Even the Dead Are Leaving: Guest Post by Celia Wood
Grandfather Seid’s grave, Greenville, Mississippi. Photo credit: Celia Wood.
Guest post by Celia Wood, Oxford, Mississippi
Back in September of 2019, I left Oxford, Mississippi, to drive to the Delta to rendezvous with some Chinese American friends for their small family homecoming. Kelly and Norman Seid had been classmates of mine, and more so than with any other friends, we had kept up with one another, some years better than others. Norman had been a year ahead of Kelly and me, the class of 1971, and Norman had been student body president.
Actually their brother Arnold, unable to make the trip, had knit me forever into the fabric of their family by making a simple request when he became a sophomore at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Could you check up on our little brother Yang, from time to time, while I’m gone? He has no interaction with females, you know.” Their father and uncle were raising seven boys.
The Seid’s mother Mary had died in 1968, so their very shy, very polite little brother secured my admittance behind the green curtain, a panel of fabric, which separated the family’s living quarters from their grocery store, located near sculptor Leon Koury’s Blue Orbit Lounge. I would fetch Yang and we would get ice cream, visit the public library, or pick up another child to go play at the park. It wasn’t enough, but my parents were making me attend a white-flight high school in another town due court-ordered desegregation for my senior year. I wish I could say, “So I spent every Saturday with Yang,” but I did spend some Saturday afternoons with him. That said, our shared time deeply impacted me, and I wondered about Mary Seid, whom I had never known. I learned that she had taken her own life, something people in the Mississippi Delta had a greater likelihood to do than others and something it turns out that Chinese American women at that period in time had a higher statistical likelihood for doing than for any other demographic in America.
At one high school reunion years later, Norman would sit me down, provide information about my wonderings, and invite me to write the story of his mother’s life, and that story has developed over time into a novel that I have told and retold in several drafts. So when Norman called to invite me to meet two of his mother’s brothers and two of her sisters, I leapt at the chance. These members of his family from Guangdong have immigrated to America and now reside in NYC. They recently saw their Mississippi relatives at a wedding in NYC, and when they learned the fifty-first anniversary of their sister’s death was approaching, they decided the time had come to pay their respects to their sister in the Chinese graveyard in Greenville, Mississippi.
Six members of the family flew to Memphis, where they rented a van and drove down to Greenville. After meandering through cotton fields white as snow, they met up with Frank, the eldest Seid brother, Kelly, Norman, and me at a local Greenville diner so busy I had to park behind their dumpster. Having spent hours researching and writing about the Chinese, I had to curb my enthusiasm. I had so many questions. Language difficulties winnowed what I could ask or understand. However, I learned delicious details about life in Guangdong Province before their big sister Mary ever travelled to America to become Frank Seid’s wife. While I had studied Red China at Millsaps back in college, I didn’t know how their sister and their parents actually would have traveled to present her bride gift a village away or whether Mary would have written her diary in Mandarin or Cantonese. My biggest takeaway besides the warmth of these family members, who at first had no idea why I was included in their family gathering, was the importance of family. A sister-in-law and a nephew, who had never known Mary were also in tow, both respectfully in sympathy with Mary’s siblings. Naturally, they would make such a journey in honor of their big sister or aunt who had taken her life fifty-one years ago.
The day before I joined the group, each family member had planted beside Mary’s grave either a chrysanthemum, dwarf gardenia, or an azalea and left a serving of delights to make Mary’s afterlife sweeter. They had burned money, Norman told me at at our end of the table. “Don’t let my relatives hear you asking about exhuming her.” I had just asked him whether plans were underway to join Mary’s remains with Norman’s father’s in Honolulu. Frank Seid, Sr. had died more than a decade ago, and his sons Arnold and Yang had ultimately taken care of and had him buried there. Norman divulged that the brothers were having both their mother’s and grandfather’s remains exhumed and transported to Hawaii in 2020. I knew his father originally planned to have Grandfather Seid’s remains transported back to China, but now, the place for gathering everyone together in death has suffered a sea change. It has become America, but no longer Mississippi. Hawaii has won out!
Norman darkly added, “Don’t let my mom’s relatives know about our moving any remains! It took them fifty-one years to get to Greenville. I plan to spring it on them later that they are going to have to come honor her in Honolulu, too! That will be a really big trip!” He raised and lowered his eyebrows in Groucho Marx fashion.
After a plate lunch featuring fried pork chops, the ten of us loaded up and caravanned over to Greenville’s Welcome Center, housed in a former paddleboat. It neatly anchors Greenville’s former importance as a port city along the Mississippi River in a visitor’s mind. Frank, Jr., Norman, Kelly, and I approached the displays as if they were new to us, despite the fact that the air conditioner seemed on the fritz upstairs in the ninety-degree heat. We took various photos with the visiting relatives and of one another in front Jim Henson’s frog, named Kermit for a friend of his from Leland, Mississippi. We moseyed from display to display, trying to explain things to our Chinese guests. Having made the tour through the sweltering upstairs area, exclaiming over memorabilia about African-American blues musicians, Jewish merchants, Italian restaurateurs, and Lebanese settlers, I lifted my head in horror. Where were the Chinese? They were missing! Not featured in a single display! I asked Kelly whether I had missed something. Self-deprecating, he replied, “Oh, there was nothing much to miss.”
“Oh, there so was something to miss, Kelly! How could they do that,” I asked incredulously, but in retrospect I question my naiveté. A WASP, I’m practiced in denial, while my Chinese-American friends have limited expectations. We all grew up in the South, where our history books left out our black brothers and sisters. For many whites the Delta Chinese, supposedly at one point the largest concentration of Chinese not located in an American city, were invisible in a place that wasn’t quite home. The hauntingly beautiful flat land could be a lonely place to live, especially without a sense of belonging. No wonder, the brothers are moving Grandfather and Mary Seid away from Greenville.
On my way back to Oxford, I stopped by the Chinese Heritage Museum in Cleveland on Delta State’s campus. It confirmed my reverence for their culture. Their art, articles from their daily life, their service in World War II, their medals and photos marking their achievements -- all testified to their contributions and further fueled my outrage. The rest of the way home, I found myself humming Paul Simon’s lyric nothing but the dead and dying back in my little town. Only, I realized, it now merits a deletion. “Nothing but the . . . dying back in my little town,” for even the dead are leaving.
Want to learn more about the Mississippi Delta?
Check out earlier blog posts What’s Good in Mississippi: Art + Stories and A Quick 48 Hours in Greenville, Mississippi. And read about What’s Good in Marks, Mississippi and Greenville, Mississippi.
Like what you see? Invest in a painting or print of the Mississippi Delta.
Want to be a guest writer, or know someone who might? Holler at me at jennifer@whatsgoodproject.com.