by Lois Ruby
I looked her in the eye, hoping it was a window to the truth. She didn’t blink; she stared right back. Yes? No? Taking a deep breath, I let the suitcase slide down my body to the dusty ground.
She grabbed it and slung her leg over the seat of the motorcycle. Its motor began cranking.
“Wait!” I yelled. “When’s the next train back to Shanghai?”
Her foot stamped the stubborn cycle’s accelerator pedal until the engine finally roared into action. “Four A.M. tomorrow,” she shouted, zoomed in front of me, took a sharp corner, and disappeared in a cyclone of dust.
Back in the station I read the letter:
To Whom It May Concern:
I appreciate Miss Margaret Loeffler’s making the journey to Hangchow. While I found her to be bright and conscientious, I have determined that she is wholly unqualified as a tutor for my granddaughter, Spring Jade. I wish Miss Loeffler good fortune in her next assignment, which I trust will not include tutoring an impressionable girl. Should Miss Loeffler apply for gainful employment elsewhere, I shall be forthright in providing what information I can.
Cordially,
MADAME LIANG
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
1944
Mother gasped when I walked into our apartment. “Where did you get those clothes?”
How stupid of me. I was so exhausted and so relieved to be home from Hangchow that I didn’t even think about the clothes. Then I became aware of those lovely silk hose latticed with runs and the dented hat. A heel had broken off one shoe, and the suit looked like I’d slept in it, which I had. But even with all that damage, the clothes were more glamorous than anything we’d worn in ages.
“Tanya’s mother. She’s a dressmaker, you know.”
“Hats and shoes and patent leather purses also?”
“Can’t a girl dress up now and then without an interrogation?”
Mother tamped out the dented fender of my hat. “How grown-up you are. Go in your room and take off the skirt. We’ll press it with a little steam, and it’ll look brand-new.”
I pulled the curtain of my room and blew out a breath of relief. Erich was right; Mother had stopped asking questions whose answers she was afraid to hear.
One day just as the spring term was ending, Tanya and I hurried home as usual before our passes expired. She was full of news about her beshert, Shlomo.
“Of course, I don’t actually get to speak to him, but the rebbe says my Shlomo is his prize student. He has a memory like a steel trap; nothing escapes. We’ll have babies reading Torah before they’re three years old!”
“Wonderful,” I mumbled, picturing midget Shlomos with thick eyeglasses and skin as white as rice paper.
As we sprinted by Kloski’s Polish Restaurant, out flew Liu, with the aproned proprietor right behind him. “The scoundrel’s stealing ice from me,” Mr. Kloski shouted, raising a cast-iron frying pan obviously meant for Liu’s head.
Tanya said something in Yiddish that I think was, “Go ahead, it’s about time someone cracked his thick skull,” at the same moment I shouted, “Don’t hit him!”
The startled man froze, with the pan in midair, and then as though the movie reel began spinning again, he waved the pan and shouted Polish curses at Liu.
“Why can’t the pest leave you alone?” Tanya asked.
“He’s in trouble, Tanya. Have a heart.”
I wondered why Liu didn’t scamper away while he had the chance. Instead, he hunkered just enough out of Mr. Kloski’s reach to avoid the collision with the pan.
A Japanese sentry came to investigate the hubbub, and Tanya dashed off. It must have been hilarious to passersby—all of us yelling at once, in Polish, Chinese, German, and Japanese. Mr. Kloski quickly retreated to his restaurant now that the soldier was involved, and if I’d had any sense, I’d have taken off in the opposite direction like Tanya did.
The soldier clutched Liu by the scruff of his neck, the way you’d pick up a kitten, and then I saw Liu’s face. His cheek was swollen to twice its normal size, and his eyes swam in his head. Had someone beaten him?
Tangle with a Japanese soldier? Insane. Plus, I’d miss my pass deadline. I looked the soldier in the eye and bowed in mock respect. Layering on thick flattery, I said—half in English, half in German, with two or three Japanese words thrown in for good measure—“Officer, could you kindly put this boy down?”
Liu’s focus sharpened enough to send me a silent signal, which I read as, Run, idiot! I’m not worth it.
“Officer,” I began again, “this is a worthless mongrel, nothing but a footstool for the emperor, and beneath the dignity of a worthy officer in the venerable Japanese Army. He’s a beggar in my lane. Please, let me drag him home.”
The soldier, who certainly wasn’t an officer, turned Liu toward him for a quick inspection; found him wanting, I suppose; then dropped him to the ground. I expected to hear brittle bones crack, but Liu was as indestructible as bamboo, and as soon as the soldier lost interest, Liu scrambled to his feet.
I dusted him off, gently fingering his swollen cheek. “What happened to you?”
He hooked a filthy thumb into his cheek and showed me a raw, inflamed place at the back of his mouth. “Bad tooth, missy.”
I was no dentist, but any reasonable person could see that it was infected, abscessed, and had to come out. “We have to hurry, Liu. Wait here a second.” I went back into Mr. Kloski’s restaurant, and begged two ice cubes from him, which we tied into the ragged hem ripped from Liu’s shirt. “Here, Liu, hold this against your cheek. We’re going to the dentist near my house.” We raced through the Hongkew gates two minutes past my deadline, but the guard wasn’t in the mood for a battle.
My own teeth chattered, despite the heat, as the street dentist foot-treadled his rusty equipment. With no antiseptic, no anesthetic, not even a mouthful of cold water to deaden the pain, he ripped the tooth from Liu’s mouth and tossed it behind him into the gutter. Then he gave Liu a small packet of herbs guaranteed to cure the infection. Liu already looked lots better.
Satisfied, the dentist put his hand out for payment. Liu and I hadn’t a fen between us. But a workman must be paid, as Father always said, even though he rarely was. What could I use for currency? I had one barrette left, a yellow dachshund like Pookie. I unclipped it from my hair, which tumbled into my eyes, and I gave the barrette to the dentist with a shaky hand. He inspected the offering curiously and pocketed it with a nod of approval.
When I got home, Mother said, “Get your hair out of your eyes, Ilse.”
“I lost my barrette,” I said, afraid to tell her how I’d spent it on Liu.
Mother sighed. “What else can we lose? You’ll invent something for you and Erich to eat? I’m going to the concert hall. Your father is playing.”
I glanced over at the roll of mattresses. The Violin was gone for the first time in weeks. “Wait a second, Mother.” I reached for my Hangchow hat. “There. How’s it feel?” The hat looked lovely on her graying auburn hair, turning her eyes wide and girlish and giving me a hint of what she must have looked like on her way to America.
Mother had given up all pretense of setting a proper table, since there wasn’t much to put on our plates, anyway, and by suppertime the afternoon heat rose and settled into our third-floor apartment as thick as molten lead. Just walking around our tiny room seemed like too much effort. We took our kitchen chairs out to the lane for our supper, snatching every breeze that came by. The street cook in our lane sold the best sweet potatoes, steamed on his wok until the insides ran hot and juicy and sugary as caramel. We scooped them out with spoons, burning our mouths carelessly, but fried taste buds weren’t much of a price to pay for the pleasure of this delicacy once a week or so. A small sweet potato—our whole meal.
Father was in a particularly jolly mood that evening. He’d had two concert dates with a little pay for each, and now he was smacking his lips over the last of his potato.
Erich said, “I’m saving half for a mi
dnight snack.”
“Very admirable, son,” said Father.
“Very Austrian. I hate when he does that, Father. That half potato’s going to haunt me all evening,” I growled.
“I know,” Erich replied with a grin. “That’s what gives me the courage to stash half my supper away.”
Our neighbors were all sitting or leaning against the wall. Our official lane beggar, Chang, crouched at his station in the gutter, waiting, and the atmosphere was relaxed because we knew that the spring nights would be pleasant and cool for a few more weeks.
And then the atmosphere in the lane suddenly tensed, as though an electric storm had jaggedly passed through it, and our neighbors’ voices softened. Some shoved their little ones into the buildings, or darted inside themselves. Even Chang sidled into a competitor’s territory because two Japanese soldiers came goose-stepping down the lane, chins haughtily in the air and bayoneted rifles shelved on their shoulders as if they were the color guard in a military dress parade.
I jammed my spoon into the potato as the soldiers stopped right in front of Mother.
“Shpann? Frieda Shpann?”
“Yes,” Mother responded breathlessly.
“Why you do not wear armband?”
“I was not issued an armband. I have a resident certificate inside. Shall I get it?”
“You must wear armband!” the taller soldier barked.
Father stepped forward. “Excuse me, sir, but I believe you have my wife confused with someone else. We are Austrians. We came here in nineteen thirty-nine. We are stateless refugees designated for this area. We are not enemy nationals.”
Mother’s face drained of all color. Erich moved closer to Mother, not that he could protect her from these men.
The uglier of the two soldiers reached into his pocket and produced an official-looking document. Father took his reading glasses out of his shirt pocket and examined the document. Mother was a statue, with her spoon in midair, her eyes fixed as though she might never blink again.
“Frieda,” Father said, his voice shaking, “this is you?”
The soldier snapped the document out of Father’s hand and read the top line. Even in his awkward English, the message came through clearly:
“‘In the matter of Frieda Shpann, citizen of the United States of America, who failed to register at the Enemy Aliens Office in Hamilton House by the December thirteenth, nineteen forty-two deadline.’” The Japanese soldier spit out the rest of his message: “You are a number one enemy alien. You are in violation. You will report tomorrow to receive your red armband.”
“Mother? What’s he talking about?” I whispered.
“Go inside, children,” she said. “Inside at once.”
Sick at heart, Erich and I obeyed, but we saw and heard the whole thing.
“Frieda Shpann, you will be relocated with other Americans to a civil assembly center in two weeks’ time. Prepare yourself.” The document was tossed onto Mother’s lap. The two soldiers clicked their heels and did an about-face, marching out of our lane.
Erich bolted toward our parents, me right behind. Mother was stricken, Father perplexed, and we three were spilling over with questions. Father motioned for us to pick up the two chairs, and he hastily led us upstairs.
That night we found out the secret Mother had kept for twenty years: Her American friend, Molly O’Toole? She was a he, and his name was Michael O’Halloran.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
1944
“How could you do this to us?” I demanded. “Lying to us all this time? Letting Erich and me believe those packages came from a girlfriend. Molly O’Toole, we even gave her a name, and you never said a word. You let us carry on like utter fools.”
Mother sank into her chair, chin to her chest, and still I pummeled her with jagged, cutting words until even Erich said, “Hush, Sister. Give her a chance to talk.”
We four circled around the table in our hot apartment, Mother at one end, Father at the other end, Erich and I standing on either side of Mother.
Erich was the one who kept us all from spinning out of orbit in our separate swirling pools of anger. “All right, Mother, what can you tell us?”
She twisted her handkerchief and spoke in a low, flat voice. The walls were thin, and this wasn’t a matter for the Kawashimas.
Mother began, “I was young, impetuous. Like you, Ilse.”
“Not like me. I would never make fools of my family!”
Mother looked off into the distance. “It was nineteen nineteen, the Great War had just ended. People were dying all around from the influenza that was sweeping the world, especially in Europe. A pandemic, they called it, which means it was everywhere, but not so bad in America, away from the big cities. My father sent me to America to study. My mother didn’t want me to go. She cried and cried. From the ship hundreds of people everywhere saying goodbye, and all I saw was my mother soaking my father’s handkerchief.”
“Get to the point, Mother,” I snapped.
“I must tell this in my own way, Ilse. Be patient.”
“It’s not my style to be patient!”
Mother ignored my latest outburst. “So I went to Berkeley, California. A wonderful university there, students from all over the world. It was a libertine place, everyone free to come and go. A glorious, colorful circus it was.”
Jealousy bolted through my body like lightning: Why could she have a life of freedom and plenty in America, whereas I was stuck here in a decaying ghetto in China?
“Maybe you can see how appealing this was to the stiffly proper girl from Austria. My father had always been strict—you remember Grandfather—but then, why had he sent me to a place like Berkeley unless he wanted me to taste the fruits?”
Everything she told us felt like a knife to my heart. I wanted to know all of it at once, and at the same time, I didn’t want to hear any of it. I needed all my questions answered, and I hated every question.
I hated her for deceiving us.
Mother twisted a dishrag into a tight rope. “There was a boy.”
“What?” I shouted.
Father leaned forward, his face twisted in agony.
“I’m sorry, Jakob. May we talk about this privately?”
Father shook his head. “Tell us, all of us.”
Mother took a deep breath. “Michael O’Halloran, a graduate student. He taught my American literature section. I barely knew any English; and American literature seemed so loose and unwieldy compared to the classical German literature I’d studied. So I went to the teacher for tutoring.”
Not so bad, I thought, calming down. Of course Mother had boyfriends before Father. I had Dovid, didn’t I? And someday I’d marry and tell my husband about my first love, about Dovid. Not so bad.
Mother’s eyes darted toward Father and away. “I fell in love … with everything American. I went around the dormitory quoting Walt Whitman. In my thick German accent. How foolish I must have sounded. He was a kind man, Jakob. I was very fond of him. Not the same way I’ve loved you, not so wholly and deeply.”
Erich and I glanced at each other. We’d never heard our parents talk of love. They’d been devoted to one another, respectful, even playful occasionally, but love had always been a private matter between them. I was embarrassed to hear it made public. Parents had no business laying bare their hearts in front of their children.
Mother whispered, “Michael and I, we decided to marry.”
My head snapped up, and Erich’s eyes flashed in disbelief.
“You married the man?” Father said.
I reached over to clasp his hand.
“Yes.” She searched each of our faces with sad, defeated eyes. “A civil ceremony. I never told my parents. Michael is not Jewish. I suppose this is not so shocking in view of the whole disturbing truth that’s tumbling out.
“Back in those days, I thought nothing of giving up my life in Austria to be his wife. How else could I be as American as every other girl in Berkeley? Now, of
course, I understand what it means to give up one’s homeland; we all do.”
“So, what happened?” I asked coldly.
“We had nearly two years together, this Michael and I. They were … awkward years. I was a little prudish, a little rigid. We were opposites. Each passing day I was more and more homesick for my mother and father, my city, my language. Especially my language. We had a terrible fight. I threw a lamp at him.”
“You, Mother?”
“What sort of lamp?” I asked.
“Just a lamp. Yes. I was a rebellious girl, remember? We lived in a … how do I describe … what we called a co-op? Nothing more than a room in a sprawling house.” She glanced around our cluttered hatbox. “Bigger than this, but not by much. One kitchen downstairs, everything shared, even painting the house, all of us on ladders.” Her voice drifted away, then circled back. “That night he left and didn’t come home all night.”
“Well, what did you expect, Mother?” I cried.
Father pulled his hand out of mine.
“I was furious at Michael. How could he make me worry so? Especially since he knew I was frightened and homesick, every night crying myself to sleep. I stuffed everything I owned into one suitcase, plus a carton of English books, and I walked to the bus depot. The next day I was on a ship home. I never said a word about Michael to my parents, only that I’d missed them and needed to come home to Austria. After all, I was still an Austrian at heart, only a U.S. citizen because I was married to an American.”
Father drummed his fingers on the table without a sound. “And the divorce?”
“This is very hard.”
“Good. Why should we make it easy for you? Your whole life’s a lie, Mother, your whole life.” My words sounded cruel to my own ears, yet they couldn’t possibly cut deeply enough to suit me.
That was when Mother’s tears started to flow. “I never divorced him, Jakob. Thousands of miles, what difference would it make?”
“The difference, Frieda, is that you now have two husbands, and our children are bastards, do you understand what I’m saying? And one of your husbands happens to be an American, and now the Japanese say you’re an American citizen, and they will lock you up in an internment camp, and then what’s to become of us all?” Father shot to his feet. He needed space to stalk around in, walls to bang. He slid to the floor along one wall, with his knees jutting up, pulled a pillow to his lap, buried his face, and wept. Up to that moment, I believed that fathers never cried.