by Julie Wu
Eyes flickering, she smiled. “Sure! But he’s not in. You’ll have to catch him at the end of the day.” She handed me my letter and its curled, warm copy. “Relax and settle in, take a tour. Have you seen the area?”
I STOOD IN front of Mount Rushmore, remembering: Yoshiko sitting in the darkened theater next to me, the images of Midwest Holiday sliding across her face as she turned to face me.
I’d like to go there.
A plane flew in the vast blue overhead, casting a shadow that slid across the curving expanse of George Washington’s forehead, stretched over the lock of hair above his left ear, and slipped in and out of the crevices of Thomas Jefferson’s gaze. The plane flew on, its shadow dropping down below Teddy Roosevelt’s chin and onto the forested slope below Abraham Lincoln’s beard. And then the plane was in the open, glinting silver against the brilliant blue sky.
I had come to South Dakota because of these men. Because of them and this country, which they had chiseled out of boldness and idealism, I had left my home, my wife, and my child. Because of the Black Hills looming all around me, their rolling shoulders covered in sweet-smelling ponderosa pine. Because of the vast plains surrounding them to the horizon’s end, and because of the big, bustling cities far out of sight, so full of complexities and riches and opportunities.
“Spectacular,” a gravelly voice said behind me.
I swiveled around. Two men looked up at the mountain. The one who had spoken was older, white, peering through binoculars. He wore a khaki-colored hat with a wide brim and a matching vest with zippered pockets. The other man was young, about my age, with black hair. His skin was slightly darker than mine, and his arms were folded across his buttoned-up shirt.
The older man spoke again. “Though I respect your opinion on the matter, Bashir.”
The younger man shrugged. “It’s one of the greatest monuments in the world. You can’t help being awestruck by it. And these are great heroes—heroes I was taught to admire. But it would have been nice if they hadn’t been carved out of sacred Indian land by a member of the Ku Klux Klan.”
“They’re the ones you grew up with, right? The Lakota?”
“That’s beside the point. The US gave this land to them by treaty, in perpetuity.”
“Until it was convenient.”
“Exactly.”
The older man caught sight of me and whispered to Bashir. His whisper carried in the mountain air: “He one of ’em? An Indian?”
The young man glanced at me and smiled wryly. “Oh, he’s no more Indian than I am,” he said out loud, turning to face me. “Isn’t that right? What is your ethnicity, if you don’t mind?”
“Chinese,” I said. “From Taiwan. I just arrived.”
“Ah,” he said. His eyes were black, astute. “How are those Nationalists?”
I was taken aback for a moment. No one had ever asked me that before—certainly not an American. “Difficult,” I said, and I glanced around, as though an agent might be lurking behind a bush, under a rock. “How do you know about them?”
He shrugged. “I read the paper. Between the lines.” He laughed, his teeth flashing. “By the way, I’m Bashir. This is Morris. I bet you never thought you’d end up at Mount Rushmore with a Lebanese and a Jew.” They laughed together, and I did, too, though I had no idea where Lebanon was, or why it should be unusual for a Lebanese and a Jewish man to be friends. I felt, for the first time in weeks, more ignorant of history and geography than the people I was speaking to.
Bashir told me he was a second-generation immigrant, a civil engineering student at the School of Mines. Morris was a lawyer who knew Bashir’s family. “Trying to win Bashir over to the law. No offense to you engineers, but if your goal really is to effect social change . . .”
I took a few steps away from the two men as they argued about the merits of the different fields. Not once did Bashir mention his parents.
I looked back up at the presidents. One man’s symbol of patriotism, another man’s symbol of betrayal and racism.
Nothing was ever as simple as it appeared. I had dreamed for so many years of escaping the narrow confines of my life by coming to this country. I had imagined that here I would be unbounded, free like this man, Bashir, to take whatever path I wished. In a way, it was true. No soldier would stop me in the street, no teacher would strike me for speaking out of turn. Paths in a thousand different directions were open and waiting to challenge me. All I had to do was step forward and I could shoot rockets into the sky.
But even here, gazing up at George Washington’s serene visage desecrating the mountainside, I was a son, a brother, whose resources had been meted out. My father’s conditions seemed unfair to me, but he had tried his best. Without the promise of pharmacy school, his brothers might well have voted to keep the money from me, and me in Taiwan. I knew, now that I was a parent, that all a father could do was his best.
Even without that promise to my father, would I have the courage to forge my own path in this alien land? Without question, it would be safer to follow my father’s directions, to do a semester here, two semesters studying pharmacy, and then return. How would I get the money to survive longer? If I floundered, I would have no Toru to save me, no father to bribe the officials, no Yoshiko to tell me everything would be all right. If I made a misstep, I would fail, with no one to blame but myself.
But wasn’t this what it was to be master of your own fate? What would this country be now if these presidents had taken the safe route? What would George Washington have done with one year in 1950s America? Studied what his parents told him to and gone home to do a job he didn’t want?
Bashir and Morris waved and made their way back to the parking lot. “Perhaps I’ll see you back at school,” Bashir said.
“Good luck with your decision,” I called.
He smiled and tapped his head.
He walked away, his gait self-assured. He laughed and slapped Morris on the back. And as I watched him, I decided that I would do as the Americans did. It was my life.
Full of excitement, I rushed back to the electrical engineering office. By the time I arrived, the previously blue sky had clouded over, and I paused just inside the door of the Engineering Building to brush the rain off the luxuriant wool of my suit.
“ . . . young man’s just got here from China. Been by asking for you, I hope you don’t mind . . .”
I stood with Mrs. Larsson in the department office by Beck’s door.
And then Professor Beck appeared, carrying a briefcase and wearing a yellow rain slicker and rain hat. Dark, graying curls peeked out from under his hat’s brim. He studied me, his eyebrows thick and twitching, his eyes dark and sure as my father’s. I caught sight of a row of modestly framed diplomas behind him.
I had long ago lost any reverence I might have had for authority figures. I respected them and understood that their position probably represented an accomplishment of some kind. But after all I had been through, I knew that every person was human, flawed and confined by whatever world he knew. I stepped forward without fear. “I’m Chia-lin,” I said. “I just arrived from Taiwan and I want to introduce myself.”
He shook my hand, looking me up and down from the top of my head to the soles of my Japanese shoes.
“Here this morning,” Mrs. Larsson said, her dress swishing behind me. “Nice boy, and very interested in our automatic copy machine.”
“It is a nice machine,” I said. “Infrared.”
Beck nodded.
Mrs. Larsson handed me a letter, which I saw was another one from Yoshiko.
“Nice to meet you, Chia-lin.” Beck took a step toward the hallway. He spoke with surprising gravity. “I’m sure you’re a fine young man. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to make it home for dinner, or my wife will kill me. Been away for a week and she’s been home with the kids.”
His boots squeaked out the office door and down the hallway.
I had drunk in too much of the South Dakotan air to let him wal
k away from me so easily. I hurried after him, holding the letter in my hand. “I need to talk to you. I have a wife, too,” I said. “And son.”
He glanced at the letter, still walking. “Oh yeah? How old?”
“Two months.”
He turned to me with a squeak, looking at me sharply. “You have a two-month-old? In China?”
“Yes, Taiwan.”
He stood watching me for a moment, trying to see, perhaps, what kind of man would leave his newborn son for a year.
“It was my only chance to come to America,” I said. “I want to bring them here. That’s why I need to talk to you.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But you’re the department head. Maybe you know a way.”
He sighed and resumed his squeaky gait. I watched him despondently, but then he turned around, gesturing for me to follow. “Come on.”
I followed him down the hall, out the door into the rain, and into the parking lot. He opened the passenger door of his car, a Ford station wagon, and gathered up books and papers from the seat. He backed up, arms full, and indicated the seat with his head. “There.”
“Me? . . . Where are we going?” Could he be taking me to the immigration office? To a lawyer?
“To my house,” he said. “You can have dinner with me and my wife, Rose.”
He carried his load to the rear of his car and dumped it in through the tailgate. I stood by the open door, raindrops splattering on my head. I wasn’t sure if he was making fun of me or just taking pity on me.
He indicated the seat. “Come. Be my guest.” He looked at me, his eyes dark and impenetrable. The yellow brim of his hat quivered in the rain. “Chia-lin, we’ve had Chinese students for years. They sit in the corner talking among themselves. None of them speak up in class, they don’t make eye contact, and not one has ever chatted with Mrs. Larsson about the copy machine or come by my office to introduce himself. Except for you.”
He indicated the seat again, and I got into the car.
As he turned the key in the ignition, he said, “We’ll talk to Senator Dickey about your family. But don’t expect too much. There are restrictions for you Orientals.”
I hesitated. “And I need to finish my master’s in one year,” I said. “I have received an offer when I finish, and I only have money enough for one year.”
“No foreigner’s ever done that.” He looked sideways at me. “Take one day at a time.”
20
BUT TIME WAS WHAT I did not have. Time was what passed with each step of my foot through the well-mannered halls of the School of Mines. Each page I read marked another few minutes, each letter from Yoshiko another few days of not knowing how to fulfill my promises to her and to my parents at the same time. If I did not go to pharmacy school, I should at least send home the hundred dollars a month my family requested, as they had funded me in the first place. But if I continued at the School of Mines, I would not have a dime to spare, I would have no degree at the end of the year, no way of staying on, and no one would be satisfied.
Dear Saburo,
I am so happy for you! I received a letter from Professor Beck’s wife, Rose, telling me about your dinner and how impressed she was with you. I told you the Americans would like you, because you’re so smart and your English is so good.
Everyone is very impressed by the picture of you in front of your refrigerator, though they all comment that it is empty. Do you have enough money to buy food?
I cannot believe that one phone call could cost as much as your rent. Is that really true? Perhaps you heard your friends wrong and it actually costs five dollars, not fifty?
I went to the market with your mother today. She was so nice, holding my hand. Everyone at the market thought I was her daughter. So I told her about your visit with the Becks. I thought she would be proud.
And she said, “If he’s doing so well, tell him to send us back one hundred and fifty.”
I’m so sorry to have to tell you! I tried to reason with her, but she believes this nonsense about there being gold in the streets there. Don’t even think about it. Of course you can’t spare it. You have no income. Don’t worry, just study, and everything will all come out all right.
I miss you all the time, and so does Kai-ming.
Love,
Yoshiko
I shared my cavernous refrigerator and the rest of my apartment with two Mainland Chinese bachelors—one who cooked everything with tomatoes, and one who cooked everything in pure soy sauce. Many dinners, I washed the sauce off my food in the sink while my roommates watched, one with lips stained permanently pink, the other bald and sweaty-palmed. They kept to themselves and remained within the Chinese community, and I avoided them as much as I could. I had come to America to meet Americans, not people steeped in the old culture and ways of thought. If Yoshiko were here, she would be out in the world with me. She wouldn’t hole up like these men. I knew that.
I studied hard, trying to rectify the deficiencies of my education. What Li-wen had said to Professor Gleason was true. I had had vocational, not academic, courses. I knew circuitry, not theory. I was many years behind.
But all of America lay outside my door. And so, when Professor Beck invited me to go for a hike with him and his friends in the Black Hills, I said yes without hesitation.
His friend, a geology professor, picked me up that Saturday, pulling up in front of my apartment in a beautiful white Buick. He hopped out wearing shorts, sunglasses, hiking boots, and a special hat with snapped-up flaps. He pulled down his sunglasses, and his eyes traveled from my Japanese broadcloth shirt to my freshly shined dress shoes. “You’re going hiking like that?” he said.
I was not about to spend my family’s money to buy an outfit just for a day hike. I had visited Yangmingshan with Yoshiko many times in dress clothes. Not everyone was rich enough to have special clothes for every situation.
A couple of hours later, though, as my leather soles slipped on the rocks with every step along the trail, I thought it might have been worth splurging at least on a pair of sneakers. I hurried to keep up with Beck and his friends as they disappeared up the mountainside—and slipped, jamming my toes. Branches of pine swiped me in the mouth and brushed against my button-down shirt. It was April, and I had thought myself warmly dressed, but as we climbed higher up, it was cooler, and the sweat from my exertion evaporated quickly in the wind.
I wished they would wait for me, but no one waited in America, it seemed. I was forever chasing people—Ni Wen-chong, Gleason, Beck.
I scrambled up a low rock face on my hands and knees to a path overhung by birch branches that glowed in the afternoon sun.
And then I was in the open. The sheer beauty of it stopped me short: the cool, mirrored surface of a lake, reflecting the surrounding cliffs, the tiered green branches of pines, and the sky above. Three bighorn sheep, their horns curled round their ears like decorative finials, stood in the water at the far end of the lake. I breathed in the American air.
Beck approached me, swishing through the tall, wheat-like grass in his hiking boots, and handed me his canteen to share, as I had none. The rest of his party sat on a cluster of rocks by the lake’s shore, pulling snacks and drinks out of packs stuffed full of equipment.
“You brought nothing?” Beck said as he drew near.
“This is how I hike in Taiwan,” I said.
“Think you can make it to Harney Peak?” He looked at me, his expression unreadable, shaded by his khaki hat.
I wiggled my toes. They felt black and blue. “Sure,” I said. I had no map or compass to guide me back. I indicated the lake, the bighorn sheep. “It’s very beautiful.”
He nodded and turned to the lake, his profile silhouetted against the glittering surface of the water.
He looked back at me. “I can lend you a blanket. It’ll get cold.”
I imagined clambering over the rocks with a blanket over my shoulders. “I’m fine,” I sa
id. “Have you heard from Senator Dickey?”
“I have not. You’d best write him yourself.”
I nodded. I had been thinking of suggesting this myself. “My wife was very glad to receive a letter from Rose,” I said.
“Yes. She likes you.”
“My wife was so happy that she told my mother about it and my—” I caught myself before I told Beck what my mother had actually said. “Unfortunately my parents still want me to go to pharmacy school.”
“Well, that would be a shame,” Beck said. “Since you’re a good engineer.”
“I have no interest in pharmacy,” I said. “But it’s my family’s business, and they are the ones who paid for my year here.”
“I understand,” Beck said. “But it’s your life.”
I smiled. “This is the American point of view.”
He shrugged. “Isn’t it yours?”
“Maybe,” I said. “But you told me I couldn’t get my master’s in one year, and I have no scholarship, so—”
“I didn’t say that, Chia-lin.”
One of his friends called to him and he turned to wave back to the group. They were getting up from the rocks, screwing shut their canteens and brushing off their shorts.
“Chia-lin, I said no foreigner’s ever done it. That doesn’t mean you can’t.”
“But I don’t even—”
“You don’t even what?”
I fell silent. I had never told him I did not have a bachelor’s degree. He was kind to me, in his gruff way, but I couldn’t be sure that expelling me for misrepresentation would be beyond him.
“Have confidence in yourself,” Beck said. He took back his canteen, from which I would have liked to drink more, and went back to his friends. He waved to me over his shoulder. “Come,” he said.
THE WIND, SMELLING of pine and wildflowers, swept across Harney Peak.
I shivered as the wind penetrated the damp fibers of my shirt. I stumbled along after Beck’s group on the bare granite. My feet throbbed and pain shot down my leg, my toes slipping into every crevice and depression on the path. I tore my eyes away from my feet to see the others enter a stone tower at the top of the peak, and I crawled to a spot just below the entrance so I would see them when they exited. I could go no farther. I sat down to rest and look out at the panorama.
