[infopopup:Jooking] in C-Town

1945 summer in India, winter here. My mother, brother and I were among the crowd of refugees waiting in line on the dock to board. We had been waiting in the hot Bombay sun for most of the day. Suddenly my name was being called from behind my back. Eleanor! I recognized her as the sister of Betty, a girl in my class in Diocesan, an Episcopalian school in Kowloon we had attended for a few months before the Japanese invasion.

A couple of years above us, Eleanor had been a very popular girl in school; I had admired her from afar, always stylish, she had worn her cardigan sweater on the outside of her uniform like a cape with sleeves hanging loose, swinging with every stride. Cool. Betty and I had been the opposite. She did not seek attention. Neither did I.  I knew no English and most of the time had no clue what was going on. I don’t think we ever spoke. We sat on the opposite ends of the last row where we hoped the sister would not call on us. The only thing I remember from that class was drawing a British flag carefully putting a thin line parallel to the fat line with a little plastic ruler… When the Japanese invaded, school closed. I gave no thought to where anyone else went. My family would spend the next several years as refugees, escaping from the ever expanding Japanese invasion. Now here we were, Eleanor and Betty, their little sister Mary, and their mother along with my family all  bound for America on the same ship.

In the two months at sea Betty and I became fast pals, scurrying around the decks of the troop carrier, hustling sailors for chewing gum, scoring soda crackers for her seasick mother, attending art classes taught by a nun, sitting cross legged on the floor to watch the nightly movies, and fighting bullies–one, in particular, a British boy named John who had made a  habit of being extremely nasty to us. We kept an eye out for opportunities to get even. One quiet afternoon after lunch when no one else seemed to be around I went to the end of a long narrow passageway and called John while Betty waited, out of sight, in a recessed doorway somewhere in the middle of that hall. “John! John!…John!” He came running. Just as he passed  Betty stuck her foot out and he flipped, neatly, over it, landing, with a most satisfying smack, on his head.

Ying & Tung