When Our Hair Is White
I LIE ON my bed, a huge hole in my chest where my heart used to be. Destroyed, that’s how I feel. I listen to May and Joy murmur together. Later, I hear raised voices and doors slam, but I don’t go back out there and fight for my daughter. I don’t have any fight left in me. But then maybe I never did. Maybe May was right about me. I am weak. Maybe I’ve always been afraid, a victim, a fu yen. May and I grew up in the same home with the same parents, and yet my sister has always been able to look out for herself She grabbed at opportunities: my willingness to take Joy, Tom Gubbins’s offer of a job and what that turned into, her constant striving to go out and have fun, while I accepted the bad as merely my unlucky fate.
Later still, I hear water running in the bathroom and the toilet flush. I hear Joy opening and shutting her drawers in the linen closet. As silence finally settles over the house, my mind goes to deeper and darker places. My sister has made me think about things in a whole new way, but none of that changes what happened to Sam. I’ll never forgive her for that! Except… except… maybe she was right about seeking amnesty. Maybe not voluntarily stepping forward was a dreadful mistake on Sam’s and my parts, which resulted in terrible tragedy for Sam. But why hadn’t May told us she was going to report us, even if it was for our own good? I know the answer too well: Sam and I were always afraid of anything new. We were afraid to leave the family and go out on our own, afraid to leave Chinatown, afraid to let our daughter become what we said we wanted her to be: American. If May had tried to tell us, we wouldn’t have been able to hear her.
I know that, in the worst of my Dragon aspects, I can be stubborn and proud. Cross a female Dragon and the sky will fall. Indeed, tonight the sky has fallen, but I need to tell Joy that she is and will always be my daughter and that no matter what she feels about me or Sam or her auntie, I will love her forever and ever. I will make her understand how much she’s been loved and protected and how much pride I have in her as she begins her life. I have ten thousand hopes that she’ll forgive me. As for May, I don’t know if I can find a way to absolve her or even if I want to. I don’t know if I want to have a relationship with her at all, but I’m willing to give her a chance to explain everything to me again.
I should go out to the screened porch, wake them up, and do all this right now, but it’s late and it’s quiet out there and too much has happened on this terrible night.
“WAKE UP! Wake up! Joy is gone!”
I open my eyes to my sister shaking me. Her face is frantic. I sit up, fear pulsing through my body.
“What?”
“It’s Joy. She’s gone.”
I’m up, out of the room, and running to the screened porch. Both beds look to me like they’ve been slept in. I take a breath and try to relax.
“Maybe she’s gone for a walk. Maybe she went to the cemetery.”
May shakes her head. Then she looks down at a piece of crumpled paper she holds in her hand. “I found this on her bed when I woke up.”
May smoothes the paper and hands it to me. I begin to read:
Mom,
I don’t know who I am anymore. I don’t understand this country anymore. I hate that it killed Dad. I know you’ll think I’m confused and foolish. Maybe I am, but I have to find answers. Maybe China is my real home after all. After everything Auntie May told me last night, I think I should meet my real father. Don’t worry about me, Mom. I have great belief in China and everything Chairman Mao is doing for the country.
Joy
I take a breath, and the pounding in my heart slows. I know that Joy can’t possibly mean what she’s written. She’s a Tiger. It’s her nature to flail and strike out, which is exactly what she’s done in her note, but there’s no possible way she’s done what she’s written here. May seems to believe it though.
“Has she really run away?” May asks when I look up from the letter.
“I’m not worried and you shouldn’t be either.” I’m irritated with May for starting the day with more drama when I hoped to talk things through, but I put a reassuring hand on her arm, trying to keep some semblance of calm between us. “Joy was upset last night. We all were. She probably went over to the Yees’ house to talk to Hazel. I bet she’ll be home for breakfast.”
“Pearl.” My sister swallows and then inhales before continuing. “Last night Joy asked about Z.G. I told her I think he still lives in Shanghai since his magazine covers always show something about the city. I’m pretty sure that’s where she’s gone.”
I wave off the idea. “She’s not going to China to look for Z.G. She can’t just get on a plane and fly to Shanghai.” I tick off the reasons on my fingers, hoping logic will soothe May’s concerns. “Mao took over the country eight years ago. China is closed to Westerners. The United States doesn’t have diplomatic relations—”
“She could fly to Hong Kong,” May cuts in haltingly. “It’s a British colony. From there she could walk into China, just like Father Louie used to hire people to walk tea money in to his family in Wah Hong Village.”
“Don’t even think that. Joy is not a Communist. All that talk has been just that—talk.”
May points to the note. “She wants to meet her real father.”
But I refuse to accept what my sister is saying. “Joy doesn’t have a passport.”
“Yes, she does. Don’t you remember? That Joe boy helped her get one.”
At that, my knees buckle. May grabs me and helps me to the bed, where we sit down. I begin to weep. “Not this. Not after Sam.”
May tries to comfort me, but I’m inconsolable. It’s not long before guilt takes over.
“She hasn’t just gone to find her father.” My words come out ragged and broken. “Her whole world has been split apart. Everything she thought she knew was wrong. She’s running away from us. Her real mother … and me.”
“Don’t say that. You are her real mother. Look at the letter again. She called me Auntie and you Mom. She’s your daughter, not mine.”
My heart throbs with grief and fear, but I grab on to one word: Mom.
May dabs away my tears. “She is your daughter,” she repeats. “Now stop crying. We have to think.”
May’s right. I have to regain control of my emotions, and we have to figure out how to stop my daughter from making this terrible mistake.
“Joy will need a lot of money if she wants to get to China,” I say thinking aloud.
May seems to understand what I mean. She’s been modern for a long time and has kept her money in a bank, but Sam and I followed Father Louie’s tradition of keeping our earnings nearby. We hurry to the kitchen and look under the sink for the coffee can where I keep most of my savings. It’s empty. Joy’s taken the money, but I don’t lose hope.
“When do you think she left?” I ask. “The two of you stayed up talking—”
“Why didn’t I hear her get up? Why didn’t I hear her pack?”
I have these same self-recriminations, and a part of me is still angry and confused about everything I learned last night, but I say, “We can’t worry about things like that right now. We have to concentrate on Joy. She can’t have gone far. We can still find her.”
“Yes, of course. Let’s get dressed. We’ll take two cars—”
“What about Vern?” Even in this moment of terror and bereavement, I can’t forget my responsibilities.
“You drive to Union Station and see if she’s there. I’ll get Vern situated, and then I’ll drive to the bus station.”
But Joy isn’t at the train station, and she isn’t at the bus station either. May and I meet back at the house. We still don’t know for sure where Joy has gone. It’s hard to believe that she’ll really try to go to China, but we have to act as though that’s what she’s doing if we’re to have any chance at stopping her. May and I make a new plan. I drive to the airport, while May stays at home and makes phone calls: to the Yee family to see if Joy said anything to the girls; to the uncles on the chance she sought their advice about getting into mainland China; and to Betsy and her father in Washington to check if there’s an official way to catch Joy before she leaves the country. I don’t find Joy at the airport, but May receives two distressing pieces of information. First, Hazel Yee said that early this morning Joy called in tears from the airport to say she was leaving the country. Hazel didn’t believe Joy and didn’t ask where she was going. Second, May learned from Betsy’s father that Joy can apply for and receive a visa to Hong Kong upon landing.
Since we haven’t eaten, May opens two cans of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup and begins to heat them on the stove. I sit at the table, watching my sister and worrying about my daughter. My beautiful, wild Joy is running headlong to the one place she shouldn’t go: the People’s Republic of China. But Joy—as much as she thinks she’s learned about China from the movies, that boy Joe, that dumb group she joined, and whatever her professors might have taught her in Chicago—doesn’t know what she’s doing. She’s followed her Tiger nature, acting out of anger, confusion, and misplaced enthusiasm. She’s acted out of last night’s passions and confusions. As I told May, I believe that Joy’s rushing off to China is as much a flight from us—the two women who have fought over her from birth—as it is about finding her real father. And Joy can’t possibly understand how traumatic—not to mention dangerous—finding Z.G. could be.
But if Joy can’t avoid her essential nature, then I can’t escape mine either. The pull of motherhood is strong. I think of my own mother and all she did to save May and me from the Green Gang and protect us from the Japanese. Mama may have agonized over her decision to leave my father behind, but she did it. Surely she was terrified to step into the room with the soldiers, but she didn’t hesitate then either. My daughter needs me. No matter how perilous the journey or how great the risks, I have to find her. She needs to know that I’ll stand by her, unconditionally, without question, whatever the situation.
A small smile comes to my lips as I realize that for once not being a U.S. citizen is going to help me. I don’t have a U.S. passport. I have only my Certificate of Identity, which will allow me to leave this country that has never wanted me. I have some money tucked in the lining of my hat, but it isn’t enough to get me to China. It will take too long to sell the café. I could go to the FBI and confess everything and more, say I’m a rabid Communist of the worst kind, and hope to be deported …
May pours the soup into three bowls, and we go to Vern’s room. He’s pale and confused. He ignores the soup and nervously twists his bed-sheets.
“Where is Sam? Where is Joy?”