Homesick

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by Jean Fritz


  "I think you're smart enough," he said, "to make her happy without actually telling a lie."

  After my father had gone the next day, I went to the hospital with Mrs. Jordan.

  "How do you like the baby's name?" my mother asked.

  "I think it's a nice Bible name," I said primly.

  My mother turned to Mrs. Jordan. "Has Jean been good?" she asked. Now that my father had left, I knew that my mother was worried that I'd be a bother to Mrs. Jordan. I knew that every time we visited, my mother would ask the same question. "Has Jean been good? Has Jean been good?" All summer long. I felt like a coolie who has had a load strapped to his back before going up the mountain.

  Later while Mrs. Jordan was talking to the doctor in the hall, I slipped into his office for a private visit with my sister. Someday, I thought, she'd have a load on her back too.

  "Listen," I told her, "I don't care what your name is, I just want you to know that I'm not going to worry about your being good. And don't expect too much of me either. We're together, remember. We're sisters." I could hardly wait for her to understand.

  My life took on a pattern now. Since I could never stay long at the hospital, there was a lot of time to fill up. Mrs. Jordan introduced me to some other children, and when I wasn't reading in my window seat with Kurry or writing letters at my blue desk, I was often with Peggy Reynolds who lived two houses down. We played tennis and checkers and I lent her the Bobbsey Twins and she lent me the Rosemary books. Once the Jordans took me to the Cave of the Immortals in the West Valley. At the temple inside the cave, I could go up to the altar and talk to the Rain God if I wanted to, but I didn't have a thing to say to him. My prayers had nothing to do with weather.

  What I really liked best that summer was going on little breakfast picnics with Lin Nai-Nai. We had found a fish pool in a park not too far away and while the fog was still lifting from the ground, we would sit there in the midst of bluebells and tiger lilies and eat our hard-boiled eggs and bananas and drink the tea we'd brought in a thermos bottle. Sometimes I gave Lin Nai-Nai English lessons while we ate. She could carry on a conversation now about health and one about weather, but she couldn't manage to say "Miriam." So we settled on Mei Mei, the Chinese word for Little Sister, which I liked better anyway.

  After three weeks, my father came back, but he could only stay for a few days. We went down together to the hospital and found Mother sitting up in a chair, her legs propped on a stool. The baby had been moved into her room. Miriam had lost her pucker now and when she looked at me, I imagined she knew who I was.

  "She had her fingernails cut yesterday," my mother said.

  That was wonderful news, I thought. If her fingernails were growing, the rest of her must be hurrying up too. I leaned over the basket to see.

  "Would you like to hold her?" my mother said.

  I had never supposed that they would trust me to hold her. I sat in a chair and my father placed her gently in my arms. She didn't cry. She just looked up at me and I looked down at her. I'm so lucky, I thought. Who would have dreamed I would be so lucky?

  When I went back to the house, I told Lin Nai-Nai about it. The next morning at breakfast I was telling the Jordans when one of the servants came in with a note and gave it to my father. He tore it open and as he read, his shoulders slumped. When he looked up from the note, there was emptiness in his eyes.

  "Miriam died last night," he said. "They don't know exactly why." He pushed back his chair. "I must go right down to the hospital."

  I didn't recognize my voice when I spoke. "Will you tell Mother?"

  "She knows."

  "But I thought—" I didn't go on. I thought something awful would happen to my mother if she were even a little bit upset. I was afraid that now she might break in two. Mr. Jordan went out of the house with my father and Mrs. Jordan put her arms around me. I think she expected me to cry, but I didn't feel like crying. I felt numb. Wooden. Oh, I should have known, I told myself. It was too good to be true. I should have known.

  Later that morning my father took me to see Mother. She was lying white-faced in bed and she put up her arms to hug me, but she didn't say a word about Miriam. It seemed to me that I would never dare say Miriam's name to my mother for fear of what it might do to her.

  In the afternoon Lin Nai-Nai came to me with a little picnic basket in her hand. "We'll go to the bluebells," she said. "That will be good for you."

  Still wooden, I followed her. We sat down by the pool and she spread out the picnic. Almond cookies too—my favorite. I tried to eat but I couldn't.

  "Cry," Lin Nai-Nai said. 'Tut your head down," she patted her lap, "and cry. It's the only way."

  "I don't feel like crying. I don't feel anything." But suddenly I did feel. Not grief. Anger. It flooded through me. I was furious. At first I couldn't figure out whom I was furious with, but then I knew. I was mad at Dr. Carhart. I picked a daisy and began ripping off the petals. Who did he think he was? What did he know? Standing up in a pulpit and saying death was a glory! Nothing to be sad about! What kind of glory could it be for a little baby who wouldn't know if she was in a dark tunnel or not? I took a bite of hard-boiled egg and chewed it furiously. I ate my whole lunch that way. In a rage. Then we went back to the house.

  That night I tried to write to my grandmother but no words came. It would be weeks and weeks before she'd know that Miriam had died. In fact, she was probably still getting used to her being born. She was still happy. I crumpled the paper.

  We had a funeral for Miriam in the living room. My mother couldn't leave the hospital, of course, but my father and the Jordans had invited a few friends. The tiny white coffin was set on a table. There was a wreath of flowers on it but no bluebells. I ran out and picked some bluebells and put them in the center of the wreath before the service started. We sang hymns but I didn't sing. There was no song in me. The minister from the Kuling church read the twenty-fourth psalm and said a prayer, but he didn't mention glory, thank goodness. Then because Miriam was to be buried in Hankow, two coolies carried the little coffin down the long narrow path. Standing alone with my father on the porch, I thought I had never seen anything as sad as that tiny coffin winding down that steep mountain, bumping along under two poles that the coolies carried on their shoulders. Every bump was another never. Never, never, never, never.

  When the coffin was out of sight, my father put his arm around me. "You know, Jean," he said, "you have been very, very good through this."

  Suddenly something inside me exploded. I wheeled around at my father. "Good!" I shouted. "That's all anyone can think about. Good! I haven't even thought about being good. I haven't tried to be good. I don't care about being good. I have just been me. Doesn't anyone ever look at me?

  My father had sat down in a rocking chair and had pulled me onto his lap. I was crying now. All those tears that had been stored up inside were pouring out. My whole body was shaking with them. My father held me close and rocked back and forth.

  "You don't understand," I cried. "You and Mother will never understand. I was waiting for Miriam to grow. I knew she'd understand. She was the only one. I was counting on her. I needed her."

  I looked up at my father. His head was back on the headrest, his eyes were closed. Tears were streaming down his cheeks. "I do understand, Jean," he said. And we went on rocking and rocking together.

  AFTER MY FATHER LEFT THIS TIME FOR HANKOW, he didn't come back at all. Communist soldiers had begun to attack Wuchang (the city across the river from Hankow) and he was helping to set up hospitals for the sick and wounded. He wrote that we should come home as soon as Mother was able in case the riverboats stopped running, so in the middle of September, even though Mother could walk only a little, we went back down the mountain. Kurry was shut up tight in a basket on my lap, and the Jordans, who were traveling all the way to Hankow with us, led our procession.

  I wasn't sorry to leave Kuling. The bluebells and the tiger lilies had dried up and dropped off their stems. And I was gl
ad to get away from the wind. Every night it came howling down from the mountaintop as if it were looking for something lost. It shook the trees inside out, rattled at doors, banged at shutters. Then it would stop for breath. Not there, it seemed to say. Not there. Then it would begin again. fVhooo, tvhooo, going back to all the same places it had been, looking and looking. Some nights it never gave up. Even in a war, I thought, I would be safer in Hankow than in these mountains and with a wind that might, for all I knew, be looking for me. Maybe in Hankow my mother would get well quickly so I wouldn't have to worry about upsetting her. Maybe sometime I could talk out loud about once having had a real baby sister with fingernails that had to be cut.

  Not yet, of course. My mother was carried down the mountain on a stretcher, and although she got up for meals on the boat, she spent most of the time lying down in our cabin. When we approached Hankow, she went on deck and stretched out on a long chair.

  "It looks just the same, doesn't it?" she said.

  And it did. Even from the middle of the river I could see the plane trees marching up the Bund in their white socks. (Their socks were painted on to keep bugs away, my father said.) As we came closer, I saw that there were more coolies on the dock than usual, more jostling, more noise, but I thought nothing of it. Just coolies. There was nothing that looked like war.

  Then the gangplank was lowered and my father bounded on the deck in his white panama hat and his white duck suit. He hugged us both, but Mother got the first hug and the longer one because of course she was the one to worry about. He shook hands with the Jordans. "This may be the last boat to get through," he announced triumphantly. My father loved to set records: to be the last, the first, the fastest, to get through what he called Narrow Squeaks.

  He explained that he'd borrowed the Hulls' Dodge sedan (which the Y.M.C.A. had bought) and parked it close by on the Bund. Did my mother think she could walk that far?

  It really wasn't far and when my mother said yes, she could, my father motioned for coolies to carry our luggage to the car. I think he suspected there might be trouble because he stood on the gangplank and held up four fingers, as if he were trying to keep more coolies from coming on board. Mr. Jordan, a wide man, blocked the gangplank by standing right behind my father.

  But suddenly there was a roar from the dock and thirty or more coolies stormed up the gangplank, lifted my father and Mr. Jordan right off their feet and set them down on the deck. They circled around our pile of luggage (ten pieces), shouting, grabbing up suitcases and bundles, even pulling the briefcase out of my father's hand. One coolie, seeing the basket I was holding, tried to pull it away. I clung tight.

  "This is not baggage," I shouted. "It's alive." When he didn't let go, I kicked him on the shin. "It's a baby tiger!" I yelled. The coolie glanced at a tall, pockmarked man who stood at the edge of the crowd, each hand tucked, Chinese fashion, up his other sleeve. He was better dressed than the coolies and seemed to be the boss. He motioned for the coolie to leave me alone.

  By this time five coolies had taken charge of the baggage. The others had backed off but had not left the boat. "Pay now," they shouted. "Make the foreign devils pay now." The tall, pockmarked man unfolded his arms; in one hand he held a knife.

  The cost of carrying a bag had always been five coppers, so for eleven bags (including the briefcase), the total should have been fifty-five cents. Today my father handed a twenty-cent piece to each of the five coolies which was, of course, almost double the normal rate.

  "I know you fellows are having hard times," my father said.

  The coolies threw the money on the deck as if it were dirt. All the coolies began chanting: "Fifty cents a bag! Fifty cents! Fifty cents!"

  I could see my father set his chin in his stubborn, not-giving-in way. Then he glanced at my mother and without another word he opened his wallet and pulled out five single dollars, one for each coolie and an extra fifty cents for the man with the briefcase.

  As we followed the coolies off the boat, I thought the trouble was over. Some of the coolies lost interest when we reached the dock and went their own way, but some, including the boss, stayed with us. When we reached the stone steps that led to the Bund, the five coolies plunked the baggage down. That was as far as they went for a dollar, they said. They each needed two dollars more to finish the job.

  My father's chin turned hard as stone. He looked at the boss. "We will go on," he said, "or I will call the police." He raised his arm as if he were about to call the police, but the boss pointed his knife at him. Other coolies produced knives.

  "If you call the police," the boss said, "you will be dead by the time they get here."

  I felt my knees go weak and tremble. I was surprised, because I didn't know that people's knees really shook when they were scared. I had supposed that writers of books just said that in the same way as they made happy endings at the last minute. As I looked at my father's chin and at the men with their knives, I knew no one was going to give in. Only a writer could save us now, I thought.

  Suddenly Lin Nai-Nai nudged me and pointed to the Bund which as usual was lined with rickshas parked on both sides of the street, but there were no coolies with the rickshas. All of them, up and down the street, were running toward us. In a moment they had surrounded us.

  "This way, Mr. Gau. Hurry. This way," one of the coolies cried. I recognized him. My father had helped him once when he was in trouble and he'd been our friend ever since. He must have seen what was going on and called the others. Forming a double line that led to the Dodge sedan, they hurried us and our baggage into the car while they stood guard. My father and the Jordans slid into the front seat, my mother, Lin Nai-Nai, and I into the back. The ricksha coolies stayed until we had the car started and were off the street. It was a grand rescue. I didn't think there was a writer in the whole world who could have done better.

  But I was afraid something terrible might have happened to my mother. My father and the Jordans were all asking how she was and she said she was all right and she did seem to be. I put my hand on her knees and they weren't even shaking. Maybe she was better already.

  As soon as we were inside the house, I let poor Kurry out of her basket and we all gave a big sigh, glad to be safe again.

  My father leaned against the door. "Well," he said proudly, "that was a Narrow Squeak!" Probably he was already thinking what a good story this would make when he wrote home, but I planned to write first.

  Dear Grandma (I would say): We were almost murdered tonight but in the nick of time we were saved by a bunch of ricksha coolies. I was so scared that my knees were shaking, but don't worry about us. Just remember that in China there are always ricksha coolies around.

  We went into the living room where my mother stretched out on the sofa and my father began talking about what had been going on in Hankow. Since the Jordans were leaving the next day, he wanted them to hear everything, so he went on and on, the way he did when he was taking Dr. Carhart's place and preaching a sermon. I paid no attention; it was just more Chinese-fighting talk. Who was going to rule China. Who was going to beat whom. It was like a Victrola record that had been playing ever since I was born. Then suddenly my father interrupted the record to speak to me.

  "You'll be interested in this news, Jean," he said. "The British School is not going to open this fall and Miss Williams has gone back to England."

  "You're joking!" I cried.

  "Cross my heart," my father said.

  Like all good news, it was hard to believe. I tried to imagine it. No more Miss Williams ever. No more worrying about Ian Forbes or the king of England or prisoner's base.

  "We'll have lessons together," my mother said.

  I nodded, thinking how I'd study my favorite subjects: poetry and George Washington and the map of America. No complicated math problems, no French. My mother didn't speak French and I had never seen her do anything but add and subtract in her account book. She said we wouldn't start for two or three weeks to give her a chance to re
st.

  I began to see that this war was going to mean more than just talk, but at first I didn't connect Yang Sze-Fu's fingernails with the war. Of course I was surprised the next morning when I noticed that the long, spiky nails on his pinkies were gone and were now the same length as his other nails.

  I asked Lin Nai-Nai. "How come Yang Sze-Fu cut his nails?"

  "He's a Communist," Lin Nai-Nai said. "Communists don't believe in long fingernails. They believe all people should be working people, no one pretending to be better than anyone else."

  "Are you still interested in being a Communist?" I asked.

  "No," she said. "How can I like the Communists when they are attacking my city?"

  I had forgotten that Lin Nai-Nai's family lived in Wuchang. Once long ago she had explained to me that she had disgraced her family when she had run away from her husband and they would never want to see her again. Now she was worried about them, and no wonder. My father had told me how Communist soldiers were trying to make the city of Wuchang surrender by starving it to death. It was a city with walls around it, and since the soldiers wouldn't let anyone in or out, eventually the people would run out of food. I had read about sieges like this in my English history book, but in ancient days soldiers had worn armor and ridden horseback and used battering rams against the city walls. These soldiers had only cloth caps and cotton clothes, but they had a cannon which they fired from the hills and they had bombs which they dropped on the city from the one airplane they owned. And they waited.

  I took Lin Nai-Nai's hand as she sat in her embroidery chair. "How many brothers and sisters do you have?" I asked.

  "Two brothers. One, ten years—Dee Dee. One, twenty-two. Two sisters, sixteen and twenty, but maybe they are married now and moved away. Maybe my parents are dead. Who knows? One thing is sure, anyone alive in Wuchang is hungry."

  From that moment the whole war became for me a war against Lin Nai-Nai's family. When I heard the cannon being fired across the river, I thought of Lin Nai-Nai's little brother, Dee Dee, and wondered if his knees were shaking. The first time the Communist airplane flew over Hankow on its way to Wuchang, I ran outside and shook my fist at the pilot and shouted all the Chinese swear words I knew. My mother called me in.

 

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