Shanghai Girls Page 21

  From the moment May and I arrived in Los Angeles, we’ve been thinking of ways to escape. If only we—I—had known Sam felt the same way.

  “I began to think you, Joy, and I could go home together, but how could I allow our baby to travel in steerage? She could die down there.” He squeezes my hands in his. He stares directly into my eyes, and I don’t look away. “I’m not like the others. I don’t want to go back to China anymore. Here, I suffer every day, but it’s a good place for Joy.”

  “But China’s our home. The Japanese will tire eventually—”

  “But what is there for Joy in China? What is there for any of us? In Shanghai, I was a rickshaw puller. You were a beautiful girl.”

  I hadn’t realized he’d known this about May and me. The way he says it strips me of the pride I’ve always felt for what we’d done.

  “I don’t care to hate anyone, but I can hate my fate—and yours too,” he says. “We can’t change the people we are or what’s happened to us, but shouldn’t we try to change our daughter’s fate? What road awaits her in China? Here, I can pay back the old man and eventually earn our freedom. Then we will give Joy a proper life—a life of opportunities that you and I will never have. Maybe she could even go to college one day.”

  He speaks to my mother’s heart, but the practical part of me that survived my father losing everything and my body being torn apart by monkey people doesn’t see how his dreams can become real.

  “We’ll never be able to break away from this place and these people,” I say. “Look around. Uncle Wilburt has worked for the old man for twenty years and he still hasn’t paid his debt.”

  “Maybe he’s paid his debt and is saving his treasure to return home a wealthy man. Or maybe he’s happy where he is. He has a job, a place to live, a family to have dinner with on Sunday nights. You don’t know what it’s like to live in a village with no electricity or running water. Maybe you have one room for the whole family, maybe two. You eat only rice and vegetables, unless there’s a festival or a celebration, but even that takes great sacrifice.”

  “All I’m saying is that one man by himself is barely able to support himself. How are you going to help the four of us?”

  “Four? You mean May.”

  “She’s my sister, and I promised my mother I’d take care of her.”

  He considers that for a moment. Then he says, “I’m patient. I can wait and I can work hard.” He smiles shyly and then says, “In the morning when you go to the Golden Lantern to help Yen-yen and see Joy, I work at the Temple of Kwan Yin, where I have an extra job selling incense to the lo fan to stick in the big bronze burners. I’m supposed to say, Your dreams will come true, for the blessings of this graceful deity are limitless,’ but my mouth can’t form those words in English. Still, the people seem to take pity on me and buy my incense.”

  He gets up and walks to the dresser. He’s such a sadly thin man, but I don’t know how I didn’t recognize his iron fan before this. He rummages through the top drawer and then returns to the bed with a sock that bulges at the toe. He turns the sock upside down, and nickels, dimes, quarters, and a few dollar bills spill on the mattress.

  “This is what I’ve saved for Joy,” he explains.

  I run my hands over the money. “You are a good man,” I say, but it’s hard to imagine this pittance changing Joy’s life.

  “I know it isn’t much,” he admits, “but it’s more than I made as a rickshaw puller, and it will add up. And maybe, in another year or so, I can become a second cook. If I learn to be a first cook, I might make as much as twenty dollars a week. Once we can afford to go out on our own, I will become a fish peddler or maybe a gardener. If I’m a fish peddler, then we can always eat fish. If I’m a gardener, then we can always eat vegetables.”

  “My English is good,” I offer tentatively. “Maybe I could look for a job outside Chinatown.”

  But honestly, what makes either of us think Old Man Louie will ever release us? And even if he does, don’t I have to tell Sam the truth too? Not the part about Joy not being his! That secret belongs to May and me, and I’ll never reveal it, but I have to tell him what the monkey people did to me and how they killed Mama.

  “I’ve been smeared with mud that I’ll never be able to wipe clean,” I tentatively begin, hoping that what Mama said about the Ox is true: that he won’t abandon you in times of trouble, that he’ll stick by you faithfully, and that he is charitable and good. Don’t I have to believe her now? Still, the emotions that play across his face—anger, disgust, and pity—don’t make it easy for me as I tell my story.

  When I’m done, he says, “You went through all that and still Joy came out perfectly. She must have a precious future.” He puts a finger to my lips to keep me from saying anything more. “I would rather be married to broken jade than flawless clay. And my father used to say that anyone can add an extra flower to brocade, but how many women will fetch the coal in winter? He was talking about my mother, who was a good and loyal woman, just as you are.”

  We hear the others enter the apartment, but neither of us moves. Sam leans close and whispers in my ear. “On the bench in Yu Yuan Garden, I said I liked you and I asked if you liked me. You only nodded. In an arranged marriage this is more than we can hope for. I never expected happiness, but shouldn’t we try to look for it?”

  I turn to him. Our lips nearly touch as I whisper, “What about more children?” As close as I feel to him now, I find it hard to tell him the whole truth. “After Joy came out, the doctors at Angel Island told me I’d never be able to have another baby.”

  “As boys, we are told that if we don’t have a son by age thirty, we are unlucky. The worst insult you can yell on the street is ‘May you die son-less!’ We are told that if we don’t have a son, we should adopt one to carry on the family name and care for us when we become ancestors. But if you have a son who is … who has … who can’t…” He struggles, as May and I often have, to put a name to Vernon’s problem.

  “You buy a son, as Old Man Louie bought you,” I finish for him, “so that you can care for him and Yen-yen when they become ancestors.”

  “And if not me, then the son we might give them one day. A grandson would ensure them a happy existence here and in the afterworld.”

  “But I can’t give them that.”

  “They don’t have to know, and I don’t care. And who knows? Maybe Vern will give your sister a son, and all debts and obligations will be paid.”

  “But, Sam, I can’t give you a son.”

  “People say a family is incomplete without a son, but I am happy with Joy. She is my heart’s blood. Every time she smiles at me, grasps my finger, or stares at me with her black eyes, I know I’m lucky.” As he speaks, I bring his hand to my cheek, and then I kiss his fingertips. “Pearl, you and I may have been given bad fates, but she is our future. With just one child, we can give her everything. She can have the education I didn’t have. Maybe she will be a doctor or… These things don’t matter so much, because she will always be our consolation and our joy.”

  When he kisses me, I kiss him back. We’re sitting on the edge of the bed, so all I have to do is put my arms around him and bring him with me as I lie down. Even though people are in the apartment and even though they hear every squeak of the bed and stifled moan, Sam and I do the husband-wife thing. It isn’t easy for me. I keep my eyes squeezed shut and terror clenches my heart. I try to concentrate on the muscles that labored in the fields, pulled rickshaws through my home city, and so recently cradled our Joy. For me, the husband-wife thing will never bring great feelings of enjoyment, the release of clouds and rain, the taste of ecstasy of a hundred years, or any of the things the poets write about. For me, it’s about being close to Sam, the loneliness we feel for our home country, the way we miss our parents, and the hardship of our daily lives here in America, where we are wang k’uo nu—lost-country slaves, forever living under foreign rule.

  After he finishes and a proper amount of time has
passed, I get up and go into the main room to get Joy. Vern and May have already gone to their room, but knowing glances pass between Old Man Louie and Yen-yen.

  “You bring me a grandson now?” Yen-yen asks as she hands me Joy. “You’re a good daughter-in-law.”

  “You’d be a better daughter-in-law if you told your sister to do her job,” the old man adds.

  I don’t respond. I just take Joy back to our room and lay her in her drawer in the bottom of the dresser. Then I reach around my neck and take off the pouch Mama gave me. I open the top drawer and tuck the pouch together with the one that May gave Joy. I don’t need it anymore. I close the drawer and turn back to Sam. I take off my clothes and slip naked back into the bed. As his hand runs up my side, I find the courage to ask one more question.

  “Sometimes you disappear in the afternoons too,” I say. “Where do you go?”

  His hand stops on my hip. “Pearl.” My name comes out long and soft. “I didn’t go to those places in Shanghai, and I’ll never go to them here.”

  “Then where—”

  “I go back to the temple, but this time it’s to make offerings to my family, to your family, and even to the Louie ancestors—”

  “To my family?”

  “You just told me how your mother died, but I knew she had to be gone, and your father too. You wouldn’t have come here to us if they’d still been living.”

  He’s smart. He knows me well and he understands me.

  “I also made offerings to our ancestors after we were married,” he adds.

  I nod to myself. He’d answered the Angel Island interrogators honestly about that.

  “I don’t believe in these things,” I confess.

  “Maybe you should. We’ve done them for five thousand years.”

  As we do the husband-wife thing again, sirens sound in the distance. In the morning we wake to learn that a fire has swept through China City. Some people say it was an accident that flared in the smoldering firecracker remains behind George Wong’s fish market, while others insist it was arson set by people in New Chinatown who don’t like Christine Sterling’s idea of a “native Chinese village” or by people in Olvera Street who don’t like the competition. The gossips will go on and on, but no matter who started the fire, a good part of China City has been destroyed or damaged.

  Even the Best of Moons

  THE FIRE GOD is indiscriminate. He lights lamps, he makes fireflies glow, he reduces villages to ash, he burns books, he cooks food, and he warms families. All people can hope for is that a dragon—with its watery essence—will douse unwanted fires when they come. Whether you believe in these things or not, making offerings is probably wise. As Americans would say, it’s better to be safe than sorry. In China City, where no one has insurance, no offerings are made to appease the Fire God or inspire a dragon to be benevolent. These are not good omens, but I tell myself that people in America also say lightning never strikes twice.

  It will take almost six months for the parts of China City damaged by smoke and water to be repaired and the destroyed sections to be rebuilt. Old Man Louie is in an even worse position than most, since not only did some of the cash he’d hidden in his various enterprises burn but some of his real wealth—his merchandise—turned to ash. No money fills the family pot, but plenty goes out for the rebuilding effort, to order new goods from his factories in Shanghai and from antiques emporiums in Canton (and hope that they can leave those cities on foreign ships and pass safely through the Japanese-infested waters), and to feed, house, and clothe his household of seven, as well as support his paper partners and paper sons, who live in bachelor boardinghouses nearby. None of this sits well with my father-in-law.

  Although he insists that May and I stay with our husbands and work at their sides, there’s nothing for us to do. We don’t know how to use a hammer or saw. We have no merchandise to unpack, polish, or sell. There are no floors to sweep, windows to wash, or customers to feed. Still, May, Joy, and I walk over to China City every morning to see how construction is progressing. May isn’t unhappy with Sam’s plan to stay together and save our money. “They feed us here,” she’s told me, finally it seems to me, showing some maturity. “Yes, let’s wait until the four of us can leave together.”

  In the afternoons, we often visit Tom Gubbins in the Asiatic Costume Company, which escaped fire damage. He rents props and costumes, and acts as an agent for Chinese extras to movie studios, but otherwise he’s a bit of a mystery. Some say he was born in Shanghai. Some say he’s a quarter Chinese. Some say he’s half and half Some say he doesn’t have a single drop of Chinese in him. Some call him Uncle Tom. Some call him Lo Fan Tom. We call him Bak Wah Tom, Motion Pictures Tom, which is how he introduced himself to me at China City’s Grand Opening. From Tom, I learn that mystery, confusion, and exaggeration can build your reputation.

  He helps a lot of Chinese—buying them clothes, buying their clothes, finding them rooms, getting them jobs, making arrangements for expectant mothers at hospitals unfriendly to Chinese, sitting for interviews by the immigration inspectors, who are always on the lookout for paper merchants and paper sons—but few like him. Maybe it’s because he once worked as an interpreter at Angel Island, where he’d been accused of getting a woman pregnant. Maybe it’s because he has a fondness for young girls, although others say he has a fondness for young men. All I know is that his Cantonese is near perfect and his Wu dialect is very good. May and I love to hear the sounds of our home dialect coming from his mouth.

  He wants my sister to work as an extra in the movies; naturally, Old Man Louie objects, saying, “That’s a job for a woman with three holes.” He can be so predictable, but in this he’s just voicing the sentiments of many old-timers who believe that actresses—whether in operas, plays, or motion pictures—are little better than prostitutes.

  “Keep talking to your father-in-law,” Tom instructs May. “Tell him that one out of every fourteen of his neighbors works in the movies. It’s a good way to make extra income. I could even get him a job. I promise he’ll make more money in a week than he did in three months sitting in his antiques shop.” The idea makes us laugh.

  People in Chinatown are often called “acting conscious.” When the studios realized they could hire Chinese for as little as “five dollars a Chink,” they used our neighbors for crowd scenes and to fill all kinds of nonspeaking roles in films like Stowaway, Lost Horizon, The General Died at Dawn, The Adventures of Marco Polo, the Charlie Chan series, and of course The Good Earth. The Depression may be receding, but people need money and will work for it in any way possible. Even people in New Chinatown, who are wealthier than we are, like to work as extras. They do it because they want to have fun and see themselves on the silver screen.

  I don’t want to work in Haolaiwu. Not for any old-fashioned reasons but because I understand I’m not beautiful enough. My sister is, though, and she wants this badly. She idolizes Anna May Wong, even though everyone around here talks about her as though she’s a disgrace, because she always plays singsong girls, maids, and murderers. But when I see Anna May on the screen, I think back to the way Z.G. used to paint my sister. Like Anna May, May glows like a ghost goddess.

  For weeks Tom begs us to sell him our cheongsams. “I usually buy clothes from people who bring them back after a visit to China, because they’ve gained too much weight at home. Or I buy them from people who’ve come here for the first time, because they’ve lost so much weight on the ship and on Angel Island. But these days no one’s going home because of the war, and those lucky enough to make it out of China have usually left everything behind. But you two are different. Your father-in-law looked out for you and brought your clothes.”

  I don’t mind selling our clothes—I chafe at having to wear them for the sake of China City’s tourists—but May doesn’t want to part with them.

  “Our dresses are beautiful!” she cries indignantly. “They’re part of who we are! Our cheongsams were made in Shanghai. The material came f
rom Paris. They’re elegant—more elegant than anything I’ve seen here.”

  “But if we sell some of our cheongsams, then we can buy new dresses—American dresses,” I say. “I’m tired of looking unfashionable, of looking like I’m fresh off the boat.”

  “If we sell them,” May inquires shrewdly, “what will happen when China City reopens? Won’t Old Man Louie notice that our clothes are gone?”

  Tom waves away that worry as inconsequential. “He’s a man. He won’t notice.”

  But of course he will. He notices everything.

  “He won’t care as long as we give him a portion of what Tom pays us,” I say, hoping I’m right.

  “Just don’t give him too much.” Tom scratches his beard. “Let him think you’ll make more money if you keep coming back here.”

  We sell Tom one cheongsam apiece. They’re our oldest and ugliest, but they’re splendid compared with what he has in his collection. Then we take the money and walk south on Broadway until we come to the Western department stores. We buy rayon dresses, high heels, gloves, new undergarments, and a couple of hats—all from the sale of two dresses, with enough left over that our father-in-law isn’t angry with us when we put the remaining money in his palm. That’s when May begins her campaign, teasing him, cajoling him, and, yes, even flirting with him, trying to get him to surrender to her desires just as our father did in the past.

  “You like us to keep busy,” she says, “but how can we keep busy now? Bak Wah Tom says I can make five dollars a day if I work in Haolaiwu. Think how much that will be in a week! Add to that the extra I’ll make if I wear my own costume. I have plenty of costumes!”

  “No,” Old Man Louie says.

  “With my beautiful clothes, I might get a close-up. I’ll earn ten dollars for that. If I get to say a line—just one single line—I’ll make twenty dollars.”

  “No,” Old Man Louie says again, but this time I can practically see him counting the money in his mind.