At meals, the missionaries, Miss Banner, and General Cape sat at the table for foreigners. And where Pastor Amen used to sit, that’s where General Cape put himself. He talked in his loud, barking voice. The others, they just nodded and listened. If he raised his soup spoon to his lips, they raised their spoons. If he put his spoon down to say one more boast, they put their spoons down to listen to one more boast.
Lao Lu, the other servants, and I sat at the table for Chinese. The man who translated for Cape, his name, he told us, was Yiban Johnson, One-half Johnson. Even though he was half-and-half, the foreigners decided he was more Chinese than Johnson. That’s why he had to sit at our table as well. At first, I didn’t like this Yiban Johnson, what he said—how important Cape was, how he was a hero to both Americans and Chinese. But then I realized: What he spoke was what General Cape put in his mouth. When he sat at our dinner table, he used his own words. He talked to us openly, like common people to common people. He was genuinely polite, not pretending. He joked and laughed. He praised the food, he did not take more than his share.
In time, I too thought he was more Chinese than Johnson. In time, I didn’t even think he looked strange. His father, he told us, was American-born, a friend of General Cape’s from when they were little boys. They went to the same military school together. They were kicked out together. Johnson sailed to China with an American company doing the cloth trade, Nankeen silk. In Shanghai, he bought the daughter of a poor servant as his mistress. Just before she was about to have his child, Johnson told her, “I’m going back to America, sorry, can’t take you with me.” She accepted her fate. Now she was the leftover mistress of a foreign devil. The next morning, when Johnson awoke, guess who he saw hanging from the tree outside his bedroom window?
The other servants cut her down, wrapped a cloth around the red neck gash where the rope had twisted life out of her body. Because she had killed herself, they held no ceremonies. They put her in a plain wood coffin and closed it up. That night, Johnson heard a crying sound. He rose and went into the room where the coffin lay. The crying grew louder. He opened the box, and inside he found a baby boy, lying between the legs of the dead mistress. Around the baby’s neck, just under his tiny chin, was a red mark, thick as a finger, the same half-moon shape of the rope burn on his mother.
Johnson took that baby who was one-half his blood to America. He put the baby in a circus, told people the hanging story, showed them the mysterious rope-burn scar. When the boy was five, his neck was bigger, his scar looked smaller, and nobody paid to see if it was mysterious anymore. So Johnson went back to China with the circus money and his half-blood son. This time, Johnson took up the opium trade. He went from one treaty-port city to another. He made a fortune in each city, then gambled each fortune away. He found a mistress in each city, then left each mistress behind. Only the little Yiban cried to lose so many mothers. That was who taught him to speak so many Chinese dialects— Cantonese, Shanghainese, Hakka, Fukien, Mandarin—those mistress-mothers. English he learned from Johnson.
One day, Johnson ran into his old schoolmate Cape, who now worked for any kind of military army—the British, the Manchus, the Hakkas, it didn’t matter which—whoever would pay him. Johnson said to Cape, “Hey, I have a big debt, lots of trouble, can you loan your old friend some money?” As proof that he would repay him, Johnson said, “Borrow my son. Fifteen years old and he speaks many languages. He can help you work for any army you choose.”
Since that day, for the next fifteen years, young Yiban Johnson belonged to General Cape. He was his father’s never paid debt.
I asked Yiban: Who does General Cape fight for now—the British, the Manchus, the Hakkas? Yiban said Cape had fought for all three, had made money from all three, had made enemies among all three. Now he was hiding from all three. I asked Yiban if it was true that General Cape had married a Chinese banker’s daughter for gold. Yiban said Cape married the banker’s daughter not just for gold, but for the banker’s younger wives as well. Now the banker was looking for him too. Cape, he said, was addicted to golden-millet dreams, riches that could be harvested in one season, then plowed under, gone.
I was happy to hear that I was right about General Cape, that Miss Banner was wrong. But in the next instant, I became sick with sadness. I was her loyal friend. How could I be glad, watching this terrible man devour her heart?
Then Lao Lu spoke up: “Yiban, how can you work for such a man? No loyalty, not to country, not to family!”
Yiban said, “Look at me. I was born to a dead mother, so I was born to no one. I have been both Chinese and foreign, this makes me neither. I belonged to everyone, so I belong to no one. I had a father to whom I am not even one-half his son. Now I have a master who considers me a debt. Tell me, whom do I belong to? What country? What people? What family?”
We looked at his face. In all my life, I had never seen a person so intelligent, so wistful, so deserving to belong. We had no answer for him.
That night, I lay on my mat, thinking about those questions. What country? What people? What family? To the first two questions, I knew the answers right away. I belonged to China. I belonged to the Hakkas. But to the last question, I was like Yiban. I belonged to no one else, only myself.
Look at me, Libby-ah. Now I belong to lots of people. I have family, I have you. . . . Ah! Lao Lu says no more talking! Eat, eat before everything gets cold.
11
NAME CHANGE
As it turns out, Kwan was right about the sounds in the house. There was someone in the walls, under the floors, and he was full of anger and electricity.
I found out after our downstairs neighbor, Paul Dawson, was arrested for making crank phone calls to thousands of women in the Bay Area. My automatic response was sympathy; after all, the poor man was blind, he was lonely for companionship. But then I learned the nature of his calls: he had claimed to be a member of a cult that kidnapped “morally reprehensible” women and turned them into “sacrificial village dolls,” destined to be penetrated by male cult members during a bonding rite, then eviscerated alive by their female worker bees. To those who laughed at his phone threats, he said, “Would you like to hear the voice of a woman who also thought this was a joke?” And then he played a recording of a woman screaming bloody murder.
When the police searched Dawson’s apartment, they found an odd assortment of electronic equipment: tape recorders hooked up to his telephone, redialers, voice changers, sound-effects tapes, and more. He hadn’t limited his terrorist activities to the telephone. Apparently, he felt the prior owners of our apartment also had been too noisy, inconsiderate of his morning Zen meditations. When they temporarily moved out during a remodeling phase, he punched holes in his ceiling and installed speakers and bugging devices underneath the upstairs floor, enabling him to monitor the doings of his third-floor neighbors and spook them with sound effects.
My sympathy immediately turned into rage. I wanted Dawson to rot in jail. For all this time, I had been driven nearly crazy with thoughts of ghosts—one in particular, even though I would have been the last to admit so.
But I’m relieved to know what caused the sounds. Living alone edges my imagination toward danger. Simon and I see each other only for business reasons. As soon as we’re fiscally independent, we’ll divorce ourselves from our clients as well. In fact, he’s coming over later to deliver copy for a dermatologist’s brochure.
But now Kwan has dropped by, uninvited, while I’m in the middle of a phone call to the printer’s. I let her in, then return to my office. She’s brought some homemade wontons, which she is storing in my freezer, commenting loudly on the lack of provisions in my fridge and cupboards: “Why mustard, pickles, but no bread, no meat? How you can live like this way? And beer! Why beer, no milk?”
After a few minutes, she comes into my office, a huge grin on her face. In her hands is a letter I had left on the kitchen counter. It’s from a travel magazine, Lands Unknown, which has accepted Simon’s and my proposal
for a photo essay on village cuisines of China.
When the letter arrived the day before, I felt as though I had won the lottery only to remember I’d thrown my ticket away. It’s a cruel joke played on me by the gods of chance, coincidence, and bad luck. I’ve spent the better part of the day and night gnawing on this turn of events, playing out scenarios with Simon.
I pictured him scanning the letter, saying, “God! This is unbelievable! So when are we going?”
“We’re not,” I’d say. “I’m turning it down.” No hint of regret in my voice.
Then he’d say something like: “What do you mean, turning it down?”
And I’d say, “How could you even think we’d go together?”
Then maybe—and this really got my blood boiling—maybe he’d suggest that he would still go, and take along another photographer.
So I’d say, “No, you’re not, because I’m going and I’m bringing along another writer, a better writer.” And then the whole thing would escalate into a volley of insults about morals, business ethics, and comparative talent, variations of which kept me awake most of the night.
“Ohhhh!” Kwan is now cooing, waving the letter with joy. “You and Simon, going to China! You want, I go with you, be tour guide, do translation, help you find lots bargains. Of course, pay my own way. For long time I want go back anyway, see my auntie, my village—”
I cut her off: “I’m not going.”
“Ah? Not going? Why not?”
“You know.”
“I know?”
I turn around and look at her. “Simon and I are getting divorced. Remember?”
Kwan ponders this for two seconds, before answering: “Can go like friends! Why not just friends?”
“Drop it, Kwan, please.”
She looks at me with a tragic face. “So sad, so sad,” she moans, then walks out of my office. “Like two starving people, argue-argue, both throw out rice. Why do this, why?”
When I show Simon the letter, he is stunned. Are those actually tears? In all the years I’ve known him, I’ve never seen him cry, not at sad movies, not even when he told me about Elza’s death. He swipes at the wetness on his cheeks. I pretend not to notice. “God,” he says, “the thing we wished for so much came through. But we didn’t.”
We’re both quiet, as if to remember our marriage with a few moments of respectful silence. And then, in a bid for strength, I take a deep breath and say, “You know, painful as it’s been, I think the breakup has been good for us. I mean, it forces us to examine our lives separately, you know, without assuming our goals are the same.” I feel my tone has been pragmatic, but not overly conciliatory.
Simon nods and softly says, “Yeah, I agree.”
I want to shout, What do you mean, you agree! All these years we never agreed on anything, and now you agree? But I say nothing, and even congratulate myself for being able to keep my ill feelings in check, to not show how much I hurt. A second later, I am overwhelmed with sadness. Being able to restrain my emotions isn’t a great victory—it’s the pitiful proof of lost love.
Every word, every gesture is now loaded with ambiguity, nothing can be taken at face value. We speak to each other from a safe distance, pretending all the years we soaped each other’s backs and pissed in front of each other never happened. We don’t use any of the baby talk, code words, or shorthand gestures that had been our language of intimacy, the proof that we belonged to each other.
Simon looks at his watch. “I better go. I’m supposed to meet someone by seven.”
Is he meeting a woman? This soon? I hear myself say, “Yeah, I have to get ready for a date too.” His eyes barely flicker, and I blush, certain that he knows I’ve told a pathetic lie. As we walk to the door, he glances up.
“I see you finally got rid of that stupid chandelier.” He gazes back at the apartment. “The place looks different—nicer, I think, and more quiet.”
“Speaking of quiet,” I say, and tell him about Paul Dawson, the house terrorist. Simon’s the only one I know who can fully appreciate the outcome.
“Dawson?” Simon shakes his head, incredulous. “What a bastard. Why would he do something like that?”
“Loneliness,” I say. “Anger. Revenge.” And I sense the irony of what I’ve just said, a poker stabbing the ashes of my heart.
After Simon leaves, the apartment does feel awfully quiet. I lie on the rug in the bedroom and stare at the night sky through a dormer window. I think about our marriage. The weft of our seventeen years together was so easily torn apart. Our love was as ordinary as the identical welcome mats found in the suburbs we grew up in. The fact that our bodies, our thoughts, our hearts had once moved in rhythm with each other had only fooled us into thinking we were special.
And all that talk about the breakup being good for us—who am I trying to fool? I’m cut loose, untethered, not belonging to anything or anybody.
And then I think about Kwan, how misplaced her love for me is. I never go out of my way to do anything for her unless it’s motivated by emotional coercion on her part and guilt on mine. I never call her out of the blue to say, “Kwan, how about going to dinner or a movie, just the two of us?” I never take any pleasure in simply being nice to her. Yet there she is, always hinting about our going together to Disneyland or Reno or China. I bat away her suggestions as though they were annoying little flies, saying I hate gambling, or that southern California is definitely not on my list of places to visit in the near future. I ignore the fact that Kwan merely wants to spend more time with me, that I am her greatest joy. Oh God, does she hurt the way I do now? I’m no better than my mother!—careless about love. I can’t believe how oblivious I’ve been to my own cruelty.
I decide to call Kwan and invite her to spend a day, maybe even a weekend, with me. Lake Tahoe, that would be nice. She’ll go berserk. I can’t wait to hear what she says. She won’t believe it.
But when Kwan answers the phone, she doesn’t wait for me to explain why I’ve called. “Libby-ah, this afternoon I talking to my friend Lao Lu. He agree, you must go China—you, Simon, me together. This year Dog Year, next year Pig, too late. How you cannot go? This you fate waiting to happen!”
She rambles on, countering my silences with her own irrefutable logic. “You half-Chinese, so must see China someday. What you think? We don’t go now, maybe never get another chance! Some mistake you can change, this one cannot. Then what you do? What you think, Libby-ah?”
In hopes that she’ll cease and desist, I say, “All right, I’ll think about it.”
“Oh, I know you change mind!”
“Wait a minute. I didn’t say I’d go. I said I’d think about it.”
She’s off and running. “You and Simon love China, guarantee one hundred percent, specially my village. Changmian so beautiful you can’t believe. Mountain, water, sky, like heaven and earth come together. I have things I leave there, always want give you. . . .” She goes on for another five minutes, extolling the virtues of her village before announcing, “Oh-oh, doorbell ringing. I call you again later, okay?”
“Actually, I called you.”
“Oh?” The doorbell sounds once more. “Georgie!” she cries. “Georgie! Answer door!” Then she shouts, “Virgie! Virgie!” Is George’s cousin from Vancouver already living with them? Kwan comes back on the line. “Wait minute. I go answer door.” I hear her welcoming someone, and then she’s on the line again, slightly breathless. “Okay. Why you call?”
“Well, I wanted to ask you something.” I immediately regret what I haven’t said yet. What am I getting myself into? I think about Lake Tahoe, being marooned with Kwan in a dinky motel room. “This is sort of last-minute, so I understand if you’re too busy—”
“No-no, never too busy. You need something, ask. My answer always yes.”
“Well, I was wondering, well”—and then I say, all in a rush—“what are you doing tomorrow for lunch? I have to take care of some business near where you work. But if you’re busy, w
e could do it another day, no big deal.”
“Lunch?” Kwan says brightly. “Oh! Lunch!” Her voice sounds heartbreakingly happy. I curse myself for being so stingy with my token gift. And then I listen, flabbergasted, as she turns away from the receiver to announce, “Simon, Simon—Libby-ah call me have lunch tomorrow!” I hear Simon in the background: “Make sure she takes you somewhere expensive.”
“Kwan? Kwan, what’s Simon doing there?”
“Come over eat dinner. Yesterday I already ask you. You say busy. Not too late, you want come now, I have extra.”
I look at my watch. Seven o’clock. So this is his date. I nearly jump for joy. “Thanks,” I tell her. “But I’m busy tonight.” My same excuse.
“Always too busy,” she answers. Her same lament.
Tonight, I make sure my excuse isn’t a lie. As penance, I busy myself making a to-do list of unpleasant tasks I’ve been putting off, one of which is changing my name. That necessitates changing my driver’s license, credit cards, voter registration, bank account, passport, magazine subscriptions, not to mention informing our friends and clients. It also means deciding what last name I will use. Laguni? Yee?
Mom suggested I keep the name Bishop. “Why go back to Yee?” she reasoned. “There aren’t any other Yees you’re related to in this country. So who’s going to care?” I didn’t remind Mom about her pledge to do honor to the Yee family name.
As I think more about my name, I realize I’ve never had any sort of identity that suited me, not since I was five at least, when my mother changed our last name to Laguni. She didn’t bother with Kwan’s. Kwan’s name remained Li. When Kwan came to America, Mom said that it was a Chinese tradition for girls to keep their mother’s last name. Later, she admitted that our stepfather didn’t want to adopt Kwan since she was nearly an adult. Also, he didn’t want to be legally liable for any trouble she might cause as a Communist.