by Julie Wu
“We have to prove that she’s been treated successfully,” I said into my scarf. The wool was damp with my breath. Snow had soaked through the seams of my boots, and my feet were painfully cold.
Beck walked beside me, boots crunching on the snow-covered cornfield that extended for acres around us, the stumps of corn plants sticking up in rows the way rice sprung up through the water in Taiwan. How much better to be there—warm, at least, knowing your bearings, knowing nothing of this cold, confusing place that still seemed to me the frontier.
Beck wore a bright orange hat and an orange vest and carried two guns. I wore the same getup, plus the scarf, minus the guns. I was afraid of setting one off by accident. A little spaniel trotted at Beck’s heels, and I stayed clear of it, too. I didn’t trust dogs.
“Has she?” he said.
“She has one month of treatment left.”
“Okay, so get all the paperwork together in a month.”
“But then we’ll be on the bottom of the pile!” I said.
He shrugged, shading his eyes with his hand. “Good cover over there,” he said, pointing to a clump of trees. “This is about right.” He handed me a gun. “Quotas for Asia haven’t changed, anyway, so why get worked up about it?”
I frowned under my scarf. “I just wonder how they found out.”
“Her doctor tell? Here the doctors have to report TB to the state.”
“No,” I said. “He wouldn’t have.”
“You ready?” he said.
“To shoot?” I readied my shotgun.
“No,” he said. “For tomorrow’s class. What’s it on?”
I put my gun back down. “Antennas.”
He squinted, patting the dog, who sniffed the ground excitedly. “Okay,” he said. “Tell me why car antennas are straight up and down.”
I sighed, looking up at the sky—gray, uniform stratus clouds.
Beck’s specialty: the simple yet impossibly hard question.
“Go on,” he said. “Give me a good answer and you might have yourself a job.”
“A job?” I said.
“Yeah. We need popular professors.”
“I don’t have my master’s yet.”
“You’re getting it in June, right?”
“If I pass all my courses.”
He gave me a weary look that said, Of course you will. “It’ll help get your wife here, right?”
“But I don’t want a job here. I want to get my doctorate, at Michigan.”
“And how’re you paying for that, big boy? Don’t you need income to show the INS? Gleason giving you a scholarship?”
I was silent, squinting at the trees, wiggling my toes to make sure I could still feel them. Of course Gleason wouldn’t give me a dime. The spaniel sniffed at my feet, and I moved away.
“Teach here during the year and take courses at Michigan over the summers,” Beck said. “You know Tom Reynolds, right? Teaches signals? He’s been doing the same thing for a couple years. You can carpool. Now, tell me about those antennas.”
Dear Saburo,
Your parents finally came to visit me in the hospital. I had been there for three months and they came and stood by my bed.
Kachan wouldn’t look me in the eye. When I asked why she had not brought Kai-ming, she said, “We are here visiting a friend. We did not come just to see you.”
Can you believe that? Did I hurt her feelings so much? Of course I enjoyed her company, but I am not going to be so blindly obedient that I die. Maybe she thought if I stayed sick, I would stay in Taiwan and be her companion forever?
After a moment your mother looked around and said, “Hm. Your friends have brought you a lot of treats.”
I said that I couldn’t eat them all. What a stupid thing to say!
The next day, your sister Mariko showed up with two empty shopping bags from New Rose. She walked over to my bedside table, picked up the package of Japanese moachi right next to my nose—the moachi my father had brought for me—and plopped it right into her bag. Then she took the sugary bread that May-ying got from Ho Won in Taipei, the bag of preserved prunes from my mother, the Japanese rice crackers from the seamstress’s daughter, the pears from my second aunt, and the red bean cakes from my elementary school principal. You always said she was the nicest sister, just a little spoiled, but she opened every single drawer and every cabinet door to find the gifts there, too, before she left, so that both shopping bags were bulging and there was not a single package left in my room. I swear she even looked under the bed.
When she left, she smirked at me, as if to say, Now who is Kachan’s favorite?
My friends ask how I enjoyed their treats. What can I say?
This is why I say, write Senator Dickey again. Get your PhD and get me and Kai-ming to America. I want to be free from this place.
Love,
Yoshiko
I crumpled the letter angrily and threw it against the wall. What had I done for my family to treat my wife this way? Was my mother acting only out of betrayal and jealousy? Or was she still punishing me for my little brother’s death?
I smoothed out the letter.
Free. Was I free, here in America? Would Yoshiko be?
33
IN APRIL, YOSHIKO FINISHED her treatment and was released from the hospital. I got the medical waiver for her and shortly afterward received my master’s, snapping my own graduation picture with a tripod. I only wished I could see my family’s reaction when Yoshiko showed them the picture.
I took Beck’s advice: I would work as a School of Mines professor during the year and study at Michigan over the summers. My income was enough to satisfy immigration requirements for extending my visa, and the extra years under Beck’s Socratic tutelage would help me with my coursework at Michigan. If I studied at the rate of a certain Chinese Student Association president, it would take me twenty years to prepare for the qualifying exam, but my colleague who studied at Michigan, Tom Reynolds, believed I could do it in three.
“We’ll take the exam then, at the same time. We’ll be in the same position. I’ve already gone for two summers. I can’t do it any longer—I’ll be up to my ears in loans.”
After graduation I gave him a lift to Michigan so we could split the drive and the motel bills, and we moved into a two-room apartment near North Campus. I had a desk and a refrigerator. That was all that mattered.
I found Wen-chong in the laboratory, working the ionosonde. He leaned back in his chair, stretching his arms. “Ah, it’s you! Got your master’s, I heard!”
I would be working on a project with him during the summers while I was taking courses. I planned to improve their rocket’s telemetry design and somehow develop that into my doctoral thesis once I’d passed the qualifying exam.
As I spoke, the hallway door opened, and Li-wen’s friend the Professor walked in carrying a clipboard. He smiled widely on seeing me and waved.
I stopped talking midsentence.
Wen-chong turned around. “Ah, you know Sun-kwei?”
“I do,” I said.
“He’s a good number cruncher,” Wen-chong said.
I FOLLOWED WEN-CHONG down the hall to his office. His shoes made sharp clicking sounds on the linoleum, while mine, worn out from walking through mud puddles and clambering over rocks and snowy fields, were silent. “His best friend is a Nationalist agent,” I whispered to him.
“Really?” he said, wrinkling his nose. “I don’t believe it. He’s harmless as a mouse.”
“Perhaps he is,” I said. “But he makes me nervous.”
“Well then, be careful what you say. By the way,” he said, “we have a launch in December. Can you make it?”
“I’m a professor now,” I said. “I can arrange my own schedule.”
34
INTO THE GREEN GLOW that lit up the Manitoban winter sky and waved over the cosmos like a woman’s lovely hair blowing in the sea breeze, our rocket soared. Into the aurora borealis, probes at the ready, transmitters beeping.
For science. For beauty.
Dear Saburo,
I took Kai-ming to Taipei, and all the passengers marveled at our boy. As soon as the train began to move, he jumped up in his seat, exclaiming, “But why are all the trees and buildings flying backward?” He had many questions about how the train works, and I did my best to answer them. I tell him he is so smart, just like his papa, a professor in America!
We are practicing English together. There’s a course on the radio every morning, very early. I turn it on quietly so as not to wake anyone else in the house . . . I am glad your job is going well at the School of Mines. Can you really get a PhD just studying there in the summers?
I dreamed of Yoshiko sitting on the rocks by Hudson Bay. She wore a flowing white dress and sparkly shoes. Kai-ming jumped around her, his feet slapping on the rocks. I strained to see his face—
The phone rang, splintering my dream.
I sat up, finding myself in my Rapid City apartment, my night table piled high with exams to grade and data from the December launch. The snores of my roommates halted briefly.
I grabbed the phone.
“Saburo,” a voice growled, “what’s going on?”
My father! My stomach clenched at his echoing words. He addressed me only if I was in trouble. Calling me from Taiwan meant very big trouble indeed.
“What?” I said.
“I’m trying to visit your little brother in Japan and they wouldn’t let me leave the country. They say you’re a subversive.”
“They” could only mean the Nationalists.
“It’s not true!”
“Well, they think it is.”
“What about Li-hsiang?” I said, panicking.
“Li-hsiang? Why talk about her? She’s not sick anymore.”
“But she won’t be able to leave Taiwan.”
“Of course not, stupid. You’d better come home. We gave you the money for one year only.”
The image rose to my mind of the waving fields around the house in Taoyuan, the dark, wide floorboards inside, cool against my burning belly. “This is my home,” I said.
“What?”
“This is my home,” I shouted into the receiver, tears springing to my eyes. “I’m paying my own way!” The idea that he would hold the money over my head when they had sent Kazuo here for vacation, when he had sent my little brother to Japan, enraged me.
“Ai!” he said. “I had to reregister with the party to get my visa.”
I spoke up again. “Then you can help get Yoshiko and Kai-ming out now,” I said. “In addition to yourself. It’s not good for you if I look like a criminal.”
The line clicked and went silent.
IN THE MORNING I called Wen-chong.
“I have bad news,” he said, before I had a chance to say anything. “They’re trying to deport Professor Hong.”
35
THEY’RE ALSO TRYING TO imply that you have some kind of conspiratorial connection to him,” Wen-chong said. “The letter you gave me was traced.”
“Well, that’s absurd,” I said, shifting the phone to my other ear. “I only met him once, by chance.”
“Of course,” he said. He hesitated. “But I think you understand how logical your government is. There’s something else.”
“What?”
“There’s been an anonymous charge that you’ve been plagiarizing in our lab.”
My face flushed. “Well, that’s even more absurd. No one has ever done this kind of work before. There’s no one to plagiarize from!”
“I know it, but Gleason wants to look into it. There are many labs in other universities, and he wants to make sure you’re not duplicating something we just haven’t seen. There’s a committee that has to investigate any such charge, and they’ll be contacting you. I suppose they’ll have to talk to you by phone or fly out to South Dakota.”
I hung up the phone in despair. Li-wen was trying to destroy me! I had no doubt this was all his doing. It was too much of a coincidence that the Professor had joined Gleason’s lab just before these accusations began.
I SOMEHOW GOT through the last two weeks before the School of Mines’ spring vacation and drove to Ann Arbor in two days.
I burst in on Li-wen and the Professor as they ate noodles in their dormitory room. They looked up at me in surprise. It smelled like stale sesame oil. On the counter behind their heads, Kazuo’s vase stood, filled with chopsticks and spatulas.
“Well, it’s Superman,” said Li-wen after a moment. He waved his cup of tea toward me. He wore a denim button-down shirt. “Coming to save the day. I’m so glad you found us.” He put some noodles in his mouth and chewed.
The Professor smiled and nodded.
“Why are you trying to ruin my life?” I said, heart pounding. “I have done nothing to you. I have a baby, you know.”
“He’s not a baby anymore, little brother,” he said. “He’s over two years old now. Clever little bugger. Tease him and he comes right back at you. Would you like some noo—”
“Stay away from my family,” I said. “If you continue to play games with me, I can always mention to the INS that you entered this country illegally.”
He chewed for a moment, looking down, and took a slurp of tea. “It’s not me you need to talk to,” he said finally. “Do you think I’m so soft? It’s your brother.”
“Kazuo?”
He shrugged. “Who else?”
“Why?”
He shrugged again. “He’s jealous. Your parents are pressing him to marry some ugly rich woman, and your lovely wife is right there under his nose. And you’re here in America, while he was too scared to even take the exam. It doesn’t seem fair, does it?”
“I don’t believe you,” I said.
He leaned over and reached for an airmail envelope that was on the counter and handed it to me. I recognized Kazuo’s handwriting.
I am grateful for your connections and all you’ve done, for I cannot abide the thought that he would have everything that should be mine. All my life I have done what I was asked. I have been the dutiful son, the diligent student. I have lived my whole life in fear of disappointing my parents. And for all that, I have earned nothing but a life of endless toil and a prospective bride who never smiles. While my little brother—the one who never cared, who talked back and flunked out of school—he is the hero, somehow.
“Are you all right?” Li-wen said.
I walked over to the bathroom, stuffing the letter into my pocket. I leaned over the sink and vomited. The edges of my vision began to darken, and I sat down on the toilet, head in my hands, panting. Towels hung on a rack just by my head, their stale mustiness reminding me of the futon in my parents’ country house, where I had lain during the war.
After a minute, my vision returned, and a pair of green leather slippers appeared in the bathroom doorway. I looked up to see Li-wen holding a wet paper towel and a glass of water. I took only the paper towel.
He held out the glass. “It’s not poisoned, my boy. We push papers. We’re not criminals.”
I took the glass, rinsed out my mouth, and spat the water into the sink. I used the rest of the water to rinse the vomit down the drain and wiped my face and neck with the paper towel.
He leaned against the doorframe, his mouth twisted. He put his hand in his pants pocket. “Your brother is a bit of a bastard,” he said. He shifted his feet.
“He had the advantage his whole life,” I said. “If he didn’t end up with what he wanted, it’s his own fault.” I squeezed past Li-wen out of the bathroom.
“What are you going to do?”
I said nothing. Because I didn’t know and wouldn’t have told him, anyway.
36
MRS. LARSSON HELD A gingersnap in her teeth while she poured me a cup of coffee. She took the cookie out of her mouth and looked up, eyebrows arching. “What’s that, Chia-lin?”
“May I use your automatic copy machine?” I repeated.
“Oh, sure!” she said brightly. “Y
ou’ve been dying to use it for two years now, haven’t you?”
She gave me the cup of coffee, and I took a sip, the warm vapors opening up the vessels in my brain, calling things into focus. I’d been driving all night.
I handed her Kazuo’s letter.
“Which side?” she said. She looked blankly at the Chinese characters, which described not only my undeserving nature and Kazuo’s conversations with Tu Kuo-hong, the security general’s son, but also Kazuo’s favorite pulp novel series and his current infatuation with a certain well-endowed Taiwanese folksinger.
“Both.”
“One copy?”
“Three.”
“Three it is. Oh! There’s another letter from your wife. Have a seat. It’ll take me a couple of minutes, anyway.”
Dear Saburo,
My father is selling his house to join his brother’s ice company. My older brother and his wife are angry about it, but what choice does he have? My father is incapable of making it on his own, and his only chance at success is to join the ice company. His brother has made the price so steep. Imagine, making your own brother sell his house so that you can profit all the more! There’s something deeply amoral about it, but this is the same man, after all, who stood by and did nothing while my brother died.
What can we do? My uncle holds all the cards and he knows it. My mother keeps saying we should find out what significance my father’s name has, because she recalls my grandmother’s saying the name had some value, but my father waves this off as another one of my mother’s complaints.
“All done,” Mrs. Larsson said. She handed me the warm, curling sheets of paper.
“How are your children?” I said. I longed to hear news of a happy American life.
“Oh, they’re great,” she said. “Getting all geared up for the end of school. They do miss their father, though.”
“Where’s their father?”
“He’s passed on,” she said. She handed me the envelope, eyes down, and lifted her chin slightly. “Korea.”
TWO WEEKS LATER, I received a telegram from my father:
RECEIVED YOUR LETTER. WILL FIX.
