“Where are you?” Longing was there too, amid his anger; I could feel it.
“I have to go. I’ll call you later.” I hung up and immediately called Ah Zhay.
The phone rang for a long time before she answered and accepted the call. Her voice was full of forced alertness; I realized it was past midnight in Taichung.
“Wei told me about Baba,” I said as soon as she answered.
“They came for him two days ago. In the middle of the day.”
My head felt light. It had been years since the police had last questioned Baba. Why now? Worry burned in my stomach—was this punishment for whatever Wei had been up to?
“What’d he do?” I asked.
“Who knows? What did he ever do?” Something shushed against the receiver. I waited for her to say more, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t trust the line.
“Where’s he now?”
“Who knows?” I knew the defeat in her voice was fear.
“Did you talk to Dua Hyan?” As angry as Dua Hyan was at Baba, he surely would not let anything happen to him. I was not certain how much power Dua Hyan actually had, but I knew that he was discreet enough to never let us see the full extent of it.
“There’s nothing he can do. He wouldn’t anyway.”
“How’s Mama?”
Long-distance calls were hollow, as if sound traversed an actual distance. Even so, I could hear the saliva as she opened her mouth, then with second thought, closed it, a familiar gesture I could see. Finally, she answered. “She’s fine.”
Fine was fine. Secondary to whatever was happening to Baba. “What can I do?”
“Nothing.” She paused. “Where are you?”
It would take too long to explain. “A marital spat. You know. It’s nothing.”
The words drifted past her, my troubles a small matter, brushed away. “I’ll call you if I hear anything.”
We said good-bye. I stepped over the girls, now sprawled on the floor and completely enthralled by Mighty Mouse, and stood at the window. In the parking lot, a woman, bony armed and dressed in nothing but a T-shirt and jeans despite the cold, danced erratically next to a car while the man leaning on the hood smoked. She cupped his face in her hands, pretended to kiss him, then spun away again.
I wondered what it was like to live in the moment, to be concerned with only your next meal and your next fix. A life in which everything else was either bodily pleasure or pain.
The desk clerk came out and slowly approached the couple. Her eyebrows rose in apprehension, and she spoke as she walked. The man shook his head.
The KMT hadn’t gone after Wei or his parents directly, I suppose, because they thought that nothing could be more upsetting to him than to see me upset. He would willingly sacrifice himself, but not us.
The dancer twirled around the clerk, who held her arms defensively to her chest. I realized that the dancer was barefoot. Time did not exist for her. Living in the moment did not even apply. It was forty degrees outside and she happily wore no shoes. Mr. Lu had said he could help me. I thought of the envelope of diminishing cash—hadn’t I already accepted his help?
Tit for tat, Mr. Lu had said.
The man ignored the clerk, who threw her hands up in the air and shouted at the dancer. She returned to the office.
The exchange of safety for information, he’d said. I realized Baba’s arrest wasn’t to punish Wei. It was for me. To scare me into giving up the manuscript.
He could help me, Mr. Lu had said. Now, I understood what he had meant.
—
“I’m hungry,” Emily wailed.
A police car turned into the parking lot. Its lights flashed but its siren was silent. The dancer couldn’t keep from tapping her feet and turning her wrists. The man dropped his cigarette and carefully stamped it out. The desk clerk came to the office doorway.
“I said I’m hungry, Mom.”
I reluctantly turned away from the scene. “How about cereal?”
I poured three bowls but I couldn’t eat. I dialed information and got the number for the Coordination Council for North American Affairs, and left a message with the secretary for Mr. Lu to call me at the motel. I sat at the table, listening to the cereal crackle in the milk, and stared dumbly at the television. If he called back, I would tell him it had been a false alarm. A mistake. The girls slurped at their bowls and kept their eyes on the television. It had to be a trap. He couldn’t possibly convince the authorities in Taiwan to release Baba. Like Jia Bao had said, they were manipulating us. I decided I just wouldn’t answer the phone.
My cereal turned to swollen mush. I poured it into the bathroom sink and pushed it down the drain with the end of the spoon.
When I returned to the window, the parking lot was empty.
The phone rang. Stephanie glanced at me.
“I’ll get it,” I said. I felt nauseated.
Mr. Lu’s cascading voice greeted me. “I have a message that you called? What is this number?”
“I’m at a friend’s.”
“And you called because…?”
“Mr. Lu, my father has been detained.”
Was that a laugh or a cough? “I know,” he said. “Two days ago now.”
I faced away from the girls, as if not seeing me would keep them from hearing me. I cupped my hand around the mouthpiece. My breath in the receiver became a lusty feedback in my ear. “Can you do anything?” I whispered.
“Perhaps.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that I’ll see what I can do.”
“You will? Please tell me you are telling the truth.”
“I’ve always been completely honest with you. But tell me what you will do for me.”
I kneeled next to the bed to hide from the girls. “I don’t know,” I whispered.
“I see.”
We both were silent.
Finally, dismissively, he said, “You know, my hands are tied. I can’t help you unless you are willing to help me. I have given you quite a bit already and what have I gotten in return? This isn’t charity. This isn’t friendship. This is a business relationship. You know what they say about life—there’s no such thing as a free lunch.” He uttered the last part in English. If I had not felt so awful, I would have laughed—he had an adage for every occasion.
“The manuscript,” I said.
“Exactly.” When I didn’t respond, he continued. “Let me paint a picture for you. Your father’s health isn’t good—I’m sure your sister has told you that. He doesn’t handle the cold well. Unfortunately, there are no heaters where he is staying. Perhaps, out of pity, they might have given him an extra blanket. If they have one. He will sleep in his soiled clothes. And—”
“Stop. I get it,” I said. I thought of how perplexed yet resigned Baba had appeared the other times he’d been brought in. This time, his nightmare had come true. This time, they had actually kept him, as he always expected they would. My poor, poor father. Hadn’t eleven years been long enough to get out of him everything they needed? “And you’ll help him if I give you Jia Bao’s book?”
“You have my word.”
“But what will happen to Jia Bao?” My yoga teacher would have been proud. I was now folded up, my burning stomach against my thighs—an exquisite child’s pose—the phone gripped so tightly my knuckles ached.
“You don’t have to worry,” he said. I listened for the tenor of real sincerity in his voice. I mulled over each word, searching for multiple meanings. I had to be certain his promise had only one interpretation. Seconds passed. “Hello?” His question was impatient.
“Give me two days.” I told him I’d meet him at the restaurant in Oakland Chinatown with the manuscript. Overcome by calm, I hung up. It was done. The only direction was forward. I called Wei back and finally gave him the motel number. For emergencies, I said.
—
I told the girls that I was taking them home for clean clothes. Wei was gone—I’d called before we left
to be sure—but his smell had overtaken the house. This was his house now. The sink held a couple of dirty plates, and the sofa bore the imprint of a body. The bed was hastily made: the blanket stretched out but wrinkled and the pillows balled and lumpy. In the bathroom, rings of dirt colonized the sink and toilet.
I was disappointed. I wanted chaos: red-eyed fruit flies buzzing over garbage and stripped toilet paper rolls left on the holder—a mess to reflect the absence we’d left in his life.
With the girls upstairs choosing new toys to bring back to the motel, I went to the den. I had typed my translation on carbon paper, and the stack, each sheet doubled, was almost a hand high. I couldn’t imagine all this work burned or shredded. Did Mr. Lu need both copies? Would he know? I went through and stripped each page from its smudgy double and separated the manuscript into two piles. I would think of an excuse for Jia Bao later. The whisper of the tearing paper was rhythmic, automated. Concentrating on it kept me calm. Nothing in the book was incriminating anyway. Just a simple history of oppression. Brutality, as Jia Bao would say. And it was all true—what would Mr. Lu find fault with?
When I was done, I bundled the carbon copy with a rubber band and put it back in its spot in the file drawer that Wei had set aside for me. I slipped the original in a grocery bag alongside a pile of Jia Bao’s handwritten notes that I’d come across and went to fetch the girls.
—
Mr. Lu kept his word. The day after I gave him the manuscript, Ah Zhay—relief and exhaustion in her voice—called to tell me Baba had come home.
46
JANUARY 8 WAS A COLD, SUNNY DAY. The sky was bright blue, but you could see your breath in the air. Jia Bao had built his wardrobe out of donations and thrift store finds, and today he wore a blue Cal sweatshirt (LET THERE BE LIGHT, the scuffed gold seal on the chest declared) and faded black sweatpants. I tell you this because a thousand times I have forced myself to envision this scene in every minuscule detail, looking for the tiny gap, the slip, the one decision that might have changed everything. He wore a blue sweatshirt, nubby at the joints, no hood, a triangle of stitching at the throat, and still carrying the odor of its former life. He made a cup of coffee on the stove and drank it right there, too hot, heat seeping through the ceramic and almost burning his knuckles where they brushed the cup. Murky gray light fell through the narrow kitchen window and he stood in it though it did nothing to warm his cold feet. He softened a stale bun in the coffee and ate it.
—
He hadn’t spoken to his wife in two weeks. Their conversation had been short and empty of real content; only the sound of their voices mattered. The words were merely vessels containing the timbre that said everything was okay, or wasn’t. He imagined her in their apartment on the white vinyl couch with the brown piping, leaning over the armrest toward the phone table, chin tipped to her chest, trying for some privacy even though it was the phone line itself that revealed them. The building was under surveillance too. The police were obvious. She had said this aloud, to him and to whoever else listened. It wasn’t a secret. He told her to be careful.
—
Brushing his teeth, he watched himself in the mirror. He was a small man, always shorter and slimmer than his classmates. What did his wife see in him? he thought. Did she regret it all? How many peaceful days had they had? He rinsed his mouth and scratched at the stubble on his chin. A few gray hairs had shown up. With his fingernails, he plucked them out. How much would she have aged the next time he saw her? When would that be? He thought of his children too, their time line moving faster than his, the difference between childhood and adolescence just a matter of months.
Truth be told, he didn’t know what was the ultimate point. The fight had gone on for decades already; it would likely continue for decades more. Tens—hundreds?—of thousands of lives thrown into the cauldron; every life an inch of progress. What determined success?
Too impatient to wait for the water to warm, he splashed cold water on his face. Pink bloomed in his cheeks.
He sat in the kitchen chair and tied his running shoes, the only new clothing purchase he had made. Converse Trainers in blue and white. Laces pulled so tight that the nylon pursed against the blue suede eyelets.
He missed her. Despite the chaos of their days, they always had sought each other at night; in the dark, their bodies were a barricade against the world.
He decided he would buy a newspaper from the liquor store and then jog to Wei’s house. Outside of the dim apartment, the sunlight was startling, and he stood next to the door for a moment, blinking.
It was a Tuesday. Except for a few cars parked under the bare trees, the street was empty. He walked down the middle of the street and felt the open space all around him. The glare off the windows kept the neighbors’ homes private. A dog barked at him from its perch behind the second-floor window of a yellow house.
A car pulled out from its spot beneath an oak tree and crawled toward him. He moved aside to let it pass, but instead the car stopped. He glanced around; there would be no witnesses.
“Tang Jia Bao?” someone asked through the open window.
“Hey,” Jia Bao confirmed. Run, he thought. Run.
Run.
Jia Bao thought of his wife, standing next to the sofa, phone at her ear, unable to speak.
If he made it to Shattuck Avenue, everything would be okay.
It would be early morning when she got the call. Before she went to work. She might not even be dressed yet. She’d stand next to the sofa, the phone held lightly to her ear. After she hung up, she’d sit for a while before she told their kids.
It’s a gun, Jia Bao thought. Run. But his body could not move.
The man’s hand was shaking. Jia Bao saw the tremor. He’s afraid. If he had time enough to notice the twitch under the man’s skin, he should have run.
Even the bullet didn’t speed up time. It tore through his chest. He tried to duck, not fast enough, and the second bullet hit him in the shoulder. He heard the shooter grunt, or perhaps it was himself. A ragged cry, regret and surprise, congested with tears or maybe blood. This was how his father had died, he realized with irony and sadness: a few feet from home, in the street.
His wife wouldn’t faint or collapse into tears. She would not believe it for hours. She would tell herself he was safe. She’d sit in the dark until the sun finally rose, and then she’d go to tell the children.
—
Every gesture was a risk, Jia Bao had said. The word “safe” did not exist.
Wei called me.
“Jia Bao, he…they…,” he began. As he told me what had happened, the world went hazy. I hung up the phone and hurried into the bathroom and shut the door and kneeled down and cried. It welled out of me with force, and when it subsided, I thought of Jia Bao again, reminded myself of what I had done and what had happened, of how I’d been betrayed, and I thought my tears would carry away the pain, but the grief was unending.
Our neighbor agreed to pick up the girls, and I went with Wei to identify the body in a room resembling a laboratory classroom with a round silver clock on the wall, bins of medical supplies, and shelves of binders. The coroner apologized as he led us in; they were waiting for new drawers and were forced to rotate the bodies through the few that they currently had. Covered corpses lay on the tables, and a chalkboard with names and times marked who was due to be cycled back into refrigeration next. The room stank of chemical cleansers that poorly masked the odor of death. Wei put his hand on my shoulder, as much to brace himself as to comfort me.
The coroner opened a drawer that groaned with its burden and cried on its tracks. Jia Bao’s body was modestly covered at the waist, but everything else was exposed: his pale, bloodless skin; the soft hair ringing his blue nipples; the ragged wounds on his chest and shoulder that exposed thick, broken flesh oddly devoid of blood. Gravel still clung to his cheek.
I hid my face in Wei’s shoulder.
“That’s him,” Wei said.
The dra
wer closed with a gentle clang.
—
Wei tried to tell the police it was an assassination. He tried to explain to the police who Jia Bao was and why the KMT would want him dead.
I sat, numb, in the institutional police station chair, a damp tissue balled and shredded in my fist while Wei spoke. He was pale. Though he’d lost most of his accent in English, now he stumbled over some of his words in his earnest attempt to convince them. “I don’t think you understand. He’s very well known in my country. He was under house arrest. The government wanted him dead. There’s no way that this was an accident. The KMT men are ruthless. I am sure that they killed him.”
“You said Thailand?” the officer asked.
“Taiwan.” Ordinarily, Wei would have launched into a small sermon on the difference. Now, wearily, he said only, “Taiwan, Republic of China. Not Thailand.”
What reaction did we expect? Outrage? That they would throw down their pens and their jaws would drop in shock? They betrayed nothing except, perhaps, a smidge of skepticism. Wei told them that he was certain they would find no evidence of robbery or conflict. Without that, what was left?
After we spoke to the police, we went to Prince Street, to a scene still marked and stained. We stayed in the car. A silent crowd had gathered to watch the clean-up crew scrub away the blood. Jia Bao’s blood.
“Did you call his wife?”
“I did.” Wei’s voice cracked.
The light shifted, that subtle yet sudden transition from afternoon to dusk. One by one, people looked at their watches, gave a last glance at the glistening pavement, and drifted toward home. I felt nothing. I was gouged out and hollow.
“Will you come home now?”
Would I? In the motel, nothing had changed. I’d turn on the TV and it would still be on channel 36; the girls’ clothes would still be scattered on the chairs; the milk in the cooler was the same milk from last night. It was in the same place it had been this morning when Jia Bao had been alive. At night, women’s heels would again patter past our window and men would shout from the parking lot. It was wrong. It was wrong for it to have stayed the same, I decided, when everything was different.
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