Last Night at the Telegraph Club(64)

One of the children was reading from the book of Luke in a high, childish voice: “And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.” Young Mary—a Chinese girl in a brown peasant-style dress with a blue cloth over her hair—carefully set a swaddled baby doll inside a wooden manger lined with hay. Someone had built that manger years ago; Lily recognized it from Christmases past.

Lily had played the part of a shepherd once in the Christmas tableau, when she was about nine or ten. She had been the only girl to play a shepherd, and in fact she had argued her way into the role, because Shirley had been cast as Mary and that was the only role for a girl. She remembered saying to the Sunday school teacher: “It’s not fair if Shirley’s the only girl in the play!” The teacher relented and told her that she could be a shepherdess, but Lily insisted that she was a shepherd, just like the boys. She had been so proud.

Now she wondered, a bit tensely, if it had meant something. Had Kath also played a shepherd in her church’s pageant? She suddenly envisioned all the women she had met at the Telegraph Club as little girls, every one of them dressed up as a shepherd boy or even a wise king, boys’ robes hiding their dresses, false beards covering their girlish faces.

The shepherds were moving across the front of the sanctuary, surrounding Mary and Joseph and the baby doll Jesus. Frankie was gripping his shepherd’s crook fiercely, completely invested in his role. Lily noticed that none of the shepherds were girls this year; they were all boys.





—1937


Japan invades China.





—1940


Edward Chen-te Hu (胡振德) is born.





—1941


United States enters World War II.





—1942


Joseph joins the U.S. Army and becomes a naturalized U.S. citizen.





—1943


The Chinese Exclusion Act is repealed.


—Mar. 25, 1943

GRACE and her family attend the parades in honor of Madame Chiang Kai-shek’s visit to San Francisco.





—1944


The “Suicide Squad” is formalized as the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, operating under the Army.





—1945


World War II ends.





GRACE


Eleven Years Earlier



Chinatown was thick with flags and streamers and flowers: red, white, and blue American and Chinese flags; long red ribbons fluttering from lampposts; white-petaled apricot blossoms with their soft pink hearts blushing in polished windows. Madame Chiang Kai-shek was visiting San Francisco, and the sun itself seemed to glow with particular warmth to mark her arrival, slanting between the buildings to gild every flag and streamer in golden light.

Grace Hu had caught the fever that gripped the entire city. Earlier that morning she staked out a spot on Grant Avenue between a corner kiosk and a lamppost to watch China’s first lady process through Chinatown. Grace’s mother had dragged an empty crate onto the curb and sat there with two-year-old Eddie perched on her lap, miraculously calm for the moment. Lily, who was six, leaned back against Grace as they waited. That afternoon, Lily would join thousands of Chinatown’s children in a parade through Civic Center, and Grace would march with her, one of dozens of volunteer mothers who would corral the children through the city. Now, Grace imagined, was the calm before that storm.

“佢話佢好虚弱,” Grace’s mother said. “無論佢走到邊度, 都有白車跟住佢.”*

“但佢一定要好堅強先可以橫跨美國演講,”* Grace said.

“為中國佢會忍受一切.”*

Grace’s knowledge of her mother’s Cantonese dialect was limited to what was spoken at home. She couldn’t always fully understand when her mother talked about politics, but she knew her mother well enough to hear the cynicism in her tone. She was about to ask her what exactly she meant when Lily interrupted.

“Mama, when will she get here?” Lily asked.

“Soon,” Grace said.

“But you said that a long time ago,” Lily complained.

Grace laughed and squeezed her daughter close, and as Lily squealed half in protest, half in laughter, Grace bent down and said, “Any minute now. Any minute!”

Eddie heard the anticipation in her voice and reached for her, his little fingers spreading wide. She tickled his pink palm with the tip of her finger and smiled as he giggled. Watching her son laughing on her mother’s lap made her realize she didn’t want to squabble with her mother about Madame Chiang. She wanted to enjoy the day.

Her husband had joined the U.S. Army a year ago, and today was the first day she had felt optimistic about the war. She was sure that Madame Chiang’s tour of America could only bring greater American support to China in its struggle against imperial Japan. She felt a distinct pride that her husband was part of the effort. Though he couldn’t tell her much about what he was actually doing, she knew that he had been sent to China, and that he was working to save the lives of men from both of his countries: his homeland and his new, adopted nation.

At last Grace heard the rising roar of the crowd heralding Madame Chiang’s arrival at the gates of Chinatown. Grace’s mother stood, lifting Eddie in her arms so that he too could see the approaching motorcade. Those in the crowd were waving their flags excitedly. Their cheers drowned out the sound of the motorcade’s engines, and everyone leaned forward in unison, yearning to catch a glimpse of the one woman who had come to embody all of China.