DRAGONFLY
DREAMS
BASED ON A TRUE STORY
ELEANOR MCCALLIE COOPER
Dragonfly Dreams
by Eleanor McCallie Cooper
© Copyright 2021 Eleanor McCallie Cooper
ISBN 978-1-64663-422-4
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior written permission of the author.
Map created by Evie Zhu
Review Copy: This is an advanced printing subject to corrections and revisions.
Published by
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800-435-4811
www.koehlerbooks.com
Dedicated to Grace McCallie Divine Liu
Four years is a long time and if I tried to tell only a part of what we’ve been through since I last wrote I would fill a book.
November 20, 1945
TABLE OF CONTENTS
DEDICATION
FOREWORD
MAP
PRELUDE
PART I
PART II
AUTHOR’S NOTE
PHOTOS
HISTORICAL TIMELINE
AUTHOR’S BIO
STUDY GUIDE
FOREWORD
PRELUDE
Sunlight sparkled in the grass and flashed off the pool of water. At first, I didn’t see what landed on my arm—the shivering wings of silver, blue, and green, the long narrow body, and the big round head with the bulging black eyes that seemed to see in every direction.
I started to reach for it, but Chiyoko stopped me.
“No, don’t hurt it.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“It’s a dragonfly. When a dragonfly lands on you, it’s good luck. It’s a sign that change is coming. You better watch your dreams, Nini.”
It flew off, wings fluttering rapidly, and then changed directions and hovered over us. I lifted my hand hoping it would land again, but it flew quickly out of reach. Two others appeared—then suddenly there were five or six, and more, flitting around Chiyoko’s head, their blue-green wings reflecting an iridescent glow. We began to flutter too, trying neither to catch them nor to chase them away—dancing with them in the sunlight, holding our arms out like wings, hovering, rising, falling, laughing.
Part One
CHAPTER 1
December 5, 1941
A coastal city in China
It was the day before my tenth birthday. Chiyoko and I were walking home from school.
When we usually reached the Avenue of Many Nations, we parted to go home in different directions, but this day we stopped dead in our tracks. Japanese soldiers were blocking the way, barking orders, and shoving people to the side of the street.
A soldier wearing a dark helmet had a rifle with a sword at the end, pointing directly at us.
Chiyoko froze, but I saw an opening in the crowd, and dodging the soldier, I pulled her away, stepping quickly to a place in the crowd where we could see down the street.
A shiny black car was moving slowly toward us. Rows of Japanese soldiers marched stiffly behind it. I could feel as well as hear the thump, thump, thump of their heavy boots against the pavement.
Suddenly a rickshaw swerved into the street. The Chinese puller didn’t seem to notice the black car or the soldiers as he shouted in English, “Out of way! I have French ambassador’s wife!”
The passenger was a woman in a fur coat, wearing a black hat with dark netting covering her face. She held her arm around a boy with blonde hair dressed in a heavy coat.
Usually a rickshaw carrying a foreigner, especially someone important like the French ambassador’s wife, could get through any crowd easily. The puller ignored a Japanese officer’s command to stop, continuing down the street as if he didn’t hear him. Then the officer moved toward him, lifted the butt of his rifle in the air, and struck the rickshaw puller hard on the head.
The puller groaned and crumpled to the ground, still holding on to the poles as he fell. The French ambassador’s wife and the boy were thrown forward. A man next to me tried to help her but was shoved back by two soldiers. The man yelled, “Call the police!” But no one came.
The woman in the rickshaw straightened her hat, then grabbed the boy’s hand and climbed out, stepping right on top of the fallen rickshaw man.
The Japanese officer yelled again, and two soldiers quickly dragged the rickshaw and the limp man out of the way of the oncoming car.
Chiyoko, pushing next to me, stiffened as if she saw or heard something I didn’t. “Oh no,” she said. “My father. He warned me—”
The soldiers stood at attention as the car passed by. The crowd stayed quiet but as soon as the car passed, everyone began pushing against each other, trying to move in all directions.
“We better get out of here, Nini.” Chiyoko grabbed my arm. “Come on! You can’t go that way.” She gestured in the direction I usually went home. “Not with these soldiers here. I know another way.”
Not having a chance to question her, I chased Chiyoko across the street. She broke into a run, and when she turned into an alley, I almost lost her. The alley was a narrow passage behind the buildings, stacked with all sorts of junk. Chiyoko seemed to glide through like a fish in water, but I tripped on some broken tiles, bumped my head on a pipe sticking out of the wall, and nearly choked on a clothesline stretched across the alley. My heart pounding, I dodged ladders and bamboo poles, bicycle parts and broken carts, and nearly gagged on sour smells from earthenware pots.
I finally caught up with Chiyoko as she slowed at a wooden gate and pushed it open. I followed her through. She shut the gate behind us, sighing with relief.
We were in someone’s garden, but it looked abandoned. There was a fountain in the middle of the garden covered in vines. The statue on top of the fountain was a fish that looked like it was trying to swim out of the vines. The house was dark and shuttered, surrounded by a crumbling brick wall with glass shards on top.
Chiyoko leaned against the wall next to the gate. I fell against my knapsack beside her.
“You don’t need to run so fast,” I panted. “No one is following us.”
“I know,” she said. “But I couldn’t stop.”
She took off her knapsack, dropped it to the ground, and then squatted beside it. I slumped down beside her.
Chiyoko and I looked alike in so many ways, but we were different in so many others. We were about the same height and both wore our hair in long braids. When we were dressed in the school uniform—a navy-blue skirt and a white blouse with a sailor collar and navy-blue tie—the other girls couldn’t tell us apart and just called us “the little Chinese girls.” That angered Chiyoko, but she didn’t say anything. She couldn’t brag that her father was Japanese, not then, anyway, when the Japanese were causing so much trouble. But she was proud that her hair was blacker and straighter than mine and her skin was fairer. She had a narrower face and was slimmer than me. I had a rather round face and body. My eyes were hazel, and I had more of a bridge on my nose, which made me look more like the foreign girls.
We attended an international school where most of the girls were from foreign families living in China. I had a hard time telling the French girls from the British or the Russians from the Poles; they all looked foreign to me. What made me mad was that they treated me as if I were the foreigner in China!
I felt I could stand up to them because I was American. Da, who is Chinese, married Ma when he was studying engineering in New York, and that’s where I was born. I guess you could say I’m half-American and half-Chinese, but all they saw was my Chinese side. Like the time Chiyoko and I were walking together when two British girls, I think they were sisters, were coming from the opposite direction, and the older one said, “You Chinese girls better get out of the way when we pass.” Chiyoko looked down and moved aside. I just stood there and yelled, “I belong here more than—” Before I could get the words out, Chiyoko pulled my arm and jerked me back, causing me to trip over my own feet. The girls just walked on, giggling and poking each other.
Leaning against the wall, I finally caught my breath.
“What’s happening, Chiyoko?”
“My father told me something might happen today,” she said. “When I saw the car and the soldiers, I wondered if this is what he meant.”
She paused a moment, then she turned and looked straight at me.
“He told me to tell you . . . to tell your mother. Nini, you must tell your mother to be careful!”
“Why? Why my mother?”
“Because she’s American. My father said to tell your mother to stay inside for a while. Not to go outside.”
“What does that have to do with the soldiers?”
“I think it has to do with the car.”
“Did you see who was in it?”
“No, I couldn’t see. Too many people in the way.”
“But I don’t understand what that has to do with my mother anyway.”
“I don’t know exactly, but my father thinks she might be in danger.”
Chiyoko jumped up, looking around. “We need to find a place to leave messages.” She began moving her hands over the wall as if she were a blind person looking for a doorknob.
“What are you doing?”
“I used to come here. My parents knew the family who lived here before they left last year.”
Many people left last year . . . they locked their houses and just left. Most of them were foreigners who lived in the foreign districts. You see, although we were in China, we didn’t live in China. Where we lived was divided into sections, and each section was owned by a different country and had their own laws. England owned a district. France had a district. So did Russia and Italy and other European countries. Japan claimed a large section, built like a fortress.
“My father was their doctor, and when he made a house call, I used to play with their daughter.”
Chiyoko’s father, Dr. Mori, was a very kind and well-known doctor. He had a medical clinic in the Chinese part of the city where he served whoever came. Chiyoko told me he had come to China to work at the Japanese hospital, and that’s where he met Chiyoko’s mother who was a nurse. Because she was Chinese and marriage with Chinese was forbidden for the Japanese, he was forced to leave the hospital. That’s why they started their own clinic and lived in the apartment above it.
“When I played with their daughter,” she said, continuing to move her hands along the bricks, “we used to leave secret messages in a hiding place.”
Her hand hit a brick that was sticking out a little from the others. “Look, Nini!”
She wiggled the brick and pulled on it until it came out from the wall.
“You see,” said Chiyoko triumphantly. “It’s only half a brick, and there’s a space for us to leave messages.”
“But why will we need to do that?” I asked, growing agitated with Chiyoko. “I’ll see you at school on Monday, just like always.”
She paused. “Just in case . . . if you ever want to tell me something or if you hear something. You can leave me a message and tell me to meet you here. I’ll check and see if there is a message, and then I’ll meet you.”
Chiyoko put the brick back in the wall.
“Now, fold and flatten your message, stick it inside the hole and put the brick back. I’ll find it.”
She started looking around again. “Let’s leave something at this spot so we know where the secret hiding place is.”
The wall was crumbling in many places, and Chiyoko began looking for loose bricks on the ground. I began picking up bricks, too.
When we had a small pile, Chiyoko said, “I better go. My mother will be worried.”
Her mother ran the clinic, but she also worried about Chiyoko all the time.
Chiyoko began fumbling in her knapsack.
“Nini, I don’t know if I will see you on your birthday.” She pulled out a small red box. “Here,” she said and pushed the box into my hand.
The top of the box fell off when Chiyoko moved her hand away. Staring up at me were the bulging black eyes of a dragonfly with shining wings of silver blue.
Memories flooded my mind. We had been playing one day when a dragonfly landed on my arm. I was afraid of it at first and wanted to chase it away, but Chiyoko told me not to.
“If a dragonfly lands on you, it’s good luck,” she said. “You’ll have a dream—a dragonfly dream. It means change is coming.”
I remembered how we danced that day fluttering our arms as other dragonflies flew around us, laughing in the afternoon light. I smiled, and so did Chiyoko.
I pulled out the dragonfly, and the necklace chain fell across my hand. Before I could thank her, Chiyoko startled me by saying in a serious tone, “I’ll miss you, Nini.”
“Why do you say that? I’ll see you at school Monday.”
“I hope so,” she said.
Chiyoko put her arms through the straps of the knapsack. “You can go home that way.” She pointed with her forehead toward the other side of the garden. I looked in the direction she indicated, but all I saw were some bushes. “There’s a hole in the wall over there. It goes to the French district.”
“How will you get home?”
“I’ll go back to the alley and turn on the next street. It’s not far. My parent’s clinic is around the corner from here.”
I had never been to the clinic, even with Chiyoko, because it was in the Chinese part of the city, and Ma said it was too dangerous for me to go there. I didn’t realize that we had run so far—all the way through the alley to China.
“I better go.” Chiyoko paused at the gate. Her jet-black hair had come loose during the run and some wisps of hair fell across her face, which seemed paler than usual; her usually bright eyes were moist. In that moment she seemed much older. She went out the gate and closed it behind her.
Immediately, as soon as the gate closed, I felt alone and anxious to get home. Ma would be worried about me too. I put the lid on the dragonfly box, stuffed it in my knapsack, and headed for the other side of the garden.
Behind the bushes, I found exactly what Chiyoko had said—a place in the wall where the bricks had fallen out. I took my knapsack off and shimmied sideways through the narrow gap, pulling my knapsack after me.
CHAPTER 2
On the other side of the wall, I pushed past some oleander bushes only to discover I was in a cemetery with large flat gravestones. I didn’t know where I was or who was buried here, but I followed a path between the stones to the back of a building. When the path came to an end, I realized I was behind a cathedral.
The Cathedral of St. Georges was the tallest building in the French district. Everything on the cathedral was done in threes—three crosses, three domes, and three arches. Everyone knew the cathedral, and I had come this way with Amah and knew my way home from there.
The Rue de France was as busy as usual for a Friday afternoon. A French policeman stood on a platform in the middle of the intersection in his khaki uniform, blowing his whistle, stopping traffic in one direction with his white-gloved hand held straight out. With his other white-gloved hand flicking rapidly, he directed the traffic to go one way or the other, bicycles and bicycle carts, pedicabs and mini-t
rucks. But this didn’t stop the drivers from yelling and honking at each other to get out of the way.
When he blew his shrill whistle and held out his hand to halt traffic, I ran across quickly and barely dodged a man on a bicycle cart.
“Hey, watch where you’re going, you scamp!” he yelled and swerved, almost losing his load of baskets as he barely missed a farmer’s vegetable cart.
I ran past the government buildings with their tall wrought iron gates behind which was the French ambassador’s residence. I ran past the shops with white and green awnings—the butcher shop, the café, and the bakery where our cook, Sun, came for rolls in the mornings.
A small group of children played in the French park while their Chinese nannies chattered on the benches along a row of fruit trees. I was too much in a hurry to look and see if Amah, our nursemaid, was there with my five-year-old sister, Mei-mei, or my baby brother, Weilin.
Chiyoko thought it funny that I lived in the French district when neither of my parents were French. But lots of people lived in the French district who weren’t French, and, besides, we lived there because my father was the chief engineer of the water company, which was also in the French district.
The water company was not far from the French park, in a compound surrounded by a wall with a gate. The guard on duty that day knew me well and opened the gate wide when he saw me coming. I didn’t even say hello as I ran past him.
The guard called after me, “What’s the matter, Little Missy?”
Bounding up the stairs to our apartment, I burst through the door, eager to tell Ma what had happened. I didn’t think someone else might be there, but I ran smack into a pair of hairy arms that wrapped around my neck and held me so tight I could hardly breathe.
“Hey, what’s the big hurry, Baboon?” asked a husky voice with an Irish accent.
I knew at once it was Tooner. I usually loved it when Tooner came. He never knocked and would announce himself with a boisterous, “The tuner’s here!” when he came to tune Ma’s piano. Everyone just called him Tooner. He was a chesty, red-bearded Irishman who had lived in China forever. He was always full of jokes and funny songs, but I didn’t feel like joking around.
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