Heritege paper

Blood Secret

She stroked the wet locks of dark locks of hair on the girl's head. Startled to be out in the cool smoothness of an evening, the infant searched with glistening lips for the woman's breast. The mother shifted farther on the lauhala mat, away from the mess of childbirth, wiping her damp brow with a kihei corner. She rocked the newborn gently as it suckled for milk; the nose her own, thought he lips and eyes the fathers. The woman lay down flat on her back, watching moonlight poke through the tree branches of Aala Park; her breath and the baby's perfectly in sync. She thought about how beautiful her Hawaiian- Chinese baby would be, as a gentle breeze caressed her body into slumber. The year was 1884. It was the sixteenth of October.

I never was told the true story of my birth. I would have always imagined it to be like this, my mother holding me tenderly for the few and final hours I was hers. I never dared to ask my father about what went on between him and my unmentionable mother. I was nonetheless grateful to live under his roof instead of as a bastard child. Sometimes I would wonder if she was perhaps the Hawaiian lady working at the corner store. Or was she one of the many single Hawaiian mothers I often passed by on the way home: a baby on her hip, topless with her pa'u billowing in the wind, bare feet kicking up the burning dry dirt as she walked. I wondered if I ever did meet up with her, how would she know that I was her baby? Did she know me by a different name, a special freckle, or a birthmark? Did she watch me grow up knowing all along who I was, while I loved my life without ever officially meeting her? In my mind, my father was the unmentionable one, not my no name mother.

My family knew about my mixed blood but the matter was discarded at birth. I was family and that was all that counted. You would have never known I wasn't pure Chinese by my actions and my looks.
I was brought up in my Chinese culture, but most of my knowledge of costume came from my visit to my father's home in Chiak Nam, China. Upon arriving in the village all five of my brothers and sisters and I were greeted by Gong Gong, Cousins, Ayi and her husband. It was a joyous time and rich slices of meet were already roasting for a welcome home dinner. Eating meat was such a luxury and it was only spared for special times like these. We ate nosily: Chinese tongues spewing words across the room harmonizing with chopsticks clattering on clay bowls to sing the melody of a family reunited. This was the first time I ever met Baba's family, but I felt right at home with them.

The next four months that we spent in Chiak Nam were not quite as pleasant as that first day. I was twelve going on thirteen that summer, and Baba had decided that the time had come for me to marry. He had come back to Chiak Nam to have Nai Nai bind by feet. Nai Nai, was Baba's crotchety, stubborn and strict old woman of a mother. Since her childhood she was but skin, tendon and bone, with there never being enough to eat growing up. Her calloused hands were rough from the years in the field and her face awash with age spots from working in the Southern Chinese sun. Her decision was what went, "No talk," she would spit through her teeth, "Bie Shuo a!"
Nai Nai bound my feet that summer and I never complained once. But much to her disappointment we had to leave before they were completely one folding toe to heel. She would have slapped me over my ears and pulled at my braided locks if she had known I had married with my feet unbound as if I was a lowly country bumpkin. I unwrapped the bandages myself, and because Baba didn't trust anyone back home to redo them for me I never had them rebound. If Nai Nai knew about my Hawaiian blood, she would have told me to leave and never come back again. No granddaughter of hers would be a mutt. She never did find out about my feet or my blood secret.

I never told my husband about my Hawaiian. Even when I was pregnant with hid first child I never confessed to being anyone other than whom he thought I was. If I told him, the truth would unravel much like my feet bindings did, ripping my life apart until the painful sores of secrecy were revealed. It was a mater of safety: my own, my husbands, and our children.

The baby was born in December. It was a son, a good omen, and a male to carry on the family name. I cleaned his face, as I pushed my dark locks of sweating hair out of my face. His little lips suckled having found my milk. I leaned back against the bedpost rocking him gently, our chests heaving as one. The moon spilled light onto the dusty floor; curtains fluttering open in the smooth breeze of evening. He had the lips and eyes of my husband though his button nose was like mine, and my mothers. From my mother, to me, to my son, the blood secret now coursed through new veins.