Homesick Page 3

  My mother was going to take me to the Hulls' on Friday and since my father had a committee meeting that night, she would stay for supper and Mr. Hull would drive her home in his Dodge sedan. I would go home when the Hulls came into town for church on Sunday.

  So on Friday I put on my middy blouse which, more than any of my clothes, made me feel like a Marjorie, and my mother called for rickshas. The coolies came running, jostling and swearing at each other, each one shouting for us to take his ricksha, take his, take his. I always felt sorry for the coolies who weren't chosen. I knew how few coppers they made and how often they had to go without rice but, on the other hand, I felt sorry for those who were chosen. The harder a coolie ran and the heavier his load, the sooner he would die. Most ricksha coolies didn't live to be thirty, my father said. Of course I was not a heavy load, but even so, by the time we reached the Hulls' house, my coolie was wiping the sweat from his face, using the dirty rag that hung at his waist. It was no use telling a coolie to walk, not run. He'd feel he was a weakling if he didn't run; he'd lose face.

  The Hulls' house was red brick and American-looking, not American like the pictures of my grandmother's house which had a front porch and honeysuckle vines and a swing, but American like a picture in a magazine. Mr. Hull had designed it himself, with special features for his family. Andrea's room, for instance, had a bar down one wall for her to use when she practiced dancing. We went straight to her room and I sat down in her white wicker rocking chair and waited for the news.

  "Well, I'm afraid they are doomed," she sighed. Her parents had had a terrible fight the week before, she reported, and hadn't spoken for days. "And they won't listen to me. I figured out how we could bring our whole family together but they won't listen."

  Andrea was lying flat on the floor because that was good for her posture, but with news like this, I was surprised that she still cared about her posture.

  "What did you figure out?" I asked.

  "A baby." Andrea gave me time to get used to the idea. "I didn't expect my mother to have the baby," she explained. "That would take too long. I wanted my parents to adopt one from the same place that they adopted David. Then we'd all have someone we could love together." She began pedaling her legs in the air to strengthen her thighs. "Besides," she added, "an adopted baby would be good for David. He wouldn't feel so left out. You know how he is."

  I did know. At twelve, David was the oldest of the children. The Hulls had adopted him when they thought they couldn't have children of their own.

  Then a year later Andrea had come along and afterwards Edward, but Mr. and Mrs. Hull treated David the same as the others and seemed to love him as much. Still, David felt different. He was always wondering who his real mother and father were, even though the Hulls said they didn't know, couldn't find out, and it didn't matter. They didn't even want him to talk about it and he didn't, except sometimes to Andrea and me.

  Andrea let her legs drop to the floor and rolled over to look at me. "They weren't even interested in a baby," she said. "But guess what?"

  "What?"

  "They decided it would be nice to invite an orphan here for Christmas vacation. So they wrote to the orphanage and we heard yesterday. We're going to have a girl. Eleven years old. She'll arrive by boat three days before Christmas and stay through New Year's."

  "What's her name?"

  "Millie." Andrea screwed up her face. "Ugh."

  I agreed that the name was not good. But an orphan! I'd like an orphan sleeping in my house and spending Christmas with me. "Maybe you could call her Lee for short," I suggested.

  Later at supper Mrs. Hull told my mother about Millie's coming. As soon as she was finished, I spoke up.

  "Why couldn't we ..." I began, but Mrs. Hull interrupted. She turned to my mother.

  "We could share Millie," she said. "She could go to your house for a few days in the middle of her stay. I expect Jean would like that."

  That wasn't what I'd had in mind, but still it sounded like a good idea. So it was settled that when the Hulls came to our house for Christmas dinner (which they always did), they would leave Millie with us for three days. (In my mind I was already calling her Lee. She'd be more like a sister, I decided, than a friend.)

  I was still thinking about Lee when we went to bed, although I didn't usually bother with private thoughts when I was going to bed at Andrea's. The Hulls believed in fresh air, so they had a sleeping porch where the whole family slept, winter and summer, with the windows wide open around three sides of the room. When I came for a visit, Mr. and Mrs. Hull slept in their own room and I used their bed. Sometimes before going to sleep, David and Andrea and Edward (who was only six) and I played Pioneer. We'd roll the beds into a semicircle and fight off the horse thieves. Sometimes we played War and lined up the beds for the wounded. Maybe because it was later than usual, tonight we didn't play anything. Andrea got under the covers and began right away to shake her head from side to side on the pillow, which was the way she went to sleep. Sometimes she had to shake her head a long time but not tonight. I had decided that I was the only one awake when I saw David sit up.

  "Jean?" he whispered. "You awake? I want to ask a favor."

  I couldn't imagine what David Hull could want of me. I did understand, however, that it wasn't easy for him to ask. He was a pale, thin-faced, twitchy boy who, I had to admit, seemed out of place in the Hull family with their free and natural ways.

  "I want it to be a secret." His whisper had turned hoarse.

  I got up, pulled a blanket off my bed, wrapped myself up, and went to sit on his bed.

  "You know that Millie," he said.

  "Yes."

  "Well, she comes from the same orphans' home as I came from. And I was thinking. They must have records in the office of that place." He was looking out the window and shivering as he talked.

  "Why couldn't she sneak into that office when she goes back after being here? Why couldn't she find out about me?" He took such a big breath I could feel the favor coming.

  "Then she could write you. And you could tell me. That way, Mom and Dad wouldn't have to know anything about it. You know how they are."

  The whole idea sounded crazy. "David," I said, "why do you care so much? What difference does it make?"

  He turned on me, his face fiercer than I'd known it could be. "How would you like it," he hissed, "if you didn't know whether your father was a crook or what he was? Or whether he was dead or alive? If you didn't know that you were American? You might be Russian or Danish or German or anything. How would you like it?"

  Well, of course, I knew I wouldn't like it. "But you're legally an American," I pointed out.

  "Legally! What difference does that make?" David's whisper was becoming raspier and raspier. "When you go back to America, you'll know you're home. When you meet your grandmother, you'll know she's your real grandmother. I won't know anything." He spoke so fast it was as if he'd learned his thoughts by heart. "You see?" he asked.

  "Yes."

  "Well, will you or won't you? Will you make the plans with Millie?"

  "Yes," I said, "I will." But as I went back to bed, my feelings were tangled up again. Part of me said that I had to help him; part of me said I couldn't help him. In the first place, the idea wouldn't work; in the second place, David would never be satisfied. No matter what he found out, he would always want to know more.

  From across the room came his whisper, quieter now. "Thanks," he said. "But remember. Don't even tell Andrea."

  As it turned out, Andrea and I were so busy the next day, I wasn't even tempted to tell. As soon as we got up, she announced that we were going to wash our hair. She had a new rinse made from dried camomile flowers. "It brings out the hidden lights in your hair," she explained. Andrea had different shades of gold already in her hair, but I didn't see what could be hidden in my plain brown hair. Certainly I never dreamed I could have undiscovered red highlights but Andrea said I could; I just needed to encourage them to come out. And of
course I was willing to do that. So Andrea dropped the dried, buttonlike flowers in a pitcher of hot water, and while they soaked, we began washing our hair, each of us soaping each other and giving each other a first rinse with ordinary water.

  Then for the magic rinse. I poured half the pitcher of camomile mixture over Andrea's head and she poured the other half over mine. I rushed to the mirror.

  "Wait until it dries," Andrea said.

  So I rubbed my head with a towel, stopping every few minutes for a look. No sign of red yet. I kept rubbing until at last Andrea (whose hair was a-glint) told me to quit. As soon as I'd combed my hair, she inspected it and assured me that there was a change. "Wait until the sun shines on it," she said. "That's when it really shows up." I smiled as I fluffed out my hair. I had never appreciated its possibilities before.

  After breakfast we walked on top of the wall that separated the Hulls' property from the Chinese farms. It was an eight-foot-high wall and when you stood on it, you felt as if you owned the world. Today with the air crisp and the sun making highlights on my hair, I felt especially pleased with that world. It was like a picture postcard. Across the background a water buffalo walked with a boy on its back. The rest of the picture was divided neatly into little farm plots, each with its mud hut, each with its creaking well. From this height the people didn't look like poor, overworked Chinese; they seemed to be toy people going happily about their business. And I felt like a queen, walking the turret of my castle. I waved my arm at the scene below.

  "That's our kingdom," I announced to Andrea. "And I am Queen Marjorie. Who are you?"

  "You are Queen—who?"

  "Marjorie."

  Andrea gave me the same kind of withering look as my mother had. "Marjorie is not a name for a queen," she said. "It's not a decent name for anyone."

  I felt myself getting mad, so to be safe, I sat down, my feet dangling over the Chinese side of the wall.

  "I happen to like the name Marjorie," I said stiffly. "I guess I can be Queen-anything-I-want-to-be. What's your name?"

  Andrea was sitting down too. "Queen Zobeide."

  I didn't have the chance to tell her what I thought of her name. Actually both of us forgot all about being queens because at that moment an old woman stepped out of a hut and started shrieking and cursing at a man in the next farmyard. She shook her fists. "Egg of a turtle!" she screamed. "May all your children fall sick! May you outlive every one of them! May the gods heap misfortune on your head!" On and on.

  At night lying on the sleeping porch, Andrea and I had often heard women carrying on like this. Now we were trying so hard to catch all the language, not to miss a word, that we were surprised when at the height of her rage the woman stopped short. There was a moment of complete silence. The woman had caught sight of us, sitting on our wall, staring. She put her hands on her hips, threw back her head, and called on all the gods and neighbors to come and witness the dog-things in their midst. It was as if now, now she had at last found someone worthy of her anger. She could forget the poor pig of a man who lived next door. For us she found new words so bad we couldn't translate them, although our Chinese was as good as our English. As her voice grew more shrill, her neighbors did come to listen and look. Occasionally a man would laugh and add an insult. Young boys began picking up stones and hurling them at the wall. "Foreign devils," they shouted. "Foreign devils."

  Andrea and I were used to being called "foreign devil." We were used to insults. Coolies often spat directly in our path, but we had been taught to act as if we didn't see, as if nothing had happened. But today it was different. More people angry all together, angrier than before. We knew the stones wouldn't reach us; still, we couldn't get down from that wall fast enough.

  As soon as we were off the ladder, we slid to the ground, out of breath. "I guess it will get worse," Andrea said. "It's the Communists who are doing this. They're the ones who are making the Chinese so mad."

  Of course I knew about the Communists who wanted to make a revolution in China like the one in Russia that had driven Vera Sebastian out. Still, I hadn't paid much attention. All my life there had been fighting somewhere in China—warlord against warlord. Grown-ups were constantly talking about these warlords, hoping that one of them would finally bring the country together in peace. When a warlord was a Christian (and one or two were), my father really got his hopes up. But I just thought of the Communists as another group of Chinese. Fighting as always.

  But it wasn't like that, Andrea said. If the Communists got the chance, there would be a new kind of war. Farmers against their landlords. Factory workers against factory owners. The poor against the rich. Chinese against foreigners. "The Communists want to get us out," she said. "My father says that one day we may be glad to have those gunboats in the river to protect us."

  It all sounded so complicated, I thought of my father when he was discouraged. Sometimes he'd put out his hands in a kind of helpless gesture. "But China's so big," he'd say, as if he were apologizing for having come so far and doing so little. That's the way I felt now. China was too big for me to even imagine all the things that might happen. At the moment all I hoped was that the Communists wouldn't spoil Christmas.

  But after the weekend when I got home, I was glad to see that Christmas seemed to be coming on in the usual way. We had mailed our packages to America months ago. (I had sent my grandmother a doily filled with nothing but French knots. It was a "labor of love," I explained.) Now big, bulky packages were arriving from America, pasted over with seals that said, DO NOT OPEN UNTIL DECEMBER 25. Of course I knew what my grandmother had sent me because every year she sent the same thing. I didn't blame her. Without having met me, how could she know that I hated to get clothes for Christmas? Besides, she had made every one of the petticoats she sent, so they were probably labors of love too.

  In addition to the American packages, presents were being delivered to my parents from Chinese friends. Almost every day when I came home from school I'd find one or two cakes on the hall table, waiting to be put away. They were all alike—tall, castlelike cakes, each with white icing and pink characters that said LONG LIFE AND HAPPINESS and sprinkled all over with tiny silver pellets that my mother wouldn't let me eat.

  I was also buying presents to give away. For Lee I had bought a red pencil box with two drawers in it, like mine. A package of open-up paper flowers. And I had gone into the sandalwood box where I kept my savings and taken out twenty coppers and four twenty-cent pieces. I had them changed into a silver dollar and put it in a velvet-lined jewelry case my mother had. Although it was hard to take so much money out of my savings all at once, I figured that orphans would hardly ever have money of their own, certainly not as much as a whole dollar. My mother, who was positive that Lee would like clothes, was knitting a sweater and a pair of mittens.

  I had thought so much about Lee that by Christmas Eve I felt I knew her. I pictured how much more comfortable she'd be with me than with a sleeping porch full of children and with grown-ups who might or might not be speaking to each other. I wished she could have been with us to help decorate the tree and hang the red crepe paper streamers in the dining room, but I knew I shouldn't expect life to be one-hundred-percent perfect. It was enough that she was coming the next day. And if we really became good friends—well, who knew what might happen? After all, orphans could be adopted.

  I bargained with my parents about what time we'd get up in the morning. "Six o'clock," I suggested. "Seven," my father countered. "Six-thirty," I offered. He accepted. He even agreed not to shave until after we had opened our presents. Our guests wouldn't be arriving until one o'clock. Eleven guests altogether: the Hulls, Lee, two elderly missionary ladies who would otherwise be alone at Christmas, and three sailors (whom we'd never met) from an American gunboat.

  What I liked best about Christmas was that for a whole day grown-ups seemed to agree to take time off from being grown-ups. At six-thirty sharp when I burst into my parents' room, yelling "Merry Christmas!," they bo
th laughed and jumped right up as if six-thirty wasn't an early hour at all. By the time we came downstairs, the servants were lined up in the hall dressed in their best. "Gung-shi." They bowed. "Gung-shi. Gung-shi." This was the way Chinese offered congratulations on special occasions, and the greeting, as it was repeated, sounded like little bells tinkling. Lin Nai-Nai, however, didn't "gung-shi." For months she had been waiting for this day. She stepped forward. "Merry Christmas," she said just as if she could have said anything in English that she wanted to. I was so proud, I took her hand as we all trooped into the living room. My father lighted the tree and he distributed the first gifts of the day—red envelopes filled with money for the servants. After a flurry of more "gung-shis," the servants left and there were the three of us in front of a huge mound of packages. All mysteries.

  I kept telling myself that we wanted to make Christmas last but whenever it was my turn to open a package, I yanked at the ribbons and tore off the paper because I couldn't wait. When I had finished, I was sitting inside a circle of presents: four books, a fountain pen, an Uncle Wiggily game, a stamp album, a skipping rope, a pocketbook, a bracelet, a paperweight with snow falling inside, and best of all, the "pound of butter" present—a box of pale blue stationery with my name JEAN GUTTERY and HANKOW, CHINA printed in gold at the top with a little gold pagoda at each side. And of course there were clothes, including the petticoat from my grandmother, one size larger than last year's. But I felt strange when I thought of my grandmother. Here I was in the middle of Christmas and there she was with Christmas not even started in her house. It was only December 24 in America.

  I was watching out the window when the Hulls arrived. As soon as the Dodge sedan drew up, a back door flew open and Andrea jumped out. By the time she reached the door, I was there.