Shanghai Girls (Shanghai Girls #1)(111)
“Yes, that’s true,” Sam says, stepping through the darkness and feeding another stack of newspapers and memories into the incinerator. “But more than anything we have to prove we’re the most loyal Americans who ever existed.”
May doesn’t like this, but she’s my moy moy and a sister-in-law, and she has to obey.
JOY—WHOM WE’VE told as little as possible, believing her ignorance helps hold our story together—and May aren’t called in for questioning, and no one comes to the house to interview Vern. But over the next four weeks, Sam and I—often together, so I can translate for my husband when we’re transferred from Special Agent Sanders to Agent Mike Billings, who works for the INS, speaks not one word of any Chinese dialect, and is about as friendly as Chairman Plumb all those years ago—are called in for numerous interrogations. I’m questioned about my home village, a place I’ve never been. Sam’s questioned about why his so-called parents left him in China when he was seven. We’re questioned about Father Louie’s birth. We’re asked—with condescending smiles—if we’re acquainted with anyone who earned money selling paper slots.
“Someone profited from this,” Billings says knowingly. “Just tell us who.”
Our responses don’t help his investigation. We tell him we collected tinfoil during the war and sold war bonds. We tell him I shook hands with Madame Chiang Kai-shek.
“Do you have a photograph to prove it?” Billings asks, but of all the photos we took that day, that’s the one we missed.
At the beginning of August, Billings changes direction. “If your so-called father was actually born here, then why did he keep sending funds back to China even after he should have stopped?”
I don’t wait for Sam’s response but answer this myself “The money went to his ancestral village. His family has fifteen generations there.”
“Is that why your husband has continued to send money out of the country?”
“We do what we can for our relatives who are trapped in a bad place,” I translate for Sam.
At that Billings comes around the table, pulls Sam up by the lapels, and shouts in his face, “Admit it. You send money because you’re a Communist!”
I don’t have to translate this sentence for Sam to understand what the man is saying, but I do in the same even voice I’ve used all along to show that nothing Billings says will throw us from our story, our confidence, and our truth. But suddenly Sam—who has not been himself since the night Joy made fun of him for his cooking and his English and has not slept well since the day Agent Sanders entered Pearl’s Coffee Shop—jumps up, sticks his finger in Billings’s face, and calls him a Communist. Then they’re shouting back and forth—No, you’re a Communist! No, you’re a Communist!—and I’m sitting there echoing the accusations in both languages. Billings gets angrier and angrier, but Sam is steady and firm. Finally, Billings clamps his mouth shut, collapses in his chair, and glares at us. He has no evidence against Sam, just as Sam has no evidence against the INS agent.
“If you don’t want to confess,” he says, “and you won’t say who’s sold false papers in Chinatown, then perhaps you can tell us a little something about your neighbors.”
Sam serenely recites an aphorism, which I translate: “Sweep the snow in front of your own doorstep, and do not bother about the frost on top of another family’s house.”
We seem to be winning, but in twisting and in struggle, thin arms will not win out over thick legs. The FBI and INS question Uncle Wilburt and Uncle Charley, who refuse to confess, say anything about us, or rat out Father Louie, who sold them their papers. Those who don’t push the drowning dogs are already the decent ones.
When Uncle Fred brings his family to the house for Sunday dinner, we ask Joy to take the little girls outside to play so he can tell us about Agent Billings’s visit to his home in Silver Lake. Fred’s stint in the service, his college years, and his dental practice have nearly erased his accent. He’s lived a good life with Mariko and their half-and-half daughters. His face is full and round, and he has a bit of a belly.
“I told him I’m a veteran, that I served in the Army and fought for the United States,” he recounts. “He looks at me and says, And you got your citizenship.’ Well, of course I got my citizenship! That’s what the government promised. Then he pulls out a file and invites me to take a look at it. It’s my immigration file from Angel Island! Remember all that stuff from our coaching books? Well, it’s all in the file. It has information about the old man and Yen-yen. It lists all of our birth dates and outlines our whole story, since we’re all connected. He asks me why I didn’t tell the truth about my so-called brothers when I enlisted. I didn’t tell him anything.”
He takes Mariko’s hand. She’s white with the fear we all feel. “I don’t mind if they pick on us,” he continues. “But when they go after my children, who were born here …” He shakes his head in disgust. “Last week Bess came home crying. Her fifth-grade teacher showed a film to the class on the Communist threat. It showed Russians in fur hats and Chinese, well, looking like us. At the end of the film, the narrator asked the students to call the FBI or the CIA if they saw anyone who looked suspicious. Who looked suspicious in the class? My Bess. Now her friends won’t play with her. I have to worry about what’s going to happen to Eleanor and little Mamie too. I remind the girls that they’re named after the First Ladies. They don’t have to be afraid.”