Ha Jin - A Free Life

Both Nan and Pingping volunteered to have their blood drawn to see if they could be a donor, and later Taotao did the same, but none of them was a match. The Mitchells were quite touched nonetheless. Dave said to Nan, "We appreciate you trying to help her. You're a good man."

"Sure. Eef you or Janet had leukemia, we'd do the same. Don't sink I volunteered only because Hailee's a Chinese girl." "I understand."

Then Nan hit on an idea. Why not contact the local Chinese community and see if they could help? Both Janet and Dave liked the suggestion, but they didn't know many people except the few whose children attended the Sunday Chinese classes at Emory. Nan didn't have a lot of contacts either, yet he nerved himself to call Mei Hong and ask her to help, though he believed she must still hate his guts. To his surprise, she eagerly agreed to spread the word among the Chinese students and the people in Chinatown. Also, she was going to contact all the Chinese churches in the Atlanta area and plead with them for help. She even said she'd go to Emory Hospital and have her own blood drawn.

As it turned out, she didn't need to go there, because after the local Chinese-language newspapers wrote about Hailee's case and published the Mitchells' plea for help, so many people offered to have their blood tested that a temporary clinic was set up at the Chinatown Plaza in Chamblee. A week later, to everyone's amazement, a thirteen-year-old girl in Duluth, named Moli, was found to be a match. At first, Moli's parents were unsure if they should let their daughter donate her bone marrow, but Mei Hong convinced them, saying that if they didn't help to save Hailee, they'd be despised by all the Chinese here. She also told them that a bone marrow transplant was similar to a blood transfusion, with no harm done to the donor's health. So the girl's parents, both recent immigrants working at Peace Supermarket, yielded and even let Mei Hong take their daughter to an interview with a reporter.

When the good news came, the Mitchells were overjoyed and broke into tears. Dave hugged Nan and wept like a little boy. With trepidation he and Janet spoke with Mei Hong on the phone and were reassured that the girl's parents wouldn't go back on their promise. In fact, Mei Hong had become the spokeswoman for the girl's family, since her parents couldn't speak a word of English. To

Nan, that woman had simply taken the whole thing into her own hands as if she were Moli's aunt.

Nan was puzzled. To him Mei Hong was just a jingoistic firebrand who couldn't think straight. He wondered whether she'd have let her own daughter be a donor if her child had been a match. When he talked with her about Moli, she said with her eyes fixed on him, "You think I'm a hypocrite, huh? Let me tell you, if Moli were my daughter, I would let her do the same. Every member of my family had our blood tested. Hailee is a Chinese girl, so we must do whatever we can to save her. Wouldn't you donate your bone marrow if you were a match? No?"

"Of course I would. I had my blood drawn too," Nan said.

After a thorough exam, which ascertained that Moli was healthy, Dr. Caruth explained to the girl's parents the process of marrow donation through Mei Hong's interpretation. The couple was fully convinced that it wouldn't impair their daughter's health, and they signed the paperwork. Nan and Pingping wondered why the girl herself hadn't said a word about the decision made for her by others. Did she want to donate her bone marrow or not? Wasn't she scared? Pingping asked Moli once, but the pumpkin-faced girl just replied, "Aunt Hong says I should help save Hailee, and if I were sick, others would do the same for me." Asked further, she'd say no more. Pingping felt for her so much that she packed a box of assorted appetizers for her, but Moli wouldn't accept it, not until Mei Hong told her to take it home and let her parents know it came from the Gold Wok.

A few days later Moli's bone marrow was injected into Hailee. The child's initial reaction was disheartening. She ran a high fever, and fluid was building up in her lungs, which made her wheeze. An X-ray showed her heart was enlarged considerably. She had to be kept in intensive care. The doctors at Emory Hospital, where Hailee stayed, said these problems were normal after a bone marrow transplant and it was too early to conclude that the treatment had failed. The Mitchells kept their fingers crossed.

Then, a week later, Hailee's fever subsided some and a soft sheen returned to her cheeks. When she smiled, a sparkle appeared in her eyes again. Her lungs began to clear and the size of her heart was shrinking. All the tests indicated that the transplanted bone marrow had been producing new blood cells. Now, positively, her leukemia was in remission.

Hailee's leukemia was cured eventually, and Mei Hong became another of her godmothers, though the Wus still avoided her.

IN EARLY JUNE, Nan had won a prize in a raffle at Grand Panda Supermarket. He was offered the plane fare for a round trip from Atlanta to Beijing. By now he had become a U.S. citizen and would have no difficulty getting a tourist visa from the Chinese consulate in Houston. Should he go back to visit? He asked his wife, who disliked the idea. Then should they let the tickets, worth $650, be wasted?

Nan begged Pingping to allow him to go back for a short visit. It was so hot these days that the restaurant didn't have much business. With the help of Chef Mu, everything would be all right at the Gold Wok. But Pingping wouldn't let him leave. He continued pleading with her for a few weeks, to no avail. Finally he said he wanted to see his parents before they died. Those words made his wife relent.

Nan decided to depart within a week. He wondered if he should visit his parents-in-law in Jinan City as well, but Pingping, after giving thought to that, told him not to-she wanted him to come back as soon as possible. She planned to return and see her parents once she was naturalized. Nan promised he'd make a quiet trip and come back in just a week or so. She also warned him not to speak against the Chinese government publicly. In the past the police had often questioned his siblings about his activities abroad. Not until two years ago had they stopped harrying them, because his father had assured the authorities that Nan had "cleaned up his act" and was no longer a dissident.

What Pingping didn't know was that Nan wanted to return to China for another purpose also-to see Beina. He didn't intend to resume a relationship with her; he just needed that woman's face and voice to rekindle his passion so that he could write poetry. He needed the vision of an ideal female figure for his art, just like a painter who uses a model. Yes, he wanted to use her just as she had once used him.

Nan boarded a Boeing 737 bound for Beijing one morning in late July. As the plane taxied toward the runway, somehow he didn't feel excited. He looked around and saw that almost half the passengers were Chinese, and nobody paid heed to the imminent takeoff. He remembered the intense excitement he and the other passengers had experienced twelve years ago when he flew for the first time in his life, from Beijing to San Francisco. As the plane was taking off, many of them had applauded and some had leaned aside toward the portholes to catch through the ragged clouds a bird's-eye view of the cityscape of the capital, which tilted while the plane banked a little. He also remembered how he and his fellow travelers, most of whom were students, had been nauseated by a certain smell in the plane- so much so that it had made some of them unable to swallow the inflight meal of Parmesan chicken served in a plastic dish. It was a typical American odor that sickened some new arrivals. Everywhere in the United States there was this sweetish smell, like a kind of chemical, especially in the supermarket, where even vegetables and fruits had it. Then one day in the following week Nan suddenly found that his nose could no longer detect it. Another memory of his first flight brought a smile to his face. Like some of the passengers crossing the Pacific Ocean for the first time, after eating the lunch he had wiped the plastic fork and knife clean and noticed people looking at one another and wondering what to do with these things. Some of them put the knives and forks into their pockets or handbags, carrying them all the way to their destinations in America, because they couldn't imagine that all the plastic containers and tools were disposable. They had no idea what kind of plentitude and waste they were going to encounter in this new land.