 Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Table of Contents Kingston goes back in time to when her aunt was married. On the first night she saw him, they became husband and wife and had sex; he then sailed for America. Kingston imagines that her aunt probably had forgotten even what he looked like. Next, Kingston remembers conversations between her mother and father in which they had referred to the outcast table where wrongdoers were forced to eat alone. She adds that, unlike the Japanese who let outcasts leave the family to become samurais and geishas, the Chinese made the outcasts remain in the family, ostracized for life. She guesses that her aunt must have eaten at the outcast table. Kingston finds another question about the story. Even though wives always went to live with their husbands' families, the aunt was apparently living with her own family at the time of the raid. She wonders if the aunt had been sent back from her husband's family in disgrace. Then she remembers that her aunt was an only daughter in a family of four brothers, all of whom had traveled to the United States. Perhaps the family had sent for the daughter, but they certainly expected her to "keep the traditional ways." Kingston assumes that her aunt, her "forerunner," had let her delicate dreams grow. She imagines that her aunt perhaps found a man attractive for subtle things like the way his hair grew, and disgraced the family for such a subtle attraction. Kingston momentarily entertains the idea that perhaps her aunt could have been "a wild woman" who kept "rollicking company." She then dismisses this scenario because it does not fit with the aunt's time.
Next, Kingston envisions her aunt working on her appearance in front of a mirror. She knows that a woman of her aunt's time would quickly gain a reputation as an eccentric if she tended to her looks. All the married women "blunt cut their hair" or wore tight buns. Kingston identifies with her aunt's spirit and imagines that she "combed individuality into her bob." Kingston then remembers a story about her grandfather, who was no name's father. One day he brought home a baby girl, having traded one of his sons for her. His wife had made him retrieve the son. Kingston hopes that when he had his own daughter, the no name aunt, he doted on her before her tragic end. Kingston digresses again and thinks about the Chinese immigrants who always seem to have loud voices, "not modulated to American tones even after years away from the villages where they called their friendships out across the fields." Ironically, at the Chinese dinner table, there is quiet, for no one is allowed to talk. Table of Contents | |
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