by Jean Fritz
I tried to think of something to say that would make Lin Nai-Nai feel better, but I could find nothing. As far as I could see, she had not a single thing in her life to look forward to.
"I'll make you a cup of tea." I went to her little two-burner stove and put water on to boil. When the tea was ready, she drank noisily to show her appreciation. Tomorrow she would feel better, she said. I shouldn't worry.
But I didn't see how she would feel better. That night at supper I asked what would happen to Lin Nai-Nai when we went back to America.
"She'll go to live with Mr. and Mrs. T. K. Hu," my mother said. "We made arrangements months ago, but of course she hoped to go back to her family. Since she can't, I'm sure she'll be happy with the Hus."
Still, I couldn't bear to think of leaving Lin Nai-Nai.
"How will we ever know what's happening to each other?" I asked her one day. "You can't write English and I can't read Chinese."
"Mr. Hu can write for me and he can read your letters to me. You can tell me all about your grandmother and how you feed the chickens and how happy you are."
As much as I'd talked, I found it hard to imagine myself actually picking up a pen to write such a letter. Ever since my father had said delay was possible, I hadn't dared to make plans for fear of being disappointed. I had tried to put America right out of my mind. Of course I wrote to my grandmother as usual and we sent off our Christmas packages to Washington, P.A., but I wasn't keeping any album of pictures of what it would be like when we got there. I held out until Christmas and then I couldn't hold out any longer.
It all started when I opened the present from my father. It was a big, soft package and inside there was blue-and-gray-plaid wool that looked like a blanket, but it was not a regular blanket, my father said. It was a steamer rug made especially for ocean voyages. He described how I would sit on a deck chair as we crossed the Pacific and I'd cover myself with the steamer rug and while I looked at the ocean, a steward would bring me a cup of beef tea. That did it. How could I stay put in China when my steamer rug was ready for the high seas?
Then I opened my grandmother's present. Of course she sent me a petticoat but she also sent a calendar for the next year: 1927. She had attached a note: "I have a calendar just like this. Beginning January 1st, let's both cross off the days until you're home. That will make the time go faster." She figured that it might be July by the time we had crossed the continent, so at the end of every month she had written down how many days were left. At the end of January: 150 days. At the end of February: 122 days. As I turned the pages, the days seemed to fly past. Then I came to July, and there pasted over the whole month was a picture of my grandmother and my grandfather and my Aunt Margaret.
My grandmother was a large woman who looked as if she did everything in a big way. In the picture, she was laughing so hard I could almost hear her, and her arms were out as if she were waiting for me to run into them. Beside her, my grandfather smiled under his mustache as if he were saying, "How about a game of horseshoes?" (My father said he was a champion.)
On the other side was my Aunt Margaret. I hadn't seen a picture of her since she'd been in high school and now she was twenty-one and taught music and had lots of beaus. I'd been afraid that maybe she had turned into a flapper with spit curls and spike heels and she might not like me. But when I saw her picture, I knew I could get in bed with her on Sunday mornings and tell jokes even if she had been out late the night before with a beau.
"Do you think we really will leave for America on time?" I asked.
"Yes," my mother said. "I feel it in my bones."
That was the best Christmas present of all. I knew that my mother's bones were almost always right.
IN HISTORY BOOKS WAR SEEMED TO BE A SIMPLE matter of two sides fighting, the right side against the wrong, so I didn't see how this Chinese war was ever going to make it into history. In the first place, there weren't just two sides. There were warlords scattered around, each with his own army, and there was the Nationalist Army (under General Chiang Kai-shek) which was trying to conquer the warlords and unify the country. And there were the Communists who were supposed to be part of the Nationalist movement, but they had their own ideas, my father said, and they didn't always agree with General Chiang Kai-shek. Both the Communists and the Nationalists wanted to make things better in China, he explained, but both did terrible things to people who opposed them. If a man was an enemy, sometimes they'd cut off his head and stick it up on a pole as a warning to others. My father had seen this with his own eyes.
Furthermore, it wasn't armies who made the most trouble in Hankow. Gangs of Communist-organized workers were the ones who did the rioting. In January they took over the British concession and returned it to the Chinese. I didn't understand much of what was going on, but it didn't matter since all I cared about was going to America on time. And it looked as if we would. In February we had some of our furniture and all of our Chinese things crated for shipment. We still had our beds and chairs and bureaus and dining-room furniture, so we could get along, but even so, the house was bare and echoey. It was while we were in the midst of this packing that Mr. and Mrs. T. K. Hu came calling. Mr. Hu was carrying a large box which he handed to my father.
"Since you are packing," he said, "we thought this would be the time to give you our remembrance."
My father unwrapped the package and took out a very large ginger jar. Shiny Chinese yellow it was, the happiest color in the world, and it was decorated with bright green characters which wished us long life and health and happiness and lots of money which certainly took care of my wishes. As we stood admiring the jar, Mr. Hu took it from my father's hands and set it on one side of our fireplace.
"A pair of these jars was given us as a wedding gift," he said. "They have always stood one on each side of our fireplace. We will keep one and now you have the other. When we look at ours, we will think of you and when you look at yours, you will think of us."
My mother put her arms around Mrs. Hu. My father took one of Mr. Hu's hands in both of his. "Old friend," he said. "Old friend." He must have been misty-eyed, for he took off his glasses and wiped them. Suddenly I found myself blinking back tears and I didn't know why. I was counting the days on the calendar, wasn't I? Then how could a yellow ginger jar turn everything inside me upside down?
Mr. Hu, a large, merry-faced man whom I'd always liked, turned to me.
"And when you look at that jar, Miss Jean," he said, "you can think: 'I was born in China. Part of me will always be there.'"
I had never planned to think any such thought. I was upset by the idea and changed the subject.
"Mr. Hu," I said, "if I write letters to Lin Nai-Nai in English, will you read them to her in Chinese?"
He smiled as we all sat down. "Yes. And you can be sure that we'll take good care of your Lin Nai-Nai."
There was something else. I knew I should have talked to my mother about this first but she might have said no. "Mr. Hu," I said, "do you think you could take care of my cat too?"
"Jean!" My mother was embarrassed but before she could stop me, I scooped up Kurry who was under the sofa. "She's a gentle cat," I said.
"Of course we'll take her." Mr. Hu smiled and Mrs. Hu scratched Kurry in her favorite spot behind the ears.
Everything was going well. In March my father received word that a new man was being sent to the Y.M.C.A. to take his place, so I didn't see how my father could feel "needed" now. We planned to take the riverboat from Hankow on April 15, arriving in Shanghai on the twentieth. We would stay with the Hulls for six days before the President Taft sailed.
We hadn't heard from the Hulls for about a month but the last news had not been good. Mrs. Hull had written that she and Mr. Hull were going to get a divorce and he had moved to an apartment. Andrea wrote that her father was happy in his apartment and maybe this was for the best, after all. The rest of them might go to America. She didn't know when but she was ready. She had learned the Charleston.
Why would Andrea want to learn the Charleston? I wondered. That was a flapper thing to do and Andrea was only in eighth grade. I asked my mother about it.
"Andrea has always been old for her age," my mother pointed out. "She even looks older than she is." (That was true.) "And in Shanghai, Americans are crazy to keep up with American fads. They don't want to fall behind."
Well, I just hoped that Andrea hadn't grown up so much that she'd forgotten that I was to have a bathroom of my own when we visited.
On the morning of March 26 when I sat down at my desk, I crossed out March 25 on the calendar. Eighty-five days crossed out, ninety-six to go before July. But only twenty before we left for Shanghai, which was really the beginning of our trip home.
At about ten o'clock that morning as my mother was reviewing me in spelling, we heard the front door being flung open. We knew it was my father because of the way he ran up the stairs—two at a time. When he appeared at the door, he had that excited, tense look that meant a Narrow Squeak was on its way.
"All women and children have to leave Hankow today. You have about three hours to pack and get ready." He must have run home because he was still out of breath.
"What's happened?" My mother banged the spelling book shut and stood up as if she were ready to leave that very minute.
The day before yesterday the Nationalist Army had captured Nanking (down the river from Hankow), my father told us, and afterwards the soldiers had gone wild. They had broken into foreign homes, knocked foreigners around, stolen right and left. They were doing such terrible things to people that American and British gunboats had opened fire on them. Foreign gunboats hadn't done this before, my father said, and there was no telling what might happen now. There might be wholesale murder of foreigners up and down the Yangtse. We might find ourselves at war.
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 ail on an ark, waiting for a flood to begin, but this ark wasn't big enough for t
wo 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.