Homeseeking

by Karissa Chen

Because the Chinese written language uses a representational (versus phonetic) system, the same written word has many different pronunciations, depending on what language the speaker is using. This includes names. Given that my characters move within various Chinese-speaking regions of the world, I wanted to make sure to denote their code-switching in a way that would feel accurate. Therefore, each character may be referred to in a multitude of ways and may even broaden or change the way they think of themselves given a situation or over time.

For many people in the world, learning more than one language is a necessity, either because of migration or simply because the place they live in is a global one and survival dictates it. It is a skill that requires an ability to adapt and challenge oneself, and for many immigrants, it’s one of the most difficult, humbling, and uneasy parts of coming to a new country. If you, the reader, find yourself confused, I hope instead of giving up, you might take a moment to imagine what it must be like for those who have to navigate this on a daily basis, and then forge onward.

Although they all understood some Mandarin, Tina and George were most comfortable with Cantonese, Mary and Michael preferred Taiwanese, and Jianfeng’s Beijing accent was so thick, Ted complained it was like listening to someone with marbles in their cheeks. So they defaulted to the language of their adopted country, as difficult and slippery as it sometimes proved to be.

“There’s a difference between something that is old-fashioned and something that belongs to your heritage. An instrument like the guzheng is timeless; what makes it old-fashioned or contemporary is how you use it. Don’t you know in some dance hall performances, musicians use traditional instruments to play popular music?” M’ma made a sound of disapproval. “Okay, Apa.” Suji was now desperate for the conversation to end. “I’ll learn to play the guzheng.”

But the emperor laughed. What would we possibly gain from this friendship? he asked. We have everything we need right here. We have delicious fruits and beautiful mountains and the most pleasing music in the world. We have wonderful machinery and useful tools and the strongest army. We have gold and fireworks and the most fragrant tea. We have no need to befriend anyone else; what can you teach us that we don’t already know? He sent the pale man away and shut the door to the rest of the world. “But do you know what the rest of the world did, girls?” The girls shook their heads. Apa’s face grew grim. “The rest of the world grew without us. They did it in terrible ways—they conquered other lands and enslaved the bodies of men for labor. They stole from places and used what they stole to build factories and bigger guns and ships. So that one day, when the foreign men returned to our shores, we were unprepared. We had stayed the same while they had become powerful. They wanted our tea and porcelain and they no longer wanted to be friends—they planned to take what they wanted without asking. They tricked us by poisoning us, little by little, with opium. They made us weak. And now they are everywhere, treating us like dogs in our own lands.”

“We must always be brave and meet what scares us head-on, even if it is hard. But still, you must not forget who you are. You must always remain proud.”

The past mingled with the present. He was Howard now, and she was Sue, but here she was, across from him again, still beautiful in every way. “Susu—” he started, then stopped. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to say. He wanted to hold on to this moment, or maybe what he wanted was to go back to an old moment, a moment before all the things they didn’t talk about existed. Change something, somehow.

He was fumbling. The year after Linyee’s death had been passed in a gray, soundless fog, an acceptance that the best part of his life was over and that now he could only muddle through each monotonous day, waiting to die. He was content, he told himself. They’d had a good life. He would not dwell upon regrets. And yet in the month since Suchi had reappeared in his life, he’d discovered he still had things he wanted, wishes unfulfilled. Suchi was the answer to all of those things. He would right history with her. They would restart their lives, cram everything that had been robbed from them into the next five, ten, twenty years.

“The Suchi you knew evaporated decades ago,” Suchi interrupted, slamming the mugs down on the table and setting her eyes steely upon him. Her voice vibrated and swelled in a rush. “She was silly and frivolous, and she was killed off in the war, just like everyone else. What took her place is the Suchi sitting before you now, and I survived by not looking backward. So stop trying to revive the dead. You won’t find what you’re looking for here.”

And then, in October 1971, over two decades after Howard and two million other Nationalist and Nationalist-affiliated refugees had fled to the island of Taiwan, the Republic of China lost its United Nations seat. Despite years of backing Chiang’s (anti-Communist) government as the rightful leadership of China, the UN had charged that Chiang and his exiled officials could no longer claim to represent the millions of Chinese citizens back on the mainland. They promptly gave the seat to the People’s Republic of China. By the following February, Howard was staring at a front-page photo of Nixon shaking hands with Zhou Enlai, the PRC’s premier. The bamboo curtain had lifted.

But the implication that Chiang’s government was a rogue government diminished his life to that of a lowly rebel, unwanted and unrecognized by his own home.

Suchi had been a memory that sometimes felt realer than reality, a path not taken, a regret he couldn’t reconcile. Now she was actually real. He could breathe her back into his world with one phone call. Briefly, he indulged again in the fantasy—her voice, the airport, the warmth of her body. The life beyond. This he could not get past. Because he knew the life beyond could not conform to a fantasy. It would be messy, it would be hurtful. He could not right Suchi’s life without leaving Linyee’s in shambles. He owed a debt no matter which way he turned.

Zenpo waved him off, his other hand clutching the empty glass. “It’s a hard day,” Haiwen said. “It’s a hard day for all of us.” “Every day is hard,” Zenpo murmured. “It’s just that on some days you’re able to forget.”

Haiwen cried. For everything he had lost, for everything he missed. His nephew growing up. His sister getting married. Caring for his father and mother as they aged. The chance to marry Suchi and share a life with her—though this was, of course, a sorrow complicated by his love for Linyee and the girls. His children would never learn Shanghainese, never bite into his mother’s flaky turnip pastry and watch a wisp of hot steam curl out of it. The old regret of never getting to study at the music conservatory or become a professional violinist—a regret that had once caused pain to twist in his chest if he even heard a violin—split open again, a fresh wound.

Hope and despair were two sides of the same coin, Haiwen now thought. Li Tsin, like Haiwen, hadn’t given up hope of returning home.

Anguish spread through his chest, a thick sludge. It had been a long time since he had wept; he had gotten used to the permanent stone of grief he carried with him, a stone tears could not banish.

“Everyone is just a regular man until they put a bullet in your head,” Zenpo said. “It doesn’t matter if they’re Jap lovers or Commies—we can’t make any mistakes. ‘It is better to kill a thousand innocent men than to let one guilty man live.’ ”[14] Haiwen had heard this saying before, had heard it floating around among certain fanatical leaders who were zealous about their quest to root out and defeat the Communists, but it shocked him to hear Zenpo parroting it.

Briefly, while he’d been talking to Tsai Linyee, he’d forgotten his grief, and this alarmed him. What if it leaked out of his brain like the music?

Soukei had garnered many “friends” over the years, “the taaitaai,” as she called them, rich wives of Saikeung’s associates who invited her to lunch at the upscale dim sum restaurant in Repulse Bay or to have high tea at the Peninsula. But the women wore her down with their fixation on the latest handbags, their love of island gossip and petty drama, the way they treated their amahs, their passive-aggressive competitiveness in comparing their children. They were all kind to Soukei—they had to be—but she suspected they looked down upon her for her past and said unkind things when she wasn’t around.

A year or two ago—maybe even a month ago—Haiwen’s heart might have been swayed by talk of patriotism. But now the word rang hollow to him—no, it angered him. What did it mean, to love his country? And furthermore, did his country love him back? He recalled a conversation he’d had with Suchi months ago, the way he’d vigorously defended the Nationalist cause, how blindly he had believed that everything Chiang Kai-shek did, he did for the betterment of all Chinese people. He could no longer muster the same fervor. Nationalists, Communists—they were all the same. Asking ordinary people to sacrifice their lives, to kill their fellow countrymen, all so their leaders could come to power.

She was remembering when they were children, how earnest Haiwen had always been about making it up to her when she was upset over even the smallest things. He was still the same person, she could see. Still earnest, still too much in his head. She’d been unfair to be angry at him: he hadn’t changed from whom he’d once been; she was the one who had.

Suchi thought of what they’d all been speculating about Haiwen’s condition. She thought about the memories he cherished, the ones he’d spent so long holding on to, so long examining. She had never imagined that even as she tried to erase her past, there’d been someone out there who felt she was worth remembering. For all these years, Haiwen had kept everything that had been lost alive within him. Even if the rumors weren’t true and Haiwen was fine, time was finite. One day all he cherished would be taken from him.

Haiwen was gazing at her, and she thought she could see him trying to pull up the memory. “I thought to myself, This is someone who will do this for me for the rest of our lives. And I could see all the umbrellas you would bring me, a line of them stretching into infinity, the skin of your palm on their handles becoming more creased over time, your hair turning thinner and grayer.”

Should we call him your boyfriend now? Samson had teased. But her son didn’t understand—who they were to each other, it was beyond labels. They were just them. Haiwen and Suchi.

Despite her mother’s disapproval of Haiwen, in the end, she had wished for his safe return, if not for his own sake, then for her daughter’s happiness. This quiet love was something Suchi had been too young and impatient to see. Suchi wondered now if M’ma had continued to light that lantern once the girls were gone. Maybe she kept that light burning to lead her own daughters home. And Suchi was almost home. Or, rather, she was almost with her mother. Haiwen’s niece would be waiting for them at the airport when they landed; she had promised to take them straight to the place where M’ma lived. Xuenong had warned them that while the woman had been told about Suchi’s impending arrival, it was unclear how much she understood. Suchi knew now that home wasn’t a place. It wasn’t moments that could be pinned down. It was people, people who shared the same ghosts as you, of folks long gone, places long disappeared. People who knew you, saw you, loved you. When those people were far-flung, your home was too. And when those people were gone, home lived on inside you.

She wants to tell her children to stop arguing. The past doesn’t matter anymore; they all did what they had to in order to live. She wants to tell them what matters most is family—it is the only thing that matters, the only way to make a home. They alone will remember Haiwen when she is gone. They alone will remember their father, and soon, her. She wants to tell them people only die when there is no one left to remember them, but if they hold each other tightly, they can keep all the ghosts of their family alive.