Dreams of the Red Phoenix (29 page)

In the front hall, Kathryn and two of his mother's choir
friends had been let in. Mrs. Reed and Mrs. Carr whispered to
one another as the nurse's assistant in the Red Army trousers and
cap eyed them, her arms crossed.

Kathryn called out to Charles as he joined them, “We have
come to take you home, dear boy!”

He wiped sleep from his eyes with his elbow and pulled the
loose shirt around his ribs. It had gotten too small, leaving his
middle exposed. As Kathryn studied him from his bare toes to
the top of his head, Charles regretted not dressing properly.

“My, he has grown, hasn't he?” Mrs. Carr said.

“We'd best lock up our daughters,” Mrs. Reed whispered.

Kathryn planted a damp kiss on his cheek and took his hand.
“Ladies, I shall take full responsibility for him from now on.”
Then she turned and patted his chest through the wrinkled shirt.
“Are you packed?”

Charles nodded, his eyes on the hand that remained on his chest.

“We're counting on you to escort us. The men won't come
along until later. The plan is for women and children to meet at
the southwest gate at noon. Bring only what you can carry. Rev
erend Wells is trying to see if some of our possessions and furni
ture can be shipped home, but I'm sure your mother knows about
that. Where is she, anyway? Somewhere around here, I assume?”

The ladies peered into the quiet clinic, where one or two as
sistants tended to a handful of patients. All but a few of the beds
were empty now. No new influx had come for days, perhaps
weeks, the military action having moved even farther away from
town, Charles guessed. Just then, out of the corner of his eye, he
noticed the muslin curtain rustle at one of the front windows.
Dao-Ming turned at the dining room corner and headed for the
basement steps.

Mrs. Reed peered into the clinic and said, “I had no idea Shir
ley had
this
going on.”

“We were overrun with Chinese at first, too,” Mrs. Carr said,
“but I can't imagine still having them in my home.”

“She lost her husband so recently, poor dear, and must have
needed to fill the void.”

Charles wanted to speak up on his mother's behalf but didn't.
He hoped Kathryn might defend her, but instead she asked,
“Any idea where she is, Charles? Or have you lost track of her
like the rest of us?”

“I'm sure she's around somewhere. She's terribly busy and has
a great deal to manage. We'll be at the gate at noon. No problem.
Thanks for telling us.”

He escorted Kathryn and the ladies out, shut the heavy door,
and leaned against it. The smoky scent of the dark carved rose
wood enveloped him, so familiar and commonplace here. He
wanted to let out a shout. He was finally departing, leaving be
hind every strange, exotic smell and sight he had become accus
tomed to over the years. But where was his mother? She must
be on her way home, he thought, and would surely arrive at any
minute. At least he desperately hoped so, and he pushed from his
mind any thought otherwise.

Charles strode to the top of the basement steps and called
down for Dao-Ming, thinking she might know his mother's
whereabouts, but no answer came. Perhaps she had helped his
father with the pigeons, but he couldn't imagine how she had
been of any use with the radio. Though now that he thought
about it, he recalled her slipping into the cellar many times. He
had always assumed it was to collect the root vegetables that Lian
stored down there, but who knew the real reason? Charles head
ed into the clinic. He stood over the young Communist nurse
in khakis and Red Army cap as she knelt beside a grandmother
stretched out on a cot.

“Good morning, miss,” he said to the nurse.

He didn't know her name but had overheard his mother
and Captain Hsu discussing the diligent way she performed her
work. She seemed all right, a little plain and far too serious. He
wondered if he could get a smile out of her.

“So, what's the story, morning glory?” he tried.

She didn't look up.

“I bet you don't even know what a morning glory is. How
about, hey, good-lookin', what's cookin'? Nothing, right? Hardly
any food around here at all.”

“Go away, we are busy,” she finally said, still not looking up.

“I'll leave you alone, but I wonder if you've seen my mother?”

The young Communist nurse finally glanced up at him, and
the edges of her lips rose slightly.

“Hey, I got a smile out of you,” he said. “You like my outfit?”

Her expression became stern again. “No Nurse Carson here,”
she said and stood. “She has served her purpose and is no longer
needed. We are better off without her.”

“Gee, that's rude,” Charles said. “She set up this clinic, you
know? It's our house.”

“This is not your house. Never your house.”

“How ungrateful. After all she's done for you.”

The young woman turned back to her patient. “You are a
young, insignificant boy. Leave us alone.”

“Now, wait a minute,” he said and touched her shoulder.

The woman jumped up and put her hand on the butt of the
pistol tucked into her Red Army belt. She began to shout, “Get
out! No more foreign devils here! America business steal North
China coal, become rich, while we Chinese starve. You and Moth
er do nothing to stand up to the yellow sons of whores from Ja
pan! You are bad people, not good! Get out before I shoot you!”

The woman waved her pistol in the air as Charles stumbled
out the front door and onto the porch. He held on to the column,
his head dizzy from her crazy words. A searing hunger bit into
him. As he caught his breath, he noticed that only a few Chinese
passed by in the empty courtyard below. For days, he had seen
them packing up and departing. The ground they left behind
was hard and cracked from their many footfalls. As the last of the
campfires died out, litter remained strewn throughout the com
pound—scraps of newspaper, old sheets of tin, wooden planks,
and piles of rubbish everywhere.

Across the way at the Reeds' house, Charles saw the Reverend
lugging his wife's and daughters' straw suitcases down the porch
steps. The vegetable garden to the side of their home had been
trampled and used as a bathroom for weeks, but one lone sun
flower still hung its dried head over the churned-up soil.

Each spring, Caleb Carson had been the first to farm that
small plot. Charles would follow his father outside and helped
push the seeds deep into the thick yellow clay, patting down the
soil and shaping it around each thin stalk. He could practically
feel the dampness of it between his fingers. Charles rubbed his
hands together now. His father had been swallowed up by that
same entrapping earth. Charles wrapped his shirt tighter around
his ribs and knew that the unsettled air meant rain.

When he was young and the autumn storms finally came, he
and Han used to splash in puddles that formed quickly in the
parched dirt. They painted each other's faces with mud in great
slashes like war paint, becoming Indians on the American West
ern plains and doing war dances in the rain. Charles wondered
why they had never pretended to be characters from Chinese lore.
He had insisted on cowboys and Indians, and Han, being a good
guy, had gone along with it, playing Tonto to Charles's masked
man. They never switched parts because why would they, when
Charles was the leader and Han the follower?

Charles felt his cheeks flame. As they grew older, Charles
had imitated suave leading men, Cary Grant or Clark Gable,
while Han was always cast as his trusty manservant. He spat over
the side of the porch now and slapped his palms on the railing.
“Damn,” he said to no one and let himself wonder if maybe the
Communist nurse was right: he and the other Americans had
been squatters all along. Outsiders who never knew the truth but
barreled ahead anyway, insisting on their way. His mother had
tried to help with the clinic, and the Chinese had followed her
instructions, but she had never been in charge. Captain Hsu, and
now this young Communist nurse, and perhaps other Chinese
whom Charles didn't even know about, actually ran the show.
Charles and his mother had thought they were the leading actors,
when really he could see now that they were but extras in China's
fast-moving play.

He set off down the steps and across the courtyard, slipped
down the alley, and came out in the servants' quarters. The same
eerie emptiness met him there. He didn't bother to turn toward
Han's house. He knew that his friend would be on the front lines
by now: happy to choose his own role and not have it assigned to
him by his American friend.

Han had been the braver of the two, Charles realized now.
Han had worked hard since he was a boy, been loyal to his father,
and always performed his duties with care and respect. By com
parison, Charles had never been leading-man material at all. He
caught his breath and leaned a hand against the rough-hewn wall
of Lian's quarters, as he had that day when he had stood over Li
Juan and tried to appear handsome and debonair. The poor girl
had just come from the dangerous countryside, and he had tried
to impress her with his new sneakers.

He turned and peered into the darkened room. Lian stood
with her hands on her hips in front of her mother, who lay on a
straw mat with her arms crossed over her chest. The old woman
had finally died, Charles thought. As he joined Lian, he wanted
to offer his condolences and for once be of help to her and not the
other way around. But he pulled up short when he saw that the
old woman's eyes remained open, her face set in a grimace.

“Mother,” Lian said, “you are behaving like a stubborn old
mule.”

“That is what I am. Nothing more.”

“Hello, Lian,” Charles said softly. “Everything all right?”

“Do not bother us now, Charles-Boy. We must leave right
away, but Mother refuses to go another step. She prefers to lie
here and be raped and murdered. She wants my two precious
daughters to be kidnapped by dwarf bandit soldiers and taken
away on their trains to a life of servitude and misery. This is what
happens when you are stubborn, Mother, and refuse to do what
is best for all!”

Charles didn't know what to say, but a bright voice responded
from the kitchen area.

“I say we leave her,” Li Juan said.

Lian snapped her fingers hard. “If you think that, you are no
child of mine. We bring her.”

Li Juan stepped closer. “I'm not carrying her.”

“We will find a way. This cot will serve as a stretcher.”

Charles cleared his throat and ventured to ask, “Can she walk
at all?”

Li Juan ignored him and headed for the door, dragging a bun
dle made of a sheet with his mother's initials monogrammed on it.
Charles followed close on her heels as she stepped into the alley.

“I came to say good-bye,” he said.

Li Juan finally looked at him and giggled. “What are you
wearing?”

He looked down at his ill-fitting colorful pajamas. “Nothing,
it doesn't matter. I just want to say thank you.”

“For what?”

“I—” he glanced into Lian's small, dark room and then up the
rutted path with ditches on both sides that stank of human waste.
He wanted to say for everything. For absolutely everything. “I'm
not sure,” he offered. “But thanks.”