WANG PING

MORNING DELIVERY

“Don’t be silly, Hon,” he said

clutching the Sunday Sports

Vikings lost again, shit!

over the steaming pancakes

she had tossed on his plate

spatula clanking against china

Six in a row! Fucking losers!!

“Just because I’m reading, Hon,” he said

“doesn’t mean I’m not listening

Wish I could dump them like these stupid pancakes!!!

or loving you.”

READING NIGHTMARES

Not a Hooker

Chicago Guild Complex: the phone was disconnected, the address wrong.
It was February. City covered with ice, wind cutting my leather pants.
I roamed downtown Chicago, knocking on doors looking for the Hot House
where my reading was scheduled at 8:00 pm. Night fell. Cars cruised the
street. One packed with laughing men stopped at the curbside. The driver
beckoned me to enter. I faked some karate movements and shouted in
Chinese. “I’m a poet, not a hooker, you bastards!”

Warning Ignored

Barnes & Noble, Manhattan: my first and last reading for The Best
American Poetry. “Ten minutes, maximum,” the editor warned sternly.
I went on for half an hour, and forgot the poem he had asked me to read
for the anthology.

Wrong Audience

Bronx Museum: to please the crowd, I picked my funniest poem,
“Of Flesh and Spirit”. But no one laughed, not even at the line “The
most powerful curse: fuck your mother, fuck your grandmother, fuck your
great grandmother of eighteenth generation”. My audience, a group of
school children and teachers, stared at me behind the podium as if I was
insane. Some clasped their hands and prayed.

Misplaced

Birchbark, Minneapolis: forgot to bring the poem I wrote for Mother’s Day.

Deadly Night

Barnes & Noble, Edina: drove 30 miles in the rain to the suburban chain.
No one showed up. Not a single soul.

Truth

Har Mar, Roseville: 7:27 pm, three minutes before the reading, and the
father hadn’t come home as promised. Tried to bribe my sons to go to the
bookstore with me. “No way, Jose!” they said in unison. “We want to wait
for daddy and watch TV.”
“Forget about your Dad. He’s out drinking with some woman.” I shouted
and dragged them into my car.
The store manager waited at the door, looking distressed. “Bad traffic,”
I apologized.
“Not my mom’s fault,” my four-year-old blasted out. “My Dad is out
drinking with some woman.”

Ego or Fear

Museum of Modern Art: my first gig to interpret for Allen Ginsberg,
Gary Snyder and the Chinese Misty School poets at the grand opening of the
American Chinese Poetry Festival. All I did was scream repeatedly into the
microphone, “My name is Penny. Can anybody hear me?”

THEY SPRAYED US WITH HOSES

We pawned everything for this license. I mean everything—house, savings,
furniture, jewelry, our son’s piggy bank for college. We borrowed from the in-laws,
friends, loans from sharks. 350 thousand yuan for a piece of paper that allows us
to drive a cab. Had we known, we’d not have gotten into this business even if
they put a knife at our necks.

We plunged into the sea for our son, who was four years old then. He’s going to
college, the best one in the country. He will not grow up scrubbing rich people’s
toilets like his parents. Nothing shameful. Someone has to do the dirty work. We
grew up on Mao’s saying: all work is glorious as long as it’s honest. But time is no
longer the same, and our son is a smart boy. You can tell by his bright eyes. He’ll
rise higher than his parents, making more money and respect. It costs a lot to go
to college. Our minimum wage will never get him there. We looked around.
Everyone was quitting their job to get rich buying and selling stuff. We call it
xiahai—plunge into the sea. We had no capital or brains to open business. All we
had was a pair of hands and willingness to do anything to send our Bao Bao to
college. We heard driving taxi was a good business, if one was willing to drive
24 hours a day. That was no problem. My husband could take the night shift, and
I the day shift. And our car would be churning in money like a machine. So we
got a few loans together, quit our jobs, got the car, and plunged into the sea.

Money was good for a while. We worked 24 hours every day, seven days a week.
Snow or rain, our car was always on the street, looking for clients. We ate in the
car, napped in the car. My husband even took a second job before his night shift.
For five years, we hardly see each other. My son would plead when I left the door
in the morning: “I want to play with you, Mama.” My heart sank as I looked down
at his eyes. “Play with Daddy when he wakes up, Bao Bao.” He blinked to hold
his tears. “Daddy needs sleep. Daddy needs to go to work. Bao Bao will be alone
all afternoon. Bao Bao will not cry. Bao Bao is a brave boy.”

I let go his hands and fled. If I opened my mouth, I’d burst into tears, and
I wouldn’t be able to leave. Did we make the right decision? Was it right to leave
a four-year-old child alone in the apartment every afternoon while his mother drove
strangers to their sons and daughters and his father picked up someone else’s son
from kindergarten and drove him around to amuse him until his mom came home
from mahjong or hair saloon? Why should our son cry his eyes out every day
behind a locked door while the rich kid has his own pet dog, his own limo and
chauffeur?

Eat bitterness now and you’ll become somebody someday, we told our son.

He studies hard, late into the night, seven days a week. No weekend, no holiday,
like us. His bag weighs fifteen pounds at least, filled with books. And he wears
glasses. They make him look real smart and handsome. He’s not No. 1 student in
his class yet, but he’ll get there, next year, on his ninth birthday. He’s determined.
Where there’s a will, there’s a way. He no longer begs me to play. I wish he still do.
If we could go back to the past, I’d drop everything and play with him all day and
all night.

Could I really? Money was good only for a short while. Then suddenly everyone
seemed to have become a cab driver. The streets were jammed with yellow, silver,
and red cabs. Most of the drivers are peasants. They work like mad ants, never stop
to rest, drink, eat, or use bathrooms. Then the government wanted us to pay a fee
for the license. 350 thousand yuan. It sinks us into the abyss. Every yuan we’re
making goes to interests and loan payments. And last month the rumor came:
the license is good for only five years. By 2009, we’ll have to pay another 350
thousand, perhaps even more, to renew it.

How can we live? How do they expect us to live?

So we got together in front of the government building, all the lowly cab drivers
from the city and villages. We were not asking for gold or fame, not seeking to
become rich like those fat communist cadres and capitalists. We just want some
justice, just want to make enough money to eat and live and send our kids to
a decent college.

And they sprayed us with fire hoses.

They said they’d take away our licenses if we didn’t disperse immediately.

This morning my son asked me why I was still working. “The more you work,
Mama, the poorer we seem to become.”

How true! But it’s too late to get out. Our debt is bottomless. Our fate is to
drown in the bitter sea that has no shore. But at least we’re still together as a fami-
ly. Late at night, when I lie on the couch and watch my son bending over the desk
doing his homework, I feel grateful. Most cab drivers I know are from the country-
side. Their kids, growing up with grandparents, don’t know them as fathers, and
their wives work in different cities as nannies, maids, masseuses, street walkers. . .