Hawaii - James Michener [433]
Together the Kees sucked in their breath and faced the day they had long feared. Sooner or later, some member of the family would want to marry a white man. Now it had come and those who dreaded the event suspected that Africa with the radical new ideas he had acquired at Michigan must somehow be at fault. Therefore, the older members of the family began staring at the lawyer, and he suffered from their harsh gaze. Finally Europe asked brusquely, "Tell us, Africa. What do you think of this?"
There was a long hush in the hot room, and voices of children could be heard. Finally Africa spoke. "I am humiliated," he said. "I am ashamed that it is my daughter who wants to marry outside our circle of acquaintance. I have given her a good education and her mother has 'tried to teach her to be a decent Hakka. I am humiliated and I do not know what to do." Suddenly the pressure upon him became great and he hid his face in his hands, sobbing quietly. The disgrace he had brought upon the family immobilized his speech, so his wife added, "He feels that he must accept the shame for what his daughter has done."
At this solemn moment Australia interjected a happier note. "Of course it's his responsibility. If a man goes to Michigan, he picks up foreign ways. I suppose that's why we sent him to Michigan. Remember, Asia, it was your sons who went to Pennsylvania. It was your sons who brought American friends into our homes, and it was one of those friends who met Sheong Mun. Bang! They're in love! Ellen, if your stingy father won't give you the two hundred dollars I will."
"It isn't the money that I want so much, Uncle Australia, as your blessing."
"You have mine!"
"And mine!" Australia's wife chimed.
"Have I yours, Wu Chow's Auntie?"
The family turned to look at Nyuk Tsin, sitting with her worn hands in her lap. "I am concerned with only one problem, Sheong Mun," the old woman said. "When your children are born they will be the children of a white man, and they will be lost to our family. Promise me that you will send me a letter each time you have a child, and I will go to the Punti scholar and find his true name, and we will write it in our book and send the name back to China, as we have always done."
"My sons will not want Chinese names," hard-headed Ellen countered.
"Later they will," the old woman said. "They will want to know who they are, and in the book the information will be waiting for them."
As the Kees dispersed over the face of the world, marrying with men who worked in strange lands, letters arrived constantly for Nyuk Tsin. Her sons would read them to her, and she would note the births of all children. For each son she got a proper name, and registered it in China, and as she predicted this day in 1908, the time did come when the boy so named would want to know what the Chinese half of his ancestry signified, and men would arrive in Honolulu whom you would not recognize as Chinese, and they would meet old Nyuk Tsin, and she would take down a book she could not read, and the interpreter would pick out the information and the Chinese-German-Irish-English boy would understand a little better who he was.
But on this particular day the old woman was concerned with Africa's children, and after it had been grudgingly agreed that the lawyer's daughter, Kee Sheong Mun, known locally as Ellen Kee, could marry her sailor, Nyuk Tsin coughed and said, "It is time we think again about getting Hong Kong into Punahou."
Asia groaned, America rose and left the room in disgust, and the rest of the family turned to stare at Africa's youngest son, a square-headed wrinkle-eyed boy of fifteen. Among the family it was believed that young Koon Kong, who was known as Hong Kong, had inherited his father's intellectual brilliance. He was most able at figures, knew Punti, Hakka, English and Hawaiian well, and seemed unusually gifted at managing money, for he augmented whatever he got hold of by lending it out to his numerous cousins. His rate of interest