Where the Past Begins

by Amy Tan

  If music had been scored for the themes of his diaries, it would begin with a sweet hymn for two bars before being drowned out by Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain.” Those two songs, set to repeat.

  I’ve had readers ask me in public why I have not included fathers in my stories. I’ve answered that fictional characters must be dimensional, complex, and morally ambiguous—in other words, flawed, rather than idealized. I pointed out that I have actually included father figures in my novels, and it was not coincidental that they died an early death; my father passed away when I was not quite sixteen. After his death, my memories of him became an idealized view of him—the two of us standing in the mirror of the past, face forward, seeing him in a one-dimensional state of perfection fixed in grief. My stock of memories has been enough for me to believe he was kind to others, compassionate and giving to strangers, honest in his dealings with everyone, and inspirational as an American Baptist minister. He was also handsome, a raconteur, a stylish dancer, a good singer, smart in versatile ways, charming and gracious in exactly the right ways, which always made people glad to see him. I remember thinking on many occasions that I was proud that he was my father. If I had had a choice, I would have picked him. He was special, the best in a roomful of fathers. One other thing, he was not a hypocrite. I have often publicly cited that. His beliefs and his actions were consistent, and that was very important to me when I was a teenager and prone to idealism and rapid disillusionment.

  Fresno, 1954: Me, age two, with my father.

  Today, the day after the 2016 presidential election, I am disillusioned—devastated and angry. My party lost, and the unthinkable has happened. America has changed overnight. It has already shown that it will be governed under an openly racist agenda, one that sees immigrants as the cause of economic woes, crime, and terrorism. A significant percentage of the public are expressing their antipathy to anyone who does not look like he or she is white, heterosexual, and conservative. There is a new mainstream America. Some of my friends have already experienced these attacks. I have received racist insults on social media, which typically include some variation of the words “Commie,” “go back to China,” and “you’re not an American”—the latter meaning being quite different from someone being told their ideas are un-American. I was so distraught by the open hatred that I wanted to know who among my friends and family had supported directly or indirectly that party’s antiimmigrant position. I could no longer respect those people. I was thankful that everyone in my family—brother, sisters, cousins, nieces, and nephews—had supported my candidate. Many of them had been immigrants before getting their U.S. citizenship. Had my mother been alive, I have no doubt that she would have voted as I did. We would have agreed on most, if not all, of the most sensitive issues.

  Immediately after thinking this, however, I was startled to realize that I did not know how my father would have voted. He had been an evangelical Christian, whose faith redoubled in crisis. He might have voted for the party viewed as the evangelical choice. And merely in thinking that, I was treading on my memory of him as perfect.

  I can think of nothing else now: How would he have voted? I fear the answer I might find. I am afraid of forever seeing him differently, but I cannot avoid looking. My grief over this election forces me to examine all that I believed about him and have never questioned.

  My earliest memories of my father took place in Fresno, where we lived for the first two and a half years of my life. Fresno is notorious for its hot summers, which vies with my father’s birthplace, Wuhan, one of the Four Furnace cities of China, where hardy locals eat chilies to stay relatively cool. My father joked that when the devil was placed in a pot of oil in hell, someone asked if he was now suffering for his sins. The devil replied, “Not at all. It is like a comfortable bath compared to Wuhan.” My father might have told that same joke, substituting Fresno for Wuhan, while suggesting to his parishioners that they should aim to go to heaven rather than finding out that the devil was not telling the truth. He had a ready joke for any situation and a Bible passage for every doubt. I was told that when it was evident he would die, a member of the church asked if he had made his peace with God. My father said, “Why no! We’ve never quarreled.”

  I am remembering one of those typically hot days when I must have been a little over the age of two. As a toddler, my memory would have been naturally imprecise, and my adult mind has likely filled in the blanks for cohesion. I do know that my memories from a very young age have much to do with emotional sensations tied to spatial perception, the nearness to and distance from my mother and father, the feeling of being in an open space compared to a smaller one with dark corners. I remember making an effort to not cry when my parents left me in the arms of others. I remember crying when a piece of fruit fell on my head and my parents laughed. I remember being in an enclosed space—a large station wagon—packed with older children, who were much larger than I was. They were dressed in swimsuits and were very excited. My father, the church minister, was driving down a road lined with tall trees. When we stopped, all the other kids ran off in different directions to reach the public swimming pool. My father walked me to the pool and had me step in a little bit at a time, and then he put his hand under my belly so I could float and flap my arms, as if I were swimming. We must have been in the shallow end of the pool, because he could stand and walk around. Later, we got out of the pool and went to the water slide. He helped me climb the steps and seated me, then told me to wait. This whole sense of where I was felt very different once he was no longer right there behind me. I saw him at the bottom of the slide. I’m sure the distance was very short. But in my memory, my father looked very small and the slide was long and steep. He said to come down and he would catch me. Even though I was uncertain, I trusted he would do as promised. He had always done so whenever he threw me in the air or balanced me standing on the bottoms of his feet. All the kids loved for him to do that. They, too, trusted him. So I let go, but instead of catching me, he allowed me to plunge into the pool. Stinging water went up my nose. He was laughing as he lifted me up. He probably asked if it was fun. I might have nodded to please him. But I was now afraid of the slide and the bottomless water. After that, he took me to the wading pool, which was likely six inches deep, and I sat there and slapped the water to watch a penny on the bottom change shape. I noticed that my wet swimming suit was turning dry and the ruffles stood out again.

  I recall another time when I was three and a half. We lived in an apartment in Oakland. I was standing at the top of the stairs, and my father was downstairs in the living room, sitting in an armchair by the window. I wanted to reach him, and in the next moment, I was tumbling down the stairs. When I finally stopped, I was crying, still scared. I had a child’s indignation that this was not supposed to have happened. My mother and father came to me, and my father scooped me up and placed me against his chest and sat down in the armchair, patting my back. When I finally felt a little better, I opened my eyes and saw blood on his shoulder and I screamed louder than ever. It was probably just a bloody nose, but in my child’s memory, half his shirt was already drenched with my blood. As he hugged me closer and patted my back, I remember an odd mix of feelings—caught between comfort and terror as I lay pressed against him.

  We lived in another house when I was four and a half, a ramshackle place, big enough for our family, as well as my uncle, aunt, and four cousins, who had just emigrated from China. I recall a night when my father was bathing me as I crouched in the white pedestal sink. I had to stand so he could rinse me off. When he finished, he walked away, probably to get a towel. My back was to him, and he might have taken only two steps, but it seemed like he had gone out of the room. So I turned to see, and immediately slipped on the curved sink, and fell backward onto the cold tiled floor. As a child, I felt like I was alone for quite a while before I was discovered. In reality, it must have only been seconds. I don’t think I was injured, but I cried mightily, mostly from residual fear
and some other mix of a child’s emotions—shock and anger that my father had made this happen by leaving me.

  My memories are more vivid by age five. I had started kindergarten and the school was only a block away from our apartment. It was enclosed by a tall chain-link fence. Most of the playground was asphalt, but at one end, there was a sandbox, monkey bars, swings, a spiral slide, and a stand of shady trees where we girls used twigs to define areas of a make-believe house. One afternoon, my father took me there, just the two of us. It probably was a Saturday or Sunday, because the playground was empty of children. I wanted to go down the tall curly slide. That was the most popular feature of the playground and was usually controlled by older boys, so I had not yet had a chance to try it. My father stood behind me and helped me climb the steep steps. Once I was at the top, I sat down and held on to the side rails as he climbed down. As with the swimming pool slide, without him behind me, I felt instantly vulnerable. He called to me from the bottom, but because of the twists and turns of the slide, I could not see him. I was higher than I had ever been in my life and to let go I would have to believe my body would be able to take those three loops down and deliver me to my father’s arms. I was afraid. My father continued to call for me. That particular moment of paralysis replays whenever I am standing in my skis during a snowstorm, unable to see the slope in front of me. As in childhood, I can be overwhelmed by uncertainty, and I find my inability to go forward to be maddening. It’s as if I were two people—one who is adventurous and wants to leap forward and experience the thrill, and the other the same little girl who refuses to budge because she does not trust that her father will be there. But I did eventually let go, and as I headed for that curve, I was suddenly yanked back and pulled over the rails of the slide. The hem of my skirt had snagged onto a sharp metal edge and I was now dangling off the side of the slide. I was screaming and a long time seemed to pass before my father understood what the problem was and came to rescue me. That memory includes an element that could not possibly be true, except as part of my high emotions in being rescued from a dangerous situation: along with my father helping to bring me down, there were firefighters and a long ladder.

  Just now, in recalling these memories, I am struck by the similarities—memories about the downward sensation of falling and a feeling that my father was supposed to protect me. Did this say something about how I saw my father? Actually, I have other memories of falling that had nothing to do with my father: sliding down a curved banister with my cousins and landing on my tailbone; riding down a hill on a small bike without brakes and hitting my forehead on the sidewalk when I tried to stop; flying with a centrifugal force off a push merry-go-round that older boys had made go faster in response to my protests; landing hard on my end of a teeter-totter when the other kid suddenly jumped off when I was at its highest point. There are probably many more incidents I might be able to recall if I thought long enough, matching scabs to causes. My overall sense is that I had somehow cast my father in the role of hero and I had expected him to protect me from bodily harm when we did exciting and often scary things together. My mother, on the other hand, prevented me from doing anything risky. She held tight on to my hand, told me what I should not do, and scolded me if I did not obey. She filled my mind with visions of every way I could be squashed, dismembered, burned alive under a hot water faucet, or electrified by lightning or lamps.

  I have no photos of any of those falling incidents. They are recalled only from a child’s gut memories, and in a way I trust that they are true, more so than the recollections I have that are associated with photos. With the latter, I am guessing I have created a patchwork story that matches the photo. But even if both those kinds of memories are not strictly factual, they do contain the emotional sense of what was true at the time.

  Because my father was an amateur photographer, I have hundreds of photos that he took with his Rollei. He developed some of them in improvised darkrooms and I was allowed to watch as he bathed the photographic paper in a smelly solution. He made many copies of the photos he liked. His earliest photos of my mother were taken in Tianjin, where she and my father lived after she ran away from her husband in Shanghai. One photo shows her waking up in bed, looking blissful. It’s obvious that she has already combed her long hair and arranged it to spread across the pillow. In another, she is stretching out her arms as demonstration that she will soon get out of bed. Next, she is sitting on the edge of the bed, legs crossed, and reaching down to put on a silk slipper, while looking up at the camera. Then she is standing in her pajamas in front of a mirror, running her fingers through her long, neatly combed hair. He took many photos of her outdoors as well—by a lake, sitting on stairs, standing with her back flat against the wall of a building, and always looking radiantly in love. In some she is wearing Western clothing, and in others, it is a hybrid of East meets West—a Western cardigan over a plain checked Chinese dress. In that photo, her shoes are oxfords and ankle socks, which was unusual. My mother was quite proud of her size four feet, as was my father, who sometimes took photos of only her feet. In most of the photos, she is beaming at the camera, but in a few, she has been posed sitting in a certain position, while gazing off into the distance with a thoughtful expression.

  He put me in specific poses as well. I remember being told during many photo sessions to cross my feet at the ankles, or to clasp my hands in my lap, or to point up to the sky, or to sit cross-legged with my shoes peeking out from my dress. I think he was inspired by the poses of calendar pinup girls. In one, taken when I was four, I had to thrust out my chest and bend my arms back to hold on to the top rail of a chain-link fence. I am wearing a pink-striped, puffy-sleeved chiffon dress and patent leather shoes, so it must have been a Sunday after church. My hair is tied in two ponytails and strands of hair have escaped from a multitude of barrettes. I recall that the pose was uncomfortable. My twisted arms ached. But in the photo, I show none of that discomfort. I am smiling, holding up the fence with sheer bravery and a desire to please my father. He probably said many nice words of encouragement: “What a pretty smile. Good girl.” That same day, he also posed me in a birch tree. I remember my uncertainty in being hoisted up into the V of the tree and then trying to remain there without showing I was scared. It was not a comfortable place to sit. The photo is highly posed—one arm resting on one limb, the other lightly touching the other limb. My feet are crossed at the ankles. And there again is the signature look—gazing off into the distance. My lips are tightly sealed, so I might have been afraid and trying hard not to show it. On that same afternoon, he took photos of my little brother sitting in the crook of the same tree. In one he has the concerned frown of an eighteen-month-old. In another he looks like he is shrieking. I suspect that my little brother’s photo had been taken first and I wanted to show that I was not a crybaby like him. I was a skilled competitor for love. These days, I am more cautious than I am brave. My mother’s warnings stuck. However, there are times when I am emboldened by another person’s fear. When others remark on the steepness of a ski slope, my hesitation vanishes and I launch my skis downward and take off. I take perverse delight in wrapping snakes around my neck to see others run off screaming. No bravery on my part is required, since I like snakes and the ones I hold are harmless. Actually, one was venomous, but I did not know that until several years after the photo was taken.

  My father was competitive, and he wanted us to be competitive as well. You needed ambition to become the best. I remember now an afternoon in the same park when I was six. We happened to walk by a grove where a Hula-Hoop contest was about to begin. Most kids knew how to use one. Gas stations gave them away for free with a fill-up. My father encouraged me to enter the contest and signed me up to compete with the six-year-olds. I was handed a Hula-Hoop and proceeded to shimmy along with the other kids. It was clear fairly soon that compared to those kids, I was an Olympiad. As I walked forward and backward, I wiggled my hips at different speeds so that the hoop eased up from my waist,
over my arms and then to my neck. One by one, the other children lost control of their Hula-Hoops or tired and let their hoops wobble to the ground. I kept going. I shimmied the hoop down to my knees, then even lower to my ankles and easily brought it back up to my waist before taking it up to my neck again. I performed these gyrations with seemingly no effort, and in the end I won a giant Hershey’s bar, the child’s equivalent of a million dollars. In a strange way, I felt I had cheated because my father and I both knew almost from the start that those kids had had no chance of winning.

  I think my father wanted me to not only be better than other kids, but excessively so. When I received a “Needs to Improve” rating in penmanship in the second grade, my father bought a book on calligraphy. He taught me to make letters that were shaded on one side of the letter. It required me to apply pressure on the pencil with each down stroke. Sure enough, my penmanship received an “excellent” rating on the next report card. In the sixth grade, when I had to choose a science project, my father reminded me that I was interested in planets and rockets. All the kids knew about NASA’s Saturn project. My father suggested I might do something with solar cells, which were being tested for use on satellites. My father knew this because he made transformers for the electrical systems of satellites. For my science project that year, he coached me every step of the way—starting with my writing a letter to the famous Dr. Wernher von Braun of NASA to beg for a few solar cells. Dr. Von Braun did not write back, but someone else at NASA did—a three-page letter explaining how solar cells worked and how they were being tested for use on satellites and rockets. I eventually received nine solar cells from a company that supplied them to NASA. My father gathered the other parts I needed: a capacitor, resistor, circuit board, wire, switch, and a buzzer. He let me use the soldering iron to assemble the parts to the board. I wrote a detailed paper on solar cells and their use for satellites in space and for door buzzers on Earth. My teacher said I had done an excellent job, but I knew that without my father’s help I would have been writing about the growth rates of tomato plants in milk cartoons. While I was glad that my father had spent so much time helping me, in a way, he had lowered my confidence. The brilliance of coming up with a solar-powered buzzer was his. He assembled the circuit board. He explained what an electrical circuit was, and even after he did, I still was not sure I understood what all the pieces were for. Through his efforts I had been thrust into the stratosphere of sixth grade science, and instead of feeling my project was the best, I knew it was a sham. Then again, it’s likely most of the kids had help from their fathers, and the only honest project was the tomato plants.