Monkey King and Kuan Yin reside on the altar, separated by a porcelain vase. Grandma is afraid Monkey King is so lively he’ll annoy the Goddess of Mercy. She’s placed the bronze ring around his head, casting a spell to tighten it whenever he mouths off. Grandma took me to see Monkey King at the old World Theater when I was three. Every day she dressed for work at the garment shop in her home-sewn double-knit. I don't feel like working. We arrived at the theater at noonand didn’t go home until the stores closed, having seen Monkey King five times. In the shabby movie house, fairy people changed into giant bananas when it snowed, shaking, It’s so cold, it’s so cold. The world was big. Heaven shook. Monkey King could travel 180,000 miles a somersault. In Grandma’s dialect he is Sin Unh Kung. King of the Monkeys, born from stone on the mountain of fruit and flowers. Grandma went to find him when she was a little girl. Her mother was dyingof a high fever, and she asked a wise woman for prayers and medicine. Monkey King was asleep in a teacup, curled up, a piece of jade. The woman said, Blow on the stone and wake him. Grandma begged the shivering jade to stop her mother’s fever. That night, her mother stumbled out from her bedchamber screaming. A man-sized monkey in the garden waved an iron bar at a blue demon with buck teeth. She wailed, damp with sweat. The fever broke. She couldn’t have imagined him.It was Monkey King in the yard fighting the demon, her fever.
© Priscilla Lee. All rights reserved.