The train to Shanghai came, and Rulian and the five blind girls got onto the third car. A window went up, through which they waved at us. Minnie stepped closer and said to them, “Take good care.”
“We’ll miss you,” one of the girls said, a catch in her voice.
I stepped over and touched their hands too. A locomotive whistled, panting heavily and crawling into the station on the other track. Before we could say more, a conductor shut the door and latched it with a clank; their train let out a long guttural hiss and a puff of vapor, then pulled away. Four hands, three small and one larger, reached out the window, waving. Minnie blew a kiss to them and I followed suit.
On our way back, we were drawn aside at Yijiang Gate because Minnie didn’t have her cholera certificate; without the papers, newcomers were not allowed to enter the city. An officer took her to a cabin nearby and ordered her to receive an inoculation. She protested, insisting that she was not a new arrival and had accidentally left her medical papers at her home inside the city. “Look,” she said to the man with a pimpled face, “I don’t have any baggage in my car. I’m living here, a resident of Nanjing.” After she argued for five minutes or so, he let her go without receiving the injection. He warned her that from now on she must carry all her vaccination certificates when she passed the city gates.
34
THE MIDDLE SCHOOLERS had left campus for the winter break. Now our staff and faculty could relax a little. Donna and Alice had gone to Shanghai for vacation. Plumer Mills left Nanjing a week after the New Year. With the International Relief Committee disbanded, he felt he was no longer needed here. Plumer had told us that in Shanghai he would look for a way to get the six IRC men out of prison. Minnie asked him to include Yulan in the group as well, and he agreed, though he said he was still unsure how to make her fit in. Every day Minnie checked the mail, hoping Plumer had made progress. She had confided to me that from now on she would lump Yulan with the six IRC men whenever we appealed to the Japanese for their release. I thought this might be a productive move to get the madwoman out of incarceration. Despite lack of word from Plumer, we were positive that he’d been working hard on the case. He was a fine man, honest and trustworthy.
Again the full moon was waning, the sky getting darker night by night. In the third week of January Mrs. Dennison’s Christmas gifts for the staff and faculty arrived, in a large parcel weighing more than eighty pounds. Every year the old woman would spend at least one hundred yuan on presents for the employees on campus — every one of us would get something from her, including the cooks and janitors. Like Minnie, she spoke fluent Mandarin, understood us Chinese, and even observed our customs. Both women had lived in China for decades, long enough for some Chineseness to have entered their bones. Yet unlike the founding president, Minnie would give presents only to a few friends at the Spring Festival. She meant to avoid competing with the old woman, knowing that too many gifts from the school leaders might raise expectations too high among the employees. She had asked me what present I’d like, and I said I wanted her to join my family for dinner on the Spring Festival’s Eve, as my husband and son were away. She agreed to come.
Two days after Mrs. Dennison’s presents arrived, the staff and faculty gathered at the South Hill Residence in the evening, and Minnie gave us a party at which she handed out the gifts. There were tins of gunpowder tea, bags of raisins and pistachios, zippered Bibles in a bilingual edition, cigarillos, candied fruits, dried pork floss, and even packs of firecrackers for some people’s children and grandchildren, but the two fresh mangoes for Minnie were already black and no longer edible. Yet she was pleased to receive a Quaker calendar again.
“What a pity. I’ve never tasted a mango,” said Luhai, who got a paisley tie.
Minnie smiled and told him, “I’ll remember to get you some one of these days.”
I received a sweater and also a flowered neckerchief for Liya and a pack of sesame toffee for Fanfan. Mrs. Dennison had written the recipients’ names on most of the gifts, so it was easy for us to distribute them. The old president was always precise about everything, especially about small favors.
Big Liu raised a double-bang firecracker and said, “Good heavens, who dares to set off this rascal nowadays? The Japanese would come and search for firearms for sure.”
That cracked people up. Everyone was happy, and the room grew noisy and hazy with tobacco smoke.
Minnie read Mrs. Dennison’s letter to us. The former president feared that the presents might arrive late, so we should take them as gifts for both Christmas and the Spring Festival, which would fall on February 19, still a month away. These presents embodied her thanks to every one of us who had worked so hard at Jinling. She also said she would join us soon.
FOUR. The Grief Everlasting
35
MRS. DENNISON CAME BACK to Jinling in mid-March 1939. With her was Aifeng Yang, who served as her assistant and had taught extensively at the college, including horticulture, children’s education, and domestic hygiene. Minnie gave them a welcome-home party, attended by all the faculty and staff. People were excited to see Mrs. Dennison again.
Officially the old woman was just an adviser at our college, but she thought of the college as hers. Already sixty-nine, she was healthy and in good shape despite her grizzled flaxen hair and a little stoop due to chronic back pain. She looked much thinner than before. When she spoke to you at length, she’d gesticulate unceasingly, her longish face would begin adopting an expression between smiling and crying, and her tawny eyes would turn fiery. Yet most of the time she looked miserable, as if something unfortunate had just happened to her. She told us that many wealthy families in the States that used to donate to Jinling had become reluctant to give on account of our school’s uncertain future, so she was resolved to restore the college and to attract American donations again.
The next morning I took her around campus. We went to the poultry center, where Rulian enthusiastically greeted Mrs. Dennison, who had once taught her. The old woman was satisfied to see that Rulian still conducted experiments and to hear that some hens could lay two eggs a day. Imagine what an extraordinary contribution this project would make to China’s larder if a third of the hens in our country were that productive! Suddenly a chicken broke out cackling. “That must be Matchmaker,” Rulian said, rolling her almond-shaped eyes, and went into the shack of coops. She had named every bird in her charge. Matchmaker, a black pullet, often brought other young hens to roosters.
In a flash Rulian came back with a huge brown egg. “See, this hen often lays a double-yolk thing.” She showed it to Mrs. Dennison.
The old woman held it with both hands. “Oh dear, it’s still warm.”
“You can have it,” Rulian said.
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely, a double-yolk egg can’t hatch.”
Mrs. Dennison took out a linen handkerchief and wrapped it around the egg. Rulian found a pastry box and handed it to her. “This is good,” the old woman said, putting the bundle into the small paperboard container.
We went to the gardens in the back of campus, where the damage left by the refugees was still visible, although the trees were all leafing and some shrubs were fluffy with wet blossoms. After looking through various parts of the college, the old woman was not pleased, except with the two-hundred-yard macadam road that ran through the expanse between the front gate and the quadrangle — Minnie had gotten it paved for only one-third of the regular price.