The Wangs vs. the World (45 page)

Saina knew that her grandparents had fled the Japanese. There were stories of narrow escapes, of running down a road in soft-soled shoes, a Japanese fighter plane strafing the ground. Somehow, Saina had always pictured it in hazy, romantic tones, as if a pair of torn stockings had been the only casualty. And then one day she’d been online, searching for photos for her
Look/Look
project, feeling slightly ill as she scanned groupings of refugees for a pretty face. She’d started out on the familiar news sites—the
New York Times,
Newsweek,
the BBC. One click had led to another, and gradually she found herself moving through sites full of conspiracy theory and invective, with the photos themselves getting more and more graphic, whole slide shows preceded by flashing titles:
THE ISH THEY DON’T WANT YOU TO SEE!
or
NSFW GRAPHIC
.

Before that, it had never occurred to Saina that the photos of war she saw in the paper, the long rows of patients with bandaged stumps like the men before her, the dead bodies in ditches, that those were still censored for the coddled public who would—wouldn’t they?—rise up and demand peace forever if they saw what war really looked like. If they had seen photographs like the ones that crowded into her browser, image after image of men turned into carcasses, butchers’ piles of meat and organs made grotesque by a human hand or head, they could never arm their children and send them overseas to fight other people’s children.

Her grandparents’ escape could not have been some daring, madcap jaunt. The gunfire, in her childhood imagination, had always pinged ineffectually on either side of the golden path, the stupid Japanese never coming close to her daring grandparents. But, of course, that couldn’t be true. It must have hit people, destroyed them, burst open their bodies, and left them twisted and wrecked all over the road. Her grandmother, in her soft-soled shoes, must have run past children with their limbs blown in half, their bloody bones cracked so that the marrow was exposed like joints of lamb, their small bodies sniffed at by mad-eyed dogs.

“They see too much,” her father had said once, when she was doing a report for history class and asked him whether his own parents had ever talked about the war. “They see too much so they have to close their hearts tight. Can’t get them open again.”

She didn’t understand that fear. If she was lucky, she never would.

Saina turned down another corridor. A ward full of babies. New life. Little creatures who hadn’t yet seen the things we could do to one another.

Saina looked at her cell phone. Another text.

917-322-XXXX

Please
.

She turned off her phone.

After another ten minutes of wandering around the hospital, light-headed and unsure of herself, down another hallway and then another, she peeked inside a door that had been left ajar and she saw her father. He was asleep. Peacefully, blissfully asleep. The heart-rate monitor attached to him hopped encouragingly. There was an IV drip that worried her, and the black eye he got in the car accident had bloomed, but otherwise he looked decent.

An accordion screen stretched across the middle of the room, blocking off the windows. Whoever was on the other side had the window and the privacy, something that Saina couldn’t imagine her father allowing. What had happened to him? She wanted to sneak in and read his medical charts, but they would be in Chinese, and though she could make her way well enough when trying to speak the language, she really could only read numbers and a handful of words.

Instead, she slid to the floor outside his door and finally, finally, fell asleep.

“
Xing lai! Xiao meimei xing lai! Zao an, xiao meimei!
Hel-lo! Rise and shi-ine!”

Ugh
. Grace’s neck was twisted and sore, and her legs were numb from hanging over the armrest all night.

“Wa! Xiao meimei xing lai le!”

Oh.
That noise was being directed at her. A man wearing a red baseball cap popped into view. He peered down at her with a giant smile that stretched from one sparsely whiskered cheek to the other.

“Xing lai! Xing lai! Lai kan baba!”

His teeth were yellowed and uneven, and tiny bits of spittle flung themselves onto his lips as he talked way too close to her face. Why was this man telling her to wake up?

“Ni shi shei?”
asked Grace.

“Ha ha ha!” He cocked his hat up and looked around the room, searching for someone to confirm that this was, indeed, the funniest thing he’d ever heard.
“Wo shi shei?”

“Andrew! Wake up!” She kicked at him.

Her brother startled and opened his eyes. “What’s happening?”

“I don’t know. Who is this guy? He keeps telling me to wake up and go see Dad.”

“Maybe he’s a relative?”

The man stood there patiently, still smiling at them.
“Lai! Lai kan baba!”

Grace whispered, “Do you think he’s . . . you know.”

“Slow?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know.”

“Wang xiao hai,
shi de ma? Wo shi shushu!”

“I mean, he seems to know us, right? He just called himself our uncle.” He turned to the man.
“Hao, shushu.
Uh . . .
qing deng yi xia.”
Andrew started gathering their stuff. “Wait, where’s Saina? Her stuff’s gone.”

“Oh god, who knows. You realize that at this point I’m the only family member who
hasn’t
disappeared?” said Grace, a little angry.

“Maybe she’s with Dad already,” said Andrew.

It would be just like Saina to sneak up to see their father while she and Andrew were asleep. They followed the man past the deserted nurse’s station and into an elevator. When the elevator doors slid open, there was Saina, asleep on the floor.

Grace was startled. “Saina! What’s happening?”

Saina opened her eyes as if she had just been waiting there for them, half sprawled out on the floor. “What time is it? This is Dad’s room.”

Andrew shrugged. “Morning time?”

The man who had gotten off the elevator with her siblings immediately squatted down next to Saina, delighted.
“Ah! Wang Jiejie! Ne me piao liang! Lai lai lai, bu yao zuo zai di shang!”
He put out a hand to help her up and, not wanting to be rude, she took it, nearly colliding into him as they both stood. The man kept hold of her hand and began shaking it.
“Ni hao, ni hao, wo shi shushu!”

Uncle? What was this man talking about? Ignoring him, Saina pushed open the door.

Grace and Andrew stopped in the doorway, shocked. Their father was in a hospital gown printed with, of all things, tiny little
ducks.
He had an IV drip in his arm and wires attached to his chest. His face looked strange. Saina hadn’t noticed it when he was asleep, but awake, something seemed off, like he’d gotten Botox accidentally or something.

Their father’s eyes fluttered open, and instead of looking at them, he fixed on the man who had brought them to the room. “Wha! Andrew! Grace! Saina! Why are you talking to him? No! Tell him go away!
Ni bu yao gen wo de xiao hai zi shuo hua!
” Charles shouted, his attempts to make a shooing motion hampered by the wires webbed in front of him.

Meanwhile, the stranger who seemed to know them had disappeared behind the accordion divider and was murmuring to an unseen patient on the other side.

“Daddy! Are you okay?” Grace hugged her father carefully as he patted her hair, and then he stretched his arms out for Saina and Andrew.

“All my children!” he said, hugging them each in turn. “All my children in a general hospital!” Charles had known for sure that Grace and Saina would come, but there was a chance that the thieving woman would keep his son in her grasp. He should never have doubted Andrew. A white woman, no matter how alluring, could never be equal to the Wangs.

“Oh, Dad,” said Saina, “that might be the worst joke you’ve ever come up with.” She sat down on the bed and held on to his hand. “Are you okay? What happened? Who is that guy in the red hat?”

“Where’s Barbra? She is not coming?”

“She’s coming. She just has to wait until Monday so that she can get her passport renewed—they wouldn’t do it over the weekend.”

“And your tickets? Not
tai guei
?” asked Charles.

Even now, it was strange to hear their father speak of money as something that might be lacking, as something to be careful of. “Nope. Grace stowed away in my luggage.”

“Ha!” laughed Charles. “Gracie so small and so cute, she can be a stowaway anywhere!”

“Actually, we ended up doing it all on my frequent flier miles, so it was fine. And the gallery helped me expedite our visas,” said Saina.

“Okay, okay. Andrew you leave that woman? Good boy. Almost everybody here now. Wang 
jia
all together.”

Andrew was standing at the foot of the bed. He could just barely see the back of the crazy guy’s jacket as he moved around the adjoining space. “Dad, what’s going on? Are you hurt?”

“I feel okay now.”

Just then the man peered out from behind the divider, his cap askew, and addressed their father.
“Wang Gege! Lai tan tan hua la. Bu yao niang zi la.”

“Wo men mei you hua lai tan.”

From behind the divider, they could hear another voice, arguing, and the man ducked back in.

“Dad, who
is
that creep?”

“Oh. It so long story, Gracie. Like
Lord of the Ring
. So long. Daddy just happy to see you all.”

Saina examined her father. As much as she wanted to understand what was happening, he did look tired and worryingly pale, his skin slack against the parade of ducklings on his gown. “Do you need to rest? We can talk to the doctor. Or do you want some breakfast? Do they have
jou
?” He loved rice porridge. Even as a child, Saina had known that it was one of the only things her mother did that made him happy. When he came downstairs to a tableful of dark, rubbery thousand-year eggs, dried pork, and stinky cubes of chili-flecked tofu, a pot of thick rice porridge still bubbling on the stove, those were the only mornings he would sit down and eat with his wife instead of rushing off with a Pop-Tart or turning away a plate of scrambled eggs completely untouched.

Still in her father’s arms, Grace pulled back. Saina couldn’t possibly be suggesting that they all leave now and go check into a hotel somewhere, that they let their father continue to tell them nothing. Rebellion coursed through her, forcing her words out. “No! I don’t care if you need to rest! And I don’t care that you’re in the hospital! You came and took me out of school and drove me all the way across country and dumped me at Saina’s house and took off without explaining anything to me and now you’re in a
hospital
in
China?
If you don’t tell me, I’m going to get back in the car with Bing Bing and I’m going to make her drive me to the airport and I’m just going to go back home to L.A. and live on the
streets.
”

Grace was being a little dramatic about it, but Andrew agreed. Now that they were, improbably, in this hospital room halfway across the world, the time for unspoken things seemed to be past.

When the three of them were together, they always acted a little bolder. Charles looked at his children. Grace, Andrew, Saina. Saina, Andrew, Grace. The three sides of his triangle. He could feel a pressure building in his bladder. Could Andrew help him to the bathroom? They all stared at him, waiting. The pressure continued to build and he felt panicked until he realized that he was attached to a catheter. Release. Relief.

“Oh,
hai zi,
very long story.”

“Daddy,
please.
”

“You sit down here again,” he said, patting the space Grace had just vacated. For once, she was agreeable and nestled herself in. “You know about World War II.”

“Of course!”

“World War II, China also fighting the Japanese, and there are Communists—”

“Dad! We don’t need a history lesson! Why are you in the hospital? Why are you even in China?”

“Everything a history lesson. Your life part of a history lesson. Meimei, listen. Okay. Wang family have so much land,
hao duo, hao duo di.
Your grandfather grow up, he manage land with his father, then there is war and many, many people die, but your family mostly are still alive. Wang
jia,
we support Chiang Kai-shek, Nationalist government, and soon they have to fight Communist, too. Communist worse than Japanese. Communist fight their own people, kill their own people, they hate
xue wen,
hate knowledge, culture. Chiang Kai-shek have to flee to Taiwan, many people go with him. Your grandma and grandpa go with him.”

“What about our grandpa’s father? What happened to him?”

“Killed. Some family
bei
kill, some family go to Taiwan, some family stay and become Communist.” He pointed to the divider. “
Ta men
stay.”

Andrew looked up. “Wait, so that guy really is our uncle? Like, a real uncle?”

“No,” said Charles, dismissive. “Maybe like a cousin. But very far away. Not really Wang family. But listen, for a long time after the Communists take over, we don’t know what happen in China. Everything closed. No communications. I grow up in Taiwan; I come to America. And then China open up and we find out everything so sad. I don’t even tell you; nobody talk about it.”

“What was it?”

“
Tai tsan ren le.
My aunties, they stay in
lao jia,
and when Communists come, they are dragged out in the street. You know
xiao hong wei bing
?”

“
Yes,
Dad. Little Red Guard, we know.”

“Okay,
xiao hong wei bing
very scary, they abuse aunties, put them in parade, everybody hit and punch. They spit.”

“That
happened?
To our relatives?”