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THE PEOPLE V. WILLIAM CHAO

Journalism 238: Writing for New Media

Posted April 21, 7:51 a.m.

My name is Lynn Chin. I’m a member of Haven’s Chinese American community.

In this blog, I will cover the trial of William Chao as my final project for Journalism 238. My personal goals are as follows: Be clear and fair. Follow the assignment guidelines for blog format:

• Use short sentences.
• Make paragraphs three or fewer lines.
• Use white space.
• Use sentence fragments to enliven prose.
• Use bullet points when possible.

Disclaimer: Computers aren’t allowed in the courtroom. I never learned cursive and can’t print very fast. I can’t vouch my quotes from the trial will be perfectly or even sequentially transcribed. For accuracy, check the court reporter’s transcript.

Posted April 21, 6 p.m.

We met this morning in the county courthouse’s biggest room, under the rotunda. 204It’s like a courtroom from a 1960s television show. There is dark wood wainscoting. An American flag. In the front are tables for the lawyers, the judge’s bench, and a witness stand. In the gallery are about 150 wooden chairs, with an aisle down the middle.

The courtroom was completely full. The following groups sat in the gallery:

• 26 members of the Chinese American community (rows 2–4), including me and my parents.
• Eight nuns from the Spiritual House (row 1).
• Approximately 120 other members of the public (rows 5–16).

My parents and their friends wore pale blue “DG” buttons in support of Dagou. But a lot of the people seated behind us wore red and navy buttons that read, in white type, “JUSTICE FOR ALF.”

My friend Fang sat down next to me. His mother, Ma Wa, was with my parents. “I’m amazed our parents are coming to this,” I said to him. “My mom and dad hardly ever use vacation days. Now they’ve taken a week off to watch the trial.”

“We need to be here,” Fang said. “We need to know what’s going on. If Dagou’s found guilty, it’ll make us all look bad. This is about Haven’s attitude toward all Asians.”

Fang is a bit of a conspiracy theorist.

Not much happened to start off. Mr. Stern, defense attorney, requested not to allow the prosecution to refer to the defendant as “Dog Eater.” The request was granted by Judge Lopate. Now they’re choosing the jury. This is called “voir dire.”

Posted April 23, 5:30 p.m.

Just checking in to report that voir dire is over. There are twelve jury members and two alternates.

This is a bit off topic, but one of the jury members is familiar to me. She’s a chirpy, stout woman in burgundy boots. I know her. I can’t remember from where, but when I watched her answering the questions, I had an unexpected feeling. I felt guilty. 205

Posted April 24, 12:15 p.m.

I’m alone at Starbucks. Everyone else is having lunch at McDonald’s, but I need time to myself. Witnesses for the prosecution start to testify next week, and I have a lot to think about.

In case you don’t know, Simeon Strycker is the prosecuting attorney (working with assistant prosecuting attorney Corinne Udweala). He’s a wiry, tallish man. He has thin hair and wears little gold-rimmed glasses.

I can’t not mention this thing Strycker does: In the middle of his opening speech, he’d pause and take a drink from a water bottle he keeps with him at all times. The bottle has a black plastic nipple. While he’s sucking it, his eyes roll, or focus, inward. The nipple squeals slightly.

Strycker began: “The evidence in this case will tell the story of familial resentment and the violent end of an American dream.” He said Mr. and Mrs. Chao “worked inhuman hours to build their American dream” of owning a restaurant, all while raising their sons.

He defined “the young William ‘Dagou’ Chao” as a “creative type” who didn’t make it in New York City and came home to live off of the family business.

Next, he spent a lot of time setting the scene of the alleged murder and describing the party. He said that:

• Dagou had shoveled the snow into piles so high you couldn’t see into the restaurant from the street.
• The restaurant was lavishly and expensively decorated.
• There was an unusual amount of free food and alcohol at the party.

He said Big Chao and Dagou fought afterwards. Big Chao said the party was too extravagant. He accused Dagou of stealing money and Dagou didn’t deny it. Then Big Chao threatened to call the police.

Near midnight, Mr. Strycker said, when the last employee left the premises, the father and son were still arguing. The next morning, Big Chao’s body was found locked in the restaurant freezer room. 206

Posted April 24, 6 p.m.

In contrast to Strycker, the defense attorney, Jerry Stern, is a round, frumpy guy. He nodded at jury members like he knows them. Maybe he does. Maybe he’s stood in line with each of them at the Red Owl. It’s the difference between Haven and a bigger city.

Jerry spoke simply, making a few main points:

• That the prosecution’s claims cannot be taken as the truth until he can show evidence to back them up.
• That “precisely how Leo Chao became locked in the freezer room is not known.”
• That there are no witnesses to his death and nothing was captured on camera.
• That much of the evidence is circumstantial.

He said, “It’s the prosecution’s theory Leo Chao was killed intentionally. Intention is not a given in this case.” He reminded everyone that Dagou is innocent until proven guilty.

Jerry’s partner, the assistant defense attorney, is a dark-haired woman named Sara Stojkovic. I haven’t heard her speak yet. She’s polite, organized, and neatly dressed: Jerry’s polar opposite. I’m relieved he has someone like this.

Posted April 27, 9:30 a.m.

It’s Monday morning, and court is almost in session. I’m in the bathroom, typing in a stall. I need to be alone.

Here’s what happened: When I got to the courthouse an hour ago, there was a line of women in the hall, waiting for this bathroom. I got in line behind a woman with a frosted-blond ponytail. When it was her turn to enter, she glowered at me, opened the door, and slammed it in my face. She wore a JUSTICE FOR ALF pendant on a ribbon around her neck.

Posted April 27, 12:20 p.m.

Starbucks, again. This morning we saw Strycker try to build his “wall of evidence” and Jerry punching holes in it. 207

The prosecution’s first witness turned out to be a woman we all recognized from the Christmas party: the unexpected guest. Her name is Cecilia Chang.

Cecilia’s a social worker who’s fascinated by her heritage. During the party, she told my parents how she met her grandfather during a semester abroad. She took four years of Mandarin in college, and has been writing to him in Chinese (!) for twelve years.

The Bible readers loved her: my parents, the Fans, Ma Wa, and the others. But it turns out she’d come to the party searching for her grandfather’s money and personal effects. They disappeared when he died at Union Station.

She testified that:

• Two days before the party, one of the Chao family—it would be James—most likely took her late grandfather’s luggage containing $50,000 from the Chicago train station.
• At the party, people talked about how Dagou couldn’t afford such a lavish spread. Jerry Stern made an objection (hearsay) that was sustained. Cecilia was probably telling the truth, but it is hearsay.

Strycker backed this up with a police security video of her grandfather, walking through the train station, carrying a bag. She was somewhat discredited in the cross-examination, when Jerry got her to admit she had no written proof that there was money in the bag.

But clearly there was something. Some connection the prosecution was going to make between the disappearance of the money and Big Chao’s death.

Strycker then brought in his second witness, Yvonne Winters, a night nurse from Memorial Hospital. She was this gaunt, serious white woman. She says she heard Dagou yell he wanted to kill his dad.

She was professional and persuasive. But Jerry asked a bunch of questions that made it clear she couldn’t tell a Chao family member from another visitor. She literally thinks we all look alike. She has what Fang would call cross-racial identification issues. 208

I also made these notes: “Stanley Pardlo, owner and manager of Haven Fine Wines and Spirits. Morning of December 24 at 9:25 a.m., rang up purchases by William Chao of

• 2 6-bottle cases of Stolichnaya
• 2 cases of Jack Daniel’s whiskey
• 1 case of bourbon
• 1 case of white wine
• 1 case of red wine
• 1 case of rosé
• 4 cases of Tsingtao beer
• 1 case Korbel champagne

There was also a package of decorative umbrellas.

The total purchase amount was over $2,000, paid in cash. Exhibit No. 27, identified by the witness, shows the receipt recording this. Pardlo remembers because it was unprecedented for William Chao to pay in cash and because the bill was so unusually extravagant.

This is off topic, but I can’t imagine James stealing anyone’s money. Can’t imagine Dagou using stolen money to fund the Christmas party liquor. Strycker has created a James, and a Dagou, nothing like the people I know.

Posted April 27, 7:30 p.m.

I’m at home in my room, still mulling over the prosecution’s evidence. Where did Dagou get the cash to buy so much liquor when just the night before, according to a clerk from the 7-Eleven, he was unable to produce enough cash to buy some lottery tickets?

I am also thinking about the woman with the ponytail who slammed the door in my face. This dog-eating story is a lightning rod. It has nothing to do with the Chao family, or with my parents’ friends. Or me. 209

But I’m beginning to see Fang is right: our Chineseness has something to do with the way the prosecutor is presenting this trial. So I’ve decided to include below some notes I haven’t used because they come out to longer than three lines. I’m sick of short sentences and paragraphs, sick of white space. I also hate bullet points, though they are useful.

• There was something in the way Strycker set the scene for the crime during his opening statement last week. Specifically, he described Dagou “laboring,” plowing and shoveling the parking lot the day before the party, how he heaped more snow on top of the piles made by the city plows, which, “like a wall around the restaurant, made it difficult for anyone to see inside.” As if Dagou made a Great Wall, and the Christmas party was some ancient Chinese secret. As if Dagou had tried to prevent anyone from seeing a transgression about to happen in the restaurant.
• Strycker also spent a lot of time in his statement describing the restaurant on the night of the party, as if it were a movie setting: red lanterns, walls “glowing with scarlet light,” and the Christmas tree itself an out-of-place American gesture. His list of party details created a vivid mix of cultural idiosyncrasies: Santa Claus, weird dishes, sea creatures, toasts in Mandarin. I grew up attending the Chaos’ Christmas celebration every year. I didn’t recognize the party described by Strycker.
• Strycker repeatedly referred to our community as an “enclave.” This echoes the language in which the print and online media have referred to us as an “immigrant enclave,” an “insular group” that is “culturally self-isolating.”

As early as his opening statement, Strycker deliberately distorted the story to make the courtroom (and, more importantly, the jury) find it harder to relate to Dagou.

I just realized I didn’t write down the fact that there is not a single Asian person on the jury. Why didn’t I write it down? Am I so surrounded by white people, in my Haven public life, that I don’t notice? I’m sure they notice me, notice I am not white.

It was a smart tactic of Jerry’s to use her own cross-racial identification bias against Yvonne Winters. But it makes me depressed. 210

Posted April 27, 11:14 p.m.

One more thing: I remember where I’ve met the chirpy juror in the burgundy boots. She is a middle school librarian, and Nesbit Ng and I were mean to her in seventh grade.

She’s this prim, heavily built woman with bewildered, light blue eyes. She wears black skirts and draping sweaters. We made fun of her, called her “The Lump”; and once, in the middle of study period, I persuaded Nesbit to program all of the computers to burst out into the Chipmunk Christmas song. She was mad.

Posted April 28, 8 a.m.

No one has any idea what O-Lan is going to say when she testifies today, because nobody really knows her. This is not exactly our fault; my mom says she “makes it her business not to be known.” She visits Ma Wa’s store, but Ma Wa says she never converses. Only Mr. Fan has spoken to her for any length of time, because he’s made it his responsibility to welcome every Mandarin-speaking newcomer to Haven. And even Mr. Fan doesn’t know much about her. As far as we can tell, O-Lan has no family and no friends. She seems to need no one.

Posted April 28, 12:30 p.m.

Told Fang and Alice I had to get my own lunch.

This morning, while waiting for the trial to start, I had a fight with Fang about what he calls my lack of focus. (He read the description I posted about Strycker and his water bottle.) He said, “What kind of reporter would spend an entire paragraph in the middle of trial coverage writing a description of the prosecuting attorney drinking from a water bottle?”

Maybe Fang’s right. But I might as well give up on trying to write according to the format. To be honest, Strycker is beginning to give me the willies. He’s like a ghost. His movements are so light, it’s like he doesn’t have arms inside his perfect suit jacket. He’s, what do they call it—immaterial. And to think he’s portrayed us as oddities. Is he human.

Also, the Lump loves him. She gazes at him in fascination, with her eyes riveted on his face every time he speaks. Is he casting a kind of racist spell on her? Or, is 211it somehow my fault? (Our fault: will our seventh-grade mischief, our pubescent cruelty, give her a bias against Asians? We, who judged the Lump, deserve it. But does Dagou deserve it? Will we be responsible for Dagou’s fate?)

I am starting to sense that in this trial, the boundaries that have kept separate the various compartments of my life (school, home, Asianness, privacy, and misbehavior) are breaking down, and these disparate parts are being revealed to the world.

Here is what happened in trial this morning:

• A forensic locksmith testified that the freezer in the basement of the Fine Chao was, in Strycker’s words, “a death trap.”
• He said, once you’ve entered and closed the door, the only way to leave is to use a key from the inside. There was an old sign (Exhibit No. 2) kept near the shelf with the key, reading, “KEY TO EXIT FREEZER ROOM. DO NOT REMOVE THIS KEY.”
• A handyman who’s done work on the freezer identified and read the sign. The freezer wasn’t up to code—it was grandfathered in, or something.
• O-Lan testified.

O-Lan wore her work clothes: black pants, a dark blue shirt, black socks, and dirty sneakers. She clearly doesn’t care. She didn’t make eye contact with anyone, stared at the floor ten feet in front of her.

The interpreter was a youngish guy with a shiny forehead who spoke musically but mechanically in Mandarin and English. My mom says it’s a Malaysian accent. She wondered if he’s new to Haven, but Mr. Fan, who knows everything, says he came out just for the day, from Chicago.

There was a kind of stutter in the beginning of the conversation. Even the interpreter had to get his bearings. I’ve never heard a Mandarin accent like O-Lan’s, thick as a dialect. I never noticed how much attitude she has. I also had the feeling she was frightened. 212

I was struck by how much of the restaurant work is on O-Lan’s shoulders. The Chaos work hard, but she’s their servant. She unloads vegetables and any supplies. She washes and cuts basically all of the vegetables. During and after the meal, she loads the dishwasher. She runs errands. She cleans the floors and counters, uses the vacuum cleaner, and she also handles garbage and recycling. The cooks are men (Dagou, his dad, and one other cook who was out of town over winter break).

Strycker asked her to describe the events that took place in the Fine Chao between 11:30 and 11:45 p.m. on December 24. Who were the last guests to leave? She said James Chao and the hired help. Also, “that American woman,” which could have been Brenda, could have been Katherine. I didn’t know O-Lan felt contempt for Americans, but it was in her voice. Strycker wanted to know who was still in the restaurant between 11:45 and 11:59 p.m. She said, Dagou Chao and Leo Chao and herself. She was vacuuming the carpet. During this time, she could hear Leo Chao and William Chao arguing in the kitchen. She says she could hear them because she stopped the vacuum to clean up with a mop.

According to O-Lan: During this confrontation, between 11:45 and 11:59 p.m., Leo Chao claimed Dagou took from his (Leo’s) Ford a bag containing $50,000. He called Dagou “a thief.” O-Lan said Dagou didn’t deny taking the money. Big Chao said the money rightfully belonged to a stranger, and that he (Big Chao) had been planning to turn it in to the police (Fang says this doesn’t sound like Leo Chao ). He told Dagou he was going to tell the police what Dagou did.

At this point, Jerry leaped out of his chair and yelled, “Objection, hearsay! Objection, please admonish the witness to answer only what she’s been asked. Motion to strike everything after the answer to the question!” The motions were denied.

Strycker made O-Lan identify Exhibit No. 7, which is a picture of the door to the freezer room. She couldn’t do it. Had she ever been in the freezer room? The basement? No and no. Did she know anything about a key on a shelf inside the freezer room? No. He said, please see Exhibit No. 2 (the sign about the key). He asked her if she could read the sign and she could not. 213

Oh, and there was one weird thing. When Strycker asked O-Lan if she’d ever been in the freezer room, she said,

“No. I am a vegetarian. My mother was a vegetarian. That room is Leo Chao’s temple.”

“What do you mean by ‘Leo Chao’s temple’?”

“He goes into that room and worships meat.”

“What kinds of meat did Leo worship?”

(A pause here, while the people wearing JUSTICE FOR ALF buttons fixed their eyes on her and held their breath.)

“All meats. Every kind of meat.”

The assistant defense attorney Sara Stojkovic’s questions for O-Lan were mostly about her immigration status. She’s been living in Haven for years, but with no papers. Would she confirm she’s in the US as an undocumented immigrant? Yes. Did she receive any payment in exchange for testifying? No. Did she ask the State, that is Mr. Strycker, to help her with her immigration issues? Yes. Did Mr. Stryker refer her to a lawyer who would help her with her immigration issues? He did.

That’s it for this morning. I’m going to call Fang. This afternoon, more witnesses for the prosecution, including James, who has been subpoenaed.

“I’ve Got This!”

At the McDonald’s, James waits for Fang, watching the rain rush down the gutters to the bottom of the hill. He rereads Lynn’s blog. Judge Lopate has ruled witnesses aren’t allowed to be part of the audience in the courtroom until after they testify. In order to be near Dagou, James has come every day to sit in the courthouse waiting room. From across the hall, he has no idea what’s happening in the courtroom. He knows he’s not supposed 214to read anything about the trial, or talk about the trial with anyone who has been in the courtroom. But he can’t help himself.

James rereads, I am a vegetarian. My mother was a vegetarian. He rereads, The Chaos work hard, but she is their servant. He turns off his laptop and stares at its blank screen.

He knows, now, why Cecilia Chang, the stranger at the holiday party, was so familiar to him. Her expression and her hair cut into bangs. She’d been the girl with the beagle from the snapshot he had seen, held in the old man’s shaking hand, months ago, in Union Station.

He remembers telling his father, in what now feels like another life, of his desire to be small, to be a part of something larger than himself. Throughout the trial, but especially today, as the moment for him to testify draws near, he has felt like a tiny creature approaching the enormous machine of justice, with its wheels juddering, ready to crush his life as well as those of his brothers. He told Fang he believed in the process. He now sees that the machine of justice, supposedly fair and impartial, is in reality subject to loosened screws, worn parts, and any number of quirks and forces that lie outside of his knowledge.

Fang enters the McDonald’s, talking on his phone.

“Didn’t he use the word ‘inhuman’?” Fang asks. He listens to the voice on the other end. “Doesn’t matter. He managed to work it in. You wait,” Fang says. “Gotta go. I’m with James now.” He puts away his phone. “That was Lynn. She’s become hung up on the question of where Dagou got his cash.” Fang yanks off his wet cap and lets it drip on the table. “Bag of cash!” he scoffs. “She’s still buying into Strycker’s case. Strycker’s all about appealing to clichés: The bag of cash. The American Dream. The inhuman laborer. The ambitious and ungrateful son who can’t appreciate what’s been done for him.”

“He said my parents ‘worked inhuman hours’ to build my dad’s American dream,” James says. “He did use the phrase in a positive way, if that’s possible.”

“You, too! You’re buying into the prosecution’s story,” Fang says. 215“He says Big Chao is a hardworking, stoic immigrant whose inhuman hours are an investment into the American Dream. He’s the quintessential Asian American, the model minority: humble, diligent, hardly a person. He put his sweat and blood into his children’s lives like every Asian parent.”

“That’s ridiculous,” James says. He pictures his father: coarse hair sticking straight up, eyes bulging suggestively at Katherine, winking lewdly at Gu Ling Zhu Chi and yelling, “Pork hock!” “Stoic? How can anyone believe—?”

“But as it turns out, a lot of random people who’ve been to the restaurant do believe he’s low to the ground, a humble server. The jury was nodding. Here’s the other thing,” Fang says, taking off his rain-speckled glasses. “According to the prosecution, Big Chao’s son William, a.k.a. Dagou, is not like him. William is a bad minority. He doesn’t appreciate the opportunities he’s been given in this country. He’s lazy and ungrateful, dishonest, a thief, and sexually enamored of a woman not appropriate for him, a white woman.”

“That’s also ridiculous.”

Fang squints with his naked eyes, rubbing at his glasses with a napkin. “Isn’t the idea that Dagou would carve and serve up Alf ridiculous? Isn’t this all ridiculous? Anyway, the prosecution says Dagou is an overindulged, oversexed, shiftless yellow-brown delinquent. He possesses an unscrupulous and insatiable greed. He’s a thief. And he wants Brenda, and money, and the restaurant, badly enough to kill. That’s Strycker’s story.” He examines his lenses. “What’re you eating for lunch?”

“Not hungry.”

“Buy something. Come on, you’ve gotta testify this afternoon.” He peers at James through his now-smeared glasses. “Where’s Ming?”

“His flight gets in at two o’clock. He’s coming straight from the airport. Fang, I need your advice. Last night I was thinking about my testimony. I had an idea about something you said a few weeks ago.”

“Let’s order.” 216

They order hamburgers, coffee, and for Fang a McFlurry with Butterfingers. Then Fang sits down, touches his hat. Still wet. He picks up his Big Mac with both hands and says, before taking a bite, “I’m all ears.”

James sits opposite, and begins. “That children’s book, The Five Chinese Brothers. You said the book is about the consequences of an unfortunate death. You said there was a cover-up attempted by the other brothers. But it wasn’t a cover-up, was it? The brothers don’t try to hide the murder, but they sub in for each other’s punishments. The one with an iron neck can’t be beheaded. The one with the stretchy rubber legs can’t be drowned under the sea, and so on. No one can tell the difference between the brothers, and so they think the First Brother is immortal, and they give up.”

Fang puts down his half-eaten burger and wipes his mouth. “The key is that the story itself assumes no one can tell the difference. The story only works if the reader believes the brothers look exactly alike. And, of course, there are the pictures.”

“Right, fine. So what if the world at large doesn’t care which brother they get, as long as it’s one of them?”

Fang takes a long sip from his McFlurry. “You’re going to claim it’s you? No one will buy it. You can’t hide your innocence to save your life.”

“It might as well be me,” James says.

Last night, as he and Alice lay together in his childhood room, their hearts easing, breath slowing into sleep, James jerked awake, certain it was early Christmas morning. He lay next to Alice, his heart pounding, convinced that they were together half a mile across town in Dagou’s bed, up above the restaurant. Hearing the thumping from below. “I remember now,” James said. Drowsily, Alice took his hand, but James didn’t sleep. The thumping from below—why hadn’t he remembered it? He’d been present, almost on the very spot where his father had died. He hadn’t told Fang about this. He hadn’t told his brothers. The thumping, a plea for help. In that moment, it had been in his power to prevent any of this from happening. What had he done? Turned over, gone back to sleep—in short, nothing.

An image appears in James’s mind. It’s a memory he has tried, for 217months, to push away. It comes only when he’s least expecting it: The face of his father’s corpse as he discovered it in the freezer room. The staring eyes frosted over with the gaze of a stone or marble statue. The expression of surprise, of sudden consternation.

He is not, and can never be, innocent.

 

After hamburgers and coffee, Fang and James climb the hill. As they reach the courthouse, they see a crowd of people around and under the bus station, holding red and navy signs: justice for alf! A small group of reporters and photographers disengage themselves from the crowd and rush toward them, into the rain. “Hiiii-ya!” Fang yells, bringing his hand down in a chopping motion. The reporters scatter. Fang grins at James and they enter the courthouse, go through security. The upstairs lobby is crowded with scores of wet umbrellas. James looks into the courtroom at a sea of red and navy buttons. He can only glance inside; he’s not allowed to enter until it’s time for him to testify. He’s required to wait for the bailiff in the now-familiar room off of the lobby.

The night before, while lying awake, James came up with a Plan B. Now he sends a text to Dagou: Meet me in the bathroom. After checking all of the stalls to make sure the room is empty, he climbs onto one of the toilet seats. Hopefully the bailiff escorting Dagou will only peek under the stalls before letting Dagou into the room. He crouches on the toilet, straightening his tie and waiting for his brother to enter. He hears the door open. “Okay,” someone says, and Dagou, monumental in a notquite-charcoal suit, appears. James gets down, leaves the stall. For many days, Dagou has been wearing an expression James has never seen on him before: careful, frightened.

“You wanted to see me, Snaggle?”

“You still planning to testify?”

“Yeah. I need to tell everyone what really happened.”

James squares his shoulders. “Listen, Dagou. I’ve been thinking. Real quick: If I tell Strycker I can’t remember—that I’m having trouble remembering 218whether the key was really on the shelf, at the end of the party—then no one could say how long it was gone. And that means anyone could have done it, or it was an accident. You won’t have to testify. Their case is cooked.”

Dagou listens, frowning slightly. “No,” he says. “You tell them what you saw. You tell the truth. You don’t want to perjure yourself.”

“I don’t care, Dagou.” James can hear the calm in his voice. He knows he’s capable of lying. “You’re more important to me than that.”

“Snaggle. Listen to me.” Dagou puts his hands on James’s shoulders and brings his face close enough that James can see the wide pupils in his shining, deep brown eyes. “I don’t know what’s going to happen to me, Snaggle, and neither do you. But no matter what, it’s most important for me to hold on to my idea of you. I need to think about you the way you’ve always been. No matter where I end up, I’ll know you’re still you. Tell the truth. Promise me.”

James swallows hard. “I promise.”

Dagou puts his arms around James. James leans into his brother’s warm, mountainous chest. Dagou chuckles, clasps him in his big arms and rubs his back briefly, then releases him with something of his old lightness.

“And don’t worry about my testimony,” he says. “I’ve got this!”

The door flashes open and he’s gone, leaving James to stare at his own face in the mirror.

A Look of Surprise

When the bailiff finally escorts James into the courtroom, the place is crowded to capacity, stuffed with observers, umbrellas, walking canes, and sweaters. The air is close, smelling of sweat and damp. Still, there’s an echoing quality to each chair scrape, each cough, as they turn to watch him coming. The jurors turn. Alf’s supporters turn, their chairs straining. The community members turn their rows of black heads and balding heads and salt-and-pepper heads. Several nuns in their brown robes 219swivel in their seats; An, with her wax-blond crew cut, is among them. Ming is not in the room.

To the community, James has always been the least troubled of the Chao sons. Protected by his older brothers, he’s the reticent product of his mother’s generosity and his father’s tyranny. Studious and agreeable, a future physician. But as he walks into the room, everyone begins to understand that he will always struggle against his family’s shadows.

Dagou sits at the defense table, dwarfing not only the assistant defense attorney, Sara Stojkovic, but Jerry Stern himself. From the stand, James glimpses a view of his big neck, recently shaved, bulging slightly over the edge of his collar. A yellow legal pad and a pen are on the table but he doesn’t touch them.

The prosecution begins by showing, for a second time, the security video of Zhang Fujian. James has a direct view of the screen. He was informed that they would show the video. But as he watches now, he’s seized by the soundless black-and-white image of Union Station, his imagination supplying the light snowfall from the level above, the nearby roar and cry of trains. The people in the video, strangers in their winter coats, hurry in many directions. Then an old man, quite small, clutching a carpetbag, shuffles onto the screen. He moves at a visibly slower pace than the others, who rush past him, back and forth, as he makes his way across.

Strycker speaks. James struggles to focus on the questions, all requiring yes-or-no answers. He might be strong enough to stand up to Strycker. He understands why Fang said he was incapable of hiding his innocence. But he knows that Fang trusts him too much; Fang is wrong. He lies and says he hasn’t read anything about the trial. He won’t lie about the key only because Dagou has asked him not to.

“While following you, the man collapsed. You performed CPR. Did you notice he carried a bag?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Did you take the bag with you when you left the train station?”

“Yes, I did.” 220

There’s a gasp from one of Winnie’s friends in the gallery who might have been hoping the carpetbag was a red herring cooked up by the prosecution. Strycker goes calmly on with the questioning. The story is confirmed: distraught, having failed to save the old man’s life, not wanting his luggage to be left behind, James loaded the bag along with his own luggage into his brother’s rental. When Ming dropped him off at the restaurant, he switched the bag, along with his own luggage, to the trunk of Leo’s Ford Taurus. What were his intentions? He wanted to check inside for the man’s address, return it to his family. Did he do this? No, he didn’t. Why not? He forgot about it. His failure to resuscitate the stranger, leading to a sense of shame; Winnie’s stroke; the sudden death of Leo and of his mother: these events had driven the bag from his mind.

Strycker brings up Cecilia Chang’s phone call to the Fine Chao Restaurant on the afternoon of December twenty-third. Was James present for the call? Yes, he was in the room when Ming answered the phone. Did he realize Cecilia had called about the bag in the Ford? Not exactly. What did he mean? It had been Ming who guessed the subject of the call and told him to search the trunk of the Ford. Following Ming’s instructions, did James then search the trunk? He did not; he’d been distracted, and, later, interrupted by a call telling him their mother was ill. He’d gone to Memorial Hospital. Nor did the police find the bag a week later, when they impounded the Ford, investigating a possible intersection between two seemingly unrelated crimes—Cecilia Chang’s theft report and Leo Chao’s murder.

The prosecution authenticates the police report James filed stating he believed the bag was moved to his mother’s room at the hospital that evening, the night of December 23. Why did he wait months to file this report?

“I might’ve figured out earlier that the bags were accidentally swapped,” James says, “but after the police failed to find the bag in the Ford, I stopped thinking about it.” He pauses, struggling to sort through everything that happened. He describes how he discovered the burgundy bag. “That’s when I put two and two together, and filed the police report.” 221

Strycker takes a long drink from his bottle. Everyone listens to its squealing sound. When he sets the bottle down, the room is unnaturally silent.

“Did you actually see a bag in the hospital room, or talk to anyone who did?”

“It’s the only logical thing that could have happened.”

“Answer the question yes or no,” says Judge Lopate.

“No.”

“You never saw anyone put her burgundy bag in your mother’s hospital room, true?”

“It must have sat in the trunk until someone brought it back to the Spiritual House.”

“I’m not asking for your speculation, I’m asking for what you personally witnessed.”

“No.”

“If your theory is not true, is it possible the bag was never put into your mother’s hospital room?”

“I suppose so—”

“Objection,” Jerry calls out. “Speculation.”

Everyone wonders why the old man’s bag of money is so important. With the entire restaurant at stake, its past savings and future income—with the crime of a man’s death at stake, and, with it, the hullabaloo and hue and cry over Dagou, over Alf, and the entire Chinese American community of Haven—what is the significance of Zhang Fujian’s bag?

James stares out into the sea of pale blue and red-and-navy buttons. It’s like a public exam. He’s finished with the question-and-answer section, and now it’s time to ID the exhibits. James identifies People’s Exhibit Number 5, a drawing of the first floor of the Fine Chao Restaurant, with the door to the basement marked in red; Exhibit Number 7, a photo of the door to the freezer room; and Exhibit Number 9, a photo of the shelf where the key was kept.

“Now I’m going to ask you some questions about the night of December 24. Did you go downstairs to fetch a second bag of ice?” 222

“Yes.”

“Did you observe the key on a shelf inside the freezer room?”

“Yes.”

“What time was that?”

“It was around eleven-thirty p.m.”

Strycker gestures to the assistant prosecuting attorney, who makes a note of this. Then he continues. Who was in the restaurant at that time? Fang Wa and Katherine Corcoran. Also O-Lan, Leo, Dagou, and James. Did he see them leave? In what order did they leave? James recites that as far as he can tell, Fang left. Then Katherine left. Then he himself left. “But it’s possible,” James adds, “that I assumed someone had gone and they were still inside the restaurant. And it’s possible that someone came into the restaurant after I left. I wouldn’t know about that.” Strycker asks to have this comment stricken from the record, and asks for the jury to be admonished not to consider James’s speculation about possible scenarios.

“Do you know how it came to be that the key was removed from the shelf between eleven-thirty p.m. and the morning of December twenty-fifth?”

“No.”

“When you left the restaurant, where did you go?”

“I went to Alice Wa’s house.”

“What happened after that?”

“I left the Was’ house.”

“Then where did you go?”

“To my brother’s—to William’s—apartment over the restaurant.”

“Why did you go to William’s apartment?”

“I went because he offered it to me, he offered me the key.”

“When did you leave the apartment?”

“Around nine-thirty a.m.”

“For what purpose did you leave?”

“To go downstairs and set up for the lunch shift.”

“Can you describe what you did outside and inside the restaurant at nine-thirty a.m.?” 223

“As I came down the outer staircase, from the apartment, I saw the family Honda in the parking lot. I expected my father to be inside the restaurant. I let myself inside through the back door. I called for him. I checked the kitchen and the office. I checked in the bathroom. Then I went downstairs, into the freezer room, and turned on the light.”

A photographic slide is projected onto the screen. There is the image—a sturdy, older Asian male corpse, thick trunk and limbs sculpted in shades of ocher and gray, greenish blue from cold, limbs thick and still, the head ornamented by a porcupine coat of thick salt-and-pepper hair. James can’t look away. There it is again. The eyes open, the staring of sudden captivation. James has been prepared for this, but the image takes him by surprise, as if he’s never seen it.

“People’s Exhibit Number Ten. Could you describe this photograph?”

“It’s my father’s body the way I found him in the freezer.”

“Just a few more questions, Mr. Chao, and I’ll be finished. What did you do after you found your father’s body?”

“I called Dagou on the restaurant phone.”

“Did he answer?”

“No.”

“What did you do after that?”

“I called the police.”

“No further questions, Your Honor.”

Strycker’s questioning is over. James hates Strycker, has hated dealing with him, dreaded the public confrontation. The worst is over now. It’s only Jerry. But Jerry’s face is solemn.

Was James present on December 23 at approximately three p.m. when Cecilia Chang called the Fine Chao Restaurant? To whom did Cecilia speak? Was William Chao in the restaurant at that time? To James’s knowledge, was William ever informed about the money in the luggage? Did William ever speak about the existence of the bag itself? Jerry asks about FM 88.8. Did James hear William on his radio? How far away from William’s transmitter was James when he had tuned in with a simple radio? Did William speak about his conflict with his father publicly 224on that broadcast? Did he mention, publicly, that it was possible to lock someone in the freezer room?

Jerry Stern moves on to James’s statement that he remembers the key on the shelf of the freezer room at eleven-thirty p.m. How can he be so sure what time it was? How can he be so sure he saw the key? Is there a photo, a video, any visual evidence at all that the key was indeed upon the shelf in the freezer room? In other words, how can they know he’s telling the truth?

“I’m telling the truth,” James insists, and Jerry moves on.

Did Dagou offer him the use of his apartment? Yes, he did. Did Dagou’s offer of his apartment place James in the building when and where Leo Chao’s death took place? Yes, it did. James senses a trap closing around him. Is it possible that Jerry would accuse him of this?

But he does not, and it’s Strycker’s turn again. Did James himself enter the restaurant at any time between 11:55 p.m. and 9:30 Christmas morning? He did not. Did he stay in Dagou’s apartment the entire night? He did. Did he have a witness—was someone present, could anyone attest to the fact that he had not entered the restaurant that night?

James doesn’t answer. He stands, his heart whamming his throat. If he just doesn’t speak, if he does nothing—

“Answer the question, Mr. Chao.”

“Yes.”

“Who was that person?”

Just as he opens his mouth to speak, James hears an echo of his own words to Alice, months ago: Don’t tell your mother.

“Alice Wa.”

There’s a disapproving tcch! from someone in the first rows of the gallery.

Alice’s Secret

Finished with his testimony, James is at last permitted to sit with the others. Fang has saved three seats. Two are for him and Alice. The third is 225for Ming, who’s not responding to texts. Now, as Alice takes the stand, James finds himself in the midst of a community silent with disapproval. On Fang’s other side, Lynn is frantically taking notes.

After learning Alice was subpoenaed, Lynn and Fang speculated she might be too frightened to give more than yes-or-no answers. But James knew better. Now, as Alice faces the room with her chin raised, he sees more powerfully than ever that what she will say is unknown to him. He feels a stab of longing for Alice—not physical desire, exactly, but more an echo of desire. He’s thrust her into the public; now he’s powerless to do more than watch events unfold.

Strycker goes straight to Christmas Eve. He asks her to confirm that James was with her for the entire night of December 24–25. When did she and James enter William’s apartment? What time did she leave? What did they do? They talked. About what?

“We were talking about God.” There was a collective sound, half laughter and half relief, from the gallery. Alice says, “We were talking about the question of how if God knows all of our pain, and the suffering the world imposes on us, and how we impose it on each other—that if God is compassionate, and all knowing, how is it possible God doesn’t make himself known to us?” The judge doesn’t ask Alice to stick to the point. Lynn gives Fang and James an odd look. James knows she’s speculating about whether the judge is a religious person. He wonders if she might muse about this in her blog.

“Did you and James discuss his relationship with his father?”

“We compared the love of God to parental love.”

“Did you fall asleep?”

“Yes.”

Alice sighs. She’s finished what she came to say. Together, she and Strycker have exonerated James.

But Strycker continues. “Did you hear anything unusual that night?”

A bit of pink flares into Alice’s cheeks.

“Please speak up.”

She stands stubbornly for a moment. “I told you,” she says to Strycker, “I don’t want to talk about this. And you said—” 226

“Please answer the question, Ms. Wa,” says Judge Lopate.

There’s a pause. Then Alice says, “Yes. I heard something. I thought, sometime very late, I heard a noise—”

“I’ll be finished in a minute, Ms. Wa. Can you describe the noise?”

“It was a—faint thumping, or banging. It was on and off, while I fell asleep and woke up again.”

“Did you tell James about the noise?”

“No.”

“Did he wake up?”

Alice looks at her feet. “Yes. He woke up once.”

“Did the two of you discuss hearing the noise?”

There’s a strained silence. “Yes.”

“Please speak up, Ms. Wa.”

“Could he identify the source?”

“I—no, I don’t think so. Because he asked me if I thought he should go check. And I told him to go back to sleep.” Her voice is higher now, the voice of a child.

“Could you identify it, Ms. Wa?”

“I—I thought it was a ghost.”

“To clarify: you heard a banging noise and thought it was a ghost?”

“Yes.”

Soon after, Alice is led back out by the bailiff. As planned, she returns to the gallery and sits in the empty chair next to James. James takes her hand; it’s cold. She doesn’t look at him.

Ming’s seat is still empty.

Around them, the community listens to the testimony. There’s the police officer who responded to the incident at the 7-Eleven. There’s the woman Dagou knocked over, pointing a surly finger to identify him. Most significant to everyone is the testimony of Officer Carly Bucek, a petite, sandy-haired woman. Officer Bucek’s testimony lasts more than an hour. First she’s asked to confirm all of the observations she made in her notebook while investigating the restaurant. She’s shown a dozen exhibits, and she identifies each of the photographs she took. The bare 227shelf on the wall; the sign. The scratches on the metal plate around the lock. The frozen meat the victim placed over the air vent in the wall in an attempt to block the cold. The body. Strewn nearby on the concrete floor are the victim’s shirt and trousers, underwear, and socks. Even the watch has been removed and is lying facedown near the left hand. Shivering. Disorientation. A final flash of uncomfortable heat as the body made one final, desperate effort to warm itself. The strewn clothes indicating hypothermia as the cause of death.

No, she did not find a key to the door.

No, there were no recent fingerprints from William Chao on the door.

Officer Bucek’s notes taken during her questioning of Dagou are quoted at length by the prosecution, and she affirms them all: specifically, that Dagou said, on Christmas Day when the officers apprehended him at Brenda’s house, that he had a motive to kill his father, he had the right to kill his father, and the method to kill his father. He said he had planned to kill his father; at this, it was decided to take him to the station. Officer Bucek is questioned about the impounded Ford. When was the car impounded? When was it searched? Was it possible a bag could have been removed between the afternoon of December 21 and the week after Christmas, when the car was impounded and searched?

In the cross-examination, Officer Bucek is grilled by Jerry Stern about the way Dagou had been treated before he was brought in for questioning. He had been physically restrained. He had been handcuffed. He had been threatened with a gun. Some are encouraged by Jerry Stern’s indignant and thorough questioning of exactly when, and why, additional units had been requested for a simple discussion with Dagou; why such extreme measures had been used; in what way and how long Dagou had been questioned at the station; whether his exact words were that he “would” kill his father; whether the subjective tense warranted a person of interest being taken in for questioning. Jerry wants to hear exactly how Dagou had been Mirandized, how he had refused his right to a lawyer, and how he had been persuaded to sign the paper. Was his mother mentioned; had the officers actually mentioned 228his estranged parents, implied Winnie was a suspect in the killing, and did they know this was not appropriate, it amounted to threatening; and had he, Dagou, agreed to sign the document because of veiled threats against his mother?

After this long afternoon of questioning, the court is adjourned.

Ming’s Third Visit to O-Lan

Later that evening, across town, it’s nearly closing time at Skaer’s Diner. Ming Chao sits in his booth drinking black coffee and staring at coverage of the trial on his laptop. His barely touched fish sandwich has been pushed aside. His small suitcase is next to him. He came straight from the airport, midafternoon, and has been waiting in the diner ever since.

Ming scans the local newspapers; he lurks on Twitter; he studies Lynn’s blog about the testimony of James, Alice, the police. Several times, he takes out his phone and starts texting his brothers, Katherine, Sara Stojkovic, or Jerry Stern. But each time, he puts his phone away before sending. At ten o’clock, he pays his bill. No one points out he hasn’t eaten or asks if the food was all right. They’re used to him now. Since Leo’s death, the Skaers’ animosity has ceased; trips to the diner are no longer forays into enemy territory. Ming gets into his rental car and drives to O-Lan’s apartment.

He’s told no one about his visits to O-Lan. But during his time in Phoenix, he couldn’t stop remembering. Thinking, blinking into the relentless sun. Some enormous question running like a complex program in his mind, taking up space there, yet invisible to him, blotting his ability to sleep. It’s taking over his mind, like the bleeding from a cerebrovascular accident.

The rickety stairs seem to narrow as he climbs. There’s a slit of light under the door. The knob, as before, turns easily in his hand. He stumbles into the room. The bare bulb, suspended over the table, lights the two cold dishes waiting there: a lotus-root salad and a plate of little radishes, lightly dressed. He sniffs: the scent of sesame oil. 229

O-Lan stands near the stove, calmly transferring vegetables into a small bowl. In another small bowl, dried mushrooms soak in water. Her cleaver lies on the counter.

Ming feels a sudden shift in the air. Is he standing in an empty room in another place and time? No, all is as usual, and yet, as he examines the place, it seems to him there’s an ephemeral quality to every detail, down to the greasy sneakers next to the door.

After some time (has it been minutes? half an hour?), he speaks.

“Let me tell you what I think,” he says, in English. “You came to this country searching for my father. You had some kind of hint about where he was—”

She replies, also in English, “He doesn’t hide himself.”

So, he was right. “No,” he says. “But there are other Leo Chaos. You might’ve found a dozen before you figured out who he was. Tell me: How many did you try? You came to our restaurant searching for him, and when you found him—” His mouth is dry.

She gives him an almost pitying look. “Yes, it’s true. I tried other restaurants in other towns.”

“—you took a job at the restaurant. You pretended you couldn’t speak English. But of course you could! How else would you know what my brother said, on the radio? Pretending you had no English was a way of hiding, hiding your secret—”

She laughs, frightening him. He speaks into his fear. “Not at first! At first your lack of English was simply caution, a way of limiting exposure to others. But at some point, in your private explorations of the restaurant, you began to realize that not speaking English would be your protection, your alibi—” It’s a struggle to think. “You trained yourself not to understand the language. You unlearned it. But you knew a person could be locked into the freezer room and in order to escape they would need to know how to read the sign. You knew if the key disappeared, you wouldn’t be taken seriously as the criminal.

“And so you finished him off! You waited for the exact moment, knowing for months, even years, that you must wait for the perfect moment, 230the perfect opportunity! You settled in, you waited—” He breaks off. “How come you’re still in town?”

“I live here.”

“You’ll be deported!”

“Are you going to the police?”

Her question works on him like a jinx, his thoughts suspended.

“Why didn’t you go to them the moment you flew in?” she asks, her voice still mild. “Why didn’t you go straight from the airport? Surely if you were going to turn me in, you would have done it already.”

“It was you who killed him! You!”

She shrugs. “Do you believe yourself?”

Ming can feel his jaw drop slightly open, a parody of stupidity, and yet he can’t close his mouth.

“I,” she says, “am a desperate person, an illegal immigrant, an alien whose smallest noticeable action could get her deported. I have only my job and my employer. Why would I do something to put myself at so much risk?”

“You’ve got nothing to lose.”

Ming eyes the food on the table. The red radishes with the faint cracks where she has whacked them with the back of the cleaver. The thin-sliced lotus roots, their crisp white lace of bones.

“You’re hungry.”

“No.”

“Eat with me.” She pours a second cup of tea. “You’re afraid of my food?” Mocking him. She brings two bowls and two pairs of chopsticks to the table. She pulls the stool from the kitchen and sets it opposite the single chair. “Would I poison you?”

Flushing, Ming sits down. He picks up the chopsticks and raises a radish slowly to his mouth.

“Try it. Hong luobo have enough vitamins to keep the blood moving, even in your veins.”

The blue circlet of flame dances on the stove. She moves the wok 231over the flame, adds the oil, and waits, tilting the wok and watching for telltale rivulets of heat. She adds a few sliced mushrooms, and they sizzle in the hot oil.

“How did you feel when you walked into the restaurant? Finding him, finally.” The cracked radish, peppery and crisp, holds enough marinade for surprising flavor. Ming takes another. “Did you—” He stretches his mind toward cruelty. “Then did you want his approval, his love?”

O-Lan shrugs. In this gesture, for a moment she seems not as old—not past her childbearing years. She’s healthy, and the nibs of flesh under her arms are, after all, nibs of extra flesh.

Ming needs to say this: “You’re not required to live out the wishes of your parents.”

O-Lan turns to him. Her lips twist. “You grew up in a country where some people have the privilege to believe this is true. How would you know about my relationship to them? To anyone?”

“I have my brothers,” says Ming, surprising himself.

“You’re ashamed of your brother.”

Ming can’t stop eating the radishes. There’s a sharp sizzle, but controlled, as she adds the other vegetables to the oil. “You may hate my father,” he says, continuing his thoughts, “but you have no reason—no reason!—to frame my brother.”

Again, she shrugs. “You think not? He was legitimate, the official oldest child in the family, and I was not. He is known, he is acknowledged, and I am not. He’s Big Chao’s child, and I am not. But I’m many of those things: born legitimate, oldest, and Big Chao’s child.”

She lets the vegetables sizzle untended for a moment, then faces him. “You yourself think William is an embarrassment. You’d be very happy if he weren’t your brother.”

“You don’t know what I think.”

She lifts the lid from a small pot and the smell of cooked rice fills the room. Ming picks out a lotus root; it crunches softly. Suddenly he is ravenous. 232

“You’re still trying to believe I killed Leo Chao?” O-Lan asks. “You’ll feel better when you confess. In the deepest, most knowing well in your heart, Ming Chao, you believe someone else is the killer of Leo Chao.”

“No, it was you—” He’s salivating, choking on his words so the statement is less commanding than he had intended. He clears his throat. “You, Chao O-Lan. Chao O-Lan is the killer of Leo Chao.”

“No, it’s you, Chao Ming.”

She brings the wok to the table and he looks eagerly into it. There is celery and sliced, pressed tofu with mushrooms. Wordlessly, she ladles him a full bowl of rice. He bends toward his bowl, scooping the food into his mouth with chopsticks.

She speaks calmly in English, with little inflection. “I may be a monster to you, but I don’t eat like a monster, and you do. You’re barely human, your hands are barely warm, you don’t hold heat.”

She puts rice into her own bowl. “I’ve seen you checking your pulse, your steps, your runs, your calorie counts. You don’t cook your own food, you eat raw vegetables that have been washed by strangers, your condiments come in plastic, you eat meat that has been sitting for days in the refrigerator, stuffed between pieces of bread, and you eat alone.

“You think you can get rid of them? Extract your family from your body if you give up Chinese food? Extract your own blood from your body?”

Ming can’t stop eating to speak, so he only points at her with the chopsticks.

“True,” she says, “I also eat alone. But I have no one to eat with, and you do. You could be with that Katherine. You only have to let her know and she would recognize her feelings. But you push her away. Your brothers, also.”

Ming reaches for more rice.

She puts her chopsticks down. “Why do you push her away? It’s because of what she is. You don’t want to be with a woman who looks 233the way you do. What kind of human being are you?” She observes him calmly. “How many times were you warned what was going to happen, and you did nothing?”

Ming’s throat closes again. “I was in the Hartford Airport at the time!”

“You were.”

“You persuaded me to go. You made me go!”

“No, you chose to fly east. You went even though you knew there was a giant storm.”

Steam rises from his rice; Ming wipes his face.

She looks puzzled for a moment. “When you decided to go to New York, in full awareness of the weather, you were acting in full knowledge of what would happen. You wanted it to happen.”

Ming shovels in food. He’s breathing loudly while he eats, like a laborer, a coolie. It’s delicious: the white rice, the savory tofu, the tender, slippery mushrooms, the celery, so crisp and yet so easy to swallow, because she has stripped away by hand the tough fibers from the outer layer of green. He has a sudden vision of his mother cutting through a stalk of celery to this layer of green, then, with a flick of her wrist, pulling the long sinew of fiber from the stalk. She removed the fibers only for meals she made at home for them, Monday nights. This was when he was a small boy, before they had risen up against her food and started eating TV dinners. Ming remembers how much he used to despise everything about the pressed tofu: its flavor of anise, its brown skin, its origin in the humble bean.

At last, all of the food is gone. There is only a single radish left, and a fragment of bone.

O-Lan sits watching. His eyes dart away to her narrow mattress with the pair of slippers next to it. A cardigan hangs from the bedpost, and, at its foot, there is an old blue carpetbag.

Ming takes one last deep breath and pushes back his chair. “Goodbye,” he says. He hurries out, slams the door behind him, and stumbles down the stairs, shaking, flushed with shame. 234

Ghost in the Machine

He lies on the bedspread in his old room, staring into the dark.

But not entirely dark. He hasn’t lowered the shade, and the moon, now only hours to full, shines in the window, lighting up the objects of the past, making them jump out at him. The posters on the wall. The old clock radio, a familiar hump on the bedside table.

His old room and the old moon that would be full at noon. Soon, the noon moon. The noon courtroom.

The fire escape to O-Lan’s room, steel-colored in the moonlight.

(Her canine tooth against the orange peel.)

(She is his father’s daughter, and very much like him.)

He now knows the facts. He alone knows the facts. He must call Jerry Stern; he’ll do it first thing in the morning. The moonlight falls on Ming’s old clock radio. (He hears, in his mind’s ear, the sputter of static, then the disc jockey’s twang awakening him in the winter morning dark. It’s the local pop radio station rousing him out of bed. He’s a freshman in high school, being woken in this room on the morning of a debate tournament. No, that was years ago. He lives in New York now.) Tomorrow the trial continues. He and Katherine, Brenda, and Jerry Stern are set to meet before the trial, at eight forty-five a.m. Ming checks his phone. It says midnight, but his clock radio says two o’clock. He must reset the radio.

 

In the quiet, he hears the neighborhood dogs barking one after another, yard to yard. Then a lone, nearby howl rises over the others. The howl picks up the thin hairs behind his ears; his cheeks grow cold, his fingertips sharpen against his palms. Ming frowns. The dog, seemingly loyal, bottomlessly hungry. The dog, like the sons, not as loyal as the man might think.

Ming turns on the old radio.

The click of the power, then volume. The radio spits softly, a low wet 235hiss and warble of waves unseen. He soothes the tuning knob between his thumb and forefinger, seeking a station. This knob requires him to turn smoothly, slowly, in order to catch hold. He wonders if the radio has stopped working. But after half a minute, he nicks a brief crackle of static; he rolls the dial back and forth over the place, searching for a catch. Back and forth. Another crackle of static. He rolls even more slowly, carefully, feeling for the place; and then, just when he’s giving up, the hiss ebbs, giving forth to a low hum. It’s a hum of medium register, full-bodied as a note from an alto sax, but not made of human breath; it is inhuman and as such comforting. He turns up the volume and the hum fills his mind, pushing away thought, pushing away movement. He lies clutching the bedspread, for perhaps five minutes, perhaps an hour, listening to the hum. Then a crackle of static sounds at the edges. Static, hum, static, hum.

A voice is coming in and out. Someone’s talking. Ming reaches cold fingers back to the dial, twiddles it, delicately, back and forth. He can hear, below the static, a voice he knows. He’s obliged, commanded, to bring it forth.

It’s a low, mellow voice, and strong, with a rich tone similar to his brother Dagou’s, and yet not at all, because of crags and furrows and a husky rasp of age, deepened and strengthened like a sixty-nine-year-old whiskey that has absorbed the smoke-blackened and gnarled wood of its container; because it stirs up a deep disquiet—no, a fear, so that he has to steel himself against it—a voice so familiar to him it seems to speak from some part of his own mind, and yet it is suffused, saturated, with an unknown country, another world. (A muddy village, a half-filled bottle of smoky oil above the stove. Stones in the river, a basket of fish curled and twitching in the stern of a boat.)

Fine hairs stand out on his neck. His body curls spasmodically on the bed.

Clearly now, the voice speaks. “The tail of fear is wagging the dog of the son.”

“Stop it,” Ming says.

“Fear, weakness, cowardice. You didn’t get that from me.” 236

“I said get lost.”

“You’re not happy to talk to me? After I worked like a dog, to feed you, to support you, to buy this house, with a room for you to study? You wouldn’t be a high-flying hotshot now without me, kid.”

(Mornings waking in this room, this chamber of stark loneliness and desolation. Dagou gone to college now, no more big, sweaty but loyal fool between Ming and the villagers. The crackle of the radio, the smell of an egg frying in oil. Beads of soy sauce sliding from the translucent skin, then the hot, sulfurous runny yolk curdling in his gut. Fear. Longing for the bus, the protection of the driver when they lived farther away from school, in the old apartment.)

Ming reaches for the volume knob, squeezing the voice back into the radio until the knob clicks. Silence. He curls on his side, relaxes, but keeps his eyes open watchfully.

He will not engage. He’ll climb into his hunting blind, although somehow he can’t climb now, cannot lift himself past the first steps of the ladder—his body has changed shape, and his four feet are on the ground. He wasn’t working for his father, he wasn’t exploited. He never worked for anyone except himself. (Those days of years ago. The runny egg yolk making a hot, sulfurous trail down his throat, curdling at the acid in his stomach. The walk to the distant, hostile middle school alone, the walk changing to a run, to flight, a daily race for survival through the neighborhood of villagers. Past the old butcher shop, with its odor of meat. The school. The bathroom with its metal door, the cold, wet throat of the toilet.)

Ming feels his forehead. He gets out of bed, shuffles to the bathroom, thrusts a washcloth under icy water, wrings it out. He returns to his room. He lies down and spreads the cloth over his eyes. For a moment everything is still. But then he can hear it again: the voice, at first unintelligible and yet fully familiar in its identity.

“This is FM 88.8. Chao Family Network.”

Ming puts his hands over his ears.

“Good night, good morning. Earth to Ming Chao, Ergou.” 237

“You don’t exist,” Ming says. “You’re dead.”

“Frozen, dead, buried. You all tried to kill me using different methods, like the way they tried to kill Rasputin. I survived.”

“Your death has been documented by the police. You don’t exist.”

“So easy to get rid of me. Just like closing a door, eh?”

“And you can’t be Dagou pranking me, messing with his radio. It was confiscated as evidence.”

“The old man is allowed to visit his favorite son.”

“I’m not your favorite.”

“That’s out of your control. You can’t choose my favorite. You, you’re my son, you’re my true inheritor.”

“I don’t—” Ming presses his hands to his ears. “Don’t want it!”

“But you are, I gave myself to make you. You can’t unchoose me.”

“Get the fuck out of my head.”

“There’s something I want you to do. Now, while it’s eight hundred thirty-eight.”

“You’re my imagination. I control you and I want you to go away now. Go now.”

“I want you to go to the restaurant. Into the freezer room—”

Ming leaps up, seizes the cord to the radio, and yanks it from the wall.

Silence.

Ming never did understand the reason his father kept the freezer room. Surely the occasional money he saved on meat couldn’t have covered the utility bills for that room. In all his father’s money-grubbing practices, the freezer room was the only one Ming could never make sense of. Leo was simply attached to the room.

Ming plugs the radio back into the wall.

Immediately his ears fill with static. After a moment, the voice emerges, full, triumphant.

“In length and breadth how doth my poodle grow!”

“You can’t know Faust,” Ming says.

“You think I can’t. Jerry Stern told me. That Jerry is good guy.”

“This is a dream.” 238

“You never took me seriously. I’ve got smarts. You’re ashamed of me, think I don’t know anything? I know my English. I taught this old dog new tricks! Listen to this! Hot dog! Work like a dog! Fight like cats and dogs. Call off the dogs. Lie down with dogs—get up with fleas! It’s a dog’s life. Wouldn’t wish that on a dog. Raining cats and dogs. Let sleeping dogs lie. Love me, love my dog. Lucky dog. Top dog. Dirty dog. Put on the dog. Shaggy dog story. Sick as a dog. Dog breath. Put a dog off the scent. Why keep a dog and bark yourself. Go to see a man about a dog. Blind dog in a meat market. Dog sniffing another dog’s butt. Dog ate my homework. Dog-eat-dog. Dog-tired. Dog sleep. Dog tags. Chowhound. Beware the dog—”

“Shut up!”

“If it’s in your head, why’d you plug the radio back in? You don’t need electricity.”

Ming can’t think of an answer.

“Admit it. You plugged in the radio out of need. You need to know something you can’t figure out yourself. Something only I can tell you.”

He stops, waits.

“I do want to ask you something,” Ming admits.

“Now we’re getting somewhere.”

“I want to ask you about my sister, whatever her true name is. My sister at the restaurant.”

“It’s before your time. And you know why she’s here. Not for her mother. That’s just a fancy lie. She came here to get three things. First, money. Then, my life. And finally, the ring. I’ve been trying to tell you. That’s what she’s been searching for all along. What is hatred that can’t be solved with money? Money and murder. What is getting revenge but getting money?”

(Ming hears an echo of his own voice, in the Other Restaurant.)

“You can measure the size of a man by how much money he wants. You, my son, you’re a man. Your older brother, chasing his bullshit ego around, chasing his penis now, he’ll always be a nobody.” 239

“And my sister?”

“She came all the way across the world. Not for a large amount of money. Not a fortune. But it was somebody’s Life Savings. Enough to purchase papers, transportation, a piece of property, just a small one in a nowhere town—start-up costs for a little business—”

“The restaurant—”

“And now she’s got some money. But not what she wanted. Not what she was truly after. So she stuck around, even after I was dead, even after she got the ring. Until she finally had a chance to talk with you, so that one person left on earth would remember who she was, what she did.”

Was this true? Did O-Lan have the ring now? “What was she truly after?”

“Ask your brother.”

“Dagou doesn’t know anything.”

“No, ask your little brother.”

Ming plunges on. “Don’t try to lead me off the scent. What did you do to her mother? You took money from her, didn’t you? You left her and her daughter, your own child, and you came to the U.S. What money was she after?”

“I’m saving the profits for you. Your inheritance.”

“I don’t want it.”

“It’s nothing to you. You will think it nothing. But you, you’re my son, and I want you to keep it.”

“Shut up,” Ming says.

(At that moment, he hears a familiar but unidentifiable sound from somewhere outside of the room, near the door. He’s cramped by an old fear, and his body seizes on the bed.)

“Admit it. You hate me, not because I’ve done bad things. Not because I know money is exchangeable for love, or life, or God. This is what you yourself believe.”

“Shut the fuck up!” 240

(Footsteps, pursuing him. Ming’s gasps come quickly now.)

“You don’t hate me for this. Nope, you hate me because you think I’m only a small-timer. If I’d managed to sleep with a woman who had a billion yuan, well, then you would find me a more suitable father. But my scale turns out to be on the level of a small business, something humble—”

“Get out! Get out!!”

(“Ming? Ming?”)

“I told you—”

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he hears the clock radio turn off. There is a hiss of air. The station is gone.

Ming staggers to the thermostat, adjusts the heat.

A moth flutters by and he sniffs its wings, its radiant dust. He feels an intense physical discomfort. The dry heat presses in on him from all sides, as if he is encased in wool; the room is terribly stuffy. He’s gulping for air, he’s thirsty. He drops to his knees—that’s better. He crawls toward the bathroom, pushing away the image of simply putting his head into the cool wet basin of the toilet, guzzling its contents. Repulsive. Disgusting. He stretches out, rears up, and braces himself upon the sink. Slipping, almost falling, he reaches out for the faucet. (Something’s wrong. This is not his hand.) The moth flutters by. Following it instinctively, tracking its motion, he catches a glimpse of something in the mirror. He looks away, panting hoarsely, and then, with a slow, deliberate turn that requires all of his strength, he looks into the mirror again.

He sees a dark beast’s shape, brown-black in the face, golden at the ruff, shaped by a long, rounded muzzle and peaked ears. Large ears standing alert, crowned by coarse brown hair. Yellow eyes close-set, eyes at a slant, pupils high over the ring of pale iris. Eyes cold, the eyes of a wolf. Ming cries out, whines, but the yellow eyes do not flicker or change. Then he sees someone coming for him, coming up behind him. The villagers.

(“Hey, Chao!” Footsteps thud nearby. They are boys. Hands grab him. He thrashes, swings wildly, but he is pummeling air, only now and 241then does his fist thud into an arm or belly. He’s not strong enough to overpower them, but his true flaw, he knows, lies inside—fear, cowardice, weakness. They’re dragging him through the alleys of the village.) He is thirteen years old. It is a brilliant, mellow autumn afternoon. “My dad’s gonna butcher you and string you up, gook.” Ming thrashes desperately, wildly, breaking free only to come crashing down against the ground. Pain shooting through his left wrist. He screams, and they seize him up again, they hustle him into the back door of a place that stinks of meat. “Gong bong, ching chong, king kong.” “Here, into the bathroom.” His feet jerk out from under him. His whole body swinging like meat on a hook; his head swinging. Crack. Colors shoot like stars, close to his face. He tries to scream. Blood dripping, blood blooming red in the water. Thrust into the toilet’s mouth, a faraway stench of stale urine and feces under the rim, then cold wetness, choking, coughing, screaming, soundless screaming into water.

(Something is pounding on the door. Ming sniffs: Not James. Who is it?)

Light floods his eyes.

“Ming? Are you all right?”

It’s Alice Wa. She grabs his arm, trying to pull him up, her grasp surprisingly firm. “It’s nine-thirty, it’s morning. I left the courthouse. I promised I would come to check on you. Dagou testifies today.”

“Fuck off.”

“Ming, are you sick?” There’s no gasp of surprise, no show of dismay. Although she is a flake, Alice has some stomach for this. Perhaps she understands, more than the others.

“Fuck off, Florence Nightingale.”

“Your voice is hoarse. Ming, you need to get into bed. Or maybe stay there on the floor.”

There’s the rough wool of a blanket against his chin; he throws it off.

“You look terrible. Wait here, I’m going to get someone.”

“No, no.” 242

“Then you need to go to the hospital.”

“No.” Ming sits up. “I’m going to the trial. Don’t try to stop me.”

A Character Witness

Straightening her shoulders in her eggshell linen suit, Katherine takes her place on the witness stand. For Winnie’s sake, she will be calm. Yet she can feel, emanating from her body, a palpable, shattering anxiety.

She affirms she is an attorney at the Chicago accounting firm Sims, Mauk, and Machado. She was the fiancée of William Chao. How long were they engaged?

“For twelve years.”

As the gallery takes this in, Katherine briefly imagines the article in the pages of the Sioux City Journal: How is it possible their former high school debate champion, who has succeeded in the world and achieved so much, could allow herself to be bamboozled by a dog eater? How is it possible she could be the unquestioning fiancée of a murderer for twelve years? What kind of a character witness will she make? Obviously, she lost perspective on Dagou’s character long ago.

Yet Katherine answers the questions without blushing. She ignores the jury, the community, and the people wearing Alf T-shirts. She’s focused on her one objective: That she will answer only the questions put forth in the examination and the cross-examinations. This has been her strategy for months, walking a delicate tightrope of the agreement she made with herself, over Winnie’s deathbed: that she wouldn’t lie to defend Winnie’s oldest and beloved son, her own former fiancée; but, for Winnie’s sake, she won’t reveal anything that isn’t asked of her. She’ll do what she can to stand up for Dagou—not for the sake of what they once were to one another, but for Winnie.

For several years, she has suspected the futility of her approach to the past. She knows this now: You can’t create it. You can try forever; you can fall into the process; you can devote yourself. But it isn’t a relationship, it’s not a work in progress. The past is gone. 243

The only option is to move forward and to do the best you can.

“During the twelve years you were engaged, was he ever violent toward you?”

“No.”

“Was he violent toward others or did he express violent tendencies in your presence?”

“He was sometimes loud, and very candid, but never physically violent.”

“Did he ever talk about a plan to kill his father?”

“No.”

There are lies, and lies of omission. She wasn’t asked the question: Had he ever wished his father dead? This statement she’d heard a hundred times, beginning shortly after his fateful mistake of returning to the Midwest—a decision he’d made for Winnie’s sake, and also (Katherine believed at the time) because she, Katherine, had received a very good job offer in Chicago. For years, she’d felt guilty, responsible, for his return to Haven.

Now Jerry is finished, and it’s time for the cross-examination. Assistant Prosecutor Corinne Udweala frowns through her glasses. She puts one hand skeptically on her hip for a moment while she’s checking her notes.

“Would you say he and his mother, Winnie, had a close relationship?”

Again, this question. “Yes.”

“To your knowledge, did she give William cash gifts?”

“Yes.” Katherine shifts on her feet. Strycker has been stealthily building an argument involving small amounts of money, but what is he getting at? “If you mean birthday presents. She gave him money for birthday presents.”

“How much money?”

“Five hundred, a thousand dollars.”

Udweala raises her voice ever so slightly. “In mid-December of last year, did you give William ten thousand dollars?”

A rustle of surprise comes from the front of the gallery. It’s James. Katherine can see him from the corner of her eye. He didn’t know about 244the money; Dagou did not tell him. He’s staring at her now, surprised, a little hurt. She retrains her gaze on Udweala. “Yes.”

“Why did you give him the ten thousand?”

“I knew he needed the money.”

“In this conversation, did the subject come up of a ring?”

A murmuring rises, then a shhhh.

“Yes.”

“Was it an engagement ring?”

“Yes.”

“What did you discuss, regarding the ring?”

“He asked me to give it back.”

“Was he ending the engagement?”

“I don’t know.”

A giggle breaks out from somewhere in the back of the gallery.

“He asked you to return the ring. Then what happened?”

“He admitted he was broke. He said he wanted to sell the ring. I gave him some money.”

She hears a rustle near the door: perhaps it’s Alice, returning with Ming. But it’s just someone fumbling with their inhaler.

“Were you paying him to continue the engagement?”

“Objection!” Jerry jumps in. “Irrelevant.”

The objection is sustained. It’s too late. A high titter rings out, followed by the thunderclap of a loud “Ha, ha!” from a man in the jury. For a moment it seems the room will break apart in laughter.

But in the first few rows, the community holds the line, stonily looking straight ahead. And at this moment it is clear to Katherine, more definitively than it has ever been, that she is beloved. She straightens her shoulders.

“I gave him money,” she says steadily, “because he needed it and I wanted him to have it.”

“To your knowledge, what did Dagou do with the ten thousand dollars?” 245

“He bought radio equipment. He put new tires on his truck. He bought new strings for his bass, and a gym membership.”

“Did he spend all ten thousand?”

Of course, it’s possible Dagou spent all ten thousand. He’s not in the habit of saving; he’s inherited Winnie’s extravagance. New tires, illegal radio equipment. Who knew what else? But if he did spend the money, she’s not aware of it. She frowns. It’s possible he spent the money on Brenda. But could even Dagou—adding infatuation to his prodigality—make all of ten thousand vanish in a matter of weeks?

“I don’t know,” Katherine says. More urgent in her mind is the question of why the prosecution is focused on tracing every possible source of income, on nailing down precisely how little money Dagou had. Her testimony is finished; she has permission to sit in the gallery. Mary Wa embraces her. She leans into Mary for several minutes, comforted by the familiar smell of the Oriental Food Mart, troubled by the puzzle of the prosecution’s plan, relieved she hasn’t been asked to reveal her secret. She takes a few deep breaths. The next witness for the defense is Brenda Wozicek.

The Testimony of Brenda Wozicek

Creak! Chairs protest as people crane to watch her enter, followed by the gray-haired bailiff. Even in the courtroom, she can’t control her magnetism. Some actually rise as she passes, as if this is a wedding and she’s the bride. She takes her place at the stand. For perhaps a minute, everyone stares at her in silent judgment. Must the fabric of her jacket wrap around her body like that? Must her hair dip in that wayward curl over her forehead? Must her eyes be so vividly blue? And her blouse: it suits her, even Ken Fan can’t take his eyes off of her, but must she have chosen a scarlet blouse?

“I’m his fiancée,” she’s saying to Jerry Stern. For all her physical presence, she speaks quietly. Everyone leans forward, and she turns to them, 246eyes shining with a righteous light. An uncomfortable whispering arises from the gallery. Only Katherine appears wrapped in calm. “He’s also the son of my late boss, Leo Chao,” Brenda says.

“How long have you known the defendant?” Jerry asks.

“I knew Dagou—William—in high school.”

“Did you know him well?”

“No. Our groups didn’t overlap.”

“When did the two of you become involved?”

“Shortly after I started working at the restaurant.”

“You were sexually involved?”

“Yes.”

“Were you officially involved at the time?”

“No.” Brenda’s lips twist. Her self-possession, her surety would be absurd if it were not for the arresting curve of her mouth.

“Did this change on the night of December twenty-fourth, morning of the twenty-fifth?”

“Yes, we became officially involved. After the party.”

“Why that night and not before?”

“Well, for one thing, William had a kind of understanding with Katherine Corcoran. The way he described it, the relationship wasn’t sexual anymore and they were just good friends but they had never officially ended their engagement. Because his mother was in poor health, and she was close to Katherine—and because Katherine was like a member of the family. It was kept up out of politeness, but I knew Dagou would end it immediately, if …”

“If what?”

“If and when we became officially involved.”

“Did you and William ever discuss the possibility of moving in together?”

Brenda shakes her head, bemused. “No.”

Jerry nods. “During your time as Leo Chao’s employee, did you go down to the freezer room?” 247

“No. It didn’t have anything to do with my job, which was to seat people, bring their drinks, take their orders, bring their food.”

Jerry glances through his notes. “Let’s visit the morning of December twenty-fifth. Did William Chao come to your house after the party at the Fine Chao?”

“Yes.”

“At approximately what time did William Chao arrive at your house after the party?”

“Between midnight and twelve-thirty.”

“What was his frame of mind when he visited you during the morning of December twenty-fifth?”

“He seemed relaxed, much happier than he’d been lately.”

“Would you say a weight had been lifted from his shoulders?”

“Yes. The party had gone well and that cheered him up. The party was for his mother. He was devoted to her. He’d wanted the party to be special, in her honor.”

“Can you tell the jury what was said?”

“Well, he told me his father had only been joking, and he hadn’t sold the restaurant.”

“Did he say he had shut Leo Chao into the freezer room?”

Brenda frowns. “No.”

“Please elaborate on this.”

“He told me he’d been so upset with his father—for being so domineering—that he’d created a plan. But he specifically said he didn’t carry it out.”

“Please describe what he said.”

“He said his father had double-crossed him in a terrible way, had promised him the restaurant and then announced he would sell it. And then told him the whole thing was a joke! He’d waited years for the time when he would be able to live his own life. He said his life would begin when his father was dead, and not before. And that after the party when his father went downstairs, all he had to do was to step 248in, remove the key, and leave, shutting the door. But he didn’t do it. Couldn’t, didn’t do it.”

Jerry waits for a moment, looking thoughtfully at Brenda. “How did you respond to this?”

“I told him I was glad he didn’t do it.”

“To reiterate, William specifically told you he did not shut his father into the freezer room?”

“Yes.”

“Do you believe him?”

“Yes, I—”

“Objection: relevance.”

“Objection sustained.”

“After this conversation, he was in your presence until the following morning?”

“Yes—he was with me all night.”

“When did you go to sleep?”

“We didn’t fall asleep until after four o’clock. I heard the bells ringing. The next morning, I woke first around eleven-thirty and went downstairs to make some coffee. Dagou was asleep upstairs until early afternoon, when the police knocked on the door.”

Jerry examines his notes again. He has just a few more questions, he says. Had William ever discussed inheritance laws with her? Maybe, she can’t remember. Does she remember him telling her he understood the law to provide that his mother would inherit everything should his father die? No. Did she herself know the law? Yes. “Did William tell you he was trying to please his mother with an extravagant party so she would give him the restaurant after his father’s death?” No, of course not.

“You were aware of Winnie Chao’s will?”

At this question, there’s a rustle from the second row. Every one of Winnie’s friends is surprised. Did Winnie make a will, when Leo had not?

“Yes.” 249

Mary Wa turns to stare at Ken Fan. Lynn’s father raises his brows at Lynn’s mother.

“Have you seen the will?”

“No. Dagou said she told him about it in the hospital, when she was sick.”

Jerry raises his voice. “Do you recall William telling you that Winnie Chao left all of her property to a Mrs. Ling Gu, of the Haven Spiritual House?”

There’s a long moment in which time is suspended. “Yes,” says Brenda, but the word falls almost unheard into a canyon of amazed silence.

“No further questions, Your Honor.”

Cultural Differences

As Corinne Udweala gets ready to start her cross-examination, a clamor of speculation takes over the gallery. The community is on tenterhooks. How could Winnie possibly have made a will, when Leo did not? And how could she leave everything to the Spiritual House, forgetting her own children? Even Fang is surprised. Even Katherine is rattled from her calm. The nuns are whispering and murmuring in their chairs.

Ken Fan muses aloud that Winnie most likely assumed she’d never outlive Leo, with his physical strength and his immortal confidence. She must have assumed he would take over all of their property when she was dead: “So, why did she make a will?”

Mary Wa lifts one finger, replies, “The will is opportunity to set things right.” After decades in the U.S., pursuing profit and family fortune, Winnie would have come to see the property as a burden. She would have sought to rid the family of the restaurant: she might even have believed that the restaurant was founded on greed and dishonesty, that it was a cursed property. She must have wished to try, by letting go, to lift the Chao family out of this whole mess: the greed, the hatred, and the covetousness. To bring them, with her final act, toward 250tranquility. And now, as a result, Gu Ling Zhu Chi is the owner of the Fine Chao.

“Gu Ling Zhu Chi must have kept it a secret, must have decided to let the Chao brothers stay for the time being,” says one of the women from the Spiritual House. “She must be waiting until after the trial to decide what to do with the restaurant.” Everyone remembers Jerry’s presence at the forty-nine-day ceremony, his sequestered conversation with Gu Ling Zhu Chi and Dagou. But no one believes they could all keep such a secret.

It’s Katherine who brings them back to the moment. Jerry Stern has brought up Winnie’s will in order to exonerate Dagou from the plot to kill for the restaurant. But Strycker must also have known about the will. This would explain why the prosecution spent so much energy following the trail of smaller cash. Prompted by Katherine, everyone can see it: Winnie’s birthday gifts. The money for the ring. And ultimately, the blue carpetbag containing Zhang Fujian’s money. The prosecution doesn’t need the restaurant to make its case. The prosecution’s story takes on weight: On Christmas Eve, following the party, Leo accused Dagou of stealing the fifty thousand dollars, and threatened to call the police. Minutes later, in danger of losing his personal freedom over the only windfall of money he would ever have, Dagou locked his father into the freezer room.

James says nothing. So, the entire trial has circled back again: Back to the moment in the train station, when he had turned at the sound of the old voice. Please help, young man. If only he hadn’t heard. If only he’d rushed up the stairs, escaped. Or remembered to give the luggage to the EMTs. If only he had handed it over to the lost-and-found. Would none of this be happening now?

He longs to talk to Alice, but Katherine has sent Alice out to search for Ming.

Corrine Udweala begins Brenda’s cross-examination.

It’s most likely Udweala has been chosen with the jury in mind. Matching Strycker against Brenda might seem harsh, but Udweala has the no-nonsense manner of a vice principal chastising an oversexed teenager. 251Brenda is in danger, James can tell. Like a teenager, she wears her righteousness too close to the surface.

“You said Leo Chao was a ‘domineering’ man. Did he ever treat you this way?”

“No. He was different with me than he was with the others.”

“Why do you think this is?”

“I think because I wasn’t family. And because I’m white.”

“But you believe he was domineering toward his family?”

“Yes.”

“Did you consider your relationship with Leo Chao to be one of friendship?”

“We would sit and talk.”

“Did the two of you discuss his relationship with William?”

“Not specifically. He made general comments about how a child could never know a parent. That was it.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Lately he’d gotten to describing his regrets.”

“Please explain.”

“He talked about how, if he had stayed in China, just ‘stuck it out,’ he said, he might have been able to get truly rich. That there were too many people in business here already, and it turned out there was a limit to how rich he could get in the U.S., but in Asia things had opened up and it was possible to get rich without constraints. How he’d made this fundamental life mistake. Sometimes he asked me if I thought he was old.”

“How did you answer?”

“I just said no, not that old.”

“Were you aware at any point that Leo Chao had sexual intentions toward you?”

From the gallery, James studies Lynn’s juror. Her eyes are gleaming, her small mouth slightly open. Her expression is sterner, more righteous, than when the other witnesses were questioned. She’s judging Brenda.

“No.” 252

“Were you aware at any point of Leo and William vying for sexual access to you?”

“Objection, irrelevant.” The objection is overruled.

Brenda raises her voice. “What are you trying to say about me? Are you trying to say, did I lead them on? What are you implying here?”

At the outrage in her tone, everyone is uncomfortable. People cough, people look away, people cross their arms.

“You say you were physically involved with William Chao shortly after you became coworkers. Did you ask William to break up with Katherine Corcoran?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Objection, relevancy.” The objection is overruled.

“That sounds like a leading question to me. And none of your business.”

“Ms. Wozicek,” says Judge Lopate, “please answer the question.”

“If you must know, I could tell Dagou was in love with me, and it didn’t matter to me if he was attached. It was I who had the doubts, mostly. Other doubts.”

“Why did you have doubts?”

“Objection, relevancy.” The objection is overruled.

“Seriously, is this relevant?”

“Were there other things? What were your other doubts?”

Brenda looks at Jerry. “Objection,” he says.

“Objection overruled.”

Brenda’s nostrils flare. “I had reservations, I suppose, about our cultural differences.”

“Can you give an example of a reservation about your cultural differences?”

Brenda turns to Dagou. He nods, and she relaxes visibly. “Well, as one example,” she says, “I had a schedule and a salary at the restaurant, not huge, but with tips an acceptable compensation, because I wasn’t part of the family. I saw the amount of work Mrs. Chao did—and how much 253work Dagou did—and I wasn’t confident they had fair compensation. Mr. Chao—my boss—was a dictatorial man. You could even describe him as tyrannical. And I didn’t see how Dagou would ever get ahead unless …”

“Unless?”

“Well, unless he was in a situation where he wasn’t working for his father.”

“So it would be to your personal advantage if Leo Chao were no longer alive?”

“Objection. Relevance.”

“Overruled.”

“That’s an insult, and a leading question.”

“Ms. Wozicek, please answer the question.”

“If you look at it that way, yes.”

“You said you and William became ‘officially involved’ on December twenty-fourth?”

“Yes.”

“That night, did you and William ever discuss a recent windfall of fifty thousand dollars?”

“No.”

“Did you and William discuss your plans to move in together?”

“I said, no.”

“Did you agree to become officially involved with William even though you both knew another woman still considered herself his fiancée?”

“Yes.”

“Did you decide to do this because William’s financial prospects had suddenly improved by fifty thousand dollars? Enough to live together, in the Lakeside Apartments, after his father was dead?”

Brenda flinches. Jerry calls out, “Objection! Speculation! Foundation! Assumes facts not in evidence!” The objection is sustained.

Udweala rephrases the question. “You said you had financial reasons not to be ‘officially involved’ with William Chao. Did you become ‘officially involved’ on the evening of December twenty-fourth, despite 254the fact that he had not broken off his engagement with his girlfriend, because William now had fifty thousand dollars?”

“For God’s sake, no.” Brenda’s voice is sharp. “I told you, he never told me about any fifty thousand. What are you implying here? You want to make me out as some kind of slut? A whore? You want the jury to think that Dagou tried to pay me to move in with him?”

Again, James glances at Lynn’s juror. Her lips are set, her eyes bright, and James understands that with these blurted questions, Brenda has said exactly what the prosecution wanted.

Dagou Tells the Truth

James knows the history of the defense: How, in the past weeks and months, Jerry, Sarah, Katherine, and Ming have grown united in their belief that Dagou should not testify on his own behalf. That, however carefully they coached him, he would go off message. They all worked to persuade him. But Dagou insisted, with the stubbornness of his father. The jury would expect him to explain. Wouldn’t they believe him if he simply told the truth?

Now Dagou, a mountain of gray serge, towers hopefully before the citizens of Haven, his eyes alight with belief that the truth will set him free.

From where he sits between Fang and Lynn, James prays the jury will believe his brother.

“I’m going to begin by asking you about the freezer room,” Jerry says. “Please estimate: how often did your father go into the freezer room?”

“A couple times a week. If we couldn’t find him, when his car was in the parking lot, he was pretty sure to be down there. We had a joke; we called it his ‘third office.’”

“Who else used the key to the freezer room?”

“Just family. My mother and brothers.”

“Did O-Lan know about the key to the freezer room?” 255

“Objection, speculation. Foundation.”

“Overruled.”

Dagou shrugs. “It’s possible.” Jerry, focusing on Dagou, nods. “But, to be honest,” Dagou bursts out, “it’s unlikely.” Jerry and Sara look at one another. “See, O-Lan hates raw meat. So the family dealt with the meat. We’ve arranged our habits so she never has to go into the freezer room. And even if she went in there, there’s no way she could read the sign.”

Jerry pauses, then asks, “Are you certain she doesn’t know about the freezer room key?”

“Yes, I’m certain. I suppose I shouldn’t say this, it would help exonerate me to say I was not certain. But I always tell the truth.” Dagou straightens, puffs out his chest, exhibiting his honesty. “No one spends more time at the restaurant than I do! And I’ve never seen her even open the basement door.”

“Did you mention the key in your early morning, December twenty-third, radio broadcast?”

“Yes.”

“On December twenty-fourth, were you and your father the last two to leave the restaurant?”

“I think so.”

“Are you sure?”

“No.”

“Did you and your father engage in an altercation that night?”

“Not more than average. He shouted at me, called me a loser.”

“Did he accuse you of taking a bag of cash from his car?”

“No.”

“Did he threaten to call the police?”

“No.”

“Did you take the key from the shelf in the freezer room?”

“No.” Dagou’s voice is firm.

Jerry nods. He turns toward the judge. “No further ques—” 256

“There was a moment when I thought about it, to be absolutely truthful,” Dagou says.

Everyone sighs, almost groans.

Jerry turns, a little wearily, to Dagou. “Please describe what you mean.”

“My father went downstairs and into the freezer room. I also went downstairs.”

Jerry’s face is expressionless. “You were both downstairs.”

“Yes.”

“What happened next?”

Dagou stares at his hands, gathering composure, then straight up at Jerry. “When I got down there, the light was on and the door to the room was open. It would have been easy to reach in, take the key, and push the door shut. I actually hesitated.”

He turns to the jury. “But I didn’t do it,” he says. “I don’t know if I can explain. What happened was—it was like grace. I felt released. Someone, something guided me to turn around, to go back up the stairs. I turned around.” He looks proudly at the judge. “I went upstairs, and I left the restaurant.”

“You made the decision not to close the door?” Jerry speaks very clearly.

But Dagou doesn’t accept his phrasing. “It wasn’t a decision. I simply did not do it. I’m not saying I haven’t been angry at my father, that he hasn’t enraged me. I’m not saying I hadn’t wished that he were gone. I have. But ultimately, I did not do it.”

“What did you do after you went upstairs?”

“I left the restaurant and drove straight to Ren’s—Brenda’s—house.”

“Were you at her house until the police arrived at two p.m. on December twenty-fifth?”

“Yes.”

“No further questions, Your Honor.”

Dagou gives Brenda a shy smile, which she returns. He’s finally done it, what he’s wished to do since his arrest. He’s told his side of the story 257to everyone. He’s glowing, grinning broadly at them all now: rosy, vulnerable, newly born.

 

Dagou also smiles at Simeon Strycker. He wants even Strycker to like him, James can see—Strycker, his enemy, who emits an untouchable indifference, a reptilian coldness.

But Strycker’s tone is casual, almost friendly. “You referred to the freezer room as your father’s ‘third office,’” he says. “What are the first and second offices?”

Dagou’s head bobs with relief. “The first office is the restaurant office, in the back. The second office, that was what we said when he was taking a dump.”

“Thank you.”

Dagou gives another little smile.

“And do you live in an apartment above the restaurant?”

“Yes.”

“Did you pay rent to your father on that apartment?”

“Well, he let me stay there in exchange—”

“Please answer yes or no, Mr. Chao,” says Judge Lopate.

“No.” Dagou lowers his head.

“Is it true that on December fourteenth of last year you signed a lease on a penthouse apartment in the Lakeside Apartments in south Haven?”

There comes a rustle of surprise from the community. Fang reaches over James and writes on the corner of Lynn’s legal pad, The dog wants a bigger house!

Strycker is saying, “… and paid a deposit plus first and last months’ rent, totaling sixty-three hundred dollars?”

“Yes.”

“Was the monthly rent on the penthouse twenty-one hundred dollars, beginning January first?”

“Yes.” 258

“On the morning of December twenty-second, did you ask your father if he would make you a partner at the Fine Chao?”

“Yes.”

“What was his response?”

Dagou’s expression dims. “He wouldn’t do it.”

“On the evening of December twenty-third, you drove your Toyota pickup to your father’s house. You parked the Toyota at the house and switched vehicles, taking the Ford Taurus, your father’s car, to Memorial Hospital. Is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you switch from your own vehicle, the Toyota, to your father’s car?”

“I left the Toyota at my dad’s because the plow was still attached.”

“Where did you drive the Ford?”

“I drove to the Spiritual House and packed a bag of clothes for my mother. Then I drove to the hospital.”

“Were you on Memorial Hospital’s fourth floor at approximately ten-thirty p.m.?”

“Yes.”

“Did you threaten to kill your father at that time?” Strycker’s voice is low, almost intimate.

“Yes.”

Strycker looks at his notes. But he could be pretending. His eyes aren’t moving; he’s not even blinking. “According to testimony, on the night of December twenty-third at ten fifty-four p.m., at the 7-Eleven convenience store, you attempted to make a purchase of one bottle of Jack Daniel’s whiskey and lottery tickets and were unable to complete the purchase of the lottery tickets due to lack of funds. You then assaulted a customer. Is this true?”

Dagou nods. “Yeah, it’s true. I want to”—he takes a gulp of air—“apologize to her. I was in a terrible state of mind.”

“What did you do after you left the 7-Eleven?”

Dagou looks confused. “I … got back into the Ford. I drove around.” 259

“Where did you drive?”

“I drove to Brenda’s house. I shoveled her driveway and front path. Talked to her for a minute. Then I got back into the car and went home.”

“You say you shoveled her driveway. Where did you find the shovel?”

“In the trunk of the Ford.”

Strycker pauses almost imperceptibly. “So, on December twenty-third, at Brenda Wozicek’s house, you did look inside your father’s trunk?”

“I never knew about the cash! I had no idea!”

The judge says, “Answer the question, Mr. Chao.”

Dagou flinches visibly. “I did.”

“At that point, did you discover, in your father’s Ford, a carpetbag containing approximately fifty thousand dollars?”

“No.”

“Did you and Brenda discuss your plan to move in together and use the fifty thousand to help pay the rent on the penthouse apartment?”

“No!” Dagou yells.

“Objection!” Jerry says. “Argumentative. Assumes facts not in evidence.”

“Objection overruled—”

“I didn’t take any money! I’m not a thief!”

Strycker pauses before continuing, “Let’s move on to the morning of December twenty-fourth. Did you use cash to buy eight chickens and twelve ducks from the Shire farm on Highway 30?”

“Yes.”

“At approximately nine twenty-five a.m., did you purchase from Stanley Pardo of Haven Fine Wines and Spirits two six-bottle cases of Stolichnaya, two cases of Jack Daniel’s, a case of bourbon, a case of white wine, a case of red wine, a case of rosé, and four cases of Tsingtao beer? And a case of Korbel champagne, and a package of decorative umbrellas? Paying in cash?”

“Yes.”

“At approximately nine a.m., is it true you bought groceries from the Oriental Food Mart, paying in cash?” 260

“Yes.”

“How much did you spend at the Oriental Food Mart?”

Dagou stares starkly, thinking. “About six hundred dollars.”

“Where did you get the cash to pay for the alcohol and the groceries?”

“I had it, it was my money.”

“If you had the money, why did you have no cash to pay for the lottery tickets on December twenty-third?”

“Why does it matter? I had the cash all along. I didn’t want to spend it. But Ma was sick, and I spent money I had to make a good party.”

“Where did you get the money to pay for the party?”

Dagou doesn’t speak for a long moment. His lips are pursed, his forehead is rumpled. The gallery rustles with the sound of people shifting their weight.

Finally, he mutters, “It was for the ring.”

“Please speak up.”

“It was left over from Katherine,” he says, red-faced. “I used her money for the down payment on the new apartment. But I still had money left over. I was saving it so I could give it back to her. So we could be fair and square. So I could ask for the ring back. Then I could sell it for more than ten thousand. To pay the rent on the apartment.” He levels his shoulders and turns to Judge Lopate. “I may be an asshole, Your Honor, but I’m not a thief!”

“Where were you keeping the money?”

“I had it under my mattress.”

Strycker lifts his pale brows. It is like the stab of a knife. “Let’s move on,” he says, “to approximately twelve a.m., December twenty-fifth. Between approximately eleven-thirty p.m. on December twenty-fourth and twelve a.m. on December twenty-fifth, you and your father had an altercation in the restaurant?”

“Yes.”

“What was it about?”

“I said before, he called me a loser.”

“Did you fight about anything else?” 261

There’s a moment before Dagou answers. Only a fraction of a moment, but people glance up, noticing. “He wanted to know where I’d gotten the money for the party.”

“Did he accuse you of taking a bag containing money from his car, the night before?”

“No.”

“Did he inform you he was about to call the police on you?”

“For chrissake, no!”

Strycker pauses, allows the jury to experience Dagou’s profanity.

“During this altercation, did you wish your father dead?”

“Yes.”

“Did you have these thoughts before this altercation?”

“Sure.”

“How often did you have these thoughts?”

“Well, maybe about ten times a day. No, fifteen times a day.”

Strycker takes another drink of water. “How long have you been having these thoughts?”

Dagou lowers his voice. “I’d rather not answer.”

Judge Lopate says, “Please answer the question, Mr. Chao.”

“Oh, well, all right.” Dagou gazes out at the back of the gallery. “It started when I was in high school, went away when I was in college, and then, after I came back to Haven, it crept up on me again.”

“Can you describe your thoughts?”

James begins to pray again. Please, God, please watch over him. Please keep him safe.

Dagou looks straight at Strycker. How he manages to meet the prosecutor’s eye, James can’t imagine; some great force of will guides him now. Strycker’s eyes are colorless, his expression unreadable.

Dagou loosens his tie, takes a gulp of air. “Well, the thing is,” he says, “I wasn’t the oldest son he wished for: I turned out to be a beta, even with my physical fitness, my personality, and my grades. I could not conquer America for him. I came home with my tail between my legs. But I was also exactly the son he wished for: someone he could take  262advantage of, ignore, disrespect, and underpay, a non human, a dog. Nothing exists for him except himself. I understood this from watching him after my mom got pneumonia. He didn’t care as long as I was here to take her shifts. That was when I started wishing he was dead. If he were only gone.” He twists again toward Judge Lopate. “But, Your Honor, there’s nothing unusual about wishing someone dead. Really. Everybody does it.”

There’s a loud noise from the defense table. Jerry has dropped his phone. Why he’s even holding the phone at that point is unclear. He must have picked it up and dropped it to get Dagou’s attention. Dagou’s peering hopefully around at the first rows of the gallery. James tries to smile, everyone tries to smile, in encouragement; but instead they grimace.

“Admit it, people! Everybody does it!” Dagou’s expression is imploring now. “It was like a new world, this picture in my mind—this vision of the house, our street, our restaurant—without him in it. New sidewalks, green trees, the houses lined up with their siding all clean and bright in the sun. The real America. The wish to be like a baby—and the world without anything in it: no shame, no hatred or responsibility. A fresh start.”

Strycker smiles.

James holds his breath. Please, God—

“An imaginary world. A world where he’s gone and everything is immediately, and miraculously, safe! And then one day, I realize there’s a way this could happen. He could get trapped in the freezer room and never come out. Not violent, see. An accident. The door to the freezer room, swinging shut. The empty nail inside. When I’m angry, instead of punching him, I think of the door swinging shut. That’s how the wish becomes a plan. It would be nighttime, after work. We’d be the only ones in the place, we’ve closed up, and my dad just happens to be in the freezer room and the door just happens to be open, and I just happen to reach in and take the key, then nudge the door shut. I think about it at odd moments. Sometimes even the first thing after I wake up. The door shuts and the world is new again.” 263

There is absolute silence in the room. Katherine is very pale. Her eyes are dark and glittering.

“I request a brief recess,” Jerry says.

The judge denies it.

“And then the opportunity reveals itself, after the party. The guests leave. Ren leaves. James leaves. O-Lan is ready to go home. There’s just my father and me, alone in the restaurant, late at night. I’m taking off my apron. I’m standing in the hall. My father, still shouting, heads down the stairs. I hear his footsteps. I hear him open the door at the bottom of the stairs, hear him walk into the freezer like I’ve heard him do a hundred times before. He’s telling me I’m a spendthrift, a loser, a wimp. He’s telling me I’m too cowardly to ever get back at him. Taunting me! I stand there listening, and, I want to do it. All I have to do is take the key, close the door. Then put the key into my pocket. It would be freedom, it would be triumph, and his frozen corpse would be a trophy, the world’s biggest Christmas present! So I walk down the stairs. I reach the door. But at that very moment, right when it’s all going through my head—right then—you have to believe me here—I just—don’t do it!”

He is coughing—no, he is sobbing into the hushed room.

Please—

“Maybe it wasn’t grace. Maybe I just can’t do it. Instead, I turn and walk back up the stairs.”

Tears stream down Dagou’s pumpkin face.

“I’m a candy-ass, a failure! I can’t reach in. I can’t take the key. I fucking can’t do it. I can’t close the door and walk away. So I don’t do it because I’m a coward. The moment passes. I didn’t do it. And the world is still here, as messy and terrible as ever!”

Silence.

“Now, looking back, I wish I had done it! If I had done it, then at least I would be proud. I would be a man!”

His voice rings into the gallery.

“No further questions,” Strycker says.

No one moves, not even to cough. They’re all watching Dagou. His 264big shoulders are bent, his face is in his hands. He’s still sobbing as Judge Lopate dismisses him. Then she dismisses the jury, and the members of the jury slowly stand. The lawyers begin to pack up their briefcases. The testimony is over. James is fixed to his seat when a low chatter begins somewhere in the back of the room. There comes the sound of the door opening. There is the sound of a muttered argument—but no one turns. They’re focused on Dagou.

Then a murmur rises from the back of the gallery. A familiar voice rings out. “Call for a break!”

James whips around. It’s Ming, with Alice and the bailiff hurrying after him.

“Ming!” James shouts. He tries to get past Fang.

“Shut up!” Fang hisses. He and Lynn seize James’s arms. Though he twists frantically, he can’t get loose.

Ming is making his way up the aisle. He looks terrible. Green skin, jagged cheeks, and black eyes glittering feverishly over his jacket and loose tie.

“Call for a break,” he’s saying. “A break in the proceedings! I have to speak.”

Judge Lopate is on her feet urging the jury to leave the room. They’re filing out, staring at Ming like everyone else. Even Strycker is staring.

Ming is halfway up the aisle when Ken Fan leaps up. He puts his hands on Ming’s shoulders, trying to steer him back. On Judge Lopate’s orders, the bailiff hurries to the jury, shepherding them ahead of him. The judge orders the lawyers to the bench. Ming tells Ken Fan, “I’m here to give evidence against myself. I’m the guilty party.”

Finally, with a terrific wrench, James breaks free. He leaps to his feet. The three brothers stand in the courtroom: Dagou staring out at Ming, Ming turning to Dagou, James looking from one brother to the other.

Katherine cries out, “Ming, stop! You were a thousand miles away!”

“I didn’t have to be there!” Ming says, squaring his shoulders. “It’s the perfect murder, don’t you see? Dad was obsessed with that freezer. It was 265only Dad who could be killed. James is wrong. The key was gone. Anyone could have done it. No proof, no witnesses!”

“Ming, you know you didn’t do it,” Katherine says. “You had no motive.”

Ming smiles broadly. “We all hated him. We were all his bitches. Our motives lie in the past. It’s a dark room with the flayed corpses of animals in it. Nobody in their right mind wants to go there.”

James is struggling through the crowd to reach Ming. Worming his way between Katherine and Ken Fan and the other community men who have surrounded his brother, trying to grab him by the shoulders.

“Forget Alf! I’m the one who got away. Do you know what kind of person our father was? A terrible person…. He knew that about himself. But he wanted power, he needed to keep people around him. So he found a way. The key was marrying my mother, did you know what a fool my mother was? She fell for him, once to marry him and at least three times after that. Three dogs. Dagou is the big dog and I’m Ergou, the second dog. I’m the dog who ran away. I’ve gone into the wild. More than foaming at the mouth. I’ve become one of them. I’m a—”

“Ming, stop,” Katherine begs. She is sobbing.

“I knew she was my sister! Not in my conscious mind. But my unconscious mind knew she wasn’t normal, not like the others. She’s a wily one. She’s involved me in her drama, her wasted-life drama. The drama of her wasted life. It’s true I wasn’t in the state.” He pulls something out of his pocket. His hands are shaking. “It’s true, I have a boarding pass! But that’s no alibi!”

Ming turns, speaking to the gallery. “Villagers! Villagers, I arranged to be gone.” He turns to the prosecuting attorney. “Strycker, you think your case is watertight. But Dagou broadcast his plan. He isn’t the only one who knew about the key. James knew. I knew. I could easily have taken the key with me, flown to New York City, and dropped the key into the Hudson River. I am responsible for Ba’s death. I did it!”

Katherine’s voice rings out, “No, you didn’t! Ming, you didn’t.”

Katherine stands and turns to Ming, her face contorted with tears. 266She squares her shoulders. Then she takes a shuddering breath and says, “I have the key.”

For a moment, no one moves. As James, startled, turns in her direction, he glimpses Brenda in the gallery looking daggers at Katherine.

“It’s right here in my purse.” Katherine opens her purse, removes a key, and holds it up to the judge. The brass key, with its distinctive square head, glints slightly.

Stunned, Ming asks, “Where’d you find that key?”

Katherine says, “In Dagou’s jacket pocket. In the restaurant office. I was looking through his pockets, after the party. I—I was very upset that night. I thought it was her key.”

There is a single hoot of nervous laughter, followed by a shocked silence.

“Yes, it’s true. I swear to God, that is where I found it.”

“Mistrial,” Jerry is saying. “Call for a mistrial!”

Judge Lopate tells the lawyers to show up first thing in the morning. She says she’ll decide about the mistrial then. James and Ken Fan, after speaking to the bailiff, escort Ming out of the courtroom. James takes Ming by the arm and Ming, snarling, shakes him off. James takes hold of him again, more gingerly, and Ming doesn’t resist.

James’s Secret

At the nursing station in the psychiatric wing, James is told Ming needs psychotropic medication. He’ll be kept at least a night for observation, and if he’s not a danger to himself or others, he’ll be released. He was given a sedative and is now asleep, says the nurse. But when James enters the room, his brother is wide awake. Ming sits up too straight, and his eyes are too bright.

“Get me out of here,” he says.

“I think it would be good for you to stay here for a night. Nothing’s happening out there. Just deliberation by the jury.” 267

“A jury of villagers,” Ming snarls. “He doesn’t stand a chance.”

Ming’s bright eyes lock onto James’s eyes. James holds the gaze bravely, but Ming’s righteous anger sears into his mind.

“Forget it. Just forget the condescending medical bullshit, Mr. Premed. You’ve got a shitty bedside manner. You don’t want me out of here. You’ve always envied me, wanted to see me put down. Fine, I’ll get myself out of here. I know what to tell them. I’ll tell them. Get me a cup of coffee.”

“Ming, you’re not well.”

“Let me begin at the beginning, Doctor. She’s one of us. Our sister. Dad knew all about it. She has his jaw like a spade. She has his smile like a cat. He never was a dog, you know, as he claimed—he was a cat in dog’s clothing. It was she who had the dirty sneakers. I went to her apartment. I talked to her three times. She’s spent years in Singapore, I think. She speaks flawless Commonwealth English. She staked us out, she’s been living here and working at the restaurant, pretending all the while to be something else. I ate radishes cracked with her cleaver. I ate her lace bones. She told me I’m the murderer.” Ming sits even more straight, his hair mussed, but still elegant and oddly compelling in his hospital gown. “It’s I who knew it would happen. I foresaw—I knew it would happen! I wanted it to happen, and I didn’t prevent it. I let go of Dagou. Dagou took the rap. I let him take it. I thought he killed Ba, I thought he would kill Ba, but it was really me because I knew—”

“Back up,” says James, shaking his head. “Did you say, do you mean O-Lan is—”

“That’s why she never left. I’m pretty sure Dad once tried to fire her, and she wouldn’t go. I’ve got to get out of here, James. I’ve got to keep her from escaping. She’s a flight risk. Green card, indeed. She’d rather kill us all than be a citizen of any country.”

“You need sleep and rest.”

“I need coffee.”

“No more caffeine, doctor’s orders.” 268

“I’m getting out of here.”

“Ming, you’re having a nervous breakdown.”

Ming cocks his head and looks up to the left, as if a lamp has turned on in the corner of the room. “That would explain a lot.”

“Can I do something?”

“Go talk to her! Keep her here!” Ming, his eyes flashing triumphantly and angrily, recites directions to O-Lan’s room. “Now get out of here. Go. There’s no time.”

As James runs through the fluorescent-lit halls, he considers what Ming has just told him. Weightless, he pumps the length of the building, toward the exit nearest the parking lot. He can’t feel the floor under his feet. He can no longer focus on the significance of Ming’s words, for his heart is in flight from them.

Around him is the hospital. He has the sense of being in the arteries of an endless, brilliant beast, an organism, its windows glittering in the dark like jeweled dragon hide, a lone phlebotomy cart circulating in its corridors, tiny vials of blood moving along its arteries. The basement bowels, the cafeteria, the offices at the top. The little room where Winnie died—grief-stricken, jolted by the news of his father’s death, bound to Leo in love and hate. He had once wished to be a doctor, to know this place. The more he learns about the body, the less he has even the smallest sense of knowledge or control, and the more he understands there is no such thing as knowledge and control.

But he is the youngest brother, and he must follow orders. He recalls Ming’s directions, drives through Letter City into the oldest part of town, the shabbiest part. James reaches the house Ming described to him, “cheap white siding, 1920s style, big but with something meanly scaled in all of the proportions.” Using his phone as a light, James climbs the outside stairs.

A single door at the top. His fist echoes and he knows—believes—he knocks in vain. He puts his hand on the knob. As he turns the knob, he believes—hopes—the room will be empty.

He enters, closing the door behind him. 269

Someone is sitting in the dark, near the kitchen. James flicks on the ceiling light. O-Lan wears jeans, a T-shirt, and a denim jacket; at her feet is the blue carpetbag.

“Hello,” he says, in English.

She doesn’t answer.

“Ming says you can understand me. I’m here to make sure you stay. You’ve got to stay.”

He waits for several seconds; still she doesn’t answer. The light casts shapes over her face. He can see it now, beneath those marks of pain and age: that unmistakable vitality, the blood of his father. He looks at her left hand. On her third finger is the blunt shape of the ugly, yet priceless, ring.

When she speaks, her voice holds the rich, mocking fortitude of Big Chao. “Do you believe I should stay?”

James struggles against the impulse to recoil from the aggression, and the surprise, of her spoken English. For some reason, he remembers Winnie’s voice, You need to breathe. He breathes. “I don’t know,” he says. His mother stays with him, guiding him. “Do you trust anything?” he asks, as she might have done. “Do you have faith, in God, or in the teachings of Buddhism?”

“I’ve been to see Gu Ling Zhu Chi,” she says, surprising him. “I went straight to her temple when I first arrived in Haven. The nuns took one look at me and let me in. They can always tell when someone is truly meant to see her.”

“What did she say?”

“She asked me for my story. I told her I had come to town to destroy my father. I told her about his great injustices toward my mother and me. She prayed for me. Then she summoned Leo Chao to the Spiritual House, and she reintroduced us.”

So all along, Gu Ling Zhu Chi had held this knowledge over his father. It explained Leo Chao’s respect for the old nun.

“I was hungry, homeless, an illegal. She advised him to give me a job. In this way, she thought, he could begin to make it up to me. I would learn to live in peace. And I would serve as a reminder to him, that we 270must consider the consequences of what we do. She made him promise to employ me. And she offered me lodging.”

“Why didn’t you take it?”

O-Lan shook her head. “She wanted to keep an eye on me. But she didn’t force me to live with her, it’s not her way. I took a room here instead. I worked for him. Of course, he didn’t improve. He exploited me. Gu Ling Zhu Chi was wrong on both counts. He didn’t change his ways, and nothing weakened my determination.”

“But Gu Ling Zhu Chi is right,” James said. “We must consider the consequences of what we do. You have to stay in Haven now. There’ll be an appeal.”

“I don’t mind if everyone knows what I’ve done,” she says. “Yes, there’ll be an appeal, and my testimony will be discredited. But I won’t be here. Why would I have stayed?”

James has to think back, slowly, in order to remember. “A green card.”

“They assume it’s what everyone wants.”

Of course, the prosecuting attorneys assumed she’d be held in Haven by the promise of citizenship. But Ming was right. Why would she want to be a part of this, or any, country? O-Lan, the Orphan, who had no native language.

“You should all know one more thing,” she says. “One more piece of the story.”

He nods, he is ready.

“Your mother guessed who I was. Not right away. It happened about a year after I arrived. I told her what your father did to my mother and me. It’s why she left the restaurant. Why she left your father and went to the nuns.”

Did she guess that he’s often wondered why Winnie had left them? Is she trying to comfort him? It’s possible. In the set of her lips, and in her neck and shoulders, he reads a stubborn and familiar resistance. There is deep pain in her, as well. He’s seized with the recognition, the understanding, that it is even more terrible to be a daughter of Leo Chao than it is to be his son. 271

“But you’re our sister,” he says. “We can’t just let you go. Where would you go?”

She smiles. “I’m not going to tell you that.”

“I’ll stop you.” James takes out his phone. “I can call 911,” he says. “There are only three entrances to the freeway. The police will follow you.”

She shrugs. “That’s your decision, little brother. You do what you think is right. I’m leaving now. Goodbye.”

There are so many things he wants to talk to her about. More than the ring, the carpetbag. But he finds he cannot bear to be rebuffed by her.

“Goodbye,” he says. Their eyes meet. She reaches for the bag. He stands in place, in her way, but he doesn’t try to stop her. Quick as a cat, she moves past him, out the door, and down the stairs.

James sits down at the card table, holding his phone. She told him to do what he thinks is right. He brings up the screen to dial and stares at the bright numbers. One call, and he will have done the right thing. She’ll be caught, and she’ll receive the punishment she deserves. But is it right? It is more terrible to be a daughter of Leo Chao—worse to be his Chinese daughter than his American son. What would Dagou want him to do?

James puts his phone back into his pocket. He’ll wait for the authorities to discover the room is empty. By that time, his sister will be far away, many hours out of town, possibly states away from Haven, in any direction. Soon, James will go back down the stairs, to the hospital. But for several minutes he sits at O-Lan’s empty table, steadying his breath.

The Closing Statements

It’s midmorning, and the courtroom has grown bright and warm, before Judge Lopate is ready with her decision on the request for a mistrial. The sun, pouring through high windows, glints off the buttons worn by the waiting spectators. Everyone watches as Judge Lopate takes a sip of water. Then she announces that the jury had been dismissed and essentially sequestered by the time Ming told his story. The witness had also been dismissed. There’s no mistrial. 272

In the first few rows, the community listens with their faces closed, protected. Outsiders might describe them as emotionless and inscrutable. In reality, almost everyone is praying now. By an accident of timing, most of the Christians sit on one side of the aisle today, and almost all of the Buddhists sit on the other side. Katherine is on the Buddhist side. Lynn suspects she chose deliberately, knowing that the temple women wouldn’t hold yesterday’s words and actions against her. Maybe Dagou will be found innocent; maybe he’ll forgive her for betraying him in order to protect Ming. Omi sits on the Christian side. Watching her lips move, Lynn suspects she has switched to Christianity because she believes Dagou is guilty. Christianity provides a concrete action plan for sins, even mortal ones. Christianity acknowledges wickedness but maintains Dagou might still be saved.

Strycker stands to deliver his closing statement. He says the law that a son must respect the father is universal. He quotes the Bible: “‘Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land that the Lord your God is giving to you.’” He quotes Confucius: “‘The virtue of filial piety is essential to the establishment and continuance of human society.’ Therefore,” he continues, “William ‘Dagou’ Chao has broken the rules not only of the American culture in which he was raised, but of the culture of his ancestors!”

Strycker stares at the jury. “Does William ‘Dagou’ Chao have the right to walk free as a member of our society? Does a man who has used every method within his means, legal and illegal, to pour his hatred for this man into the ears of family, friends, and strangers; does William ‘Dagou’ Chao, who has literally broadcast his desire to murder in the exact way this murder was performed, who has admitted that he had murderous intent, have a right to remain free after that murder?

“William ‘Dagou’ Chao has committed a murder under the laws of our country. He must be punished for it.”

As Strycker’s high voice penetrates the room, Dagou sits motionless. There is a long hush. Jerry Stern gets slowly to his feet. 273

Clearly, deliberately, Jerry makes a plea for rationality. “Appearances,” he says, “are not the same as truth; rumors are not the same as truth; threats are not the same as murder; an unexplained death is not the same as a murder; and a statement made in the subjunctive, under pressure of police, is not a confession.”

Jerry reminds the jury members about their job. That it’s the jury’s task to judge whether Dagou is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. That the case for Dagou’s guilt is entirely unclear. It’s only known that Big Chao died of hypothermia. Without evidence that anyone took the key on purpose, it’s reasonable to assume this death was a tragic accident. “And while William wears his heart on his sleeve,” Jerry says, “while he may have vocalized thoughts that seem to supply the motivation to commit an unspeakable act, there are others who may have had similar motivation to harm Leo Chao. And there is even reasonable doubt as to whether anyone may have intentionally taken the key and shut the door.”

He straightens now. His voice deepens and carries to the back of the room.

“Mr. and Mrs. Chao brought their lives to America so their family could have certain rights and freedoms. And after all of their hard work, Mr. and Mrs. Chao would want their sons to keep the privileges they have struggled for, the rights they have earned.

“Think long and hard about taking those rights from William Chao,” Jerry says. “Would you vote to imprison a man on circumstantial evidence? Would you vote to take away the liberties his parents sacrificed themselves to give to him? Please do not destroy a human life.”

Jerry’s plea is followed by stillness. Then Judge Lopate straightens her reading glasses and begins the complicated, methodical job of instructing the jury. Dagou’s fate is now up to them.

Lynn scribbles in her notes: The evidence is circumstantial. The jury gets to decide. If they believe Dagou, they’ll vote to exonerate him. If they don’t believe him, they’ll vote to convict. Will the jury believe a flawed but heartfelt Asian man? We shall see. 274

The Moment of Return

That night, James and Alice get into his childhood bed. “Please,” he says to Alice, “I don’t think I can live with this unless I tell you and Dagou. I know, we’re supposed to tell the truth in court. I didn’t lie even to save Dagou, and I revealed my relationship with you to the police. But please, if you are capable, forget I ever told you this. I disobeyed Ming and let O-Lan go. I let Dagou take the punishment for her, for me, and all of us. We’re all guilty. We let this happen under our watch. We let him mistreat her and we let one of us do something unconscionable. All four of us are guilty now.”

“I’ll forget all about it,” Alice says. He knows she won’t forget, but she won’t tell.

They lie with their heads on the same pillow, looking into each others’ eyes. “I let her go,” James says. “I let her go even though she killed my father.” The old man in the train station. Leo and Winnie. “I don’t know how I’ll get over this.”

“I don’t think you will.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t think we can get over what we do.”

James reaches for her.

“I can’t,” Alice says. She draws her knees up, protectively, between them. Her chilly, pointed toes press against his stomach.

“Don’t you love me?”

She doesn’t answer for a moment. Then, “I do. I do love you.”

“Then tell me why not.”

“Because,” she says, knowing he needs it spelled out, “I can’t do it now that I’ve testified, now that we all know he was trapped that night, dying in the restaurant, just downstairs. We can’t pretend it didn’t happen. We can’t pretend we don’t know, and that we didn’t do anything about it.”

“It’s not your fault,” James says. “You thought it was a ghost.”

“I told you to go back to sleep. And now, after my testimony, you know what I did.”

She can’t forget it. He can’t talk her out of remembering. 275

They had sex so many times. But until it happens again, it’s in the past tense, it’s unreachable. Hasn’t he always somehow known, even when they are together, that each minute with her is in the fugitive tense? Already escaped and gone forever? Even the night before the trial. The memory waits for him. On the second time that night he somehow managed to outlast her; he was still inside of her, Alice silently and fiercely rubbing against him, and then, to their surprise, she began to shudder and moan. In that moment, when he knew she was about to come, did he shut his eyes to feel it pass through him, did he accept it as only the first of a thousand times? No, he opened his eyes. He pulled slightly away from her in order to watch her face. He wants nothing in the world but to see that again.

Remembering, wrenched with helplessness and fear, he tries to hold her to him, but she clutches her knees to her chest, her body enclosed and private, sealed into itself.

“Alice,” he says, “then what will you do now? Will you go to the Spiritual House? Will you become a nun?”

She smiles. “No.”

“Then …”

She touches her nose to his. “I said I can’t ever do it with you anymore, but it doesn’t mean I’ll never do it with anyone else. Just not with you, and not in this community.” At her use of the words “this community,” he understands she sees herself as being apart from it. “Not here,” she says.

“You’re going away?”

“Yes.”

She’s lying in his bed with him, their heads on the pillow, and she is looking back into his face, her eyes serious and wide, deep pupils, caramel-colored irises. She is eight years old. They are squatting over an anthill on her lawn. Below them, ants boil from the mound, their flat wings tilting, glittering in the morning sun. She is fifteen years old and hunched over her sketchbook, glancing up at him from the back room of her mother’s store. She is nineteen. She’s standing in the Spiritual House, she drops her purse, their heads almost bump together, and he smells vividly 276her cheap shampoo. Then the light changes and it’s autumn; leaves blow down a broad and unfamiliar sidewalk in an unknown city. She is standing before a plate-glass window of an art supply store, wearing all black, her face a pale oval reflected in the glass. Her hair is cropped in a way he’s never seen before, so that it sticks up a little, rough edged like the feathers around a crow’s beak. James’s vision fades; for a moment he can’t see any further into the future. He closes his eyes. With an effort, he imagines Alice standing at a mirror in a smaller, high-ceilinged chamber with a narrow bed, clothes draped over her bureau. She’s seated at a drafting table in a painting studio, the northern light from a high window filling the room with spiritual purpose, like the light of a cathedral. He can’t make out the outline of her drawing.

In this instant, when James understands he may not see Alice much anymore, he doesn’t know this is the moment when time will begin to circle backward. Even though he’ll see her before she leaves for New York, although he’ll see her, less and less frequently, at the Christmas holidays, he’ll never again see her head on the pillow next to his; he won’t feel this way again, but will only return to it, over and over, in his memory. And each time he returns, the memory will change, will alter and degrade. Will she be looking into his eyes with the same intensity as now? Or will she not look at him in quite the same way, will she gaze at him with gentleness and yet with a kind of coolness, of distance? No, not even the memory will be the same. At some point, the hundredth repeat, the thousandth repeat, the memory will be lost to time. James and Alice look into each other’s eyes. Alice looks away and the moment is gone.

The Verdict

Posted on May 1, 3 p.m.

You’ve probably heard the jury has found Dagou guilty of murder.

Judge Lopate had thought the sentence through. She acknowledged Dagou was born into an unusually complex, emotionally violent family, an immigrant family that 277had no choice in our society but to labor under unreasonable hardship in order to establish itself. Also, born the first son of a “difficult man with a domineering and violent temperament.”

“In these things,” she said to him, “you had no choice. But as human beings, we are not merely victims of fate.” She says it’s foundational to American society that its adult citizens are expected to exercise free will and to behave in a morally upright manner no matter what the difficult circumstances, no matter what has been done to them.

She went on about how Dagou lives in the United States. “You may believe you remained with your family out of filial piety, the pillar of your culture’s vision of family. But you are now living in a culture where you are allowed, even required, to make your own choices, your own decisions,” she said. “Your behavior was that of a trapped animal who would kill its keeper in order to escape. But in reality, you were never trapped.

“The jury has found you guilty of second-degree murder. You have been sentenced to thirty years’ imprisonment without parole.”

Behind us, the gallery burst into applause.

Dagou sat stunned, with his gaze fixed on Judge Lopate like he was expecting her to take it all back. She met his gaze calmly, then looked out at the gallery.

From the first few rows, we all stared back at her.

We were outraged, stunned, anguished; but we did not fight back. We were, by and large, too docile. Too well behaved, too pragmatic, too self-doubting. I sat speechless, like the others, ashamed of myself, and furious that not one of the jury chose to believe a flawed but heartfelt Asian man.

Only Fang stood.

“Appeal!” Fang bellowed, loud enough for everyone to hear. “There’ll be an appeal! Ack!”

Ma Wa had reached up and thumped the back of his head.