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“China’s not her home country,” Sam grumbles.
“He’s a Commie,” Vern says, but then he thinks everyone’s a Commie.
“It’s just love,” May says lightly, but I hear worry in her voice. “Girls say and do stupid things when they’re in love.”
I fold the letter and put it back in its envelope. There’s nothing we can do about any of this from so far away, but I begin a chant—something more than a prayer, something more like a desperate plea: Bring her home, bring her home, bring her home.
Dominoes
SUMMER ARRIVES AND Joy comes home. We bask in the soft music of her voice. We try to stop ourselves from touching her, but we pat her hand, smooth her hair, and straighten her collar. Her auntie gives her signed movie magazines, colorful headbands, and a pair of purple ostrich mules. I make her favorite home-cooked foods: steamed pork with salted duck eggs, curried tomato beef lo mein, chicken wings with black beans, and almond tofu with canned fruit cocktail for dessert. Every day Sam brings her one treat or another: barbecued duck from the Sam Sing Butcher Shop, whipped-cream cake with fresh strawberries from Phoenix Bakery, and pork bao from the little place she likes so much on Spring Street.
But how Joy has changed these last nine months! She wears pedal pushers and sleeveless cotton blouses that nip in at her tiny waist. She’s lopped off her hair and styled it into a pixie cut. Inside she’s changed too. I don’t mean that she challenges us or insults us as she did in her last months before she left for Chicago. Rather, she’s come back believing that she’s more knowledgeable than we are about travel (she’s been to Chicago and back on the train, and none of us have been on one in years), about finances (she has her own bank account and a checkbook, while Sam and I still hide our money at home, where the government—or whoever—can’t get it), but most of all about China. Oh, the lectures we hear!
She slaps her paws at the gentlest among us, her uncle. If the Boar—with its innocent nature—has a fault, it’s that he trusts everyone and will believe almost everything that’s told to him, even by strangers, even by swindlers, even by a voice on the radio. Years of listening to anti-Communist broadcasts have forever colored Vern’s opinions about the People’s Republic of China. But what kind of a target is he? Not a very good one. When Joy proclaims, “Mao has helped the people of China,” about all her uncle can do is say, “No freedom there.”
“Mao wants the peasants and workers to have the very chances that Mom and Dad want for me,” Joy presses adamantly. “For the first time, he’s letting people from the countryside go to colleges and universities. And not just boys. He says women should receive ‘equal pay for equal work.’”
“You’ve never been there,” Vern says. “You don’t know anything about it—”
“I do so know about China. I was in all those China movies when I was a little girl.”
“China isn’t like the movies,” her father, who usually stays out of these disagreements, says. Joy doesn’t smart-tongue him. It’s not because he tries to control her as a proper Chinese father should or that she’s an obedient Chinese daughter. Instead, she’s like a pearl in his palm—forever precious; to Joy, he’s the solid ground on which she walks—forever steady and reliable.
Sensing a momentary lull, May tries to put a final stop to Joy’s line of thinking. “China isn’t like a movie set. You can’t leave it when the cameras stop rolling.”
This is one of the harshest things I’ve ever heard my sister say to Joy, but this most mild of reprimands acts like a nettle in my daughter’s heart. Suddenly her attention focuses on May and me—two sisters who have never been apart, who are the closest of friends, and whose bond is deeper than Joy could ever imagine.
“In China, girls don’t wear dresses like you and Auntie May want me to wear,” she tells me a couple of mornings later as I iron shirts on the screened porch. “You can’t wear a dress when you’re driving a tractor, you know. Girls don’t have to learn how to embroider either. They don’t have to go to church or Chinese school. And there’s none of that obey, obey, obey stuff that you and Dad are always bugging me about.”
“That may be so,” I say, “except that they have to obey Chairman Mao. How is that different from obeying the emperor or your parents?”
“In China, there are no wants. Everyone has food to eat.” Her response is not an answer, just another slogan that she picked up in one of her classes or from that Joe boy.
“Maybe they can eat, but what about freedom?”
“Mao believes in freedom. Haven’t you heard about his new campaign? He’s said, ‘Let a hundred flowers bloom.’ Do you know what that means?” She doesn’t wait for me to answer. “He’s invited people to criticize the new society—”
“And it’s not going to end well.”
“Oh, Mom, you’re so …” She stares at me, considering. Then she says, “You always follow the other birds. You follow Chiang Kai-shek, because people in Chinatown do. And they follow him because they think they have to. Everyone knows he’s no better than a thief He stole money and art as he fled China. Look at how he and his wife live now! So why does America support the Kuomintang and Taiwan? Wouldn’t it be better to have ties to China? It’s a much bigger country, with a lot more people and resources. Joe says it’s better to talk to people than to ignore them.”
“Joe, Joe, Joe.” I sigh wearily. “We don’t even know this Joe and you’re listening to him about China? Has he ever been there?”
“No,” Joy grudgingly admits, “but he’d like to go. I’d like to go too one day to see where you and Auntie lived in Shanghai and go to our home village.”
“Go to mainland China? Let me tell you something. It’s not easy for a snake to go back to Hell once he’s tasted Heaven. And you are not a snake. You’re just a girl who doesn’t know anything about it.”
“I’ve been studying—”
“Forget that classroom business. Forget what some boy told you. Go outside and look around. Haven’t you noticed the new strangers in Chinatown?”
“There will always be new lo fan,” she says dismissively.
“They aren’t the usual l
o fan. They’re FBI agents.” I tell her about one who’s recently been walking through Chinatown every day and asking questions. He makes a loop that starts at the International Grocery on Spring, passes Pearl’s on Ord, and goes along Broadway to the Central Plaza in New Chinatown, where he visits General Lee’s Restaurant. From there he continues to Jack Lee’s grocery on Hill, then over to the newest part of New Chinatown across the street to visit the Fong family’s businesses, and finally back downtown.
“What are they looking for? The Korean War is over—”
