Another Vignette Inspired by Audrey Chin: My Name is Snow

Recently, I published a review of Audrey Chin’s book As the Heart Bones Break–a novel that I found both intriguing and instructive.  In this review, I mentioned that I actually put the book down at points and found myself writing little vignettes–responses to her work– compelled by the rich subject matter.  What I ended up with was stuff that, in another liftetime, I swore to never take on–stuff that previously turned me off–but which I decided to take a stab at.  I’m glad I did it.  And I’m indebted to Audrey for opening a new world for me.  For this piece, I used the second person narration (the “you”) that Audrey made her centerpiece device. Give me your feedback.  Tell me what you think!

 

My name is Snow, but until I was thirteen, I never saw it, never touched it, never tasted it.  All I knew was that it was white, cold, distant—and at nights when I dreamed of this thing, this thing called “snow,” I envisioned a ghostly bride in a translucent veil, walking across a beach, trailing a train on sands that hold no footprints.  If you cup snow in your hand, it disappears.  It becomes something else.  It is no longer snow.

snow

An American soldier once said that in his native Alaska, the indigenous people have a thousand words for snow—all different kinds of snow.  I never met this man but I read it in a newspaper clipping from a now defunct newspaper.  And then I lost the newspaper but I kept the words with me.  The words of the newspaper were in Vietnamese but I thought he was speaking to me, only to me, in English.  There are words for slushy snow, icy snow, pure virgin snow.

I had a friend in school who shared my name.  It was a popular name and we had a choice of whether to become friends or enemies.  We became friends.  I told her of my American from Alaska.

“Is he tall?”

“He is tall, as pine trees.”

“Will you remember me when you go to him.”

“I will always remember you,” I told her.  She knew that she would never be able to go to the United States.  But me:  my papers were already in.  And it was just a matter of time.

If I close my eyes, I still think of this man—freckled shoulders, chapped thin lips—and in my dreams, he gives me an eskimo kiss, nose-to-nose, chaste.  I must have described him to my friend, Snow, so many times.

eskimo kiss

And then he instructs me about the properties of snow.  My, how he longed for his snow.  Snow is beautiful in Alaska and when it interacts with the light that bounces through the atmosphere, it forms rainbows, it forms fantastic illusions.  You have never lived until you see the Northern Lights.

It would be a long time before that would happen.  And I guess I never lived.  I cannot say that much of my life counts for much—much living, that is.  I am nothing in this country.  And I was not much of anything in the one I left behind.

northern lights

And then I saw snow for the first time at the age of thirteen when I found myself in Minnesota in the coldest winter.  The snow came down like ashes from a great fire.  It floated.  And then it came down like a curtain of finest lace.  “Don’t go out there,” said my sponsor.  “You’ll catch your death.”  But I was already out the door.

I am lying on the ground.  I am sticking out my tongue.  I am catching it in my tongue, and my tongue can taste its becoming and unbecoming, the unwinding of that spool of thread—first snow, then water—like a trick knot in a magician’s hand.  I am making a snow angel.  I do not know it.

I am making a snow angel.

snow angel

2 thoughts on “Another Vignette Inspired by Audrey Chin: My Name is Snow

    • Margot–Thanks for such a nice comment. I’m at the point in my reading life where I have begun to realize that the responsibility of the honest reader is to not just sit back and enjoy but, also, to glean whatever you can from the experience. So, I always try to engage as deeply as I can and see if I can take something out of it. I’m glad that comes off in the writing!

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