Born Under an Assumed Name Read online

  Later that morning I watched from the window again as the guard placed foot-high piles of dirt along the inside perimeter of the wall.

  As a child, I lived in a walled, American world within the island of Formosa, as Taiwan was then called. In one way, this world was bright and spotless and upright as a battleship, but often, when we stepped outside its walls, or bits of the outer world slipped in, that sterling picture became jumbled and tarnished. Living in a closed American world within another country has its inherent brittleness.

  When you live in the country of your passport, you can take nationality for granted. You breathe it in with the air. When you grow up abroad, however, surrounded by people unlike yourself, the question of what country you belong to arises every day. You have to piece together nationality, painstakingly put it into words and build it block by block, like a foreign language. As a girl, I learned what it was to be American by watching Americans, by watching the world, and by watching my father. And my father was a certain kind of American, with a certain kind of job, a job that could make being an American into a hot potato.

  My father went to work every day at the NACC, the Naval Auxiliary Communications Center, a plain, rectangular building on a base surrounded by a high wall in the sprawl of Taipei. As long as I could remember, my father had described his job to me as “China Watcher.” This meant his duty was to keep a close eye on Red China for the American government. China Watchers had a secret mission that was very important to Washington, he told me, but I hadn’t a clue, at seven, what exactly my gentle father really did. His official title was “naval attaché,” but, unbeknownst to me, my father’s actual portfolio, as a clandestine human intelligence officer, was to “debrief” escapees from the Mainland and to recruit and run agents with close ties to Red China. China then was almost completely closed to the West. In addition, my father and his associates were training Nationalists from the Mainland to infiltrate back into their homeland and build a democratic opposition movement.

  In Taiwan, my family lived not under an assumed name, as we had when I was born in Japan, but we would throughout the rest of my childhood live under the cloak of “official cover.” All through his thirty-year career—I wouldn’t know this until I was a teenager—my father described his job as something somewhat altered from the truth. And every day in his work as a covert operations officer in pursuit of Communist secrets, he used false names and assumed secret identities.

  Until I left for college, in tandem with my father’s shifts in identity, and by virtue of family membership in the strange league to which my father belonged, I too lived under identities not of my own choosing. This way of living had many benefits but also high and painful costs for both me and my father—sacrifices that would eventually, for each of us in different ways, call in their chits.

  It was in the crumpled and beauteous hinterlands of postwar Japan, at the point my father entered the clandestine service, that my father’s secret work commenced its own clandestine job of slow and subtle tainting. The secret work my father did was like a branding on his chest, predestining his rocky and ambivalent, fascinating and tortured career. For me, his daughter, his secret work was like a stamp on my passport. Indelibly, it shaped my girlhood, turning it into a glamorous life rich in foreign cultures, delicate beauties, and startling joys—and burdened by strange silences, heartsickness, constant change, and loss.

  Now and then, I sipped tiny tastes of my father’s clandestine activities—they were like the little sips of scorching Chinese tea my father shared with me from his glass—but I didn’t know that I was sipping. Most of the time, my father’s secret was as imperceptible as a droplet in a rising tide.

  In my father’s soft-worn British atlas, Taiwan was a tiny rice grain in the Pacific Ocean just off Red China. The island was a dictatorship propped up by the U.S. government, patrolled by military police and on constant alert for Red Chinese attack, but for me it was a place of limpid airs; of lime-sparkling padi and scarlet lanterns; of fast-talking people in tattered clothes; of the delicious smells of pineapple and soy sauce shrimp; and the stink of fish and water buffalo dung. I had spent most of my seven years in Asia. This, to me, was how a place should look and sound and taste and smell. This poverty-burdened and shimmering padi-land—yanked around by the big powers in the Cold War—would stay in my bones, and draw and disturb me for years to come.

  The Taipei in which my family lived was a cluttered city—half poverty-crumbled, half rebuilt with American money—sprawled at the foot of Yangming-shan, a beautiful, steep-sloped mountain named for a Chinese philosopher, and inhabited by deer, mountain pigs, and wealthy Taiwanese. According to my father’s orders, our tour of duty in Taipei was two years, but, as my father said, whenever Washington cabled—and it could happen at any time—our job was to serve the U.S. government and board the next boat. (One day when I was settling into a new dormitory in a Midwestern college, feeling homesick for our recent home in Tokyo, I would ask my mother how she felt about having left so many places. “Oh I miss every home we’ve ever lived in,” she’d sigh. Then she would count up the temporary billets and embassy houses we had lived in over the course of my father’s career. We’d have moved, by then, thirty-one times.)

  Our house was in a neighborhood called Renai Lu, Section Four. This was a new housing district on land that used to be rice padi: a crisscross of narrow streets lined by compact houses, each boxed within its own high wall. Many Americans lived in a U.S. compound, but our neighborhood was mostly Chinese save for the Tanners, another U.S. government family.

  Our house, enclosed within its wall higher than my father’s head, was made of concrete. It was small, square, and tight. The bare rooms were provided with embassy-issue furniture made of bamboo with grey duck cushions: a two-person couch and two chairs of the same grey duck, and a low coffee table. We also had one armchair, with a flowered slipcover, a sprig of prettiness to cut the institutional grey. Andy and I each had a plank bed with our own covers on them—olive green army blankets and white sheets. My father loved army blankets because he had served in World War II—when he’d first visited Asia—and his army service was one of the things of which he was proudest. There was a scroll on the wall in the living room. It was of Chinese characters in calligraphy presented as a compliment to my parents by one of my father’s Chinese colleagues. The characters meant either “America,” or “beautiful place,” my father told me, depending on how they were translated. He delighted in the double entendre.

  America was my country, but I really couldn’t say if it was beautiful. I had last been there when I was four. Taiwan was the only home I remembered with any clarity. I knew America made good hamburgers and vanilla ice cream, because we ate them at the snack bar at the base, and I knew America had friendly soldiers with crew cuts, because we saw them all the time, both at the base and on the regular Chinese streets. What I didn’t know was that my country had another, darker side.

  My days in Taipei clicked along to a rhythm like my piano metronome, put into motion by my mother’s orderly hand. My mother was often busy with her work as a physical therapist with Chinese polio victims and orphans, and as a teacher at TAS, Taipei American School, so our family had three servants: Yuki, a cook; Aduan, a maid; and Mary, our amah who took care of Andy and me. My mother and Mary knitted our household together. It seemed as if Mary had always lived with us. I loved her. She had fluffy black hair that she let me pin up with barrettes. She cooked special sweet rice snacks for us and played Old Maid as many times as I asked.

  When we lived in America, my mother explained, we couldn’t afford household help, but when we were in foreign countries, it was different. Because of my father’s “representational duties,” our family received an extra allowance for servants.

  We lived in China but I hardly ever went to Chinese people’s homes. On weekends we visited other Americans who lived in Taipei—missionaries and other government families. Some of them had sandboxes and swing sets like bac
k in America. When I went to my best friend Laura’s, we sat on the couch side by side, and drew pictures.

  My parents did have Chinese friends. My mother had her Thursday ladies’ group and my father had lots of Chinese friends. One of them was Mr. Chu, a man I had never seen—his special Chinese friend. At odd times—a drowsy Sunday midafternoon or a Thursday morning at five o’clock before the roosters had crowed—my father sometimes went for a walk with him. I imagined the two of them walking along hidden back alleys that smelt of blossoms and garbage, or along misty forest paths, their heads leaning toward each other, speaking of private things known only to the two of them.

  We hired two pedicabs on Renai Lu, the big street near our house, and the skinny drivers cycled us into the center of the city. We were going downtown because my father loved to walk the streets of Taipei.

  I watched the old man who was pedaling my mother and me. The muscles of his bare back strained and stuck out in rubber bands, and his leg muscles were carved into curves as they pushed up and down on the pedals. I hoped the ride would finish soon because it looked like it was difficult for him to carry us. When we got to the downtown, we paid the drivers and proceeded on foot through the close streets. One of the roads was called “Losefalu,” the Chinese way of saying Roosevelt.

  The streets as we walked were a whirl of stink, color, and cry. I liked all the swirling colors and rotten and fruity odors, and walking along holding my father’s strong hand.

  Long vertical banners of cloth with big Chinese characters fluttered in front of all the small, jumbled shops set side by side on the crowded, narrow street. They were messy places piled with plastic toys and buckets; cascades of rubber shoes; stacks of hard Chinese pillows; bolts of cloth; and tubs of smelly fish heads, noodles, and chicken feet. They also sold items like black furniture carved in geometric designs and shiny pots in a thousand sizes. But most of all, for me, looking around holding my father’s hand, the street was teeming with people. Hundreds of heads poured into the distance ahead of us, and when I looked back, a long, oncoming wave of faces pushed toward me. They were a smudge of bright brown eyes, butter-brickle skin, and ink-black hair. I could hardly distinguish one person from the blur until my eyes got used to it. Then I could pick out people one by one: a hunched woman in a black dress shaking her finger at a man standing by a shelf of pigs’ heads; a man selling fortune-telling sticks; a boy chasing a scroungy brown dog; an old man squatting, fanning himself with a broad fan; a sea horse seller; a man falling off his bicycle because no one would let him through; a pedicab driver leaning against his cab in the middle of the street; a water buffalo wandering in and out of the people, its tail flicking.

  Mixed in with all the other people on the street were American and Chinese soldiers. They were bunched in groups of two or three. My father had told me that the guns both the Chinese and the American soldiers carried were American M-1 rifles and American 45-caliber pistols. The Chinese soldiers wore khaki the color of old bamboo. The faces of both the American and the Chinese soldiers were serious until one of their group pointed and told a joke, and then their shoulders swayed and they laughed.

  The air around me squabbled and banged. Chinese people were talking, in a racket of chattering and yelling and scolding. I could only understand words here and there. TSE CHAW SHUR HOW CHOW CHO, harsh, chopping consonants strung together in rapid, spat-out sentences. Cows lowed, roosters crowed, buffaloes snorted. Hawkers shrieked out the names of the wares they were selling.

  As we walked deeper and deeper into the street the smells grew stronger. The street reeked of rotting fish, rotting eggs, vomit, and dung. The air also smelled of fresh-cooked chicken and spring onions, spring rolls, and sweet candy.

  Through the chaos, my tall father in his long, baggy shorts and sneakers, my mother in her pale green shift, my brother with his short legs sticking out beneath his shorts, and I, in my smocked, flowered dress, made our way. My father, walking with his head high and his eyes directed outward, looked exhilarated, my mother looked both interested and concerned about the poor people, and Andy pointed at everything and talked nonstop. I was easy and curious, and bubbling with confidence. I knew all these Chinese who saw us would know, just by looking at us, that we were American: inherently different, richer, and superior to them.

  As we walked along the street, we were frequently approached by ragged children: boys in nothing but frayed black shorts, girls with pus-filled eyes, and twig-thin toddlers. They pulled on my father’s pant leg, or they hung on to my mother’s arm, or tugged on my dress. And they looked at me with their dark, sick-sad eyes. I knew that if we gave one child a coin, we would instantly be mobbed, but at some points, if a child was alone and there was no crowd about to pounce, my father spoke to the child softly in Chinese and handed me a coin to give.

  This time, a little girl in a tattered frock stood in front of us holding out her dirty hand. My father dug a couple of coins out of his pocket and put them in my hand and nodded toward her. Her eyes were black pools.

  I had been around poor, diseased children all my life, but still it was difficult to look her in the eye—I felt ashamed of both my pity and my pride—and I tried to avoid looking at her scabby, poxed arms and stained, ripped dress.

  My father had said to me many times, “We are lucky to be Americans. The Chinese are very poor, and so we should help them whenever we can.” But the children of the oozing eyes and scabby arms climbed into my bed with me at night. With dull eyes, they begged in my dreams. Dreams that would return—issuing sharp pangs of sadness, and lacing me back to Asia—for years ahead.

  After our walk, since this was Saturday, we drove in our flag-blue Rambler for lunch at the NACC Club, a low white building inside the blocks-long, cement-walled American compound where my father worked. In the cool dining room with white cloths on the tables, we sat near the window. Andy ordered a hot dog and french fries. My father and I ordered Salisbury steaks, and my mother ordered liver and mashed potatoes: all good old American food. As we ate, I observed.

  The club was filled with American military men, and outside the window a steady stream of soldiers, marines, and sailors passed by. I could tell that a little World War II thrill trickled through my father’s body whenever he saw a uniform, and he had taught us to identify men by service and rank. I was good at navy men: Enlisted men had navy, white, or sometimes khaki uniforms with chevrons on their sleeves; ensigns had one stripe on their shoulder boards; lieutenants had two stripes; commanders had three stripes; and captains had four. Admirals had stars, from rear admiral with one star to full admiral with four. A hush, like a pause, stopped my body whenever we saw an admiral. The navy men, I knew from my father, were from the Seventh Fleet. President Truman had sent them to Taiwan after the Korean War to patrol the Formosa Strait, which flows between Taiwan and the Mainland, and to protect Taiwan from Communist attack.

  Sometimes at the Club we were seated at a table next to a captain and his family. My father had an important job, but because he was a civilian, he didn’t have a uniform. Sometimes I wished he did, so everyone would notice him like they noticed the captain, with creases sharp as knife blades and black-reflecting shoes. But my father didn’t want to be noticed. He had a way of standing at an angle and gazing far off, deflecting attention from himself, like light bouncing off a mirror. Years later I would realize my father was a master of “hiding in plain sight.”

  While we swizzled up the last of our ginger ales through our straws, my father shifted forward and I could tell he was about to talk to us about the world. At mealtimes, my father taught us about history and current events—particularly about the actions of our country. Even though we were children, he wanted us to know about the world and to think about what was occurring. The year before, when I was in first grade, John F. Kennedy had been elected president. He was young and handsome, and he had a beautiful wife who wore hats that matched her nautical dresses. He also had a fluffy-haired daughter, Caroline, who was three years y
ounger than I was, and a little son named John-John, who wore wool shorts and had knobby knees and brown shoes, like Andy’s.

  When we received our tulip cups of American vanilla ice cream—I liked to swirl mine into a cool, smooth soup and then eat it very slowly so that it lasted a long time—I said, “Tell us again, Pop, why America needs to be here to help Taiwan.” I loved this story of China and America. In it, the countries seemed like characters in a book: bad guy China and good guy America.

  My father looked at me, his soft brown eyes intent behind his horn-rimmed glasses. He clasped his hands on the table and leaned toward us. “Well, before and through World War II, China was a feudal society. That means landlords owned the soil, and the peasants—and these were most of the Chinese people—worked like slaves for them. The peasants were extremely poor, and had to give most of what they grew to the landlords in exchange for using the land. It was a desperately unfair system, with the vast majority of the Chinese wearing rags, living from hand to mouth, and being maltreated by the few who lived fat and wealthy like kings.

  “Then, during World War II, while the Japanese were occupying big hunks of China, a civil war kindled between the Nationalists—commanded by Chiang Kai-shek—and the Communists—inspired by Mao Tse-tung—and once the Japanese were defeated, it flared up.

  “Now, the Communists, as I’ve told you, believe in the principle, ‘from each according to his ability and to each according to his need.’ This means that they believe everyone should work hard for the welfare of the country and, in return, everyone should have all their basic needs met by the government. Under communism, governments own all the land and factories, and are responsible for supplying their people with jobs, housing, food, medical care, and old-age security. This idea appealed to the followers of Mao, who wanted to make things more fair and more equal for the peasants of China.” My father unclasped his hands, placed them flat on the table, and straightened up as he continued.