The name again

I gave myself a new name in ten minutes: Zhang Yichen.

There is no word for what I feel. My mother’s younger brother died suddenly. I felt almost nothing, only a blank like a dream in which I kept thinking of my mother, and of the cord that has bound her to her natal family all her life, how it might tighten again.

Two nights ago my sister and I were settling work details when she said our mother’s great-uncle had also passed. I stared at the Chinese characters and could not read the meaning between them. My mother did not call right away, probably thinking I was asleep. When I called back, her eyes were swollen.

For two days I did not dare to disturb her. I was afraid I would not respond the right way. I thought I could wait, but it was as if something had already been arranged. While dialing someone else I hit the wrong contact and reached her. It was three in the afternoon in New York, the middle of the night in China. She picked up. She said they were waiting for the death certificate and would take the body back to the hometown before dawn. She said they would perform huàn hún, a calling of the soul, a folk rite for guiding the departed. I do not know the details of such rituals. I only saw her eyes and her tears and heard her uneven breathing.

This afternoon my mother called me herself. In a voice almost never heard in our family, she said, I have something to tell you. I was afraid and unsteady, yet I wanted the next sentence. She said she hoped I would change my surname to hers.

Since her divorce from my father, or even before that, I had wanted to change my surname and not follow my father’s line. I was a teenager then, still a minor, and both parents had to consent. I knew my father would not agree. My mother urged me not to be stubborn. She understood my anger toward him but still wanted to protect what remained between us. She told me to wait.

This time she was serious. After the divorce both her children kept our father’s surname. By village custom a woman in that position is treated as if she has no children under her own name. Her brother had died, and the funeral notice would be written with relatives listed. She wanted one child under her name. Over the phone she said, from now on, when I die, you will be listed as my daughter. Your sister’s name cannot be written there. When your father dies, only your sister will be listed, not you.

I said, give me ten minutes.

She called again and said, we are only waiting for you.

I sent the name: Zhang Yichen.

When I was fifteen or sixteen I once named myself Zhang Yichen too, but with a different final character. My mother asked if I wanted that old choice, or to keep Yuxin and only change the family name. I tried the sound in my head, Zhang Yuxin. It felt like a strange hybrid. So I replaced 辰 with 宸. The pinyin is the same, Yichen, but the characters are different. 辰 evokes time and stars. 宸 carries the image of an eave or a celestial hall, something sheltering.

辰 ends here. 宸 enters.

She handed the phone to my grandfather, my mother’s father. I watched his face age in a second. I have read that sentence in many novels, but this was the first time I saw it happen. He used to beat me when I was small, and I loved him anyway for a long time, until I grew up and learned more. My mother’s natal home was strictly patriarchal. He treasured his only son and gave him what should have been my mother’s education and care. I am not extreme, but I do resent patriarchy. I ache for my mother. After that, distance came between my grandfather and me, and geography widened it.

On the screen he tried to speak. His voice was so hoarse it barely came out, but he kept talking to me. His face looked like a frame of bone. I bit my lip until I tasted metal. He had lost his only son. He was the one who, under patriarchy, sacrificed my mother, his wife, and everything he had to the son he cherished.

One person is gone. What about those who remain. Will they live at all.

I watched the blue light of the screen slow, like the end of a breath. The name had already gone out. I stood in the room as if at a door. I do not know what is behind the door. I know that at this moment, within Chinese family tradition, within the shadow of older custom, within ideas that still work on us, I follow my mother’s surname. I return myself to her name. Yao Yuxin, the child who grew up in this body and walked through so many wounds, still lives here. I choose to step out under a new name from the past Valkyrie Yao, and she will still travel with me. I stand under my mother’s name, and I stand inside my own.