Dreams of the Red Phoenix (36 page)

He nodded.

“After all our years in China, I would think that you might
know more about filial piety than you have shown me today.
Would Lian have approved of your behavior?”

Charles shook his head.

“Would Han?”

“No, Mother.”

“All right, then,” she said and stepped closer and lowered her
voice. “The truth is, I'm a poor example for you. But without
your father here, we must help one another to stay on track.
We
are our brothers' keepers
, as he used to say.
We are one
. We must
remind each other of that. But I think we can do it if we put our
minds to it, don't you?”

He offered another nod.

“Good.” Then she held open her arms and said, “Now, give
your mother a proper hug.”

He fell toward her more gladly than she could have hoped.

“I love you, my dear, and always will,” she said.

“I know, Mother,” he said and dipped into her embrace.

After a long moment, he stepped back and said, “Here, come
stand with us. It really is an excellent spot to wave farewell to
China.”

The three Americans stood side by side at the railing. Shirley
placed her hand around the metal, and to her happy amazement,
Charles set his much larger one on top. Very few things in life,
she thought, would ever feel as satisfying as that sweaty, strong
palm on the bony back of her hand.

An image came to her in that moment, as it would often from
then on: Captain Hsu smoking as he leaned against the wooden
railing on her front porch, a wry, knowing smile barely raising
the corners of his mouth. He would forever be pointing out to
her her weaknesses and the weaknesses of her people. He would
serve as her insistent reminder that she rise to be her better self,
as she had, however briefly, on these shores.

The enormous ship began to rumble. Deep in the hull, its en
gine spun the massive propellers as ocean water frothed at the
stern. The final horn blasted over their heads, startling Shirley so
badly that she gripped Charles's hand. He laughed and squeezed
hers in return.

“We're going home, Mother. We're finally going home.”

He looked as excited as a small boy, the one she had known so
well and still knew even now, though differently. A roiling wake
formed behind them as they left the chaos on the shore. The boat
created a fierce and unyielding undertow—so strong that if a
person slipped and fell into it, he would be sucked downward
and drowned in its thick embrace. History had done the same
here in this country they were leaving behind. Her husband had
slid into it and died instantly in a landslide, while Captain Hsu,
Shirley feared, had met it in an enemy bullet on a wet and lonely
night in the mission courtyard, with herself to blame.

And yet, despite her sorrow, Shirley had come to love this vast
and maddening cipher of a country. The Middle Kingdom, as
China had called itself from ancient times, Center of All Under
the Vast Heavens, was known as encompassing all things in all
seasons: the brick walkways and dusty grounds of the mission
compound, the grassy plains where peaceful streams ran past wil
lows, the purple-shrouded mountains in the distance, and even
the teeming, desperate streets of Shanghai. As she and her son
left it behind, morning sunlight sliced the air over the masses,
coating the foreign bank and merchant buildings on the shore in
a fiery wash.

M
y grandmother Gertrude Chaney Pye was a missionary in China
from 1909 to 1942. When her husband, Reverend Watts O. Pye,
died in 1926, Gertrude did not return to America but instead chose to
remain in Shanxi Province to raise her son, my father, Lucian W. Pye.
When the Japanese invaded Manchuria in 1931, then occupied North
China in the lead-up to the Second Sino-Japanese War that started in
1937, she stayed. When my father went off to college in the United
States in 1939, Gertrude still stayed. Only Pearl Harbor finally forced
her to leave. She made passage in 1942 on one of the last boats out, the
Gripsholm
, a neutral Swedish ship. As a child, I heard many stories
about her, but one in particular stood out: during the Japanese occu
pation, she shooed Japanese soldiers off her front porch with a broom.

When I mentioned this anecdote about my grandmother to my ed
itor, Greg Michalson, who I was fortunate to work with on my first
novel,
River of Dust
, he suggested I write a new novel inspired by her
experience. I'm deeply grateful to him for his literary wisdom and keen
editorial eye and for his excellent team at Unbridled Books. I'm also
thankful to my delightful publicist, Caitlin Hamilton Summie, and to
my generous agent, Gail Hochman.

China and Japan scholars Patrick Cranley, Prof. Richard J. Samu
els, Virginia Stibbs Anami, Rick Dyck, Jeanne Barnett, and Pat Bar
nett Brubaker helped me grasp the history of North China in the 1930s.
My story was informed in particular by the biographies and journals
of three American women who lived in China during that era: Agnes
Smedley, Helen Foster Snow, and Nym Wales. The China experienc
es of my father and his closest friends, Charles T. Cross and Harold
R. Isaacs—uncle and grandfather figures to me as a girl—were also
crucial, as were seminal texts by Edgar Snow and Jonathan D. Spence,
numerous other personal accounts of that time, and several studies of
warlords, including one by my father.

This novel was written in his memory and is also for Eva and Dan
iel, who show me the way as they blaze forward in life.