{"id":193,"date":"2010-08-22T21:37:47","date_gmt":"2010-08-23T01:37:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.sherryquanlee.com\/?p=193"},"modified":"2010-08-22T21:37:47","modified_gmt":"2010-08-23T01:37:47","slug":"secrets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.sherryquanlee.com\/?p=193","title":{"rendered":"SECRETS"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve gotten through another weekend.\u00a0<\/em> I\u2019ve learned if I can get through another lonely Friday night, weekends can be momentous.\u00a0 Thank God for sisters.\u00a0 My sister came to my rescue Friday night and we did what we do best together-played slots (while listening to great music (Soul Tight Committee, http:\/\/www.soultight.com\/schedule.html<\/a>). Saturday we went to garage sales, my favorite store in North Saint Paul (http:\/\/lagarageandgallery.com\/<\/a>), and to satisfy our hunger we ate burgers at the oldest bar in Minnesota (http:\/\/www.neumannsbar.com\/<\/a>).\u00a0 After shopping for groceries, we both went to our respective condos and took a nap!\u00a0<\/p>\n

For me, Sunday is almost always a day of work.\u00a0 Today I found it quite soulful to scrub floors, clean my ice box, vacuum and dust, wash clothes\u2014all the things that help me relax and get ready for another work week.\u00a0 But, as often is the case, by Sunday evening I remember that I am a writer.\u00a0 And by Sunday evening I wonder why it takes so much stressful energy fighting off being alone, followed by a surge of activity, before I can actually sit down to write.<\/p>\n

My friend, who I also consider my mentor, has given me assignments.\u00a0 She told me to write stories. The stories have to be two pages, nothing longer.\u00a0 Also, I was told not to revise, not until I have a dozen or more short stories. She gives me prompts.\u00a0 The first assignment was to write a story that begins at the end.\u00a0 The second \u00a0assignment was to write a story about a secret<\/span>.\u00a0 I have given myself two rules.\u00a0 One, the stories have to be written in third person<\/span> in hopes to move away from the personal (I am not worried about admonishments as to whether I have written fiction or nonfiction, my stories are drafts and who is to know, including me, if they are true or not). Two, the stories have to be about love<\/span>.\u00a0 I challenge you to also accept this assignment.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/h1>\n

SECRETS<\/span><\/h1>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/h1>\n

The secret belonged to her mother.\u00a0 She, the youngest sibling, did not own it.\u00a0 She, sixty years old\/young, had no secrets.\u00a0 Never had any secrets.\u00a0 Her mother was dead.\u00a0 She died still white as an angel\u2019s frock.\u00a0 Perhaps, unafraid at last.\u00a0 Her mother had become what she said she was, White.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Even dead, she was White and she had told her children, no funeral.\u00a0 No funeral, they assumed, because Mother didn\u2019t want her relatives to mourn her, or damn her to hell.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Her children promised cremation; no confession of sins, no truth telling.\u00a0 Dead or not, the color black was not allowed.<\/p>\n

The residents of her mother\u2019s nursing home celebrated each death with story.\u00a0 Whether they knew or liked each other before death, whether they sat together at meals or played Scrabble together on Thursday afternoons fighting over the legitimacy of a word, whether they said hello to each other every day or never, whether the sat in their wheelchairs in the TV room watching \u201cDays of Our Lives\u201d– at the gathering to celebrate yet another passing, they never said anything ugly, not even about her mother.\u00a0 They celebrated her mother\u2019s passing with stories, some very funny. \u00a0Some, the daughters asked themselves, \u201ccould this me my mother they are talking about?\u201d \u00a0It was important to conjure up goodness and humor after yet another resident was hurried off in an ambulance, not to return.\u00a0 No one told her mother\u2019s secret at the celebration, they probably didn\u2019t know, though some might have guessed.\u00a0\u00a0 There were no stories linked to race or class.<\/p>\n

The daughter she was weary.\u00a0 How much time, and energy, and anger, and defiance, and information, and confrontation, and how many poems, and how many stories, how many lost friends, how many lost lovers, how much loneliness did it take for her to uncover and shed her mother\u2019s lies.\u00a0 What is the cost of truth?\u00a0 Was her angst and sorrow and loneliness any more than what her mother endured by not telling the truth?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Neither were right or wrong.\u00a0 We do what we do because we have to.\u00a0 We do it with compassion.\u00a0 We do it for love.<\/em><\/p>\n

The mother:\u00a0 slot machines, romance novels, garage sales, peanut butter kisses, chastity, shame; prayer.<\/p>\n

The daughter:\u00a0 dark chocolates, poetry, slot machines, thrift stores, and romantic liaisons; eventually, no guilt and no shame; prayer.<\/p>\n

She would not let her mother\u2019s family disappear, though for years they were hidden in dark shadows.\u00a0 She gave them life with her words, though she had much to imagine.\u00a0 Her mother read her book Chinese Blackbird<\/em>, and said in a whisper \u201cwe are proud.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Was she proud, or perhaps angry, perhaps sad, that the only way to keep her daughters\u2019 from race riots and dark men was to prep them as exotic Asian girls, praying for them to marry the White Lieutenant; a safety net, what Bloody Mary demanded for Liat?\u00a0 Her prayers were mighty strong.\u00a0 Four daughters, eventually 13 ex-lieutenant husbands.\u00a0 \u00a0The youngest was\u00a0 brave, \u201cbe gone\u201d she said.\u00a0 But often she wondered, \u201cwhat if.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

At sixty, the youngest daughter is weary and lonely.\u00a0 Is martyrdom worth the isolation?\u00a0 Are political allies true friends or lovers?\u00a0 Why did she need to expose her mother\u2019s secret?\u00a0 Why did invisibility scourge her?\u00a0 Did she know she had a secret of her own?<\/p>\n

The daughter of the mother who passed for White wasn\u2019t as Negro or Chinese<\/em> as her birth certificate proclaimed.\u00a0 Culturally, she was White.\u00a0 Scandinavian neighborhood.\u00a0 Norwegians and Swedes.\u00a0 Lutheran Church.\u00a0 Hot dish.\u00a0 Dick and Jane. Wonder Bread.\u00a0 White picket fences.<\/p>\n

At sixty, she is restless.\u00a0 She still wants the apple pie, the American Dream\u2014this is her secret.\u00a0 Perhaps being a grandmother she wants her world to be smaller, kinder, without labels, without definition.\u00a0 No trying to save the world, no trying to control.\u00a0 Just to survive each day; sometimes with joy.\u00a0 With a heart full of love.<\/p>\n

Loving her children and her grandchildren she knows:\u00a0 that her mother\u2019s secret, and her secret, are not so very different.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sherry Quan Lee<\/p>\n

August 16, 2010<\/p>\n

Admittedly, minor revisions, Sunday, August 22, 2010<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve gotten through another weekend.\u00a0 I\u2019ve learned if I can get through another lonely Friday night, weekends can be momentous.\u00a0 Thank God for sisters.\u00a0 My sister came to my rescue Friday night and we did what we do best together-played slots (while listening to great music (Soul Tight Committee, http:\/\/www.soultight.com\/schedule.html). …<\/p>\n

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