“Oh,” Lilly said. She wasn’t sure how this information helped.

  “I’ll show you a bit of magic that you can use to protect yourself.” Mr. Kan turned to Teddy. “Can I have that mirror that you use to tease the cats with?”

  Teddy took out a small bit of glass from his pocket. It was broken from a larger mirror and the jagged edges had been wrapped in masking tape. Some Chinese characters had been written in ink on the masking tape.

  “The Chinese have been using mirrors to ward off harm for millennia,” Mr. Kan said. “Don’t underestimate this little mirror. It has great magic in it. Next time, when the other girls tease you, bring out this mirror and shine it in their faces.”

  Lilly took the mirror. She didn’t really believe what Mr. Kan was saying. He was kind and nice, but what he was saying sounded preposterous. Still, she needed a friend, and Mr. Kan and Teddy were the closest thing to friends she had on this side of the Pacific Ocean.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “Miss Lilly.” Mr. Kan stood up and solemnly shook her hand. “When there is such a large gap of years between two friends, we Chinese call it wang nien chih chiao, a friendship that forgets the years. It’s destiny that brings us together. I hope you will always think of me and Teddy as your friends.”

  Lilly explained her muddy appearance by blaming it all on Ah Huang, the “stubborn water buffalo” that she eventually subdued with her Texan cowgirl skills. Of course Mom was angry, seeing Lilly’s ruined clothes. She gave Lilly a long lecture, and even Dad sighed and explained that her days of being a tomboy really needed to come to an end, now that she was a young lady. But on the whole, Lilly thought she had gotten off easy.

  Lin Amah made Three-Cup Chicken, which was Dad’s favorite. The sweet smell of sesame oil, rice wine, and soy sauce filled the kitchen and living room, and Lin Amah smiled and nodded as Mr. and Mrs. Dyer praised the food. She wrapped the leftovers into two rice balls and put them in the lunch box for Lilly. Lilly was apprehensive about bringing Three-Cup Chicken to lunch, but she fingered the mirror in her pocket and thanked Lin Amah.

  “Good night,” Lilly said to her parents, and went to her room.

  In the hallway Lilly found a couple of sheets of paper lying on the floor. She picked them up and saw that they were filled with dense typescript:

  have successfully sabotaged numerous factories, railroads, bridges, and other infrastructure. Agents have also assassinated several local ChiCom cadres. We have captured dozens of ChiCom individuals on these raids, and their interrogation yielded valuable intelligence concerning Red China’s internal conditions. The covert program has been conducted with plausible deniability, and so far no elements of the U.S. press have questioned our denials of ChiCom accusations of American involvement. (It should be noted that even if U.S. involvement is revealed, we can legally justify our intervention under the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty as the ROC’s sovereignty claims extend over all of the territory of the PRC.)

  Interrogations of ChiCom prisoners suggest that this program of harassment and terror, combined with the threat of an ROC invasion of the mainland, has pushed the ChiCom to further intensify internal repression and tighten domestic control. The ChiCom have increased military spending, and this likely has shifted scarce resources away from economic development and increased the suffering of the masses at a time when the PRC is experiencing great famines after the Great Leap Forward. As a result, there is a great deal of dissatisfaction with the regime.

  President Kennedy has reoriented us toward a more confrontational stance toward the ChiCom. I suggest that we weaken the PRC by all means short of all-out, general war. In addition to our continued support of ROC interdiction and harassment of PRC shipping and our support and direction of the insurgency in Tibet, we should increase our joint covert operations with the ROC in the PRC. I believe that by intensifying our covert operations against the ChiCom, we can force the ChiCom to curtail its support for North Viet Nam. In the best case, we may even provide the proverbial straw to break the camel’s back, and successfully induce a domestic popular revolt to support a ChiNat invasion force from Taiwan and Burma. The Generalissimo is quite eager.

  Should the PRC be provoked into a general war with us, it will be necessary to use atomic weapons to ensure the credibility of American resolve to our allies. The President should be prepared to manage popular perception in America and to induce our allies to accept atomic warfare as the means to victory.

  At the same time, there is no question that the ChiCom would step up their efforts to infiltrate Taiwan and establish a network of agents and sympathizers within Taiwan. ChiCom propaganda and psywar techniques are not as sophisticated as ours, but appear to have been effective (at least in the past), especially among the native Taiwanese, by exploiting conflicts between the native-born penshengjen and the Nationalist waishengjen.

  The maintenance of ChiNat morale is vital to our hold on Taiwan, the most vital link in the chain of islands that form the bulwark of American thalassocracy in the Western Pacific and the perimeter defense of the Free World. We must assist the ROC in counterespionage efforts on the island. Current ROC policy suppresses sensitive issues such as the so-called 228 Incident to avoid giving the ChiCom an opportunity to exploit penshengjen resentment, and we should give this policy our full support. We should also give all possible assistance to root out, suppress, and punish ChiCom agents, sympathizers, and other

  They seemed to belong to Dad from work. Lilly stumbled over the many words that she didn’t know, and finally stopped at “thalassocracy,” whatever that meant. She quietly put the papers back down on the ground. Suzie Randling and tomorrow’s lunch were far more pressing and worrisome to Lilly than whatever was typed on those sheets.

  As expected, Suzie Randling and her gaggle of loyal lieutenants kept a watchful eye on Lilly as she sat at the other table, with her back to the girls.

  Lilly delayed taking out her lunch as long as she could, hoping that the girls would be distracted by their gossip and ignore her. She drank her juice and nibbled on the grapes that she brought for dessert, taking as long as she could, peeling the skin off each grape and carefully chewing the sweet, juicy flesh inside.

  But eventually, Lilly finished all of the grapes. She willed her hands not to tremble as she took out the rice balls. She unwrapped the banana leaves from the first rice ball, and bit into it. The sweet smell of sesame oil and chicken wafted across to the other table, and Suzie perked up right away.

  “I smell Chinaman slops again,” Suzie said. She sniffed the air exaggeratedly. The corners of her mouth turned up in a nasty grin. She loved the way Lilly seemed to shrink and cower at her voice. She took pleasure in it.

  Suzie and the flock of girls around her took up the chant from yesterday again. Laughter was in their voices, the laughter of girls drunk on power. There was desire in their eyes, a lust for blood, a craving to see Lilly cry.

  Well, it won’t hurt to try, Lilly thought.

  She turned around to face the girls, and in her raised right hand was the mirror that Mr. Kan had given her. She turned the mirror to Suzie.

  “What’s that in your hand?” Suzie laughed, thinking that Lilly was offering something as tribute, a peace offering. Silly girl. What could she offer besides her tears?

  Suzie looked into the mirror.

  Instead of her beautiful face, she saw a pair of blood-red lips, grinning like a clown, and instead of a tongue, an ugly, wormy mess of tentacles writhed inside the mouth. She saw a pair of blue eyes, opened wide as teacups, filled half with hatred and half with surprise. It was easily the most ugly and frightening sight she had ever seen. She saw a monster.

  Suzie screamed and covered her mouth with her hands. The monster in the mirror lifted a pair of hairy paws in front of its bloody lips, and the long, dagger-like claws seemed to reach out of the mirror.

  Suzie turned around and ran, and the chant stopped abruptly, replaced by the screams of the other girls as they, too, saw the monster inside the mirror.

  Later, Mrs. Wyle had to send a hysterical Suzie home. Suzie had insisted that Mrs. Wyle take the mirror from Lilly, but after a minute of careful examination, Mrs. Wyle concluded that the mirror was perfectly ordinary and handed it back to Lilly. She sighed as she tried to pen a note to Suzie’s parents. She suspected that Suzie had made up the whole episode as a way to get out of school, but the girl was a good actress.

  Lilly fingered the mirror in her pocket and smiled to herself as she sat through the afternoon’s lessons.

  * * * *

  “You are really good at baseball,” Lilly said from her perch on top of Ah Huang.

  Teddy shrugged. He was walking ahead of Ah Huang, leading him by the nose and carrying a baseball bat over his shoulder. He walked slowly, so that Lilly’s ride was smooth.

  Teddy was quiet, and Lilly was getting used to that. At first Lilly thought it was because his English wasn’t as good as Mr. Kan’s. But then she found that he spoke just as little to the other Chinese children.

  Teddy had introduced her to the other kids from the village, some of whom had thrown mud at Lilly the day before. The boys nodded at Lilly, but then looked away, embarrassed.

  They played a game of baseball. Only Teddy and Lilly knew all the rules, but all the children were familiar with it from watching the American soldiers at the Base nearby. Lilly loved baseball, and one of the things she missed the most about home was playing baseball with Dad and watching games together on TV. But since they moved to Taiwan, there were no more games on TV, and he no longer seemed to be able to find the time.

  When it was Lilly’s turn to bat, the pitcher, one of the boys from yesterday, lobbed her a soft and slow pitch that Lilly turned into a gentle groundball that rolled into right field. The outfielders ran over and suddenly, all of them seemed to have trouble locating the ball in the grass. Lilly easily circled the bases.

  Lilly understood that that was the way the boys apologized. She smiled at them and bowed, showing that all was forgiven. The boys grinned back at her.

  “Grandpa would say, ‘pu ta pu hsiang shih.’ It means that sometimes you can’t become friends until you’ve fought each other.”

  Lilly thought that was a very good philosophy, but she doubted that it worked among girls.

  Teddy was by far the best player among all the children. He was a good pitcher, but he was a great hitter. Every time he came up to bat, the opposing team fanned out, knowing that he would hit it way out.

  “Someday, when I’m older, I’m going to move to America, and I’ll play for the Red Sox,” Teddy suddenly said, without looking back at Lilly on the water buffalo.

  Lilly found the notion of a Chinese boy from Taiwan playing baseball for the Red Sox pretty ridiculous, but she kept herself from laughing because Teddy didn’t seem to be joking. She was partial to the Yankees because her mother’s family was from New York. “Why Boston?”

  “Grandpa went to school in Boston,” Teddy said.

  “Oh.” That must be how Mr. Kan learned English, Lilly thought.

  “I wish I were older. Then I could have gotten to play with Ted Williams. Now I will never get to see him play in person. He retired last year.”

  There was such sadness in his voice that neither spoke for a few minutes. Only Ah Huang’s loud, even breathing accompanied their silent walk.

  Lilly suddenly understood something. “Is that why you call yourself Teddy?”

  Teddy didn’t answer, but Lilly could see that his face was red. She tried to distract him from his embarrassment. “Maybe he’ll come back to coach someday.”

  “Williams was the best hitter ever. He’ll definitely show me how to improve my swing. But the guy they replaced him with, Carl Yaz, is really good too. Me and Yaz, someday we’ll beat the Yankees and take the Sox to the World Series.”

  Well, it is called the World Series, Lilly thought. Maybe a Chinese boy will really make it.

  “That’s a really grand dream,” Lilly said. “I hope it happens.”

  “Thanks,” Teddy said. “When I’m successful in America, I’ll buy the biggest house in Boston, and Grandpa and I will live there. And I’ll marry an American girl, because American girls are the best and prettiest.”

  “What’s she going to look like?”

  “Blonde.” Teddy looked back at Lilly, riding on Ah Huang, with her loose red curls and hazel eyes. “Or red-haired,” he added quickly, and turned his face away, flushed.

  Lilly smiled.

  As they walked past the other houses in the village, Lilly noticed that many of the houses had slogans painted on their walls and doors. “What do those signs say?”

  “That one says, ‘Beware of Communist bandit spies. It is everyone’s responsibility to keep secrets.’ That one over there says, ‘Even if we by mistake kill three thousand, we can’t let a single Communist spy slip through our fingers.’ And that one over there says, ‘Study hard and work hard, we must rescue our mainland brothers from the Red bandits.’”

  “That’s frightening.”

  “The Communists are scary,” Teddy agreed. “Hey, that’s my house down there. You want to come in?”

  “Am I going to meet your parents?”

  Teddy suddenly slumped his shoulders. “It’s just Grandpa and me. He’s not my real grandpa, you know. My parents died when I was just a baby, and Grandpa took me in as an orphan.”

  Lilly didn’t know what to say. “How...how did your parents die?”

  Teddy looked around them to make sure that no one was nearby. “They tried to leave a wreath on an empty lot on February 28, 1952. My uncle and aunt had died there back in 1947.” He seemed to think that was all that needed to be said.

  Lilly had no idea what he was talking about, but she couldn’t probe any further. They had arrived at Teddy’s home.

  * * * *

  The cottage was tiny. Teddy opened the door and showed Lilly in while he went to take care of Ah Huang. Lilly found herself standing in the kitchen. Through a doorway she could see a larger room—the only other room in the cottage really—lined with tatami mats. That was evidently where Teddy and Mr. Kan slept.

  Mr. Kan showed her to a seat by the small table in the kitchen and gave her a cup of tea. He was cooking something on the stove, and it smelled delicious.

  “If you like,” Mr. Kan said, “you are welcome to share some stew with us. Teddy likes it, and I think you would too. You’ll have a hard time finding Mongolian-style mutton stewed in Shantung-style milkfish soup anywhere else in the world, haha.”

  Lilly nodded. Her stomach growled as she breathed in the wonderful cooking fumes. She was feeling relaxed and comfortable.

  “Thank you for the mirror. It worked.” Lilly took out the mirror and put it on the table. “What do the words on the tape mean?”

  “It’s a quote from the Analects. Jesus said something that means exactly the same thing: ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’”

  “Oh.” Lilly was disappointed. She was hoping that the words were some secret magical chant.

  Mr. Kan seemed to know what Lilly was thinking about. “Magic words are often misunderstood. When those girls and you all thought ‘gook’ was a magic word, it held a kind of power. But it was an empty magic based on ignorance. Other words also hold magic and power, but they require reflection and thought.”

  Lilly nodded, not sure she really understood.

  “Can we do more literomancy?” she asked.

  “Sure.” Mr. Kan put the lid on the pot and wiped his hands. He retrieved some paper, ink, and a brush. “What word would you like?”

  “It would be more impressive if you can do it in English,” said Teddy as he came into the kitchen.

  “Yes, can you do it in English?” Lilly clapped her hands.

  “I can try.” Mr. Kan laughed. “This will be a first.” He handed the brush to Lilly.

  Lilly slowly wrote out the first word that came into her head, a word she didn’t understand: thalassocracy.

  Mr. Kan was surprised. “Oh, I don’t know that word. This is going to be difficult.” Mr. Kan frowned.

  Lilly held her breath. Was the magic not going to work in English?

  Mr. Kan shrugged. “Well, I’ll just have to give it a try. Let’s see...in the middle of the word is another word: ‘lass.’ That means you.” He tipped the end of the brush toward Lilly. “The lass has an ‘o’, a circle of rope, trailing after her, and that makes ‘lasso.’ Hmm, Lilly, do you want to grow up to be a cowgirl?”

  Lilly nodded, smiling. “I was born in Texas. We are born knowing how to ride.”

  “And what letters do we have left after ‘lasso’? We have tha-space-cracy. Hmm, if you rearrange them, you can spell ‘Cathay,’ with a ‘c’ and an ‘r’ left over. C is just a way to say ‘sea,’ and Cathay is an old name for China. But what is ‘r’?

 

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