Authors: Lisa See
“Sometimes you think you have all of tomorrow ahead of you,” Mama often said. “When the sun is shining, think of the time it won’t be, because even when you’re sitting in your house with the doors shut, misfortune can fall from above.” I ignored her when she was alive and I didn’t pay enough attention as I got older, but after all these years I have to accept that Mama’s foresight is what saved us. Without her hidden savings, we all would have died right there in Shanghai. Some deep instinct motivated her and kept her going when May and I were nearly paralyzed with fear. She was like a gazelle who, under hopeless circumstances, still tried to save her calves from the lion. I know I have to protect my daughter—from herself, from this Joe boy and his romantic ideas about Red China, from making the kinds of mistakes that so dampened May’s and my choices—but I don’t know how.
I’M GOING TO
Pearl’s to pick up takeout for Vern when I see the FBI agent stop Uncle Charley on the sidewalk. I pass the two men—with Uncle Charley ignoring me as though he doesn’t know me—and enter the café, leaving the door wide open. Inside, Sam and our workers go about their business while listening as hard as they can to what floats through the door. May comes out of her office, and we linger by the counter, pretending to talk but watching and listening to everything.
“So, Charley, you went back to China,” the agent says suddenly in Sze Yup in a voice so loud I look at my sister in surprise. It’s as though he wants not only to have us hear what he’s saying but also to let us know that he’s fluent in the dialect of our district.
“I went to China,” Uncle Charley admits. We can barely hear him, his voice quavers so. “I lost my savings, and I came back here.”
“We hear you’ve said bad things about Chiang Kai-shek.”
“I haven’t.”
“People say you have.”
“What people?”
The agent doesn’t answer that question. Instead he asks, “Isn’t it true you blame Chiang Kai-shek for losing your money?”
Charley scratches at his rash-covered neck and sucks on his lips.
The agent waits and then asks, “Where are your papers?”
Uncle Charley glances through the plate-glass window, looking for help, for encouragement or possible escape.
The agent—a big
lo fan
with sandy-colored hair and freckles on his nose and cheeks—smiles and says, “Yes, let’s go inside. I’d like to meet your
family
.”
The agent enters the café, and Uncle Charley follows with his head hung down. The
lo fan
walks right up to Sam, flashes his badge, and says in Sze Yup, “I’m Special Agent Jack Sanders. You’re Sam Louie, right?” When Sam nods, the agent goes on. “I always say there’s no point in wasting time on these things. Someone told us you used to buy the
China Daily News
.”
Sam stands absolutely still, measuring the stranger, thinking about his answer, emptying his face of emotion. The few customers, who can’t possibly understand the words but certainly know that the flashing badge can’t mean anything good, seemingly hold their breath to see what Sam will do.
“I bought the paper for my father,” Sam says in Sze Yup, and I see the disappointment on our customers’ faces that they aren’t going to be able to follow this as closely as they’d like. “He died five years ago.”
“That paper is sympathetic to the Reds.”
“My father read it sometimes, but he subscribed to
Chung Sai Yat Po
.”
“Seems like your father was sympathetic to Mao though.”
“Not at all. Why would he support Mao?”
“Then why did he buy
China Reconstructs
too? And why have you continued to buy it after his passing?”
I have a sudden desire to use the toilet. Sam can’t possibly answer with the truth—that his wife’s and sister-in-law’s faces have appeared on the covers of those magazines. Or does the FBI man already know that those are our faces? Or does he look at the pretty girls in the drab green uniforms with red stars on their caps and think all Chinese look alike?
“I’m told that in your living room above your couch you have pages from the magazine taped to the wall—pictures of the Great Wall and the Summer Palace.”
This means someone—a neighbor, a friend, a competitor who has been inside our home—has reported this. Why didn’t we take the pictures down after Father died?
“In his last months, my father liked to look at those attractions.”
“Maybe he had so much sympathy for Red China he wanted to go back home—”
“My father was an American citizen. He was born here.”
“Then show me his documents—”
“He’s dead,” Sam repeats, “and I don’t have them here.”
“Then perhaps I should pay a visit to your home, or would you prefer to come to our office? That way you can bring your documents too. I want to believe you, but you have to prove your innocence.”
“Prove my innocence or prove I’m a citizen?”
“They are the same, Mr. Louie.”
When I get home with Vern’s lunch, I don’t say anything to him or to Joy. I don’t want them to worry. When Joy asks if she can go out that night, I say as lightly as I can, “Fine. Just try to be back by midnight.” She thinks she’s finally triumphed over her mother, but I want her out of the house.
As soon as Sam and May come home, we strip the pictures the agent talked about off the walls. Sam bags up every copy of the
China Daily News
that my father-in-law saved because of some article or other. I order May to go into her drawer and pull out the magazine covers that Z.G. painted of the two of us.
“I don’t think this is necessary,” May says.
I respond sharply: “Please, for once, don’t argue with me.” When May doesn’t move, I sigh impatiently. “They’re only pictures on magazine covers. Now if you won’t get them, I will.”
May purses her mouth and turns to go out to the screened porch. Once she’s left, I look for photographs that I think might be—and here’s a word I never thought I’d use—incriminating.
While Sam makes another tour through the house, May and I take what we’ve gathered to burn in the incinerator. I set fire to my pile of photographs and wait for May to throw in the magazine covers, which she hugs to her chest. When she doesn’t move, I wrest them from her arms and drop them in the fire. As I watch the face
—my
face—that Z.G. so beautifully and perfectly painted curl in the flames, I wonder why we let any of these things creep into the house. I know the answer. Sam, May, and I are no better than Father Louie. We’ve become American with our clothes, our food, our language, our desire for Joy’s education and future, but not once in all these years have we stopped missing our home country.
“They don’t want us here,” I say softly my eyes on the flames. “They’ve never wanted us. They’re going to try to trick us, but we need to trick them in return.”
“Maybe Sam should confess and get it over with,” May suggests. “That way he’ll get his citizenship and we won’t have to worry about any of this.”
“You know it’s not enough for him just to confess his own status. He’ll have to expose others—Uncle Wilburt, Uncle Charley, me—”
“You should all confess together. Then you can all get your legal citizenship. Don’t you want it?”
“Of course I want it. But what if the government is lying?”
“Why would the government lie?”
“When
hasn’t
it lied?” And then, “What if they decide to deport us? If Sam is proved to be illegal, then I’ll be eligible for deportation too.”
My sister considers that. Then she says, “I don’t want to lose you. I promised Father Louie that I wouldn’t let them send you away. Sam has to confess for Joy, for you, for all of us. This is a chance for amnesty, to bring the family together, and to rid ourselves finally of our secrets.”
I don’t understand why my sister doesn’t—won’t—see the problems, but then she’s married to an actual citizen, came here as his legal wife, and isn’t facing the same threat that Sam and I are.
My sister puts an arm around my shoulder and pulls me close. “Don’t worry, Pearl,” she reassures me, as if I’m the
moy moy
and she’s the
jie jie
. “We’ll hire a lawyer to take care of things—”
“No! We’ve gone through this before, you and I, at Angel Island. We won’t let them do anything to Sam, to me, to any of us. We’re going to work together to turn their accusations against them, like we did on Angel Island. We’ve got to confuse them. What’s important is to keep our story straight.”
“Yes, that’s true,” Sam says, stepping through the darkness and feeding another stack of newspapers and memories into the incinerator. “But more than anything we have to prove we’re the most loyal Americans who ever existed.”
May doesn’t like this, but she’s my
moy moy
and a sister-in-law, and she has to obey.
JOY—WHOM WE’VE
told as little as possible, believing her ignorance helps hold our story together—and May aren’t called in for questioning, and no one comes to the house to interview Vern. But over the next four weeks, Sam and I—often together, so I can translate for my husband when we’re transferred from Special Agent Sanders to Agent Mike Billings, who works for the INS, speaks not one word of any Chinese dialect, and is about as friendly as Chairman Plumb all those years ago—are called in for numerous interrogations. I’m questioned about my home village, a place I’ve never been. Sam’s questioned about why his so-called parents left him in China when he was seven. We’re questioned about Father Louie’s birth. We’re asked—with condescending smiles—if we’re acquainted with anyone who earned money selling paper slots.
“Someone profited from this,” Billings says knowingly. “Just tell us who.”
Our responses don’t help his investigation. We tell him we collected tinfoil during the war and sold war bonds. We tell him I shook hands with Madame Chiang Kai-shek.
“Do you have a photograph to prove it?” Billings asks, but of all the photos we took that day, that’s the one we missed.
At the beginning of August, Billings changes direction. “If your so-called father was actually born here, then why did he keep sending funds back to China even after he should have stopped?”
I don’t wait for Sam’s response but answer this myself “The money went to his ancestral village. His family has fifteen generations there.”
“Is that why your husband has continued to send money out of the country?”
“We do what we can for our relatives who are trapped in a bad place,” I translate for Sam.
At that Billings comes around the table, pulls Sam up by the lapels, and shouts in his face, “Admit it. You send money because you’re a Communist!”
I don’t have to translate this sentence for Sam to understand what the man is saying, but I do in the same even voice I’ve used all along to show that nothing Billings says will throw us from our story, our confidence, and our truth. But suddenly Sam—who has not been himself since the night Joy made fun of him for his cooking and his English and has not slept well since the day Agent Sanders entered Pearl’s Coffee Shop—jumps up, sticks his finger in Billings’s face, and calls
him
a Communist. Then they’re shouting back and forth—No, you’re a Communist! No,
you’re
a Communist!—and I’m sitting there echoing the accusations in both languages. Billings gets angrier and angrier, but Sam is steady and firm. Finally, Billings clamps his mouth shut, collapses in his chair, and glares at us. He has no evidence against Sam, just as Sam has no evidence against the INS agent.
“If you don’t want to confess,” he says, “and you won’t say who’s sold false papers in Chinatown, then perhaps you can tell us a little something about your neighbors.”
Sam serenely recites an aphorism, which I translate: “Sweep the snow in front of your own doorstep, and do not bother about the frost on top of another family’s house.”
We seem to be winning, but in twisting and in struggle, thin arms will not win out over thick legs. The FBI and INS question Uncle Wilburt and Uncle Charley, who refuse to confess, say anything about us, or rat out Father Louie, who sold them their papers.
Those who don’t push the drowning dogs are already the decent ones
.
When Uncle Fred brings his family to the house for Sunday dinner, we ask Joy to take the little girls outside to play so he can tell us about Agent Billings’s visit to his home in Silver Lake. Fred’s stint in the service, his college years, and his dental practice have nearly erased his accent. He’s lived a good life with Mariko and their half-and-half daughters. His face is full and round, and he has a bit of a belly.
“I told him I’m a veteran, that I served in the Army and fought for the United States,” he recounts. “He looks at me and says, And you got your citizenship.’ Well, of course I got my citizenship! That’s what the government promised. Then he pulls out a file and invites me to take a look at it. It’s my immigration file from Angel Island! Remember all that stuff from our coaching books? Well, it’s all in the file. It has information about the old man and Yen-yen. It lists all of our birth dates and outlines our whole story, since we’re all connected. He asks me why I didn’t tell the truth about my so-called brothers when I enlisted. I didn’t tell him anything.”
He takes Mariko’s hand. She’s white with the fear we all feel. “I don’t mind if they pick on us,” he continues. “But when they go after my children, who were born here …” He shakes his head in disgust. “Last week Bess came home crying. Her fifth-grade teacher showed a film to the class on the Communist threat. It showed Russians in fur hats and Chinese, well, looking like us. At the end of the film, the narrator asked the students to call the FBI or the CIA if they saw anyone who looked suspicious. Who looked suspicious in the class? My Bess. Now her friends won’t play with her. I have to worry about what’s going to happen to Eleanor and little Mamie too. I remind the girls that they’re named after the First Ladies. They don’t have to be afraid.”
But of course they have to be afraid. We’re all afraid.
When you’re held underwater, you think only of air. I remember how I felt about Shanghai in the days after our lives changed—how streets that had once seemed exciting suddenly stank of nightsoil, how beautiful women suddenly were nothing more than girls with three holes, how all the money and prosperity suddenly rendered everything forlorn, dissolute, and futile. The way I see Los Angeles and Chinatown during these difficult and frightening days couldn’t be more different. The palm trees, the fruits and vegetables in my garden, the geraniums in pots in front of stores and on porches all seem to shimmer and shiver with life, even in the heat of summer. I look down streets and I see promise. Instead of smog, corruption, and ugliness, I see magnificence, freedom, and openness. I can’t bear that the government is persecuting us with its terrible—and God help me, true—accusations about our citizenship, but I can bear even less the thought that my family and I might lose this place. Yes, it’s only Chinatown, but it’s my home, our home.