A Map of Betrayal (12 page)

Something surged up in my chest, and tears welled out of my eyes, bathing my face. I covered my mouth with my palm, but still Manrong heard me sobbing.

“Why are you crying?” she asked.

“I feel so sad for your mom. She was a good woman. I wish she had lived differently.”

“You’re a good woman too. The moment I saw you I knew you were someone I could trust.” She stretched out her hand and gripped my arm.

We went on talking. Manrong said life was much better now, but most people were unhappy because of “the unfair distribution of wealth.” I was impressed by her use of that phrase. She hadn’t even gone to high school, but she liked reading books, especially romance novels from Taiwan and Hong Kong, so she was articulate and at times could be eloquent.

I WENT TO MANRONG
’
S SHOP
the next morning, eager to spend more time with her. She had hired two full-timers and also farmed out work to housewives in the neighborhood, paying them piecework rates. The sewing machines were purring in the side room as Manrong and I sat at the counter chatting. Now and then a customer stepped in, and she turned away to handle business while I resumed watching the street. People passed back and forth, and there were also panniered donkeys and mules, whose
hooves clip-clopped on the cobbles. As a three-horse cart loaded with stuffed gunnysacks was wobbling by, I noticed a Mongolian pony branded with “283” on its haunch; perhaps the little shaggy nag had served in the army and had been decommissioned. Across the street some vendors squatted behind their wares along the sidewalk. They were selling chickens and ducks, tobacco leaves, hothouse vegetables (mostly cucumbers, leeks, bell peppers, and oyster mushrooms), wicker cages, and willow baskets. From time to time a voice cried out at potential buyers.

Through our conversation I learned that Manrong’s twin daughter, Juli, was a migrant worker in Guangdong province. She was in Dongguan, a city near Guangzhou, doing a factory job. The girl used to come back once a year, at the Spring Festival, but this year she had not returned, saying she’d have only a week off and the long trip would have tired her out, so she decided just to send her parents money and to get some rest in her dorm during the holiday. As for her son, Benning, my sister was unclear about where he was. He seemed to be based in the south and traveled a lot, sometimes on ships going abroad and sometimes in different Chinese cities. Perhaps he was with the merchant marine. His mother hadn’t seen him for more than two years but was certain that he was doing fine. Among her three children, he was the smartest, had gone to college, and might have a bright future. In the past his letters had been forwarded to his parents by his sister Juli, so Manrong never had his address and phone number.

Around midmorning the next day, my niece Juya took me to the Songhua, saying we should watch the river opening its frozen surface, which she assured me was a one-of-a-kind spectacle. It was still chilly in mid-April, and many people were wearing heavy coats and wrinkled calf-high boots. On the streets some men still wore fur hats. Juya and I headed north, taking shortcuts whenever we could. She was walking ahead, picking the way. The backstreets were a wholly different scene from the downtown, many houses ramshackle and enclosed by slapdash wooden fences, some windows
still covered outside by tattered quilts, and heaps of trash everywhere, some four or five feet high. Besides muddy puddles there were half-thawed feces on the narrow streets, and it was hard to pick our way through the sludge. The down and dirty alleys brought to mind a swamp of compost giving off miasmic fumes. Just a few blocks from the bustling commercial district, the back alleys were like a ghetto without any drainage or sanitary service. If all the garbage and waste remained here, disease might break out in the summer. I’d seen similar scenes elsewhere in China—behind the shiny façade were the hapless people jettisoned by the ship of success.

It was blustery on the river; howling gusts of wind buffeted trees and people’s hair and coats. Time and again large chunks of ice were tossed up and splashed the dark greenish water. I saw a number of fish, carp and pike and bass, floating by, belly-up, crushed dead by the ice. The river was roaring, and if I closed my eyes, it sounded like an ancient battle in full swing with all the clangs and clatters of blood-drawing metal. It was terrifying to see the immense body of water churning small icebergs and rushing them eastward, smashing whatever they met along the way, and gliding against the backdrop of gray woods on the other shore, where patches of snow were still visible.

Behind us, the sloping riverbank was covered with rocks, and up beyond the slope, on the esplanade, some kiosks stood, though they were unmanned. There was also a restaurant that would open to tourists in late May. Atop that structure squatted a loudspeaker that must have remained voiceless for the whole winter. On the west of the pavement spread a small cemetery, and in its center stood a tall bronze statue of a Russian soldier against an obelisk, wearing a rain cape and holding a submachine gun that had a thick, round magazine. A flock of crows perched on his helmet, shoulders, and arms, cawing hungrily. Around us people were all excited, some jabbering, some shouting, and some snapping photos of the floating ice blocks. Downriver to the east, across the
water, was a cement factory where two smokestacks were spouting whitish fumes.

Juya said the riverbank was a hot spot for social gatherings in the summer and also a place where young people would come for a date. You could rent a rowboat, and if you were willing to spend more, could take a two-day cruise downstream to the Russian border in Tongjiang and Fuyuan.

“We used to pick up fish from this water when the ice was breaking open,” Juya said.

“You don’t do that anymore?” I asked.

“Uh-uh, it’s too dangerous. Besides, a lot of farmers raise fish now, so folks no longer eat fish from this polluted water. My brother, Benning, was once trapped on a block of floating ice while he was reaching out for a killed bullhead. He was scared and hollered like mad.”

“At this spot?”

“No, down the river, close to our village.”

As we were speaking, a flock of oil drums bobbed past, some glistening with patches of grease in the glare of sunlight. “He was rescued?” I asked about her brother.

“Yeah, an off-duty firefighter jumped into the water and brought him to the bank, but the man’s leg got crushed. He became a local hero for a couple months.”

“Where’s Benning now?”

“I wish I knew. He only told us he travels a lot. He’s been in touch with Juli, though. They’re very close.” There was a trace of petulance in her voice.

“I’d love to meet him,” I said.

“He used to be based in Guangdong, but I’m pretty sure he sometimes goes to Beijing.”

Her father also mentioned Benning before I took my leave the next morning. His parents wanted me to meet him when he went to the capital the next time, and they asked me to urge him to find a girl, start a family soon, and give them a grandchild. “Treat our
son and daughters like your own kids,” my sister told me. At her repeated request, I promised to visit them again in a year or two.

Their warmth and hospitality moved me and made me reflect again on my parents’ secluded life. Both Gary and Nellie had been loners and rarely mixed with others except for a few relatives. Although I loved my mother, I often felt uneasy when spending time with her alone. Unhappy and frustrated, she tended to take her anger out on me, perhaps because she believed I was closer to my father than to her. When I finished my PhD and was hired by the University of Maryland, Nellie appeared underwhelmed and closemouthed, as though to show I could never live up to her expectations. She had wanted me to go to medical school, but I hated medicine. When I published my first book, a monograph on the U.S. role in the Opium War, and got tenure, she remained unimpressed. I used to tell Henry that my mother was a troubled woman; yet the two of them got along and were fond of each other. Whenever Nellie came to visit, Henry would make shrimp scampi or chicken Parmesan for her. He was much better at cooking Italian than I was. My mother often joked about me, saying, “A slow girl can have a late blessing.” That was her way of approving my second marriage. I think she envied me.

1956–1957

Gary and Nellie got married in the summer of 1956 and moved into a bigger apartment in north Alexandria. It was on the third floor and had a living room; two bedrooms, the smaller of which he used as his study; and a narrow balcony—more than eleven hundred square feet total. For the first time in her life Nellie lived in a place that felt like her own. Her parents, despite having accepted the marriage, still could not appreciate Gary, who in their eyes was too introverted and too tense. He seemed never to let his guard down and even at parties wouldn’t touch alcohol, giving the excuse that he was going to drive afterward. (Grandpa Matt often said about Gary, “Jesus Christ, the dude kept a poker face even at his own wedding. I wonder what can make him happy.” Grandma Beth would counter, “Gary couldn’t loosen up like you ’cause he and Nellie were gonna leave early the next morning. He had to keep his head together.” The newlyweds spent their honeymoon the following week in St. Petersburg, Florida.)

Yet unlike the McCarricks’ other son-in-law, Gary was responsible and generous to his bride. Better still, he had not expected anything from her parents. Before the wedding, Nellie had talked to Gary about whether she should ask her parents for a few thousand dollars to pay for the wedding party, but he urged her not to, saying he was already grateful that they’d given her to him, that in China the groom’s family had to take care of all the expenses. That was true, but it could also have been his way to ease his guilty conscience about bigamy. He believed that, with the help of the Chinese government, he could explain and justify things to Yufeng eventually. But what could he say to Nellie? There was no way he could reveal himself as a married man to her without being exposed. This realization made him more considerate to her.

After their wedding Nellie had stopped waitressing because she wanted to raise a family. With Gary’s salary, $680 a month, she was happy she needn’t go out to work anymore. In the early days of their marriage, they enjoyed having sex, so much so that he stopped using his study at night for weeks. At times they’d go to bed even before ten p.m. (“He was like a wild animal,” Nellie confided to Lilian many years later. “He was a little rough in bed in the beginning. I had to teach him how to slow down with some foreplay and how to follow my lead.”)

Nellie found herself pregnant in the late fall of 1956. In spite of his excitement, Gary was unnerved. Now remarried and with a child on the way, he realized he’d begun putting down roots in America. More unsettling was the prospect that the longer he lived here, the deeper and wider his roots might reach. He often shuddered at such a scenario: China summoning him back and his having to leave without delay, abandoning Nellie and their child without warning. He hoped nothing like that would happen. If a departure came, he’d like to have enough time to make arrangements and untangle himself.

Nellie’s pregnancy made her moods swing capriciously. She complained a lot and often threw fits, but Gary was tolerant and solicitous. If he couldn’t stand her anymore, he would lock himself in his study, working or reading. Nellie had few friends. She spent most of her days in front of the TV and wouldn’t miss a single episode of
I Love Lucy
and
Lassie
. She even dyed her hair fiery red like Lucy’s, and when she didn’t like what Gary said, she’d grunt “Eww” in imitation of that funny woman. At dinner she would brief him on what she had watched that day, but seldom did he show much interest. She suspected that her words went in one of his ears and out the other. Once in a while she felt so frustrated that she would lash out at Gary, calling him a “swot,” a word her grandfather had used to refer to someone who stuck his nose in a book all the time. Indeed, nowadays Gary read and wrote a lot, often deep into the night, in the study that he kept strictly to himself. In there everything
was in order, and he wouldn’t let Nellie tidy up the room for him. Every morning he made sure to lock his two file cabinets before going to work. Whenever he found she had entered the study in his absence, he’d blow a fuse, insisting that the nature of his job allowed nobody but himself admittance to his work space. That annoyed her, but bit by bit she gave up cleaning that room.

What troubled her more ever since her pregnancy was that he had stopped making love to her, giving his fear of damaging their baby as an excuse. According to the Chinese custom, he argued, a husband was not supposed to have sex with his pregnant wife, because it was believed that sex might not only hurt mother and baby but also bring on bad luck to the man. Gary even added his own little spin to this common practice, saying, “It’s unnatural to have sex when a woman is expecting. Look at all the wild animals. They copulate only to breed. Once a female is impregnated, the males will leave her alone until she’s in heat again.”

Nellie wouldn’t buy that nonsense. One evening at dinner when the topic of sex came up again, she asked, “What if your pregnant wife is still in heat?” Her voice was full, a bit gravelly.

Gary stared at her in disbelief. “That’s just an assumption, isn’t it?”

She went on with a teasing smile. “By your Chinese standards such a woman must be abnormal, a shameless broad, right?”

“Oh, come on, let’s not talk like this. After our baby is born we’ll sleep together again.”

In fact, she wasn’t eager for sex either and was also afraid of damaging the baby. Nellie was just anxious about his avoiding her bed at night. Worse, seldom did he spend time with her during the day. If she could, she’d have smashed his study, which was becoming his bedroom. She continued, “My obstetrician said sex is okay during pregnancy as long as we’re careful.”

Gary’s eyes blazed, widening at her. He couldn’t believe she had discussed such a matter with Dr. Nelson, that dumpy man wearing a thick gold band on his tapering finger. Gary remembered the
obstetrician’s smirk while the man was assuring him that the baby was healthy after he had examined the young mother privately, as if to insinuate to the husband that he’d just had fun with his wife alone despite the clean johnny wrapped around her body. Gary spat out at Nellie, “I don’t believe him. I don’t trust that quack. He’s a schmuck!”