One Amazing Thing by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Page B

was under blackout orders), and did as the priest instructed, her motions jerky as a puppet’s. It was only the next morning, as she was about to board the Sea Luck, that she seemed to realize the enormity of what had happened. She threw her arms around her father, insisting that she would not leave him, that she would rather that they died together. It took her brother and her new husband all their strength to get her up the gangplank while her father, himself in tears, tried to console her. I’ll be fine. I’ll be back in the house once the government sorts things out. Then I’ll come to America to pay you a visit. And your brother will join you soon. We’ll get him on another ship in a few days.
    None of the things he promised came to pass. Within a year, he died of a heart attack at the camp, his devastated mother following him soon after. As for Vincent, he did get on a ship, but one bound for Australia, and it was years before he and his sister found each other.
    “That was the last time anyone would see me cry,” Jiang said.
    The monthlong voyage seemed endless, with the Chans cooped up in a minuscule cabin with another newly married couple. (Upon boarding they had discovered that the captain, taking advantage of the helplessness of his customers, had double-sold tickets.) Mr. Chan and Mr. Lu, understanding that they had no recourse, made the best of it. They divided the little space they had with a blanket that served as a curtain, made up a bed on the floor where each couple slept on alternate nights, and created a strict timetable for the use of the cabin so that they would each get some privacy with their wives. This had a twofold result. Mr. Chan and Mr. Lu formed a lifelong friendship, and by the end of the voyage, Jiang was pregnant.
    How did she feel about this last development? Did joy course through her as the baby grew? Or did she feel sick with worry at the prospect of having a child in a place where she knew no one who could support her through childbirth and into motherhood? Did she feel fondness for the child’s father—or perhaps even the beginnings of love? Did she resent him for imprisoning her in a bloated body that would no longer fit into the pretty clothes she brought from Calcutta? Did she compare him with someone else who had kissed her more tenderly? Or did she tolerate him with resignation, because what choice did she have?
    In America, they moved from city to city until Mr. Chan was forced to accept the fact that his dentist’s degree was worthless here. Finally, they sold Jiang’s jewelry and bought a small grocery in a Chinatown. Jiang helped in the store, dividing her attention between the customers and the babies—one, then two, in the playpen in the tiny back room. She was so good at managing the business that by the time the babies grew into children, the store had expanded into a supermarket and the Chans lived in a comfortable apartment above it. The family bought another supermarket and then a third; the children were sent to private schools; they moved to a large and lavish apartment in a gated building.
    Everything Jiang required for daily life lay within the boundaries of Chinatown—markets, movie theaters, the houses of friends, the children’s schools. Was there another need? If so, she buried that hankering deep within herself. In this new, compacted existence, there was no necessity for her to speak English, so she let it go. And, along with the language she had once prided herself on speaking so well, she let go of that portion of her past where English had played an important part. By the time her grandchildren were born, she communicated only in Mandarin.
    Sometimes in the evenings Mr. Lu, now a widower, visited Mr. Chan. Jiang served them tea and dim sum but never joined in their wistful reminiscences. Her brother, Vincent, having finally managed to locate her, paid them a visit from Australia, where after decades of hard work he had risen to be the manager