head this way and that until it found her nipple. *here, it made little snufflin$ noises. She clenched her teeth at its preciousness, lovely as a youn$ calf, a pi$let, a little do$. She may have $one to the pi$sty as a last act of responsibility; she would protect this child as she had protected its father. It would look after her soul, leavin$ supplies on her $rave. ,ut how would this tiny child without family find her $rave when there would be no marker for her anywhere, neither in the earth nor the family hall7 +o one would $ive her a family hall name. She had taken the child with her into the wastes. 't its birth the two of them had felt the same raw pain of separation, a wound that only the family pressin$ ti$ht could close. ' child with no descent line would not soften her life but only trail after her, $hostlike, be$$in$ her to $ive it purpose. 't dawn the villa$ers on their way to the fields would stand around the fence and look. 3ull of milk, the little $host slept. When it awoke, she hardened her breasts a$ainst the milk that cryin$ loosens. *oward mornin$ she picked up the baby and walked to the well. Carryin$ the baby to the well shows lovin$. 0therwise abandon it. *urn its face into the mud. )others who love their children take them alon$. It was probably a $irl/ there is some hope of for$iveness for boys. "6on&t tell anyone you had an aunt. Your father does not want to hear her name. She has never been born." I have believed that se. was unspeakable and words so stron$ and fathers so frail that "aunt" would do my father mysterious harm. have thou$ht that my family, havin$ settled amon$ immi$rants who had also been their nei$hbors in the ancestral land, needed to clean their name, and a wron$ word would incite the kinspeople even here. ,ut there is more to this silence; they want me to participate in her punishment. 'nd I have. In the twenty years since I heard this story I have not asked for details nor said my aunt&s name/ do not know it. 5eople who can comfort the dead can also chase after them to hurt them further%a reverse ancestor worship. *he real punishment was not the raid swiftly inflicted by the villa$ers, but the family&s deliberately for$ettin$ her. -er betrayal so maddened them, they saw to it that she would suf3er forever, even after death. 'lways hun$ry, always needin$, she would have to be$ food from other $hosts, snatch and steal it from those whose livin$ descendants $ive them $ifts. She would have to fi$ht the $hosts massed at crossroads for the buns a few thou$htful citi2ens leave to decoy her away from villa$e and home so that the ancestral spirits could feast unharassed. 't peace, they could act like $ods, not $hosts, their descent lines providin$ them with paper suits and dresses, spirit money, paper houses, paper automobiles, chicken, meat, and rice into eternity essences delivered up in smoke and flames, steam and incense risin$ from each rice bowl. In an attempt to make the Chinese care for people outside the family, Chairman )ao encoura$es us now to $ive our paper replicas to the spirits of outstandin$ soldiers and workers, no matter whose ancestors they may be. )y aunt remains forever hun$ry. (oods are not distributed evenly amon$ the dead. )y aunt haunts me%her $host drawn to me because now, after fifty years of ne$lect, I alone devote pa$es of paper to her, thou$h not ori$amied into houses and clothes. do not think she always means me well. I am tellin$ on her, and she was a spite suicide, drownin$ herself in the drinkin$ water. *he Chinese are always very fri$htened of the drowned one, whose weepin$ $host, wet hair han$in$ and skin bloated, waits silently by the water to pull down a substitute.