One early morning, the sun nestled between the mountain crags, Foon Wah discovered her mother lying motionless on the dirt floor, eyes open to the rafters, her spirit unbound.
They buried her on the hill with the Gui Lin dead. The other refugees pitied the children and helped Foon Wah learn the things her mother had yet to teach her. How to grow gna toi peas in water. How to roll taro into the burnt rice at the bottom of the pot. How, when her monthlies arrived the following spring, to spread a strip of cloth in the crotch of her undergarments.
At twelve, she became mother to her three younger siblings: hiding them when there were reports of Japanese soldiers, scrubbing them clean in the river, and when the sirens wailed, gathering them to run for the caves.
There were two caves, one to the north and one to the west, and the one to the north was their favorite, because they always projected movies on the cave walls to pass the time—movies likeHall of the Broken Zither, with the boy who sells himself into slavery to save his father. In the west cave, she and the adults squatted on their heels in the steamy dark while the little ones played in the mud. Sometimes her mother would be there, tucked into the shadows of the cave walls. She’d remind Foon Wah to check the little ones’ hair for nits and rub the feet of the elderly.
Then came the bomb, the beautiful American bomb, the Japanese vanquished in a mushroom cloud. Their father returned and took them to Canton City. It was a city in ruins, the governor’s mansion charred to its foundations, birds flying through the shattered windows of the theater house, and the hospitals overflowing with marred, raped, broken bodies. Japanese soldiers, now prisoners,dragged wooden waste carts on their shoulders through the streets. Every day, hysterical crowds poured onto the road to dump their garbage on the heads of the Japanese. Even Foon Wah did it once.
Her uncle was a tax collector for the republic, and they settled into his apartment and became his assistants. Whenever she heard the siren of a passing ambulance, she would drop everything in her hands as if it signaled another air raid.
Her siblings teased her. The past was past, they said. Her father, for his part, was determined to take her out of that wreck. Perhaps he felt guilty for all the trouble she’d faced. He spent his evenings at the homes of matchmakers, in search of a family with a son who would wed his eldest daughter and take her to America. When he introduced her to Richard, she understood that he would not find better. “Marry a young handsome brother like that? How can you ask for more?” said her best friend Mee Lai, who was arranged to marry an old man with a warty face to whom Mee Lai’s father owed money. Yet the night after Foon Wah’s father announced her betrothal to Richard, Foon Wah dreamed that she was in a cave—that Richard was a Japanese soldier who seized her by the wrists.
Waking with a start, she realized then that she would have been content continuing what she’d done since her mother’s death: caring for her siblings, applying her tireless perfectionism to the replacement of buttons and the peeling of apple skins. She didn’t want to be blown halfway across the world.
But Foon Wah wasn’t the kind to disobey, and every uncle and aunt urged her to go. The Communists have taken the north, they said. And so she was fitted for a white wedding gown and a red cheongsam, at Richard’s insistence.
Despite her cousins’ warnings about the weather, when Foon Wah and Richard landed in San Francisco, she found it hard to believe that people survived in such a frigid climate. Their first stop was a bak gui clothing store where Richard selected a rich woman’s coat with fox fur stitched to the collar. Discovering the garment cost heruncle’s entire monthly salary, she pleaded for Richard to reconsider. He laughed and bought it anyway.
She was exhausted, but he was lively and talkative; he had slept for most of the twelve-hour flight, while she and the other passengers had sat wide-eyed, gripping their armrests. In fact, she’d felt responsible to stay awake for their safety—he was so foolhardy, he might have napped through a disaster.
But she was awed by his mastery of English. He could talk the bak gui into letting her use the restroom at fancy restaurants. The day he took her to dance on the San Francisco piers, he wore his navy uniform, and yellow-haired bak gui girls ran up to her husband to thank him for his service.
They astonished her: these bak gui women with bare shoulders and calves, in dresses with deep-diving necklines. They went out on the town by themselves, stood in the gutter hailing cabs, kissed boyfriends on the boardwalk, and were always eating, eating, eating—cotton candy, Richard called it.Pretzels. She had never seen grown women so intent on their own pleasure. And with the new coat—did her husband expect that she become one of them?
On the train, she and Richard shared a booth with the Goldmans. These bak gui had long noses, bony knuckles, and wide, knowing smiles, and they smelled good, like paper and ink. They were also returning to New York and thrilled to meet a Chinese American veteran, so Richard lit Mr. Goldman’s cigar and they together condemned the evils of Germany and Japan. Foon Wah smiled, understanding little, trying to feign enjoyment of the beef slab and the cold, oily leaves served for lunch.
She looked through the open window at the vast American prairie and caught a whiff of home. Saw in the prairie her own sunbaked farmers squatting in smoke wreaths, and children stumbling in the dawn with poles across their shoulders. The sun had begun to set at the edge of the fields and the clouds hung pink and grubby like wet sheep fleece, likecotton candy, and she realized they would retire to the sleeping cars. She felt a cold pressure in the pit of her stomach,like she had swallowed a glass of what they calledice cubes, and she wished the sun would never set.
Her monthly was over, and she had no more legitimate excuses to delay the inevitable. When they returned to the sleeping car, she climbed the ladder to the top of the bunk and sat with her legs stretched before her, steeling herself for the worst.
In the end, it was not so terrible. He was not a Japanese soldier in a cave. In fact, what terrified her most of all was how, involuntarily, her body opened to him.
After he was done, she waited for his nightly twitch. It had come unfailingly each night since their wedding and signified that he was finally falling asleep. Then she turned to her side and cried into the pillow.
What was the use of that gnawing feeling, that unsatisfied craving in her nightgown? What was her use here? What was anybody’s use in America?
In America, Foon Wah learned, a family that had made its fortune would live just outside the city in a house that was modern like a city house.
That was the kind of house Richard promised her during the taxi ride from Manhattan to Brooklyn. Koon Lai sat in front, next to the driver. They wove through traffic-jammed streets between skyscrapers, giant billboards, and flashing neon lights. Next came a bridge, one capable of bearing hundreds of cars at once, and a plum-colored river teeming with ferries, steamboats, and cargo ships.
Here was the center of the world, and it was just as impressive as it was said to be.
Brooklyn’s roads were wide and smooth. On a boulevard with yellowing trees called Eastern Parkway, they passed a white building with many columns that she at first mistook for President Truman’s house. Throughout the ride, Koon Lai remained quiet, and Foon Wah worried that he was upset. She’d discovered him to be a small man with a gentle, almost girlish face. He wore spectacles and walked witha slight limp. Only a moment after they’d met, Richard had switched to English and berated his father in a tone so harsh that she had to believe Koon Lai had done something awful—or else Richard was crazy.
The issue, she learned eventually, was that Koon Lai lacked the money to rent an apartment for the couple, and for the time being, she would join them and the cooks on cots in the back room of the restaurant. When they reached 78 Livonia, Koon Lai wouldn’t stop apologizing.
“A new wife deserves better,” he said. “This building is getting old. Cracked walls! Aiya, another crack. This mold on the window. An embarrassment!”
“Baba, don’t worry.” She smiled, but he remained so anxious, it was like he’d never met a woman before.
In the weeks that followed, it was always Koon Lai, never her husband, who noticed when her eyes were wet from homesickness. He liked her tripe soup, praised her and guzzled bowl after bowl of it. One evening, he took her to the Cantonese theater on East Broadway, where they played the old silent films. It would become their ongoing tradition.
Since she was good with numbers, the men entrusted her with the cash register, and she quickly memorized the phrases she would need to say to the bak gui customers. Though sometimes the little ones would tug her dress, screech “Ching chong!” in her ear, and skip away, she found that most bak gui were polite to her. When there were no chores to do, she’d amble up and down Livonia with a dictionary, attempting to read the flyers posted to the pillars of the elevated rail. “Modern Homes in Long Island,” she tried to pronounce. “There’s No Place like Jersey.”
One afternoon, Richard returned from Pitkin Avenue with a large object and set it down in the corner of the sleeping room. It looked like a cabinet, but when he opened its doors, she saw it contained a globe of glass, a radio speaker, and six dials of different sizes. Everyone crowded around in awe—everyone except Koon Lai.
“Turn one of the dials,” Richard encouraged her.
