Homesick (11 page)

“Did you know I had a baby sister this summer?” I asked.

Nancy sat up and handed me a piece of gum. “Yeah, I heard.”

“If she had lived,” I said, “she would be four months old now.”

“You keep track?” Nancy was pulling the chewed gum from her mouth and stretching it out with both hands so that it was a flat, rubbery piece punctured with holes. “These are Miss Williams' pants,” she laughed.

I didn't want to talk about Miss Williams. “Sure, I keep track,” I said. “I know the exact day she would have turned four months.”

Nancy stuffed the gum back into her mouth. “Well, let me tell you. Four-month-old babies are a pain in the neck. I know. We've had two.”

My mother came out on the porch with a sweater for me to put on. I don't know what got into me but I had started something I didn't want to let go.

“I was just telling everyone about Miriam,” I said. “How she would have been four months old now.”

My mother looked as if I'd slapped her in the face. She didn't say a word, but as she went back into the house, I knew she would never in her whole life talk about Miriam. It was as if I'd never had a baby sister.

I stretched my gum out the way Nancy had, only I pulled mine so thin it was almost all holes. “These are your pants,” I said and I ran back to the swings.

When we got home at about four o‘clock, my mother went upstairs to take her afternoon rest. I went into the living room where Wong Sze-Fu was dusting the furniture with a feather duster. He swooped the feathers over the piano keys and as the dust drifted back down, he told me that Lin Nai-Nai was home. She had come about a half hour ago.

Already! But my father wasn't even home!

I ran to the servants' quarters and up to her room. I was so worried that I didn't even knock, just slipped inside. Her back was turned toward me as she sat in a straight chair, swaying to and fro. “Ai-ya,” she whispered. “Ai-ya, ai-ya.” Her trouser legs were rolled up. The strips of bandage that bound her feet had been taken off and her stumps of feet, hard little hooves with the toes bent under, were soaking in a pan of water on the floor. “Ai-ya,” she said.

I threw myself on my knees beside her chair and put my arms around her waist. “What is it?” I whispered. “What happened?”

I had never seen her feet unbound or tears on her face or her sleek black hair straggling out of the bun on the back of her neck. She put an arm around my shoulder as if she welcomed me, as if good friends were supposed to share bad times.

“My father would not allow me in the house,” she said. “My mother is sick but he wouldn't let me see her. He would not even take the food. He closed the door in my face.”

With her eyes shut, Lin Nai-Nai shook her head back and forth as if the world were more than she could understand.

“I just left the baskets on the doorstep and ran. I ran all the way to the river and rented a sampan to take me across. Then I walked from the Bund.”

“Oh, your poor, poor feet,” I moaned.

“Yes, my poor feet.”

She was quiet for a moment but I knew she had more to tell. “I saw Dee Dee,” she went on. “He is the only one home and he is thin. So thin. My sisters are married and in Shanghai. My other brother was killed by a shell.” She shut her eyes again.

“Dee Dee told you that?”

“Yes. He ran after me in the street. He told me that when he grows up, I can live with him.” She shook her head. “He doesn't know that when he grows up, he will be a man. A different person. Now he is still a boy and when I told him there was chocolate in the basket, he forgot everything else. And when he left, I began running again.” She made a small laugh. “Bound feet running. Like a stumbling duck.”

I tried to think of something to say that would make Lin Nai-Nai feel better, but I could find nothing. As far as I could see, she had not a single thing in her life to look forward to.

“I'll make you a cup of tea.” I went to her little two-burner stove and put water on to boil. When the tea was ready, she drank noisily to show her appreciation. Tomorrow she would feel better, she said. I shouldn't worry.

But I didn't see how she would feel better. That night at supper I asked what would happen to Lin Nai-Nai when we went back to America.

“She'll go to live with Mr. and Mrs. T. K. Hu,” my mother said. “We made arrangements months ago, but of course she hoped to go back to her family. Since she can‘t, I'm sure she'll be happy with the Hus.”

Still, I couldn't bear to think of leaving Lin Nai-Nai. “How will we ever know what's happening to each other?” I asked her one day. “You can't write English and I can't read Chinese.”

“Mr. Hu can write for me and he can read your letters to me. You can tell me all about your grandmother and how you feed the chickens and how happy you are.”

As much as I'd talked, I found it hard to imagine myself actually picking up a pen to write such a letter. Ever since my father had said delay was possible, I hadn't dared to make plans for fear of being disappointed. I had tried to put America right out of my mind. Of course I wrote to my grandmother as usual and we sent off our Christmas packages to Washington, P.A., but I wasn't keeping any album of pictures of what it would be like when we got there. I held out until Christmas and then I couldn't hold out any longer.

It all started when I opened the present from my father. It was a big, soft package and inside there was blue-and-gray-plaid wool that looked like a blanket, but it was not a regular blanket, my father said. It was a steamer rug made especially for ocean voyages. He described how I would sit on a deck chair as we crossed the Pacific and I'd cover myself with the steamer rug and while I looked at the ocean, a steward would bring me a cup of beef tea. That did it. How could I stay put in China when my steamer rug was ready for the high seas?

Then I opened my grandmother's present. Of course she sent me a petticoat but she also sent a calendar for the next year: 1927. She had attached a note: “I have a calendar just like this. Beginning January 1st, let's both cross off the days until you're home. That will make the time go faster.” She figured that it might be July by the time we had crossed the continent, so at the end of every month she had written down how many days were left. At the end of January: 150 days. At the end of February: 122 days. As I turned the pages, the days seemed to fly past. Then I came to July, and there pasted over the whole month was a picture of my grandmother and my grandfather and my Aunt Margaret.

My grandmother was a large woman who looked as if she did everything in a big way. In the picture, she was laughing so hard I could almost hear her, and her arms were out as if she were waiting for me to run into them. Beside her, my grandfather smiled under his mus tache as if he were saying, “How about a game of horseshoes?” (My father said he was a champion.)

On the other side was my Aunt Margaret. I hadn't seen a picture of her since she'd been in high school and now she was twenty-one and taught music and had lots of beaus. I'd been afraid that maybe she had turned into a flapper with spit curls and spike heels and she might not like me. But when I saw her picture, I knew I could get in bed with her on Sunday mornings and tell jokes even if she had been out late the night before with a beau.

“Do you think we really will leave for America on time?” I asked.

“Yes,” my mother said. “I feel it in my bones.”

That was the best Christmas present of all. I knew that my mother's bones were almost always right.

5

IN HISTORY BOOKS WAR SEEMED TO BE A SIMPLE matter of two sides fighting, the right side against the wrong, so I didn't see how this Chinese war was ever going to make it into history. In the first place, there weren't just two sides. There were warlords scattered around, each with his own army, and there was the Nationalist Army (under General Chiang Kai-shek) which was trying to conquer the warlords and unify the country. And there were the Communists who were supposed to be part of the Nationalist movement, but they had their own ideas, my father said, and they didn't always agree with General Chiang Kai-shek. Both the Communists and the Nationalists wanted to make things better in China, he explained, but both did terrible things to people who opposed them. If a man was an enemy, sometimes they'd cut off his head and stick it up on a pole as a warning to others. My father had seen this with his own eyes.

Furthermore, it wasn't armies who made the most trouble in Hankow. Gangs of Communist-organized workers were the ones who did the rioting. In January they took over the British concession and returned it to the Chinese. I didn't understand much of what was going on, but it didn't matter since all I cared about was going to America on time. And it looked as if we would. In February we had some of our furniture and all of our Chinese things crated for shipment. We still had our beds and chairs and bureaus and dining-room furniture, so we could get along, but even so, the house was bare and echoey. It was while we were in the midst of this packing that Mr. and Mrs. T. K. Hu came calling. Mr. Hu was carrying a large box which he handed to my father.

“Since you are packing,” he said, “we thought this would be the time to give you our remembrance.”

My father unwrapped the package and took out a very large ginger jar. Shiny Chinese yellow it was, the happiest color in the world, and it was decorated with bright green characters which wished us long life and health and happiness and lots of money which certainly took care of my wishes. As we stood admiring the jar, Mr. Hu took it from my father's hands and set it on one side of our fireplace.

“A pair of these jars was given us as a wedding gift,” he said. “They have always stood one on each side of our fireplace. We will keep one and now you have the other. When we look at ours, we will think of you and when you look at yours, you will think of us.”

My mother put her arms around Mrs. Hu. My father took one of Mr. Hu's hands in both of his. “Old friend,” he said. “Old friend.” He must have been misty-eyed, for he took off his glasses and wiped them. Suddenly I found myself blinking back tears and I didn't know why. I was counting the days on the calendar, wasn't I? Then how could a yellow ginger jar turn everything inside me upside down?

Mr. Hu, a large, merry-faced man whom I'd always liked, turned to me.

“And when you look at that jar, Miss Jean,” he said, “you can think: ‘I was born in China. Part of me will always be there.”'

I had never planned to think any such thought. I was upset by the idea and changed the subject.

“Mr. Hu,” I said, “if I write letters to Lin Nai-Nai in English, will you read them to her in Chinese?”

He smiled as we all sat down. “Yes. And you can be sure that we'll take good care of your Lin Nai-Nai.”

There was something else. I knew I should have talked to my mother about this first but she might have said no. “Mr. Hu,” I said, “do you think you could take care of my cat too?”

“Jean!” My mother was embarrassed but before she could stop me, I scooped up Kurry who was under the sofa. “She's a gentle cat,” I said.

“Of course we'll take her.” Mr. Hu smiled and Mrs. Hu scratched Kurry in her favorite spot behind the ears.

Everything was going well. In March my father received word that a new man was being sent to the Y.M.C.A. to take his place, so I didn't see how my father could feel “needed” now. We planned to take the riverboat from Hankow on April 15, arriving in Shanghai on the twentieth. We would stay with the Hulls for six days before the President Taft sailed.

We hadn't heard from the Hulls for about a month but the last news had not been good. Mrs. Hull had written that she and Mr. Hull were going to get a divorce and he had moved to an apartment. Andrea wrote that her father was happy in his apartment and maybe this was for the best, after all. The rest of them might go to America. She didn't know when but she was ready. She had learned the Charleston.

Why would Andrea want to learn the Charleston? I wondered. That was a flapper thing to do and Andrea was only in eighth grade. I asked my mother about it.

“Andrea has always been old for her age,” my mother pointed out. “She even looks older than she is.” (That was true.) “And in Shanghai, Americans are crazy to keep up with American fads. They don't want to fall behind.”

Well, I just hoped that Andrea hadn't grown up so much that she'd forgotten that I was to have a bathroom of my own when we visited.

On the morning of March 26 when I sat down at my desk, I crossed out March 25 on the calendar. Eighty-five days crossed out, ninety-six to go before July. But only twenty before we left for Shanghai, which was really the beginning of our trip home.

At about ten o‘clock that morning as my mother was reviewing me in spelling, we heard the front door being flung open. We knew it was my father because of the way he ran up the stairs—two at a time. When he appeared at the door, he had that excited, tense look that meant a Narrow Squeak was on its way.

“All women and children have to leave Hankow today. You have about three hours to pack and get ready.” He must have run home because he was still out of breath.

“What's happened?” My mother banged the spelling book shut and stood up as if she were ready to leave that very minute.

The day before yesterday the Nationalist Army had captured Nanking (down the river from Hankow), my father told us, and afterwards the soldiers had gone wild. They had broken into foreign homes, knocked foreigners around, stolen right and left. They were doing such terrible things to people that American and British gunboats had opened fire on them. Foreign gunboats hadn't done this before, my father said, and there was no telling what might happen now. There might be wholesale murder of foreigners up and down the Yangtse. We might find ourselves at war.