Homesick (12 page)

I could feel my knees beginning to shake. This time, however, it was not only from being scared but from being mad. Fifteen days left and this crazy war might still spoil everything.

“You'll come with us, won't you?” I asked my father. “You won't wait?” My father shook his head. This boat was for women and children. He'd take the boat on the fifteenth, if all went well.

If!
There it was again. That nasty little word that was always snapping at my plans.

“Pack as many clothes as you can. Stuff it all in,” my father said. “What doesn't fit, I'll bring when I come.” He was already on his way to the attic to bring down suitcases and then he was going to the boat to see about our cabin. If he made arrangements for our luggage to be taken to the boat before we went, he said, we could probably avoid trouble.

My mother turned to me. “Get Lin Nai-Nai. I'll need her help.”

As I started for the door, I realized that this might be my only chance to give Lin Nai-Nai my good-bye present. My father had framed a picture of Kurry and me and I had wrapped it in red tissue paper. I grabbed it out of my dresser drawer and ran to the servants' quarters.

Lin Nai-Nai was just coming out of her room. She had heard the news.

“I have a present for you,” I said.

“I have one for you too.” I went into her room and on her bed was a small soft present also wrapped in red tissue paper.

“You mustn't open this,” she said, “until you have left China.”

“On the ship?”

“Yes. After the ship has sailed.”

“Well, open yours at the same time,” I said. “April twenty-sixth. That way we'll almost be opening them together.” I had planned a private good-bye tea party in her room with almond cookies and rice cakes. Now there wasn't time for anything. I put my arms around her. “Oh, Lin Nai-Nai,” I moaned.

Back upstairs my mother was rushing from room to room, her arms full of clothes. Suitcases were open all over the beds.

“May I pack the small green suitcase just for myself?” I asked.

“Yes, but take only what you'll need from here to Shanghai. We'll repack at the Hulls'.” As she handed things to Lin Nai-Nai, she would say, “Brown suitcase. Blue.” Suddenly she turned back to me. “No books,” she said. “But don't forget underwear. And a sweater and socks.”

I had put Lin Nai-Nai's present on the bottom of my bag so I wouldn't be separated from it and now I quickly covered the two books I had packed with a bunch of underwear. On top I put everyday clothes and at the last minute I happened to think of “wholesale murder” so I stuck in some first-aid equipment.

At twelve o‘clock my father returned. Everything was all set, he said. He'd made private deals with coolies whom he could trust and they were outside now.

“How do you know we won't all be mobbed as we get on the boat?” I asked.

My father waved his hand as if there were no time for silly questions. Then he went along with the baggage to see that it got on the boat. When he came back, he honked the horn on the Dodge sedan to let us know it was time to go.

“We're going to stop for the Gales,” he told us as we got in the car. “They found their car this morning with four flat tires.”

At the Gales' house my father honked again and out they came—Mr. and Mrs. Gale carrying a cage between them. I couldn't believe it, so I got out of the car to make sure. Yes, Nip and Tuck were inside. Chattering. Making messes.

“You're not taking them, are you?” I asked.

“Of course I'm taking them,” Mrs. Gale spoke sharply. “I'm not leaving them for the Communists.”

I was furious. Here I'd left a sweet, well-mannered, housebroken cat behind and they were dragging along two disgusting, smelly, flea-covered monkeys. I slid into the front seat with my mother and let the Gales and their dirty animals have the backseat to themselves. I nudged my mother and she nudged me back. She hated those monkeys too.

On the Bund gray-coated soldiers with rifles over their shoulders were stationed all over the place. They were here to keep order, my father said. They knew the gunboats would fire if they had to and they evidently didn't want that to happen. Crowds of Chinese were milling around but they didn't look like organized riot-makers, just ordinary Chinese who had come out of curiosity to laugh at the foreigners scuttling away. The Gales and their monkeys were, of course, the main attraction, and I couldn't help grinning as the crowd jeered and joked about them.

On the dock I saw that our boat had been fitted all around with huge steel plates. They were meant to stop bullets, but according to Mr. Gale, they'd been put up so clumsily, they'd fall over if a shell hit them.

“Do you really think we'll be fired on?” I asked.

My father gave me a reassuring pat. “Probably the worst thing about your trip will be that those steel plates will cut off your view. You won't be able to see a thing, so you better take a last look now.”

Before going up the gangplank, I turned around and looked at Hankow. No one could say it was a pretty city but today with spring in the air, it was at its best. I tried to memorize the Bund. The American flag flying merrily over the consulate. The branches of the plane trees bumpy with buds. The clock on the Customs House looking down, like a great-uncle, on us all.

Then I noticed that not six feet away from me a little boy was jumping up and down, screaming, “Foreign devil!” It was my little friend from the Mud Flats. He had grown taller and his pigtail was gone but he was the same boy. I stepped over to him and leaned down.

“It's me,” I said. “Look, it's me. Your American friend.”

I could see in his eyes that he recognized me but not for a moment did he stop screaming.

I couldn't bear it. “I gave you oranges,” I reminded him.

He spat on the ground. “Foreign devil!” he screamed.

I leaned closer. “Shut up!” I screamed back.

I turned and ran up the gangplank. As soon as I was on the boat, I gave a steel plate a hard kick.

My father was watching. “Who are you mad at?”

“The world,” I answered. “The whole world.”

With the steel plates up, the deck was dark and dismal and prisonlike. I had the sudden feeling that we were all on an ark, waiting for a flood to begin, but this ark wasn't big enough for two of a kind, so the men would have to get off. Meanwhile we stood about in little family clusters, hugging each other, giving advice, saying good-bye. I called “Hello” to Nancy Little who was standing close by with her family. Then the boat gave a whistle and the men paraded single file down the gangplank while the women and children stood behind the steel plates, not even able to wave good-bye.

As soon as the boat had cleared the dock and was headed downriver, the captain announced over the loudspeaker that all passengers were to assemble in the lounge. When we went in, the room was already crowded—babies, children of all ages, and women of all kinds: nuns, spike-heeled flappers, lame grandmothers, fat mothers and thin ones, brave ones and sniffling ones. Nancy, Margaret, Isobel, and I found each other and sat down on the floor, waiting for the captain to speak, which he was obviously going to do as soon as the room had quieted down.

His speech was about safety. If we heard firing while we were on deck, we were to throw ourselves immediately on the floor. The bullets, he said, would probably just rattle against the plates and fall off, but there were gaps between the plates and there was no telling how heavy the firing might be. He explained all the emergency procedures and told us where the life jackets and lifeboats were. At night we were to pull the black curtain that hung at our portholes so that the boat wouldn't be easily seen. Finally, whenever we heard a bell ring three times, we were to grab our life jackets and hit the deck.

We were busy the rest of the day getting settled in our cabins, but the next morning after breakfast Nancy and I decided we should practice the safety measures. We talked Margaret and Isobel into being the enemy and hiding from us. Then as we strolled around the deck, they were to make rat-a-tat sounds and Nancy and I would fall to the deck. It was a good game and we played all day, improving our speed as we went along. When we got tired of plain falling, we tried different styles of falling. How would the nuns fall? we asked ourselves. And the flappers? We pretended that we were Mrs. Gale walking Nip and Tuck on their leashes, and although we let Mrs. Gale escape the bullets, we made sure that Nip and Tuck got it right in their hearts.

Back in the cabin at the end of the day, my mother told me that I was too old for that kind of game.

“I am?” I hadn't thought of myself as being too old for anything. I looked in the mirror. Of course I had grown taller, up to my mother's shoulders now and too big for any of my grandmother's petticoats. I studied my face to see if it had changed but all I could see was the same old face.

My mother looked over my shoulder. Then she licked her finger and reached around to smooth out my eyebrows. I was dumbfounded. I'd seen her smooth out her own eyebrows but surely it couldn't be time for me to pay attention to mine. Still, she kept looking at my reflection as if she were seeing someone who was not quite there yet.

“I certainly hope you don't have the Guttery eyes,” she said. “It would be a shame if you had to wear glasses.”

My mother didn't know that I was dying to wear glasses. All writers wore glasses and the sooner I got into them, I figured, the better. I moved away from the mirror because I knew what my mother was really thinking. Now she was hoping that I'd not only be good but that I'd turn pretty. I wanted to tell her to give up, but how could I? I was the only daughter she had.

The next day I told Nancy that I was bored by the falling-down game, so for the rest of the trip Nancy, Margaret, Isobel, and I spent most of our time in the lounge, playing snap and old maid. In any case, all that practice in falling down turned out to be a waste of time. No one had to fall down at all. The only bullets that hit the boat came at night when everyone was flat in bed anyway. I'd wake up with a jerk. Ping! Ping! Ping! And sometimes pingpingpingping. I'd burrow under my covers, wondering if a whole army was shooting at us or just a couple of soldiers on the riverbank. In the end it didn't matter. We got to Shanghai safely and on time.

My father had telegraphed Mrs. Hull about our arrival and she had sent someone to meet us and take care of our luggage. I worried about how much Andrea might have changed since learning the Charleston, and when she came to the door, my heart sank. There she was in silk stockings and there I was in woolen knee socks. There she was with her belt around her hips and there I was with my belt at the same old place around my waist. But as soon as she started to talk, I felt better.

“Guess what? Guess what?” She was full of news as always, but her mother hushed her.

“Later, Andrea,” she said. “It will save. Let Jean and her mother take their coats off and settle down first.”

My mother couldn't wait to settle down. “Any word from Arthur?” I knew she was hoping that there'd be a telegram, telling us that all was well and he'd see us for sure on the twentieth.

“No word from him. But there was a story in the paper yesterday.” As soon as we were in the living room, Mrs. Hull handed my mother a clipping. I could tell it wasn't good news. Over my mother's shoulder I read that there had been rioting in Hankow. All foreign men had been staying overnight on boats where they would be safer.

My mother put the clipping down and looked out the window. “Well,” she said, “I'm not going to America until Arthur gets here. No matter how long we have to wait.”

I could see that Andrea was impatient. “But the paper doesn't say that people can't leave Hankow,” she pointed out. “He better get here. Guess what?” She couldn't hold back her news any longer. “We have reservations on the
President Taft
too. We'll be going with you. David and Edward and Mother and I.”

“Really
? Oh, that's wonderful,” I said. “Isn't that wonderful?”

Andrea grinned. “And how!”

“We'll just take for granted that Arthur will be here.” Mrs. Hull spoke firmly to my mother. “We'll go right ahead and get ready. You may want to take up the hems on your skirts, Myrtle.”

My mother seemed to cheer up as the talk turned to skirt lengths and I leaned over to Andrea. “I have to go to the bathroom,” I whispered.

“Sure. Follow me.”

I climbed the stairs behind Andrea's silk stockings. At the top she pointed out the rooms: her mother's room with its bath on one side; next to it the guest room (where my mother would be) and its bath; down the hall the boys' room.