Paper Daughter (19 page)

I'd watched, eyes wide open, until the moment it crashed down and pummeled me, flailing and choking, through the plunging surf.

"It was your fault," I'd yelled at Dad. "You shouldn't have let me go out there. It's your fault I got hurt." And I'd cried the way I wanted to cry now, because I remembered how that breaker had hurt and because I didn't want to see this picture that I couldn't stop looking at.

It wasn't fair that this was what I'd found. I'd gone to the archives for Dad's sake, hoping to pick up a trace of his steps.

And yes, I'd thought I wanted to know who his real family was. Who mine was. I'd thought replacing the part that had gone missing would help me feel like my old, familiar self again.

Instead my search had taken me to a terrifying world I didn't want to know about. It had shown me teenagers who gave up their true identities for the rest of their lives.

It had tied me to a girl who died when she wasn't much older than I, leaving a photo that said she had a story that was big and sad.

My thoughts were all tangled up, and I felt sick and outraged for her, too.

"Why? How?" I said aloud, as though the girl's picture might answer.

And then I did start crying, and I cried and I cried.

I cried because I'd failed Dad. Because I'd run out of ideas for how I might find out about the day he died.

I cried for that scared kid, Fai-yi Li, in that long-ago interrogation room.

I cried for An, the girl who was and wasn't me and who surely was my ancestor.

And I cried for the unknown person between us. There must have been someone besides Dad ... before him.

HOPE JOYCE CHEN 2009

Where do seventy plus years of a life go?

Is there a set portion for regret?

And if so, which parts of my portion would I replace with ones less haunting? Which parts of my life would I change?

Perhaps it would be my regret, when I watched the older girls leave Chinatown, that I was not old enough to go with them. The war had brought money to their parents and uniforms to their brothers, and it had opened office doors for them.

I followed not too many years later.

Perhaps, instead, I should have stayed with the old couple who had treated me like a daughter, giving me their name and trying to raise me as they had been raised.

Perhaps I would have stayed if they had not been so honest, if they had not told me someone else had first called me
Hope,
and if they had not also given me two things that they themselves had not purchased. A ragged blanket that I eventually lost.
A
torn postcard I took with me when I ran away.

Or perhaps my real regrets began a few years later, when I'd saved enough to pay my way into a secretarial school. For if I hadn't gone there, hadn't graduated and found a position, hadn't fallen in love where I shouldn't...

Well. At least I have no regrets for the infant. However his life has turned out, surely it has been better than any I could have provided.

And although I never saw him after the day he was born, I did give him as much as I was given. More.

There were papers to complete, and even though I knew it would probably be changed, I gave him a name: Steven Chen. And when I handed the signed forms back to the agency lady, I gave her the beautiful, soft blanket that was the most expensive thing I had ever bought. "This is for him," I said, "andalso this old postcard.
"

She examined it, puzzled. "Why is it important?
"

"
I don't know," I answered. "But when I was a baby, someone lef it with me.
"

***

So again I ask, where have the years gone?

My twenty-five became thirty-five. A decade became two and then three and four. I reached the end of working. Another decade went by.

I'm well past seventy now. With what? Another ten, twenty more years in front of me? I can live them as I've lived thus far, on my own.

Except, lately I've thought...

Perhaps it's just seeing my women friends move away from San Francisco to be nearer to sons and daughters. But I've started thinking that one day, even though I still live in this city where I was born, I'll be alone in a land of strangers.

I know there are places where missing people can leave their names. Registries for parents who want to find children. For children who want to find parents.

I wish I could know whether, if I were to leave my name, it would become a regret.

The early afternoon hum was already picking up when I got to the newsroom. In Lifestyles, Deena handed me a new batch of contest entries, but I'd barely started opening them when Jillian came over, bringing two mugs of tea.

"I'm working with Lynch again," she said, "but I told him I needed a break. How did it go this morning? Did you track down the name we got off the sign?"

"Huping Huang," I said. "Yes. I saw files on him and his daughter, but there wasn't anything in them about anyone who'd be alive today."

That was all I meant to say, but I couldn't keep the rest of it in.

"They were my family, though. I saw her photograph, and she looked just like me. And I read that she died not long after the picture was taken."

"No wonder you came in looking like you needed tea," Jillian said. "I once heard about this person who, you know, could get in touch with her earlier lives, and—"

She broke off. "I'm sorry. That must have been hard. And you must be really disappointed you didn't learn anything to help your father."

***

Jillian came back in midafternoon, just after I finished the recipes.

"I've got an idea," she said. "That shop—Huang's—was in Seattle's Chinatown. Probably he and his daughter lived nearby, because people did live close to their work in those days, and as Chinese, the Huangs probably weren't welcome many other places." She shot me a quick look. "I don't mean that wrong," she said. "But things were different back then."

"I know that," I said. "What are you getting at?"

"That for those same reasons, Mr. Li—" She paused. "That's the name of the old man you talked to, right? The one who still lives in the area?"

I nodded. I'd told her about him while we were working at the library.

"So my idea is that there couldn't have been that many teenagers in Chinatown when he was a kid. They probably at least knew each other. So I think you should ask Mr. Li if he remembers Mr. Huang's daughter, and if he knows if any of her family still lives in the area. Because if they do, and your father had found that out, then—"

I stopped her. "I can't go back there," I said.

"Why not?"

"Because I can't." To my horror, I felt the tears well up again. "Because I don't
want
to."

"I don't understand," Jillian said.

I looked down, trying to think how I could explain a truth that I was ashamed of.

Finally I said, "Do you remember our first day here, how you took me for an ethnic pick?"

"One of my better blunders, huh?" Jillian said with a little laugh. "And you gave me a look that froze me out."

"That's because that's not how I think of myself. I have a heritage, sure—everyone has that, and I'm proud of mine. But it doesn't make me foreign, and it doesn't mean I have to take on the problems of a bunch of people I don't understand."

Jillian waited, her face difficult to read.

I said, "I don't want to change who I am, even if sometimes I'm not sure who that is."

Jillian still didn't respond.

I tried again, hearing a plea creep into my voice and feeling my face go hot. "Seeing An Huang's picture, knowing we have to be related, made me realize that if I keep up this hunt, I might find a family I don't want. And then, even if I never see them again, I'll know about them, and that will make me different."

I groped for a better way to explain. "It's like when somebody dies. Nothing changes for you unless you know."

"So?" Jillian finally said.

"So," I said, "I don't want to see Mr. Li or his sister again, because I don't want to know more about An Huang."

Jillian took a moment to think about that. Then, "Got it," she said. "You'd rather leave your dad to whatever stories people make up about him than take a chance on finding a truth you might not like. That's cool."

I felt like I'd been slapped. "You don't mean that."

She got up. "No, I don't. If I had a father who came anywhere close to being as great as you say yours was, I'd do everything I could to take care of him."

"Look," I said. "Wait. It's not as though it's very likely that Mr. Li would know anybody who—"

"You're right," she said. "The possibility that you might learn anything useful from him is probably so remote it's not worth upsetting yourself over. But I'm glad I brought it up, because now we're even."

"What do you mean?"

"We've each had to let go of some ideas. You were wrong about me, thinking I didn't have a brain in my head, right up till you read my writing. And I was wrong, right up till now, thinking I'd like to be like you."

***

Fran wasn't around to ask if I could leave early, so I asked Deena, who seemed relieved not to have to find another task to keep me busy.

On my way out of the newsroom I detoured by Photo. Jillian was working at a computer monitor that displayed several almost-identical pictures of kids playing under a lawn sprinkler.

"I see what you meant about changing the depth of field," she said, turning. Then, "Oh! I thought you were Lynch."

"About our talk. I just wanted to let you know I heard what you said. I'm going out there now."

Mr. Li's sister answered their door. "Now is not good for a visit," she said.

But he'd come to the door also, and he invited me into their small living room, where a chess game was in progress. "You remember my nephew, Ian? You have come at a fine time. He was about to say
checkmate.
"

Mr. Li reached across the board, his fingers brushing the outlines of pieces until he found Ian's white queen. He moved her diagonally, tipped over his own black king, and said, "There, nephew. I have saved you having to embarrass me."

They both laughed easily, although Sucheng Li, looking on, did not join in.

"Please," Mr. Li said to me, "do sit down. I heard you tell my sister you have thought of another question for us. Are you still searching for the people your father might have come to see in this neighborhood?"

"I think I may have found the family," I said.

I was interrupted by my cell phone, its ringtone jarring in that setting. Apologizing, I ended the call without looking to see who it was from, switched the phone to silent, and laid it on the table.

"The reason I've come back," I said, "is that the names I have are from a long time ago, from about when you came over from China. I know the people are no longer here, but I hope you might remember them and know of any relatives or descendents."

"And their names?" Mr. Li asked.

"Huping Huang and his daughter, An. He was an herbalist, and she—"

I broke off, stopped by Mr. Li's sudden stillness, so complete it seemed unnatural.

"Are you all right?" I asked.

He brought himself to with a small jerk. "I do remember them," he said, "but I know nothing that can help you."

His manner had become even more formal, as though he was being careful not to say too much.

I thought of my guess that he and his sister had come to this country illegally. Perhaps he was reluctant to talk about any part of that time.

"Please," I said, "I won't cause you trouble. I just need to find somebody who can say why my father was in this area the day he was killed. Otherwise he may always be suspected of doing something really wrong."

"I do not understand," Mr. Li said.

"My father was a journalist, and the police think he may have taken money for hushing up a crime he'd learned about. They think that might be why he came here. But Dad wasn't like that. I'm sure the only dishonest thing he ever did was make up a story about where he'd come from, and he only kept that going because he loved my mother and me."

Mr. Li closed his eyes briefly before saying, "I would help you if I could, Miss Chen. But I know nothing of your father. Sucheng, do you?"

"No." Her hand pushed on my shoulder. "You go now."

I'd known, of course, that Mr. Li and his sister weren't likely to be able to help me. That's what I'd told Jillian. But now I realized how much I was counting on them to have some answers, anyway. And I was surprised at how let down I felt.

As I stood, I made one last try. Taking the copy of An's picture from my bag, I said to Sucheng Li, "Would you please just look at this picture of An Huang? Maybe then you might remember something."

She barely glanced at it. "No," she said.

But Ian, who'd stood up with me, was staring first at it and then at me. "She looks just like you!" he exclaimed. And then, "Auntie! Look again!"

"I saw. It means nothing." Sucheng Li gave me a little shove. "Now you leave!"

"No!" Mr. Li said. His voice strained, he asked, "Nephew, is what you say true?"

"Absolutely," Ian answered. "It's like they could be the same person."

Mr. Li turned away then, but I could still see his profile and the emotions playing across his face. I saw him go from uncertain to sad, to angry, and then to ... A word came to mind that I knew but had never used:
implacable.

"And you said it means nothing? What else have you lied about, Sucheng?" he asked quietly. "Perhaps about Miss Chen's father? Was he here after all?"

Then it was his sister's face that emotions raced across, stretching and deepening its pitted crevasses.

She cackled suddenly. "Yes, and I sent him away. Sent him and sent her. I told her to have her brat on the street, and you never knew. You never knew anything I didn't want you to. Did you?"

She laughed again, an ugly laugh like a crow's cry. "Did you?"