All she said, though, was, "Nice. He must have loved you and your mother a lot."
"Yes," I said. "He did."
CHAPTER 24
"Are you sick?" Fran asked the next morning when I called for permission to go in late.
"No. I've got a personal matter to take care of. About Dad."
"Maggie," she said, "you can't—"
"It's not anything that would cause problems for the paper. I promise."
I knew she wanted to ask for details, but she didn't. "Go ahead, then," she said finally. "Take the morning. You can make it up Friday."
***
I angled over to the Sandpoint Way NE address I'd found for the National Archives Pacific Alaska Region. A concrete sign with its name sat behind a small flower garden, and more flowers surrounded the entrance to a solid-looking white building.
I told the man working at the reception desk that I was trying to pick up a family search my father had started.
"Genealogy's a catching bug!" he said. "Though usually the people who've caught it aren't quite so young."
"The only thing I have to go on is a Chinese name from a long time ago."
"Let me get you set up," he said, "and then I'll turn you over to an archivist who's an expert in that area."
I showed him my driver's license, and he logged me in and gave me a researcher's card. "No packs or bags of any kind in the reading area. No pens, either. Pencils only, or did you bring a computer?"
"No."
"Then pencil and paper. All right, let's go."
***
The archivist was a friendly, vivacious woman who was excited about my interest in Chinese immigration. "If you'd like a tour, I'll show you what we have," she said. "People have no idea!"
She led me into a long section of floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with vertical document boxes. "These are all Chinese immigration and legal records. A treasure trove for researchers."
Explaining about wanting to track down the person my dad might have visited recently in searching for his family, I showed her Huping Huang's name. "He must be dead by now, but I'd like to know if his family—his descendents—might still be living in Seattle."
"You're not going to learn that here," she said. "But there might be something in his file that would point you in the right direction."
"And you'd have a file on him?"
"We might, if he was a naturalized citizen or alien worker, and if he came through the Port of Seattle. Do you know what year he would have immigrated here?"
"I don't know that he did," I said.
"Or when he might have left to visit or move back to China?"
"I really don't know anything about him at all except that he was an herbalist," I admitted. "I got his name from an old photograph. Can't we just look it up?"
"I wish it was as simple as checking an alphabetical list, but it's not," the archivist said. "Even where we have lists, names can be a problem because of inconsistencies in how immigration officials interpreted and spelled what they heard."
"And no one corrected them?" I asked.
"Identification papers specifying an immigrant's right to be in the United States were so precious and often so hard to obtain, I doubt that many would have risked quarreling with anything on them. Probably they just accepted their new names. Anyway, usually the easiest way to get into a record is via an entry or sailing date."
Discouraged, I said, "I don't know any dates at all, except for 1932, when a Fai-yi Li, or Li Fai-yi, came here with his sister. But that doesn't help, because even though I first thought he might be related, apparently he's not."
"If it's even a possibility, and assuming we have a file on him, you might want to look through it anyway," she said. "It might contain references to other family members or connections."
"And I'd be allowed to?"
"A 1932 file should be open. Generally, to protect privacy, we apply the seventy-five-year rule in determining what's available to the public."
***
Soon I was settled at a table in the researchers' work area, reading pages pinned in a manila folder for LI, FAI-YI.
The top sheet was a long form with information inked in and a photograph attached. The boy pictured looked solemn and scared and way too young to bear any resemblance to the old Mr. Li I'd met.
Reading down the form, I learned that Fai-yi Li was fifteen years old when he arrived in this country. He was five feet eight inches tall, and he weighed 139 pounds. Identification marks included a mole on his neck.
At the bottom of the page was the notation "S/N."
I searched out the archivist who'd helped me and asked her what the S/N meant.
"Son of native," she answered. "Native was the term usually used for an ethnic Chinese born on American soil."
The multi-page transcript of an interrogation followed the form sheet, with questions so random I couldn't imagine why they'd been asked.
The young man's answers told how many steps there were to the front door of his home in China. How many rooms were in the house and how many children lived there, where the school was and the village well.
The archivist paused by my chair. "Finding anything helpful?"
"Not so far. I'm reading the things he was asked when he arrived here, but the questions are weird. Why would anybody care about the details of his Chinese village?"
"Because someone only pretending to be from there might not have been able to answer the questions," she said. "Or he might have tried but gotten tripped up telling inconsistent lies. The interrogations were designed to uncover deceit."
"But why would—"
"It was the Exclusion Era," she said. "It began once Chinese labor was no longer needed to help open up the West—by building railroads, primarily. For the next sixty years or so, until the middle of World War II, federal laws severely restricted immigration. Generally, unless they came in under one of a few special classifications—students, for instance—or unless they were already American citizens because one of their parents was, ethnic Chinese didn't get in."
"So people tried to get around the laws?" I asked.
Nodding, she said, "It was often quite sad. Some paid to have themselves smuggled in, risking their lives in horrible ways. Some who had come here in the early years took advantage of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake to gain citizenship, saying that records of their birth were among those that burned.
"And," she continued, "still others sought entry here by falsely claiming to be the children of American citizens. Such 'paper son' schemes required connivance at this end—someone, usually but not always a relative, willing to claim them and able to provide a convincing story.
"Efforts to discover paper sons included interrogations like the one you're looking at. A single inconsistent answer could cause a hopeful immigrant to be declared illegal."
"And then, if he was?" I asked.
"He'd be sent back. And immigration officials might take a new interest in the status of the supposed parent, too."
No wonder the kid in the photograph looked scared, I thought.
I remembered the angry snatch of words I'd overheard Mr. Li and his sister exchange—"All these years, and now you put us in danger." Maybe this explained what I had heard. Maybe they'd come here as part of a paper son scheme. Would anyone care about that after all this time?
I returned to my reading, finding more of the same questions repeated over and over in different ways. And then they took a new tack. The questioner said, "We've a report of a crime that you were involved in before you left China. What do you know about that?"
"What crime?" Li asked.
"A crime. You tell us."
Now, as the questions and answers went back and forth, the interrogator became increasingly accusing. "It was reported ... It was reported."
Li repeated, "I do not know. I do not know."
And then suddenly the questioner said, "Enough. You're believed."
There was little more after that. Th
at was the end of the transcript.
"What happened?" I asked the archivist, who was reading over my shoulder. "Why the sudden decision?"
"Probably he convinced them," she said.
"But what were those questions about a crime all about?"
"Who knows? They might have been trying to correlate his story with things they'd heard from other immigrants. Or the questions might have been a setup for demanding a bribe. There are certainly accounts of corrupt immigration officials and translators among the good ones. But," she went on, "we've gotten sidetracked. Look what I've found for you."
For the first time, I saw that she'd brought over a much smaller file. "This might be your herbalist," she said. "Same name spelling and the right occupation."
CHAPTER 25
There were only a couple of pages. The first was an application made by Huping Huang, a Chinese merchant living in the United States, for a permit to be allowed to reenter this country following a proposed visit to China with his daughter, An Huang, who was an American citizen.
The reentry permit was granted, but it appeared never to have been used, since the file's last notation was just a ship name and the date of its departure from San Francisco in 1935.
So, I thought, apparently he left this country and never came back.
I looked for anything on the form that might help me. His marital status was listed as widower; the daughter was his only child.
"Would there be a file on the daughter?" I asked.
The archivist clicked her tongue as she considered. "As an American citizen—no. As an ethnic Chinese—possibly. It wouldn't hurt to look."
A few minutes later she handed me one last file, and giving me an odd look, she said, "I'll leave you to go through this one by yourself."
I opened it and looked at a picture of a teenage girl.
Of course, the girl's old-fashioned clothes and blunt haircut were unfamiliar, but her face ... It was the face I saw when I looked in a mirror. Or so similar to it, anyway, that I felt blood rushing through me and my heart beating fast. Goose bumps raised on my arms, and my breath came shallow.
This girl was me, except she was so much lovelier. A girl who looked more gentle than I could ever be. But perhaps she was defiant, too? Somehow she seemed to be both.
And sad. She looked very, very sad.
I could feel the archivist discreetly watching from across the room, and I made myself read.
There wasn't much in the file. Even less information than in her father's—j ust an approved request for a reentry permit and, later, a brief notation from an official who had checked to see if she ever actually left the United States. Dated in 1936, the entry ended, "Deceased, San Francisco."
***
I left the archives with a photocopy of An's picture. I hadn't asked for it. The archivist just gave it to me, along with a look that said she understood that I couldn't trust myself to talk just then.
I went only a few blocks, though, before realizing that it wasn't safe for me to drive. The tears filling my eyes made traffic a blur, and when I switched lanes, I saw a car appear from nowhere on my left. After that, I pulled into the first parking lot I came to and stopped the car at the deserted far end.
Hugging the steering wheel, I waited out waves of emotion. I felt as though all the adrenaline my body was capable of producing was pumping through me, and that if I didn't hang on to the wheel, I might explode through my skin.
I was beyond keyed up. I was excited and frightened and also...
I picked up the picture. Also, I felt robbed.
Looking at An made me furious because it was as though the fact of her meant I wasn't the first person in the world who was me.
Which I knew was crazy. Even crazier was that I kept looking at her picture, when all I had to do was turn my gaze away.
Suddenly I remembered another of those ocean birthdays. I was older, allowed beyond the breaker line for the first time. A particularly big wave had risen from the rolling swell, and Dad had shouted that it was one to dive into. But I couldn't stop watching it, even when he'd shouted, "Now, Maggie!Now!"
I'd watched, eyes wide open, until the moment it crashed down and pummeled me, flailing and choking, through the plunging surf.
"It was your fault," I'd yelled at Dad. "You shouldn't have let me go out there. It's your fault I got hurt." And I'd cried the way I wanted to cry now, because I remembered how that breaker had hurt and because I didn't want to see this picture that I couldn't stop looking at.
It wasn't fair that this was what I'd found. I'd gone to the archives for Dad's sake, hoping to pick up a trace of his steps.
And yes, I'd thought I wanted to know who his real family was. Who mine was. I'd thought replacing the part that had gone missing would help me feel like my old, familiar self again.
Instead my search had taken me to a terrifying world I didn't want to know about. It had shown me teenagers who gave up their true identities for the rest of their lives.
It had tied me to a girl who died when she wasn't much older than I, leaving a photo that said she had a story that was big and sad.
My thoughts were all tangled up, and I felt sick and outraged for her, too.
"Why? How?" I said aloud, as though the girl's picture might answer.
And then I did start crying, and I cried and I cried.
I cried because I'd failed Dad. Because I'd run out of ideas for how I might find out about the day he died.
I cried for that scared kid, Fai-yi Li, in that long-ago interrogation room.
I cried for An, the girl who was and wasn't me and who surely was my ancestor.
And I cried for the unknown person between us. There must have been someone besides Dad ... before him.
HOPE JOYCE CHEN 2009
Where do seventy plus years of a life go?
Is there a set portion for regret?
And if so, which parts of my portion would I replace with ones less haunting? Which parts of my life would I change?
Perhaps it would be my regret, when I watched the older girls leave Chinatown, that I was not old enough to go with them. The war had brought money to their parents and uniforms to their brothers, and it had opened office doors for them.
I followed not too many years later.
Perhaps, instead, I should have stayed with the old couple who had treated me like a daughter, giving me their name and trying to raise me as they had been raised.
Perhaps I would have stayed if they had not been so honest, if they had not told me someone else had first called me Hope, and if they had not also given me two things that they themselves had not purchased. A ragged blanket that I eventually lost. A torn postcard I took with me when I ran away.
Or perhaps my real regrets began a few years later, when I'd saved enough to pay my way into a secretarial school. For if I hadn't gone there, hadn't graduated and found a position, hadn't fallen in love where I shouldn't...
Well. At least I have no regrets for the infant. However his life has turned out, surely it has been better than any I could have provided.
And although I never saw him after the day he was born, I did give him as much as I was given. More.
There were papers to complete, and even though I knew it would probably be changed, I gave him a name: Steven Chen. And when I handed the signed forms back to the agency lady, I gave her the beautiful, soft blanket that was the most expensive thing I had ever bought. "This is for him," I said, "andalso this old postcard."
She examined it, puzzled. "Why is it important?"
"I don't know," I answered. "But when I was a baby, someone lef it with me."
***
So again I ask, where have the years gone?
My twenty-five became thirty-five. A decade became two and then three and four. I reached the end of working. Another decade went by.
I'm well past seventy now. With what? Another ten, twenty more years in front of me? I can live them as I've lived thus far, on my own.
Except, lately I've thought...
Perhaps it's just seeing my women friends move away from San Francisco to be nearer to sons and daughters. But I've started thinking that one day, even though I still live in this city where I was born, I'll be alone in a land of strangers.
I know there are places where missing people can leave their names. Registries for parents who want to find children. For children who want to find parents.
I wish I could know whether, if I were to leave my name, it would become a regret.
CHAPTER 26
The early afternoon hum was already picking up when I got to the newsroom. In Lifestyles, Deena handed me a new batch of contest entries, but I'd barely started opening them when Jillian came over, bringing two mugs of tea.
"I'm working with Lynch again," she said, "but I told him I needed a break. How did it go this morning? Did you track down the name we got off the sign?"
"Huping Huang," I said. "Yes. I saw files on him and his daughter, but there wasn't anything in them about anyone who'd be alive today."
That was all I meant to say, but I couldn't keep the rest of it in.
"They were my family, though. I saw her photograph, and she looked just like me. And I read that she died not long after the picture was taken."
"No wonder you came in looking like you needed tea," Jillian said. "I once heard about this person who, you know, could get in touch with her earlier lives, and—"
She broke off. "I'm sorry. That must have been hard. And you must be really disappointed you didn't learn anything to help your father."
***
Jillian came back in midafternoon, just after I finished the recipes.
"I've got an idea," she said. "That shop—Huang's—was in Seattle's Chinatown. Probably he and his daughter lived nearby, because people did live close to their work in those days, and as Chinese, the Huangs probably weren't welcome many other places." She shot me a quick look. "I don't mean that wrong," she said. "But things were different back then."
"I know that," I said. "What are you getting at?"
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