"Daddy!”
"U-n-n-h-u-h?" He was engrossed in a new medical journal and only vaguely aware of his daughter's voice.
"Daddy, pay attention to me!"
"Sure, sure." He looked up into her pretty, agitated 17-year-old face. He read irritation there, and perhaps something more — maybe a touch of fear. "Yes, Millie, what's bothering you?"
"Daddy, some of the kids called me a Chink yesterday."
There were tears in her eyes — Chinese eyes that looked out of a feminine equivalent of his own countenance.
He laughed.
"Well, we can't deny that you're Chinese without throwing out your mother, and I don't think you want that."
"But Daddy, Chink is not Chinese. Chink is a nasty word — and they said it like I heard a white boy from the South call a black boy from California last semester. Nigger!"
Racial discrimination was rare at the American high school. The school was a melting pot — dominantly American but with many Chinese students and scattered representation from countries maintaining diplomatic missions in Taipei. He wondered what might have happened to bring on such an instance of name calling. And he also wondered how he could reassure his daughter and restore the self-confidence so essential to the child of mixed blood.
"Honey," he said. "It probably didn't mean anything. You know how the kids are. They say these things without thinking. How did it happen, anyway?"
"I was walking past the sun dial with Mike after lunch," she said. "Mildred was one of them. Maybe she put them up to it. I think she has a thing for Mike."
"Well," he said, "maybe you would like to go back to Chinese school." She had finished Chinese middle school while tutoring in English, and had then gone on to American high school. He and Shu-ling had agreed on the mixed education. Millie had not objected.
"Oh, that would be just as bad," she said. "The kids would call me Tsa-tsung again."
Tsa-tsung was not a bad word. It meant only "mixed blood". The literal meaning didn't matter. What counted was use of the expression as an epithet.
"I suppose they would," he said. "Besides, you would lose a year, if you went back, and college would be a problem."
''I don't want to change, Daddy. It's just that I don't like to be called names — and I don't understand why I should be. The Chinese think they are the best and the Americans think they are the best. They can put up with each other. But when you put the two together, they are both against you."
"Not always, Millie. You know that's not true. Your friends don't feel that way. I don't. Your mother doesn't. Don't forget that you also have Chinese and American grandparents who do not— and who are proud of you."
And who love you with all their hearts, he thought.
The gate bell rang imperiously — one ... two ... three rings, Mike's signal to Millie.
"I've got to run," she said unnecessarily. "Mike and I are going for a swim this afternoon."
"Watch out for sharks," he said, and meant the swimming kind. They had been bad off northern Taiwan. There had been a death and some of the beaches were off limits.
She was gone. A moment later he heard the gate slam and the roar of a souped up motor and the putt-putt of pipes. He grinned. The kids weren't so unlucky on Taiwan. Chinese authorities looked the other way when an American boy's car lost a muffler. He had lost his as a boy in the States — but that was more than 20 years ago. Things had changed. Maybe noise bothered Americans more than Chinese.
"Sue," he called. "Sue, come here a minute." She was in the kitchen fixing Saturday luncheon, but old Shamei could finish that. Shamei could cook as well as Sue-but Sue would never admit it. To do so would be to lose some of her importance to the family.
"What is it, Fred?" she asked. "I just put an omelette in the pan, and you know Shamei will overcook it.'·
"Oh, nonsense," he said.
He put his arm around his wife and looked at her affectionately. She was tall for a Chinese girl, and still slender. New friends could never believe that she was over 40. She looked 28 or 29-30 at the most.
"Of course, Shamei doesn't cook with the same gas that you do, but it doesn't matter this time. I want to tell you something. The kids have been calling Millie names again."
Her hurt eyes looked into his. Sue had never understood unkindness, no matter what the motivation. Especially, she had never been able to comprehend racial or national discrimination. Her father had been an ambassador. She was brought up in the cosmopolitan capitals of a big and fascinating world. Father had taught her, too, the old Confucian precept that all men are brothers. She had believed it. She still did.
"Why do people do that?" she asked. "Sometimes it makes me think we were wrong to marry and have Millie. We love each other and we are happy. But what is our love doing to the life it created?"
"It's not serious," I think," he replied. "Seems to be a matter of Mildred being
jealous of Millie. The subject of the jealousy is that handsome n'er-do-well Mike."
"Maybe we shouldn't let Millie go out with Mike," she said. "Then there wouldn't be any trouble."
"That's not so, and you know it," he said. "We have brought up Millie as a free human being, subject only to the rule of not hurting others. How could we interfere?"
"Mildred's hurt," she said.
"I suppose so," he answered, "but the whole thing is only puppy love and by fall semester it will undoubtedly be Tom, Dick or Harry for Millie-and maybe Mildred, too. "
"You are right, I guess," she said, "as you usually are. Anyway, let's forget about it for now and eat Shamei's burned-up omelette. "
They walked into the dining room hand-in-hand. The omelette was delicious —fluffy, light, and cooked to within a second of perfection.
"A little overdone, but not so bad," he said.
She looked across the table at him and smiled her pleasure. She would praise Shamei later but she wanted him to regard his wife as indispensable. He did, and she was, but she was too modest ever to be really sure of it.
Twenty years before he had come to Taiwan as director of the new American hospital. It was a good first position after his navy medical service. But he had not expected to stay.
Then he met Millie. She had taken her nurse's training in the United States, and returned to China to help her country. But China was falling into the hands of the Communists. Somehow she made it across the vastness of the land — from Peiping to Shanghai, to Canton and Hongkong. When the foundation advertised for English-speaking nurses in Hongkong, she applied and was accepted immediately. Her credentials were outstanding.
He had asked her to become his office nurse. She looked at him long and searchingly — and then accepted without a moment's further hesitation. Love had come quickly. Never had he known a woman so competent, so feminine, and — when there was need to be — so strong.
They were married less than a year after the hospital opened. From the beginning it was a perfect union. Together they had planned and opened a clinic of their own, and then expanded it into a sizable hospital serving the whole community, not merely the American colony and other foreigners. They had practiced good medicine and had found a good life and happiness.
The gate bell began its clamor once more. Then Millie burst into the room and hurled herself into her mother's arms. She was crying as though her heart was broken — and it was.
Mike had told her he was going to marry Mildred.
"Oh, Mother, I know it's because I am half Chinese. I know, I know. I hate her"
Sue patted her daughter's head.
"You are too young for Mike, anyway," she said.
Millie only cried the more. "But I love him, Mother," she sobbed, "and I thought he loved me. Everything changed so fast. I don't understand."
Sue looked at Fred questioningly. He nodded.
"Millie, I must tell you something that you have to know. We didn't tell you before, because it didn't matter then. Now it does."
Millie was quieter now and listening. "You know that we care nothing for a person's skin color or nationality," Sue said. "But others in the world don't always feel the same way. We can't force our view on them. We can try to keep them from hurting others."
"Mother, I know all that. None of it changes the fact that Mike doesn't want me because I am part Chinese."
"And that's exactly where you are wrong. Millie. It has nothing to do with your being Chinese. Do you know where Mike is from?"
"Of course, he's from Mississippi."
"And his father and mother and two sisters, you know them, too?"
"Yes, Mother."
"Have they been nice to you?"
"Always. None of them discriminates against Chinese. His father doesn't like Negroes, but Mike laughs at that and says it's because of Dixie heritage and that his father can't help it."
"What you say is connected with what I have to tell you, Millie. You see, several weeks ago Mike came to see me and your father."
Millie's face showed her surprise. "But he never said a thing to me!"
"No, beforehand there were reasons why he did not, and afterward there were other reasons. Mike wanted our permission to ask you to marry him. He said he knew it would be a long engagement, and that you both had to finish school, but that he loved you and wanted to get the future settled."
Fred stirred in his chair. "Remember, Mike's all right," he said.
Sue gave him a soft smile. "Because of Mike's family background, we had to tell him," she said. "You see, it's not only a matter of my being Chinese. Your father's grandmother was also from Mississippi, and she was black."
Millie looked into her father's face. She saw kindness there, but no hint of Negro blood. She shook her head. "I can't believe it," she said. "But even if what you say is true, why should that matter more than my Chineseness?
"It didn't to Mike," her mother said. "But we insisted that Mike tell his family. And Mike's father objected — strongly. He forbade the marriage. Mike came back to talk it out with us. We all agreed that the marriage would have slim chance of success under such circumstances."
"Yes, Mother, but how could Mike turn away from me and in the next moment decide to marry Mildred?"
"Because he was afraid that if he didn't impose some obstacle between himself and you, you two would inevitably come together again. He likes Mildred but he doesn't love her. She knows that, too. She knows the whole story. Whoever may have called you bad names, she wasn't one of them."
Millie sat on the edge of her father's chair, and kissed him on the ear.
"Do you mind, Father?" she asked. "Mind what?"
"Being a White Darkie with a Yellow wife?"
He laughed. "No," he said, "I wouldn't have missed a minute of it."
The phone rang.
"I'll get it," Millie said, and went into her father's study.
In a moment she was back. "There's been a bad accident," she said. "You are needed at the hospital right away."
Her voice fell to a whisper. "It's Mike's father," she said. "His car skidded off the Tienmou road and his condition is critical."
Dr. Saunders — Sue at his side-looked down at the barely breathing body of Mike's father, and went to work. The chest damage was extensive. He was four hours in the operating room and on the critical list for two weeks afterward. Medical genius and a strong Scotch-Irish constitution pulled him through.
The day before he left the hospital, he asked to see Dr. Saunders alone.
"I owe you my life," he said. "The only way I can repay you is to give you my son. I want you to know that I withdraw my objections to the marriage."
"I'm still black," Millie's father answered. Mike's father turned his head away.
Some days later Mike came to see Dr. Saunders.
"Father really means it," he said. "He has reformed. He said that he never met a finer man than you, and that he has come to understand the stupidity — and futility — of discrimination."
"Does that mean you want to renew your proposal to Millie?" her father asked. "What about Mildred's feelings?"
"Haven't you heard?" Mike asked. "Heard what?"
Mike grinned. "Millie has a new boy friend," he said. "I'm glad to be the first to tell you. He's a fine boy, none better and he's Chinese."
That evening at dinner, Millie owned up to her new love.
"I don't know what I saw in that old Mike," she said. "Why, Daddy, he's ancient —and Mildred is so right for him. But Sammy's wonderful, he's my dream boy."
"Sammy? Don't tell me he's Jewish. I was told he was Chinese."
"Oh, he's Chinese all right —like I am — but he was born in New York, and his mother is a Jewess. Her maiden name was Cohen. Both his father and mother are doctors, and they came to Taipei to work in radiology at the Armed Forces Hospital. Sammy's a year ahead of me, and we are going to Stanford and then to Med School together. Oh, Daddy, it's so wonderful."
Fred and Sue grinned at each other. As Confucius said, all men are brothers. He might also have said something about young girls changing their minds very quickly.
"She's only 17," Sue said softly. "There's plenty of time in which to change her mind again."
"And maybe come up with a Martian Taoist?" he said. "Let's hope we can keep it simple — Anglo-Saxon-Chinese-Jewish-Episcopal-Buddhist grandchildren are good enough for me."
"I love you," Sue said. He blew her a kiss.
Millie was paying no attention. She was thinking that Sammy was such a nice name. Just like Sammy Davis Jr! That reminded her of the cute Negro boy who had just come to school and whose father was an American army colonel. She hadn't met him yet, but she had heard he could play the guitar and sing like Nat King Cole.
It was so wonderful, Millie thought, not to be a pure-race phony.
The Chinese say: Ai jen che jen heng ai chih —
Those who love others are always loved in return.