No Certain Home

by Marlene Lee

  “Where are you off to, young lady?” asked Mother.

  “To wash my hands.”

  “You just washed them.”

  “She likes the gold handles,” said Agnes.

  “Nellie gets to wash her hands whenever she feels like it,” Myrtle pouted. “I want to wash the ham off.”

  “Take Sam with you,” Mother sighed, “and wash him up, too.” Nellie moved so they could get by. At the same time, she looked over her shoulder in the direction of the loud party at the far end of the car.

  “They’re talkin’ about the Exposition,” she explained.

  Mother sniffed and closed the lid on the shoe box of food. “They play cards,” she said, tying up the string. “I saw them last night.”

  “What’s the Exposition?” John asked. He laid a piece of ham on the arm of the seat. Mother picked it up and wiped the red plush with her handkerchief.

  “It’s the World’s Fair in St. Louis,” Nellie said. “The 1904 World’s Fair.”

  Agnes leaned forward. “We’re headed the wrong way.” She was proud of her directions. “We’re goin’ west. We’ll miss it.”

  “Father says—” Nellie began.

  “What does Father say?” asked Father himself, back from the smoking car. He took the empty seat across the aisle.

  “That the St. Louis Exposition has got nothing on Trinidad, Colorado,” Nellie said smugly.

  “Trinidad”—Father paused to re-open the window, cross one leg over the other, and smooth his glossy mustache—“has people from every spot on the globe.” He grinned at the children and flicked away a cinder thrown up from the roadbed. Across the aisle Mother’s thick, red hands fiddled with the string on the shoe box.

  “Italy, Germany, Russia, England, France, Brazil,” Father enumerated, and would have gone on if he hadn’t run out of countries.

  “Canada?” asked Agnes.

  “Canada,” said Father, “and Mexico, and other countries too numerous to mention.” The children looked at Mother who gave a small, apprehensive smile.

  “God, woman!” Father said. He recrossed his legs the other direction. “Everybody in the world wants to be in Trinidad. That’s where the money is.”

  “Are you hungry, Charles?” Mother asked.

  “Nah,” Father said. He was in a happy, magnanimous mood. The smoking car was also the drinking car. He rose. “Think I’ll take a stroll.”

  “You just got here.”

  “Then I’ve just left.” He stood and walked back along the aisle, his rolling gait as much a part of the train’s sway as the train itself. At the end of the car he pushed open the door. The clatter of wheels on rails, the shriek of the train’s whistle swept through the car like a wind.

  At midnight the Smedleys stepped down onto the Trinidad station platform. In the dark, passengers milled around them, a pushing, shoving weight of shouts and strong-smelling bodies. Foreign babble flowed out of more cars than Agnes dreamed could be hooked up to one engine. The train hadn’t been this long, she was sure, when they left Kansas City.

  “Where’d all these people come from?” she asked Father, who was pushing ahead into the crowd.

  “Denver!” he called back to her. “They come from Denver! And before that, Chicago and New York. Every spot on the globe!” Agnes stayed right behind him, calling back to Nellie and Mother who might get lost among the foreigners in the dark.

  They slept in a boarding house that night. Agnes dreamed about Trinidad and their very own home, but when Father showed it to them that afternoon—“It’s close by,” he said, “no need to hire a wagon”—and they’d carried their grips across the railroad tracks, it wasn’t a house at all, but a tent. Still, Father had nailed up a “kitchen” he called the shed, and once you were inside this kitchen you only had to dip your head a little to get into the tent where Mother and Nellie were already spreading blankets on the plank floor.

  “We’ll have featherbeds before long,” Mother said gamely, and when she stood, her face was pink and pleased because Father had planned well and soon there would be enough money for a house.

  Daylight ended early in Trinidad, shut out by the Juniper-covered crags of Fischer’s Peak and the high mesas and foothills. Agnes crossed the ditch and climbed the embankment, Myrtle behind her. Following Father at a distance—he’d told Mother he was going to town “on business,” but they all knew he was going to the saloon—they began picking up pieces of coal dropped from the trains’ fireboxes onto the tracks. By the time they dragged the gunny sack, heavy and lumpy with coal, back to the tent, a cool and purple stillness had fallen over the shanties along the track; over the town of Trinidad and the Santa Fe Trail flowing through its center like a river.

  Agnes set the gunny sack near the stove and looked Mother in the eye. “I’m invited to a birthday party,” she said.

  “How come?” asked Mother.

  “All the girls in the class are invited. Everyone has to take a present to the birthday girl.”

  Mother disturbed a few embers in the stove, blew on them, and jabbed a short-handled shovel into the gunny sack. “They live on the hill,” she said. “They already have nice things. What are you going to take?”

  “Three bananas.”

  “Three?” Mother acted like she’d never heard of such a thing. “You’d take bananas from your own brothers and sisters so you can give them to a rich child on the hill?”

  “Three,” Agnes said firmly.

  “Such a selfish girl,” Mother said, and slammed the stove door shut.

  Agnes was the first one at the party. She’d worn her best dress, the one she’d had her photograph taken in, a pinafore with a wide, ruffled yoke.

  She climbed the long flight of steps leading up to the fine house and rang the bell. The little girl’s mother came to the door. She looked at Agnes, then at the bananas, amazed at such a nice gift, and told Agnes to go in the parlor where the little girl was arranging a circle for “musical chairs.”

  “H’llo,” said the birthday girl. “Where’s your present?”

  Agnes bobbed her head in the direction of the front door. “Your mother put them on the table.”

  “’Them’?” said the birthday girl. “More than one?”

  Agnes grabbed a straight chair from the corner. “Does this here go in the circle?”

  “Oh, we already have enough chairs,” said the girl, and turned away to tighten her hair ribbon. The doorbell rang. Agnes remained holding the chair while the lovely little girl skipped to the entry hall. She was gone so long that Agnes set the chair back down and went out to stand near the round table. Other lovely little girls were setting their gifts on the lace tablecloth that hung clear to the rug. The presents were wrapped in colored paper and bright ribbons, all except three bananas.

  She stared at the dark, woody stems and yellow skins beginning to turn black. A snake of doubt uncoiled in her stomach and slithered up her backbone. She took a step toward the door. Its beveled glass admitted light but shut out tents and railroad tracks. She considered hiding on the porch where it turned the corner and ran alongside the house. By now the entry and front room were full of noisy children. The little girl’s mother hurried between the door, the gift table, and an inner room where Agnes could hear the soft chink of china and silverware against a background of women’s voices.

  When the piano in the parlor started up with a loud, fast song that had lots of fight to it, Agnes decided to stay a minute longer. She went in to stand behind the birthday girl sitting on a round stool at the piano. Patent leather shoes peeked out from her long, velveteen skirt. The girl twisted around to see who was watching and lost the beat.

  “Go back with the others,” she hissed.

  “I’d rather watch you play,” Agnes said softly. “Can I watch you play?”

  “No! Can’t you see you made me lose the beat?”

  “Don’t sound to me like you lost the beat,” Agnes said. “It’s beautiful.”

  “Wouldn’t you
like to join the circle?” said the little girl’s mother. By now the children were stalking something in the middle of the parlor. Suspicious, Agnes stepped into the ring and followed the line around and around a lot of chairs. Suddenly the music stopped. There was a great crash as the children threw themselves onto the chairs. Agnes stepped back, shocked at rich people’s manners. The little girl’s mother came up and gently tapped her shoulder.

  “You’re out,” she said.

  “What?”

  “You lost your chair.”

  “I never had one,” said Agnes. Everyone in the parlor grew still

  “The point of the game,” said the little girl’s mother, “is to find a chair.”

  Agnes went over and picked up the straight chair she had earlier put beside the velvet curtain. “I can set in this one,” she said.

  By now the children were tittering. The music started up and they stalked chairs again. The song was choppy and getting choppier. Each time it stopped, hell broke loose. Others joined Agnes on the sidelines, and she realized they, too, were out. Finally there were just two people circling one chair. Agnes turned away from such a stupid game.

  After the winner was declared the mother said they would play it one more time, “now that everyone knows the rules.” Again chairs were set in a circle. Agnes decided not to go home just yet. She’d hunted more quail and squirrel than anyone here, and she could damn well locate a chair.

  The piano began again. A different piece. Slower and prettier. Agnes considered going out the first time around so she could stand by the piano and hear the music. This song needed quiet listening to, not dashing around a durn fool circle of chairs.

  The music stopped. Agnes lunged for a chair and landed on someone’s hand.

  “Ow!” screamed a short boy.

  “It’s the rules,” Agnes said fiercely, and held her seat. Soon she was stalking chairs again, around and around, and she could see that the mother had placed them so that whoever was at one end of the lopsided circle would lose out. Each time she reached the end, she held back until she could make a dash for the chair on the other side.

  “Now, Agnes,” said the mother when Agnes was hanging back at the end of the lopsided circle, “move along with the rest of the children.” Agnes glared at her. The music stopped and Agnes threw herself in the nearest chair, which sent some silly girl crying to the side of the room, sucking her hand.

  After a bit they were down to three chairs. This time when the music stopped, Agnes leaped up sideways and landed where a chair had been a moment ago. But one of the girls moved it at the exact moment Agnes needed it.

  “She moved it!” Agnes bellowed from the floor. “I seen her do it!”

  “Now, now,” said the mother, “let’s all get along nicely.” Agnes was out. But this time she didn’t go over to the piano. She didn’t even hear the music. She watched the cheating girl like a hawk. And when the girl started to throw herself into a chair, Agnes reached over and pulled it quick-like toward the short boy whose hand she’d sat on earlier, and when she moved the chair she also pushed him into it, so that the cheating girl stood red-faced, out, and ready to spit. She turned to the mother and cried,

  “She’s not playing according to the rules!”

  “You hadn’t ought to cheat!” Agnes shouted back. “I seen you before! You moved the chair!” The mother motioned for her daughter to play louder and stepped between Agnes and the cheating girl.

  “Now, girls, it’s only a game. We’re ready for our refreshments. Won’t that be nice?”

  Agnes watched everyone troop through the double doors and thought just maybe, before she left, she’d take a bite of whatever it was people ate at birthday parties. She followed the others into the dining room. The first thing she saw in the center of a long table was a bowl of fruit, and right on top was a bunch of the most beautiful bananas she’d ever seen. Six. And not one black spot.

  The three blackening bananas sitting on the gift table filled her with shame. So, too, did her tent, the kitchen shed, the railroad tracks. For a long moment she did not trust her family or herself. Then a strong, fresh feeling climbed up her spine where the snake had uncoiled before. She turned and walked out of the dining room toward the front door. On the way out, she grabbed her bananas. Descending the stair steps to the street, she held her head high. In case anyone was watching, they would not see her cry. She’d left early because she wanted to. She’d planned it all along. She hated birthday parties. She would never go to another birthday party in her life, no matter how many times she was invited.

  4

  China 1937

  At dusk Agnes stood on the terrace near her cave and looked across the valley at the ancient walls of Yan’an. Beyond the ruins of the old town the Yan River snaked off to the east. Closer, at the foot of the loess hill where she stood, Red Army soldiers were racing their horses on the drill ground, a flat piece of land soon to be converted to an airfield. Agnes sometimes took her pony, Yunnan, captured in battle against the Nationalists, and galloped him across the clay-packed field, Yunnan’s ears pinned back, her own short brown hair flattened by the wind. Zhu De had given her the pony as a gift. Second only to her portable typewriter, Yunnan was her most cherished possession.

  “Good evening,” Zhu De said in Chinese. He had come from his cave to join her. “It is a beautiful early evening.”

  “Beautiful evening,” Agnes repeated in Chinese. Her accent was poor. Zhu De stood scanning the sky. In a single sweeping gaze he contemplated the ancient pagoda on the cliff; then studied the river itself that curled off into the distance where it would meet the Yellow River, “China’s Sorrow”; then returned to the horse races on the field below. Zhu De’s eyes and mind were never still.

  “You are not racing Yunnan?” he asked, making a small joke.

  Agnes’ face, with its strong, pleasing bone structure, could suddenly break into a wide grin. “I will let others win today.” A shout went up from the soldiers in the field below. Zhu De raised his arms and clapped. These were the same young men and boys he taught in the Red Army Academy, renamed the Anti-Japanese Resistance University. He dropped his arms to his sides. “It is a good army,” he said. The sun sank, brilliant red, in the haze of dust hovering above the dry and dusty region. Zhu De turned from the sunset toward Agnes who had opened her notebook. He smiled. “You are eager to work.” She was already writing. He began:

  “At the Lunar New Year when I was a child, we put wild honey on the lips of the Kitchen God and burned his picture in the courtyard that Heaven might receive a good report of our family.” He paused until her pencil stopped moving. “We believed the stars made us poor and unlucky. We hated Landlord Ting, but it was the stars, we thought, that made us poor. The stars made us eat kaolaing gruel and vegetables from a common pot. The stars gave us a black cake of coarse salt over which we rubbed the wet vegetables. Only on very special nights did we burn a candle: cotton in a dish of rape seed oil.

  “Famine came. Our family broke apart like a fallen fruit. I went with my uncle and aunt who had no children.” Zhu De’s face settled into a stoic mask. “Our world changed. We planted opium. The famine made it necessary. Now the family was split, you see.” He gripped his hands together, then tore them apart to augment the simple Chinese he used with Agnes.

  “It was decided I should continue in school. My schoolmaster was Hsi Ping-an, a good teacher. He believed in Western, scientific education, but he was too old to understand the mathematics and science. He taught us to inquire. Still, our curriculum was the old Confucian ethics.”

  Zhu De broke his monologue with a smile that began in his eyes, played out on his seamed face, and returned to rest in his eyes. “You are comfortable in your cave?” he asked.

  “I am comfortable enough,” Agnes replied. “I am not here to be comfortable.”

  “You have trapped all the rats in Yan’an?” He laughed outright. The Chinese thought her compulsion to kill the rats overrunning the caves was
amusing. Similarly, they did not understand her interest in cleanliness and something called germs. However, Mao had put the weight of his authority behind her anti-rat campaign, and traps begged from her friend Edgar Snow in Beijing were cocked and ready to spring shut all over these loess hills.

  “Rats carry disease,” she stated, and the general did not disagree. They stood in silence. Shadowy hills and plateaus stretched away into the dusk.

  “In the days of my childhood,” he continued, “the Old Weaver traveled through Szechwan villages each winter to weave cloth from the cotton thread my mother and the other wives and daughters spun.

  “ He fought in the Taiping Revolution of 1847 and wore the red jacket and carried the red flag. The Old Weaver told stories about the opium wars and foreigners’ plunder of China. The Empress Dowager, he told us, taxed the poor to pay foreign victors.”

  Agnes needed her interpreter, Lily Wu, but if she called for her, Mao Zedong would see, even in the dusk, and follow her here to the terrace.

  “There is much change in the world,” Zhu De went on. “In China we live in the heart of change. During the Taiping Revolution, Marx and Engels were writing their works, India had a great rebellion, and soon your country would have a civil war, north against feudal south. I have lived in a time of confusion. I, myself, was confused. When I was nearly forty I cleansed myself of confusion and self-indulgence.”

  Agnes stopped writing and listened.

  “I had grown addicted to opium. It was very pleasant. I thought my life should be pleasant. I grew confused and indolent.” Zhu De shifted his weight on his strong, stocky legs and stopped talking.

  “The wealthy say you are a bandit,” Agnes prompted.

  Zhu De did not smile. “I am a poor peasant. If it becomes necessary, I am a bandit. My life is work, walk, and hunger.”

  “The people of China call you ‘Zhu-Mao’ because they think you and Mao Zedong are one person.”

  Zhu De did not answer directly. “It is necessary that many people become one to achieve life for the poor,” he said.