A Free Life (59 page)

So they stopped badgering him to inscribe the characters. If the boy didn't like Chinese, he would never master it by copying the words. Maybe someday they could send him to Pingping's parents during the summer; that way he could regain his fluency and literacy in his mother tongue. In his school Latin was very popular, and he applied for it but couldn't get into the class. It was said that some students had learned Latin so well that they kept diaries in the dead tongue so that their parents couldn't tell what they wrote. Nan knew that the knowledge of Latin would strengthen his son's English, so he was displeased that Taotao couldn't enroll in the class.

Later Pingping found out that besides English, most papers in science were published in three other languages: French, German, and Japanese. So it would be better if Taotao took up either German or French, both offered at his school. At the beginning of the next semester he chose to learn French, which turned out to be so easy for him that he soon excelled in the class.

Once he asked his parents, "Can I major in French in college?"

"You should study to be doctor," Pingping said. "What profession is better than save people's life?"

"I don't like medical science. How about art history or English? Can I major in art history?"

"Zen you will be a poor scholar for zer rest of your life," Nan said.

"I don't care."

"You don't care because we work night and day to make money for you," retorted his mother. "You act like rich kid who don't need profession."

Taotao turned to his father. "Didn't you tell me to follow my heart? You said, As long as you do something well, you won't starve.' "

"Sure, I said zat. But you should take your mozzer's opinion into account too."

"If I get a scholarship, can I study anything I want?"

His parents didn't answer, knowing there was no way to dissuade him. Nan knew Pingping would be happy if Taotao became a premed, but he believed they shouldn't force their son to do anything against his will. Yes, he wanted the boy to follow his own heart.

" SOMETHING good happened," Dick said to Nan when he stepped into the Gold Wok. There was a note of delight in his voice. He pulled his maroon scarf off his neck, his hair damp with rainwater and his cheeks steaming a little. It was still drizzling outside, and it had been a slow afternoon at the restaurant. "What happened?" asked Nan.

"My book won the National Book Critics Circle Award." Dick's eyes were sparkling and his face was so radiant that he seemed many years younger.

"How big is zis prize?"

"Almost like a Pulitzer."

"My goodness, congratulations!" Nan gave him a bear hug, patting his shoulder several times. "So now you're as famous as Edward Neary?"

"I'm getting close."

"You inspire me," Nan said in all sincerity. Indeed, just yesterday he hadn't thought of Dick as a significant poet; now overnight his friend had become a literary figure.

"Now my task is how to manage success," said Dick.

"How do you mean?" Nan was puzzled, unable to see how success was something to be managed.

"I must capitalize on the opportunity to promote myself and my work, also to raise my fee."

"What fee?"

"The fee for my readings and talks."

"Oh, you'll rake in zer kind of mahney like Edward Neary?" "You bet."

That surprised Nan, because Dick was talking like a businessman. Yet Nan said, "We must celebrate." "Yes, let's do that. Thank you."

Nan went into the kitchen to make Crabmeat Fu Rong and Scallops with Black Bean Sauce. Both dishes were easy to to cook, and the latter was one of Dick's favorites. Nan told Niyan to take two bottles of Tsingtao beer to Dick. He said to Pingping, "Dick just won a top prize for his poetry book. He's a star now."

"No fooling? What prize?"

"I forgot what it's called, similar to the Pulitzer."

"My, I should go and congratulate him."

"Tell him I'll be done in a few minutes."

Both Pingping and Niyan gave their congratulations to Dick, who was so wild with joy that he wouldn't use the glass on the table and drank the beer directly from the bottle and in long swigs. His eyes turned watery. He now smiled and now sighed, shaking his head as if bemused by such good fortune.

A few weeks later Dick told Nan that he had received a job offer from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and decided to accept it. Nan had heard of that place and knew this was a major development in his friend's career. At least Dick wouldn't have to worry about his tenure at Emory anymore. Nan felt upset that from now on he'd be entirely alone as a struggling poet. He had been writing poetry in English these days, though somewhat halfheartedly, and had been planning to show Dick a few of his poems about animals once he polished them. Now his friend was about to leave; it was almost like a blow to him.

Nan managed to be congratulatory, though deep down he wished Dick could stay in Atlanta a few more years. Dick seemed to have sensed Nan's disappointment, so he promised to keep in touch with him and even said, "You must come see me in Iowa."

"I shall try." Nan grimaced.

"I'll miss the Gold Wok, you know."

They both laughed. "You are always welcahm to eat here. Do come back and visit us," Nan told him.

Seeing that Dick didn't respond and knowing he must be elated to leave Atlanta, Nan added, "Winter is mild here."

"Yes, of course. I'm sure we'll meet again, one way or another."

So in May 1997, Dick sold his condominium and left for New York. After spending the summer there, he started teaching at the University of Iowa. As promised, he kept up a correspondence with Nan.

_PART
SEVEN

JANET and Dave were worried about their daughter's health these days. Hailee, already three years old, caught cold continually and often lost her appetite. She ate so little that she seemed to have stopped growing. Even when she cried, which she often did, she no longer screamed gustily as she used to, and neither would she kick her legs or flail her arms, where the skin was so pale that the blood vessels were visible. One night her nose bled; the blood stained the front of her wrap-over vest and frightened her parents.

The next morning Janet took her to the hospital. Dr. Williams, a tall, haggard-looking woman, listened to Hailee's chest, palpated her abdomen, and discovered that her liver and spleen were tender, probably swollen. Immediately she sent her to the lab to have her blood tested. A nurse drew three tubes of blood from Hailee's arm and said the result would be available in two days. On her way back to the jewelry store, Janet stopped at the Gold Wok and chatted with Pingping. Pingping held Hailee in her arms, cradling her and cooing at her, but the girl was subdued, her eyes dim, and a line of drool flowed out of the corner of her mouth, which seemed partly collapsed. With tears in her eyes Janet told Pingping, "I've prayed and prayed and prayed, hoping she'll be okay."

"Don't worry before it's time. I'm sure Hailee will be all right. Babies always have problem. If they don't get sick often, they won't be smart."

"What kind of logic is that?"

"I tell truth. My younger sister is always sick when she's little, so she's smartest in our family."

"I would rather have Hailee healthy than smart." "She will be fine."

Hailee looked sleepy, so Janet left a few minutes later. Nan had been busy working in the kitchen and had overheard their conversation; he said to Pingping about the Mitchells, "Now they know what it's like to be parents." Over the years Nan had grown to be very fond of Hailee. For some reason, whenever the girl saw him, she'd raise her little arms and cry, "Baobao [Hold me]," as if to claim a special tie with him. And without fail Nan would take her into his arms. If the Mitchells asked him to be Hailee's nominal father now, he would agree happily, but they never asked him again.

_·

Dr. Williams called Janet two days later and in a soothing voice told her the result of the blood count. An abnormal number of white blood cells had been found, which might indicate leukemia, but she'd have to give Hailee a bone marrow biopsy to get enough information for an accurate diagnosis. She advised the Mitchells not to panic.

The next morning Janet took Hailee to the hospital again. A brow-less male nurse gave the child a local anesthetic on her hip and said she wouldn't feel any pain, so Janet, who covered her daughter's eyes with her palm, was not to worry. Then he inserted a long needle into Hailee's hip bone. Slowly the crimson marrow appeared, filling the syringe. Janet averted her head in terror, feeling as though a hand were yanking and twisting her insides. The girl let out a feeble groan but didn't kick her legs.

The result of the biopsy was the same. Dr. Williams told the Mitchells that Hailee had acute leukemia. From now on, the girl would be treated by a group of doctors in the hospital, though Dr. Williams would remain her primary pediatrician. She insisted that the child be hospitalized without delay. She also said that Janet and Dave shouldn't feel hopeless, because almost seven out of ten leukemia patients had been cured in the United States and the cure rate was even higher among children.

Still in disbelief and confusion, the Mitchells wanted to consult another doctor for a second opinion. Dr. Williams encouraged them to do that and had the results of Hailee's blood test and bone marrow biopsy faxed to an expert, Dr. Caruth at Emory Hospital. The following day Dr. Caruth sent back his diagnosis, which was also leukemia.

After crying in each other's arms, Janet and Dave took their daughter to Gwinnett Hospital, where the child went into chemotherapy. A transparent tube was put into a vein in Hailee's chest, through which anticancer drugs were pumped into her bloodstream. Her initial response to the treatment frightened her parents. Her face turned greenish and she often vomited, unable to stop groaning. She seemed too tired to cry loudly. No matter how Janet and Dave coaxed her, she'd hardly eat any solids, though she still drank fruit juices and milk. Then the girl's hair began falling out, but Dr. Williams said this was normal. She assured the Mitchells that these side effects would go away and that her hair would grow back once the chemotherapy was stopped.

Pingping and Nan went to see Hailee one morning in mid-March, bringing along a jar of fresh fruits for Janet, who often forgot to eat these days. Hailee smiled at Pingping and called her "Aunt"; then she called Nan "Uncle," but was too ill to raise her arms to let him hold her.

"Do you still feel pain here?" Pingping asked, and patted her forearm, pricked by needles. "No," she mouthed.

Nan was about to stroke her cheek, but Janet stopped him-the girl's immune system had been so weakened by the medication that nobody was supposed to touch her face without wearing a glove.

Despite Hailee's good spirits, she looked withered and had lost weight, her skin tight over her strong bones. "Eat more food," Ping-ping told her. "You will recover soon, like new."

The girl smiled again, as if she had grown a few years older in just two weeks. Her mother told the Wus that Dave would come in the evening to attend to Hailee. They had a foldaway cot in the closet, so Dave could sleep beside their daughter at night. Before coming to the hospital he had to change and shower at home, as the doctor had instructed.

An old nurse came in to put some medicine into the intravenous line. The Wus took their leave, having to get to the Gold Wok before ten a.m.

Afterward they called the Mitchells now and then to see how Hailee was faring. Three weeks after the chemotherapy had started, another blood test showed a remarkable reduction of white blood cells. Apparently her leukemia was in remission. The girl was regaining her strength and began to eat solids; her pulse was stronger and even her voice sounded lively again. Both Janet and Dave were grateful and hopeful, though they were told that it would take a long time for their daughter to recuperate fully.

Once in a while Janet would come to the restaurant to talk with the Wus about Hailee, asking them how to locate the child's biological parents so that she could know something about her family's medical history. Pingping even called Seattle and talked to Ruhua, the fruity-voiced agent, and begged her to help the Mitchells. Ruhua promised to inquire into this matter, but she phoned back a week later, saying there was no way she could find any trace of Hailee's biological parents-the Chinese side had just hemmed and hawed without answering her questions. On behalf of the Mitchells, Nan wrote directly to Mr. Peng, the head of the orphanage in Nanjing. The man replied in less than a month and apologized for his inability to assist the adoptive parents, because the baby girl had been found near a local pig farm and there was no way they could identify her biological mother, who could have lived in any one of the two hundred villages in the county. He expressed the solicitude of the orphanage's leaders and staff, saying Hailee was still their daughter.

NAN had read and reread all the poetry books recommended by Dick. He liked them but felt Robert Frost and W. H. Auden were more to his taste, so these days he resumed reading Frost. In addition, he had been writing poetry in English whenever he could. Lately he had focused on a longish poem entitled "Heaven," which he planned to dedicate to Dick, as a surprise. Hard as he tried, he couldn't produce anything he liked. His lines were devoid of gravity and verve, and he could tell he was getting nowhere if he continued this way. He had to find a different angle from which he could recon-ceive his project, which had the ultimate goal of making his poems dark, luminous, and starkly elegant, a quality he vividly remembered from the paintings by Kent Philips. He knew that, living in Georgia, he couldn't possibly present that kind of landscape in his poetry, but he didn't have to avail himself of the physical world. What he should have was a restless soul from which vibrant lines might originate.

For months he couldn't feel excited about what he wrote, as if his mind hadn't wakened from a dormant state yet. He rented some movies and watched them late at night, but they didn't help create any poetic impulse either, and he got tired of them soon. He went to downtown Atlanta on a Saturday afternoon in April to attend a celebration of the imminent reversion of Hong Kong to China, but he felt more lonesome among the large crowd, though a soprano, singing at the proscenium with the curtain behind her, moved him to tears with two songs that brought back the memory of his childhood. He wondered whether this inert state of his mind might be connected to the fact that for many years he hadn't met a woman he loved wholeheartedly and with the passion from the depths of his soul. Of course there was Beina, who still bewitched him. But he had no idea where she was now, perhaps still in Harbin. If only he knew how to get in touch with her.