The Distant Land of My Father (7 page)

And so, as Chu Shih and I made
chiaotzû
after
chiaotzû,
I kept my questions to myself. When we’d finished and he got out the huge bamboo steamer and let me arrange the first batch of dumplings on spread-out cabbage leaves to cook, a first, I saw that I was being comforted, and the fear inside me rose like dough.

Chu Shih and I ate our fill at the kitchen table, and still the rest of the house stayed quiet. Though it wasn’t typhoon season, there was a strong hot wind outside that made the house rattle, and each time it did, Chu Shih looked anxiously at the door, then at the windows, and each time he smiled nervously when he saw me notice his anxiety. The sky outside grew black. When I stared hard at the windows, watching for some sign of my father, I no longer saw the magnolia and the plane trees and the willows, but only the reflection of my own worried face in the dark glass.

That was when my mother came for me: just when it was night.

She came into the kitchen without a sound, and I jumped when she touched my shoulder and spoke my name. Her face was pale, and there were circles under her eyes. I reached for her as though I’d never expected to see her again.

“Anna,” she said, and she loosened my hold on her and knelt next to me, so that we were at the same level. Her fingers shook as she set a pink and gold package of Ruby Queen cigarettes on the table. When she pushed my hair off my face and pressed her palms against my cheeks, her hands were cold. She smelled of Chanel No. 5, the scent so strong it was like something you could touch, which made me start to cry because it seemed so everyday, and the night was so wrong.

“Are you all right?” she asked, and although I thought I was, her question made me cry more. My mother looked truly confused. She turned to Chu Shih and said, “She’s been like this all day? You should have come—”

“No, no,” Chu Shih said, “just now. Not all day.” He shook his head and looked grieved, as if he had been the cause of my tears.

I caught my breath and ordered myself to calm down. I was, I told myself, my father’s daughter, which meant I had a certain standard to meet. There was no reason to act like this; I certainly wouldn’t have fallen apart if he had been in the room. I took another breath. “I was afraid.”

My mother nodded. “I know,” she said. “Let’s go upstairs and you can tell me what happened.” She stood and smoothed her skirt, and I started to follow her out of the kitchen. She stopped at the door and turned to Chu Shih.

“You’ve checked the doors?”

“Shih,”
yes.

“The windows?”

“Shih.”

“Well, then,” my mother said, “we’ll be fine. We’ll all be fine.” And she took my hand.

When we reached my room, my mother sat on my bed, her legs crossed, her back straight. Despite her composure, in that instant I thought she might cry and I stared at her hard, willing her not to. She coughed, covering her mouth with a white handkerchief, and licked her lips. Then she patted the space next to her and forced a smile. I sat down beside her.

“Are you all right?” she asked. She looked evenly into my eyes, concerned.

“Yes,” I said. “Chu Shih gave me tea.”

She nodded. “That’s good. You needed to rest.”

“Where is he?” I asked. I felt as though we’d been talking for hours, avoiding that question.

My mother brushed my hair from my face. She took a deep breath and exhaled unevenly. “I don’t know exactly,” she started, “that’s part of the problem. We don’t know exactly who’s abducted him. It could be any number of—”

She stopped and looked at me. “Let me start again,” she said, and she told me about calling Will Marsh and getting the money that the men had demanded, and arranging for Will to see that it was delivered. She said she was sure that my father would be returned the next day, or the day after that at the latest. Everyone knew, she said, that people who were kidnapped were well cared for, and released once the kidnappers had their ransom.

It all sounded like a business arrangement, and though I listened hard, it made no sense and had nothing to do with my father being hit with a gun and pushed into a car and taken away. My mother’s anxious tone did not reassure me.

“Where is he?” I asked again.

She took another breath. “I told you. I don’t know. I just know he’ll be home soon. I’ve done all I can do.”

“Why did they take him?”

My mother smiled grimly and looked away from me. “Hard to say,” she answered. “That’s something else I don’t know.” She stared at her skirt. “Your father,” she said, and her voice caught and she cleared her throat. “Your father is somewhat unpredictable. And he’s very”—she paused—”complicated. He has strong ideas and people don’t always agree with those ideas, and he does what he wants, whether people like it or not. And sometimes it gets him into trouble.” She looked at me and said, “Can you understand that?”

I nodded, and she attempted a smile. Then she closed her eyes and smoothed the delicate skin under her eyes with her fingers. “I’m so tired,” she murmured, and for a moment I was stumped. My mother was never tired, and I was suddenly concerned that maybe things were even worse than I’d thought.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

She opened her eyes and seemed to think for a moment. “Yes,” she said, “I’m all right.” She leaned close and kissed my forehead, then stood up. “Get your shoes off, Anna, and we’ll get you ready for bed.”

My shoes. I stood, remembering my father’s office as though it were last year, forgotten till this instant, and I backed away from her as though she’d asked the unthinkable. “No,” I said suddenly, and then, thinking I was being rude, I added, “No, thank you.”

She laughed. “What’s the matter with you? Come, take off your shoes and dress and put your nightgown on. It’s late.”

I shook my head and took a few more steps back.

“Stop it, Anna,” she said, more firmly now. “Don’t be difficult. We’re tired and upset. Just put your nightgown on and get into bed and you’ll fall asleep, and things will be better in the morning. You’ll see.”

But I didn’t see. I didn’t see how things could be fine, or how she could be so calm, or how my father could possibly be all right, or how the criminals who had taken him would ever return him with everyone acting so casually. And I certainly didn’t see how taking my shoes off and letting my mother find the yen I had kept would help.

“I want to keep my shoes on,” I said, and I hoped a reason would come to me.

“Don’t be silly,” she said.

“I’m not. I’m just not taking my shoes off. I might have to get up in the night.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she said. There was an edge to her voice, and when she stood, she looked at me so matter-of-factly that I almost lost my nerve and gave in.

“I’m not taking them off,” I said again, mostly to myself. “And I won’t go to sleep if you take them off of me.”

She took a deep breath and stared at me hard. I stared back and told myself that I was as strong as she was, just not as big. Finally she said, “You’re not yourself, but I’m far too exhausted to argue with you. Let’s just hope you’re reasonable in the morning.” She turned to my bed and pulled back the sheets. “Fine. In you go.”

I had not moved. “You have to promise,” I said.

“What?” The thinness of her voice let me know that her patience was all but gone.

“That you won’t take them off while I’m asleep.”

She did not hesitate. “Of course I will. Children don’t sleep in their shoes. Period. Now get into bed and go to sleep.” She looked at me and softened. I was terrified of this stance I’d invented, and it must have showed. “Anna, please. Everything will be all right in the morning. You’ll see.”

I nodded and got into my bed in my clothes and tried not to wince as my dirty shoes slid between the whiteness of clean cotton sheets. I thought of all the dirt and grime I’d seen all day, and I felt as though I’d brought it all home with me.

“I’ll tell you what,” she said. “Let me go and change out of these clothes and I’ll sit with you until you’re asleep. And I won’t take your shoes off unless you tell me it’s all right. Deal?”

I nodded.

She turned and walked out of my room and I watched her until she turned the hallway corner to go to her bedroom.

I sat up and pushed the covers off and pulled off my shoe, took the yen out, and squeezed my foot back into my shoe. The yen note was limp and damp. I unfolded it and tried to smooth it against the sheet, then held it up and examined it, wishing that it could tell me something I didn’t know. Then I went to the window, pushed it open, and unlatched the screen. I leaned out enough to reach the loose tile, the second one on the right. I refolded the yen and pulled up the tile enough to slip the yen underneath it, then pulled it up again to make sure I could reach the yen later. I could. I latched the screen, closed the window, and got back into my bed, my heart pounding as though I’d committed a crime.

A door opened and closed down the hall and I heard the softness of my mother’s steps. She came down the hallway and into my room, wearing a white satin robe that I knew was soft as water.

“I brought you something,” she said. “Maybe it will help.” She handed me a postcard. The back was filled with a neat black handwriting that was far too complicated for me to decipher.

“No,” she said, and she turned the postcard over. “The other side.”

The front was a photograph of a city of lights. It was twilight, and behind the city were dark blue cut-out mountains that looked so close, they might have been right behind the houses. In the lower corner it said something that I tried to sound out.

“The city of angles,” I read.

My mother laughed gently. “No, Anna, the City of
Angels.
It’s Los Angeles, in California. My mother sent the picture, and it’s where I grew up. I was thinking we might take a trip there sometime.”

I looked at her uneasily. “A trip?”

She shrugged. “A vacation,” she said. “Just for a while.”

I nodded and looked back at the postcard and stared hard at the lines and intersections of all those streets, everything so straight and precise. It
looked
like a city of angles.

“The City of Angels,” I said, and I turned to my mother. “Is it nice?”

She was quiet for a minute. Then she said, “Yes. And it’s safe.”

I nodded. That day I understood, for the first time, the appeal of “safe.”

“Why don’t you put it under your pillow and I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow?”

I nodded and turned my pillow over so that the cool side would be against my cheek, then I slipped the postcard under it. My mother stood and turned out the light, then sat down on the edge of my bed and tucked the sheet around me. The light from the hall was behind her, and it was easy to believe that she was from a city of angels. She seemed like one herself, and I felt ashamed. I was grimy all over, outside from a long, terrible day, and inside from lying to both of my parents, first one, then the other, and doing so with ease. I was glad I couldn’t see her face.

“It was awful,” I whispered.

She leaned close and kissed my forehead. “I know,” she said. “I’m sorry.” We were quiet then, and for a moment I wanted to tell her everything—about the yen and about Jimmy’s and about my father’s mood that day—and to ask her for a bath and a clean nightgown and a better way to go to sleep.

But I said nothing. I was too tired and too ashamed and too afraid. My mother seemed to be waiting, to be expecting something, but she didn’t ask. She just stayed close, patting my back and rubbing the spot that always hurt when I was tired, the spot that only she knew how to find.

the battle of shanghai

IN
THE
MORNING
, I went with my mother to Mass at the Cathedral of St. Ignatius in Siccawei, in the southwest part of the city. Mei Wah drove us there with the car doors locked and the windows rolled up tight, and his hard expression and no-nonsense driving made it clear that he did not like us going out. But I could not remember a Sunday when my mother had missed Mass, and when she strode into the kitchen and called for Mei Wah, she had let it be known that no exceptions were going to be made that day. The two of us were going to Mass, as usual. My father never went; faith was my mother’s domain, a foreign country to him.

Inside the church, I followed my mother to our pew and stood next to her and listened as Father Jacquinot spoke words that were like a door opening to a place I loved though I did not completely understand.
“In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti,”
he said, and I made the sign of the cross and tried to keep my thoughts on the Father and the Son. But over and over again, I thought of my father and I began to pray, not using the prayers my mother had taught me when I was small, but saying what I felt, pleading for my father’s safety, the only thing I wanted just then. And although I wasn’t completely sure that what I was doing really counted as prayer, I felt that God didn’t mind, that He even welcomed my worried thoughts. It was the first time I had ever prayed so directly and so plainly and with such urgency. While I listened to the Mass, and heard and sang the
Kyrie,
and the
Gloria,
and the
Credo,
the
Sanctus
and the
Agnus Dei,
and tried to think about those words, I prayed a second litany in my heart:
Bring him home, keep him safe, bring him home, keep him safe.