May purses her mouth and turns to go out to the screened porch. Once she’s left, I look for photographs that I think might be—and here’s a word I never thought I’d use—incriminating.
While Sam makes another tour through the house, May and I take what we’ve gathered to burn in the incinerator. I set fire to my pile of photographs and wait for May to throw in the magazine covers, which she hugs to her chest. When she doesn’t move, I wrest them from her arms and drop them in the fire. As I watch the face—my face—that Z.G. so beautifully and perfectly painted curl in the flames, I wonder why we let any of these things creep into the house. I know the answer. Sam, May, and I are no better than Father Louie. We’ve become American with our clothes, our food, our language, our desire for Joy’s education and future, but not once in all these years have we stopped missing our home country.
“They don’t want us here,” I say softly my eyes on the flames. “They’ve never wanted us. They’re going to try to trick us, but we need to trick them in return.”
“Maybe Sam should confess and get it over with,” May suggests. “That way he’ll get his citizenship and we won’t have to worry about any of this.”
“You know it’s not enough for him just to confess his own status. He’ll have to expose others—Uncle Wilburt, Uncle Charley, me—”
“You should all confess together. Then you can all get your legal citizenship. Don’t you want it?”
“Of course I want it. But what if the government is lying?”
“Why would the government lie?”
“When hasn’t it lied?” And then, “What if they decide to deport us? If Sam is proved to be illegal, then I’ll be eligible for deportation too.”
My sister considers that. Then she says, “I don’t want to lose you. I promised Father Louie that I wouldn’t let them send you away. Sam has to confess for Joy, for you, for all of us. This is a chance for amnesty, to bring the family together, and to rid ourselves finally of our secrets.”
I don’t understand why my sister doesn’t—won’t—see the problems, but then she’s married to an actual citizen, came here as his legal wife, and isn’t facing the same threat that Sam and I are.
My sister puts an arm around my shoulder and pulls me close. “Don’t worry, Pearl,” she reassures me, as if I’m the moy moy and she’s the jie jie. “We’ll hire a lawyer to take care of things—”
“No! We’ve gone through this before, you and I, at Angel Island. We won’t let them do anything to Sam, to me, to any of us. We’re going to work together to turn their accusations against them, like we did on Angel Island. We’ve got to confuse them. What’s important is to keep our story straight.”
“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.