Paper Daughter

by Jeanette Ingold

  I wanted to hug the photographer who came to tell Jillian that Lynch needed her, though I seriously doubted the message.

  "Anyway," she said, "I'm glad we got things fixed between us." She reached for two of the last three peanuts. "You know, sugared pecans don't cost that much more, and they taste a lot better."

  And then she rushed off in a whirl of bright clothes, leaving me to sweep up shells and think about what she'd said.

  ***

  Mourning was such an odd, old-fashioned word. It brought to my mind images of black clothes and stoic dignity and of the kind of rooms with closed draperies that, in a movie, tell you right away someone has died. Death's a fact, such things say.Don't question it.

  Only I had.

  I'd gotten through the early days after Dad died by not totally accepting that he had. Instead I'd slipped into a want-to-believe kind of hope, like when a kid who knows that Santa doesn't exist still hopes a swoosh of winter wind might be a flying sleigh.

  Except that my hope had been much bigger: a huge, aching invention that the report of Dad's death was wrong. That it was someone else who had been run over, and that the next time the phone rang, it would be Dad calling. He'd say he'd been in a remote area with no wireless connection, out of cell range, his rental car broken down.

  I'd known it was all fantasy, but it had helped me more than Mom's blaming herself had helped her, which is what she'd done those first days. Made up If onlys with her at the center.

  "If only I'd gone with him," she'd say. "If only I'd taken him to the airport and then picked him up."

  One morning she'd burst out, "What was he doing there anyway, on foot, in some neighborhood he didn't know? He should have called me! I could have read him a map."

  And on another day she'd slammed a table so hard that a crystal vase fell and shattered. "It's not fair! So not fair!"

  And it wasn't, I thought. Not the hidden past. Not his death. Not after.

  ***

  Before leaving the Herald parking lot that evening, I sat in the car and called Bill Ames on my cell phone. He didn't answer, and I hung up without leaving a message. And with Mom home, I didn't get a chance to try him again.

  He didn't answer on Wednesday, either, when I tried calling right after work. But Mom went to the copy shop after we finished a fast dinner, and as soon as she drove away, I called once more.

  "I didn't expect to hear from you again," he said once he'd placed who I was. "I had the impression you weren't too happy with what I had to say the last time."

  "It surprised me," I said. "I didn't know as much about my dad as I'd thought."

  He laughed. "Don't feel bad. My kids go to sleep when I tell tales from ancient history. But what can I help you with?"

  "I was wondering if you ever went home with Dad, like over a holiday?"

  "To California? I didn't have airfare for that. And he pretty much stayed around New York, anyway."

  California? I'd never heard Dad mention living in California. But maybe it made sense. If he was considering starting his life over with a new identity, he'd have wanted to get as far away from the original one as possible. And going all the way from one coast to the other for college...

  "Maggie? You still there?"

  "Yes. Sorry. I was just thinking. Do you know where in California he lived?"

  Now Mr. Ames was the one silent for a bit. Then, "If he ever mentioned it, I've long since forgotten. But I'm pretty sure it was a city rather than a rural area. Your dad had"—he paused as though considering—"he was street-smart. Manhattan didn't throw him, not even when we were freshmen."

  "So you knew him all the way through college," I said. "I was wondering if you could tell me more about—"

  Mr. Ames interrupted me. "Maggie, I'm facing an early morning. A trip to take, and I'm not packed. So unless there's something specific?"

  "No, I guess not. Thank you," I said, and hung up.

  It fit. That note of Dad's I'd seen and torn up, about a family search. There'd been something about California in that, hadn't there?

  But California? Just the biggest state in the nation, population-wise. Probably with more places that qualified as cities than most states had towns.

  I sat back and closed my eyes. How would I even know where to start looking for Dad's family—half of my family—in a place like that?

  ***

  At the Herald on Thursday, I continued with the work that was becoming easier the better I got at deciphering disc golf and slow-pitch ball schedules. As I had the day before, I called people for information they'd forgotten to include. I verified park names and addresses in the phone book. I checked the style guide for everything, absolutely everything I had the least question about.

  Sometimes I was tempted to take shortcuts—to tell myself a team's members would know whether a nine o'clock Saturday game was an early one or under the lights at night. But then I'd picture Dad's worked-over drafts, with leads rewritten till there could be no misunderstanding what he meant. And then I'd find out what I needed to know.

  Jake or Tonk checked on my progress occasionally. They always found things for me to fix, but they found fewer each time.

  And I'd learned when I could ask for help without causing them problems, because I'd gotten a better feel for the tempo of the newsroom.

  I enjoyed the morning's slow start, just as I looked forward to the pace picking up in the early afternoon, the way Mr. Braden had said it would. By late afternoon the air would almost snap with the tension of stories coming together, headlines being written, pages getting finished.

  The first page proofs would come off printers, and I would read a piece of the next day's paper that nobody outside the newsroom had ever seen.

  ***

  When I returned to my desk after lunch, I typed one last swim meet program and then told Jake I'd finished inputting all the schedules he'd given me.

  "Nice work," he said. "We're going to be sorry to lose you Monday."

  "I'll miss being here," I said. "Though," I quickly added before he got any ideas, "I'm looking forward to doing something that's more hard news." I glanced at the piles of paper on his desk. "What would you like me to do next? I could try another rewrite."

  "You could," he said, "but I've got a better idea. Grab your things."

  "Where are we going?"

  "Safeco Field. I've got an interview with a couple of the players, and I'm taking you with me. Before you leave Sports, I want you to see more than the drudge stuff."

  "But a Mariners interview?" I exclaimed. "Just like that? What do I do?"

  "Watch, listen, and have fun!"

  Which is exactly what I did once I got done pinching myself that I was actually inside the working part of a major-league stadium, sitting across from two of baseball's superstars.

  And I learned several things about interviewing. When Jake got one question answered, he didn't just jump right into the next. Instead he waited, and sometimes the wait prompted a longer answer that was a lot more interesting than the first, short one.

  I've got to tell Dad, I thought once, briefly, before I remembered that I couldn't.

  But then I realized Dad must have known, anyway, about listening past the time when it was tempting to talk. Maybe that's one of the things he'd have taught me if he hadn't died.

  When I thanked Jake back at the Herald, I knew he assumed it was for taking me on the interview.

  It was, partly, but it was also for having given me a job that week that I'd been able to learn from and finish.

  And it was for those moments, watching Jake work, when I'd remembered the side of Dad that I knew to be true.

  FAI-YI LI, 1932

  Outside, Sucheng is waiting. Noisy vehicles clog streets, ship workers shout, and the chains of huge cranes clang loudly. People in strange clothing, with faces that tell me they will not know our language, hurry by carryingparcels, pulling children, pushing carts, loading trucks.

  Sucheng says, "This is not what I ex
pected."

  "No," I say as a man bumps my arm and a woman with an expression of dislike steps wide around us.

  Confused, I realize I should have looked to this moment. But always, since that night Sucheng and I fled, there was a closer one to be worried about. "Perhaps," I say uncertainly, "we should find Li Dewei. Perhaps he will tell us what to do."

  Sucheng and I start to walk away from the docks, and when I see persons not hurrying who look kind, I show them Li Deweis name and say one of the few American words I know, Please. Soon I learn another word. Chinatown.

  Sucheng and I go in the direction they point, and eventually, weaving through the new smells of salt air, automobiles, grit, and green forests, I recognize the old cooking smells of charcoal and hot fat.

  I see a sign with characters I can read, and then more such signs lining a street where the men look like those I grew up with.

  It makes me breathe deeply with relief, though I notice that Sucheng is looking behind us, to the ways we have not taken.

  I find Li Dewei when I spot his name on the sign for a hand laundry. Pulling Sucheng into the small shop with me, I tell him I am Wu Fai-yi.

  He shrugs. "That means nothing."

  I explain that Sucheng and I are the ones he said could be his children.

  "On paper only. Why are you here?" he asks.

  But his face is not as hard as his words, and he says, "Have you no plans? What did you think to do?"

  Because I cannot say I did not think, I answer, "Find work"

  "Well..."

  My gaze follows his as he looks vaguely about, as though to find a solution to Sucheng and me in washtubs and drying clothes and stacks of flat brown paper bundles with string around them.

  Outside there is a commotion. Three boys run through the crowd, knocking people aside, and angry words follow. The boys separate, one fleeing up an alley and the others disappearing into buildings as a car with markings jerks to a stop. Two men wearing uniforms get out, adding their voices to the noise, and people point this way and that. And then one of the men is entering here, and we in the laundry are no longer just watchers.

  The official speaks to me in an accusing rush of words, and I understand that he mistakes me for one of the running boys.

  I want to tell him that if I am red-faced and breathing fast, it is from the laundry's heat and my fright.

  His hand is outstretched. "Papers," I hear, a word I know, and the only paper I have is the one given to me by the men who took my money.

  Behind the official, Li Dewei looks as though to stop me from showing it, but I already have it out, and the man snatches it from me.

  And then he demands something of Li Dewei, who, face graying, brings other papers that the man also reads. The man gestures at Sucheng and asks a question. I catch another word I know. "Daughter?"

  And Li Dewei, after a moment, nods.

  ***

  Li Dewei and I sit up late in the back room of the laundry, talking over what has happened, and Sucheng's face has an impatient set to it as she prowls the tiny space.

  I think that perhaps she does not understand what Li Dewei is explaining. Who the running boys were is unimportant. What matters is that the policeman saw my identity paper with the name Fai-yi Li on it and with Li Dewei as my father.

  "It is an easy thing for them to find a reason to make a person be deported" he says. "I should have remembered that when the man from a Gold Mountain firm came here with an offer of money..." His voice trails off as he adds, "I wanted it for my own son and wife, to finally bring them here."

  "How long have you waited?" I ask.

  "For my wife? Since the year before you were born. That is when I traveled to China to find a wife who would join me here. But before I had saved enough for her passage, the immigration laws changed, making it impossible. Then two years ago they changed back and I returned to make the arrangements. But the costs were much more than I had foreseen, and so I was back here, alone again, when the man came with his offer."

  "So you have a real child about my age?" I ask. "I am fifteen."

  He smiles. "No! A baby boy, born after my second visit."

  Then Li Dewei asks me why we wanted to come to America and how we came by the money we paid the Gold Mountain firm. I tell him the first story that comes to my mind—that Sucheng and I are here because our parents arranged to send us.

  All this talk buys time. Under it, he is thinking and I am thinking what to do next.

  Finally he says, "Thepolice may come back, and they will expect to find you here. I think you should stay. You can work in the laundry."

  Sucheng, who is stillpacing, whirls to face us. "No! I did not come here for that."

  "Thankyou," I tell Li Dewei. "We will do as you say."

  ***

  The next weeks are hard, hard, as Sucheng and I struggle to learn the work of the laundry. And I work, too, to learn the ways and words of this new country that I must get along in.

  Mostly I bend over a tub of hot suds, rubbing shirts up and down over the metal ridges of a washboard. An apple hangs on a string where I can reach for a bite without moving from my work

  I stop my scrubbing only when a customer comes into the shop, and then only if Li Dewei is away or in his room upstairs. I give the customer his clothes, which are marked with his name in Chinese characters, and on a slip of paper I draw a circle to show the size of the coin he must pay. I listen to see if he murmurs the name of it.

  Sucheng, ironing in the back room where all our living is done, has fewer chances to learn and more time for discontent to grow. She has no door through which to look out onto the street and no customers to learn from, and I do not know what she does with her mind.

  Dream, I think I think she still believes there is gold for the picking up, somewhere. Just not in Chinatown. Not in Seattle.

  Or perhaps she remembers China, though if she does, I wonder what part she dwells on. Does she think about playing at our mother's feet, or about how hard our mother worked? Does she remember how we believed ourselves special, being twins with no brothers or sisters in a village where most children had many? Or perhaps she reflects on how imperceptibly understanding seeped into our bones that being only also meant being eldest:eldest son, eldest daughter.

  Sometimes, when I take her a pile of freshly dried clothes, I see her gaze leave the hot, heavy iron she moves over a white cotton shirt. She looks frantically from wall to wall, and I wonder if she is seeking a way out of the laundry or a way back to who we were.

  "It will not always be like this," I say, hoping to comfort her. "When the authorities have forgotten Li Dewei, we can look for something better, and then—"

  She does not want to wait. "Li Dewei's danger is not our problem. He took our money knowing the risk." She says, "You should not have brought me here. I would be better off home with our parents."

  That is the heart of her arguments, so unfair that I must fight back resentment. I was not the one who needed to leave.

  But she is also right. She could not have gotten here alone.

  And so guilt runs through me because her life has become so small and because the wrongs we did weigh heavily. I worry about the time when our parents will get old without a son or daughter to care for them, and I wonder what has become of the children of that man whose body we hid. It was not their fault he attacked Sucheng.

  If there were a way to go back to that moment when blood seeped into earth, a way I could make my decision over again, I think I would not give in to my sister. Instead I would insist we go to the authorities and say, This is who we are, and this is what has happened.If need be, perhaps I would even say that I was the one who fought with the man. I would do that for Sucheng.

  She tries once more. "We can go to another city where no one has ever heard of Fai-yi Li," she says. She looks at me coyly, the way she would look at someone from whom she wanted something when she was a pretty child. Now it is grotesque. "You can go back to being Wu Fai-yi."
r />   "No," I answer. "Not now. We will not add more harm to what we have already done. Perhaps, when Li Dewei's family is here, he will want us to leave, but until he does—"

  I stop. Telling her Not now has made a blade of fear—What if never?—twist like a knife in my stomach. What kind of eldest son does not carry on his family's name?

  CHAPTER 8

  I jerked awake the next morning to a room full of sunlight. I bolted half out of bed, groping for my alarm clock that hadn't rung, wondering how late I was going to be getting to the Herald. Then I realized it was Friday, my day off.

  In the kitchen I found a to-do list from Mom, but it was really chores for both of us—groceries, lawn mowing, window washing, a run to the store for cleaning supplies.

  "None of this has to get done today, though," she wrote. "If you've got something better to do, go for it, and we'll cram the work into the weekend."

  I wasn't sure about better, but I did need to go shopping, and after a quick call for permission to use her charge card against my first paycheck, I drove to the mall.

  And then I spent the next few hours buying enough things so I could stop raiding her closet for work clothes.

  It would have been fun if I'd known exactly what I was looking for. Still something between high school and career. Between kid and not kid. Between—

  My problem was that I didn't know exactly what between I meant. I just wanted to look less ambiguous—more defined—than the girl in the dressing-room mirror.

  Not a concept you should share with a sales clerk unless you want her to start throwing strangely cut tops and fringed belts at you.

  Finally I settled on a couple of short-sleeved shirts, a pair of pants that I hoped wouldn't wrinkle as badly as my linen ones, and a tan skirt that I thought would go with anything.

  And then I texted Bett and Aimee that having a job was expensive.

  They texted back that they were living in their swimsuits.

  ***

  At home I shook out my new clothes and ironed the pieces that needed ironing.

  I did my laundry, careful first to check that the washing machine hoses and drains were functioning properly.