Naomi Ling

WITH LOVE, YOUR CHINESE AMERICAN DAUGHTER

after “The Joy Luck Club” by Amy Tan
TW: mentions of child neglect

I. Jing-Mei
Mother: I am searching      in the bushes for you,      a flash
of fur darting       among the azaleas you never                   watered.
It’s been two months &       I still don’t understand      cerebral aneurysm
how it hardens my lips               my tongue &            every Asian part of me
you resented. You never said            good daughter, proud daughter         the way
they do in movies— with strip-whitened teeth & a freshly baked hug
but I hope you still meant it.            It’s been two months but I’ve given up
searching for rabbits                          in the outskirts of our suburb            where
boys catch dragonflies in their mouths.          Do you remember that lazy Sunday
buried in July,       the evening tiptoeing by      as you taught me mah jong?
Two players not enough     you grumbled     as I fumbled        with my winds &
bamboos & dots.                               All the tiles blurred and suddenly I was seven again,
hunched over the lazy susan as you              retold your Kweilin story        only this time,
you abandoned all three of your babies                   on the journey here,
your clothes the only hope           clinging to your back.           And I would gasp in horror
imagining my siblings thrown from their mother                    like roadkill.
Like resentment.              I used to resent you, Ma,      just a little bit.              Just enough
that I wouldn’t be anything              you told me to.                I could’ve been
your perfect ABG, Ma,             the way Waverly       clenches medals between her teeth
& kisses your ankles in respec                I could’ve been anything.           Only it’s me, Ma,
me, Jing-Mei June Woo,     the way you wanted it,       the ways I could’ve reassured you
during your last breaths that yes, I will keep weaving the strings
of our legacy                      when your hands can no longer          tie the knot.

II. Rose
In the gauzy mid-morning light,
you brew tea—green for you, chai for me—
& tell me your growing pains.

In this home we are floating creatures
of deserted want & belonging.
I trace your younger figure in my steaming cup,

taste the shivers of a woman forced
into captivity at sixteen. A concubine,
left with shattered dignity & glass beads

for a necklace. You brew a tale of power struggles
& survival, fighting for your place
in a family as traditional as the sun’s path across the sky.

Most of all, you were lonely. A woman
must never be her most tender thing.
Your body: a mere possession or transaction.

         So how did you escape? I can’t help but raise my brows
at your tales, each time scarier than before. The past storms your eyes,
a fleeting reminder of all Hsu women’s pain.

The generational scars we inflict on each other.
         Another life, you finally say. In other life you will believe me.

III. Waverly
As a girl I learned to hold my breath around you—
steal the silence, shush the air, turn the key.
I’d hold it in the moments between shock & disappointment
when your face contorted
like the best performer in the circus.
        You can do better. And I did, sweeping every trophy
you could polish & wax so that when guests came over,
wailing Waverly, you’re the daughter in my dreams
I learned that I was an extension of you—
not Waverly the girl, but Waverly the daughter of Lindo
who passed along her talent, her bloodline,
her everything. You gave everything
& I still didn’t want it.
So that day as I escaped from your needy arms,
there came the sweet, sultry release
of inhibition. Flying down Main Street
toppling weaved baskets & Chinese vegetables, I saw her.
She was not the world’s next chess champion
or child prodigy. She was not as delicate, as small-footed
as her mother claimed. She was not even an inkling
of her mother’s ideations. But she was enough for this world to love,
so I named her Waverly Jong.

IV. Lena
妈妈, do you see me?
Or am I a mirage
in the pool
of your regrets?
Lost in translation
are more than our words.
You, a fortress of a woman
I can never conquer.
Last night I dressed
in my father’s clothes,
chipped armor with shin guards.
I slipped onto the drawbridge.
Dead of the night:
larks dared not to sing here.
The doors rustled
but wouldn’t budge.
I touched it, that is to say
I knelt by your bedside. Tenderly,
like every daughter holds herself.
Once the doors vanished
I peered inside—the dark claiming
every hair on my body.
All was quiet. How do you live
like this? Then I saw you, scrubbing at
a marble tile for stains that neither
of us could see. Breathless,
I began to run. Every turn brought me
back to you. Your prone figure
was helpless to my touch. Impenetrable,
just like your eyes when I tried to pry
them open. You were alive, but not living.
Open up to me, 妈妈, someone far away cried.
I beg of you

Naomi Ling is a poet, singer, and storyteller based in Maryland. Her poetry seeks to interweave motifs of girlhood, growing pains, and activism between each line. Recognized by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards and Best of the Net, she is a 2023 YoungArts Finalist in Poetry, American Voices Winner, and Kenyon Review‘s Patricia Grodd Poetry Prize Winner. If there was one dream she could make true, it would be to ride along the French countryside with a baguette under her arm.