him. I had to put Meng on the phone. Meng told him no. No, absolutely. He said Zaofan could help us more by staying there.’
‘I’ll call him,’ I promised. ‘As soon as I can. I’ll make him stay.’
She picked up Jody and carried him down the steps and onto the grass, where she gave him a length of rubber tubing she pulled from her pocket. ‘You can call him from there,’ she said, knotting the tubing into a sling. ‘You can see him. You must go home.’
A gentle breeze blew, carrying with it odd hints of burning rubber and gasoline. ‘This is home,’ I said. I had never meant to stay here forever – three years, Xiaomin and I had decided. Maybe four. Just until we finished our project and Jody was ready for school. But I had no intention of leaving now.
‘Zaofan begged us to come and join him,’ Xiaomin said. ‘I told him we might later on – what will be left for us after this? We have to stay now, at least until this is over. But I promised him I’d send you and Jody.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ I said. ‘We’re staying here. I can help.’
Jody looped the sling around his foot and pulled against it. Xiaomin struck the railing with her hand. ‘You have to go,’ she said sharply. ‘Now. Already there were soldiers this morning at Jinguomenwai, firing into the air around the British and American embassies. Your embassy is evacuating everyone. You have to go.’
‘No,’ I said, and I glared at her stubbornly. We had never argued. We had disagreed over many things, most of them having to do with Jody: she’d been appalled at what I’d let him eat, and at my failure to discipline him; I’d been annoyed that she’d sent pictures of him to Zaofan. But even our disagreements had worked out. Jody was at least as healthy and happy as the other children in his nursery, and as for the pictures – that hadn’t been all bad. Zaofan had sent me a stilted, formal letter after he’d gotten the first one, congratulating me on Jody’s birth. I’d sent another back, thanking him and avoiding any explanation of Jody’s physical appearance. ‘I’ve given Jody my maiden name,’ I’d written. ‘Doerring – Jody Doerring. My father is pleased.’ And if Zaofan knew more about Jody’s paternity than that, he never pressed it. Since then, we’d kept up an occasional correspondence in which I described how Jody was growing and Zaofan described his adjustments to life in Massachusetts.
‘Think of Jody,’ Xiaomin said. ‘What if something happens to him?’
‘No,’ I said again.
‘You’ll hurt us if you stay,’ she said softly. ‘You’ll make things worse for us – I can’t afford to have an American working in my lab. And you can’t refuse me, not after all that Meng and I have done for you.’
And that was the one argument I couldn’t refute. She and Meng had done everything for me: arranged for me to stay in China, found me work in Xiaomin’s lab, stood by me throughout my pregnancy and during my labor and then helped me through the awkwardness of registering Jody’s birth when I had no husband. They’d helped me buy a bike. They’d taught me to find my way around the city. And, whether they’d meant to or not, they’d helped me discover how I fit into the world.
‘I owe you,’ I told her. ‘I know I do. But don’t make me repay you like this.’
‘I can’t let you keep Jody here,’ she said. ‘He’s all we have.’
And so there we were. She sat down on the grass beside Jody and pulled me down beside her, and then she traced an imaginary map on the grass with her finger and explained how I should slip through the alleys to the back side of the diplomatic compound and the door to the American embassy. ‘Turn here,’ she said. ‘And then here.’ She couldn’t look at my face.
‘How can I go?’ I said. Somewhere, I knew, Jianming was on a train or a truck, heading for Changsha. Wenwen was searching the city for her brother; parents were searching the morgues for the bodies of their children. People hid in their rooms and prepared to pull into themselves again, shuttering their eyes, closing down their faces. Chinese students working abroad faxed photographs and articles across the air to machines here, any machines, hoping someone might pick up the messages. In Shanghai, a bus was on fire. In secret buildings in the Western Hills, the old men who ruled China huddled together, massaging their legs and avoiding each other’s eyes as they drafted statements couched in a rhetoric they’d worn out decades earlier.
‘Wenwen and the others,’ I said to Xiaomin. ‘What’s going to happen to them?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But the old men can’t last much longer, and the rest of us will still be here after they’re gone. You have your passport? And Jody’s?’
‘They’re in my pocket,’ I said. ‘I didn’t think I should leave them in my room.’
‘That’s all you need. I’ll send you the rest later.’
I was going, then. To the embassy, to rooms full of people I didn’t know and had avoided during my stay; to a bus full of terrified tourists eager to flee this alien place. To a plane, to Hong Kong or Tokyo, across the ocean: home. What had once been home. For a minute I thought of Zillah, my first, lost friend, and I wondered if I was repeating what I’d done with her. But then I heard Zillah’s voice, as clearly as if she stood there on the steps.
Don’t confuse the situations, she said.
‘Juice?’ Jody said, looking at me expectantly. It was time for his snack and his nap.
‘Let me say good-bye to Meng,’ I said to Xiaomin.
She shook her head. ‘He’s operating,’ she said. ‘You can’t go in. He’ll understand.’
When I rose she put Jody’s pack over my shoulders and then picked him up and dropped him in. ‘You have a good trip,’ she said to him. ‘Remember your Minmin.’
‘See you later,’ Jody said. ‘Alligator.’
Xiaomin had been in my room when I’d taught Jody that phrase; she loved to hear it and Jody loved to say it, because it always made her smile. She smiled now, and then she said to me, ‘Don’t worry. I’ll see you again.’
I knew she was right: that for the rest of my life, she’d be with me wherever I went. ‘I’ll miss you,’ she said, and then we both ran out of words. As I wheeled my bike away from the steps, I turned and saw her watching, the breeze blowing her graying hair away from her face.
SEPTEMBER 1986
PATIENT: Doctor, I’ve come to you because I think I have a strange disease.
DOCTOR: What is it?
PATIENT: I have been afraid of noise and strong light for two years. When I’m exposed to these, I feel tense and restless.
DOCTOR: Do you have other symptoms?
PATIENT: Yes. At times I suffer from palpitations and shortness of breath. I sleep poorly and am troubled almost nightly by frightening dreams.
DOCTOR: What sort of dreams do
