"Shanghai Girls" - читать интересную книгу автора (See Lisa)

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 from 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.

Her lower lip trembles. She crosses her arms. Her body shrinks into itself, making her appear pitiful. “I was a beautiful girl in Shanghai. Why can’t I be a beautiful girl here?”

The mountain crumbles one grain at a time. After several weeks, he finally gives in. “Once. You may do it once.”

To which Yen-yen sniffs and walks out of the room, Sam shakes his head in disbelief, and blood rushes to my face in pleasure that May’s beaten the old man just by being herself.

I don’t catch the title of May’s first movie, but since she has her own clothes, she gets to play a singsong girl instead of a peasant. She’s gone for three nights and she sleeps during the days, so I don’t hear about her experience until the shoot ends.

“I sat in a fake teahouse all night and nibbled on almond cakes,” she recalls dreamily. “The assistant director called me a cute tomato. Can you imagine?”

For days she calls Joy a cute tomato, which doesn’t make much sense to me. The next time May works as an extra, she comes back with a new phrase: “What in the H,” as in “What in the H did you put in this soup, Pearl?”

Often she comes home bragging about the food she’s eaten. “They give us two meals a day, and it’s good food-American food! I have to be careful, Pearl, truly I do or I’m going to get fat. I won’t fit into a cheongsam then. If I don’t look perfect, they’ll never give me a speaking part.” After that, she takes to dieting-dieting for someone so tiny, for someone who knows what it means not to eat because of war, poverty, and ignorance-before Tom sends her out for a job and then for days afterward to lose the imagined weight she’s gained. All this in hopes that a director will give her a line. Even I know that-except for Anna May Wong and Keye Luke, who plays Charlie Chan’s Number One Son-speaking parts go only to lo fan, who wear yellow makeup, have their eyes taped back, and affect chop-suey English.

In June, Tom comes up with a new idea, May gobbles it and then spits it out to our father-in-law, who embraces it as his own.

“Joy’s a beautiful baby,” Tom tells May. “She’ll make a perfect extra.”

“You can make more money from her than you can from me,” May relays to Old Man Louie.

“Pan-di is lucky for a girl,” the old man confides to me. “She can earn her own way and she’s only a baby.”

I’m not sure I want Joy spending so much time with her auntie, but once Old Man Louie sees he can make money from a baby, well…

“I will let her do it on one condition.” I can make a requirement because, as Joy’s mother, only I can sign the paper allowing her to work all day and sometimes at night under the supervision and care of her aunt. “She will keep everything she makes.”

Old Man Louie doesn’t like this. Why would he?

“You will never again have to buy her clothes,” I press. “You will never again pay for her food. You will never again pay one single penny for this Hope-for-a-Brother.”

The old man smiles at that.

WHEN MAY AND Joy aren’t working, they stay in the apartment with Yen-yen and me. Often, in the long afternoons as we wait for China City to reopen, I think back to stories Mama told me about when she was a girl and confined to the women’s chambers in her natal home with her bound-footed grandmother, mother, aunts, cousins, and sisters. They’d been trapped to maneuver for position, harbor resentments, and snipe at one another. Now, in America, May and Yen-yen fight like turtles in a bucket about anything and everything.

“The jook is too salty,” May might say.

“It isn’t salty enough” comes Yen-yen’s predictable reply.

When May twirls through the main room in a sleeveless dress, stockingless legs, and open-toed sandals, Yen-yen complains, “You shouldn’t be seen in public like that.”

“Women in Los Angeles like bare legs and arms,” May counters.

“But you aren’t a lo fan,” Yen-yen points out.

But nothing and no one is better to fight over than Joy. If Yen-yen says, “She should wear a sweater,” May responds with “She’s roasting like corn on a fire.” If Yen-yen observes, “She should learn to embroider,” my sister argues back, “She should learn to roller-skate.”

More than anything Yen-yen hates that May works in motion pictures and exposes Joy to such low-class activities, and she blames me for letting it happen.

“Why do you let her take Joy to those places? You want your girl to marry one day, don’t you? You think anyone will want a bride who puts her shadow self in trash stories?”

Before I can say anything-and I’m probably not meant to anyway-my sister comes back with her objection: “They aren’t trash stories. They just aren’t for people like you.”

“The only real stories are the old ones. They tell us how to live.”

“Movies tell us how to live too,” May retorts. “Joy and I help tell stories of heroes and good women that are romantic and new. They aren’t about moon maidens or ghost girls languishing for love.”

“You’re too simple,” Yen-yen chides. “That’s why it’s a good thing you have your sister to look out for you. You need to learn from your jie jie. She understands that those way-back stories have something to teach us.”

“What does Pearl know about it?” May asks, as though I’m not in the room. “She’s as old-fashioned as our mother.”

How can she call me old-fashioned? How can she compare me with Mama? I admit that, in my longing for home, for the past, and for our parents, I’ve become like Mama in many ways. All those old ideas about the zodiac, food, and other traditions give me comfort, but I’m not the only one looking backward for consolation. May is bright, effervescent, and undeniably exquisite at twenty, but her life-even though she gets to go to movie sets and dress up-is not what she envisioned back when we were beautiful girls in Shanghai. We both have our disappointments, but I wish she could show me a little more sympathy.

“If your movies teach you to be romantic, then why is it that your sister, who stays with me every day, has done a much better job at this than you?” Yen-yen asks.

“I’m romantic!” May fights back, haplessly falling into Yen-yen’s trap.

My mother-in-law smiles. “Not romantic enough to bring me a grandson! You should have a baby already…”

I sigh. These kinds of arguments between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law are as old as humankind. With conversations like this, I’m happy that most days May and Joy are on a film set and I’m alone with Yen-yen.

On Tuesdays, after delivering lunch to our husbands in China City, Yen-yen and I go door to door to every boardinghouse, apartment, and business along Spring Street, where people buy their groceries, and even over to New Chinatown to raise money for United China Relief and national salvation. We’ve gone beyond picketing. Now we carry empty vegetable cans and use them as beggars’ bowls, walking down Mei Ling, Gin Ling, and Sun Mun Ways, agreeing that we can’t go home until our cans are at least half full with pennies, nickels, and dimes. People are starving in China, so we also visit groceries and make the owners donate imported Chinese food, which we pack and send back to where it came from: China, home.

Doing this work, I meet people. Everyone wants to know my natal family name and which village I’m from. I meet more Wongs than I can count. I meet lots of Lees, Fongs, Leongs, and Moys. Through it all, Old Man Louie never once complains that I’m traipsing from Chinatown to Chinatown or that I’m meeting strangers day after day, because I’m always with my mother-in-law, who begins to confide in me not as a despised daughter-in-law but as a friend.

“I was kidnapped from my village as a small girl,” she tells me one Tuesday as we walk back from New Chinatown along Broadway. “Did you know that?”

“I didn’t know. I’m sorry,” I say, which doesn’t begin to cover what I feel. I was expelled from my home, but I can’t imagine being taken from it forcibly. “How old were you?”

“How old was I? How can I know? I don’t have anyone to tell me that. Maybe I was five. Maybe I was older, maybe younger. I remember I had a brother and a sister. I remember there were water chestnut trees along the main road to my village. I remember a fishpond, but I guess every village has one of those.” She pauses before going on. “I left China long ago. I long for it every day and suffer when she suffers. That’s why I work so hard to raise money for China Relief.”

No wonder she doesn’t know how to cook. She wasn’t taught by her mother, just as I wasn’t taught by mine-but for different reasons. Yen-yen has no desire for something better to eat, because she doesn’t have memories of shark’s fin soup, crisp Yangtze River eel, or braised pigeon in lettuce leaves. She’s grabbed on to old traditions-outdated traditions-in the same way I latch on to them now: as a means of soul survival, as a way to hang on to ghost memories. Perhaps it’s better to treat a cough with winter melon tea than by putting a mustard plaster on your chest. Yes, her way-back stories and her old ways are sinking into me, changing me, instilling more “Chinese” into me, as surely as the flavor of ginger seeps into soup.

“What happened after they took you?” I ask, my heart in a great sympathy of understanding.

Yen-yen stops on the sidewalk, bags filled with donations hanging from her hands. “What do you think happened? You’ve seen unmarried girls without families. You know what happens to them. I was sold as a servant in Canton. As soon as I was old enough, I became a girl with three holes.” She juts her chin. “Then one day, maybe I was thirteen, I was bundled in a sack and put on a boat. The next thing I knew I was in America.”

“What about Angel Island? Didn’t they ask you questions? Why weren’t you sent back?”

“I came before Angel Island opened. Sometimes I look in the mirror and I’m surprised by what I see. I still expect to see that girl, but I don’t like to remember those days. What do they matter to me now? You think I want to remember being a wife to many men?” She shuffles down the street, and I hurry to keep up with her. “I’ve done the husband-wife thing too many times. People make such big talk about it, but why worry so much? The man goes in. The man goes out. As women, we stay the same. Do you know what I mean, Pearl-ah?”

Do I? Sam’s different from those men in the shack, that I know. But have I stayed the same? I remember all the times I’ve seen Yen-yen sleeping on the couch. Usually some new bachelor-an immigrant from China, who appears on Old Man Louie’s partnership list until his debt is paid by someone who needs a laborer at a cheap price-sleeps there. But whenever they aren’t there, Yen-yen can be found in the main room in the morning, folding blankets and reciting one excuse or another: “That old man snores like a water buffalo.” Or “My back hurts. This place is more comfortable.” Or “That old man tells me I move around in the bed like a mosquito. He can’t sleep. If he doesn’t sleep, then everyone is unhappy the next day, no?” Now I understand that her reasons for sleeping on the couch are the same ones I had when I wished I could escape Sam’s bed. Too many men did things to her that she doesn’t want to remember.

I put a hand on her arm. Our eyes meet and something passes between us. I don’t tell her what happened to me. How can I? But I think she understands… something, because she says, “You’re lucky you have Joy and that she’s healthy. My boy…” She sucks in a long, deep breath and lets it out slowly. “Maybe I spent too long in that business. I’d worked almost ten years by the time the old man bought me. There were so few Chinese women here back then-maybe less than one for every twenty men-but he got me for a cheap price anyway because of my job. I was happy, because I finally left San Francisco and came here. But even then he was like he is now-old and stingy in heart. All he wanted was a son, and he worked hard to give me one.”

She nods to a man sweeping the sidewalk before his business. He looks the other way, afraid we’ll ask him for a donation.

“When the old man went back to his home village to see his parents, I went with him,” Yen-yen continues. I’ve heard her say this before, but this time I hear it differently. “When he traveled around China to buy merchandise, he left me behind. I don’t know what he thought: that maybe I would stay in the house for the weeks he was gone with his essence inside me, my legs up, waiting for a son to grab hold. But as soon as he left, I walked from village to village. I speak Sze Yup. My home village has to be in the Four Districts, right? Every day I looked for a village with chestnut trees and a fishpond. I never found it, and I didn’t have a son. I got pregnant, but the babies all refused to breathe the air of this world. Every trip back to Los Angeles, we reported that I had had a son in China and left him with his grandparents. This is how we brought in the uncles. Wilburt was my first paper son. He was eighteen, but we said he was eleven to match the papers we filed claiming he was born one year after the San Francisco earthquake. Charley came next. He was easy. We’d gone back to China the next year, so I had a certificate for a son born in 1908, and Charley was born that same year.”

My father-in-law had had to wait a long time for his investment-his crop-to ripen, but it had worked for him, providing cheap labor for his enterprises and easily lining his pockets.

“And Edfred?” Yen-yen smiles in amusement. “He’s Wilburt’s son, you know.”

No, I didn’t know. Until recently I had thought all these men were Sam’s brothers.

“We had a paper for a son born in 1911,” Yen-yen continues, “but Edfred wasn’t born until 1918. Edfred was only six when we brought him here, but his paper said he was thirteen.”

“And no one noticed?”

“They didn’t notice that Wilburt wasn’t eleven either.” Yen-yen shrugs at the stupidity of the immigration inspectors. “With Edfred, we said he was small and undeveloped for his age, that he’d been starving in the home village. The inspectors appreciated the idea that he hadn’t benefited from ‘proper nutrition.’ They assured me he would ‘plump up’ now that he was in his proper country.”

“It’s all so complicated.”

“It’s supposed to be complicated. The lo fan try to keep us out with their changing laws, but the more complicated they make them, the easier it is for us to trick them.” She pauses to let that sink in. “I had only two sons of my own. My first son was born in China. We brought him here and we had a peaceful life. We took him back to the home village when he turned seven, but he had an American stomach, not a village stomach. He died.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Long time ago now,” Yen-yen says, almost matter-of-factly “But I tried and tried and tried to have another son. Finally, finally, I got pregnant. The old man was happy. I was happy. But happiness doesn’t change your fate. The midwife came to catch Vernon. She could tell right away something was wrong. She said this happens sometimes when a mother is old. I must have been over forty when he was born. She had to use-”

She stops before a shop that sells lottery tickets and sets down her packages so she can shape her hands into claws. “She pulled him out of me with these things. His head was bent when he came out. She squeezed on this side and then the other to make it into a better shape, but…”

She picks up her bags again. “When Vern was a tiny baby, the old man wanted to go back to China to get one more paper son. We had the certificate, see? Our last one. I didn’t want to go. My Sam died in the home village. I didn’t want my new baby to die too. The old man said, ‘Don’t worry. You’ll nurse the baby the whole time.’ So we went to China, picked up Edfred, got on a boat, and brought him back here.”

“And Vern?”

“You know what they say about marriage. Even a blind man can get a wife. Even a man with no sense can get a wife. Even a man with palsy can get a wife. All those men have one duty and one duty alone. To have a son.” She looks up at me as pathetic as a bird but with a will as strong as jade. “Who will take care of the old man and me in the afterlife if we don’t have a grandson who will make offerings to us? Who will take care of my boy in the afterworld if your sister doesn’t give him a son? If not her, Pearl, then it has to be you, even if he is just a paper grandson. This is why we keep you here. This is why we feed you.”

My mother-in-law steps into the dry goods store to buy her weekly lottery ticket-the eternal hope of the Chinese-but I’m filled with great concern.

I CAN BARELY wait for May to come home. As soon as she walks in the door, I insist that she go with me to China City, where Sam is working on the rebuilding effort. The three of us sit on crates, and I tell them what I learned from Yen-yen. They aren’t surprised by anything I say.

“Then either you didn’t hear me or I didn’t tell it the right way. Yen-yen said they used to go back to the old man’s home village to see his parents. He always says he was born here, but if his parents lived in China, then how could that be?”

Sam and May look at each other and then back at me.

“Maybe his parents lived here, had the old man, and then retired to China,” May suggests.

“That’s possible,” I say. “But if he was born here and lived here for almost seventy years, why isn’t his English better?”

“Because he’s never left Chinatown,” reasons Sam.

I shake my head. “Think about it. If he was born here, then why is he so loyal to China? Why did he let Yen-yen and me out to picket and raise money for China? Why does he always say he wants to retire ‘home’? Why is he so desperate to keep us close? It’s because he’s not a citizen at all. And if he’s not a citizen, then the consequences for us-”

Sam stands. “I want to know the truth.”

We find Old Man Louie at a noodle shop on Spring Street, having tea cakes and tea with his friends. When he sees us, he gets up and comes to the entrance.

“What do you want? Why aren’t you working?”

“We need to talk to you.”

“Not now. Not here.”

But the three of us aren’t going anywhere without answers. Old Man Louie motions us to a booth far enough from his friends that they won’t hear the conversation. It’s been months since the New Year’s Day fight, but Chinatown ’s gossips haven’t stopped murmuring about it. Old Man Louie has tried to be more congenial, but an awkwardness lingers between him and Sam, who doesn’t waste time with niceties.

“You were born in Wah Hong Village, weren’t you?”

The old man’s lizard eyes narrow. “Who told you that?”

“It doesn’t matter who told us. Is it true?” Sam asks.

The old man doesn’t respond. We wait. Around us, we hear laughing, chatting, and the sounds of chopsticks against bowls. Finally, the old man grunts.

“You’re not the only ones here on a lie,” he says in Sze Yup. “Look at the people in this restaurant. Look at the people who work in China City. Look at the people on our block and in our building. Everyone has a lie of some sort. Mine is I wasn’t born here. When the earthquake and fire in San Francisco destroyed all birth records, I was here and thirty-five years old by American counting. Like many others, I went to the authorities and told them I was born in San Francisco. I couldn’t prove I was, and they couldn’t prove I wasn’t. So now I am a citizen… on paper, just as you are my son on paper.”

“What about Yen-yen? She also came here before the earthquake. Does she claim to be a citizen too?”

The old man’s eyebrows furrow in disgust. “She’s a fu yen. She’s bad at telling lies and she can’t keep a secret. Obviously. Or you wouldn’t be here.”

Sam rubs his forehead as he absorbs the implications of all this. “If someone finds out you aren’t a real citizen, then Wilburt, Edfred-”

“Yes, all of us, including Pearl here, will be in trouble. This is why I hold you like this.” He closes his hand into a tight fist. “There can be no mistakes, no slips, eh?”

“What about me?” May asks, her voice tentative.

“Vern was born here, so you, my May, are the wife of a true citizen. You came legally and you are forever safe. But you need to watch your sister and her husband. One bad report from someone and they’ll be sent back. We could all be sent back, except for you, Vern, and Pan-di-although I’m sure the baby would go back to China with its parents and grandparents. I trust you, May, to help make sure that doesn’t happen.”

May pales at his words. “What could I ever do?”

A slight smile curls the corners of Old Man Louie’s lips, but for the first time I don’t see it as heartless. “Don’t worry too much,” he says. He turns to Sam. “Now you know my secret, and I know yours. Like a true father and son, we are bound together forever. The two of us not only protect each other but we also protect the uncles.”

“Why me?” Sam asks. “Why not one of them?”

“You know why. I need someone to care for my businesses, take care of my real son when I’m dead, and look after me as an ancestor when I go to the afterworld because Vern won’t be able to do that for me. I know you think I’m a cruel man and you probably don’t believe me, but I truly did choose you to be my replacement son. I will always look at you as my eldest son, my first son, which is why I’m so hard on you. I’m trying to be a proper father! I’m giving you everything, but you have to do three things. First, you must give up your plans to run away.” He puts up a hand to prevent any of us from speaking. “Don’t bother denying it. I’m not stupid, I know what’s happening in my home, and I’m tired of worrying about it all the time.” He pauses and then says, “You have to stop working at the Temple of Kwan Yin. That’s an embarrassment to me. My son shouldn’t need to do that job. And finally, you must promise to care for my boy when the time comes.”

Sam, May, and I look from one to the other of us. May sends me a message, almost pleading: I don’t want to keep moving. I want to stay in Haolaiwu. Sam, whom I still don’t know that well, takes my hand: Maybe this is an opportunity after all. He says he’ll treat me as the true first son. For myself… I’m tired of running. I’m not very good at it, and I have a baby to care for. But are we selling ourselves for less than what the old man already bought us for?

“If we stay,” Sam says, “you have to give us more freedom.”

“This is not a negotiation,” the old man shoots back. “You have nothing to bargain with.”

But Sam doesn’t surrender. “May is already working as an extra. This makes her happy. Now you must do the same for the sister. Let Pearl see what’s outside China City. And if you won’t let me work at the temple, then you need to pay me. If I am to be your first son, then you must treat me the same as my brother-”

“You two are not the same-”

“That’s right. I work much harder than he does. He gets paid from the family pot. I need to get paid too. Father,” Sam adds deferentially, “you know this is right.”

The old man’s knuckles tap on the table, weighing, weighing, weighing. He gives one final decisive rap, and then he stands. He reaches out his hand and squeezes Sam’s shoulder. Then he walks back to his tea cakes, tea, and friends.

The next day, I buy a newspaper, circle a classified ad, and walk to a phone booth, where I make a call about a position as a clerk in a refrigerator repair shop.

“You sound perfect, Mrs. Louie,” a pleasant voice says on the line. “Please come in for an interview.”

But when I get there and the man sees me, he says, “I didn’t realize you were Chinese. I thought you were Italian because of your name.”

I don’t get the job, and variations of this happen again and again. Finally, I put in an application at Bullock’s Wilshire Department Store. I’m hired to work in the storeroom, where no one will see me. I make eighteen dollars a week. After my time in China City, moving from the café to the various shops throughout the day, staying in one place is easy. I dress better than the other storeroom clerks and work harder too. One day the assistant manager releases me into the store proper to stack merchandise and keep it in order. After a couple of months-and intrigued by my British accent, which I use because it seems to please my Occidental boss-he promotes me to elevator operator. It can’t be easier or more mindless-just up and down from ten in the morning until six at night-and I earn a few dollars more a month.

Then one day the assistant manager has a new idea. “We just got in a shipment of mah-jongg sets,” he says. “You’re going to help me sell them. You’re going to provide atmosphere.”

He has me change into a cheap cheongsam sent by the game’s manufacturer, and then he takes me to the ground floor just inside the main entrance and shows me a table-my table. By the end of the afternoon, I’ve sold eight sets. The following day, I come to work wearing one of my most beautiful cheongsams-bright red with embroidered peonies. I sell two dozen mah-jongg sets. When customers announce they want to learn how to play the game, the assistant manager asks me to teach a class once a week-for a fee, of which I receive a percentage. I’m doing so well that I ask the assistant manager if he’ll let me take the written test for another promotion. When his boss grades me down because of my Chinese hair, skin, and eyes, I know I’ve gone as far as I can at Bullock’s, even though I sell more mah-jongg sets than the other girls sell gloves or hats.

But what can I do? For now I’m happy with the money I make. I give a third to Father Louie, as we all have called him since he and Sam came to their agreement, for the family pot. Another third is put aside for Joy. And I keep a third to spend as I please.

SIX MONTHS AFTER the fire, on August 2, 1939, China City has its second Grand Opening, with an opera, dragon parade, lion dance, magicians, devil dancers, and carefully monitored firecrackers. In the months that follow, the fragrances of incense and gardenias perfume the air. Soft Chinese music wafts down the alleyways. Children dart among tourists. Mae West, Gene Tierney and Eleanor Roosevelt visit. Shriners host events, and fraternities come to rush. Other groups go to the Chinese Junk Café-modeled on the command ship of a pirate fleet led by the greatest pirate in the world, who just happened to be a Chinese woman-“docked” in the Harbor of Whangpoo to eat “pirate chow” and drink “pirate grog” prepared by “an expert mixologist, a man of soft words but loud concoctions.” The alleyways are full of Occidentals, but China City will never be what it was.

Perhaps people begin to stay away because many of the original sets that had been a big draw are now reproductions. Maybe they stay away because New Chinatown is seen as more modern and fun. While we were closed, New Chinatown and its neon lights seduced visitors with the promise of late nights, dancing, and amusement, while China City -no matter how much pirate grog you imbibe-is peaceful, quiet, and quaint, with its little alleyways and people dressed as villagers.

I quit my job at Bullock’s and resume my old routine of cleaning and serving in China City. This time I’m properly paid for the work I do. May, however, doesn’t want to go back to the Golden Pagoda.

“Bak Wah Tom has offered me a full-time job,” she tells Father Louie, “helping him find extras, making sure everyone arrives on time for the bus to take them to the studio, and translating on sets.”

I listen to this in surprise. I’d be better at that job. I’m fluent in Sze Yup, for one thing-something even my father-in-law understands.

“What about your sister? She’s the smart one. She should do this work.”

“Yes, my jie jie is very smart, but-”

Before she can make her arguments, he tries a different tack. “Why do you want to be apart from the family? Don’t you want to stay with your sister?”

“ Pearl doesn’t mind,” May answers. “I’ve given her plenty of things she would never have otherwise.”

Lately, whenever May wants something, she reminds me that she gave me a child and all the many secrets that go with that. Is this meant to be a threat-that if I don’t let her do this she’ll tell the old man Joy isn’t mine? Not at all. This is one of those times when May has thought things through very clearly. This is her way of reminding me that I have a beautiful daughter, a husband who loves me, and a little home for the three of us in our room, while she has no one and nothing. Shouldn’t I help her get something to make her life more bearable?

“May already has experience with people from Haolaiwu,” I tell my father-in-law. “She’ll be good at this.”

So May goes to work for Tom Gubbins, and I take her place in the Golden Pagoda. I dust from one end of the store to the other. I wash the floor and windows. I make lunch for Father Louie and then scrub his dishes in a tub, throwing the dirty water outside the door as if I’m a peasant’s daughter. And I take care of Joy.

Like women everywhere, I wish I were a better mother. Joy is seventeen months old and still in diapers that have to be washed by hand. She often cries in the afternoons, and I have to walk her back and forth for what seems like hours to calm her. It isn’t her fault. Because of her filming schedules, she doesn’t sleep well at night and she barely naps during the day. She eats American food on the sets and spits out the Chinese food I make for her. I try to hold her, snuggle her, and do all the things a mother’s supposed to do, but there’s a part of me that still doesn’t like to touch or be touched. I love my daughter, but she’s a Tiger child and not easy. And then there’s May, who now spends a lot of time with Joy. A kernel of bitterness begins to grow, which Yen-yen feeds and nourishes. I shouldn’t listen to that old woman, but I can’t get away from her.

“That May thinks only of herself. Her beautiful face hides a devious heart. She has just one thing to do and she doesn’t do it. Pearl, Pearl, Pearl, you sit here and take care of a worthless girl all day. But where is your sister’s child? Why won’t she bring us a son? Why, Pearl, why? Because she’s selfish, because she doesn’t think of helping you or anyone else in the family.”

I don’t want to believe these things are true, but I can’t deny that May is changing. As her jie jie, I should try to stop it, but my parents and I didn’t know how to do it when May was a little girl and I don’t know how to do it now.

To make things more difficult, May often calls me from the set, lowers her voice, and then asks, “How in the H do I tell these people they have to carry their firearms over their shoulders?” Or “How in the H do I tell them to huddle together when they’re being beaten?” And I tell her the Sze Yup words, because I don’t know what else to do.

By Christmas, our lives have settled. May and I have been here twenty months. Making our own money allows us to slip away for excursions and treats. Father Louie calls us spendthrifts, but we always weigh how to spend our cash. I want a more stylish haircut than I can get in Chinatown, but every time I go to a beauty parlor in the Occidental part of town, they say, “We don’t cut Chinese hair.” I finally get someone to cut my hair after hours, when white customers won’t be offended by my presence. A car would be nice too-we could get a used four-door Plymouth for five hundred dollars-but we have a long way to save for that.

In the meantime, we go to the movie palaces on Broadway. Even if we pay for the best seats, we have to sit in the balcony. But we don’t care, because movies perk up the spirits. We cheer when we glimpse May as a fallen woman begging a missionary for forgiveness or Joy as an orphan being handed onto a sampan by Clark Gable. Seeing my daughter’s beautiful face on the screen, I’m embarrassed by my dark skin. I take some of my money to the apothecary and buy face cream embellished with ground pearls, hoping to make my face as fair as Joy’s mother’s should be.

During our time here, May and I have changed from beautiful girls buffeted by fate and looking for escape to young wives not completely happy with our lots-but what young wives are? Sam and I are doing the husband-wife thing, but so are May and Vern. I know because the walls are thin and I can hear everything. We have accepted and adapted to what’s safe, and we do our best to find pleasure where we can. On New Year’s Eve, we dress up and go to the Palomar Dance Hall, only to be turned away because we’re Chinese. Standing on the street corner, I gaze up and see a full moon that looks worn and blurred, dulled by the lights and the exhaust that hang in the air. As one poet wrote, Even the best of moons will be tinged with sadness.