Honor and Duty (40 page)

“You know,” I said to him, ten minutes later, “Janie and my mother didn’t get along. I mean, they
hated
each other. Janie left, left the house. Christmas Eve—a long time ago.…”

“Ming-li ran away in 1954,” said Uncle Shim.

“She was sent away, Uncle Shim,” I said. “She did not run away. Did my mother tell you that?”

“Your honorable second mother has said little to me since we were introduced, but she did express her lament that—ah—,” and he hesitated, calling upon his magnificent memory—“ ‘Jane, sick from grief over the death of her mother, has run away, without a note. It is so much like her, to make people worry about her needlessly.’ That is, of course, only approximate.”

I looked at my right hand, as Lady Macbeth had looked at hers. I was going to break
jing ji
, taboo, leaving an old country to cross a river from which return might never be possible. Break the rule, cross the border, serve your people.

“Uncle. To cross the Rubicon? What’s the Chinese equivalent?”

“Ah,” he said. “
Jacta alea est
, the die is cast. I learned this in classical languages at Princeton. There is no Rubicon in China, although Hideyoshi crossed the Yalu, with an effect similar to Julius Caesar’s. The expression you seek is
p’o fu ch’en chou.
Break the pot and sink the boat No going back.”

I took a deep breath. “Here goes the pot, and the boat.

“I must honor my father and my mother. You said my
chimu
was my mother. You were right. But I have to tell you the truth. This means criticizing my
chimu
” I licked my lips. He was silent. “My mother ordered Janie to never argue with her.”

“An exceptionally wise rule,” said Uncle Shim.

“Janie knew better, but she refused to kowtow to Edna. She wanted to fight her, as if she could win. That was so stupid. I was the dumbest kid in the world, but
I
could see Edna would beat her, and the harder that Janie fought, the worse the losing would be.”

I hadn’t thought of this for a decade. It was a child’s story, unfit for children.

Father had set the stage by leaving the table to take a phone call from General Bledsoe, a war buddy. Bledsoe had been Joseph Stilwell’s artillery commander in China. Here I was at West Point, where Stilwell and Bledsoe had been cadets. Bledsoe always called on Christmas Eve, on the anniversary of the fall of Hong Kong.

I began to tell Uncle Shim a story told many times, but only to myself in early youth. It was my story, once told with the constancy of a spinning Tibetan prayer wheel, sustained by its own momentum and made acceptable through familiarity. Now, recalling it, I felt as if the ceiling of the Cadet Hilton might collapse, allowing familial wrath and
chimu
fury to crush me for my infidelity. Deep, unspoken fears raged unseen before my eyes.
Ji hui, jing ji.
Forget the past, and its losses.

I began to describe to Uncle Shim the images as they unraveled from the creaky spool of suppressed memory. Edna had been criticizing our mother. Janie had cried in protest, the quality of her voice still undefined in my recollection.

Then Edna screamed, “ENOUGH!” She reached into a pocket and withdrew an expensive-looking necklace. I was nine when this happened. I later described the jewelry to Toos as a “pretty.”

“I found this,” Edna said, holding it up. “You stole it.” I thought she was talking to me, but Janie answered.

“I did not! I wouldn’t steal anything! I’m a good girl!” I think she also said, “I’m a Christian girl.”

“This cost over a hundred dollars,” said Edna, her eyes bright. “You stole this from Gumps. It still has the tags. It doesn’t matter that you’re a cute little Chinese girl, or whatever. You’re not an American citizen, and the police will believe me.”

Edna passed Janie an envelope. “Inside, you’ll find money and bus fare. I found you a new home, at
great
expense to myself. I had to borrow the money to find a woman insane enough to take you. I can’t wait until you drive
her
blood pressure up!

“You have one week to get there. If you start tomorrow, on Christmas Eve, you can make it. If you do not make it, the deal is off, and I’ll turn you over to the police and the Immigration people.”

Edna still held up the necklace, as if it were a noose. “There are two conditions, young lady. One, you must stay with this woman for two years. After that, I don’t care what you do, so long as you obey the second: never call or write to your father or your brother ever again. There is to be
no contact
whatsoever, do you understand? Henceforth, you are no longer a member of this family.”

I couldn’t see Janie’s expression, because she was seated too far away from me. But she argued. Then she said, “Father
knows. He knows I wouldn’t steal. I’ve been the best girl! I did all the work here! My father will stop you!”

But for months after my sister’s departure, I knew what Janie didn’t know. Our father could not help. He would later say, in a household devoid of daughters, that the American woman knew all the answers and that a Chinese man could not know the rules of this new nation. Yes, it was so sad, so hard. But
mai yo ban fa?
What can a person do?

I told Uncle Shim that I used to stand on a wooden crate in the bathroom, telling this story of my sister’s banishment, this horror story of
wupo
, witches, to the mirror. That I told the story to myself and to the spirit of the mirror to keep Janie alive, until Edna caught me and the storytelling had ended and I had to lose my sister again.

I breathed into the phone, my chest banded with weights. My father had not laughed for a decade. He had given up a daughter to the fates, and the laughter god had taken his mirth.

“Ah, ah. This is so strange,
Hausheng.
I wish we were in Shanghai, swimming in its busy streets in a double-benched pedicab, eating salted fish and arguing about books. We could pretend our families are still strong and united. Your mother still alive, the Little Tail still a tiny girl with a strong musical voice … my wife, waiting for me on the docks of the Whangpu. So, I called to give you news. Instead, you give me news.

“You know, your mother believed in
yeh
, in Buddhist karma. I do not, at least, very little. We used to argue about this. Do you remember? We used to argue about everything.”

“No,” I said.

“You remember the calligraphy lessons,” he said.

“Vaguely,” I said.

“You of course remember the
Sheng yu
, the Sacred Edicts of Master K’ung.…”

“I learned them from you, right?”

“Ai-yaa! Of course you learned them from me. Do you think your father taught you the Edicts? How is this possible? You were not in the
boh-la
, the Run. You did not see war and invasion and revolution. You were not a young witness to death and bombing. Why is your memory as bad as little Janie’s?”

“I don’t know. I actually have a pretty good memory. I don’t think anyone can remember anything before the age of seven, anyway. I mean, maybe the geniuses …”

“See here, this is not true. Everyone remembers those years. Unless they have been in war. Ah!” he exclaimed. “Your mother died. Your memory died with her, as tribute, to honor her life. You and your mother lived in the Chinese language, and now you have lost the language of her memory. It is so clear. Sometimes I think I have the brains of an ox, not thinking at all. I am so sorry. It is time to tell you the tremendous news.”

I had wanted to hear, but was now afraid to listen.

The American
jing ji
taboos: No talking about the first Mrs. Ting, who had been known to the Chinatown community as Ting
taitai
, and to my father as Honey, and to me as Mah-mee. No talking about the evil and defiantly double-bad girl who had been my sister. Each of these people had disappeared from my life in the space of a single day, a year apart, without any bidding farewell, any grieving, any rituals of remembrance.

I remembered trying to do this as a child, trying to call up the memory of our family’s females. When I was very young, I could remember my mother and my sister. Later, the little stitchings in the mind that connected me to them broke, and I had trouble recalling their faces, voices, and habits. Because Edna’s voice had been so angry when she attacked the spirits of these two people, I began to develop a throbbing cerebral pain whenever I thought of them on my own. In time, it was as if my fading recollections of the two people who had been closest to my small life were the products of fairy tales and of fable, not of fact; of wishful thinking, and not of life; of pain, and not of love.

“
Hausheng
, your sister, the Little Tail, Janie Ming-li. I have found her. She has been living in Canada. She is ready to be greeted by you, and to renew your relationship.

“But,” he said slowly, “she is different. She has changed her name. Both names. She is not Janie anymore.” He cleared his throat. “Her new name is Lisa. She also wears the family name Mar, after your mother. She seeks to change her
yuing chi
, her fortune.

“I asked her if she missed you, her
syau didi
, her baby brother. She said, ‘I have no brother.’ That is the bad news.”

I felt a great pressure behind my eyes. Janie. With surprising clarity I saw her in the old kitchen, pots and pans arrayed on the countertops while she made dinner for Father and me, preparing breakfast, packing lunches. I saw the tip of her tongue, hinting of her effort to run the house. She was putting her hair
into a ponytail, proud of her prettiness. She sat on the lawn of Brooks Mortuary while I picked daisies for her. She held my hand so tight as we crossed the street against busy motor traffic, and gave crayons for coloring books about the Lord Jesus. She was on a picnic blanket in Golden Gate Park, apple juice streaming down her face and in her hair, thrown there by Edna for some transgression.

I saw her sitting at the dinner table, holding the envelope with her fate within it. Janie blinked and was looking at our father’s chair, which was empty.

My sister, who had become, after our mother’s death, my mother. Who had been transformed by our new stepmother into a nonperson, relinquished and forgotten, returned to a bland and nameless inventory of Chinese ghosts and abandoned spirits, to whom I could neither pray nor honor, or later, remember. I remembered Pearl’s choice: Chinese daughter or American woman. To honor a Chinese father or to be
k’ung ’hsu
, abandoned.

Now she had returned, without
lun
, ties. But she was my sister. When she had been an adolescent, caring for me, standing up for me, she had been pushed out, and I had forgotten her.

“I’m glad that was the bad news,” I said. “I don’t think I could’ve handled it if that was the good part.”

“Yes,” he said. “You are quite American, trying to laugh at the destruction of your family. Please, as a favor to an old man, an old man who is fond of you, do not inflict lightheart-edness on me when we are speaking like honorable men to each other, about our purpose of life. About family.

“It is one thing to endure pain. It is another to laugh at yourself because your head has been chopped off.”

25

New South Barracks Sinks, November 10, 1966

“May I speak to Lisa Mar? This is Kai Ting, her brother.”

A short intake of breath, somehow familiar. “Hello,” she said. A precise voice. Neither cheerful nor sad—neutral. Cold, evanescent gray fog in a San Francisco summer morning.

“Janie—is it you?” I asked.

“I don’t use that name,” she said. “My name is Lisa Mar.”

“Can I call you Janie?” I asked.

“No,” she said.

“Ah-huh,” I said, making the automatic Chinese sound. “Can’t believe I’m talking to you. How are you?”

“Fine,” she said.

“I mean,
really
, how are you?” I pressed.

“Good.”

“Man, it seems—seems like, like it’s been forever,” I said.

“Eleven years,” she said.

“You’re twenty-seven, right? What do you do for work?”

“I work in a lab. I’m engaged. You’re at West Point?”

“Janie—Lisa—can you visit me at the Academy?”

“I am not related to you.”

“Of course you are. Can you visit me?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “It’s nice to hear your voice. You must be—very healthy, to be at West Point. Do you still have asthma?”

“No. Well, actually, yes, I just got it again. Not as bad.”

“Is Silly Dilly still alive?” she asked, in a very small voice.

Silence. “Janie. Can you visit me?”

“Did she have a good life?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I have to go,” she said, slowly, mechanically. It seemed her voice, in my ear, was a ghost’s, slipping away from me.

“When’s the best time for me to call you, when you can talk?” I rushed the words, frantic to keep her with me.

“Goodbye,” she said. She hung up.

Quebec City is not only in a different country; it is in a different nation than the one in which it is located. Quebec seemed to be a pinch of France swimming in a hybrid English potpie. The traffic signs said
“Arrêt.”
I imagined I was in Paris: pretty women, artistic fountains, clustered streets and broad boulevards, warm air, bright lights, and Citroëns. I headed for the student hostel, detouring to check the Citadelle, where Wolfe and Montcalm had fought on the Plains of Abraham. Everyone spoke French. I could not miss my hotel: it was once the Petite Bastille, which was as petite as the Pentagon and as Bastille as San Quentin. It looked like a fort that had been under siege for a century and was ready to capitulate. It overlooked the massively elegant Château Frontenac and the deep blue Fleuve Saint-Laurent.