Homesick (5 page)

After breakfast we walked on top of the wall that separated the Hulls' property from the Chinese farms. It was an eight-foot-high wall and when you stood on it, you felt as if you owned the world. Today with the air crisp and the sun making highlights on my hair, I felt especially pleased with that world. It was like a picture postcard. Across the background a water buffalo walked with a boy on its back. The rest of the picture was divided neatly into little farm plots, each with its mud hut, each with its creaking well. From this height the people didn't look like poor, overworked Chinese; they seemed to be toy people going happily about their business. And I felt like a queen, walking the turret of my castle. I waved my arm at the scene below.

“That's our kingdom,” I announced to Andrea. “And I am Queen Marjorie. Who are you?”

“You are Queen—who?”

“Marjorie.”

Andrea gave me the same kind of withering look as my mother had. “Marjorie is not a name for a queen,” she said. “It's not a decent name for anyone.”

I felt myself getting mad, so to be safe, I sat down, my feet dangling over the Chinese side of the wall.

“I happen to like the name Marjorie,” I said stiffly. “I guess I can be Queen-anything-I-want-to-be. What's your name?”

Andrea was sitting down too. “Queen Zobeide.”

I didn't have the chance to tell her what I thought of her name. Actually both of us forgot all about being queens because at that moment an old woman stepped out of a hut and started shrieking and cursing at a man in the next farmyard. She shook her fists. “Egg of a turtle!” she screamed. “May all your children fall sick! May you outlive every one of them! May the gods heap misfortune on your head!” On and on.

At night lying on the sleeping porch, Andrea and I had often heard women carrying on like this. Now we were trying so hard to catch all the language, not to miss a word, that we were surprised when at the height of her rage the woman stopped short. There was a moment of complete silence. The woman had caught sight of us, sitting on our wall, staring. She put her hands on her hips, threw back her head, and called on all the gods and neighbors to come and witness the dog-things in their midst. It was as if now,
now
she had at last found someone worthy of her anger. She could forget the poor pig of a man who lived next door. For us she found new words so bad we couldn't translate them, although our Chinese was as good as our English. As her voice grew more shrill, her neighbors did come to listen and look. Occasionally a man would laugh and add an insult. Young boys began picking up stones and hurling them at the wall. “Foreign devils,” they shouted. “Foreign devils.”

Andrea and I were used to being called “foreign devil.” We were used to insults. Coolies often spat directly in our path, but we had been taught to act as if we didn't see, as if nothing had happened. But today it was different. More people angry all together, angrier than before. We knew the stones wouldn't reach us; still, we couldn't get down from that wall fast enough.

As soon as we were off the ladder, we slid to the ground, out of breath. “I guess it will get worse,” Andrea said. “It's the Communists who are doing this. They're the ones who are making the Chinese so mad.”

Of course I knew about the Communists who wanted to make a revolution in China like the one in Russia that had driven Vera Sebastian out. Still, I hadn't paid much attention. All my life there had been fighting somewhere in China—warlord against warlord. Grown-ups were constantly talking about these warlords, hoping that one of them would finally bring the country together in peace. When a warlord was a Christian (and one or two were), my father really got his hopes up. But I just thought of the Communists as another group of Chinese. Fighting as always.

But it wasn't like that, Andrea said. If the Communists got the chance, there would be a new kind of war. Farmers against their landlords. Factory workers against factory owners. The poor against the rich. Chinese against foreigners. “The Communists want to get us out,” she said. “My father says that one day we may be glad to have those gunboats in the river to protect us.”

It all sounded so complicated, I thought of my father when he was discouraged. Sometimes he'd put out his hands in a kind of helpless gesture. “But China's so big,” he'd say, as if he were apologizing for having come so far and doing so little. That's the way I felt now. China was too big for me to even imagine all the things that might happen. At the moment all I hoped was that the Communists wouldn't spoil Christmas.

But after the weekend when I got home, I was glad to see that Christmas seemed to be coming on in the usual way. We had mailed our packages to America months ago. (I had sent my grandmother a doily filled with nothing but French knots. It was a “labor of love,” I explained.) Now big, bulky packages were arriving from America, pasted over with seals that said, DO NOT OPEN UNTIL DECEMBER 25. Of course I knew what my grandmother had sent me because every year she sent the same thing. I didn't blame her. Without having met me, how could she know that I hated to get clothes for Christmas? Besides, she had made every one of the petticoats she sent, so they were probably labors of love too.

In addition to the American packages, presents were being delivered to my parents from Chinese friends. Almost every day when I came home from school I'd find one or two cakes on the hall table, waiting to be put away. They were all alike—tall, castlelike cakes, each with white icing and pink characters that said LONG LIFE AND HAPPINESS and sprinkled all over with tiny silver pellets that my mother wouldn't let me eat.

I was also buying presents to give away. For Lee I had bought a red pencil box with two drawers in it, like mine. A package of open-up paper flowers. And I had gone into the sandalwood box where I kept my savings and taken out twenty coppers and four twenty-cent pieces. I had them changed into a silver dollar and put it in a velvet-lined jewelry case my mother had. Although it was hard to take so much money out of my savings all at once, I figured that orphans would hardly ever have money of their own, certainly not as much as a whole dollar. My mother, who was positive that Lee would like clothes, was knitting a sweater and a pair of mittens.

I had thought so much about Lee that by Christmas Eve I felt I knew her. I pictured how much more comfortable she'd be with me than with a sleeping porch full of children and with grown-ups who might or might not be speaking to each other. I wished she could have been with us to help decorate the tree and hang the red crepe paper streamers in the dining room, but I knew I shouldn't expect life to be one-hundred-percent perfect. It was enough that she was coming the next day. And if we really became good friends—well, who knew what might happen? After all, orphans could be adopted.

I bargained with my parents about what time we'd get up in the morning. “Six o‘clock,” I suggested. “Seven,” my father countered. “Six-thirty,” I offered. He accepted. He even agreed not to shave until after we had opened our presents. Our guests wouldn't be arriving until one o'clock. Eleven guests altogether: the Hulls, Lee, two elderly missionary ladies who would otherwise be alone at Christmas, and three sailors (whom we'd never met) from an American gunboat.

What I liked best about Christmas was that for a whole day grown-ups seemed to agree to take time off from being grown-ups. At six-thirty sharp when I burst into my parents' room, yelling “Merry Christmas!,” they both laughed and jumped right up as if six-thirty wasn't an early hour at all. By the time we came downstairs, the servants were lined up in the hall dressed in their best. “Gung-shi.” They bowed. “Gung-shi. Gung-shi.” This was the way Chinese offered congratulations on special occasions, and the greeting, as it was repeated, sounded like little bells tinkling. Lin Nai-Nai, however, didn't “gung-shi.” For months she had been waiting for this day. She stepped forward. “Merry Christmas,” she said just as if she could have said anything in English that she wanted to. I was so proud, I took her hand as we all trooped into the living room. My father lighted the tree and he distributed the first gifts of the day—red envelopes filled with money for the servants. After a flurry of more “gung-shis,” the servants left and there were the three of us in front of a huge mound of packages. All mysteries.

I kept telling myself that we wanted to make Christmas last but whenever it was my turn to open a package, I yanked at the ribbons and tore off the paper because I couldn't wait. When I had finished, I was sitting inside a circle of presents: four books, a fountain pen, an Uncle Wiggily game, a stamp album, a skipping rope, a pocketbook, a bracelet, a paperweight with snow falling inside, and best of all, the “pound of butter” present—a box of pale blue stationery with my name JEAN GUTTERY and HANKOW, CHINA printed in gold at the top with a little gold pagoda at each side. And of course there were clothes, including the petticoat from my grandmother, one size larger than last year's. But I felt strange when I thought of my grandmother. Here I was in the middle of Christmas and there she was with Christmas not even started in her house. It was only December 24 in America.

I was watching out the window when the Hulls arrived. As soon as the Dodge sedan drew up, a back door flew open and Andrea jumped out. By the time she reached the door, I was there.

“Call her Millie,” she whispered. “She hates Lee.”

David was behind. “She's shy,” he said, whispering too. “And hard to talk to. But remember, you promised.”

Edward followed, pushing past to get to the Christmas tree.

Back at the car Mrs. Hull was standing at one side, bending over and looking in. Even from the back she looked like someone who studied American fashion magazines. Mr. Hull was standing on the other side of the car, also bending over. They were obviously talking to Millie. After a few minutes Mr. Hull straightened up and came to the house, carrying Millie's suitcase. Mrs. Hull and Millie followed.

I was surprised at Millie. I guess I expected everyone to look happy on Christmas, but I could tell by the way she walked with her head down that she wasn't happy. When she reached the door and did look up, what struck me was her expression. She had the same secretive, stubborn look that Vera Sebastian had. Well, she was scared, I told myself. I would be scared too if I were in her place.

I grinned in a way that was supposed to show that at least I wasn't anyone to be scared of. “Come on up and see my room,” I said.

She followed.

“Bring your suitcase,” I suggested.

Her suitcase was standing inside the front door but she didn't turn around. “No,” she said. “Not now.”

Upstairs I showed her not only my room but all the rooms and each time she said, “Uh-huh.” By the end of the tour I was talking so loud, it was as if I thought she was deaf. “Let's go downstairs,” I said. “Your presents are under the tree.”

Sitting beside the tree, Millie opened her packages slowly, careful to untie the ribbons, careful not to tear the paper. Each time she said “Thank you” dutifully as if she'd been told to say it. She did seem to like her sweater because she put it on, and I noticed that when she thought no one was looking, she took the silver dollar out of its box and slipped it into her sweater pocket. When she had finally finished, Andrea and I tore open our gifts to each other. A can of camomile flowers for me, a package of fortune-telling cards for her.

The other guests arrived now and at my mother's nod, I made the rounds, dropping a British School curtsy to each one. I only did it to please my mother, but it was a mistake. The missionary ladies tried to be cute and, giggling, they curtsied back. Andrea looked ready to throw up and the sailors, who had obviously not been in a curtsying crowd before, blushed. Fortunately Wong Sze-Fu, the serving boy, saved the day by announcing that dinner was ready, so we trooped into the dining room. The turkey, surrounded by a ring of candied red apples, sat on a silver platter at my father's place. Rising triumphantly from the center of the table was a butter pagoda, unusually tall and splendid. As we sat down, I thought that now things would be better. Once we started eating, people would perk up and be jolly. Maybe even Millie.

What I hadn't counted on was that those three sailors would be quite so shy. I could see that they wanted to be friendly but didn't know how. So my father began talking about Christmas at home in Pennsylvania and before long all the grown-ups were talking about old Christmases. The sailors told about their families in New Jersey and Illinois and Ohio and the missionary ladies chimed in about Michigan and Maryland and Mr. Hull described Christmas in Los Angeles, California, and Mrs. Hull said, no, it wasn't like that at all. Of course this left the children with nothing to talk about. Not one of us had been to a single state in America.

Well, I thought, after dinner we'd go into the living room and sing around the piano. Then things would be better. But when the time came, Millie didn't want to sing. She sat on the couch, and although Andrea and I urged her, she wouldn't even join in for “Deck the Halls,” my favorite. She wouldn't come to the piano when Phillip, the sailor from New Jersey, asked her, even though he was the cutest of the three sailors and I didn't see how anyone could turn him down.

Andrea looked at me and shrugged as if she'd given up, but when the missionary ladies and the sailors left, Millie suddenly seemed to come to life. Edward suggested that we children should play hide-and-seek, and right away Millie smiled as if she'd been waiting for something like this. “Let‘s,” she said.

David said he'd be “it,” and as the five of us ran into the hall to start the game, I took Millie's hand.

“You can hide with me,” I said.