Traveler

Hello. My name is Bonnie Yang. I like chocolate, sparkly nail polish, and fountain pens. My favorite days are Wednesdays and when it rains.

And I hate it when people speak simply to hear their own voice, so I will choose each word perfectly.

I do not like to talk much. Not unless I have to.

When I talk, do not follow me with a chart showing rising action, climax, and falling action. Do not ponder my hidden meanings, I have none. Assign as much meaning as you want to my words, they have none. I do not speak as an art, that is not my skill.

I am simply here to tell a story.

The story of why I found it necessary to start talking starts with my dad.

My dad has severe gout. In Cantonese, we call it 痛風 which means painful wind. A single breeze brushing over your foot is enough to have you crumble to your feet. A rich man's disease my grandfather calls it, brought on by years of consuming meat and beer.

I find it funny. My father's name is 帆, named after the sails of the mighty junk boats. A gift from his father to a friend leaving for America, naming a son who wishes you a good trip. The friend fell to gambling and drinking and his son inherited a restless foot. A traveler.

One with the wind to their back and their home behind them.

My father took us, limping. He took my mother to Niagara Falls, her schoolgirl dream. He took us out of school to start dreaming. Dreaming of Pollocks, Statues of Liberty, Golden Gate Bridges, Redwoods, and cowboys on trains.

He limped behind us as we followed the Freedom Trail in Boston. As we squawked at Picassos and names of others I forgot, he waited in the museum lobby to rest his leg. As a rite of passage, he pinched my face at Harvard and made me promise to bring him back there one day with me in a black cap and gown. He has stopped making those jokes now, thankfully.

After many years, we saved enough for a trip to Paris. The tourist trap. Unoriginal and tacky, but still romantic. For us.

We did everything right.

We took a photo of the Eiffel Tower framed by our hands in the shape of a heart. We drank espressos by the Seine- pinkies up. We said "une baguette s'il vous plaît" to the bakers in blue aprons. We tried escargots and my little brother loved them. When I saw my first French cat (Blue-eyed, black ears, white face, and pink nose) I snapped a picture of her. She blinked at me before hopping off the window sill. We did battle before the Mona Lisa, squirming against the mass of heated bodies trying to fit her into our camera frame.

We were the perfect, obnoxious, American tourists.

My father took us, limping, to the French Army Museum. We followed him silently down the dark stone corridors, nearly empty of tourists like us.

A left here.

Down the stairs.

Another right.

Wrong room, must have been the one before us.

We fell silent. Father was not a tourist today.

Then we were in a darkened room, away from the main galleries. We were looking at the golden robes of an emperor.

Later, when I did more research on my own, I realized that it was the robes of emperor K'ien Long. I had never heard of his name in my AP World History classes. (I got a five on the test)

Father was quiet. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. I saw him reflected in the glass.

I wonder what he was thinking.

The robe that was worn by the kings of his home. Now found in the darkened room of some museum in another country. With scarcely a plaque to its name.

I wonder if he thought of his limp. How, he too, was in a country reduced to such a small form when he should have been a king at home.

I wonder if he likes his name.