Shanghai Shadows (19 page)

“Why you do not wear armband?”

“I was not issued an armband. I have a resident certificate inside. Shall I get it?”

“You must wear armband!” the taller soldier barked.

Father stepped forward. “Excuse me, sir, but I believe you have my wife confused with someone else. We are Austrians. We came here in nineteen thirty-nine. We are stateless refugees designated for this area. We are not enemy nationals.”

Mother's face drained of all color. Erich moved closer to Mother, not that he could protect her from these men.

The uglier of the two soldiers reached into his pocket and produced an official-looking document. Father took his reading glasses out of his shirt pocket and examined the document. Mother was a statue, with her spoon in midair, her eyes fixed as though she might never blink again.

“Frieda,” Father said, his voice shaking, “this is you?”

The soldier snapped the document out of Father's hand and read the top line. Even in his awkward English, the message came through clearly:

“‘In the matter of Frieda Shpann, citizen of the United States of America, who failed to register at the Enemy Aliens Office in Hamilton House by the December thirteenth, nineteen forty-two deadline.'” The Japanese soldier spit out the rest of his message: “You are a number one enemy alien. You are in violation. You will report tomorrow to receive your red armband.”

“Mother? What's he talking about?” I whispered.

“Go inside, children,” she said. “Inside at once.”

Sick at heart, Erich and I obeyed, but we saw and heard the whole thing.

“Frieda Shpann, you will be relocated with other Americans to a civil assembly center in two weeks' time. Prepare yourself.” The document was tossed onto Mother's lap. The two soldiers clicked their heels and did an about-face, marching out of our lane.

Erich bolted toward our parents, me right behind. Mother was stricken, Father perplexed, and we three were spilling over with questions. Father motioned for us to pick up the two chairs, and he hastily led us upstairs.

That night we found out the secret Mother had kept for twenty years: Her American friend, Molly O'Toole?
She
was a
he
, and
his
name was Michael O'Halloran.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

1944

“How could you do this to us?” I demanded. “Lying to us all this time? Letting Erich and me believe those packages came from a girlfriend. Molly O'Toole, we even gave her a name, and you never said a word. You let us carry on like utter fools.”

Mother sank into her chair, chin to her chest, and still I pummeled her with jagged, cutting words until even Erich said, “Hush, Sister. Give her a chance to talk.”

We four circled around the table in our hot apartment, Mother at one end, Father at the other end, Erich and I standing on either side of Mother.

Erich was the one who kept us all from spinning out of orbit in our separate swirling pools of anger. “All right, Mother, what can you tell us?”

She twisted her handkerchief and spoke in a low, flat voice. The walls were thin, and this wasn't a matter for the Kawashimas.

Mother began, “I was young, impetuous. Like you, Ilse.”

“Not like me. I would never make fools of my family!”

Mother looked off into the distance. “It was nineteen nineteen, the Great War had just ended. People were dying all around from the influenza that was sweeping the world, especially in Europe. A pandemic, they called it, which means it was everywhere, but not so bad in America, away from the big cities. My father sent me to America to study. My mother didn't want me to go. She cried and cried. From the ship hundreds of people everywhere saying good-bye, and all I saw was my mother soaking my father's handkerchief.”

“Get to the point, Mother,” I snapped.

“I must tell this in my own way, Ilse. Be patient.”

“It's not my style to be patient!”

Mother ignored my latest outburst. “So I went to Berkeley, California. A wonderful university there, students from all over the world. It was a libertine place, everyone free to come and go. A glorious, colorful circus it was.”

Jealousy bolted through my body like lightning: Why could
she
have a life of freedom and plenty in America, whereas
I
was stuck here in a decaying ghetto in China?

“Maybe you can see how appealing this was to the stiffly proper girl from Austria. My father had always been strict—you remember Grandfather—but then, why had he sent me to a place like Berkeley unless he wanted me to taste the fruits?”

Everything she told us felt like a knife to my heart. I wanted to know all of it at once, and at the same time, I didn't want to hear any of it. I needed all my questions answered, and I hated every question.

I hated her for deceiving us.

Mother twisted a dishrag into a tight rope. “There was a boy.”

“What?” I shouted.

Father leaned forward, his face twisted in agony.

“I'm sorry, Jakob. May we talk about this privately?”

Father shook his head. “Tell us, all of us.”

Mother took a deep breath. “Michael O'Halloran, a graduate student. He taught my American literature section. I barely knew any English; and American literature seemed so loose and unwieldy compared to the classical German literature I'd studied. So I went to the teacher for tutoring.”

Not so bad
, I thought, calming down. Of course Mother had boyfriends before Father. I had Dovid, didn't I? And someday I'd marry and tell my husband about my first love, about Dovid.
Not so bad
.

Mother's eyes darted toward Father and away. “I fell in love … with everything American. I went around the dormitory quoting Walt Whitman. In my thick German accent. How foolish I must have sounded. He was a kind man, Jakob. I was very fond of him. Not the same way I've loved you, not so wholly and deeply.”

Erich and I glanced at each other. We'd never heard our parents talk of love. They'd been devoted to one another, respectful, even playful occasionally, but
love
had always been a private matter between them. I was embarrassed to hear it made public. Parents had no business laying bare their hearts in front of their children.

Mother whispered, “Michael and I, we decided to marry.”

My head snapped up, and Erich's eyes flashed in disbelief.

“You
married
the man?” Father said.

I reached over to clasp his hand.

“Yes.” She searched each of our faces with sad, defeated eyes. “A civil ceremony. I never told my parents. Michael is not Jewish. I suppose this is not so shocking in view of the whole disturbing truth that's tumbling out.

“Back in those days, I thought nothing of giving up my life in Austria to be his wife. How else could I be as American as every other girl in Berkeley? Now, of course, I understand what it means to give up one's homeland; we all do.”

“So, what happened?” I asked coldly.

“We had nearly two years together, this Michael and I. They were … awkward years. I was a little prudish, a little rigid. We were opposites. Each passing day I was more and more homesick for my mother and father, my city, my language. Especially my language. We had a terrible fight. I threw a lamp at him.”

“You, Mother?”

“What sort of lamp?” I asked.

“Just a
lamp
. Yes. I was a rebellious girl, remember? We lived in a … how do I describe … what we called a co-op? Nothing more than a room in a sprawling house.” She glanced around our cluttered hatbox. “Bigger than this, but not by much. One kitchen downstairs, everything shared, even painting the house, all of us on ladders.” Her voice drifted away, then circled back. “That night he left and didn't come home all night.”

“Well, what did you expect, Mother?” I cried.

Father pulled his hand out of mine.

“I was furious at Michael. How could he make me worry so? Especially since he knew I was frightened and homesick, every night crying myself to sleep. I stuffed everything I owned into one suitcase, plus a carton of English books, and I walked to the bus depot. The next day I was on a ship home. I never said a word about Michael to my parents, only that I'd missed them and needed to come home to Austria. After all, I was still an Austrian at heart, only a U.S. citizen because I was married to an American.”

Father drummed his fingers on the table without a sound. “And the divorce?”

“This is very hard.”

“Good. Why should we make it easy for you? Your whole life's a lie, Mother, your whole life.” My words sounded cruel to my own ears, yet they couldn't possibly cut deeply enough to suit me.

That was when Mother's tears started to flow. “I never divorced him, Jakob. Thousands of miles, what difference would it make?”

“The difference, Frieda, is that you now have two husbands, and our children are bastards, do you understand what I'm saying? And one of your
husbands
happens to be an American, and now the Japanese say you're an American citizen, and they will lock you up in an internment camp, and then what's to become of us all?” Father shot to his feet. He needed space to stalk around in, walls to bang. He slid to the floor along one wall, with his knees jutting up, pulled a pillow to his lap, buried his face, and wept. Up to that moment, I believed that fathers never cried.

“Go to him, Mother!” I shouted.

She shook her head. I suppose nearly twenty years of marriage had taught her when to comfort him and when to let him be. After a few moments she hurried through the rest of the story.

“In the nineteen twenties Michael O'Halloran wrote me many letters begging me to come back. I never answered. And then I met you, Jakob.”

Father refused to look up, so Mother turned to Erich and me. “It was different with your father, not so stormy as it was with Michael O'Halloran. I wrote to him when I married your father in nineteen twenty-five. He promised he would never interfere with my new life.”

“And the letters and packages and money? Molly O'Toole—you let us invent a whole life for her. Oh, Mother,” I moaned.

“What could I do, Ilse?”

“You could have been honest, Mother.”

“Please,” Mother begged. “Let me finish. Over the years we had very little contact, Michael and I. He didn't write for years, until Hitler. He was worried about our family. He knew about you two. He knew life would be difficult for us as Jews in Austria. I sent him a cable when we got here to Shanghai. I knew from the first moment off the ship that the day would come when we'd need his help, and he was willing. He sent what he could. But he never meant to cause me any trouble.”

Father came back to the table. “And yet he has, hasn't he?”

“Tomorrow, first thing, Jakob, I will get this straightened out.”

Father hurled the pillow across the room, knocking Mother's last remaining perfume bottle off a shelf. “You'll go to the Enemy Aliens Office, is what you'll do, Frieda, before you bring Japanese wrath down on my children.”

“Jakob, listen. I will talk to U.S. officials, International Red Cross,
someone
, and see if we can all be repatriated. If I am a citizen, don't they have to get me out of China and safely to the United States?”

“Americans are powerless here, Frieda, don't you see that? The Japanese are at war with them, did you forget? Wake up.”

Mother sank back in her chair. “I will try anyway. At least I can get us some extra rations, some relief supplies. At least.” Her voice trailed off.

Father shook his head, smoothing his thinning hair over his scalp. I remembered in the old days when he'd lean into The Violin. During an arpeggio his wild red hair would fly about, and he'd toss it back with his raised shoulder so as not to miss a single note. Now? He had only wisps of hair left, gray and lifeless. He said, “Do whatever you wish, Frieda. Meanwhile, the children and I will have to learn to live without you, and you will have to prepare to live in an internment camp, like thousands of other enemy nationals. If you had divorced this man, we would be in a different position today. How could you hurt your family so? Tell me that, Frieda.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

1944

From our tiny window we watched Mother walk up the lane. One look at her face and I whispered to Erich, “Trouble, for sure.”

We heard her footsteps slowly thumping up the stairs, then the key she kept on a string around her neck clicking against our door. I ran to open it, though I didn't greet her. She slid by me and flopped down on the bed with her back to us.

Erich sat beside her. How was it possible that he, angry at the world in general, seemed not to be mad at Mother? He asked, “What happened?”

Her back still turned, she said, “I must register. They made me sign a form saying I am an official enemy of the Japanese government.”

“Those bastards,” Erich barked.

Mother rolled over and raised her fist in the air, showing us a red armband with a capital
A
for American. “I must wear it all the time,” she said, ripping it down her arm and tossing it across the room.

Part of me thought,
Good!
But soon I began to understand what this armband business actually meant for Mother, for all of us.

Father came home, spotted the thing on the floor, and stomped out again. I don't know where he slept that night, maybe on a park bench. Our neighbors shunned Mother, although the Kawashimas acted as if nothing had changed. They had American relatives in internment camps; they understood.

Everything was unfamiliar, as though we'd all been cast in a play without a script. The only normal thing was school, which was different from life in Hongkew. The grounds were lushly green, in the last days of spring. We laughed at school. The teachers never stopped us from laughing, because they knew that life in the ghetto was bleak. They had no idea how grim things had turned in my home.