A Long Stay in a Distant Land Page 12

  Esther turned on the living room lamp and found her mother-in- law's sewing supplies stuffed in a tin canister. "Come here." She measured the circumference of his biceps.

  "You're making me a shirt?"

  She sat and cut a long swatch of white cloth from leftover fabric.

  "I don't think you can make a shirt in one night." He tickled her feet. She brushed his hand away. She wrapped his biceps with the cloth and bound it with two pieces of string. He looked like he'd suffered a major laceration, but it was better than having Popeye look at her while they were making love.

  She touched the fabric, then ran her fingers from his shoulder down to his forearm, feeling the transition from flesh to cloth to flesh.

  "Let's go." She turned off the lamp.

  "Do I have to keep this on?" He took her hand and let her guide them back to their room at the end of the hall.

  "Yes."

  "Do I have to wear it whenever we do it?"

  "Yes."

  "You can't even see it in the dark," he said.

  "Moonlight through our curtains."

  "I yam what I yam," he whispered as they passed his parents' door.

  "What did you say?" She made a sharp stop and he bumped into her.

  "Shh. Lower your voice."

  "Don't ever say that again." She gave his hand a hard squeeze.

  "I was joking."

  "Don't ever quote him," she said.

  "Fine. Let's go."

  The moon shone through their thin bedroom curtains as it did every night. She imagined that the right arm grazing her face and breasts was just temporarily injured. The bandages were covering a wound, and when unwound would reveal his arm as it'd always been, thin, pale, sparsely downed with hair, and free of defacement.

  As he sloughed off his underwear and climbed on top of her, she was filled with neither excitement nor affection, both of which she'd felt intensely the first time she saw his penis, erect, curved skyward as if to say, "Nice to meet you."

  Now all she could hear it saying was, I yam what I yam.

  Six months after their marriage Melvin wanted to leave. "I have a duty to my country," he said.

  "What do you mean by duty to your country?" she asked.

  "I mean freeing the world from the fascist grips of Adolf, Mussolini, and Hirohito."

  "And what do you mean by freeing the world from their fascist grips?"

  "I mean going over there with a machine gun and liberating conquered villages."

  "You sound like a cartoon." What Esther was digging at, what she knew he'd never admit, was that he'd been inspired to enlist by Popeye.

  "You're my wife," he said, "which means you're my partner. Partners support each other."

  "Not when one partner is making a bad decision."

  "You should support me without exception," he said.

  "If I supported you, we'd both be stupid."

  "I'll come back," he said.

  "If you don't get killed."

  "I won't get killed."

  "Don't leave."

  They repeated this exchange for days until she realized he'd already made up his mind. She agreed to support his decision because he'd leave with or without her consent, and she wanted him to leave on good terms. She wanted to show only kindness and support so that if he later found himself injured on the battlefield, blood draining from his head and out of the various wounds on his body, he'd remember his kind and supportive wife and suffer even more pain at the thought of who he'd left behind, and who he could have spent a life with.

  She told herself his departure would only be temporary. Supporting his decision in front of the family, that would be a permanent mark of her devotion to him, something the two of them would always remember as her love.

  And he'd owe her for her love. If in the future she said, "Let's vacation in Mexico," and he was reluctant, she could say,

  "You've already forgotten when I supported you in your decision to go to war, when your entire family was against you?"

  But the idea of his indebtedness to her didn't make her feel better because she already started to miss him, and his being present when she tried to steel herself for his departure only caused her more frustration. "Go to another room," she'd say if they were both in the living room.

  "What for?" he'd ask.

  "I'm trying to picture your face in my mind. I can't do it if your face is right in front of me."

  "Why are you trying to picture my face in your mind?"

  "Go."

  The entire Lum family, along with Esther's parents, officially assembled for the first time to discuss something other than a wedding or a meal. They sat in a circle in the Lums' living room and waited for Melvin to speak.

  Dr. Lum coughed. Mrs. Lum looked anxious. Melvin's aunt and uncle whispered in each other's ears. Melvin's cousin Doug flicked his sister's earlobes. She slapped at Doug's hands. Esther's parents sat straight and looked stoic. Esther watched, her hands on her lap.

  Melvin took a deep breath, then said, "I'm going to enlist in the army."

  "The U.S. one?" Dr. Lum asked.

  "No, the German one."

  "Don't be smart with me, boy," Dr. Lum said. "I'll knock your head off and throw it into the bay before you can say another smart thing. I asked about the U.S. Army because didn't it occur to you, smart boy, that the U.S. doesn't even like you?"

  "That's right." Mrs. Lum held up her copy of the December 1941 issue of Life magazine, which she kept taped open to the article "How to Tell Japs from the Chinese." She kept the magazine close as a constant reminder to her husband and children that the U.S. distrusted and disliked their kind, their kind being nonwhite.

  "They're saying we're the good ones," Melvin said. He pointed to the head shots of Ong Wen-hao and Hideki To jo, anthropological representatives of the Chinese and Japanese races, respectively. Perpendicular lines crisscrossed their faces and notes pointed out Ong's "more frequent epicanthic fold" and Tojo's "massive cheeks and jawbone."

  Ong had a "parchment yellow and delicately boned" face whereas Tojo, the war-mongering Jap, was cursed with "yellow-ocher skin" and a "pug nose."

  "Parchment is an ancient Greek city, a flat piece of animal skin used for writing, or an academic diploma," Melvin said. "Ocher is an earthy mineral oxide, like sand and dirt."

  "Parchment?" Mrs. Lum asked. "Boy, your face is covered with acne."

  "A son should always be handsome in his mother's eyes," Melvin said.

  "You don't have parchment for skin," Mrs. Lum said. "And don't try to teach me English." Mrs. Lum taught English in an elementary school three blocks from their home.

  "You don't have animal skin on your face, either," Dr. Lum said. "What kind of people would say you have animal skin on your face?"

  "They mean an academic diploma," Melvin said. "They're saying we're not dirt."

  Doug stopped flicking his sister's earlobes to say, "That sounds like a good thing." His mother slapped him on the back of the head and told him to shut up.

  Mrs. Lum slapped her own forehead in frustration. "If the white people in this country need a magazine to tell them that you're not a dirt-faced, ugly, pug-nosed son of a bitch, then they're not people you want to fight for in a war," she said.

  Melvin said he had an obligation to help kick the Japanese out of China.

  "You have no investment in China," Dr. Lum said. "You've never even been there. To have the right to fight for a country, you have to have set foot on its soil at least once."

  "Then I have an obligation to fight the Japanese who attacked Pearl Harbor."

  "You've never been to Hawaii," Dr. Lum said.

  "Hawaii's part of the U.S," Melvin said.

  "It's not," Dr. Lum said. "It's like Hong Kong. It's a colony."

  "Tyrone Power's the most famous actor in this country," Melvin said. "He was born in Hawaii, which makes it part of our country." Melvin didn't think Tyrone Power was born in Hawaii, but his parents didn't know who the man was, so they
didn't argue this claim.

  Dr. Lum asked for a better reason for enlisting and Melvin said he wanted to help defeat the Nazis, Japanese, and Italians with a weapon begot of his Chinese heritage.

  "Courage?" Melvin's brother Phil asked.

  "The machine gun," Melvin said.

  "The Chinese didn't invent the machine gun," Phil said.

  "We invented gunpowder and there's no machine gun without gunpowder." By "we," Melvin meant not just the inven­tors) of gunpowder, but the entire Chinese brotherhood that had spread across time and space immemorial.

  "In raising you, did we ever mention you should sign up for the opportunity to get a bullet slammed through your brain?" Mrs. Lum asked. "Have you been watching those Popeye cartoons again? Just because Popeye can beat up Nazis doesn't mean you can. He's a cartoon, child."

  "Let the Europeans take care of it," Dr. Lum said. "Not our business."

  "It is," Melvin said.

  "Let the French deal with this mess," Mrs. Lum said.

  "They didn't start the war," Melvin said.

  "They could have stopped it by building something better than the Maginot Line," Dr. Lum said. "Built a wall of cannons to protect themselves, but didn't bother to extend it to the Belgian border. That's a whole country, Belgium. That's like saying, 'We're going to build a Great Wall,' and then building half a Great Wall instead. What kind of country builds half a Great Wall to protect itself? That's like building airplanes that can't fly."

  "Don't be stubborn," Mrs. Lum said. "A man has to know when to stay away from a war, which is all the time. Don't be the Maginot Line."

  "What does stubbornness have to do with the Maginot Line?" Melvin asked.

  "What about the Japs?" Doug asked.

  "Damn Japs," the convened Lums said. "Damn Japs."

  "Damn Japs or no," Dr. Lum said, "Melvin's staying home."

  They looked at Esther. "You're his wife," Mrs. Lum said. "Don't you want him to stay? You want to chance being a window?"

  Esther's father said to Dr. Lum, "Your son cannot leave. I didn't give my daughter to a man who would be foolish enough to run off to war. I could have picked any husband for her. Any. Do you know how many suitors there were?"

  Dr. Lum knew. All the Lums knew because her father would never let them forget how lucky they were to have one of their sons marry a Chinese girl who was neither a whore nor a divorcee, a young, unspoiled girl in a time when the Chinese men still outnumbered their women greatly, a girl whom approximately one hundred and twenty Chinese bachelors had courted.

  "One hundred and twenty," her father said, and Dr. Lum nodded because he never had a response to that. "You're a foolish mule with shit for brains," her father said to Melvin. Dr. Lum winced, but said nothing.

  Esther felt an impulse to defend her husband, but her father was right. Melvin was unwilling to move forward, backward, or sideways. He'd hold his ground even if it was breaking under his feet and the sea itself was threatening to burst through the cracks and drown him.

  "I could have picked any of the other hundred and nineteen men," her father said to Dr. Lum. "But you promised me he'd be good to her, and now he's leaving after six months of marriage. That's a slap in my daughter's face. That says to me he's not happy with her and prefers the company of a group of soldiers to the most beautiful Chinese girl ever to walk the streets of San Francisco."

  Dr. Lum waited for her father to finish, then looked at Melvin and said, "Reconsider."

  Esther wanted to say to Melvin, Listen to these people, you mule. Listen. She looked at him, and he nodded at her to keep quiet.

  "If you get shot, that's it," Dr. Lum said.

  "Don't say that," Mrs. Lum said.

  "I'm just saying."

  "Don't."

  "Okay," Dr. Lum said. "But my gun's not loaded anymore. You know what I'm saying? I'm dry. Out of bullets."

  "I get it," Melvin said.

  "No longer fertile," Dr. Lum said. "If you die, I lose half my offspring."

  "I understand," Melvin said.

  "The gun has no bullets."

  "I said I understand."

  "You don't. Because if you did, you'd understand that you're worth much to many people, and worth more than being a soldier. Nobody here wants you to enlist." Dr. Lum indicated the rest of the Lums, who echoed his sentiments:

  "The old man's gun is dry."

  "No more bullets."

  "War's a game you can't win. Don't play."

  "Damn Japs."

  Melvin promised to rethink his decision that night.

  He enlisted the next morning.

  He shipped out fifteen days later.

  The family reconvened the day after Melvin's departure to talk about what a stupid decision he'd made. They discussed ideas for bringing him home. They talked about sending someone overseas to drug him and carry his unconscious body back in a large plastic bag equipped with air holes. Esther's father suggested sending Phil because he was a chemist and knew what chemicals would work best at putting someone to sleep for a long time. Phil would have to travel overseas, of course, and find his brother in France. Phil declined to accept the mission.

  They talked about sending a beautiful Chinese girl to seduce him and lure him home, until someone noticed Esther sitting in the corner of the room, looking very angry.

  They talked about sending someone to stab him in the leg so he could get discharged. No one volunteered for this plan. No one liked the idea of getting blood on his hands.

  They talked about sneaking into heavily fortified U.S. military bases, about plans that had no way of working logically or even in the wildest of dreams. They cooked up these ideas because if they didn't, they'd have nothing to talk about. Esther missed him more while listening to this foolishness.

  "This is a day to remember Melvin," Dr. Lum said. "This day next year, if he's not home by then, we'll meet again to talk about what a fool he is."

  "Cheers to that," her father said.

  The apartment Esther shared with Dr., Mrs., and Phil Lum fell quiet. They wandered their home as if they were haunting it, the occasional tapping of feet against floorboards, the wood creaking. They spoke simple phrases. "Thank you for dinner." "Enough salt?" "Salt perfect." "Good." "Thank you again." "You're welcome." "Another letter from Melvin?" "He's safe?" "Good." They saw each other only at meals, and kept to themselves at all other times.

  In silence Esther found the words of her discontent. Dr. and Mrs. Lum had failed the first law of parenting: If there is a war, do not under any circumstance allow your child to participate.

  Their failure Esther believed in with more conviction than Melvin's safe return. She believed they had failed as parents. They should have taken action. They were the heads of the family. They should have argued against him until he changed his mind. She'd done the best she could to talk him out of it. They should have done more.

  Nights, she lay awake and wondered if her in-laws were having sex two rooms away, and she felt jealous for the sex they might have been having. She wondered if she'd have sex when she was their age. She wondered if her in-laws rubbed against each other until the skin on their thighs and arms turned red, if they bruised each other's ribs and chests with their knees and elbows, if they bit each other.

  She had a hard time conjuring Melvin's face because she couldn't hear his voice. Some nights she'd sit in the living room with the lights off. Sometimes Phil would come out of his room and join her in the dark.

  "I'm just thinking," she'd say.

  "That's fine." He never asked what she was thinking. He respected her privacy and she respected him for that.

  He'd turn on the lights and offer to make tea. He rarely talked. He'd wait by the fire until the water boiled, and then pour the water into two cups and drop in the green leaves. He'd bring her a cup, serving her before himself. "Here, sister," he'd say.

  Though he was only one of several assistants to the researcher who worked on diphenhydramine hydrochloride, she preferred to see h
im as the sole force behind its invention, which had been written about in one of the medical journals he liked to read after dinner. She felt such a kind man deserved the invention all to himself.

  The family met again in '44 to discuss Melvin's foolishness. No one mentioned plans for getting him home this time. Instead they said he was a moron to go overseas when he had such a lovely wife at home, at which point Esther stood and said, "Please leave my name out of your mouths when you're insulting my husband."

  Mrs. Lum spoke of the things Melvin used to do for her. "I used to have these painful cramps. He'd sit right there and massage my heels for fifteen, twenty minutes."

  Dr. Lum talked about Melvin's love and courage, words that could mean everything and anything and so meant nothing to Esther, at least nothing regarding the Melvin she knew.

  Phil stood and read a poem he'd written over the past year:

  My Brother Melvin

  Melvin, I look around,

  But you're not here.

  You left some time ago.

  You're over there.

  In France I mean.

  Can it be true?

  The reading was followed by scattered applause and puzzled looks from Dr. and Mrs. Lum. "You write poetry?" Dr. Lum asked.

  Months later, the family received word that Melvin had been killed in combat. Esther stayed in her room for two days, refusing to eat or talk. During this time, Mrs. Lum cried loudly in her own room, the sound of sobbing and sniffling passing through Phil's room and into hers. Esther wasn't a loud crier. She'd never made much noise as a child, but now felt she should answer her mother-in-law's anguish with a louder expression of anguish. Tears streamed down her face, but she didn't make a sound. No wailing, no moaning. That's fine, she thought, so I'm not loud.

  Mrs. Lum, normally a nonpracticing Buddhist, asked Dr. Lum to construct a miniature shrine for Melvin. It consisted of a wooden board that stood upright from the wooden base to which it'd been nailed. She put it in the center of the living room floor and taped to the upright board a photo of Melvin, in front of which she placed a basket of apples, oranges, and bananas, and a clear glass vase filled with red sticks of incense that covered the home in the pine scent of grief. Each evening she and her husband kneeled in front of Melvin's photo, bowing and praying for his peace and happiness in the afterlife.