Dreams of Joy: A Novel (2 page)

Joy

LIFE SAVERS

I TURN DOWN
Broadway and then onto Sunset, which allows me to continue passing places I want to remember. The Mexican tourist attraction of Olvera Street is closed, but strings of gaily colored carnival lights cast a golden glow over the closed souvenir stands. To my right is the Plaza, the birthplace of the city, with its wrought-iron bandstand. Just beyond that, I see the entrance to Sanchez Alley. When I was little, my family lived on the second floor of the Garnier Building on Sanchez Alley, and now my heart fills with memories of my grandmother playing with me in the Plaza, my aunt treating me to Mexican lollipops on Olvera Street, and my mother taking me through here every day to and from school in Chinatown. Those were happy years, and yet they were also filled with so many secrets that I wonder what in my life was real at all.

Before me, palm trees throw perfect shadows on Union Station’s stucco walls. The clock tower reads 2:47 a.m. I was barely a year old when the train station opened, so this place too has been a constant in my life. There are no cars or streetcars at this hour, so I don’t bother waiting for the light to change and dash across Alameda. A lone taxi sits at the curb outside the terminal. Inside, the cavernous waiting room is deserted, and my footsteps echo on the marble and tile floors. I slip into a telephone booth and shut the door. An overhead light comes on, and I see myself in the glass’s reflection.

My mother always discouraged me from acting like a peacock. “You don’t want to be like your auntie,” she always chastised me if she caught me looking in a mirror. Now I realize she never wanted me to look too closely. Because now that I look, now that I
really
look, I see just how much I resemble Auntie May. My eyebrows are shaped like willow leaves, my skin is pale, my lips are full, and my hair is onyx black. My family always insisted that I keep it long and I used to be able to sit on it, but earlier this year I went to a salon in Chicago and asked to have it cut short like Audrey Hepburn’s. The beautician called it a pixie cut. Now my hair is boy-short and shines even here in the dim light of the phone booth.

I dump the contents of my coin purse on the ledge, then dial Joe’s number and wait for the operator to tell me how much the first three minutes will cost. I put the coins in the slot, and Joe’s line rings. It’s close to five a.m. in Chicago, so I’m waking him up.

“Hello?” comes his groggy voice.

“It’s me,” I say, trying to sound enthusiastic. “I’ve run away. I’m ready to do what we talked about.”

“What time is it?”

“You need to get up. Pack. Get on a plane to San Francisco. We’re going to China. You said we should be a part of what’s happening there. Well, let’s do it.”

Across the telephone line, I hear him roll over and sit up.

“Joy?”

“Yes, yes, it’s me. We’re going to China!”

“China? You mean the People’s Republic of China? Jesus, Joy, it’s the middle of the night. Are you okay? Did something happen?”

“You took me to get my passport so we could go together.”

“Are you crazy?”

“You said that if we went to China we’d work in the fields and sing songs,” I continue. “We’d do exercises in the park. We’d help clean the neighborhood and share meals. We wouldn’t be poor and we wouldn’t be rich. We’d all be equal.”

“Joy—”

“Being Chinese and carrying that on our shoulders and in our hearts can be a burden, but it’s also a source of pride and joy. You said that too.”

“It’s one thing to talk about all that’s happening in China, but I have a future here—dental school, joining my dad’s practice.… I never planned on actually going there.”

When I hear the ridicule in his voice, I wonder what all those meetings and all his chatter were about. Was talking about equal rights, sharing the wealth, and the value of socialism over capitalism just a way to get in my pants? (Not that I let him.)

“I’d be killed and so would you,” he concludes, echoing the same propaganda that Uncle Vern has recited to me all summer.

“But it was your idea!”

“Look, it’s the middle of the night. Call me tomorrow. No, don’t do that. It costs too much. You’ll be back here in a couple of weeks. We can talk about it then.”

“But—”

The line goes dead.

I refuse to allow my fury with and disappointment in Joe to shake me from my plan. My mom has always tried to nurture my best characteristics. Those born in the Year of the Tiger are romantic and artistic, but she has always cautioned me that it’s also in a Tiger’s nature to be rash and impulsive, to leap away when circumstances are rough. These things my mom has tried to cage in me, but my desire to leap is overwhelming and I won’t let this setback stop me. I’m determined to find my father, even if he lives in a country of over 600 million people.

I go back outside. The taxi is still here. The driver sleeps in the front seat. I tap on the window, and he wakes with a jerk.

“Take me to the airport,” I say.

Once there, I head straight for the Western Airlines counter, because I’ve always liked their television commercials. To go to Shanghai, I’ll have to fly to Hong Kong first. To go to Hong Kong, I’ll have to depart from San Francisco. I buy a ticket for the first leg of my journey and board the day’s first flight to San Francisco. It’s still early morning when I land. I go to the Pan Am counter to ask about Flight 001, which goes all the way around the world with stops in Honolulu, Tokyo, and Hong Kong. The woman in her perky uniform looks at me strangely when I pay cash for a one-way ticket to Hong Kong, but when I hand her my passport, she gives me the ticket anyway.

I have a couple of hours to wait for my plane. I find a phone booth and call Hazel’s house. I don’t plan on telling her where I’m going. Joe already let me down, and I suspect Hazel’s reaction would be even worse. She’d warn me that Red China is a bad place and stuff like that—all the usual negativity we’re both accustomed to hearing from our families.

The youngest Yee sister answers the phone, and she hands me over to Hazel.

“I want to say good-bye,” I say. “I’m leaving the country.”

“What are you talking about?” Hazel asks.

“I have to get away.”

“You’re
leaving
the country?”

I can tell Hazel doesn’t believe me—because neither of us has been anywhere other than Big Bear and San Diego for weekend excursions with the Methodist church, and college—but she will later. By then, I’ll be somewhere over the Pacific. There’ll be no turning back.

“You’ve always been a good friend,” I tell her. Tears cloud my eyes. “You’ve been my best friend. Don’t forget me.”

“I won’t forget you.” Then after a pause, she asks, “So do you want to go to Bullock’s this afternoon? I wouldn’t mind buying some things to take back to Berkeley.”

“You’re the best, Haz. Bye.”

The click of the receiver going back into the cradle sounds final.

When my flight is called, I board and take my seat. My fingers seek out the pouch I wear around my neck. Auntie May gave it to me last summer before I left for Chicago. It contains three sesame seeds, three beans, and three coppers from China. “Our mother gave these pouches to Pearl and me to protect us when we fled Shanghai,” she told me last night. “I gave mine to you on the day you were born. Your mother didn’t want you to wear it when you were a baby, but she let me give it to you when you went away to college. I’m glad you’ve worn it this past year.” My aunt … My mom … My eyes begin to well, but I fight back the tears, knowing that, if I start to cry, I may never stop.

But how could May have given me up? How could my real father have let me go? And what about my father Sam? Did he know I wasn’t his? May said no one else knew. If he
had
known, he wouldn’t have killed himself. He would still be alive to throw me out on the street as the disrespectful, shameful, deceitful, troublemaking bastard that I am. Well, I’m out now. My mom and aunt are probably up, and still not speaking to each other but beginning to wonder where I am. I’m glad I’m not there to choose which mother to love and be loyal to, even with all their poisonous secrets, because that’s an impossible choice. Worst, there’s going to be a moment when things calm down and my mom and aunt make peace—and they go over everything again with a fine-tooth comb, as they always do—that they put two and two together and realize that
I’m
the real source of what happened to my father Sam, not Auntie May. How will they react when it finally sinks in that
I’m
the one the FBI was interested in, that
I’m
the one who led Agent Sanders right to our home, causing such devastation? When that happens, they’ll be glad I’m gone. Maybe.

I let go of my pouch and wipe my sweaty hands on my skirt. I’m anxious—who wouldn’t be?—but I can’t let myself worry about how what I’m doing might affect my mom and aunt. I love them both, but I’m mad at them and afraid of what they’ll think of me too—and just like that, I know I’ll always call May my auntie and Pearl my mom. Otherwise I’ll be more confused than I already am. If Hazel were sitting next to me, she’d say, “Oh, Joy, you’re a mess.” Fortunately, she’s not here.

ABOUT A BILLION
hours later, we land in Hong Kong. Some men roll a set of stairs to the plane, and I get off with the rest of the passengers. Waves of heat shimmy off the tarmac, and the air is stiflingly hot, with humidity that’s even worse than when I left Chicago in June. I follow the other passengers into the terminal, down a dingy hall, to a big room with lots of lines for passport control. When my turn comes, the man asks in a crisp British accent, “What is your final destination?”

“Shanghai in the People’s Republic of China,” I answer.

“Stand to the side!” He gets on the phone, and in a couple of minutes two guards come to get me. They take me to the baggage area to retrieve my suitcase, and then I’m led down more shadowy hallways. I don’t see any other passengers, only people in uniforms who stare at me suspiciously.

“Where are we going?”

One of the guards answers my question by roughly jerking my arm. Finally we reach a set of double doors. We push through them and back into the horrible heat. I’m put in the back of a windowless van and told to keep quiet. The guards get in up front, and we start to drive. I can’t see anything. I don’t understand what’s going on and I’m scared—petrified, if I’m honest. All I can do is hang on as the van makes sharp turns and goes over bumpy roads. It pulls to a stop after a half hour. The guards come around to the back of the van. They talk for a few minutes, leaving me inside to worry and sweat. When the doors are opened, I see that we’re on a wharf where a big boat is taking on cargo. The boat flies the flag of the People’s Republic of China—five gold stars on a red background. That same mean guard yanks me out of the van and drags me to the gangplank.

“We don’t want you spreading communism here,” he practically yells at me as he hands me my suitcase. “Get on the boat and don’t get off until you reach China.”

The two guards stand at the bottom of the gangplank to make sure I board. All this is a surprise—an intimidating and unsettling surprise. At the top of the gangplank, I see a sailor. No, that’s not what he’d be called. He’s a crewman, I think. He speaks rapidly to me in Mandarin, the official language of China and a language I don’t feel confident about in its pure form. I’ve heard my mother and aunt converse in the Wu dialect—Shanghainese—my whole life. I believe I know it well but not nearly as well as I do Cantonese, which was the common language in Chinatown. When talking to my family, I’ve always used a little Cantonese, a little Shanghainese, and a little English. I guess I’ll be giving up English entirely from here on out.

“Can you say that again, and maybe a little slower?” I ask.

“Are you returning to the motherland?”

I nod, pretty sure I’m understanding him.

“Good, welcome! I’ll show you where to bunk. Then I’ll take you to the captain. You’ll pay him for your ticket.”

I look back down to the two guards still watching me on the wharf. I wave, like an idiot. And then I follow the crewman. When I was younger, I worked as an extra with my aunt in lots of movies. I was once in a film about Chinese orphans being evacuated by boat from China during the war, and this is nothing like that set. There’s rust everywhere. The stairs are narrow and steep. The corridors are dimly lit. We’re still docked, but I can feel the sway of the water beneath my feet, which suggests that this might not be the most seaworthy vessel. I’m told I’ll have a cabin to myself, but when I see it, it’s hard to imagine sharing the claustrophobically small space with anyone else. It’s hot outside and it may be even hotter in here.

Later I’m introduced to the captain. His teeth are tobacco stained and his uniform is grimy with food and oil. He watches closely when I open my wallet and pay for my ticket. The whole thing is kind of creepy.

On my way back to my cabin, I remind myself this is what I wanted. Run away. Adventure. Find my father. A joyful reunion. Although I only just found out that Z.G. Li is my father, I’d heard about him before. He used to paint my mom and aunt when they were models back in Shanghai. I’ve never seen any of those posters, but I did see some of the illustrations he did for
China Reconstructs
, a propaganda magazine my grandfather used to buy from under the table at the tobacconist. It was strange seeing my mother’s and aunt’s faces on the cover of a magazine from
Red
China. Z.G. Li had painted them from memory, and he did so many more times. By then he’d changed his name to Li Zhi-ge, probably in keeping with the political changes in China, according to my mom. My aunt liked to pin the magazine covers with his illustrations to the wall above her bed, so I feel like I already know a bit about him as an artist. I’m sure that Z.G.—or whatever he wants me to call him—will be very surprised and happy to see me. These thoughts temporarily alleviate my concerns about the soundness of the boat and its strange captain.