“They’ve seen us now,” he snapped. “You made them see us.”
I didn’t care. I wanted to know how the movie ended. I began to cry, frustrated that I would never know what happened to Travis and Old Yeller. Much later, when my daughters were small, I would finally see the movie to the end and learn what I had missed: Old Yeller locked into the corncrib, snarling, sick with rabies, and Travis’s tears when he raises his rifle.
“They’ve seen us now,” Baba repeated.
“Because of you!” I cried.
In the alley, my mother and brothers talked over one another, urging my father to calm down.
My father glanced around. “The men from the café. They’re here.”
“What men?” Dua Hyan asked.
Still sniffling, I pressed my face into my mother’s arm. As I peeked back at Baba through my tears, I saw the wildness in his eyes. He had nothing for them. He was not important; he could barely even bathe himself. He was nothing.
“In the café. They were there. Let’s go.” Baba looked over his shoulder at the ice pop seller, who was wiping condensation from the top of his cart. “Come now.”
As we walked home, the night snack vendors looked up from their stands and the bare bulbs that hung above their heads cast long shadows, turning their eyes into dark hollows and stretching their noses. The late-night lovers who strolled the gloomy streets had no faces. Cats darted out from black alleys, winking neon green eyes before they disappeared again. No one said a word.
—
I perched on a chair, my knees folded to my chest, mindlessly picking at my toenails. One persistent thought entranced me: I hate him. Occasionally, I glanced over at Dua Hyan, in another chair, his shoulders soft, his eyes glazed.
After a long period in the bedroom, Mama finally emerged alone. Her eyes sunk into shadows and only a sad stain remained of her lipstick. Dua Hyan and I both straightened up.
“What’s wrong with him?” Dua Hyan asked. As an answer, Mama shook her head and ordered me out of the room.
“I want to stay,” I protested. I dropped my feet to the floor one at a time—slap! slap!—emphatically expressing my indignation. First wronged, now excluded. I trudged toward the bedroom, but as soon as I was out of sight, I hunched behind the doorway to listen.
“He’s broken,” Dua Hyan snapped. He had found the right word. Baba was like a carefully pieced together eggshell delicately cupped in Mama’s hands. One breath and—glue would be no use, the seams would open anew, and all of us would scramble to gather him up.
“Don’t say that.” Mama’s pacing stopped and I heard her slide onto a chair.
“Look how tired you are.” Now Dua Hyan rose. The clapping of his boots, strong and rhythmic, paced to and fro. “He’s broken. He’s broken.”
“Shut up!” The words were damp and thick, clinging in her throat. She sniffed.
Dua Hyan stopped marching. “Are you crying?” Defiantly, he repeated his remark. “He’s broken, Mama. You need to accept this.”
—
“Dua Hyan, please don’t leave.” I stood in the doorway as he packed.
He smiled but his eyes looked sad. I wanted to grab his leg as I had when I was a kid and hold on. But I was eleven now. I had begun menstruating a few months before, and I restrained myself, as I thought an adult might. Though I wanted to beg and cry, I said, “Please stay.”
“You really aren’t a kid anymore, huh?” he said as if he were seeing me for the first time. His smile, directed at some point in time behind me, was pensive. Yes, I was taller. I had an itchiness in my chest too, and Mama had forced me to wear an undershirt. Maybe he wanted to swoop me up like I was still a gap-toothed and round-faced five-year-old.
“Stay with us,” I repeated. With him gone, who would stand between us and Baba? Jie-fu was a son-in-law—he had to be polite. Dua Hyan was not afraid.
He lost his smile and turned back to his task. His shirts were meticulously folded, as if he creased paper not cloth. Mama had washed and ironed his uniform, and lustrous moons reflected on the toes of his black boots.
“Everything will be okay,” he said. “Be a good girl and listen to Baba. Just listen to him.”
The room stretched into a universe, and Dua Hyan became a tiny dot. “Okay, Dua Hyan,” I said. “I will. I will be a good girl. I will listen to Mama. I will listen to Baba,” but he was already too far away to hear me.
—
A couple of days after Dua Hyan left, two men came into the courtyard as I was gathering eggs. They wore drab sweaters and slacks, like men who rode pistachio-colored mopeds and roamed bookstores.
“Hello,” they said brightly. “Is your father home?”
Unfailingly polite, these secret police. No more middle-of-the-night dragging away in one’s underwear. No, in those days, they stopped a person in the market, one at either side, and guided him toward the waiting car, or they welcomed both husband and wife to gender-segregated trucks, holding their elbows as they climbed in, and toted the couple away in view of their neighbors. Fear grew more exuberantly in full sunlight.
I cradled three shit-speckled eggs in my hands. Small feathers clung to my shirt. Behind me, the chickens cackled. One of the men was young and had thick, beautiful eyebrows. Self-conscious, I blushed and rubbed my cheek against my shoulder.
“He’s inside.”
“Tell him to come out.”
“Okay.”
I shuffled into the house, careful with the eggs. I carried them to my parents’ room, where my father was already standing in the doorway.
“Ba—”
“I’ll be right out.”
He had been waiting. Since the time he had first seen the men outside his window and in the fields; since the spies disguised as farmers riding atop oxen; since the men in the café and at the theater—he had been expecting them. Relief buoyed him. He ran his hands over his face and scratched sleep from his eyes.
Still carrying the eggs, I returned to the men. “He’s coming.”
“You have your hands full.” The younger one smiled. He was so handsome, his eyelashes as thick as mink, and his milky skin and pink lips twisted my stomach.
I looked at the ground and didn’t answer.
“Can I help you?” Baba’s voice was clear when he stepped out of the house. His hair was neatly combed. He was even wearing socks and shoes with laces.
“Dr. Tsai”—the older man glanced at me—“can we talk inside?”
“Of course,” Baba said.
I followed the three of them inside. Baba turned to me: “Make some tea.”
Mama and my grandparents had gone to the Owyangs; Ah Zhay was in town, Jie-fu was at work, and Zhee Hyan was at cram school. If I left Baba, I was afraid he would not be here when I returned. If they threatened to take him away again, I’d toss the eggs at them. I’d cling to their arms with all my weight, grip their legs like I had with Dua Hyan when I was little. In the kitchen, my ears throbbed as I filled the kettle and lit the stove. I tried to hear what was happening in the front room, but the conversation was just tense silence broken by muted words.
Then Baba came into the kitchen and touched my shoulder. “Give me some of your school paper.” His voice lacked urgency; he might have been entertaining old classmates.
“Yes, Baba. Do you need a pen too?”
—
In the front room, they sat at the table where my family ate our meals. Baba had set out a small plate of roasted watermelon seeds, which was untouched. I handed the pen and paper to Baba and glanced at the young man. I believed goodness could be read on a person’s face. He looked like a good person. My criteria were slim: he had clear skin, a natural color in his cheeks, lush eyelashes, a mouth that turned up naturally at the corners. He smiled at me, showing his teeth, and I allowed a tremor of a smile in return.
“Write: Honorable Su Ming Guo,” the older man began.
I stepped back and leaned against one of the two chairs set against the wall beneat
h a large scroll of peonies that my mother had painted. Its knotty wooden arm pressed into the small of my back.
“Start out chatty. Tell him you’ve been released from prison because the political climate has changed. Tell him about the freedom you have now. Tell him about”—the older man caught my eye—“about how wonderful it is to see your daughter.”
At eleven years old, I thought too that I could read evil, like goodness, on a man’s face. The older man looked evil: unruly eyebrows, pockmarked skin, wrinkles that cut too deep into his sagging cheeks. A yellowing, bloodshot eye framed his glances at me. I began to chew on the dried skin around my fingernail.
Baba sat on the side of the table facing me. He stared at me for a long time before he began. He wrote with a slow, careful hand; my mother had said he had the calligraphy of an artist.
“Encourage him to come home,” the man continued. The younger man picked up the dish of watermelon seeds and tapped it gently, as if searching for a particular one. He put it down without taking anything.
Baba’s pen hesitated. “Why?”
“As I told you, your only job is to help us with this one task. We need Mr. Su to come back to Taiwan.”
Baba dug his fingers into his hair and pressed his palm to his forehead.
“Take a moment. It takes time to find the right words,” the younger one said.
“I can’t,” Baba said.
The older man sighed and his wide, flat nostrils flared. “That’s fine. A desk at our office might be more comfortable to work at.”
Baba closed his eyes. He remained still, as if he had not heard either of them. The kettle whistled. I could not move. Both men looked at me expectantly.
“Sister, the water.”
I shook my head. My mouth was stiff, my tongue dead against my teeth.
“Sister,” the younger one said, “the water is boiling.”
I could not move.
“Turn off the kettle,” my father said, his eyes still closed; I could have been nothing more than a maid. Unseen, unheard.
I didn’t want to listen to any of them, but I was afraid, so I ran to the kitchen and turned off the flame. My hands shook as I took the rag and lifted the kettle from the burner. I poured the water into a teapot and the steam singed my face. I was too careless and water overflowed from the teapot mouth and brought the leaves floating to the top in a clotted mass. I clapped down the lid and carried out the pot and three cups on a tray.
“Now tell him how much you are looking forward to seeing him.” Even the older man’s ears were ugly: too small and splotched with brown freckles.
“Baba,” I said. The younger man leaned back to allow me to approach the table. I set the tray down with care; even so, tea sloshed from the spout.
“Good girl,” the young man said. “What a fortunate father.”
“Yes, yes,” my father said. “Tea?” Fatigue had crept back into his eyes.
“First, sign it.”
Baba paused a moment before he scrawled his name. Exhausted, he put down the pen and his shoulders sagged. The younger man took the page and folded it carefully.
“I apologize, but we can’t stay,” the older man said. They stood up and thanked my father.
My father walked them to the doorway and watched them leave. When he turned back to the room, I asked him who they were.
“The men from the café.”
I was not sure if I believed him. “Why did you have to write that letter?” They had been gone only moments. Steam still rose from the teapot, yet I began to doubt that they had ever been there.
“It was nothing,” Baba said, “but don’t tell anyone. Don’t tell your mother. She’ll just worry.” He sat at the table. “Sit. Have tea with your Baba.” He poured two cups.
“Will they come back?”
“No. They won’t. Come sit. Sit with Baba.”
I hesitated; I wanted to go to the door and catch a last glimpse of them. Whatever I saw, I would sear the picture into my mind and reassure myself it was true, not a play of light or imagination. Baba’s suspicions were not fantasy; we were known.
“Sit.”
I dragged myself to the table. Baba smiled and held out his cup. “A toast for us. Drink up,” he said. The implied joy in the words did not touch his voice or his smile.
The cup was almost too hot to touch. The leaves had steeped too long and the tea was bitter.
—
Baba and I shared the secret of the visitors. As he gardened and I stood by, his waiting assistant, he spoke to me about his suspicions in low tones.
“They’d been watching me. No question,” he said. “But there had to be someone closer by who had been paying attention for them. How else would the men have known to find just us at home that day? This is what I’m thinking. The nearest telephone is at Little Mouse’s store, right? His store is on the road to town. Ah Zhay and Jie-fu had been in town that day. You see what I’m saying?” Baba asked, his fingers deep in the soil.
“You think Ah Zhay called them?” I asked dumbly.
“Keep your voice down.” He glanced at the house. “Not your sister. The other one.”
I squatted down beside him and answered in a dramatic whisper: “Jie-fu?”
“Yes. Exactly.” Baba had fashioned a watering pot out of an old cooking oil jug. He scooped water from it onto the row of slender seedlings.
I considered this. My brother-in-law was funny. He made puns, told me silly jokes, and never snapped at me. Could a man like that possibly be a spy?
“Baba, Jie-fu is nice.”
“Of course he is. Those men who came were nice too.”
“But Jie-fu is your son-in-law.”
“I don’t know him and I don’t know his family. He’s a Mainlander. Mainlanders and Taiwanese will never be friends.”
The Mainlanders had come when I was just a toddler. By the time I was old enough to keep a memory, the civil war on the mainland was over, and more than two million Nationalist soldiers and their families had fled to the island. The cities swelled with people. Many of them came to the island owning only what they carried. Fleeing made them orphans and bachelors. However, if not for my family’s stories, I wouldn’t know the difference. When my mother was wronged in the market or had a tense encounter on the bus, she immediately would point out whether the offending party was Mainlander or Taiwanese. If Jie-fu heard her, she would assure him, “I’m not talking about you.”
To me, people were still just people. But I knew that my mother would tell me to not contradict Baba, so I said, “Okay, Baba.” But my agreement, laden with doubt, patched together my memory of his sternness with me, a dozen of his other strange behaviors, and the evening at the movie. I suspected that Jie-fu-as-spy was no different from the other imagined dangers skulking at the edges of Baba’s world.
“So you agree?” He ladled water into the furrow he’d made.
I hummed. He could take it as he wished.
“I’ll watch him too. We’ll watch each other.”
“Okay.” I worried about Su Ming Guo, the man Baba had pleaded with to return home. Baba’s letter teased like a succulent delicacy in a trap. But a good girl obeyed. As I’d learned in school, when asked how to be filial, Confucius had said, Never fail to comply. I was a good girl.
“This is between you and me. Don’t tell your mother.”
My answer had the sober weight of a promise. “I won’t.”
17
“THE TIMES TEST THE YOUTH; the youth create the times. Obey.”
“Exterminate the communist bandits!”
“Keep secrets; expose spies!”
“Long live President Chiang!”
I shouted these slogans in the classroom with spit-flecked zeal and found them printed on slips of paper tucked into cookie tins. Our teachers trained us to watch for enemy planes, to listen for betrayals and doubts, and to be good citizens in order to build a strong country.
The government had devised various programs to
ensure we were all invested in this giant project called the “Republic of China.” The Retired Servicemen Engineering Agency, partially funded by the United States, put old soldiers to work on construction projects, lest waiting for the retaking of the mainland drive them to other kinds of revolution. Through the agency, Jie-fu had begun working on the building of a new hospital in town. He left before dawn every morning and returned just after sunset. His skin turned brown and his arms whittled down to hard muscles.
Though the RSEA was established to occupy the tens of thousands of soldiers who’d come over from the mainland, it also employed civilians. Eager to win back Baba’s love, Ah Zhay asked her husband to help Baba get a job. Jie-fu talked to his foreman, and one morning Baba woke up in the dark as well and left with Jie-fu.
Baba had been a doctor. Baba was ill suited to be a construction worker. Beyond the bamboo gates tied with strips of cloth, fluttering warnings that one was entering a work zone, dozens of bare-chested men worked with their stripped shirts hanging from their waistbands and their faces shielded by cone hats. They inched along bamboo scaffolding, lugged buckets of concrete, moved earth with ungainly machines, shouted, cursed, and grimaced. Baba, clad in Jie-fu’s pants and shirt—both of which were at least two sizes too big—stood before the foreman. Baba squinted at the sun rising up behind the tarp-and-scaffold-clad skeleton of the hospital. The foreman was curt; he looked Baba up and down and assigned him the job of filling the buckets that came down via pulleys from the upper levels of the building.
I imagine it took, at most, until lunch for Baba to realize that only the camaraderie of one’s coworkers made the monotony of such a job bearable. Jie-fu seemed to love the work of pouring concrete, but he also spent half the time (it seemed to Baba) bantering and sharing cigarettes with his friends. He came over to offer one to Baba and asked him how the day was going.
Baba said everything was fine. Jie-fu persisted, telling Baba to let him know if he had any problems. Baba gruffly agreed.
“I can ask the foreman to assign you another job if you don’t like this one.”
“No need.”
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