Cutting Together a History: On Dong Li’s “The Orange Tree”

Aug 30, 2023

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June 5, 2023 • By Peter Myers

The Orange Tree

Dong Li

[b]efore fleeing, Great-Grandpa gave Grandma an orange tree plant.

He told her to plant it where the soil was rich.

When the orange tree was with us, then we would be together.

We would have some shade and fruit in the family.

Soon the two younger brothers were shocked to death. […]

Grandpa, together with Grandma and their first daughter, fled.

They walked forty-five miles and settled at Rainbow Street 12.

Maternal Great-Grandparents were having orange parties.

Paternal Great-Grandparents joined the People's Liberation Army on the Long March.

Eighty thousand people went on the march, and seven thousand made it.

To Yan’an Headquarters.

Great-Grandparents were left unburied.

On the firm snowy mountains.

No one knew how many roads she had walked before this. No one knew how many bridges she had crossed before summer. No one knew her, and it had snowed. Wiping off the snow, she dug her face into the bushels. They smelled of summer. The bushels were frozen, and so was her face. It was as if time had frozen and whitened into snow. In the snow her long dress looked purple. […] Her feet purpled. The dogs stopped barking. They were chewing on her bones.

¤

Peter Myers

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