by Aimee E. Liu
Two days after the explosion, the Berkeley Gazette published the following:
Vicious Prank Endangers Lives of All Berkeley Residents Racial Prejudice Is a Threat to All
To the Editor:
Last Friday this paper published an unauthorized announcement of our marriage which all but instructed the local populace to take up arms against us. Less than one week after this publication we were subjected to a vicious and cowardly attack that put the lives of every resident in Berkeley at risk. We are writing today to protest this paper’s policy of encouraging racist sentiment, and to alert the public to the grave and immediate menace that prejudice poses not only to those who belong to or choose to associate with the non-white races but to every member of this society. The person who penned those public words against us is as much a vandal, violating our private lives, as the person or persons who endangered all of Berkeley by physically assaulting us yesterday morning.
What was this vicious act? We will not dignify it with detailed description, but say only that it involved the distribution of rats, which had been infected by bubonic plague, around the premises of our residence. Fortunately, we recognized the risk that these animals posed not only to us but to the surrounding neighborhood. All threat of disease from this incident has been eradicated, as verified by the health authorities.
Surely we need not elaborate on the degree to which this hostility dismays and disheartens us. Is not America the Land of Liberty and Justice? Is it not the Home of the Free? Should we not all be entitled to love on right principle, to become true husband and wife by the laws of both holy gospel and the land? We fervently believe in the principles of justice and fairness on which this nation was founded. We believe that China, the world’s oldest civilization, has much to learn from America, the world’s greatest republic. However, we also believe that our two peoples will mutually benefit only if we can forge a secure foundation of friendship, tolerance, and trust between our races. We intend to do all in our power to this end.
Sincerely,
Mr. and Mrs. Paul Leon
Over the following weeks a flurry of answering editorials protested that the majority of Berkeley’s citizens fully endorsed the civil rights of Oriental students, and if an American woman should, of her free will, choose to marry a Chinaman, then it was no one’s business but her own family’s. Eleanor Layton, of all people, joined the chorus with a public announcement that Hope Newfield had been a model tenant, and, while stopping short of condoning or even acknowledging Hope’s marriage, averred that the Oriental students in Eleanor’s experience had always shown exemplary behavior. (Oh, what a conveniently flexible commodity is hindsight, Hope thought.) From Collis Chesterton, of course, there came not a peep, but exactly two weeks after the explosion, the Gazette’s Campus Column announced “the appointment of East-Asian language scholar John Marion as the new supervisor of Oriental students, replacing Professor Collis Chesterton, who has accepted a position at the University of Southern California as chair of a new history department.”
Hope showed the announcement to Paul, who studied it with his usual thoroughness, then pressed it back into her hands. “He has brought us together. I take you from him. Now we have driven him away. It is enough, I think.”
“You forgive too easily.”
“You believe Chesterton made this attack on us?”
“I know he wrote that article—and was not man enough even to sign it.”
“And the rest?” Paul pressed his fingertips together. She noticed with a shock of pride that he was no longer biting or tearing at his nails. Even with all that had happened.
“The rest,” she said. “No. No, I don’t think Collis, even in the lowest depths of his soul, could conceive of such savagery.”
“Then it is enough.”
Unfortunately, while Hope and Paul were ready to put the attack behind them, the town’s curiosity would not subside. Invitations were extended from prominent matriarchs for the young couple to attend formal dinners and teas. They received calls from church deacons urging them to join this or that congregation. A lawyer sent his card with an offer of six hours of free consultation if they wished to press charges against the newspaper. Such invitations were transparent lures to bring her and Paul out for public viewing, and so Hope declined them all, but enough people in Berkeley had passing acquaintance that their identity was soon common knowledge. Overnight, Francisco Street became a favorite destination for strolling couples and families, nannies with prams, or giggling schoolchildren who clustered outside the front gate, hoping to catch the scandalous interracial pair in a kiss.
In self-defense, Hope and Paul took to coming and going at different times, so as not to be seen together. But even apart, they were recognized, sometimes followed, and not always by well-wishers. When Hope set off for the Berkeley Chinese Educational Mission (where the charitably Methodist Mason sisters had hired her on the spot as the new tutor) men would tip their hats and leer. At the same time, merchants who used to place change directly into her palm and wish her a good day now served her close-mouthed and left her cash on the counter. Women frequently blushed and giggled when they spotted Paul on the trolley, but he was also attacked twice on the ferry landing by gangs of stone-throwing boys. On campus Paul was treated with deference by Asians and whites alike. However, upon entering the lecture hall one day he found his seat coated with semen, and the whole room filled with chortling as he bent to wipe the chair clean. Hope and Paul did not speak of these insults, but they could each see how the other stiffened before leaving the haven of their cottage. At night they lay back to back, staring sleepless at the moon-shadowed walls, alert to the slightest skitter of leaves, the thud of the smallest seed pod hitting the roof. Separately and silently, they imagined eyes at the window, footsteps on the porch, the creak of the screen door being pried open. A two-by-four lay under the bed, within Paul’s reach, and he would use it, too, if it came to that, but they both recognized that the consequences of defending themselves could be far graver than any injury at the hands of assailants. Even the most carefully wrought public opinion would backlash if a drop of white blood were shed by the Chinaman, whatever his provocation.
The mystery of their attacker’s identity continued to weigh on them until late one night in early August when a single shot rang out, sending them racing for Thomas’s. They found him rocking on his front porch, the derringer in his lap.
“Stupid kids,” Thomas said. “Too young to be prosecuted, too ignorant to be blamed.”
The lawn lay still and ominously dark. “You didn’t shoot them!” Hope whispered.
“Over them. Scared the bejeezus out of them, though. They ran like the devil was at their tail.” He shifted the pistol and yawned.
“You sit here watching every night?” Paul asked.
“Can’t sleep much anyway. Makes me feel useful.”
Paul stuck out his hand. Thomas looked up in surprise, smiled as he met it with his own.
3
A man’s silhouette filled the screen door, solid black and unfamiliar, its borders blurred by the sunlight shimmering through the trellis behind him. Hope, coming into the hallway, saw him first and caught her breath as he pounded the frame. The screen was fastened but flimsy, no match for the pounding, and the inner door stood open against the August heat.
Paul came out of the bedroom behind her. They’d been let alone these past few weeks (public attention blessedly diverted by a spectacular society murder), but uninvited guests, like sudden noises, still put them on alert. “Dolly!” shouted the visitor. “You in there?”
Hope turned, whispering frantically to Paul. “It’s my father.”
That she didn’t rush to fling the door open surprised neither of them. Except for a brief note, responding with predictable relief and astonishment—and terse congratulations—to her letter following the Quake, she had heard nothing from Doc Newfield since their marriage, and the only other communication Hope had sent him was a breezy upd
ate, before the troubles, giving their new address.
The shadow yanked at the door, cursed, and called again.
“Dolly?” said Paul.
“His pet name for me.”
Paul smiled. “Because you are small as a toy.” He pushed her gently. “Go to him.”
Hope’s father crushed his hat in one hand, reached the other like a giant paw as she unlatched the door. He was a tall man and sturdy, flesh boiled by long frontier days to a lavender pink. His eyes roared, luminous blue, and his graying whiskers drooped in a hood above large tender lips. He lifted her off the ground and gave her a syrupy smack on the cheek.
“Dad. This is Paul.”
He grinned hard. “Leon, is it? Hell, son, you sure don’t look like a Spaniard.”
By the time Hope worked up the nerve to look, her father had an arm clapped around Paul’s shoulders. “I am honored to make your acquaintance, Dr. Newfield,” Paul was saying stiffly.
“Come in, Dad,” she cried. “Look at you! All dressed up in city clothes. You must be thirsty. Tea, or lemonade?” An inventory of the pantry compressed her mind, forcing more severe thoughts off to one side as she led them back to the kitchen. She could offer shortbread and tea biscuits. Or some of Paul’s dried pork sticks. Not far off from the jerky that had sustained her father over long weeks riding over cattle lands, or on the road with his wagonload of tonics …
Paul sat across from his father-in-law and waited while the huge man’s gaze scaled and descended and scaled him again. Doc took breaths that doubled his chest, let them out with gusts of Sen-Sen.
“Chinese,” the older man muttered at last, glancing starkly to Hope. “Damn.”
She placed a plate of food on the table between them. Paul shook his head. Chinese sausage and English biscuits.
“I’ll be damned,” Doc repeated as he, too, inspected the plate. He took a piece of dried meat between his fingers and dropped it into his mouth. “Jerky?” He chewed.
“In a manner of speaking.” Hope smiled. The strain in her expression was as subtle as a shift of tenses, but Paul noticed and understood at once. He had seen the same expression on the street last week when he and Hope dared to go out for a short walk together, and they had talked about the power of people’s stares to construct a wall between them.
“La jou,” he said.
“Pardon?”
“Chinese jerky,” Hope translated.
Doc wiped his perspiring forehead, then fanned his hands flat on the table. “You children love each other?”
Paul looked to his wife. She sat straight, watching the plate of food.
“I am proud to have your daughter for my bride,” he answered.
“Not what I asked.”
“It’s too personal a question, Dad,” Hope said.
“Seems to me you’ve gone out of your way to make your personal business public.” Doc pulled from his pocket a wadded newspaper, spread it open to another defamatory report of their marriage, and stabbed it with his finger. The Portland Herald.
Hope’s palm fell to the table, thumb angrily rubbing the green paint.
Doc Newfield held Paul’s gaze, then drew Hope’s in as well until the three of them were linked. “You know, I understand love. I understand pain. And I know how one can lead to the other.” His bright eyes dimmed and lowered, rose again. “Take more than a name change to hide behind.”
Suddenly Paul felt as if his skin were on fire. He bent his head, mumbled an inarticulate excuse, and thrust his chair back, escaping to the bedroom, where he plunged his face into a basin of cold, numbing water.
As she entered the room Hope saw herself reflected, unrecognizable in Paul’s spectacles. “I never said—”
“Paul Leon.”
“I told him your name. Yes.”
“This name you choose. This Spanish name.”
“Paul, we’ve been over that—”
“You are ashamed of me to your own father!”
“At least I told him that I’d married. That you even exist!”
It was not what she’d meant to say. They needed his regular stipend from home, and Paul seemed so sure of the consequences if his mother learned of his American marriage, they’d agreed it was best his family not know. But the words slipped out.
Paul stood for a long moment, watching her in the mirror. “I will write to my mother.”
“I’m sorry, Paul. I shouldn’t have spoken.”
“But you are right,” he said softly. “So is your father. We cannot hide what we have done. Or who we are.”
He took the white, dripping cloth from the basin and touched it to her chin, her nose, her cheeks and forehead. The cool water, the slow gesture had the feel of ritual.
“In China,” Paul said, “every new bride must leave her parents, journey alone to family of her husband. Here in America, you and I journey together, make new family.”
Through the closed door Hope could hear her father coughing, rattling his newspaper in the sitting room. The last thing he’d said to her was that he would only stay the weekend. As far back as she could remember, his initial greetings always included a deadline for their time together, a point beyond which he’d resume his separate life and send her back to hers.
Hope pushed Paul’s hand and the cloth aside, and buried her face in his shoulder.
4
A few days later, Paul posted the following:
Revered Mother,
I hope this letter finds you and my children in excellent health and abundance. It is long since I have sent word to you and much has changed in this strange country. The broken city of San Francisco is rising like a phoenix from its ashes and soon will be as new, with towering buildings and splendid palaces. But the greatest change has transpired within your own son’s humble heart.
I beg your forgiveness, my Mother. I have taken a bride without first consulting you. But she is a wife of my true heart. Her father is an American landowner. The family name is Newfield. My bride is exceptionally beautiful, well educated, slender as a Han, with natural lotus feet. Her hair is black as ebony, her skin as pale as the plum blossom. She is strong and healthy. I call her Hsin-hsin.
I entreat you to welcome your new daughter-in-law to our family, Mother. She pleases me greatly and assists me in my work and studies. She is eager to meet you and my children and to make her home with us in China. She is a devoted wife and will deliver many sons. Together we ask for your blessing.
I wish my family peace, health, and harmony.
Your respectful son,
Liang Po-yu
Mails to inland China took months. Hope and Paul had discussed sending a cable instead, but agreed finally that there was no point to that now. It would only give his mother the idea that she could still intervene. The form of a letter was more graceful, less threatening, and more conducive to diplomacy. Besides, after the attacks they had suffered already, they were in no hurry for Nai-li’s reply.
By September life had fallen into a semblance of routine. Though they still did not go out publicly together, they had their evenings at home with Thomas or Mary Jane or both. Paul had his work and school, and Hope’s job at the Mission, while less lucrative than her work under Collis’s patronage, was gratifying nevertheless. Her new charges were younger, from poorer backgrounds, and, though most still wore pigtails coiled under their hats, they were more Western in dress and manner than most of her past students. And they were Christians. As a result, she felt freer to question them about their families, themselves, their villages—in short, about the land and culture into which she had married. Yang, her pigtailed student from the north, described the walled cities of Peking with their rooftops covered in gold. Mao, from Kunming, remembered a melting orange sun like a paper lantern over purple lakes. Little Pan from Soochow told of a city gridded with canals, like Italy’s Venice. He also explained to Hope that girl babies were frequently left to die in fields or at the base of neglected temples or were given away to Buddhist nunneries
, but that boys were cursed in another way, because they could be commandeered at will by the roving armies and bandits that dominated rural China under the Manchus. Soldiers were feared and hated in China, Pan said, because they took their pay in plunder. “In China everyone is in debt, everyone hungry. But you must know. All these things your husband write.”
Hope started. “You know my husband?”
“I read his newspaper. I read his book on Taipings. I even read some journal he edit in Japan—Hupei Student Circle, yes?”
“You’re quite the celebrity among my students,” she told Paul as they got ready for bed that night. “Seems young Pan’s read everything you’ve ever written. I think he knows you better than I do.”
Paul draped his jacket over the wooden valet and turned with an indulgent smile. “I promise, he does not.”
Hope plucked at the folds of her nightgown, smoothing and fanning it for Paul’s benefit, then snuggled provocatively under the covers.
He got in beside her holding a volume of Conrad. That morning he had pointed out that their lessons had lapsed and wondered, if she wasn’t willing to teach him, should he find another tutor? She’d cuffed his ears, and told him to bring his reading glasses to bed. Now she asked, “What would you think if I learned to read Chinese?”
He looked at her over the top of his spectacles.
“I mean it, Paul. If I’m teaching you my language, shouldn’t you teach me yours?”
“Hope. You are busy with so many things.” He gave Heart of Darkness an impatient tap.
“You don’t think I can!”
“I do not say this.”
“Why, you!” She seized a pillow and pummeled him with it, knocking off his glasses, but in one easy movement he rolled her over. The book slid away, and he imprisoned her wrists, then arranged himself on top of her.
“Teach me,” she said.