Journey Across the Four Seas (36 page)

Teresa and I laughed. What a blatant lie! The real reason was because I didn’t pay a bribe. Those who paid were put on top and those who didn’t were stuck at the bottom.

A week after the priest’s intervention, the long-awaited letter arrived. Too much time had lapsed since our last physicals, the letter said; we had to have them done over again. We filed into the doctor’s office once more, and in no time at all we got our visas. I immediately sent Joe to my hairdresser to learn the basics of barbering. One never knows: he could very well earn his tuition by cutting his classmates’ hair.

*

A few weeks before my departure, while I was preparing for my next class in the teachers’ room, the sky turned black as night. White clumps the size of pingpong balls flew across the window. A chain of loud thuds resounded. It was as if an angry mob were pelting the building with rocks. The fury of the noise was frightening. I’d heard of hailstorms, but never had I seen one in all my years in
Hong Kong
. I gazed at the sky to read its meaning, and everywhere I saw disaster befalling my birthplace.

Indeed, a month after I came to
America
, riots broke out in
Hong Kong
. Caught in the frenzy of the Cultural Revolution, leftists in Hong Kong agitated for the return of the British colony to
China
. Bombs exploded in public places and policemen were ambushed and hacked to pieces with cargo hooks. Stock market and real estate prices plummeted. People couldn’t leave fast enough for the
U.S.
,
Canada
, and
Australia
.

I can’t say that I possess the power to foresee the future. If I did I wouldn’t have made the mistake of moving to
Taiwan
. But sometimes a mother can smell danger in the air long before it appears. While watching the hailstorm that afternoon, I was convinced that my children had no future in
Hong Kong
. The colony was a piece of rental property. Whenever the landlord wanted it back, all he had to do was serve the tenant a month’s notice. I shuddered to think of my children living under the erratic Chinese regime. I’d seen enough turbulence in my lifetime; my children shouldn’t have to suffer the same. All my doubts about the move to
America
vanished, and I was convinced I’d made the right decision.

On
April 18, 1967
, I said goodbye to the crowd of friends and relatives at the airport. A storm of emotions was raging inside me. I was sad to leave my beloved hometown, and yet I was happy to go to a new home where my children would strengthen their wings and take off. This journey across the four seas was the longest I’d ever taken. A land full of unknowns awaited me, and yet I’d never felt as fearless. After all these years of searching for home, I’d learned my lesson, and so had my husband: you can’t rely on your father, uncle, or brother to build your home for you. You have to do it with your own two hands. They say in America that as long as you have two arms and two legs and are willing to work, no riches are unattainable, no goal too high. It’s true if you believe it. I believed it.

Epilogue

During their first decade in
California
, my parents did exactly what they said they were going to do. They worked and saved for college tuitions; they slept, ate, and breathed for college tuitions. Mom took up keypunching in a data processing firm, and Pop was office manager for an area branch of
U.S.
Steel. Toiling steadily, they completed Mom’s ten-year plan right on schedule. Agnes, the leader of the pack, became a social worker. Patrick, inspired as much by Father Cunningham as the desire to prove the skeptics wrong, became a lawyer. Joe became a dentist, coming closest to fulfilling Mom’s dream of having a doctor in the family. I disappointed Mom by becoming a journalist, not the doctor or scientist she’d wanted. She has only herself to blame for passing me her story-telling genes. Chris became an accountant with a double major in fine art.

In 1978 my parents made a triumphant homecoming to
Asia
. In
Hong Kong
friends and relatives flocked to admire the visiting émigrés. The highest compliment came from a millionairess, Mom’s cousin Helen. "Flora, I envy you!" she blurted. Although Mom claims that she doesn’t understand why her wealthy cousin should envy her, the pleasure on her face indicates otherwise.

The most gratifying compliment, however, came from her father-in-law. After two weeks in Hong Kong, my parents flew to
Taiwan
to celebrate the patriarch’s ninetieth birthday. His first words to Mom were, "Flora, you were right. Taking the children to
America
was the best thing you could do for them." This was the closest he could come to an apology, and it was, as Mom described it, "sweeter than a cool breeze on a hot summer day."

My parents retired soon afterwards. Pop was forced to because his company was closing its Bay Area office. Mom had hoped to work till sixty-two, when she could start collecting social security benefits. But after a decade of pounding away in a room full of the mammoth machines, the then state-of-the-art technology, she was half-blind and half-deaf. She also suffered from hypertension and severe back pain. Patrick prompted her to take early retirement. "You don’t need social security," he wrote to her. "You have five social securities in us." Mom took his advice, but instead of retiring in
Hong Kong
as stated in the original ten-year plan, she decided that her home was where her children were.

As of the completion of this manuscript, my parents are still living with me. Pop has been diagnosed with depression, paranoia, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. After eighty years of wrestling with the demons on his own, he’s finally getting help. Mom has grown fragile and is constantly in a drugged stupor to numb her arthritic pain. But even on her worst days, she’s never too sick to read me a chapter from her book. When all else fails, her stories take on a life of their own.