Hawaii - James Michener [609]
She therefore had her Harvard-trained great-grandson, Eddie Kee, study the new law and heckle the Immigration authorities until she understood every nuance. When the first language class convened, she was present, and although she was well over a hundred years old at the time, she drove her eager brain to its extent, and in the evenings sat listening to the English-language radio. But she was so ingrained in Chinese thought that English escaped her, and one night she faced up to her failure. She told Hong Kong, "I can't learn the language now. Why didn't somebody force me to learn it years ago? Now I shall never become a citizen." And she looked disconsolately at her grandson.
But then Eddie arrived with the exciting news that certain elderly Orientals would be allowed to take the examinations in their own tongue, provided they were literate in it, and at this news Nyuk Tsin covered her old eyes for a moment, then looked up brightly and said, "I shall learn to write."
Hong Kong therefore hired a learned Chinese to teach the old woman what was undoubtedly the most difficult language in the world, but after a while it became apparent that she was simply too old to learn, so Eddie went to the Immigration authorities and said honestly, "My great-grandmother is a hundred and six, and she wants more than anything else in the world to become an American citizen. But she can't speak English . . ."
"No trouble!” the examiner explained. "Now she can be examined in Chinese."
"But she can't read and write Chinese," Eddie continued.
"Well!" The examiner studied this for a while, then went into the back office, and in a moment Mr. Brimstead, an official from Washington, appeared with one question: "You say this old woman is a hundred and six?"
"Yes, sir."
"She got a family?"
"Probably the biggest in Hawaii."
"Good! We've been looking for something dramatic. Pictures we could use for publicity in Asia. You get the family together. I'll give her the exam myself and we'll waive the literacy. But wait a minute. Is she able to answers questions. I mean, is she competent?"
"Wu Chow's Auntie is competent," her great-grandson assured him.
"Because on the questions I can't fudge. You know: legislative, executive, judicial."
"Can I accompany her, to give her moral support?"
"Sure, but our interpreters will report her answers, and they have to be right."
"She will be right," the young lawyer guaranteed.
He therefore entered upon a long series of cramming sessions with his great-grandmother, teaching her in the Hakka tongue the many intricacies of American government, and this time, with citizenship hanging like a silver lichee nut before her, she summoned her remarkable energies and memorized the entire booklet.
"The father of our country?" Eddie shouted at her.
"George Washington."
"Who freed the slaves?" Hong Kong drilled.
"Abraham Lincoln," the little old woman replied, and Eddie reflected: "It's difficult to believe, but she came to Hawaii in the year that Lincoln died."
On the day of her examination, the Immigration Department assembled several newsreel cameras, officials in white coats, and about two hundred members of the Kee hui, who were told to cheer when the old lady arrived in Hong Kong's Buick. When she stepped down, brushing aside Eddie's arm, she was very short, weighed less than ninety pounds, and was dressed in an old-style black Chinese dress above which her nearly bald head rose with its deep-set eyes, legendary wrinkles and anxious smile. She did not speak to her accumulated family, for she was repeating in her mind many litanies alien to ancient China: "The capital of Alabama is Montgomery; Arizona, Phoenix; Arkansas, Little Rock; California, Sacramento."
The cameras were moved into the examination room, and an announcer said in a hushed voice, "We are now going to listen in upon a scene that is taking place daily throughout the United States. A distinguished elderly Chinese woman, Mrs. Kee, after nearly ninety years of life in America, is going to try to pass her examination