knows, is some other, distant thing. He’s a small, cute, smiling, warm, Muslim Chinese guy who loves math, American cars, elections, and camping. A long-term planner who stocks up sale items in the basement, works late every night, and falls asleep in the recliner to the ten o’clock news. Everyone loves him, especially kids. But he never speaks Chinese, not even in Chinatown. Now and then he’ll say something about life before America, after butterscotch ice cream or on a cool night around the campfire in a national park. How he kept pet crickets and pigeons in Shanghai. How he once shaved a peach and put the fuzz down the blouse of a servant to make her itch. Don’t laugh. I still feel bad, one thousand year later.
But Mimi knew nothing much about the man until yesterday, an awful Saturday, when she came home from the playground in tears.
“What happen? What you do?”
She squared off in front of the man. “Are Chinese all Communists who eat rats and love Mao?”
At last he talked to her, a story from another world. Much was lost on Mimi. But as he spoke, her father turned into a character from a late-night black-and-white thriller full of dark corners, eerie music, and a cast of thousands. He told her of the Stranded Scholars, changed into Americans by the Displaced Persons Act. He described other Chinese who’d come with him, including one who went on to win the greatest prize in science. It stunned Mimi: the U.S. and the Communists were fighting over her father’s brain.
“This man Mao. He owe me lot of money. He pay me back, I take this family to very fancy dinner. Best rat you ever eat!”
She cried again, until he assured her that he’d never even seen a rat up close until Murray Hill, New Jersey. He hushed and cooed. “Chinese eat many strange thing. But rat not so popular.”
He took her into his study. There, he showed her things she still couldn’t grasp, a day later. He unlocked the filing cabinet and removed a wooden box. Inside it were three green rings. “Mao, he never know about this. Three magic ring. Three tree—past, present, future. Lucky, I have three magic daughter.” He tapped his finger on his temple. “Your father, always thinking.”
He took the ring he called the past and tried it on Mimi’s finger. The twisting green foliage mesmerized her. The carving was deep—branches beyond branches. Impossible that anyone could carve a thing so small.
“This all jade.”
She jerked her hand, and the ring flipped to the floor. Her father knelt down and swept it back into the box. “Too big. We wait for later.” The box went back into the file cabinet, which he locked again. Then he crouched in his closet and removed a lacquered case. He placed the case on his drafting table and undid the ritual of latches and ribbons. Two flicks of the scroll rollers, and there, spread in front of her, was China, the half of her no more real than a fable. Chinese words tumbled down in columns, swirling like tiny flames. Each ink stroke shone as if she had just made it herself. It didn’t seem possible that anyone could write like that. But her father could, if he wanted.
After the flowing words came a parade of men, each a chubby skeleton. Their faces laughed but their skin sagged. They seemed to have lived for hundreds of years. Their eyes smiled at the best joke in creation, while their shoulders bowed under the weight of a thing too heavy to bear.
“Who are they?”
Her father studied the figures. “These men?” His lips tightened like the smiling figures. “Luóhàn. Arhat. Little Buddha. They solve life. They pass the final exam.” He turned her chin toward him. When he smiled, the thin gold edge of his front tooth flashed. “Chinese superhero!”
She wriggled free from his hand and studied the holy men. One sat in a small cave. One had a red sash and earrings. Another paused on the edge of a high cliff, with crags and fog trailing off behind him. One leaned against a tree, as Mimi would lean against her mulberry the next day, telling her sisters.
Her father pointed at the dream landscape. “This China. Very old.” Mimi touched the man under the tree. Her father lifted her hand and kissed her fingertips. “Too old for touch.”
She stared at the man, whose eyes knew everything. “Superheroes?”
“They see every answer. Nothing hurt them anymore.