The Long March Home

by Zoë S. Roy

  The room was full of people eating, and drinking, talking and singing, while children of all ages laughed and played around them. Yezi tried every single dish on the buffet until she was stuffed. Agnes and her friends sat around their tables and laughed and talked about almost everything. Yezi decided she needed to stretch her legs, so she ambled toward the band that played in front of the stage.

  A girl who looked to be about the same age as Yezi joined her. “Hi, I’m Kay. I heard you are from China.”

  “Yes,” Yezi replied. “My name’s Yezi.”

  “Do you live with that old lady?” Kay pointed to Yezi’s grandmother.

  “Yes, why?”

  “Did she buy— I mean did she pay for you?”

  “I don’t understand what you mean.”

  Kay tried to find the right words. “Well, about eight years ago, each student at my school was asked to donate whatever money we could, so we could save starving kids in China.”

  “Did you save any?”

  “Yeah, I paid five bucks for a kid. Next time, I’ll show you a photo of my girl. She should be about our age now.”

  “That woman didn’t buy my photo. She’s my grandmother,” Yezi said.

  Embarrassed, Kay asked, “Where are your parents?”

  “In China.”

  “You must miss them.” With a look of chagrin on her face, Kay took Yezi’s hand and said, “Come and join us.”

  Yezi smiled, and they scurried over to a group of young teenagers who were blowing paper whistles. Their cheers mingled with the laughter and high-pitched sounds of the younger children.

  Kay placed a red, cone-shaped paper hat on Yezi’s head while another girl with a painted face grabbed a handful of glittery strips of foil and draped them over Yezi’s shoulders and hair.

  Soon it was time for the countdown. The entire crowd chanted in unison, “Ten! Nine! Eight—” At the last stroke of midnight, Yezi and the other children hugged one another and then blew their paper whistles riotously. Yezi’s eyes searched for her grandmother in the crowd. She spotted her across the room, and waved to her with a smile on her face that went from ear to ear. At that moment almost everyone in the room started singing:

  For auld lang syne, my dear

  For auld lang syne,

  We’ll take a cup o kindness yet,

  For auld lang syne.

  Yezi closed her eyes and listened carefully to the words. The warm atmosphere and enthusiastic and friendly crowd in the colourful hall was forming a memorable complex in her kaleidoscope. And she was a part of it.

  23.

  UMBRELLA-SHAPED ELM

  YEZI LIKED LIVING IN BOSTON. She enjoyed the fact that there were less restrictions and more leisure time in America than in China. Yezi had finally caught up with her classmates and was comfortable at school. Now, at the age of fourteen, she loved going to parties with her friends and dressing up in nice clothes and wearing shiny jewellery. She was no longer the girl who had decided not to wear a pretty dress because she was afraid of gossip. Shopping had also become her favourite activity.

  She had recently discovered that in America you could also shop from home. One afternoon, she flipped through a bunch of mail order catalogues that were regularly delivered to her grandmother’s house and decided to pamper herself from head to toe. She chose items from the catalogues that she could afford with the allowance her grandmother gave her. All she had to do was fill out the order form and write out a cheque from the account her grandmother had recently opened for her. Several weeks later, a package of bobby pins and multicoloured hair bands arrived, followed by another parcel of white cotton socks trimmed with pink lace.

  When the third parcel arrived, she was particularly excited. She whisked it into her bedroom, closed the door, and grabbed a pair of scissors to cut away the packaging. Inside were bottles and jars of Silky Vitamin E Face Cream, Goat Milk Hand Lotion, Lavender Cream for dry feet, and lipsticks and nail polishes in a variety of colours. Jars of anti-aging face cream and wrinkle-reducing eye cream were also enclosed. These were for her grandmother, so she placed them on the shelf. Then she opened the other tubes and jars one by one, sniffing them and trying them on her skin. Yezi imagined how amazed her friends would be when she showed up at the next party smelling like tea roses and wearing red nail polish and lipstick. She forgot all about the time until she heard her grandmother call her downstairs for supper.

  She brought the anti-aging and wrinkle-reducing creams with her into the kitchen. “Grandma, I think you’ll like these.”

  At the dining table, her grandmother looked at the labels and smiled. “Thank you, Yezi. These are lovely. Hopefully they will make me look much younger.”

  “You think so? You are so beautiful anyway!”

  “Well, all I wish for now is to watch you grow up,” Agnes said.

  “I am growing up, Grandma.” Yezi smiled and began eating. “I can manage things by myself. I know how to order stuff.”

  “Did you order them by mail?” Agnes pointed to the cream jars.

  “Yes. I got lots of stuff for myself, too.” Yezi looked up at Agnes’s concerned eyes. “Are you worried about something?”

  Agnes turned her gaze to Yezi. “It’s nothing, Yezi. I am happy to see you adapting to American life.” She sipped from her bowl of chicken soup and added, “It’s already November. I just hope that your parents have been able to get their visas by now.”

  Even though Agnes knew that foreign policy had been improving in China since the United States and China formally established embassies with each other in 1979, she was afraid that Meihua and Lon would not be permitted to visit the United States.

  “Don’t worry. We will soon hear from them.” Yezi glanced at the clock on the wall. “Hey, it’s six o’clock. Time for Bugs Bunny.” She carried her plate into the living room and turned on the television. Her grandmother did not mind if she ate her dinner in front of the TV. She sank into the couch and smiled at the cartoon characters that flickered across the screen.

  Three months later, on a brisk, cold February evening in 1981, Yezi’s parents, Meihua and Lon, arrived at Boston’s Logan Airport.

  As she exited from the gate, Meihua immediately spotted her mother, sister and daughter in the distance, their heads craning to look for her. “Do you see my sister, Dora, next to my mother?” Meihua said excitedly to Lon, gesturing in their direction. “She has reddish hair. When I left home, she was only thirteen years old.”

  “Well, I can see Yezi, even though she’s dressed so strangely. I almost didn’t recognize her!” Lon chuckled. He, too, was excited.

  Taking two steps in one, Meihua threw herself into her mother’s open arms. She whispered, “I’m home!” and buried her face into her mother’s shoulder. She felt as if she were a tired hummingbird that had just flown back to its nest.

  “Welcome home,” Agnes murmured, “I’ve missed you so much. I am so happy you are finally here.” Her face was brimming with tears of happiness. Her daughter had come home at last.

  Meihua then turned to embrace Dora, murmuring over and over, “My baby sister, my baby sis….” Meihua laughed as old memories of the two of them running in the backyard, splashing in the bath, and playing games in their room flooded her mind.

  Dora stood back, placing her hands on Meihua’s shoulders. She was gazing at her so intently, as if to drink her in. “I’m not a child anymore, you know, big sister. I am so happy to see you too.”

  Lon hugged his daughter, Yezi, who fingered the cuffs of his gray coat. “This looks so different from the style that is popular here.”

  Her father teased back, “Your hair looks like straggly grass. What happened to it?”

  “It’s a new style.” Wagging her head, she stroked her sleeves. “I’m wearing all the latest fashions. Do you like my gypsy blo
use?”

  Lon eyed her light blue cotton blouse, which was gathered at the neckline and hem. Little bells hung from the ends of the string at the collar and a geometric pattern was embroidered around the neckline and on the sleeves. He also noticed the makeup on her face and pink polish on her nails. He did not comment, but a look of subtle disapproval appeared on his face. Meihua had noticed the change in Yezi’s appearance, too. When she hugged her daughter, “You’re taller now,” was all she said.

  Before entering the car, Meihua scooped snow off the surface of the vehicle, and clenched it gently in her fist. For the past thirty-three years, she had missed the snow she had grown up with. She was elated to hold it in her hand, and tossed it mischievously in the direction of her husband, who laughed with her. Getting into the car, she sat beside Lon who held her cold hand in his, his heart swelling to see his wife so happy. The snow melting in her palm gave Meihua a feeling of freshness, a lightness of heart; the warmth of her husband’s hand coursed through her body. She pulled her daughter close and breathed in the sweet scent of her hair.

  Meihua recognized the street and visualized the red brick house long before the car turned into the driveway. Looking at the huge spruce tree surrounded by the snow-covered garden, Meihua remembered the times she and Dora would chase butterflies on warm and sunny afternoons. She could see the rows of irises and daffodils that would spring up along the driveway in the sweet month of May. She could even smell the honeysuckle, which permeated in the air in the spring. Home. Sweet home.

  Once in the house, Meihua helped her mother set the table for supper while Yezi helped her father carry their luggage into the spare bedroom on the second floor. During supper, Yezi bombarded her parents with questions about Sang, and Popo Yao, and Jian. She was excited to hear all their news. Meihua and Lon laughed as they tried to keep up with Yezi’s constant chatter, doing their best to share the events of the past year and a half.

  After supper, the adults sat in the living room, talking and catching up on each other’s lives. Yezi had gone upstairs to change into a long, red skirt and a purple paisley blouse. She appeared in the doorway of the living room, and said, “Sorry but I’ve got to go to a friend’s party. I’ll see you later!” She pulled on her tall black boots at the door, grabbed her winter jacket, and left.

  Noticing Lon’s scowling face, Agnes handed him a cup of tea. “This is her weekend routine. She’ll be back before bedtime.”

  Meihua, in the rocking chair, comforted Lon. “Children her age enjoy going to parties, being with their friends.”

  “My daughter is just the same,” Dora said. She sat next to Meihua and started asking questions about Deng Xiaoping’s reform movement and the wind of change in China. Excited about the questions, Meihua talked about China’s reform including the effort to boost foreign trade and Deng’s Special Economic Zone along China’s southern coastline to attract foreign companies. Dora suggested she give a talk on China at her school if the couple had time to visit Oceanville where she and her family lived. Meanwhile Meihua wanted to know more about how Dora had decided to become a teacher in the small town of Oceanville in Maine, and also about her husband and children. They had so many years to catch up on, it seemed the words couldn’t come out fast enough.

  Listening to Meihua and Dora talk as though they had never been apart at all, Agnes’s mind travelled back over half a century to the time when her daughter was born in this very house. Agnes had named her Mayflora, partly because of the ship, the Mayflower, which symbolized her heritage, and partly because Mei had fathered her baby.

  “Do you remember that story you told me about the baby hummingbirds when you picked strawberries in the summer of 1943?” Dora asked, looking into Meihua’s eyes. Her eyes still shone with the same passion that Dora remembered seeing in them even as a child.

  “Do you mean the birds that ate the strawberries?” Confused, Meihua searched through her memories.

  “No, I mean the nest of baby hummingbirds you found at the strawberry farm. Remember? I was about six when you told me about them, and how you fed them to keep them alive.”

  “Yes, I do remember, now.” Meihua said, nodding. “I saw those hummingbirds almost every day when I was picking tea leaves on the military farm.” Meihua shook her head, with a look of worry furrowing her brow. She remembered that the Party’s Secretary had asked her not to tell the others about her experiences in the labour camp.

  “How do you know that?” Puzzled, Meihua looked at Dora. “I have never mentioned that to anybody.”

  Her words caught Lon’s attention. Gesturing for Dora not to pursue the topic, he turned to Meihua and said encouragingly, “Why don’t you tell Dora about your new paintings?”

  “Yes,” Meihua’s eyes gleamed. “I have painted quite a few new canvases based on my old memories. In fact, I have one that I would like to give to you.” Meihua ran upstairs to find her luggage and returned with a small painting of a teenaged Dora running after her older sister toward a ship at a wharf.

  Dora and Agnes admired the painting, and Meihua contentedly told them about the other paintings she had finished since her discharge from the prison camp five years earlier. She had another canvas in her hand, that she was about to show them, that took her back over three decades.

  She remembered the first time she went to China. She was standing on Peace Avenue in Chongqing City and looking up at a number affixed to the front door of a hardware store. Mayflora, only twenty-one-year-old, had just arrived from America. She had located the address of her father’s parents. Behind an open counter, a middle-aged man in a high-collared, ankle-length black robe nodded to her. “Can I help you with anything? Do you need any kitchenware or household cleaning products?”

  Looking at him, Mayflora wondered whether her grandfather, a schoolteacher, had opened the store and whether this was a clerk who worked for him.

  Something is strange. She shook her head. “Could you please tell me if the Mei family lives here?” The palm of her hand was damp as she nervously pinched the corner of her blouse. “I’ve been trying to find a relative and I believe they used to live here.”

  “No, oh no,” the man asked, shaking his head. “The entire street was destroyed during the Japanese bombing in the summer of ’41. Most of the residents around here died. I built my store on the rubble six years ago. I guess the family didn’t survive.” He pointed to an old elm tree at the street corner. “Look. That tree out there still bears the scars of that bombing.”

  “Thank you,” Mayflora said, turning to examine the tree. The sight of the mutilated tree startled her, and she shuddered, suddenly feeling very cold. Part of the trunk looked like smoke-stained stone, smooth and dark. The tree was cracked in two; most of the branches sprouted from its unburned side. It resembled an open umbrella, half of which had been slashed off. The elm was still alive but maimed. Did her father and his family survive the bomb? That was the moment, she realized that her dream of finding her father would be difficult to fulfill.

  The disfigured elm tree had haunted Meihua for years until she finally decided to paint it. “My favourite painting is this one. I call it, ‘History.’” She turned to Agnes and said, “I thought you might like it.” A young boy sat under the umbrella-shaped elm, a book in hand. On his book’s cover was a tree in full bloom.

  “I do like it,” Agnes said. “What inspired you to paint it?”

  Meihua told her. The three decades she had lived in China now slipped away. Once again Meihua was sitting in the rocking chair in the living room of her old home. She could hardly believe she was back in the same place where she had begun, yet the image of her father remained elusive. She felt a headache coming on. Her head started spinning, followed by throbbing and searing pain, then numbness. “Lon, where are the other paintings?” she asked, her voice barely rising above a whisper.

  “Are you okay?” Lon noticed her f
ace had gone white. The dampness visible on her forehead was a telltale sign of the onset of one of her headaches. “I’ll get the other paintings later, Meihua. I think you need to rest.”

  Dora and Agnes also noticed Meihua’s distress. “Mayflora, Lon is right. You need to rest after such a long flight. We can look at all your paintings tomorrow.” Together, they led Meihua upstairs, Agnes behind them, consumed with worry.

  After the weekend, Dora returned home. She planned to come back with her family the following weekend. Meihua wanted to take Lon to the Childs Gallery, which she had missed so much. She could not wait any longer. She had so many plans and there were so many things she wanted to see and do during their short one-month visit.

  On Monday morning, after getting off the transit at Copley station, Meihua and Lon trudged down the snow covered Boylston Street toward Newbury. The shovelled sidewalk looked like a dark gray scarf splayed over a white blanket. Linking her arm with Lon’s, Meihua breathed the frosty air. “You’ll get used to walking in the snow. I have missed it.”

  Lon exhaled; the warm breath from his mouth merged with the chilly air. He smiled back. “I’m enjoying it.”

  They entered the gallery. The paintings that graced the walls, seemed to welcome them, Meihua thought. She felt as if she were slipping into a fairytale. Her heart pounded fast, so she slowed her pace and breathed deeply. They strolled from hall to hall, lingering over the paintings they liked best.

  Meihua was struck by a watercolour, “Rhine Castle” by Gertrude Beals Bourne. The painting took her back to the the deck of that steamship so many years ago. She was leaning against the rail, entranced by the hills rearing along the shores of the Yangtze River.

  “Are you all right?” Lon whispered beside her, his hand on her arm.

  “Did you—” Meihua hesitated. “Oh, I love seeing all these paintings. Look at that house. Does it remind you of anything?” She pointed at the building in the painting.