Writing

HOW I LOST MY NAME

When I was born,
my father named me
Maiv Muam Nkauj Lig Lis
He believed my siblings and I
could be kings,
if given exceptional names

When we came to the United States
I became May Moua Gao Lee
The INS forgot "Lig"
Thinking it was the same as my last name
A mistake,
On our part

In first grade, my sister told me
how to spell my name
M-A-Y-M-O-U-A-G-H-O-S-T-L-E-E
She giggled;
I didn't know why

In seventh grade, I was May Moua
But our principal called me May Moo
Other kids thought Moua was my last name

By ninth grade, I was just May
Though it was still too complicated to remember
Was it pronounced "My?"

When I married
People thought my first name was Maylee
My last name Yang
They still don't pay attention when I correct them

Last week,
a friend said
I had the simplest name in the world
When I told her my full name
Maiv Muam Nkauj Lig Lis
that it meant Mongolia
where legends say we originated
she wondered why I changed it in the first place

BAGGAGE

These are things I brought to America: one mother, one father, two brothers, two sisters, one aunt from my dad's side, one uncle from my mother's side. This is our version of The Brady Bunch, but you should know we had no Alice, no Tiger, not even a house.

brought a photo, a wallet-sized black and white of me only a few months old. My chubby cheeks are nestled against my mother's gaunt frame. An anonymous hand slashes a sign in front of us like we are criminals taking a mug shot. On the sign is my name-already distorted in English.

I brought a faded grayish-green cloth with a flower pattern reminiscent of dandelions. Mother said she used this to wrap around my infant form. I clung onto that cloth until I was seven or eight, until it became tattered and transparent. I let go of it only because Mother said it would fall apart otherwise.

I brought a diseased leg. My parents said I had mob rwj. Rwj is a boil, ulcer, or abscess. I still don't know which it was. I only imagined that the refugee camp clinic had removed it, treated me with medicine at the very least. My dad did say my leg almost cost us the trip to America. Twenty-six years later, I finally asked, "What happened?" "We told them nothing," he said. "We pretended there was nothing wrong with you."

CORRESPONDENCE FROM LAOS

Come in the form of
cassette-recorded letters
sent by relations known only to us kids by name

They send their stories recorded on tape
because they cannot write
says my mother

Though the cassettes are wrapped in plastic
they are vulnerable in the hands of little children
who rip out the frail, brown strips
containing updates about a nephew's marriage
an uncle's death
an aunt's plea for us to remember them

They always ask us to remember them

Even when my mother uses a pen to ravel the tape
back into the cassette
it never sounds the same
Parts of the story are skipped
Static ensues
Until we can only fall back to memory to remember their words

Nearly thirty years after we have left Laos
my father hands me a cassette tape in the car
Play this for me, he says
And it occurs to me that I can't
because I haven't owned a tape player in ten years

I wonder how he will find a machine
to unlock the stories recorded in his hands

KEYS

My mother doesn't think I should have keys,
but my brother Xin, who is three years younger than me, has keys.
He gets to come home whenever he wants to
But I.I must knock.
Girls don't need keys, my mother said.
What for? Where are you going?
Nowhere, I think.
It is Xin who gives me his keys.
Just temporarily, he says. He can knock. Mom won't care.
But when she sees me opening the door into the house,
she tells me I must return them.
But I'm thinking that I need them too.
I need to be able to open and close doors when she's not around.
And so I shake my head and I hold onto them,
these borrowed keys,
these keys that may take me somewhere, anywhere.

THE THINGS A HMONG WOMAN LOVES

a Hmong Woman loves baby
cucumbers, unripened papayas, and green mangoes
anything she can dip with chili peppers and fish sauce
to spice up her life

a Hmong Woman enjoys serving
utensils, plates, and bowls
she likes playing games of intrigue with
the Dollar Store owner who is tricky;
he won't sell all his dishes at once
so she knows she will have to come back every three days
to find more dishes for the matching set at home

a Hmong Woman can never resist the allure of large,
plastic bowls with Chinese cartoons in the center
whether used to hold dishes, dreams,
batches of food, or even to bathe babies
the bowls are pivotal to keeping everything together

a Hmong Woman knows her worth
she keeps it in a home-sewn cotton bag
hidden in the cup of her left bra
kept close to her heart
she knows how many dollars and cents she holds
and what balance remains in the hiding places of her bedroom

a Hmong Woman understands one of her greatest assets is a chest
freezer (preferably two)
where she can encapsulate the summer's bounty
of scraped cucumber flesh and blanched green beans
in endless Ziploc bags
in a chest freezer, she can hide her booty
of mystery meat (which, of course, never begins as a mystery)
but when it is thawed months, perhaps years later,
she needs a little time to decipher that the lump before her
was, at one time, intestines meant for sausage casings
beef bones hoarded for a pho broth
perhaps it might have simply been pork chops
coveted but saved for a son or daughter
who was supposed to come by and pick them up
years ago

somewhere, a Hmong woman loves

Thai movies dubbed in Hmong
Korean movies dubbed in Hmong
and Indian movies dubbed in Hmong

somewhere, a Hmong Woman loves

flip flops
fake hair pieces,
and sequined gowns

somewhere, a Hmong Woman loves

rice sausages,
honeycomb tripe
and empty ice-cream buckets

ENDINGS

In Hmong, many words begin the same way
But last letter determines everything

Screw up the last letter and

Fish turns into salt
Horse into human
Sour into penis

A girl may start out as ntxhais
But neglect the s
and she becomes nothing more than the water left over from cooking rice