Olivia Yee. I say the name aloud several times. It sounds alien, as though I’d become totally Chinese, just like Kwan. That bothers me a little. Being forced to grow up with Kwan was probably one of the reasons I never knew who I was or wanted to become. She was a role model for multiple personalities.
I call Kevin for his opinion on my new name. “I never liked the name Yee,” he confesses. “Kids used to yell, ‘Hey, Yee! Yeah, you, yee-eye-yee-eye-oh.’ ”
“The world’s changed,” I say. “It’s hip to be ethnic.”
“But wearing a Chinese badge doesn’t really get you any bonus points,” Kevin says. “Man, they’re cutting Asians out, not making more room for them. You’re better off with Laguni.” He laughs. “Hell, some people think Laguni’s Mexican. Mom did.”
“Laguni doesn’t feel right to me. We don’t really belong to the Laguni lineage.”
“Nobody does,” says Kevin. “It’s an orphan’s name.”
“What are you talking about?”
“When I was in Italy a couple of years ago, I tried to look up some Lagunis. I found out it’s just a made-up name that nuns gave to orphans. Laguni—like ‘lagoon,’ isolated from the rest of the world. Bob’s grandfather was an orphan. We’re related to a bunch of orphans in Italy.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell us this before?”
“I told Tommy and Mom. I guess I forgot to tell you because—well, I figured you weren’t a Laguni anymore. Anyway, you and Bob didn’t get along that much. To me, Bob’s the only dad I ever knew. I don’t remember anything about our real father. Do you?”
I do have memories of him: flying into his arms, watching him crack open the claws of a crab, riding on his shoulders as he walked through a crowd. Aren’t they enough that I should pay tribute to his name? Isn’t it time to feel connected to somebody’s name?
AT NOON, I go to the drugstore to pick up Kwan. We first spend twenty minutes while she introduces me to everyone in the store—the pharmacist, the other clerk, her customers, all of whom happen to be her “favoritests.” I choose a Thai restaurant on Castro, where I can watch the street traffic from a window table while Kwan carries on a one-sided conversation. Today I’m taking it like a good sport; she can talk about China, the divorce, my smoking too much, whatever she wants. Today is my gift to Kwan.
I put on my reading glasses and scan the menu. Kwan scrutinizes the restaurant surroundings, the posters of Bangkok, the purple-and-gold fans on the walls. “Nice. Pretty,” she says, as if I had taken her to the finest place in town. She pours us tea. “So!” she proclaims. “Today you not too busy.”
“Just taking care of personal stuff.”
“What kind personal?”
“You know, renewing my residential parking permit, getting my name changed, that sort of thing.”
“Name change? What’s name change?” She unfolds her napkin in her lap.
“I have to do all this junk to change my last name to Yee. It’s a hassle, going to the DMV, the bank, City Hall. . . . What’s the matter?”
Kwan is vigorously shaking her head. Her face is scrunched up. Is she choking?
“Are you all right?”
She flaps her hands, unable to speak, looking frantic.
“Omigod!” I try to recall how to do the Heimlich maneuver.
But now Kwan motions that I should sit down. She swallows her tea, then moans, “Ai-ya, ai-ya. Libby-ah, now I sorry must tell you something. Change name to Yee, don’t do this.”
I steel myself. No doubt she’s going to argue once again that Simon and I shouldn’t divorce.
She leans forward like a spy. “Yee,” she whispers, “that not really Ba’s name.”
I sit back, heart pounding. “What are you talking about?”
“Ladies,” the waiter says. “Have we decided?”
Kwan points to an item on the menu, asking first how to pronounce it. “Fresh?” she asks. The waiter nods, but not with the enthusiasm that Kwan requires. She points to another item. “Tender?”
The waiter nods.
“Which one better?”
He shrugs. “Everything is good,” he says. Kwan looks at him suspiciously, then orders the pad thai noodles.
When the waiter leaves, I ask, “What were you saying?”
“Sometimes menu say fresh—not fresh!” she complains. “You don’t ask, maybe they serve you yesterday leftovers.”
“No, no, not the food. What were you saying about Daddy’s name?”
“Oh! Yes-yes.” She hunches her shoulders, and drops once again to her spy pose. “Ba’s name. Yee not his name, no. This true, Libby-ah! I only telling you so you don’t go through life with wrong name. Why make ancestors happy not our own?”
“What are you talking about? How could Yee not be his name?”
Kwan looks from side to side, as if she were about to reveal the identities of drug lords. “Now I going to tell you something, ah. Don’t tell anyone, promise, Libby-ah?”
I nod, reluctant but already caught. And then Kwan begins to talk in Chinese, the language of our childhood ghosts.
I’m telling you the truth, Libby-ah. Ba took another person’s name. He stole the fate of a lucky man.
During the war, that’s when it happened, when Ba was at National Guangxi University, studying physics. This was in Liangfeng, near Guilin. Ba was from a poor family, but his father sent him to a missionary boarding school when he was a young boy. You didn’t have to pay anything, just promise to love Jesus. That’s why Ba’s English was so good.
I don’t remember any of this. I’m just telling you what Li Bin-bin, my auntie, said. Back then, my mother, Ba, and I lived in a small room in Liangfeng, near the university. In the mornings, Ba went to his classes. In the afternoons, he worked in a factory, putting together radio parts. The factory paid him by the number of pieces he finished, so he didn’t make very much money. My auntie said Ba was more nimble with his mind than with his fingers. At night, Ba and his classmates threw their money together to buy kerosene for a shared lamp. On full-moon nights they didn’t need a lamp. They could sit outside and study until dawn. That’s what I also did when I was growing up. Did you know that? Can you see how in China the full moon is both beautiful and a bargain?
One night, when Ba was on his way home from his studies, a drunkard stepped out of an alley and blocked his way. He waved a suit coat in his hands. “This coat,” he said, “has been in my family for many generations. But now I must sell it. Look at my face, I’m just a common man from the hundred family names. What use do I have for such fancy clothes?”
Ba looked at the suit coat. It was made of excellent cloth, lined and tailored in a modern style. You have to remember, Libby-ah, this was 1948, when the Nationalists and Communists were fighting over China. Who could afford a coat like this? Someone important, a big official, a dangerous man who got all his money taking bribes from scared people. Our Ba didn’t have cotton batting for brains. Hnh! He knew the drunkard had stolen the coat and they both could lose their heads trading in such goods. But once Ba put his fingers on that coat, he was like a small fly caught in a big spider’s web. He could not let go. A new feeling ran through him. Ah! To feel the seams of a rich man’s coat—to think this was the closest he had ever come to a better life. And then this dangerous feeling led to a dangerous desire, and this desire led to a dangerous idea.
He shouted at the drunkard: “I know this coat is stolen, because I know its owner. Quick! Tell me where you got it or I’ll call the police!” The guilty thief dropped the coat and ran off.
Back in our little room, Ba showed my mother the coat. She told me later how he slipped his arms into the sleeves, imagining that the power of its former owner now streamed through his own body. In one pocket he found a pair of thick eyeglasses. He put these on and swung out one arm, and in his mind a hundred people leapt to attention and bowed. He clapped his hands lightly, and a dozen servants rushed from his dreams to bring him food. He patted his stomach, full from h
is make-believe meal. And that’s when Ba felt something else.
Eh, what’s this? Something stiff was caught in the lining of the suit coat. My mother used her fine scissors to cut away the threads along the seam. Libby-ah, what they found must have caused their minds to whirl like clouds in a storm. From within the lining fell out a stack of papers— official documents for immigrating to America! On the first page there was a name written in Chinese: Yee Jun. Below that, it was in English: Jack Yee.
You have to imagine, Libby-ah, during civil wartime, papers like these were worth many men’s lives and fortunes. In our Ba’s trembling hands were certified academic records, a quarantine health certificate, a student visa, and a letter of enrollment to Lincoln University in San Francisco, one year’s tuition already paid. He looked inside an envelope: it contained a one-way ticket on American President Lines and two hundred U.S. dollars. And there was also this: a study sheet for passing the immigration examination upon landing.
Oh, Libby-ah, this was very bad business. Don’t you see what I’m saying? In those days, Chinese money was worthless. It must be that this man Yee had bought the papers for a lot of gold and bad favors. Did he betray secrets to the Nationalists? Did he sell the names of leaders in the People’s Liberation Army?
My mother was scared. She told Ba to throw the coat into the Li River. But Ba had a wild-dog look in his eyes. He said, “I can change my fate. I can become a rich man.” He told my mother to go live with her sister in Changmian and wait. “Once I’m in America, I will send for you and our daughter, I promise.”
My mother stared at the visa photo of the man Ba would soon become, Yee Jun, Jack Yee. He was an unsmiling thin man, only two years older than Ba. He was not handsome, not like Ba. This man Yee had short hair, a mean face, and he wore thick glasses in front of his cold eyes. You can see a person’s heart through his eyes, and my mother said this man Yee looked like the sort of person who would say, “Roll out of the way, you worthless maggot!”
That night my mother watched Ba turn himself into this man Yee by putting on his clothes, cutting his hair. She watched him put on the thick eyeglasses. And when he faced her, she saw his tiny eyes, so cold-looking. He had no warm feelings anymore for my mother. She said it was as though he had become this man Yee, the man in the photo, a man who was arrogant and powerful—eager to be rid of his past, in a hurry to start his new fate.
So that’s how Ba stole his name. As to Ba’s real name, I don’t know what it is. I was so young, and then, as you already know, my mother died. You are lucky no such tragedy like this has happened to you. Later, my auntie refused to tell me Ba’s real name because he left her sister. That was my auntie’s revenge. And my mother wouldn’t tell me either, even after she died. But I’ve often wondered what his name was. A few times I invited Ba to visit me from the World of Yin. But other yin friends tell me he is stuck somewhere else, a foggy place where people believe their lies are true. Isn’t this sad, Libby-ah? If I could learn his real name, I would tell him. Then he could go to the World of Yin, say sorry to my mother, so sorry, and live in peace with our ancestors.
That’s why you must go to China, Libby-ah. When I saw that letter yesterday I said to myself, This is your fate waiting to happen! People in Changmian might still remember his name, my auntie for one, I’m sure of it. The man who became Yee, that’s what Big Ma, my auntie, always called him. You ask my Big Ma when you go. Ask her what our Ba’s real name is.
Ah! What am I saying! You won’t know how to ask. She doesn’t speak Mandarin. She’s so old she never went to school to learn the people’s common language. She speaks the Changmian dialect, not Hakka, not Mandarin, something in between, and only people from the village speak that. Also, you have to be very clever how you ask her questions about the past, otherwise she’ll chase you away like a mad duck plucking at your feet. I know her ways. What a temper she has!
Don’t worry, though, I’m going with you. I already promised. I never forget my promises. You and me, the two of us, we can change our father’s name back to its true one. Together we can send him at last to the World of Yin.
And Simon! He must come along too. That way, you can still do the magazine article, get some money to go. Also, we need him to carry the suitcases. I have to bring lots of gifts. I can’t go home with empty hands. Virgie can cook for Georgie, her dishes aren’t so bad. And Georgie can take care of your dog, no need to pay anyone.
Yes, yes, the three of us together, Simon, you, me. I think this is the most practical, the best way to change your name.
Hey, Libby-ah, what do you think?
12
THE BEST TIME TO EAT DUCK EGGS
Kwan doesn’t argue to get her own way. She uses more effective methods, a combination of the old Chinese water torture approach and American bait-and-switch.
“Libby-ah,” she says. “What month we go China, see my village?”
“I’m not going, remember?”
“Oh, right-right. Okay, what month you think I should go? September, probably still too hot. October, too many tourist. November, not too hot, not too cold, maybe this best time.”
“Whatever.”
The next day, Kwan says, “Libby-ah, Georgie can’t go, not enough vacation time earn up yet. You think Virgie and Ma come with me?”
“Sure, why not? Ask them.”
A week later, Kwan says, “Ai-ya! Libby-ah! I already buy three ticket. Now Virgie got new job, Ma got new boyfriend. Both say, Sorry, can’t go. And travel agent, she say sorry too, no refund.” She gives me a look of agony. “Ai-ya, Libby-ah, what I do?”
I think about it. I could pretend to fall for her routine. But I can’t bring myself to do it. “I’ll see if I can find someone to go with you,” I say instead.
In the evening, Simon calls me. “I was thinking about the China trip. I don’t want our breakup to be the reason you miss out on this. Take another writer—Chesnick or Kelly, they’re both great on travel pieces. I’ll call them for you, if you want.”
I’m stunned. He keeps persuading me to go with Kwan, to use her homecoming as a personal angle to the story. I turn over in my head all the permutations of meanings in what he’s saying. Maybe there’s a chance we can become friends, the kind of buddies we were when we first met. As we continue on the phone, I recall what initially attracted us to each other—the way our ideas grew in logic or hilarity or passion the more we talked. And that’s when I feel the grief for what we’ve lost over the years: the excitement and wonder of being in the world at the same time and in the same place.
“Simon,” I say at the end of our two-hour conversation, “I really appreciate this. . . . I think it’d be nice to one day be friends.”
“I never stopped being yours,” he says.
And at that moment I let go of all restraint. “Well, then, why don’t you come to China too?”
ON THE PLANE, I begin to look for omens. That’s because Kwan said, when we checked in at the airport: “You, me, Simon—going China! This our fate join together at last.”
And I think, Fate as in “the mysterious fate of Amelia Earhart.” Fate as in the Latin root of “fatal.” It doesn’t help matters that the Chinese airline Kwan chose for its discount fare has suffered three crashes in the past six months, two of them while landing in Guilin, where we’re headed, after a four-hour stopover in Hong Kong. My confidence in the airline takes another nosedive when we board. The Chinese flight attendants greet us wearing tam-o’-shanters and kilts, an inexplicable fashion choice that makes me question our caretakers’ ability to deal with hijackers, loss of engine parts, and unscheduled ocean landings.
As Kwan, Simon, and I struggle down the narrow aisle, I notice there isn’t a single white person in coach, unless you count Simon and me. Does this mean something?
Like many of the Chinese people on board, Kwan is gripping a tote bag of gifts in each hand. These are in addition to the suitcase full of presents that has already gone into checked baggage. I imagine tomor
row’s television newscast: “An air-pump thermos, plastic food-savers, packets of Wisconsin ginseng—these were among the debris that littered the runway after a tragic crash killed Horatio Tewksbury III of Atherton, who was seated in first class, and four hundred Chinese who dreamed of returning as success stories to their ancestral homeland.”
When we see where our assigned seats are, I groan. Center row, smack in the middle, with people on both sides. An old woman sitting at the other end of the aisle stares at us glumly, then coughs. She prays aloud to an unspecified deity that no one will take the three seats next to her, and cites that she has a very bad disease and needs to lie down and sleep. Her coughing becomes more violent. Unfortunately for her, the deity must be out to lunch, because we sit down.
When the drink trolley finally arrives, I ask for relief in the form of a gin and tonic. The flight attendant doesn’t understand.
“Gin and tonic,” I repeat, and then say in Chinese: “A slice of lemon, if you have it.”
She consults her comrade, who likewise shrugs in puzzlement.
“Ni you scotch meiyou?” I try. “Do you have scotch?”
They laugh at this joke.
Surely you have scotch, I want to shout. Look at the ridiculous costumes you have on!
But “scotch” is not a word I’ve learned to say in Chinese, and Kwan isn’t about to assist me. In fact, she looks rather pleased with my frustration and the flight attendants’ confusion. I settle for a Diet Coke.
Meanwhile, Simon sits on my other side, playing Flight Simulator on his laptop. “Whoa-whoa- whoa! Shit.” This is followed by the sounds of a crash-and-burn. He turns to me. “Captain Bishop here says drinks are on the house.”
Throughout the trip, Kwan acts tipsy with happiness. She repeatedly squeezes my arm and grins. For the first time in more than thirty years, she’ll be on Chinese soil, in Changmian, the village where she lived until she was eighteen. She’ll see her aunt, the woman she calls Big Ma, who brought her up and, according to Kwan, horribly abused her, pinching her cheeks so hard she left her with crescent-shaped scars.