"Maureen McHugh - China Mountain Zhang" - читать интересную книгу автора (McHugh Maureen F)

I should finish this now, explain, but I flee.

I meet my mother for lunch every six months or so. Filial duty. Teresa Luis lives in Pennsylvania and
commutes to work here in Manhattan. She has another family, a husband and two sons. She and my
father were divorced during the Great Cleansing Winds. Elder Zhang lives out on the West Coast where
he is an office manager for a company that builds robots to do precision robotics. I have not seen him for
fifteen years.
I meet her in the market, getting off the subway at Times Square.
I don't know why she likes to eat in the market; I think it is a tacky place with all the close streets and
the booths and sidewalk sellers. She says it has charm. My mother works at Citinet in International
Banking. She is a clerk. She always wears those suits that are almost like uniformsтАФdrab colors with
tails to the backs of her knees. Never short tails, never the long ones. She is very religious and she
believes in Marx and Mao Zedong. Do not make the mistake of thinking her stupid; she has to juggle a
lot of Kierkegaard and Heiler to explain but she manages a full wipe.
"Hello," she says and takes my arm. I am never sure I am her son, although I don't rationally doubt it.
It's just that the connection between us is very tenuous. Perhaps I have so few of her genes that we are
more like cousins.
"Zhong Shan, what's wrong?" Zhong Shan is my Chinese name, Rafael is my Spanish name. There
isn't any similarity. I am named for a Chinese revolutionary, and for her Spanish great-great-grandfather,
who was a union organizer before the great collapse. He was a party member in the secret days of the
Second Depression, and later, during the American Liberation War, a martyr.
"I am in trouble," I say, and tell her about Foreman Qian. While I am talking I watch the copper
marks under the skin of her wrist. Then I watch the copper marks on my wrist, almost like bruises. She
ties into her terminal every day, I use my jacks only when I'm working with machinery. With those jacks,
Foreman Qian can access my records. But only my surface records, not my deep records, he doesn't
have clearance. There is nothing personal in my surface records, and my mother's name is listed as Li
Taiming, her name from when she was active in the party.
When I am finished she says, "The Chinese are the worst racists in the world." This is not surprising,
nor is it helpful. Nor is it a good political thing to say but everybody knows it. "What are you going to
do?" she asks.
"Turn him down. I don't even know the girl. Even if it worked out when I apply they'll do a medical.
They'll do a background check. If I pass a medical I'll still fail the background check." Legally everyone
is equal, even here at the other end of the world in the Socialist Union of American States we all know
better than that. Be it Rome or Beijing, we bring tribute but we are not admitted. Unfortunate day I was
born.
 "You can go to dinner," she says. "Maybe the daughter won't like you. Maybe you'll forget your
upbringing and sneeze at the table."
"It's a lie," I say, "and you always told me that a lie always creates complications." But my face is a lie
as well, and she condoned that. I am sure she hears the accusation, but we never talk about my mother's
contradictions.
She does not touch me, although for a moment I think she is going to cover my hand with hers and I
am afraid.
"It is not the revolution that is at fault," she says, "it is the people who are implementing it."
I don't believe in socialism but I don't believe in capitalism either. We are small, governments are
large, we survive in the cracks. Cold comfort.

There is a game I play when I am out by myself among people. I play it on my way home, descending
into the bowels of the city, taking a three hundred year old train to the bottom of the island and under the
choked harbor to Brooklyn. The subway sways and like idiots we all nod together. My game is this: I
become other people.