In agreement, the crowd roared up around him again. Strange hands clapped him on the back. Men he didn’t know thanked him. Amid the tumult, a voice sang out, “And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave…O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!”
In a few days, Baba would discover the United States’ response to the island’s unrest: “This is China now.”
4
BABA HAD PREPARED RICE, cold seaweed, and fried fish for dinner. Zhee Hyan, the youngest boy, cried out when my mother stepped into the room. This was the first time she had been downstairs since giving birth. Zhee Hyan scrambled over his oldest brother’s legs to reach her.
“Be careful of the baby,” she said.
Music played in the other room, an album by the singer Chun Chun. The record warbled from the lean years when my parents had only bamboo needles. Grinning to himself, Baba hummed along as he scooped rice for my mother.
My mother laid me in her lap. She was careful not to drop stray grains of rice on me. Ah Zhay put down her bowl and reached over to nuzzle my nose with her finger. “Little baby,” she cooed. Just a week old, I was a snorting, wrinkly little rat with a puff of black hair. My aimless arms batted at my sister’s poking fingers.
“Enough,” my tired mother said. With her chopsticks, she gestured Ah Zhay away.
I was still nameless. My grandfather—my mother’s father, for Baba’s parents had died during the war—would determine the characters of my name by the date and time of my birth, my zodiac sign, and perhaps even any potential deficiencies that he noted as he held me. But the ceremony—sacred even to my pragmatic parents—would not happen until the chaos ended and the trains resumed. For now, I was “the baby” or, to make me seem unappealing to any malevolent spirits hoping to steal me away, “little monster.”
Our house was just off the main boulevard that ran north-south through the city, the road that would one day be bestowed with the highest honor, the name of the father of the republic, and the road by which donated American Jeeps—hastily painted to hide their origins—now entered Taipei.
My mother hushed my brothers. My father looked at her, puzzled, then he too heard the sound of gunfire, the distinctive rat-tat-tat that even war virgins recognize.
“Ma—” my sister whined.
“Quiet!” my father warned. A long moment of silence engulfed the house and the city—and then shots again shattered the quiet. Unlike the indiscriminate horror of the early staccato firing, the quiet space between these singular gunshots revealed a frightening intention. Individual men were being targeted.
My father ran to the other room, lifted the needle off the record, and turned on the radio. Bach’s Die Kunst der Fuge played. No news. He switched off the radio and returned to his family. Afraid and expectant, wife, daughter, sons gazed up at him. Their food, uneaten, appeared glazed and artificial. Wordlessly, he reached up and turned off the light.
—
In the dark, my father told my mother the rumors he had heard. He didn’t want to recount them in front of the children, but he had no choice. The first one, from the governor-general himself, was that the governor-general had heard the demands presented during the meeting in the Civic Auditorium, admitted his flaws in managing the new province, and promised to address them. The other rumor, now brightening into truth, was that the governor-general had frantically begged Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek for more troops to help control the “situation” on the island.
“Control what situation?” my mother whispered.
“Ah Bin”—Baba used her nickname, intimately—“they consider us more Japanese than Chinese. Two years ago, we were their enemy. We’re still their enemy.”
Despite my mother’s warm hands and gentle rocking, I began to cry. She pressed me to her shirt and tried to shush me.
“Nurse her,” my father urged. My mother opened her shirt and offered her breast to me. I cried even louder. Certain that the soldiers would now find us and kill us, my sister began to wail too.
“Stop.” My father grabbed Ah Zhay’s arm. “Quiet! Do you know what they’ll do if—” He stopped himself. He turned toward my mother. “Give her to me.”
My mother pressed me again to her bared breast. “No.” Her voice trembled. “She’ll eat.”
Shots again rattled the night. I screamed. Ah Zhay curled on the floor and muffled her sobs in her arm. My oldest brother, Dua Hyan, now held Zhee Hyan and murmured against his cheek.
“Give her to me!” Baba tugged my blanket. My mother’s soft protests threatened that she was close to tears. Again, she urged me to her breast. Finally, I took it and settled into hiccups and sighs.
The rest of the family sank into mute fear. The guns quieted by midnight; even soldiers need sleep. We fell asleep too—restless, uneasy, cold.
—
It was true: the Generalissimo had sent more troops from the mainland. He held the philosophy that it was “better to kill a hundred innocent men than let one guilty go free.” Rumors claimed that the troops began strafing the shore before they even disembarked.
Perhaps the Generalissimo was also guilty of listening to rumors, like the one that said the protests of February 28 had been instigated by communist agents rather than unhappy citizens.
In any case, day by day and home by home, men began to disappear.
—
On the tenth of March, paper fell from the sky. Like giant snowflakes, they drifted into our courtyard, impaling themselves on the bushes and covering the gravel. My parents had forbidden my sister and brothers from going outside lest a stray bullet tear through the courtyard fence, so Ah Zhay looked on enviously as my father went out to gather them up.
My father dropped the sheets onto the table. Each page was exactly the same: the Generalissimo’s official account of what had happened since the last day of February and explaining the presence of the new troops:
I hope that every Taiwanese will fully recognize his duty to our fatherland and strictly observe discipline so as not to be utilized by treacherous gangs and laughed at by the Japanese. I hope Taiwanese will refrain from rash and thoughtless acts which will be harmful not only to our country but also to themselves. I hope they will be thoroughly determined to discriminate between loyalty and treason, and to discern between advantage and disadvantage; and that they will voluntarily cancel their illegal organizations and recover public peace and order, so that every Taiwanese can lead a peaceful and happy life as soon as possible, and thus complete the construction of the new Taiwan.
Thus only can Taiwanese be free from the debt they owe to the entire nation, which has undergone so many sacrifices and bitter struggles for the last fifty years in order to recover Taiwan.
That day, giving the Generalissimo’s words their due, Baba taught my siblings how to make folded paper boats.
—
A few days later, a soft knock at the door startled my parents. The delicate sound of knuckles on wood told my parents that the visitor was friend, not foe, but Baba still herded the family upstairs before he opened the door.
The visitor was the nephew of my father’s very good friend Su Ming Guo. He was panting. His sandals lay in the dirt, apparently kicked off in hasty respect before he had stepped onto the porch. He shared with his uncle the same drooping eyes and dark circles, even though he was likely no older than thirteen.
The boy said he had no time to come in. “A wanted list has gone up at the train station; my uncle says to tell you that your name is on it.” The words were too urgent to be softened.
My mother eavesdropped from the top of the stairs. She waited for a moment longer as the boy told Baba that many of the men who had been at the meeting had already escaped, but even more had been arrested.
“My uncle is leaving too. He says you must go. He says wait a few days at Mount Kuanyin and then leave from Tamshui.”
My mother went to the bedroom, pulled down Baba’s suitcase from the wardrobe shelf—the same suitcase he’d carri
ed back from Tokyo at graduation—and began to pack. Her hands moved, her mind planned, but her eyes, darkening, watched scenes that my father had not yet conceived as he climbed the stairs to tell her what the boy had said.
“What are you doing?” my father asked as he came into the room.
“You’re leaving.” With studied care, she laid one of his shirts in the suitcase.
Baba closed the dresser drawer with a jerk of his knee. “Stop packing.”
“You’re leaving. They are already looking for you. I heard him.” Unable to face him, she opened the drawer again and began yanking everything out. “Where are your gray pants?”
“Stop packing. I’ve done nothing. They’ll ask me a few questions and be done with it.”
She stopped. Yes, this too was Baba’s flaw: the belief that the world was as sensible as he was. She stepped over the mess of clothes, wrapped her arms around his neck, and put her mouth against his ear. “Not this time. Not anymore.” She felt his body tense in her embrace.
Baba pulled down her arms. “Get your gold necklace and the jade earrings. Sew them into the hem of one of my white shirts. I must find…something.” The drifting sentence betrayed my father. My mother heard it. She knew him too well to not see the vagueness in his eyes and the tiny tightening around his mouth that revealed his fear. He had looked like this the very first time they had argued; early in their marriage, she had made a self-deprecating comment about how wan her face looked, coyly hoping he would counter with a compliment, and was livid when he had agreed with her.
Now, her hands shaking as she stitched the jewelry into his shirt, she regretted that ridiculous fight. What did a misunderstood word matter in the context of everything else about their life? How many times had he told her she was beautiful? She regretted all of their arguments. From a distance, every single one seemed petty. She held her breath, trying to suffocate her heart to stillness. She whispered prayers into the seam, hoping to imbue the necklace, the earrings, the shirt with protective magic. “Keep him safe. Let him pass through unharmed.” She did not know which god or goddess she spoke to—she’d be satisfied with any that would listen.
Somehow, she cooked dinner, using the last of their fresh vegetables and a final tin of fish, hoping the meal would convey what she could not bring herself to say. The whole family ate together. Neither Baba nor my mother told the children that he would be leaving. Zhee Hyan climbed in and out of my father’s lap and drifted over to pet my head as I slept in my mother’s arms. Ah Zhay chattered on about a pirate story she had made up that afternoon.
Dua Hyan earnestly questioned her. “Mean? How mean?”
“He kept ten samurai swords on his belt from all the samurai he had killed. And when he cut someone’s head off”—Ah Zhay pretended to gag as she hacked her throat with the blade of her hand—“he did not even bother wiping the blood off. He just used a new sword for his next victim.”
“How big was his ship?” Dua Hyan’s chopsticks hovered midway between the bowl and his mouth.
“Oh, I forgot to tell you! He hated little boys the most. The blood on his swords was all from little boys. Eight-year-olds were his favorite victims.” She raised her eyebrows at him.
My father smiled at how solemnly she delivered this information, but my mother saw the faltering corners of his mouth. Who knew what pirates would pursue him, and if they craved his blood too. She saw, in his glistening eyes, that he was etching every detail of each of their faces to his memory. To hide her own tears, she brought her sleeve to her mouth and pretended to cough.
As they continued their banter, my brothers and sister never noticed that our parents’ food remained untouched.
—
Since February, the nights had grown longer as the fearsome dark threatened to repulse day indefinitely. Except for this night, which passed too quickly. Once it opened into tomorrow, my mother knew, it would be as if the night, and all that had passed before it, had never existed.
—
The police arrived before Baba could leave. The knocking, too early to be considered polite, woke my parents.
A stunned breath passed between them. My mother said she would answer the door. “They’ll be kind if they see the baby,” she said.
“Or they will think I’m a coward.” Shaking with adrenaline, Baba struggled into the clothes he had prepared for his escape. My mother wrapped herself in a robe. She tried to look as disheveled and helpless as possible. Who was more naive—my mother for thinking she could manipulate these men, or my father for believing the administration was not deranged enough to consider his criticism of it a “crime”? He told himself it would take only five questions for the investigators to discover his innocence and let him go.
The knocking grew more insistent.
“Go out the clinic door,” my mother pleaded. Baba refused. He kissed her, felt the worried pulse in her temple beat against his lips, and hurried down the stairs. With the baby cradled in her arms, Mama scrambled after him.
Baba threw open the door. Three men. Mama would recall three men clustered at the door, their dark figures blocking the faint morning light, and when she could talk about it again, she would note the same thing over and over: “They were so young. Just boys.” Boys who tackled my father at his first words and dragged him away as my mother stuttered her protest.
She ran after them. Across the yard, through the gate. Babe squalling at her breast, her robe falling open, she chased them down the alley until one of the boys finally turned and, with no sign of hesitation, leveled his rifle at her. She stopped running; her screams faltered into gasps. At the end of the alley, framed by two houses in shadow, more soldiers lifted Baba into the bed of a truck. Only then did the boy lower his rifle.
On March 14, 1947, my father disappeared.
5
WHEN BABA HAD NOT RETURNED by the next morning, Mama broke her postpartum confinement. Staring up at the railroad station’s wanted poster, Mama met another abandoned wife, not ready to call herself a widow, who shared a protocol for finding their missing husbands.
The first stop, she advised, was the police station.
A line of dark-eyed women dribbled out the door, continued past the sundries shop next door, and folded around the corner. They waited politely despite every impulse to rush the police station, leap over the desks, and tear at the files. After each unsuccessful query, they whispered down the line that the man in question could not be found, but each woman still believed her husband would be the exception.
Three hours passed. My mother had left me at home in Ah Zhay’s care. She had lied to the children: Baba went on a trip.
Where? Ah Zhay had asked.
The answer came without thinking. Tokyo.
Why didn’t he tell us?
All she could say was I don’t know.
Ah Zhay pressed on, Baba’s absence already incidental: Will he bring us a souvenir?
Yes, I’m sure.
Mama’s hips ached from standing. Finally, she crossed the threshold into the station and faced a weary young officer who made a superficial search of the rolls and told her they knew nothing. They had no record of my father.
“I saw him taken away with my very eyes,” she said firmly.
“Your name again?” asked the officer. His tone chilled my mother back to sanity. “I might have made a mistake,” she murmured.
She let the next distraught wife step forward in her place.
Some of the wives also claimed the American consulate could help. My mother stood outside the gate, among other women, pleading with the guards. “Think of your own mother. Think of your own wife. My children are missing their father.” Sympathy flickered over the young men’s faces; only this consulate fence kept them from being one of the missing. As if realizing misfortune could taint them too, the guards blotted out any mark of concern and stared past the women. My mother glanced up; figures stood at the windows—she knew the men inside must have seen the women down below wailing at t
he gate—but then they passed again into the building recesses.
Our aunt, Baba’s sister, came to our home with a bundle of incense wrapped in paper and a tiny carved god.
“How can they do nothing?” my mother cried to her.
“What do they care? Like everyone else, they just want to save their own skins.” She dragged a table against the wall and set the god on it. She lit the incense, then threw herself to the ground and begged her dead parents—my grandparents—to watch over their son. Dua Hyan and Zhee Hyan clung to the doorway and gaped at my aunt heaped on the floor, hiccuping with tears and prayers. My brothers had never seen such a display.
Finally, she sat up. Bedraggled and exhausted, she said, her voice hoarse, “Why didn’t I think of this sooner? I know a fortune-teller; he can answer our questions.”
“A fortune-teller?” my mother scoffed. She jiggled the baby. “You’ve lost your mind. I don’t have money to throw at charlatans.”
“Mere men can’t help us now. There’s nothing else left to do.”
My mother thought again of the long line of women in front of the police station and of the women clamoring at the consulate gate. What did hope cost? A few coins? My mother shook her head as she said yes.
The fortune-teller kept a table on a small street near the river, revealing fates until sundown. My aunt and mother took a rickshaw to the place. As my mother trudged up to his table with her dirty hair and clothes, the fortune-teller noted her fading spirit. She was just like the other women who had come to him in those weeks as a last resort, hoping for some clue about their missing husbands.
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