“You’re our half sister.” It’s obvious now. She’s not a small woman; there’s breadth to her shoulders, and there’s something in the way she cants her hips at the counter. Her feline smile, the shape of her cheeks, can only be Big Chao’s. He backs away, his body repulsed even as it knows. She’s right: he’s never acknowledged his own blood, has never wanted to belong to these people, to his family.
“You don’t look well,” she says. “The customers are right. You’re going off the rails.”
“Off the rails?” he scoffs. “I’m the only rational person at the restaurant.”
“You were rational. I used to think you the most reasonable of the brothers. You were rational until you had a glimpse of the truth—very simple, but distorting your assumptions, blowing them up from the inside.”
“Get out of here—get out!” Ming yells.
“This is my flat.”
He turns to leave. He feels, from behind, such a force of coldness that he stumbles again. A miasma of confusion and hatred and misery rises over him like a wave. He’ll be drowned. Surely all of this hatred isn’t about him. It transcends him in time and space, it’s something from the past.
He turns again to face her.
“You must hate him! You, too, hate him!”
“I thought we had also talked about this,” she says. “We agreed on this: You are the one who truly hates him. Because you hate yourself.”
“Did he know you?”
“He knew. He denied it, in the beginning, but he knew.”
“Tell me the story.”
“You’re such a strange person,” she says. “You want to get away, and yet you keep coming back. You want to forget, and yet you want to know what happened.”
“Tell me.”
“It’s not much, to you. My mother, who was cast aside, and robbed, for the sake of an exit to this country, lived in bitterness and died years later, a ruined woman. It’s dangerous to cast people aside. You forget them, unaware they’ve not forgotten you, unaware of the tremendous spite and hatred somewhere in the world. My mother died without money or valuables, without opportunities, without happiness. She never had a life of her own, she had only me.”
“Cast aside—for the sake of a way into this country?”
“You wouldn’t know. There was a possibility, with a payment, to enter the United States. But only enough money for one person. A thief.” She meets his eye. “And he called himself a pioneer.”
He looks away.
Now she’s telling him about the shame she and her mother lived in. Poverty and hunger. “One year it got so bad my mother searched him down, tracked him down. She never told me this—she kept almost everything about him a secret from me—but I knew, I guessed, I got the truth out of her. She wrote asking for money, for food. Not for the ring, which he stole from her. But for food. And she never heard back.”
He’s thinking about Dagou’s radio story. Six-year-old Dagou with the puffball haircut. The unsent package, packed with dried mushrooms, addressed to somewhere in China.
“To think I’ve always held you in respect,” she’s saying. “You got the farthest away. You were able to leave him. You’re safe in your office, high up in your skyscraper, totaling up your annual bonuses.” How does she know about the hunting blind? Ming waves his hand in a spasmodic gesture. He wants her to stop talking now. “But you’re the one he most wanted to be. You’re the pillager, the plunderer,” she continues. “The most American. Of all his sons, you’re most like him.”
She lowers the half-eaten orange into her lap.
“So many things … now I’m a woman without a country, without a mother, a woman whose father is not my father. Who is most at fault? My mother, who died a bitter, ruined, very ill woman, abandoned by my father? She never had a life of her own, she had only her one desire: to ruin my father, to make sure he would not live, to still that endlessly healthy red blood.”
Ming turns again, panicked. He leaves the room and stumbles down the stairs.
THE PEOPLE V. WILLIAM CHAO
Journalism 238: Writing for New Media
Posted April 21, 7:51 a.m.
My name is Lynn Chin. I’m a member of Haven’s Chinese American community.
In this blog, I will cover the trial of William Chao as my final project for Journalism 238. My personal goals are as follows: Be clear and fair. Follow the assignment guidelines for blog format:
Use short sentences.
Make paragraphs three or fewer lines.
Use white space.
Use sentence fragments to enliven prose.
Use bullet points when possible.
Disclaimer: Computers aren’t allowed in the courtroom. I never learned cursive and can’t print very fast. I can’t vouch my quotes from the trial will be perfectly or even sequentially transcribed. For accuracy, check the court reporter’s transcript.
Posted April 21, 6 p.m.
We met this morning in the county courthouse’s biggest room, under the rotunda. It’s like a courtroom from a 1960s television show. There is dark wood wainscoting. An American flag. In the front are tables for the lawyers, the judge’s bench, and a witness stand. In the gallery are about 150 wooden chairs, with an aisle down the middle.
The courtroom was completely full. The following groups sat in the gallery:
26 members of the Chinese American community (rows 2–4), including me and my parents.
Eight nuns from the Spiritual House (row 1).
Approximately 120 other members of the public (rows 5–16).
My parents and their friends wore pale blue “DG” buttons in support of Dagou. But a lot of the people seated behind us wore red and navy buttons that read, in white type, “JUSTICE FOR ALF.”
My friend Fang sat down next to me. His mother, Ma Wa, was with my parents. “I’m amazed our parents are coming to this,” I said to him. “My mom and dad hardly ever use vacation days. Now they’ve taken a week off to watch the trial.”
“We need to be here,” Fang said. “We need to know what’s going on. If Dagou’s found guilty, it’ll make us all look bad. This is about Haven’s attitude toward all Asians.”
Fang is a bit of a conspiracy theorist.
Not much happened to start off. Mr. Stern, defense attorney, requested not to allow the prosecution to refer to the defendant as “Dog Eater.” The request was granted by Judge Lopate. Now they’re choosing the jury. This is called “voir dire.”
Posted April 23, 5:30 p.m.
Just checking in to report that voir dire is over. There are twelve jury members and two alternates.
This is a bit off topic, but one of the jury members is familiar to me. She’s a chirpy, stout woman in burgundy boots. I know her. I can’t remember from where, but when I watched her answering the questions, I had an unexpected feeling. I felt guilty.
Posted April 24, 12:15 p.m.
I’m alone at Starbucks. Everyone else is having lunch at McDonald’s, but I need time to myself. Witnesses for the prosecution start to testify next week, and I have a lot to think about.
In case you don’t know, Simeon Strycker is the prosecuting attorney (working with assistant prosecuting attorney Corinne Udweala). He’s a wiry, tallish man. He has thin hair and wears little gold-rimmed glasses.