Homesick

Table of Contents

 

 

On the twenty-sixth, just before we went on the ship, my father sent my grandmother a cablegram: SAILING TODAY. I wanted him to add “Hooray,” but every word cost money, he said, and besides she'd recognize the hooray even if it wasn't there. Certainly on board the
President Taft
the hooray feeling was all over the place. On deck the ship's band was playing “California, Here I Come,” and people were dancing and singing and laughing. A steward was handing out rolls of paper streamers for passengers to throw over the railing as the ship sailed.

When the whistle blew for visitors to leave, I went to Andrea and stood beside her. Together we threw our streamers as the ship began to pull away from the dock. Everyone threw. Roll after roll until the distance from the ship to the dock was aflutter with paper ribbons—red, yellow, blue, green. Flimsy things, they looked as if they didn't want to let Shanghai go.

It seemed to me that once we were completely out of sight of land, I would really feel homeward bound. But as I looked at the Shanghai skyline and at the busy waterfront, I had the strange feeling that I wasn't moving away at all.

TO THE MEMORY OF
MY MOTHER AND FATHER

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Registered Offices: Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England
First published in the United States of America by G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1982
Published by Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers, 1999
Published by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2007

Text and photographs copyright © Jean Fritz, 1982

Drawings copyright © Margot Tomes, 1982
All rights reserved
THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS EDITION AS FOLLOWS:
Fritz, Jean. Homesick, my own story.
Summary: The author's fictionalized version, though all the events are true, of her
childhood in China in the 1920's.

eISBN : 978-1-101-07678-1

 

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My special thanks go to Dorothy Bruhl Anderson, who lived in Hankow and who encouraged and helped me to remember. And to Dr. C. Martin Wilbur, an old China friend, who allowed me to draw on his knowledge and understanding.

FOREWORD

When I started to write about my childhood in China, I found that my memory came out in lumps. Although I could for the most part arrange them in the proper sequence, I discovered that my preoccupation with time and literal accuracy was squeezing the life out of what I had to say. So I decided to forget about sequence and just get on with it.

Since my childhood feels like a story, I decided to tell it that way, letting the events fall as they would into the shape of a story, lacing them together with fictional bits, adding a piece here and there when memory didn't give me all I needed. I would use conversation freely, for I cannot think of my childhood without hearing voices. So although this book takes place within two years—from October 1925 to September 1927—the events are drawn from the entire period of my childhood, but they are all, except in minor details, basically true. The people are real people; the places are dear to me. But most important, the form I have used has given me the freedom to recreate the emotions that I remember so vividly. Strictly speaking, I have to call this book fiction, but it does not feel like fiction to me. It is my story, told as truly as I can tell it.

JEAN FRITZ

DOBBS FERRY, NEW YORK

JANUARY 11, 1982

1

IN MY FATHER'S STUDY THERE WAS A LARGE globe with all the countries of the world running around it. I could put my finger on the exact spot where I was and had been ever since I'd been born. And I was on the wrong side of the globe. I was in China in a city named Hankow, a dot on a crooked line that seemed to break the country right in two. The line was really the Yangtse River, but who would know by looking at a map what the Yangtse River really was?

Orange-brown, muddy mustard-colored. And wide, wide, wide. With a river smell that was old and came all the way up from the bottom. Sometimes old women knelt on the riverbank, begging the River God to return a son or grandson who may have drowned. They would wail and beat the earth to make the River God pay attention, but I knew how busy the River God must be. All those people on the Yangtse River! Coolies hauling water. Women washing clothes. Houseboats swarming with old people and young, chickens and pigs. Big crooked-sailed junks with eyes painted on their prows so they could see where they were going. I loved the Yangtse River, but, of course, I belonged on the other side of the world. In America with my grandmother.

The trouble with living on the wrong side of the world was that I didn't feel like a
real
American.

For instance. I could never be president of the United States. I didn't want to be president; I wanted to be a writer. Still, why should there be a
law
saying that only a person born in the United States could be president? It was as if I wouldn't be American enough.

Actually, I was American every minute of the day, especially during school hours. I went to a British school and every morning we sang “God Save the King.” Of course the British children loved singing about their gracious king. Ian Forbes stuck out his chest and sang as if he were saving the king all by himself. Everyone sang. Even Gina Boss who was Italian. And Vera Sebastian who was so Russian she dressed the way Russian girls did long ago before the Revolution when her family had to run away to keep from being killed.

But I wasn't Vera Sebastian. I asked my mother to write an excuse so I wouldn't have to sing, but she wouldn't do it. “When in Rome,” she said, “do as the Romans do.” What she meant was, “Don't make trouble. Just sing.” So for a long time I did. I sang with my fingers crossed but still I felt like a traitor.

Then one day I thought: If my mother and father were really and truly in Rome, they wouldn't do what the Romans did at all. They'd probably try to get the Romans to do what
they
did, just as they were trying to teach the Chinese to do what Americans did. (My mother even gave classes in American manners.)

So that day I quit singing. I kept my mouth locked tight against the king of England. Our teacher, Miss Williams, didn't notice at first. She stood in front of the room, using a ruler for a baton, striking each syllable so hard it was as if she were making up for the times she had nothing to strike.

(Miss Williams was pinch-faced and bossy. Sometimes I wondered what had ever made her come to China. “Maybe to try and catch a husband,” my mother said.

A husband! Miss Williams!)

“Make him vic-tor-i-ous,” the class sang. It was on the strike of “vic” that Miss Williams noticed. Her eyes lighted on my mouth and when we sat down, she pointed her ruler at me.

“Is there something wrong with your voice today, Jean?” she asked.

“No, Miss Williams.”

“You weren't singing.”

“No, Miss Williams. It is not my national anthem.”

“It is the national anthem we sing here,” she snapped. “You have always sung. Even Vera sings it.”