Shanghai Girls Read online

  “Western style but with chopsticks.”

  “Did you serve betel nuts to the guests? Did you pour tea?”

  I want to say I’m not a country bumpkin, so under no circumstances would I have served betel nuts. I would have poured tea if I’d had the wedding I’d dreamed of, but that night was hardly festive. I remember how dismissively Old Man Louie waved away my father’s suggestion that May and I perform the ritual.

  “It was a civilized wedding,” I say. “Very Western—”

  “Did you worship your ancestors as part of the ceremony?”

  “Of course not. I’m Christian.”

  “Do you have any documentary evidence for your alleged marriage?”

  “In my luggage.”

  “Is your husband expecting you?”

  This question momentarily takes me aback. Old Man Louie and his sons know we didn’t show up in Hong Kong to take the ship here with them. They certainly notified the Green Gang that we failed to fulfill our part of the contract, but did they tell the Angel Island inspectors any of that? And do the old man and his sons still expect us to arrive?

  “My sister and I were delayed in our travels because of the monkey people,” I say. “Our husbands long for our arrival.”

  After the interpreter relays this, the two inspectors speak between themselves, not knowing I understand every word.

  “She seems honest enough,” Mr. White says. “But her papers claim she’s the wife of a legally domiciled merchant and the wife of an American citizen. She can’t be both.”

  “This could be an error in past paperwork. Either way, we’d have to let her in.” Chairman Plumb grimaces sourly. “But she hasn’t proven either status. And look at her face. Does she look like a merchant’s wife to you? She’s so dark. I bet she’s worked in rice paddies her entire life.”

  There it is. The same old complaint. I look down, afraid they’ll see the flush creep up my neck. I think of the girl on the boat we took to Hong Kong and how the pirate appraised her. Now these men are doing the same with me. Do I really appear that country?

  “But consider how she’s dressed. She doesn’t look like a laborer’s wife either,” Mr. White points out.

  Chairman Plumb thrums his fingers on the table. “I’ll let her through, but I want to see her marriage certificate showing she’s married to a legitimate merchant or something proving her husband’s citizenship.” He looks at the interpreter. “On what day are the women allowed to go to the wharf to get things from their luggage?”

  “Tuesdays, sir.”

  “All right then. Let’s hold her over until next week. Tell her to bring her marriage certificate next time.” He nods to the recorder and begins dictating a synopsis, ending with “We are deferring the case for further investigation.”

  FOR FIVE DAYS May and I wear the same clothes. At night we wash our underwear and hang it to dry with the laundry the other women drape above our heads. We still have a little money to buy toothpaste and other toiletries from a small concession stand open during mealtimes. When Tuesday arrives, we line up with women who want to get things from their luggage and are escorted by white missionary women to a warehouse at the end of the wharf May and I get our marriage papers, and then I check to see if the coaching book is still hidden. It is. No one has bothered to search inside my hat with the feathers. I now pull at the lining and hide it properly. Then I grab fresh undergarments and a change of clothes.

  Every morning, embarrassed to be seen naked by the other women, I dress under the blanket on my bed. Then I wait to be called back to the hearing room, but no one comes for us. If we aren’t called by nine, then we know nothing will happen that day. When afternoon arrives, a new feeling of anticipation and dread fills the room. At precisely four, the guard enters and calls, “Sai gaai,” which is a bastardization of one of the Cantonese dialects for hou sai gaai, which means good fortune. Then he lists the names of those allowed to get on the boat to complete the final leg of their journey to America. Once the guard approaches a woman and rubs his eyes as though he were crying. He laughs when he tells her she’s being sent back to China. We never learn the reason for her deportation.

  Over the next few days, we watch as the women who arrived the same day we did are allowed to continue to San Francisco. We see new women land, have their hearings, and leave. Still no one comes for us. Every night, after another disgusting meal of pig knuckles or stewed salted fish with fermented bean curd, I take off my dress under the blanket, hang it on the line above me, and try to sleep, knowing I’ll be locked in this room until morning.

  But the feeling of being locked in and trapped extends far, far beyond this room. In a different time, in a different place, and with more money maybe May and I could have escaped our futures. But here we don’t have choice or freedom. Our whole lives up to now have been lost to us. We know no one in the United States other than our husbands and our father-in-law. Baba had said that if we went to Los Angeles, we’d live in beautiful houses, have servants, see movie stars, so maybe this is the path May and I were supposed to be on all along. We could consider ourselves lucky we’ve married so well. Women—whether in arranged marriages or not, whether in the past or right now, in 1937—have married for money and all that it brings. Still, I have a secret plan. When May and I get to Los Angeles, we’ll skim money from what our husbands give us to buy clothes and shoes, beautify ourselves, and keep our households running, and use it to escape. I lie on the wire mesh that is my bed, listen to the low, mournful sound of the foghorn and to the women in the room cry snore, or whisper among themselves, and plot how May and I will leave Los Angeles one day and disappear to New ’York or Paris, cities we’ve been told are equal to Shanghai in splendor, culture, and riches.

  TWO TUESDAYS LATER, when we’re allowed to retrieve things from our luggage again, May fishes out the peasant clothes she bought for us in Hangchow. We wear them in the afternoons and at night, because it’s too cold and dirty in this place to wear our good dresses, which we put on in the mornings in case we’re called to finish our hearings. In the middle of the following week, May takes to wearing our travel clothes all the time. “What if we’re called for an interview?” I ask. We sit on our top bunks with a little valley of space separating us and clothes hanging like banners all around us. “Do you think this is so different from Shanghai? Our clothes matter. Those who are well dressed leave sooner than those who look like …” My voice trails off.

  “Peasants?” May finishes for me. She folds her arms over her stomach and lets her shoulders fall. She doesn’t look like herself. We’ve been here a month now, and it feels like all the courage she showed getting me to safety has somehow been sucked out of her. Her skin looks pasty. She isn’t terribly interested in washing her hair, which, like mine, has grown out into a straggly mess.

  “Come on, May, you have to try. We won’t be here much longer. Take a shower and put on a dress. You’ll feel better.”

  “Why? Just tell me why. I can’t eat their terrible food, so I rarely use their toilets,” she says. “I don’t do anything, so I don’t sweat. But even if I did, why would I take a shower where people can see me? The humiliation is so great I wish I could wear a sack over my head. Besides,” she adds pointedly, “I don’t see you going to the toilets or showers.”

  Which is true. Sadness and despair overwhelm those who stay here too long. The cold wind, the foggy days, the shadows on the walls, depress and frighten all of us. In just this month, I’ve seen many women, some who’ve already come and gone, refuse to take showers during their entire stays, and not just because they don’t sweat. Too many women have committed suicide in the showers by hanging or by sharpening chopsticks and driving them through their ears and into their brains. No one wants to go to the showers not only because no one likes to do her private business with others around but because nearly everyone here is afraid of the ghosts of the dead, who, without proper burial rites, refuse to leave the nasty place where they died.

 
We decide that, from now on, May will go with me to the communal toilets or showers, check to see if they’re empty, and then stand outside the door to keep the other women out. I’ll do the same for her, although I’m not sure why she’s become so modest since arriving here.

  AT LAST THE guard calls us for our interrogations. I run a brush through my hair, take a few sips of cold water to calm myself, and slip on my heels. I glance back to see May trailing after me, looking like a beggar magically dropped here from a Shanghai alley. We wait in the cage until our turns come. This is our last step and then we’ll be transferred to San Francisco. I give May an encouraging smile, which she doesn’t return, and then I follow the guard into the hearing room. Chairman Plumb, Mr. White, and the stenographer are there, but this time I have a new interpreter.

  “I’m Lan On Tai,” he says. “From now on you will have a different interpreter for each hearing. They don’t want us to become friends. I will speak to you in Sze Yup. Do you understand, Louie Chin-shee?”

  In the old Chinese tradition a married woman is known by her clan name with shee attached to it. This practice can be traced back three thousand years to the Chou dynasty and it’s still common with farmers, but I’m from Shanghai!

  “That is your name, isn’t it?” the interpreter asks. When I don’t answer right away, he glances at the white men and then back at me. “I shouldn’t tell you this, but your case has problems. It’s best if you accept what’s in your record. Don’t change your story now.”

  “But I never said my name was—”

  “Sit down!” Chairman Plumb orders. Even though I pretended not to know English during our last meeting and now, after the interpreter’s warning, feel sure I should stick to my feigned ignorance, I obey, hoping that the chairman will believe the tone in his voice scared me. “In your last interview you said you had a civilized wedding, which is why you didn’t worship your ancestors as part of the ceremonies. We have your husband’s file right here, and he says you did worship your ancestors.”

  I wait for the interpreter to relay this, then reply, “I told you before, I’m a Christian. I don’t worship ancestors. Perhaps my husband worshipped his after we parted.”

  “How long were you together?”

  “One night.” Even I know this sounds bad.

  “Do you expect us to believe you were married for one day and now your husband has sent for you?”

  “Our marriage was arranged.”

  “By a matchmaker?”

  I try to think how Sam would have responded to this question in his interrogation.

  “Yes, a matchmaker.”

  The interpreter gives a subtle nod to let me know I answered correctly.

  “You said you didn’t serve betel nuts and tea, but your sister says you did,” Chairman Plumb says, tapping another file, which I assume covers May’s case.

  As I look at the bald man before me, waiting for the interpreter to finish the translation, I wonder if this is a trick. Why would May have said that? She wouldn’t.

  “Neither my sister nor I served tea or betel nuts.”

  This is not the answer the two men want. Lan On Tai looks at me with a combination of pity and aggravation.

  Chairman Plumb moves on. “You said you had a civilized wedding, but your sister says that neither of you wore a veil.”

  I’m torn between berating myself and May for not being more diligent in working on our stories and questioning why any of this matters.

  “We had civilized weddings,” I say, “but neither of us wore veils.”

  “Did you raise your veil during the wedding banquet?”

  “I already told you I didn’t wear a veil.”

  “Why do you say only seven people came to the banquet, when your husband, father-in-law, and sister say there were many occupied tables in the room?”

  I feel sick to my stomach. What’s happening here?

  “We were a small party in a hotel restaurant where other guests were dining.”

  “You said your family home consists of six rooms, but your sister says many more and your husband stated the house is grand.” Chairman Plumb’s face turns crimson as he demands, “Why are you lying?”

  “There are different ways to count the rooms and my husband—”

  “Let’s go back to your wedding. Was your wedding banquet on the first floor or upstairs?”

  And on it goes: Did I take a train after my marriage? Did I ride on a boat? Are the houses where I lived with my parents built in rows? How many houses stood between our house and the main street? How do I know if I was married according to the old custom or the new custom if I had a matchmaker and didn’t wear a veil? Why don’t my alleged sister and I speak the same dialect?

  The questioning continues for eight straight hours—with no break for lunch or to use the toilet. By the end, Chairman Plumb is red-faced and weary. As he recites his synopsis for the stenographer, I boil with frustration. Every other sentence begins “The applicant’s alleged sister states …” I can understand—barely—how my responses might be taken to mean something different from those given by Sam or Old Man Louie, but how could May have given such completely different answers from mine?

  The interpreter shows no emotion as he translates Chairman Plumb’s conclusion: “It would appear that there are many contradictions which should not exist, particularly concerning the home the applicant shared with her alleged sister. While the applicant adequately answers the queries concerning her alleged husband’s home village, her alleged sister seems to have no knowledge whatsoever of her husband, his family, or his family home, either in Los Angeles or in China. Therefore it is the unanimous opinion of the board that this applicant, as well as her alleged sister, be reexamined until the contradictions can be resolved.” The interpreter then looks at me. “Have you understood everything that’s been asked of you?”

  I answer, “Yes,” but I’m furious—with these awful men and their persistent questioning, with myself for not being smarter, but most of all with May. Her laziness has caused us to be detained even longer on this horrible island.

  She isn’t in the holding cage when I leave the room and I have to sit there and wait for another woman whose interrogation also hasn’t gone well. After another hour, the woman is pulled from her hearing room by her arm. The cage is unlocked and the guard motions to me, but we don’t go back to the dormitory on the second floor of the Administration Building. Rather, we walk across the property to another wood-framed building. At the end of the hall is a door with a small window covered with fine mesh and ROOM NO. I printed above it. We may feel like we are in jail on this island and in our locked dormitory, but this is the real door to imprisonment. The woman wails and tries to pull away from the guard, but he’s far stronger than she could ever be. He opens the door, pushes her into the darkness, and locks her inside.

  I’m now alone with a very large white man. I have nowhere to go, nowhere to escape. I shake uncontrollably. And then the strangest thing happens. His contemptuous sneer melts into something resembling compassion.

  “I’m sorry you had to see that,” he says. “We’re just short-handed tonight.” He shakes his head. “You don’t understand a word I’m saying, do you?” He gestures back toward the door we entered. “We need to go that way, so I can take you back to the dormitory,” he goes on, elongating and exaggerating the words so that his lips stretch into the twisted features of a temple demon statue. “Got it?”

  Later, as I walk the length of the dormitory back to May’s and my bunks, my emotions are in a frenzy—yes, that’s the word—of anger, fear, and frustration. The other women’s eyes follow each step as my high heels click on the linoleum floor. Some of us have lived together for a month now and in very close quarters. We’re attuned to one another’s moods and know when to back off or offer comfort. Now I feel the women ripple away from me, as though I’m a large boulder that’s been dropped into a very peaceful pond.

  May perches on the edge of her bunk, her
legs dangling. She cocks her head in the way she has since she was a small girl and knew she was in trouble.

  “What took so long? I’ve been waiting for you for hours.”

  “What have you done, May? What have you done?”

  She ignores my questions. “You missed lunch. But I brought you some rice.”

  She opens her hand and shows me a misshapen ball of rice. I slap it from her palm. The women around us look away.

  “Why did you lie in there?” I ask. “Why would you do that?”

  Her legs swing back and forth like she’s a child whose feet don’t yet reach the floor. I stare up at her, breathing heavily through my nose. I’ve never been this angry with her. This isn’t a pair of muddied shoes or a borrowed blouse that’s been stained.

  “I didn’t understand what they were saying. I don’t know that singsong Sze Yup. I only know the northern song of Shanghai.”

  “And that’s my fault?” But even as I say it, I realize I share some responsibility for this. I know she doesn’t understand the dialect of our ancestral home. Why didn’t I think of that? But the Dragon in me is still stubborn and mad.

  “We’ve been through so much, but you couldn’t take five minutes on the ship to look at the coaching book.”

  When she shrugs, a wave of fury sweeps through me.

  “Do you want them to send us back?”

  She doesn’t respond, but the predictable tears form.

  “Is that what you want?” I persist.

  Now those predictable tears fall and drip onto her baggy jacket, staining the cloth with slowly spreading blue splotches. But if she’s predictable, so am I.

  I shake her legs. The older sister, who’s always right, demands, “What’s wrong with you?”

  She mumbles something.

  “What?”

  She stops swinging her legs. She keeps her face tucked low, but I’m looking up at her and she can’t avoid me. She mumbles again.

  “Say it so I can hear it,” I rasp impatiently.

  She tilts her head, meets my eyes, and whispers just loud enough for me to hear. “I’m pregnant.”