That’s when it occurred to Don Chan that not one single passage in the books he read contained a Chinese woman. So he was left with no other option but to imagine his mother dying from a fever that made her float right up to the heavens, like the Chinese woman he had heard about once who lived on the other side of his town. Who was so thin, she had pebbles sewn in the hem of her skirt so the wind wouldn’t blow her away.

Don Chan continued to walk into the cane fields where he stood, finally, and looked at the blue and green blending. He sat down on the dirt because he was tired of walking. He couldn’t see his house anymore. All the workers had left for the day. He was alone. Only the field mice sped across, chasing prey. The sun left the sky. He saw the sky turn a darker blue. He could hear his name in the wind. He felt the hold of a man at his elbow, but when he turned around to look there was no one there. He went to grab a piece of white fabric blossoming in the green stalk, only to find there was nothing there. He saw the shadow of a man running, but there was no man attached. He ducked at the flying machete, but there was nothing to fear; it disappeared as the night’s breeze made the cane stalks sway. He saw a woman birthing, a child running, an old man eating the insides of a passion fruit, a man much like himself, when he ate in the fields, trying to hide from his father. Not his Chinese father, but his Dominican father. He walked away from the voices that called his name. He knew the farther he went into the green, the harder it was to get out. The dark blue was his blanket, the earth was his bed. He was listening for the first time in a long time to the songs of the earth. He was hearing names—Chan Lee, Hsu Hsu, Guacanagari, Olivorio, Ch’iu…Names whispered with the rustling, the chasing, the running, and then he wondered if his name was Chan Lee at all. That if he was born from the sea, his name could be any name, he could be any man who was lost to the sea.

The earth was asking him to surrender. He had learned that all he could do for the world was nourish the earth with his blood, with his skin. And as he fell into a deep sleep, he wondered if maybe the reason he didn’t remember how he got to this land called República Dominicana was because it must have been a peaceful six years of his life. He imagined the ocean like a womb that nurtured him with its warmth.

Don Chan’s hands dug into the earth. And as he dug, the earth cracked open and he fell into it, catching glimpses of women nursing their sons; men running, shooting, building machines to kill, to incarcerate; women setting themselves on fire. As he fell deeper into the earth, he saw women killing their children in rivers and crying; people making love; hurricanes, tornadoes, rainbows, and blocks of ice drifting in the sea; the insides of people’s bodies, sprouting tobacco, sugar, and coffee. People being cut up with machetes and tossed into rivers; armies in white cloaks with burning crosses; women protecting their homes with swords; buildings collapsing into dust, burning like embers of a cigarette. He saw children, stomachs filled with air, as they struggled not to float away. Whips and chains; communities offering the sea fire, flowers, sweets, wishing for forbidden love, the resurrection of the dead, the return of the lost. Naked women displayed in store windows, for sale. Children buried in unmarked graves after their lungs gave out from working in the mines, children inhaling glue to appease their hunger; men hanging off trees with their cocks in their mouths. Castles. Blue ocean. People cutting off their own limbs out of desperation; children crying and laughing.