Thursday, April 18, 1996
Time is a complex, nonlinear web of discontinuity
Sleeping alone is no fun. That is to say, I miss my dogs and
cats. Here in Los Angeles I am awakened instead by an impersonal
alarm clock. Since it doesn’t purr hungrily in my ear, I don’t get
up to feed it.
Oh, wait. Can I start over? Yes, I know the clock is ticking,
but I meant to talk about the past. Maybe I should have begun like
this …
I have never understood history as it is presented in classes
and textbooks. An oppressive silence enshrouds these discussions of
the past. During World War II, my family was classified as "enemy
aliens," like so many other Japanese Americans. My high school U.S.
history class never learned about the Internment, but our textbook
did mention the number of gloves Mrs. Lincoln owned. I passed the
Advanced Placement exam without ever having to consider oppression
as integral to Amerikkka.
Two weeks ago, the beating of two "illegal" immigrants was
televised. But we don’t even hear about most of the violence.
On Valentine’s Day this year, Orange County police shot Hong Il
Kim five times in the driver’s seat of his parents’ 4-Runner. Kim
finally stopped in a mini-mall parking lot after police pursued him
for making a reckless right turn. So they fired, aiming not for his
tires, but for his head and chest. The police didn’t use good
judgment, but they certainly were good marksmen. Kim is dead at age
27.
A few weeks before Kim was murdered, I gave my Chinese-American
tutee a card to sign and carry with him. The card says that he and
his parents do not give the police permission to photograph him
unless they charge him with a crime. Twelve years old, and already
Andrew has to worry about the police stopping him to photograph him
for their mug book. He doesn’t understand how the police could hate
him when they don’t even know him. I didn’t know what to tell him,
how to explain that racism supports the capitalist patriarchy we
know as Amerikkka. Here I am, an enemy alien.
I remember this because my middle name is my great-grandmother’s
name, Yaeno. Her pain is my fight now, so I have been training my
lungs. I will never forget the color of my skin or the dirt under
my fingernails. I have been attending weekly rallies protesting in
solidarity with New Otani Hotel workers who want a union. My chants
sound almost like thunder now.
But I am the voice you don’t hear. Time exists not as a linear
progression, but as a tangled web of discontinuity.
I remember the Cold War as part of my childhood. My history lies
beneath the shadow of nuclear destruction which could begin at any
moment, and I am powerless to stop the bomb from falling.
I keep having this dream.
I am afraid of a man in my house, so I run to the next-door
neighbors. I warn them of the impending danger, of the ticking
clock. But they laugh and reassure me that it’s all in my
imagination. When I return home, the man corners me and slices off
my fingers, one by one. I watch, swallowing my fear in silence.
I never see the man’s face in that dream. After I awaken, after
the terror passes, I want to pull him from the shadows, to define
his anonymity. I want order instead of chaos. I want to feel
powerful, the way I never have with my father.
Do you know that stairs frighten me? The worst is the kind with
open space between the steps, so you can see the ground getting
farther and farther away as you climb. I can almost feel myself
plummeting downward, even as I reveal my secret to 20,000
people.
What I fear most is not the fall itself, but that single misstep
which will send me on my way. I fear gravity, a force I cannot
control, a violent will which is not my own.
Letting go of the past is not easy. Inside my head, a voice
endlessly repeats the "it’s my fault" logic, in which I am to blame
for my father’s rage. Surely it was something I said or did, or
didn’t do or say.
Perhaps my uncles joined the 442nd Combat Unit for the same
reason. Maybe they thought Japanese Americans were really to blame
for their own incarceration in "camps." Maybe if my uncles proved
their Amerikkkan-ness by going "for broke" fighting the Nazis in
Europe, then Amerikkka would stop the violence against their
families.
I don’t even know where the past ends and the present begins, so
where do I go from here?
What I want is to expose my most crippling fears and watch them
dissipate. I want to be able to climb up those open stairs without
being gripped by a fear of falling uncontrollably. I want to know,
not just in my mind, but in the pit of my stomach, that if he comes
for me with a knife I will kick it from his hand, scream for help,
do something.
I still have trouble letting go of the past because of the
emptiness which I feel and write to name. I walk around wondering
if anyone else can see the gaping hole in the middle of my gut. But
my mother tells me that a scar is the mark of a warrior who
survives. I speak out to tell the inside-underneath part; the
hidden. A writer and a fighter. My hope is that if I turn the hole
into a mouth, then my voice will fill the empty part of me.
I watched a news clip of the Oct. 12 protest and arrests. Kandea
Mosely’s mother told the reporter how proud she was of her
daughter, and that she was "glad the police behaved
themselves."
My mother has accepted my decision to be arrested for civil
disobedience, but she doesn’t understand it. We were both raised to
be silent women, she and I. But women have a tradition of
subversion which is as long as our silence. I wish she could be as
proud of my decision as Kandea’s mom was of hers.
So many people asked what I hoped to accomplish through civil
disobedience. I guess I would explain by saying that I am trying to
preserve my personal integrity. I am recovering my voice in order
to empower myself and my community.
The funny thing is that I used to hate writing. In high school
English classes, every essay had to have a "catchy" introduction
followed by three supporting paragraphs. What I hated most about
these essays, however, was the concluding paragraph. There we were
supposed to restate the introduction, tie up all the loose ends and
weave everything together all smooth and nice. How symmetrical. How
aesthetically pleasing. How out of context in my life.
So, is my fragmented writing style a political strategy or just
to annoy you? (Damn those lazy brown people. They can’t even write
their Viewpoints properly.) I will never be able to move forward
with a linear history, just as I will never be able to say anything
significant in a five-paragraph format.
Speaking out is a lifetime commitment, one day at a time, and
the clock is ticking.
Shigemura is a third-year geography/environmental studies
student. Her column appears on alternate Fridays.