The Distant Land of My Father

by Bo Caldwell

Everything felt expectant that morning: the darkness, the quiet, the hushed sounds of my mother moving about in my room as she found my clothes, the mysterious quality of the two of us going out alone in the cold morning. I was filled with anticipation of what was to come: being seven.

  After Mass we went out for hot cocoa in the French Concession even though it was Monday and I would be late for school. When we had settled in a café, my mother pulled off her gloves and set them on the table next to her. Though it was still early, not even eight, she was very alert. Too alert, I thought. There was an intensity to her that frightened me: the bright sparkle in her brown eyes, her flushed cheeks. She took a cigarette from a pack of Ruby Queens, put the pack on the table, lit her cigarette, and inhaled.

  She stared at me for a moment, and I grew nervous, wondering if I passed. She seemed about to say something, and I waited, though I wanted to blurt out, What is it? What won’t you tell me?

  And then she did. She took an ivory envelope from her purse and smiled at me. She put the envelope on the table, and I tried to sound out the name and address printed in clear black ink in the upper-right corner: Mackinnon, Mackenzie & Co., Agents for Tickets, 17 Canton Road, Shanghai, Phone 11428.

  “What is it?” I asked, thinking it was some kind of present.

  “It’s a wonderful surprise,” and she leaned toward me conspiratorially, then tapped the envelope lightly. Her nails were a glossy deep mauve. “It’s three tickets to go to Los Angeles.” She smiled again. “We leave in a week, so there’s lots to do. But we’ll do it. And then we’ll be home.”

  I pointed out what I thought was obvious. “But we are home.”

  My mother did not hesitate. “No,” she said quickly, her voice even and businesslike. “This is a place where we’ve stayed too long. It is in no way home,” and she stubbed her half-smoked Ruby Queen out in a white porcelain ashtray in the center of the table.

  I stared hard at a scone I couldn’t eat and cocoa I couldn’t drink, and I nodded when she asked if I understood, thinking only, He’ll fix it. I pretended to sip my cocoa until she was ready to go, and I said yes when she asked if I’d had enough. She was too distracted to notice I’d barely touched it.

  When my father got home that afternoon, he presented me with the package I’d found in the teak wardrobe, which he had wrapped in the Sunday comics. I pretended surprise, and though I was not much of an actress, my parents did not notice the charade. When I’d unwrapped the box and was taking out the stilts, my mother said quietly, “I told Anna our good news this morning.”

  I could feel my father watching me intently, and I forced myself to be brave and look up at him.

  “That was premature,” he said stiffly. “I’ll need a few more weeks.”

  “I’ve purchased the tickets,” my mother said. “Booking passage is no easy feat, Joseph, and there was space on the President Coolidge. It sails only once a month. If we don’t go now, we can’t go until March.”

  My father didn’t miss a beat. “Then you two will go without me,” he said simply, “and I’ll follow when I can.”

  That was all of the discussion I heard about our leaving, and about my father staying. But by that evening it was fact. After dinner when Chu Shih gave me a rose-colored tin of rare scented flower tea and said it would keep me well, it was clear that he meant on our trip. He and I sat at the table in the kitchen as he told me how to brew the tea and how to keep it fresh, and I realized, for the first time, that he would not be with us. Wind rattled the wooden shutters and sleet harassed the roof above us while Chu Shih made me some of the tea to warm me before bed. He called late January ta-han—great cold—and though it was only the seventeenth, I thought the name fit, for I felt colder inside than I ever had.

  The day before we left, my father came to my room. I was sitting at the window, drawing a picture of the view from my window: the acacias, the willows along the back wall, the iron bench underneath it, the huge magnolia in the center of the lawn. Outside, everything looked cold and gray and still, but I didn’t draw it that way. Behind the willows and the stone wall, I drew in the skyline of the Bund, as near as I could remember it. It wasn’t visible from my room, but I knew it was there in the distance, and I wanted something to remind me of it when Shanghai was far away.

  My father gestured vaguely around my room. “Doesn’t look like much is going with you, Anna,” he said. I followed his gaze and stared at the dolls and toys and books still crowded on my shelves. His old steamer trunk, which was covered with tin and lined with camphor wood, sat on the floor in the middle of my room. He was letting me pack my things in it, and it was only half full. He tapped it with the toe of his shoe. “This was supposed to be packed by now.”

  I went back to my picture and shook my head firmly. “Those other things aren’t going.”

  “You’re leaving them here?” he asked, and I looked at him quickly to see if it had been hope I’d heard in his voice.

  “Yep. I’ll be back. You said I would. They can stay here for now.”

  He was silent for a long moment, then he said, “All right then, might as well. You’re right. You’ll be back soon enough.”

  It was exactly what I’d wanted to hear.

  He just stood in the room for a long moment then. I finished my picture and put it and the map of China I’d drawn in his office into the trunk, and I closed the lid. Still he didn’t say anything, and neither did I. There was something he wanted to tell me, I thought. I wanted to wait him out.

  Finally he cleared his throat. “Sometimes things aren’t so clear, Anna, you see? We just can’t predict things, just can’t know how things will turn out all the time.”

  I nodded matter-of-factly. “You’ll miss us,” I said, hoping my words would hurt.

  He turned and left my room.

  And then, incredibly, it was time to go.

  The rush and packing of six days had ended. When I woke on the twenty-fourth of January, the house was eerily quiet. Chu Shih gave us breakfast in the kitchen while Mei Wah loaded our trunks into the car. I could not get food down, but I managed not to cry at the table.

  When my father said it was time to go, I followed my parents outside. Chu Shih followed, too, then stood silently by the kitchen door. My father said, “Say your good-byes, Anna. No use stretching it out.”

  I walked to Chu Shih. His expression was hurt and pained and afraid all at once. I took his hand, then I reached into my coat pocket and took out the possession I loved most, the elephant I’d bought with my father on Nanking Road. I still considered it good luck, despite the bad things that had happened. At least we were all right, and I wanted Chu Shih to be safe.

  I put the elephant in Chu Shih’s palm and closed his fingers over it. “For you,” I said.

  He nodded and his expression grew more pained. Then he simply picked me up and held me to him, a first.

  I began to cry. I held on to him tightly and I whispered what I had felt but never said: “Yeh yeh,” the familiar term for grandfather.

  He nodded and held me more tightly. I felt his shoulders shake and I realized he was weeping. When I kissed his cheek, it was wet with tears.

  My father pulled me from Chu Shih’s arms and carried me to the car and I felt a kind of closing off inside. Leaving was too awful, far more difficult than I’d imagined.

  Mei Wah drove us to the Bund through gray streets. I sat between my parents in the backseat, pressing my just-cut nails into my palms to stop crying. None of us spoke, and when we reached the wharves, my father asked Mei Wah to see to the trunks. Then he took the wicker picnic basket from the front seat and said, “Shall we?”

  I pointed to the basket, but before I could ask, he said simply, “You’ll see.” I turned to say good-bye to Mei Wah then, but he had already gotten back into the car and he could only look at me, his eyes intense, before my mother took my hand and led me toward the ship.

  As we walked up the gangplank, my father called to friends and waved, and my mother sm
iled and nodded, and they seemed so normal that I could almost believe what they’d said: that everything would be fine, that my father would be with us before we knew it. Once onboard, we explored the ship for a while, my father making a great show of opening doors for us, leading us down hallways, helping us up and down stairways. We saw the huge dining salon and toured the upper and lower decks, along with passengers and a few crew members in stiff uniforms and authoritative brass buttons. Non-passengers, mostly men like my father in suits and ties, their British or American businessman’s manners matter-of-fact, were starting to leave the ship. I tried not to notice as they kissed mothers and children good-bye, then started down the gangplank to the dock, their shoulders straight, their strides purposeful.

  My father said he wanted to look over our stateroom, and we went below. When we were in our room, he set the picnic basket on a small table and said, “Go ahead. Look inside.”

  I opened the basket and found a feast, all of my favorites: French bread and dry sausage, Ritz crackers, a thermos of Hershey’s cocoa for me and café au lait for my mother, a box of animal crackers, dried persimmons and melon seeds.

  “Thank you,” I said, and he winked.

  Our stateroom was small and tidy, a place that I would have loved under different circumstances. The teak dresser drawers had shiny brass handles and pulled out with the smoothness of liquid; the bunk beds were so neatly made they looked like dolls’ beds. The orderly way that everything fit together calmed me. I could still smell the Whangpoo and it made the room feel almost friendly, or at least familiar.

  I watched my parents carefully, not sure what to expect. It was a strange day: they were somber but excited in a way. We were all dressed up, the way we would be for church. My mother kept nervously running her fingers over the strand of pearls around her neck, something I’d seen her do while waiting for dinner guests to arrive. A carved ivory comb held her chignon in place. My father’s suit and tie gave him an official air, and he seemed in charge of some ceremony as he paced back and forth on the thick green carpet of our small room.

  “This all right?” he asked my mother, motioning around him at the tidy beds, the teak closet, the compact bathroom, the round table and two chairs.

  My mother nodded and I could see that she was trying to be cheery. “Yes,” she said, “it’s lovely, Joe. Anna and I will do fine.”

  He looked at me as though seeking proof. Wanting to please him, I said, “It’s very fancy. I love it.” But I somehow failed. His expression was hurt, and I looked at my mother, wondering what I’d done wrong. “Don’t I?”

  “Of course you do.” She smiled. “We’ll be fine,” she said again. She took my father’s large hand and held it between hers. I knew exactly what that felt like. It was what she did to me when I was frightened or nervous, and her hands always felt firm and strong and soft all at the same time. I always felt like things would be all right when she did that.

  The three of us stood there awkwardly while my mother tried to make small talk, something she was normally very adept at. But her words fell flat. Nothing she did or said was quite right, and it somehow made her seem like a traitor. I began to watch her with doubt and suspicion, and for the first time since she’d told me we had to leave Shanghai, I thought, Maybe we don’t really have to. Maybe she didn’t tell me the truth. Maybe we’re leaving because of her.

  We heard the ship’s chimes then, and a crisp British voice came over the loudspeakers, the tone cordial and no-nonsense at the same time. “Would all non-passengers kindly disembark as soon as possible.”

  “Eve,” my father started, but he was cut short by the repeated announcement. My mother released his hand. Now she was the one who looked pained.

  It was time to say good-bye, and though the moment was expected, it came suddenly. My stomach tightened and I felt panic and dread and I thought, Please, no.

  “Oh, Joseph,” she whispered, and she embraced my father tightly. I watched, horrified, for I understood from the passion I saw—a passion completely uncharacteristic for them—that this was far worse than I’d thought. I saw my father’s face pressed in the curve of my mother’s neck. And then there was a fierce kiss between the two of them.

  When my father turned to me, I saw that he was near tears. “Anna,” he whispered, his voice hoarse. He held me so tightly that I was afraid he might crush me, but I said nothing. Harder, I thought, harder. Maybe if you hurt me, we won’t have to go.

  “We have to do this now, you see?”

  I nodded and clutched at his coat, the serge lapel stiff as cardboard between my fingers. “Anna,” he said again, and I held tighter still, not worrying about wrinkling his coat, crying hard, furious at both of them for letting this happen. He took hold of my arms and forced them loose. My mother gripped my shoulders and pulled me from him. He straightened himself, ran his hands over his hair, looked as if he might speak. But he said nothing.

  “Tsaichien,” I whispered. Good-bye.

  And then he was gone.

  My mother held me, pressing my face to her. She knelt and whispered, “Come. We’ll go to the deck and wave to him.”

  I was still crying. She wiped my face with her handkerchief, which smelled like lavender and had the effect of a whiff of smelling salts. My mother’s explanation of our departure came back to me, and I grabbed hold of it, repeating her words to myself: Shanghai has become too dangerous. We have to leave, but only for a while, only because of the war. While we’re gone, he’ll close up his business and then he’ll come to California, too. And when it’s safe to return to Shanghai, we’ll come back.

  “The deck,” I said. “We can see him? We can wave to him?”

  “I hope so. He said he’d be easy to spot.”

  I took a deep breath, still shaky from crying, and followed my mother out of the stateroom and down narrow corridors that made me think of stories about people who lived under the earth, and then up sets of steep stairs until we were on deck.

  Everyone was shouting and crowding to the dockside of the ship, trying to get a last glimpse of some father or husband. My mother guided me through the crowd, asking stranger after stranger to please let us through so that her daughter might wave good-bye to her father. Other mothers were trying to do the same for their children, but somehow my mother succeeded. She parted a sea of mothers and grandmothers and secretaries and children, guiding me to the ship’s railing, then stood behind me, her hands firmly on my shoulders.

  “Now,” she said. “Look.”

  The gangplanks were just being raised. I searched the crowd below for my father and saw mostly men just like him, men in suits, waving to those they loved, but all of them seeming to stare up at me. I stared back at them stubbornly. It’s only a few months, I thought. Don’t be a baby. Make him proud of you. You’re your father’s daughter. I looked at the Bund and saw the Cathay Hotel, the Palace, Big Ching at the top of the Customs House, then I looked toward the Garden Bridge and started from there: the NYK Line, the Banque de l’Indochine, the Glenn Line, and I knew I could go all the way down the Bund to the Shanghai Club. I had learned what he had taught me.

  “Look,” my mother said suddenly, “there!” And she laughed and her grip on my shoulders tightened. She pointed down and to the right. “See him?”

  And there was my father. He was easy to spot as soon as you looked in his direction. You couldn’t not see him, for he’d brought my stilts and stood three feet higher than anyone around him. He waved awkwardly, almost falling over, and he grinned. I laughed and waved back. “Be careful!” I called, and he waved again.

  There was a loud whistle, and a violent slamming as the gangplank was pulled up. The commotion grew even louder. The crew yelled, the men on the dock called last-minute advice, the women and children around us waved more urgently. I stared at my father harder, willing him to save us. Don’t let this happen; surely you can do something.

  The ship began to move. Another loud whistle, and the ship began to ease away from the
dock.

  “Let’s go below,” my mother said, her voice low and flat.

  I shook my head. “I want to watch.”

  She hesitated, but she didn’t say no. Only, “I don’t think I can. I’ll be sitting nearby.” She walked over to one of the teak deck chairs set out in rows in the middle of the deck. There was a spent quality to her voice. She suddenly looked exhausted.

  I looked back at my father. He was alone. Most of the other men were already heading back to their offices along the Bund. He’d gotten off the stilts and stood holding them. I wondered if he would take them all the way back home to Hungjao, or just leave them in his office for now. I wondered what he would do tonight for dinner. Jimmy’s, I thought, or maybe Sun Ya’s, for long-life noodles.

  I waved once, a small wave, more a signal than a good-bye. He waved back, and I saw him smile. And then, as the ship slid from the wharf and was pulled by tugs into the Whangpoo, we simply stood staring at each other from a greater and greater distance, until I couldn’t be sure it was really him that I saw, and until I couldn’t be sure there was anyone there at all. But he was there. I knew him. He would not leave until I was out of sight.

  the city of angles

  ON THE FIFTEENTH OF FEBRUARY, 1938, after traveling 5,673 miles, my mother and I arrived at San Pedro Harbor in Los Angeles. My grandmother met us at the ship. She was not at all what I expected. She was taller than my mother, nearly five feet nine, and although she wasn’t overweight, she was a large woman. She was attractive, but not nearly as feminine as my mother, and I saw right away that she was a no-nonsense sort of person. She walked with her back straight and her head high, and when she hugged me and kissed my cheek, I smelled Pep-o-mint Life Savers, which made me think I would like her.

  After a porter had loaded our luggage into the trunk of my grandmother’s blue Plymouth, she drove us home, across the vastness of Los Angeles. She and my mother sat in the front seat and talked about how the city had changed. I sat in the backseat, looking out at Spanish homes with red tile roofs and wrought-iron balconies; groves of orange trees that stood like soldiers in rows that seemed to go on forever; spacious streets lined with tall palm trees that swayed softly overhead; and far away, in the background, purplish mountains like something I would draw. Everything was bright: red geraniums, crayon-green lawns, bougainvillea of a deep pink, and above us, the sky a startling blue. There was no garbage in the streets, there were no beggars in the doorways. The air smelled of oranges and jasmine, and it was so clean that I thought it should have a different name from what we breathed in Shanghai. The whole place seemed enchanted. “Is this real?” I whispered once. My mother, sitting in the front seat with my grandmother, only laughed.