Promising to “liberate” Taiwan, our beloved Republic of China, from Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT, China had bombarded Kinmen, a tiny island claimed by Taiwan off the Chinese coast. The night before, I had overheard a neighbor, Uncle Owyang, talking to my grandparents about it.
“What China doesn’t understand,” he had said, “is that the Republic of China is the rightful ruler of China. We carry the banner of the republic. We are a government in exile!”
My grandfather slapped the table. “You’re brainwashed! Taiwan belongs to Taiwan!” He refilled Uncle Owyang’s wine cup. “Come, have some more.”
Mama explained to me later that night that my grandfather was drinking out of worry, not jubilation. His adored grandson Dua Hyan was there, on Kinmen, serving in the air force, and we’d had no concrete news of the casualties.
I opened my mother’s fists and climbed onto her lap. I hung an arm over her shoulders. “Is that true, Mama? Are we a government in exile?”
“Hush. I’m listening for news.” She wrapped her arm around my waist. “My goodness. You are heavy. You’re much too big to sit on your mother’s lap.” Then she sank forward again, her eyes mindlessly scanning the far distance as she listened.
I rested my head against hers. “Is Dua Hyan going to die?”
“No!” she snapped. “Don’t even say such things. It’s bad luck.”
I bit my lip, worried that I had just redirected a bullet toward my unfortunate brother.
In another part of the house, my niece wailed. Ah Zhay, her husband—whom I called Jie-fu, older sister’s husband—and their year-old daughter shared a room in the left wing, sleeping together on a giant canopy bed carved out of black wood that had been my great-grandmother’s.
“Mei Mei is awake. Go get her.” My mother gently pushed me off her lap and turned up the radio.
Mei Mei stopped crying when I came in. Her cheeks were bright red and her hair was plastered to her forehead with sweat even though she wore nothing but a diaper. I lifted the mosquito net and called her to me. She crawled over.
“Yi!” she called, as close to ayi, or aunt, that she could manage. She grabbed my shoulder and pulled herself to her feet.
“What a good baby!” I kissed her flushed cheek, then patted her bottom and found that her diaper was wet.
“You poor baby. Ayi change your diaper, okay?”
She cried, “Yi! Yi!” and squirmed as I struggled with the pins and powdered her with talcum. Finally she was dry and clean. I put her on my hip. “Let’s go see your grandma.”
When we came out of the bedroom, we found my brother-in-law home early. “Ah! I was just looking for my two favorite girls,” he said. Mei Mei squealed as her father took her from my arms.
I patted her diaper. “I changed her,” I told him.
“You are the best aunt. You’re such a good girl.” His smile was bright. Feeling modest, I pushed my cheek into my shoulder.
Not long before graduating high school, another day, over another bowl of shaved ice, Ah Zhay had met another soldier. She immediately noticed his smooth brown forearms, his fine cropped black hair, his strong cleft chin, and the way he said her name with a Shanghai accent. And then the things she would not admit: he was older, an outsider, and forbidden.
His name was Deng Yan. He was twenty-five years old, a mechanic in the air force. His shirts were always bleached and pressed and his shoes shiny. He smelled nice, not like the sweaty boys at school who jostled her and catcalled and pulled at her book bag. With him, she felt like a woman.
She barely knew him; she had no idea of what he thought or had seen. She could not imagine the American trooper ships gliding across the gray sea carrying hundreds of seasick men, Deng Yan among them, in a final escape from the communists, who had no navy. Men crowded onto the deck in their sweat-stiff uniforms; they wrapped their arms around ropes and railings; they filled the hallways and bunks. For Ah Zhay, it was enough that he was handsome.
Ah Zhay’s marriage was more proof that my mother had dissolved into a shadow; she had barely protested the union, despite the gossip among all my grandparents’ friends, who believed that the match between a Taiwanese girl and a Nationalist veteran could happen only if the girl was very poor, very ugly, or very stupid. The marriage cast doubts on my sister; the rumor was that she must have had some secret ailment, some birth defect or undisclosed mental issue. To my family’s chagrin, my sister had disregarded her husband’s lack of a family or history and married simply for love. I adored Jie-fu. Sometimes, I accidentally called him “Dua Hyan.” And after he had come into our lives, I realized that all the warnings we’d been given about the soldiers were not always true, and that good or bad was a matter of perspective.
—
Days after the 8-23 Bombardment of the small island of Kinmen began, a typhoon swept through. The warning arrived between radio updates on the bombardment. We immediately went to fetch the pigs, which we boarded in one of the bedrooms. Tied into baskets, the chickens joined the pigs. We shoved our biggest pieces of furniture in front of the windows. By the time we closed the front door, the sky had turned black. We stuffed rags against the doorsills and waited.
Zhee Hyan and my grandfather began a game of chess by lamplight. I curled up on a chair near the lantern and read a comic book. The wind knocked at the doors and windows, and unknown objects clattered against the roof. My mother brought out the mah-jongg set and convinced Ah Zhay, Jie-fu, and my grandmother to play. The clatter of the game tiles and their exclamations—my mother’s semiserious complaint that my grandmother was winning—were comforting against the unseen chaos outside.
In thick, noisy sheets, the rain began. With a lack of crowing admirable for a fifteen-year-old, Zhee Hyan won the chess game and my grandfather settled down next to me to prepare his pipe. My grandfather’s pipe was made of a long, thin section of bamboo with a gnarled end.
“I have a story for you,” he said as he pressed the tobacco into the small, carved bowl. “Better than what you’re reading.” He lit the pipe, briefly puffed, then said, “This rain reminds me of when I was young and the Japanese first arrived in Taiwan.”
Not taking her eyes off the mah-jongg tiles, my grandmother clicked her tongue and said, “What does that have to do with anything? You were too young to even remember it. Don’t bother her.”
“I’d like to hear the story,” Jie-fu called over his shoulder.
My grandfather nudged me. “See, he wants to hear it. What about you?”
I reluctantly put down my comic. “Okay.”
“See. And you?” he asked my brother.
“Of course,” Zhee Hyan said. He had rearranged all the chess pieces back in their ranked spots.
“Of course. See, he says of course.”
“Ba, please,” my mother protested. “Don’t. Not now.” She laughed as she grabbed a tile. “Pong!” She tipped her row of tiles, revealing her win.
“Did they teach you this in school?” my grandfather asked me.
“No,” I said.
He held the pipe elegantly with three fingers and smacked his lips, popping out a circle of smoke. “Of course not. This is not national history.”
In May 1895, he continued, he was five years old. Word had come that the Empress Dowager Cixi, a concubine who had risen to queen after boiling her rivals in hot oil, had given Taiwan to the Japanese under the terms of the Treaty of Shimonoseki. Islanders feared that the Japanese would make slaves of them all. Their solution was to declare Taiwan an independent republic and rally people to fight their new invaders. Traitors were beheaded and their heads hung by their queues.
“Ba!” my mother exclaimed.
I was intrigued by the image of heads swinging by their long black braids. “Go on.”
—
The newly recruited army of the Republic of Taiwan would meet the arriving Japanese at Keelung. Men of all ages and sizes took the train there. Old men and women and children eager to board and escape quickly replac
ed the crowd of would-be soldiers that clambered off the train. Flotsam exploded outward along the ballast: a mess of abandoned suitcases and bedding and toppled furniture and songbirds crying in cages. Two flags of the new republic, yellow tiger on blue background, flapped limply.
My grandfather’s father, my great-grandfather, joined the stream of men drifting to the fields near the sea. They were sorted into regiments and practiced drills in the rain with imaginary guns. The battle, when it came, would be fought with unearthed rusty old cannons that had been left by the Dutch. Afterward, the men filed into muddy barracks and ate slop that had been boiled in large kettles. My great-grandfather broke from the line and, with his cousin, went into town to see what they could find among the abandoned shops and buildings. The villagers had left so hastily that in some homes, pots of still-warm food sat on the stoves.
My great-grandfather and his cousin fell asleep in one of these abandoned homes, in a bed that smelled of strangers and under a soothing canopy of rain. Later, a drum called them back into the storm. Japanese ships had been spotted. At camp, they sorted themselves into unsteady, sodden lines.
My great-grandfather and his cousin received rifles with dulled bayonets and small chipped knives to keep in their waistbands. Regiments marched to the hill forts that were better equipped with Armstrong and Krupp cannons and bright-colored flags.
The rain stopped. The cousins were ordered to patrol the village. Debris from the previous day’s looting was strewn through the streets. They walked up and down the main road, then stopped at the damp, broken shutters of a looted shop and shared a pipe they found inside. They discussed the reward for dead Japanese soldiers—one hundred and fifty taels—versus the reward for an officer, which was double that. They’d have to bring in a head as proof. A hundred and fifty taels was enough to live on for a year, and my great-grandfather and his cousin, in their bravado, swore their first piece of business would be beheading an officer.
—
The firefight began the next morning. Energy swept through the town of wet, bored men, but the gunfire stopped before noon. My great-grandfather and his cousin wandered nervously up and down the streets and through the haphazard alleys, always with an ear cocked toward the sea.
Silence.
No messengers passed through.
My great-grandfather and his cousin took out the pipe and took turns gnawing the stem. They would fight today. The gunfire had confirmed it. It would be upon them like a flash of lightning; they had nothing to do but wait.
—
The rain began again. Mist obscured the hills. His cousin cleared his throat and hawked and suggested that they return to the house they had slept in the day before.
My great-grandfather knew battles were bloody and dirty and sweaty, but rain had not appeared in his dreams of glory. They hugged their guns to their chests and hunched over. The already soaked ground quickly turned to mud. The peels and skins and guts that people tossed behind their homes came washing up into the streets.
A noise like a cry of surprise or maybe of warning startled him. He saw a line of dark figures advancing through the driving rain. His cousin grabbed his arm and they stumbled into an alley. My great-grandfather fell to his knees and fretted with his gun. Amid the clatter of the rain, his breath was loud. A gunshot rang out, then another. He crept to the corner and peeked. The column had turned loose a detachment of dispersed soldiers gliding down the street with their guns cocked. They shouted in Japanese. They did not look like dwarfs or barbarians as he had been warned. They even wore cream-colored knee-high gaiters over their shined black shoes.
“They’re coming,” he hissed to his cousin. They ran. They followed turn after turn as alleys bled into one another without pattern. They turned again and caught a glimpse of a surprised Japanese soldier. They quickly backed up to the corner. My great-grandfather blindly fired. The man yelped.
My great-grandfather peeked around again. The soldier leaned against the wall fiddling with his gun. His eyes searched around in wild panic. Before him, a sheet of water poured from the roof. This time, my great-grandfather aimed. The man howled. My great-grandfather had missed his head, but the man clutched his arm. He drew his limbs in tight, trying to make himself as small as possible.
My great-grandfather crept forward with his gun pointed at the man.
His cousin called his name.
One hundred and fifty taels for a head.
The man wailed in pain. When he saw my great-grandfather, he dropped his hand from his bleeding arm and fumbled for his gun.
“Don’t!” my great-grandfather cried. The gun made him brave, but the man’s unpredictable fear, like an animal ready to chew off its own trapped limb, scared him. He warned him again. The man did not understand and he fired. My great-grandfather fell back, stunned, and fired again. The shot obscured the man’s sobbing gibberish.
Once more, my great-grandfather had missed. Insanity flashed in the man’s eyes and my great-grandfather suddenly understood that it was suicide to go any further. He could not bring back this man alive or dead. He turned and began a wildly erratic escape, ricocheting from side to side down the alley in an attempt to evade the man’s aim. His head throbbed and blood rushed up and down every vein and artery. He made the corner and he felt ice sear across his leg.
The ice turned into an incredible heat. He kept running. Air burned in his lungs. He could not get enough.
He ran until the sound of bullets was behind him. He ran to the railroad tracks that led back to Taipehfu. He saw other men limping along, their jackets torn or lost.
Rain diluted the blood that ran from his wound. He stumbled into the grass where he dropped to his knees and twisted around to look at his injury. He could not see how deep it was. He wiped the rain from his face. He felt faint. He collapsed elbows out to the muddy ground and covered his face with his hands and screamed into the earth.
—
At that primitive scream—which my grandfather re-created for us in blood-chilling accuracy—a loud crash, punctuated by bellowing pigs, interrupted the story. Jie-fu and Zhee Hyan leaped up and ran toward the bedroom where we had boarded the animals. I hopped up too, and my mother yelled at me to sit down. I ignored her.
Behind the door, pigs cried and chickens squalled. Jie-fu waved us back and slowly opened the door.
The wardrobe that we had used to block the window had fallen over, crushing a basket of chickens and frightening the pigs that milled in the tight space. One had sought refuge on the bed. Wind and rain swept through the broken window and a small cyclone of leaves whipped around. Jie-fu pulled Zhee Hyan into the room and I slipped in behind him. The churned grit stung my face and I could barely open my eyes. While my brother and Jie-fu heaved the wardrobe off the unfortunate chickens, I herded the pigs out of the room. The pigs scattered, upset the mah-jongg table, knocked into the ancestor altar and toppled the incense pot. My sister shrieked and rescued Mei Mei from her playpen. My brother and Jie-fu shoved the chicken baskets into the hallway and slammed the door. The squawking chickens—a few among them dead—joined the pandemonium.
I scrambled onto a chair and started giggling. My sister laughed too as she jiggled my crying niece. My grandmother was angry. She blamed my grandfather.
“Why talk about the dead?” my mother cried as she gathered up the fallen mah-jongg tiles. “Look what you’ve done.”
—
The next morning, we opened the doors to a cool gray sky. The storm had driven away the heat. The trees were a vibrant green. Branches littered the courtyard. One wall of the pigpen had collapsed. We found roof tiles from a neighbor’s house.
While Jie-fu and Zhee Hyan began rebuilding the pigpen, my mother and sister swept the house. My sister tied my niece, Mei Mei, into a sling on my back, and then I began clearing the courtyard. I spoke to Mei Mei as I worked, talking about typhoons and explaining where rain came from. She gurgled back an appreciative stream of “Yi’s.”
The radio was dea
d, and in our attention to the mundane, we momentarily forgot about the bombardment in Kinmen. Zhee Hyan raked out the pigpen. Mama and Ah Zhay bickered while my grandmother banged around the kitchen. Grandfather was somewhere silent and unseen. The comforting hum of labor filled the day.
Eventually, loud, pained lowing distracted me. I scanned the fields. In the distance, three water buffalo, more victims of the storm, trudged through a drowned field in aimless circles. I thought they might belong to the Owyangs, who farmed the land to the right of us. I marched toward the levee between the paddies to see if I could identify them.
I hadn’t bothered with shoes, which I saved only for school days. My feet sank into the cold mud. Disgust and delight snaked up my spine. Mei Mei whined.
“Let’s go see the cows,” I cooed.
On either side of me, lucid, still water glimmered amid the lush rice grass. A waterlogged slipper floated in the paddy. Though the water was not deep, vertigo chilled me. I saw myself tumbling over, Mei Mei with me, lost among the grass, suffocating on mud. “We’re okay,” I said to reassure myself. I reached back and squeezed her little bare foot.
From the other direction, a man stepped onto the levee from the road.
I gestured toward the animals. “Uncle Owyang!” I shouted. “Are they yours?”
The man stopped. I realized I had made a mistake.
He was a stranger in clothes that belonged to a different city, perhaps even a different time. Black pants, a white button-down shirt. His face was dark, his eyes sunken into a squint. And he wore shoes. Even from here, I could see they were black patent leather and he did not mind the mud. He was not a farmer. The bag hanging from his shoulder began to swing as he picked up his pace.
I considered turning around and running back home. When he passed me on this narrow slice of land, only inches would separate us. I would smell his sweat, the odor of his unwashed scalp. Cigarettes in his clothes or yesterday’s wine in his skin.
Green Island Page 9
