When the war ended in 1945, we no longer had to think about secret meanings that could get us in trouble with the Japanese. Firecrackers burst in the streets all day long and this made everyone nervously happy. Overnight the lanes grew crowded with vendors of every delicious kind of thing and fortune-tellers with only the best news. GaoLing thought this was a good day to ask her fortune. So Sister Yu and I went wandering with her.
The fortune-teller GaoLing chose could write three different words at one time with three different brushes held in one hand. The first brush he put between the tip of his thumb and one finger. The second rested in the web of his thumb. The third was pinched at the bend of his wrist. “Is my husband dead?” GaoLing asked him. We were all surprised by her bluntness. We held our breath as the three characters formed at once: “Return Lose Hope.”
“What does that mean?” Sister Yu said.
“For another small offering,” the fortune-teller answered, “the heavens will allow me to explain.” But GaoLing said she was satisfied with this answer, and we went on our way.
“He’s dead,” GaoLing announced.
“Why do you say that?” I asked. “The message could also mean he’s not dead.”
“It clearly said all hope is lost about his returning home.”
Sister Yu suggested: “Maybe it means he’ll return home, then we’ll lose hope.”
“Can’t be,” GaoLing said, but I could see a crack of doubt running down her forehead.
The next afternoon, we were sitting in the courtyard of the shop, enjoying a new sense of ease, when we heard a voice call out, “Hey, I thought you were dead.” A man was looking at GaoLing. He wore a soldier’s uniform.
“Why are you here?” GaoLing said as she rose from the bench.
He sneered. “I live here. This is my house.”
Then we knew it was Fu Nan. It was the first time I saw the man who might have been my husband. He was large like his father, with a long, wide nose. GaoLing rose and took his bundle and offered him her seat. She treated him extra politely, like an unwanted guest. “What happened to your fingers?” she asked. Both of his little fingers were missing.
He seemed confused at first, then laughed. “I’m a damn war hero,” he said. He glanced at us. “Who are they?” GaoLing gave our names and said what each of us did to run the business. Fu Nan nodded, then gestured toward Sister Yu and said, “We don’t need that one anymore. I’ll manage the money from now on.”
“She’s my good friend.”
“Who says?” He glared at GaoLing, and when she did not look away, he said, “Oh, still the fierce little viper. Well, you can argue with the new owner of this shop from now on. He arrives tomorrow.” He threw down a document covered with the red marks of name seals. GaoLing snatched it.
“You sold the shop? You had no right! You can’t make my family work for someone else. And the debt—why is it now even bigger? What did you do, gamble the money away, eat it, smoke it, which one?”
“I’m going to sleep now,” he said, “and when I wake up, I don’t want to see that woman with the hunchback. The way she looks makes me nervous.” He waved one hand to dismiss any further protests. He left, and soon we smelled the smoke of his opium clouds. GaoLing began to curse.
Teacher Pan sighed. “At least the war is over and we can see if our friends at the medical school might know of rooms where we can squeeze in.”
“I’m not going,” GaoLing said.
How could she say this after all she had told me about her husband? “You’d stay with that demon?” I exclaimed.
“This is our family’s ink shop. I’m not walking away from it. The war is over, and now I’m ready to fight back.”
I tried to argue and Teacher Pan patted my arm. “Give her time. She ‘11 come to her senses.”
Sister Yu left that afternoon for the medical school, but soon she returned. “Miss Grutoff is back,” she told us, “released from the war camp. But she is very, very sick.” The four of us immediately left for the house of another foreigner, named Mrs. Riley. When we went in, I saw how thin Miss Grutoff had become. We used to joke that foreign women had big udders because of the cow’s milk they drank. But now Miss Grutoff looked drained. And her color was poor. She insisted on standing up to greet us, and we insisted she sit and not bother to be polite with old friends. Loose skin hung from her face and arms. Her once red hair was gray and thin. “How are you?” we asked.
“Not bad,” she said, cheerful and smiling. “As you can see, I’m alive. The Japanese couldn’t starve me to death, but the mosquitoes almost had their way with me. Malaria.”
Two of the little girls at the school had had malaria and died. But I did not tell Miss Grutoff. There would be plenty of time for bad news later.
“You must hurry and get well,” I said. “Then we can reopen the school.”
Miss Grutoff shook her head. “The old monastery is gone. Destroyed. One of the other missionaries told me.”
We gasped.
“The trees, the building, everything has been burned to the ground and scattered.” The other foreigner, Mrs. Riley, nodded.
I wanted to ask what had happened to the graves, but I could not speak. I felt as I had that day when I knew Kai Jing had been killed. Thinking about him caused me to try to remember his face. But I saw more clearly the stones under which he lay. How long had I loved him when he was alive? How long had I grieved for him since he had died?
Mrs. Riley then said: “We ‘re going to open a school in Peking once we find a building. But now we need to help Miss Grutoff get well, don’t we, Ruth?” And she patted Miss Grutoff’s hand.
“Anything,” we took turns saying. “Of course we’ll help. We love Miss Grutoff. She is mother and sister to us all. What can we do?” Mrs. Riley then said Miss Grutoff had to return to the United States to see the doctors in San Francisco. But she would need a helper to accompany her to Hong Kong and then across the ocean.
“Would one of you be willing to go with me? I think we can arrange for a visa.”
“We can all go!” GaoLing answered at once.
Miss Grutoff became embarrassed. I could see this. “I wouldn’t want to trouble more than one of you,” she said. “One is enough, I think.” And then she sighed and said she was exhausted. She needed to lie down.
When she left the room, we looked at one another, uncertain how to begin the discussion of who should be the one to help Miss Grutoff. America? Miss Grutoff did not ask this only as a favor. We all knew she was also offering a great opportunity. A visa to America. But only one of us could take it. I thought about this. In my heart, America was the Christian heaven. It was where Kai Jing had gone, where he was waiting for me. I knew this was not actually true, but there was a hope that I could find happiness that had stayed hidden from me. I could leave the old curse, my bad background.
Then I heard GaoLing say, “Teacher Pan should go. He’s the oldest, the most experienced.” She had jumped in with the first suggestion, so I knew she wanted to go, as well.
“Experienced at what?” he said. “I can’t be of much help, I’m afraid. I’m an old man who can’t even read and write unless the words are as large and close as my shaky hands. And it would not be proper for a man to accompany a lady. What if she needs help during the night?”
“Sister Yu,” GaoLing said. “You go, then. You’re smart enough to overcome any obstacle.” Another suggestion! GaoLing was desperate to go, to have someone argue that it should be she who went.
“If people don’t trample me first,” Sister Yu said. “Don’t be ridiculous. Besides, I don’t want to leave China. To be frank, while I have Christian love for Miss Grutoff and our foreign friends, I don’t care to be around other Americans. Civil war or not, I’d rather stay in China.”
“Then LuLing should go,” GaoLing said.
What could I do? I had to argue: “I could never leave my father-in-law or you.”
“No, no, you don’t have to keep this old man co
mpany,” I heard my father-in-law say. “I’ve been meaning to tell you that I may marry again. Yes, me. I know what you’re thinking. The gods are laughing, and so am I.”
“But who?” I asked. I could not imagine he had any time to court a woman. He was always at the shop, except when he went on brief errands.
“She lives next door to us, the longtime widow of the man who ran the bookshop.”
“Wah! The man who sued my family?” GaoLing said.
“The books were fake,” I reminded her. “The man lost the lawsuit, remember?” And then we remembered our manners and congratulated Teacher Pan by asking if she was a good cook, if she had a pleasant face, a kind voice, a family that was not too much trouble. I was happy for him but also glad that I no longer had to argue that I could not go to America.
“Well, it’s clear to me LuLing should be the one to go to America with Miss Grutoff,” Sister Yu said. “Teacher Pan will soon be bossed around by a new wife, so LuLing has less need to stay.”
GaoLing hesitated a moment too long before saying, “Yes, that’s the best. It’s settled, then.”
“What do you mean?” I said, trying to be bighearted. “I can’t leave my own sister.”
“I’m not even your real sister,” GaoLing said. “You go first. Later, you can sponsor me.”
“Ah, see! That means you want to go!” I could not help rubbing it in. But now that everything had been decided, I felt I could safely do this.
“I didn’t say that,” GaoLing said. “I meant only if things change and later I need to come.”
“Why don’t you go first, and later you can sponsor me? If you stay, that husband of yours will put you under his thumb and grind you to pieces.” I was really being generous.
“But I can’t leave my sister, any more than she can leave me,” GaoLing said.
“Don’t argue,” I told her, “I’m older than you. You go first, then I’ll go to Hong Kong in a month or so and wait for the sponsorship papers to come through.”
GaoLing was supposed to argue that she should be the one to wait in Hong Kong. But instead she asked, “Is that how long it takes to sponsor another person? Only one month?”
And though I had no idea how long it took, I said, “Maybe it’s even quicker than that.” I still thought she was going to agree to wait.
“That fast,” GaoLing marveled. “Well, if it’s that quick, I might as well go first, but only so I can leave that demon of a husband right away.”
Just then Mrs. Riley came back to the room. “We’ve agreed,” Sister Yu announced. “GaoLing will accompany Miss Grutoff to San Francisco.”
I was too stunned to say anything. That night, I went over in my head how I had lost my chance. I was angry that GaoLing had tricked me. Then I had sisterly feelings and was glad she was going so she could get away from Fu Nan. Back and forth I went, between these two feelings. Before I fell asleep, I decided this was fate. Now whatever happened, that was my New Destiny.
Three days later, just before we left for Hong Kong, we had a little party. “There’s no need for tears and good-byes,” I said. “Once we’re settled in the new country, we’ll invite you all to come visit.”
Teacher Pan said that he and his new wife would enjoy that very much, a chance to visit another country before their life was over. Sister Yu said she had heard much about dancing in America. She confessed that she had always wanted to learn how to dance. And for the rest of the evening, which was the last time we ever saw them, we took turns guessing and joking. Miss Grutoff would be healed, then come back to China, where she would make more orphan girls act in more bad plays. GaoLing would be rich, having finally found the right fortune-teller, one who could write with four brushes at once. And I would be a famous painter.
We toasted one another. Soon, maybe in a year or less, Sister Yu and Teacher Pan with his new wife would sail to America for a holiday. Gao-Ling and I would come to the harbor in San Francisco and wait for them in our new automobile, a shiny black one with many comfortable seats and an American driver. Before we drove them to our mansion on top of a hill, we would stop at a ballroom. And to celebrate our reunion, we all agreed, we would dance and dance and dance.
FRAGRANCE
Each night when I returned to the rooming house in Hong Kong, I lay on a cot with wet towels over my chest. The walls were sweating because I couldn’t open the windows for fresh air. The building was on a fishy street on the Kowloon side. This was not the part where the fish were sold. There it smelled of the morning sea, salty and sharp. I was living in Kowloon Walled City, along the low point in a wide gutter, where the scales and blood and guts gathered, swept there by the fishmongers’ buckets of water at night. When I breathed the air, it was the vapors of death, a choking sour stink that reached like fingers into my stomach and pulled my insides out. Forever in my nose, that is the fragrance of Fragrant Harbor.
The British and other foreigners lived on the Hong Kong Island side. But in Kowloon Walled City, it was almost all Chinese, rich and raggedy, poor and powerful, everyone different, but we all had this in common: We had been strong, we had been weak, we had been desperate enough to leave behind our motherland and families.
And there were also those who made money from people’s despair. I went to many blind seers, the wenmipo who claimed they were ghost writers. “I have a message from a baby,” they called. “A message from a son.” “A husband.” “An ancestor who is angry.” I sat down with one and she told me, “Your Precious Auntie has already been reincarnated. Go three blocks east, then three blocks north. A beggar girl will cry out to you, ‘Auntie, have pity, give me hope.’ Then you will know it is she. Give her a coin and the curse will be ended.” I did exactly as she said. And on that exact block, a girl said those exact words. I was so overjoyed. Then another girl said those words, another and another, ten, twenty, thirty little girls, all without hope. I gave them coins, just in case. And for each of them, I felt pity. The next day, I saw another blind lady who could talk to ghosts. She also told me where to find Precious Auntie. Go here, go there. The next day was the same. I was using up my savings, but I didn’t think it mattered. Soon, any day now, I would leave for America.
After I had lived a month in Hong Kong, I received a letter from Gao-Ling:
“My Own True Sister, Forgive me for not writing you sooner. Teacher Pan sent your address to me, but I did not receive it right away, because I was moving from one church lady’s house to another. I’m also sorry to tell you that Miss Grutoff died a week after we arrived. Right before she flew to heaven, she said she made a mistake coming back to America. She wanted to return to China so her bones could rest there, next to Miss Towler’s. I was glad to know how much she loved China, and sorry because it was too late to send her back. I went to her funeral, but not too many people knew her. I was the only one who cried, and I said to myself, She was a great lady.
“My other news is not so good, either. I learned I cannot sponsor you, not yet. The truth is, I almost was not able to stay myself. Why we thought it would be so easy, I don’t know. I see now we were foolish. We should have asked many more questions. But now I have asked the questions, and I know of several ways for you to come later. How much later depends.
“One way is for you to apply as a refugee. The quota for Chinese, however, is very low, and the number who want to get in is beyond count. To be honest, your chances are like a leak moving against a flood.
“Another way is for me to be a citizen first so I can sponsor you as my sister. You will have to claim that Mother and Father are your real mother and father, since I cannot sponsor a cousin. But as a relative, you would be in a different line, ahead of ordinary refugees. For me to become a citizen, however, means I have to learn English first and get a good job. I promise you I am studying very hard, in case this is the means I have to turn to.
“There is a third way: I can marry a citizen and then become a citizen faster. Of course, it is inconvenient that I am already married to Chang
Fu Nan, but I think no one needs to know this. On my visa papers, I did not mention it. Also, you should know that when I applied for the visa, the visa man asked for documents as proof of my birth, and I said, ‘Who has documents for such things?’ He said, ‘Oh, were they burned during the war like everyone else’s?’ I thought that was the correct answer, so I agreed this was true. When you prepare your visa papers, you must say the same thing. Also make yourself five years younger, born 1921. I already did, born 1922, but in the same month as the old birthday. This will give you extra time to catch up.
“Mother and Father have already written to ask me to send them my extra money. I have had to write back and say I have none. If I do in the future, of course, I will send some to you. I feel so guilty that you insisted I come first and I gave in to your demands. Now it is you who are stuck, not knowing what to do. Don’t mistake my meaning. Life here is not so easy. And making money is not like we imagined. All those stories of instant riches, don’t believe them. As for dancing, that is only in the movies. Most of the day, I clean houses. I am paid twenty-five cents. That may sound like a lot, but it costs that much to eat dinner. So it is hard to save money. For you, of course, I am willing to starve.
“In his last letter, Father said he almost died of anger when he learned that Fu Nan lost the ink business in Peking. He said Fu Nan has returned to Immortal Heart and is lying around useless, but the Chang father is not being critical, saying Fu Nan is a big war hero, lost two fingers, saved lives. You know what I was thinking when I read that. Most terrible of all, our family still has to supply the inksticks and ink cakes, and we receive none of the profit, only a lesser debt. Everyone has had to take on various home businesses, weaving baskets, mending, doing menial labor that makes Mother complain that we have fallen as low as the tenants. She asks me to hurry and become rich, so I can pull her out of the bowels of hell.