Homesick: Chapters 4–5

Communist soldiers had begun to attack Wuchang (the city across the river from Hankow) and he was helping to set up hospitals for the sick and wounded.

“This may be the last boat to get through,” he announced triumphantly.

I think he suspected there might be trouble because he stood on the gangplank and held up four fingers, as if he were trying to keep more coolies from coming on board.

All the coolies began chanting: “Fifty cents a bag! Fifty cents! Fifty cents!”

I could see my father set his chin in his stubborn, not-giving-in way.

Other coolies produced knives.

I felt my knees go weak and tremble.

In a moment they had surrounded us.

I recognized him.

It was a grand rescue.

Since the Jordans were leaving the next day, he wanted them to hear everything, so he went on and on, the way he did when he was taking Dr. Carhart’s place and preaching a sermon.

“Commu¬nists don’t believe in long fingernails. They believe all people should be working people, no one pretending to be better than anyone else.”

Once long ago she had explained to me that she had disgraced her family when she had run away from her husband and they would never want to see her again.

My father had told me how Communist soldiers were trying to make the city of Wuchang surrender by starving it to death.

It was a city with walls around it, and since the soldiers wouldn’t let anyone in or out, eventually the people would run out of food.

I had read about sieges like this in my English history book, but in ancient days soldiers had worn armor and ridden horse¬back and used battering rams against the city walls.

These soldiers had only cloth caps and cotton clothes, but they had a cannon which they fired from the hills and they had bombs which they dropped on the city from the one airplane they owned.

The first time the Communist airplane flew over Hankow on its way to Wuchang, I ran outside and shook my fist at the pilot and shouted all the Chinese swear words I knew.

I knew we had potassium in the kitchen and suddenly I knew that if I were writing a story about a Communist cook, I’d have him poison his foreign employers with potassium.

Grown-ups generally took the truth too seri¬ously or not seriously enough; either way it meant trou¬ble.

I was ashamed of myself for lying, so I ran out of the room to find Kurry who was a comfort to me in my guilty times.

Before the summer I had often squatted in the court¬yard with the servants while they ate, so I went out now and joined them.

Yang Sze-Fu seemed embarrassed.

I noticed how, as he held the cup, he tried to hide his pinkie, and I remembered how he used to flourish it as if he felt especially superior when he was drinking tea.

These refugees had terrible stories to tell: houses destroyed, people sleeping in the streets, children dying, water running low, disease spreading.

“Well, Jean,” my father said, “you can see what war is like. If we were scheduled to leave Hankow next week, for instance, we couldn’t do it. I’m needed here.”

I felt the tears beginning when Mother put her hand over mine.

(I envied her the keys: desk drawer keys, kitchen cup¬board keys, trunk keys, door keys.

As a member of the relief commit¬tee, my father was already there and would be going back and forth for a long time, I supposed.

His voice cracked as he spoke, and I guessed he was thinking about sights too pitiful to put into words.

I had never seen her feet unbound or tears on her face or her sleek black hair straggling out of the bun on the back of her neck.

“Bound feet run¬ning. Like a stumbling duck.”

Ever since my father had said delay was possible, I hadn’t dared to make plans for fear of being disap¬pointed.

He described how I would sit on a deck chair as we crossed the Pacific and I’d cover myself with the steamer rug and while I looked at the ocean, a steward would bring me a cup of beef tea.

She had attached a note: “I have a calendar just like this. Beginning January 1st, let’s both cross off the days until you’re home. That will make the time go faster.”

I’d been afraid that maybe she had turned into a flapper with spit curls and spike heels and she might not like me.

There were warlords scattered around, each with his own army, and there was the Nationalist Army (under General Chiang Kai-shek) which was trying to conquer the warlords and unify the country.

Both the Communists and the Nationalists wanted to make things better in China, he explained, but both did terrible things to people who opposed them.

“And in Shanghai, Americans are crazy to keep up with American fads. They don’t want to fall behind.”

When he appeared at the door, he had that excited, tense look that meant a Narrow Squeak was on its way.

The day before yesterday the Nationalist Army had captured Nanking (down the river from Hankow), my father told us, and afterwards the soldiers had gone wild.

There might be wholesale murder of foreigners up and down the Yangtse.

On top I put everyday clothes and at the last minute I happened to think of “wholesale murder” so I stuck in some first-aid equipment.

On the Bund gray-coated soldiers with rifles over their shoulders were stationed all over the place.

They knew the gunboats would fire if they had to and they evidently didn’t want that to happen.

Crowds of Chinese were milling around but they didn’t look like organized riot-makers, just ordinary Chinese who had come out of curiosity to laugh at the foreigners scuttling away.

The Gales and their monkeys were, of course, the main attraction, and I couldn’t help grinning as the crowd jeered and joked about them.

Meanwhile we stood about in little family clusters, hugging each other, giving advice, saying good-bye.

As soon as the boat had cleared the dock and was headed downriver, the captain announced over the loudspeaker that all passengers were to assemble in the lounge.

The bullets, he said, would probably just rattle against the plates and fall off, but there were gaps between the plates and there was no telling how heavy the firing might be.

He explained all the emergency procedures and told us where the life jackets and lifeboats were.

I’d burrow under my covers, wondering if a whole army was shoot-ing at us or just a couple of soldiers on the riverbank.

My father had telegraphed Mrs. Hull about our arri¬val and she had sent someone to meet us and take care of our luggage.

“We’ll go right ahead and get ready. You may want to take up the hems on your skirts, Myrtle.”

Not only was it private, it was elegant.

That night I took a long, luxurious bath in deep, lilac-scented water.

“Well, it’s not sophisticated or romantic. Your trou¬ble is that you think America is just feeding your grand¬mother’s chickens. There’s a lot more to America than that.”

Andrea told her how stylish she looked, but I knew that she had ruined herself.

“After all,” she scoffed, “it’s just a movie. How could a movie hurt anyone?”

The boat, it seemed, had run aground in that shallow chan¬nel of the river that boats were always wary of.

After all, my mother had never had her hair cut in her life and of course she expected my father to be startled or shocked.

Suddenly I felt as if a genie had clapped his hands and poof! my “ifs” had vanished.

Flimsy things, they looked as if they didn’t want to let Shanghai go, but of course as the ship moved farther away, they broke, fell into the water, or simply hung bedraggled over the ship’s side.

It seemed to me that once we were completely out of sight of land, I would really feel homeward bound.

It was as if I could see the whole country at once: all the jogging rickshas, the pagodas, the squeaking wells, the chestnut vendors, the water buffaloes, the bluebells, the gray-coated soldiers, the bare-bottomed little boys.