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Talking Story |
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From The Asian Reporter, V17, #25 (June 19, 2007), page 7.
What women know
I try to listen. Truly I do. Okay, sometimes harder than others. Like when a woman’s talking.
Oftentimes I think it’s a male problem — we have trouble listening well, we have trouble listening long. Men don’t want to sit, men want to do. If you come to a guy with your problem, his job is not listening. His feet get moving in the direction of a fix. Hands start grabbing for hammers, for nails, for a Black & Decker multi-speed power drill.
Even how we talk about it reveals us. In the girl-speak of these odd times, civil Oregonians say "challenges." Back home we used to have "troubles." Not long ago we used to have "problems." Here and now we have "challenges."
I’m bad at listening; I am hearing challenged.
I will, like I promised earlier, try harder. Try to get this right. But you’ve got to remember the times and the places that have informed me. You’ve got to recall all that because I cannot forget it.
Back home, it never occurred to our fathers or husbands, to us sons or brothers, that those angry occupying armies were "challenges." In America, white boys pinning us to the asphalt and foaming spit onto our faces until they got bored were not a challenge. That violence, there and here, was a problem. More to the point: we are now troubled. Problem-guys. Us men.
Now, multiply Asian bitterness by African America’s anger; add in every humiliating work day silently suffered by Mexican America; mix in American Indians; imagine the darkness taking hold in Arab men diminished in front of their mothers, wives, daughters, sisters. Oh ampun’allaah. God have mercy on you and me.
Shh-shh, sit and listen
But there I go again. Shouting. Ready to rumble, screw driver and crow bar in hand, when I promised not even three paragraphs ago, to listen better.
I’ve got to try harder. Really. I said that to myself several times this week. I assured my best effort to a gentle downtown sister asking after names of ethnic enclave mechanics for that liberal award they give away every year. I said so because I lost my temper. Very un-Javan gentlemanly. After I calmed down, after falling into the same exhaustion in her eyes, I got around to listening. To her.
And what I heard, humbled.
She was as sick of it too. As tired as me. I was shocked by her revelation. Stopped by her honesty. She said she wants to love her men, truly — father, husband, brothers in family and at work, but their attitudes and behavior tire her out. You’ve got to watch out when women get tired of us. Us boys. White guys beware.
I listened hard. To her. Really, I worked at it. Sweating with concentration. But not as hard as her. Not as big-heartedly as she. Cannot be. Only good women can toil like that. Still insisting on making us better, on making this machine kinder.
I thought about all those other women, white and brown and black, who gave up goodness toward us guys, who surrendered hope for our future, a long-long time ago. "Aduuh, what’re we gonna do?" I said to myself.
She paused. She looked at me, as if saying: Are you listening?
Nails and hammers
I went to a church basement on Sunday. Mothers and grandmas were down there. Under that house of God. They were talking about ending warring. Ending it now. Forever. About not giving war another son or daughter, nephew or niece, grandson or granddaughter.
They talked about taking in their tired boys, their damaged men, when they come home from that awful war. Taking them back, into their humble church, into their warm arms, into their open hearts, like tender women do. Like muscular women always have.
I sat in their circle. I listened as hard as I could. I labored at it. Focusing is hard sometimes, especially times when my heart is pounding, my belly is clenching, thighs are flexing. Warring has done this, white folks have done this. This happens to me. I wish it weren’t so. So I listen as good as I can.
And after a while I know what to do. And it does not involve a trip to Home Depot. No tools can fix it. Hammers and hacksaws can stay hanging on nails.
Still, I wonder. You’ve got to wonder.
I’m sure ev-ver-rybody wonders: brown boys and black men and white women alike — what’re white guys up to? What’s with the blue and white cop cruisers circling like sharks, why all those earnest social workers and eager prosecutors and their armies of jailors? Why does America need all those itchy, stealthy bombers and why’re those aircraft carrier battle groups plying every blue ocean under so much angry steam? All the time.
Our fathers’ anger, our brothers’ rage, our women’s shame is understandable. Sure it is. Ask anyone. Nails get hit. Hurt.
But what’s up with the hammer?
This is not a rhetorical question. Our aching earth needs to know.
Please speak. Talk to me. I will try-try-try to listen.
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