A Free Life Page 49

  At the sight of him Pingping asked, “How do you feel, Nan?”

  “All right, a little woozy.”

  “Your face is narrower now. My God, let me look at you. You’re more handsome now!”

  Niyan put in, “Nan, you really look better.”

  He observed himself in the mirror in the men’s room. Indeed, with the four big molars gone, his jawline was less squarish than before, and the new smooth contour gave a touch of maturity to his face. Even his chin had a clear angle now. How extraordinary this was! As if he had just received cosmetic surgery—a chin job. He scrunched up his face, then gave himself a mocking grin.

  4

  HAILEE suffered a relapse and was hospitalized again. This time the doctor said chemotherapy might not be effective, because after three months’ treatment, the cancer cells would have developed resistance to the medicines. Indeed, despite the use of combined drugs, the sign of remission had diminished and then stopped. Instead, a large number of leukemic blasts, young and immature white blood cells, were found in Hailee’s blood. The group of doctors in charge of her case recommended a bone marrow transplant, which would have to be done at a larger hospital.

  For weeks the Mitchells looked in vain for a donor, who would have to have the same white blood cell proteins as their daughter did. Dr. Caruth at Emory Hospital faxed the description of Hailee’s tissue details to the National Bone Marrow Donor Registry in St. Paul, Minnesota, which kept a list of more than a million potential donors, but the center couldn’t find a match, partly because only a very small percentage of the registered donors were Asians. According to the literature Dr. Caruth had given the Mitchells, the match rate was much higher among people of the same ethnicity, so Janet asked the Wus if China might also have a program that listed potential bone marrow donors. Pingping called around and even talked with an official at the Chinese consulate in Houston, but nobody had ever heard of such a registry in China. If only the Mitchells could find Hailee’s biological parents. They were certain that one of her siblings or cousins might have the tissue type that matched hers.

  Both Nan and Pingping volunteered to have their blood drawn to see if they could be a donor, and later Taotao did the same, but none of them was a match. The Mitchells were quite touched nonetheless. Dave said to Nan, “We appreciate you trying to help her. You’re a good man.”

  “Sure. Eef you or Janet had leukemia, we’d do the same. Don’t sink I volunteered only because Hailee’s a Chinese girl.”

  “I understand.”

  Then Nan hit on an idea. Why not contact the local Chinese community and see if they could help? Both Janet and Dave liked the suggestion, but they didn’t know many people except the few whose children attended the Sunday Chinese classes at Emory. Nan didn’t have a lot of contacts either, yet he nerved himself to call Mei Hong and ask her to help, though he believed she must still hate his guts. To his surprise, she eagerly agreed to spread the word among the Chinese students and the people in Chinatown. Also, she was going to contact all the Chinese churches in the Atlanta area and plead with them for help. She even said she’d go to Emory Hospital and have her own blood drawn.

  As it turned out, she didn’t need to go there, because after the local Chinese-language newspapers wrote about Hailee’s case and published the Mitchells’ plea for help, so many people offered to have their blood tested that a temporary clinic was set up at the Chinatown Plaza in Chamblee. A week later, to everyone’s amazement, a thirteen-year-old girl in Duluth, named Moli, was found to be a match. At first, Moli’s parents were unsure if they should let their daughter donate her bone marrow, but Mei Hong convinced them, saying that if they didn’t help to save Hailee, they’d be despised by all the Chinese here. She also told them that a bone marrow transplant was similar to a blood transfusion, with no harm done to the donor’s health. So the girl’s parents, both recent immigrants working at Peace Supermarket, yielded and even let Mei Hong take their daughter to an interview with a reporter.

  When the good news came, the Mitchells were overjoyed and broke into tears. Dave hugged Nan and wept like a little boy. With trepidation he and Janet spoke with Mei Hong on the phone and were reassured that the girl’s parents wouldn’t go back on their promise. In fact, Mei Hong had become the spokeswoman for the girl’s family, since her parents couldn’t speak a word of English. To Nan, that woman had simply taken the whole thing into her own hands as if she were Moli’s aunt.

  Nan was puzzled. To him Mei Hong was just a jingoistic firebrand who couldn’t think straight. He wondered whether she’d have let her own daughter be a donor if her child had been a match. When he talked with her about Moli, she said with her eyes fixed on him, “You think I’m a hypocrite, huh? Let me tell you, if Moli were my daughter, I would let her do the same. Every member of my family had our blood tested. Hailee is a Chinese girl, so we must do whatever we can to save her. Wouldn’t you donate your bone marrow if you were a match? No?”

  “Of course I would. I had my blood drawn too,” Nan said.

  After a thorough exam, which ascertained that Moli was healthy, Dr. Caruth explained to the girl’s parents the process of marrow donation through Mei Hong’s interpretation. The couple was fully convinced that it wouldn’t impair their daughter’s health, and they signed the paperwork. Nan and Pingping wondered why the girl herself hadn’t said a word about the decision made for her by others. Did she want to donate her bone marrow or not? Wasn’t she scared? Pingping asked Moli once, but the pumpkin-faced girl just replied, “Aunt Hong says I should help save Hailee, and if I were sick, others would do the same for me.” Asked further, she’d say no more. Pingping felt for her so much that she packed a box of assorted appetizers for her, but Moli wouldn’t accept it, not until Mei Hong told her to take it home and let her parents know it came from the Gold Wok.

  A few days later Moli’s bone marrow was injected into Hailee. The child’s initial reaction was disheartening. She ran a high fever, and fluid was building up in her lungs, which made her wheeze. An X-ray showed her heart was enlarged considerably. She had to be kept in intensive care. The doctors at Emory Hospital, where Hailee stayed, said these problems were normal after a bone marrow transplant and it was too early to conclude that the treatment had failed. The Mitchells kept their fingers crossed.

  Then, a week later, Hailee’s fever subsided some and a soft sheen returned to her cheeks. When she smiled, a sparkle appeared in her eyes again. Her lungs began to clear and the size of her heart was shrinking. All the tests indicated that the transplanted bone marrow had been producing new blood cells. Now, positively, her leukemia was in remission.

  Hailee’s leukemia was cured eventually, and Mei Hong became another of her godmothers, though the Wus still avoided her.

  5

  IN EARLY JUNE, Nan had won a prize in a raffle at Grand Panda Supermarket. He was offered the plane fare for a round trip from Atlanta to Beijing. By now he had become a U.S. citizen and would have no difficulty getting a tourist visa from the Chinese consulate in Houston. Should he go back to visit? He asked his wife, who disliked the idea. Then should they let the tickets, worth $650, be wasted?

  Nan begged Pingping to allow him to go back for a short visit. It was so hot these days that the restaurant didn’t have much business. With the help of Chef Mu, everything would be all right at the Gold Wok. But Pingping wouldn’t let him leave. He continued pleading with her for a few weeks, to no avail. Finally he said he wanted to see his parents before they died. Those words made his wife relent.

  Nan decided to depart within a week. He wondered if he should visit his parents-in-law in Jinan City as well, but Pingping, after giving thought to that, told him not to—she wanted him to come back as soon as possible. She planned to return and see her parents once she was naturalized. Nan promised he’d make a quiet trip and come back in just a week or so. She also warned him not to speak against the Chinese government publicly. In the past the police had often questioned his siblings about his acti
vities abroad. Not until two years ago had they stopped harrying them, because his father had assured the authorities that Nan had “cleaned up his act” and was no longer a dissident.

  What Pingping didn’t know was that Nan wanted to return to China for another purpose also—to see Beina. He didn’t intend to resume a relationship with her; he just needed that woman’s face and voice to rekindle his passion so that he could write poetry. He needed the vision of an ideal female figure for his art, just like a painter who uses a model. Yes, he wanted to use her just as she had once used him.

  Nan boarded a Boeing 737 bound for Beijing one morning in late July. As the plane taxied toward the runway, somehow he didn’t feel excited. He looked around and saw that almost half the passengers were Chinese, and nobody paid heed to the imminent takeoff. He remembered the intense excitement he and the other passengers had experienced twelve years ago when he flew for the first time in his life, from Beijing to San Francisco. As the plane was taking off, many of them had applauded and some had leaned aside toward the portholes to catch through the ragged clouds a bird’s-eye view of the cityscape of the capital, which tilted while the plane banked a little. He also remembered how he and his fellow travelers, most of whom were students, had been nauseated by a certain smell in the plane—so much so that it had made some of them unable to swallow the inflight meal of Parmesan chicken served in a plastic dish. It was a typical American odor that sickened some new arrivals. Everywhere in the United States there was this sweetish smell, like a kind of chemical, especially in the supermarket, where even vegetables and fruits had it. Then one day in the following week Nan suddenly found that his nose could no longer detect it. Another memory of his first flight brought a smile to his face. Like some of the passengers crossing the Pacific Ocean for the first time, after eating the lunch he had wiped the plastic fork and knife clean and noticed people looking at one another and wondering what to do with these things. Some of them put the knives and forks into their pockets or handbags, carrying them all the way to their destinations in America, because they couldn’t imagine that all the plastic containers and tools were disposable. They had no idea what kind of plentitude and waste they were going to encounter in this new land.

  This trip, however, excited Nan in a different way. He planned to visit his friend Danning in Beijing, then his parents in Harbin, where Beina must be living as well. He hadn’t told any of them about his return and meant to give them a surprise.

  He brought along a poetry anthology, The Voice That Is Great Within Us, which he read from time to time during the flight. But he dozed off frequently since he hadn’t slept well the night before. He was glad he was seated in an exit row and had more leg room. On his left lounged a lumpy-faced man, who was on his way back to his job in Shanghai but would stop in Beijing for a day or two on business. The man introduced himself as Yujing Fang and complained he couldn’t smoke the whole way. Because he was in a window seat, unable to talk to others, now and then he tried to converse with Nan. He said he had earned an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago and worked for GE in China. But his wife and two children lived in New Jersey, and he could visit them a few times a year, plane fares paid by the company.

  “That’s hard,” Nan said. “I mean, to be separated from your family.”

  “Yes, in the beginning just the phone bills would cost five hundred dollars a month, but now I use phone cards and we’re accustomed to the separation.”

  “Why don’t you find a job in the States?”

  “My position in Shanghai is important and lucrative. I manage a branch of our company there.”

  “Do they pay you an American salary?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then you must be a millionaire.”

  “Truth be told, I don’t count pennies when I go shopping.”

  “Tell me, what are the fashionable gifts in China at the moment?”

  “Color TV sets are still presentable. Air conditioners, digital cameras, computers—ah, yes, vitamins.”

  “Do people take vitamin pills?”

  “Sure. Twenty bottles of multiple vitamins can grease a large palm. Wisconsin ginseng is always popular too.”

  “Life must be better for many people in China now. Few of them could afford those supplements ten years ago.”

  “Another very expensive present is just coming into fashion in Shanghai.”

  “Which is?”

  “Enemas.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Enemas, having your intestines rinsed once in a while.”

  “Why?”

  “To prevent cancer and other diseases.”

  “But how can they be a gift?”

  “That’s easy. You buy a book of tickets for enemas at a hospital and give it to another person who can go there for the treatment.”

  “I see.” Nan chuckled, still thinking this was odd. Maybe only people in Shanghai would use such a present.

  “It’s expensive, though,” said Yujing. “Only rich people, like entrepreneurs, athletes, and actors, can afford to have an enema regularly.”

  “Still, how could I give my dad a gift like that?”

  “Oh, I thought you meant to bribe an official or some big shot. Actually, this enema thing might just be a passing fad. Last year electric shavers were all the rage, but they’re already passé. By the way, for youngsters, brand-name clothes and shoes are always welcome.”

  “Like what kind?”

  “Like Polo shirts and Nike sneakers.”

  Nan felt lucky that he hadn’t bought any presents for his parents and siblings. If he had, he’d have picked two or three foolproof cameras, a few calculators, a pair of electronic keyboards for his nephew and niece, and a dozen wristwatches. According to his fellow traveler, most of those were no longer appropriate. Nan had $3,000 cash on him, planning to give each member of his family a few banknotes, real American dollars. That was a bad idea, according to Pingping, who feared that her parents-in-law would keep the money quietly and then tell people that Nan hadn’t brought back anything for them. At most the old man and woman, both tightfisted, might spend some of the cash on food, for which no one could know they had taken money from Nan. It would have been far better if he had bought them some high-quality clothes so that everyone could see it plainly when his parents donned an American coat or jacket or hat. But Nan had left in too much of a hurry to visit any clothing stores. Besides, he knew nothing about brand names and wanted to travel light.

  For the rest of the trip he was reluctant to talk more with Yujing, fearing the fellow might ask him about his profession. He wouldn’t mind saying he was a restaurateur, but it would be embarrassing to admit he had only one employee. So whenever Yujing tried to chat again, Nan would appear tired and give a yawn. He kept his eyes shut and nodded off most of the time like the old woman with knotted hands seated on his right, who slept nearly all the way.

  6

  BEIJING was now hardly recognizable to Nan. He got out of a taxi at the train station and found out the schedule of the train bound for Harbin. He planned to stay one day in the capital and depart for home the next morning. Outside the station, so many automobiles were running on the streets that he was a bit unnerved and stopped to observe the rushing traffic for a while. In the distance several cranes stood motionless, like dark skeletons, over buildings encaged by scaffolding. Around him people were hustling and bustling. To his surprise, there were yellow cabs here too, like in New York City. The plaza before the temple-like station was more crowded and more chaotic than it had been twelve years before when he had come to apply for a visa for the United States. Here and there gathered knots of young men in gray-or blue-collared T-shirts, some sitting on bedrolls and smoking pensively, and some lying on newspaper spread on the concrete slabs and dozing off. Apparently these country people had come here to seek work. Their leathery faces showed the kind of numbness that reminded Nan of the homeless in Atlanta. He wondered if there were soup kitchens in Beijing. Mayb
e not.

  Nan called Danning Meng from a pay phone. On hearing of his arrival, Danning turned ecstatic and gave him directions to his home, insisting Nan stay with him. Nan agreed. He hailed a taxi and headed for Danning’s place in the Hsidan area. There was so much traffic that bicycles seemed to move faster than automobiles. Now and then the cabdriver beeped his horn at the pedestrians who didn’t step aside fast enough to make way for the car. At a red light a few vendors stepped over to hawk grapes, ice lollies, peaches, tomatoes.

  To Nan’s amazement, Danning lived in a small traditional compound with a scarlet gate, which, topped with black ceramic tiles, was in the middle of a high brick wall. A leaf of the gate was ajar, so Nan went in unannounced. Inside was a small stone-flagged quadrangle, formed by four houses. He hadn’t expected Danning to live in such a spacious home, which was old-fashioned, a rare find nowadays. Two crab apple trees stood beside the entrance to the main house, and several wooden pots planted with kumquats and bamboos sat alongside the wing houses. “Anybody home?” shouted Nan.

  Danning Meng stepped out of his living room and hugged Nan so tightly that the guest almost let out a moan. “At last we’re together again!” the host said with emotion. Though thicker and a bit gray now, he hadn’t aged much.

  “You live like the nouveau riche, such a nice place,” Nan said, beaming.

  “I paid thirty thousand dollars for this piece of property, but we may have to move soon.” Danning couldn’t stop looking at Nan, and his smiling eyes curved a little, their outside corners drooping. He took Nan into the living room furnished with antique carved furniture.

  “Why give up this place? It’s a luxurious home, better than any apartment,” Nan said the moment he sat down on a sofa.

  “A company wants to build a hotel in this area, so the entire neighborhood will be gone in a year or two.”

  “What a shame. This quadrangle is the real old Beijing.”