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I can tell Hazel doesn’t believe me—because neither of us has been anywhere other than Big Bear and San Diego for weekend excursions with the Methodist church, and college—but she will later. By then, I’ll be somewhere over the Pacific. There’ll be no turning back.
“You’ve always been a good friend,” I tell her. Tears cloud my eyes. “You’ve been my best friend. Don’t forget me.”
“I won’t forget you.” Then after a pause, she asks, “So do you want to go to Bullock’s this afternoon? I wouldn’t mind buying some things to take back to Berkeley.”
“You’re the best, Haz. Bye.”
The click of the receiver going back into the cradle sounds final.
When my flight is called, I board and take my seat. My fingers seek out the pouch I wear around my neck. Auntie May gave it to me last summer before I left for Chicago. It contains three sesame seeds, three beans, and three coppers from China. “Our mother gave these pouches to Pearl and me to protect us when we fled Shanghai,” she told me last night. “I gave mine to you on the day you were born. Your mother didn’t want you to wear it when you were a baby, but she let me give it to you when you went away to college. I’m glad you’ve worn it this past year.” My aunt … My mom … My eyes begin to well, but I fight back the tears, knowing that, if I start to cry, I may never stop.
But how could May have given me up? How could my real father have let me go? And what about my father Sam? Did he know I wasn’t his? May said no one else knew. If he had known, he wouldn’t have killed himself. He would still be alive to throw me out on the street as the disrespectful, shameful, deceitful, troublemaking bastard that I am. Well, I’m out now. My mom and aunt are probably up, and still not speaking to each other but beginning to wonder where I am. I’m glad I’m not there to choose which mother to love and be loyal to, even with all their poisonous secrets, because that’s an impossible choice. Worst, there’s going to be a moment when things calm down and my mom and aunt make peace—and they go over everything again with a fine-tooth comb, as they always do—that they put two and two together and realize that I’m the real source of what happened to my father Sam, not Auntie May. How will they react when it finally sinks in that I’m the one the FBI was interested in, that I’m the one who led Agent Sanders right to our home, causing such devastation? When that happens, they’ll be glad I’m gone. Maybe.
I let go of my pouch and wipe my sweaty hands on my skirt. I’m anxious—who wouldn’t be?—but I can’t let myself worry about how what I’m doing might affect my mom and aunt. I love them both, but I’m mad at them and afraid of what they’ll think of me too—and just like that, I know I’ll always call May my auntie and Pearl my mom. Otherwise I’ll be more confused than I already am. If Hazel were sitting next to me, she’d say, “Oh, Joy, you’re a mess.” Fortunately, she’s not here.
ABOUT A BILLION hours later, we land in Hong Kong. Some men roll a set of stairs to the plane, and I get off with the rest of the passengers. Waves of heat shimmy off the tarmac, and the air is stiflingly hot, with humidity that’s even worse than when I left Chicago in June. I follow the other passengers into the terminal, down a dingy hall, to a big room with lots of lines for passport control. When my turn comes, the man asks in a crisp British accent, “What is your final destination?”
“Shanghai in the People’s Republic of China,” I answer.
“Stand to the side!” He gets on the phone, and in a couple of minutes two guards come to get me. They take me to the baggage area to retrieve my suitcase, and then I’m led down more shadowy hallways. I don’t see any other passengers, only people in uniforms who stare at me suspiciously.
“Where are we going?”
One of the guards answers my question by roughly jerking my arm. Finally we reach a set of double doors. We push through them and back into the horrible heat. I’m put in the back of a windowless van and told to keep quiet. The guards get in up front, and we start to drive. I can’t see anything. I don’t understand what’s going on and I’m scared—petrified, if I’m honest. All I can do is hang on as the van makes sharp turns and goes over bumpy roads. It pulls to a stop after a half hour. The guards come around to the back of the van. They talk for a few minutes, leaving me inside to worry and sweat. When the doors are opened, I see that we’re on a wharf where a big boat is taking on cargo. The boat flies the flag of the People’s Republic of China—five gold stars on a red background. That same mean guard yanks me out of the van and drags me to the gangplank.
“We don’t want you spreading communism here,” he practically yells at me as he hands me my suitcase. “Get on the boat and don’t get off until you reach China.”
The two guards stand at the bottom of the gangplank to make sure I board. All this is a surprise—an intimidating and unsettling surprise. At the top of the gangplank, I see a sailor. No, that’s not what he’d be called. He’s a crewman, I think. He speaks rapidly to me in Mandarin, the official language of China and a language I don’t feel confident about in its pure form. I’ve heard my mother and aunt converse in the Wu dialect—Shanghainese—my whole life. I believe I know it well but not nearly as well as I do Cantonese, which was the common language in Chinatown. When talking to my family, I’ve always used a little Cantonese, a little Shanghainese, and a little English. I guess I’ll be giving up English entirely from here on out.
“Can you say that again, and maybe a little slower?” I ask.
“Are you returning to the motherland?”
I nod, pretty sure I’m understanding him.
“Good, welcome! I’ll show you where to bunk. Then I’ll take you to the captain. You’ll pay him for your ticket.”
I look back down to the two guards still watching me on the wharf. I wave, like an idiot. And then I follow the crewman. When I was younger, I worked as an extra with my aunt in lots of movies. I was once in a film about Chinese orphans being evacuated by boat from China during the war, and this is nothing like that set. There’s rust everywhere. The stairs are narrow and steep. The corridors are dimly lit. We’re still docked, but I can feel the sway of the water beneath my feet, which suggests that this might not be the most seaworthy vessel. I’m told I’ll have a cabin to myself, but when I see it, it’s hard to imagine sharing the claustrophobically small space with anyone else. It’s hot outside and it may be even hotter in here.
Later I’m introduced to the captain. His teeth are tobacco stained and his uniform is grimy with food and oil. He watches closely when I open my wallet and pay for my ticket. The whole thing is kind of creepy.
On my way back to my cabin, I remind myself this is what I wanted. Run away. Adventure. Find my father. A joyful reunion. Although I only just found out that Z.G. Li is my father, I’d heard about him before. He used to paint my mom and aunt when they were models back in Shanghai. I’ve never seen any of those posters, but I did see some of the illustrations he did for China Reconstructs, a propaganda magazine my grandfather used to buy from under the table at the tobacconist. It was strange seeing my mother’s and aunt’s faces on the cover of a magazine from Red China. Z.G. Li had painted them from memory, and he did so many more times. By then he’d changed his name to Li Zhi-ge, probably in keeping with the political changes in China, according to my mom. My aunt liked to pin the magazine covers with his illustrations to the wall above her bed, so I feel like I already know a bit about him as an artist. I’m sure that Z.G.—or whatever he wants me to call him—will be very surprised and happy to see me. These thoughts temporarily alleviate my concerns about the soundness of the boat and its strange captain.
As soon as we leave Hong Kong harbor, I go to the galley for dinner. It turns out the boat is primarily for returning Overseas Chinese. A different boat leaves Hong Kong every day, I’m told, taking others like me to China. Twenty passengers—all Chinese men—from Singapore, Australia, France, and the United States, have also been brought directly to this boat from other flights and other ships. (What does Hong Kong think will happen if one of us stays overnight or for a week?) Halfway through dinner, I start to feel queasy. Before dessert is served, I have to leave the table because I feel so nauseated. I barely make it back to my room. The smells of oil and the latrine, the heat, and the emotional and physical exhaustion of the last few days hit me hard. I spend the next three days trying to keep down broth and tea, sleeping, sitting on the deck hoping to find cool air, and chatting with the other passengers, who give me all kinds of useless advice about seasickness.
On the fourth night, I’m in my bunk when the rolling of the ship finally eases. We must be passing into the Yangtze River estuary. I’ve been told it will take a few more hours before we veer onto the Whangpoo River to reach Shanghai. I get up just before dawn and put on my favorite dress—a shift of pale blue dotted swiss over white lining. I visit the captain, hand him an envelope to mail when he returns to Hong Kong, and ask if he can change some of my dollars into Chinese money. I give him five twenty-dollar bills. He pockets forty dollars and then gives me sixty dollars’ worth of Chinese yuan. I’m too shocked to argue, but his actions make me realize I don’t know what will happen when I land. Am I going to be treated like I was in Hong Kong? Will the people I encounter be like the captain and take my money? Or will something entirely different happen?
My mother always said China was corrupt. I thought that sort of thing went out with the Communist takeover, but apparently it hasn’t disappeared completely. What would my mom do if she were here? She’d hide her cash, as she did at home. When I get back to my cabin, I take out all the money I stole from her can under the sink and divide it into two piles, wrapping the larger amount in a handkerchief and pinning it to my underwear. I take the rest—$250—and put it in my wallet with my new Chinese money. Then I pick up my suitcase, leave the cabin, and disembark.
IT’S EIGHT A.M., and the air is as thick, heavy, and hot white as potato soup. I’m herded with the other passengers into a stifling room filled with cigarette smoke and pungent with the odors of food that’s spent too long without refrigeration in this weather. The walls are painted a sickly pea green. The humidity is so bad that the windows sweat. In America, everything would be orderly, with people standing in lines. Here, my fellow passengers crush forward in a throbbing mass to the single processing kiosk. I linger on the edges because I’m nervous after my experience with passport control in
Hong Kong. The line moves very slowly, with numerous delays for reasons I can’t see or intuit. It takes three hours for me to reach the window.
An inspector dressed in an ill-fitting drab green uniform asks, “What is the reason for your visit?”
He speaks Shanghainese, which is a relief, but I don’t think I should tell him the truth—that I’ve come to find my father but I have no clue where he is precisely or how to locate him.
“I’m here to help build the People’s Republic of China,” I answer.
