"Shanghai Girls" - читать интересную книгу автора (See Lisa)Gold Mountain Men“THAT’S NOT FUNNY!” May laughs lightly. “I’m not joking,” Baba says. “I’ve arranged marriages for you.” I’m still having trouble absorbing what he said. “What’s wrong? Is Mama ill?” “I already told you, Pearl. You need to listen and you’re going to do as I say. I’m the father and you’re my daughters. This is how things are.” I wish I could convey how absurd he sounds. “I won’t do it!” May cries indignantly. I try reason. “Those feudal days are over. It’s not like when you and Mama married.” “Your mother and I were married in the second year of the Republic,” he says huffily, but that’s hardly the point. “Yours was an arranged marriage nevertheless,” I counter. “Have you been answering inquiries from a matchmaker about our knitting, sewing, or embroidery skills?” Ridicule creeps into my voice. “For my dowry, have you bought me a nightstool painted with dragon-and-phoenix motifs to symbolize my perfect union? Will you give May a nightstool filled with red eggs to send her in-laws the message that she will have many sons?” “Say what you want.” Baba shrugs indifferently. “You’re getting married.” “I won’t do it!” May repeats. She’s always been good with tears, and she lets them flow now. “You can’t make me.” When Baba ignores her, I understand just how serious this is. He looks at me, and it’s as though he’s seeing me for the first time. “Don’t tell me you thought you were going to marry for love.” His voice is oddly cruel and triumphant. “No one marries for love. I didn’t.” I hear a deep intake of breath, turn, and see my mother, still dressed in her pajamas, standing in the doorway. We watch as she sways across the room on her bound feet and sinks into a carved pearwood chair. She clasps her hands and looks down. After a moment, tears fall into her folded hands. No one speaks. I sit up as straight as I can, so I can look down at my father, knowing he’ll hate that. Then I take May’s hand. We’re strong together, and we have our investments. “I speak for both of us when I respectfully ask for the money you’ve put away for us.” A grimace passes over my father’s face. “We’re old enough now to be on our own,” I continue. “May and I will get an apartment. We’ll earn our own way. We plan to determine our own futures.” As I speak, May nods and smiles at Baba, but she’s not her usual pretty self Her tears have turned her face splotchy and swollen. “I don’t want you girls to be on your own like that,” Mama finds the courage to whisper. “It’s not going to happen anyway,” Baba says. “There is no money-not yours, not mine.” Again, stunned silence. My sister and mother leave it to me to ask, “What have you done?” In his desperation, Baba blames us for his problems. “Your mother goes visiting and plays games with her friends. The two of you spend, spend, spend. None of you see what’s happening right under your noses.” He’s right. Just last night I’d thought that a kind of shabbiness had settled over our house. I’d wondered about the chandelier, the wall sconces, the fan, and… “Where are our servants? Where are Pansy, Ah Fong, and-” “I dismissed them. They’re all gone, except for the gardener and Cook.” Of course he wouldn’t let them go. The garden would die quickly and our neighbors would know something was wrong. And we need Cook. Mama only knows how to supervise. May and I don’t know how to make a single thing. We’ve never worried about it. We never expected that skill would be necessary. But the houseboy Baba’s valet, the two maids, and Cook’s helper? How could Baba hurt so many? “Did you lose it gambling? Win it back, for God’s sake,” I spit out. “You always do.” My father may have a public reputation as an important man, but I’ve always seen him as ineffectual and harmless. The way he looks at me now… I see him stripped to his core. “How bad is it?” I’m angry-how can I not be?-but I feel a creeping sense of pity for my father and, more important, for my mother. What will happen to them? What will happen to all of us? His head lowers. “The house. The rickshaw business. Your investments. What little savings I had. Everything is gone.” After a long while he looks back up at me, his eyes filled with hopelessness, misery, and pleading. “There are no happy endings,” Mama says. It’s as if all her dour predictions have finally come to pass. “You can’t fight fate.” Baba ignores Mama and appeals to my sense of filial piety and my duty as the elder daughter. “Do you want your mother begging on the street? And what about the two of you? As beautiful girls you’re already this close to becoming girls with three holes. The only question that remains is: Will you be kept by one man or fall as low as the whores who ply Blood Alley looking for foreign sailors? Which future do you want?” I’m educated, but what skills do I have? I teach English to a Japanese captain three mornings a week. May and I sit for artists, but our earnings don’t begin to cover the cost of our dresses, hats, gloves, and shoes. I don’t want any of us to become beggars. And I certainly don’t want May and me to become prostitutes. Whatever happens, I need to protect my sister. “Who are these grooms?” I ask. “Can we meet them first?” May’s eyes widen. “It’s against tradition,” Baba says. “I won’t marry someone unless I meet him first,” I insist. “You can’t think I’ll do it.” May says the words, but her voice tells us that she’s given in. We may look and act modern in many ways, but we can’t escape what we are: obedient Chinese daughters. “They’re Gold Mountain men,” Baba says. “Americans. They’ve traveled to China to find brides. It’s good news, really. Their father’s family comes from the same district as ours. We’re practically related. You don’t have to go back to Los Angeles with your husbands. American Chinese are happy to leave their wives here in China to care for their parents and ancestors, so they can return to their blond “But we don’t “But you’ve met their father,” Baba responds evenly. “You know Old Man Louie.” May’s lips twist in revulsion. We have indeed met the father. I’ve never liked Mama’s old-fashioned use of titles, but to May and me the wiry, stern-faced foreign Chinese has always been Old Man Louie. As Baba said, he lives in Los Angeles, but he comes to Shanghai every year or so to look in on the businesses he maintains here. He owns a factory that makes rattan furniture and another for cheap porcelain ware for export. But I don’t care how rich he is. I’ve never liked the way Old Man Louie looks at May and me, like he’s a cat licking us up. I don’t mind for myself-I can take it-but May was only sixteen the last time he came to town. He shouldn’t have drunk her in like that at his age, which had to be mid-sixties at least, but Baba never said a word, just asked May to pour more tea. And then it hits me. “Did you lose everything to Old Man Louie?” “Not exactly-” “Then to whom?” “These things are always hard to say.” Baba taps his fingers on the table and glances away. “I lost a little here, a little there.” “I’m sure you did to have lost May’s and my money too. That must have taken you months… maybe even years-” “ Pearl -” My mother tries to stop me from saying anything more, but deep rage roars out of me. “This loss had to be something very big. Something that would threaten all May stops crying. My mother remains silent. “I lost to Old Man Louie,” Baba grudgingly admits at last. “He’ll let your mother and me stay in the house if May marries the younger son and you marry the older son. We’ll have a roof to sleep under and something to eat until I get work. You, our daughters, are our only capital.” May covers her mouth with the back of her hand, stands, and runs from the room. “Tell your sister I will set up a meeting for this afternoon,” Baba acquiesces. “And be grateful I arranged marriages to a pair of brothers. You’ll always be together. Now go upstairs. Your mother and I have much to discuss.” Outside the window, the breakfast sellers have moved on and been replaced by a stream of peddlers. Their voices sing to us, enticing us, tempting us. A COUPLE OF hours later, I walk into the Little Tokyo area of Hongkew for my noon appointment with my student. Why haven’t I canceled? The world falls apart and you cancel things, right? But May and I need the money. In a daze, I ride the elevator to Captain Yamasaki’s apartment. He was on the Japanese Olympics team in 1932, so he likes to relive his glories in Los Angeles. He isn’t a bad man, but he’s obsessed with May. She made the mistake of going out with him a few times, so nearly every lesson begins with questions about her. “Where is your sister today?” he asks in English, after we review his homework. “She is sick,” I lie. “She is sleeping.” “Sorry to hear such sad news. Every day I ask you when she will go out with me again. Every day you say you don’t know.” “Correction. We see each other only three times a week.” “Please help me marry May. I give you wedding…” He hands me a piece of paper, which lists his marriage terms. I can see he used his Japanese-English dictionary, but this is too much. And today of all days. I glance at the clock. We still have fifty minutes to go. I fold the paper and put it in my purse. “I will make the corrections and return this to you at our next lesson.” “Give to May!” “I’ll give “He should. He must. This is a time of Friendship, Cooperation, and Co-prosperity The Asian races should unify against the West. Chinese and Japanese are brothers.” Hardly. We call Japanese dwarf bandits and monkey people. But the captain often returns to this theme, and he’s done a good job of mastering the slogans in English and Chinese. He stares at me sullenly. “You’re not going to give it to her, are you?” When I don’t respond quickly enough, he frowns. “I don’t trust Chinese girls. They always lie.” He’s said this to me before, and I don’t like it any more today than I have in the past. “I don’t lie to you,” I say, even though I have several times just since we started this tutorial. “Chinese girls never keep promise. They lie in heart.” “Promises. Their hearts,” I correct. I need to turn the conversation to a new subject. Today it comes easily. “Did you like Los Angeles?” “It was very good. Soon I will go back to America.” “For another swimming competition?” “No.” “As a student?” “As a…” He switches back to Chinese and a word he knows very well in our language. “A conqueror.” “Really? How?” “We will march to Washington,” he responds, returning to English. “Yankee girls will do our laundry.” He laughs. I laugh. And on it goes. As soon as the hour’s up, I take my meager payment and go home. May’s asleep. I lie down beside her, put a hand on her hip, and close my eyes. I long for sleep, but my mind batters me with images and emotions. I thought I was modern. I thought I had choice. I thought I was nothing like my mother. But my father’s gambling has swept all that away. I’m to be sold-traded like so many girls before me-to help my family. I feel so trapped and so helpless that I can hardly breathe. I try to tell myself things aren’t as bad as they seem. My father even said May and I won’t have to go with these strangers to a city across the world. We can sign the papers, our “husbands” will leave, and life will go on as before, with one big difference. We have to get out of my father’s house and make our own living. I’ll wait until my husband leaves the country, claim desertion, and get a divorce. Then Z.G. and I will get married. (It will have to be a smaller wedding than I imagined-maybe just a party in a café with our artist friends and some of the other beautiful-girl models.) I’ll get a real job during the day. May will live with us until she marries. We’ll take care of each other. We’ll make our way. I sit up and rub my temples. I’m stupid with dreams. Maybe I’ve lived in Shanghai too long. I gently shake my sister’s shoulder. “Wake up, May.” She opens her eyes, and for a moment I see all the gentle and trusting loveliness she’s held inside her since she was an infant. Then her eyes turn dark as she remembers. “We’ve got to get dressed,” I say. “It’s almost time to meet the husbands.” What should we wear? The Louie sons are Chinese, so maybe we should wear traditional We flag down a rickshaw boy and tell him to take us to the place my father has arranged for the rendezvous: the gate to the Yu Yuan Garden in the center of the Old Chinese City. The driver-who has a bald head scarred by ringworm-pulls us through the heat and crowds across Soochow Creek at the Garden Bridge and along the Bund, passing diplomats, schoolgirls in starched uniforms, prostitutes, lords and their ladies, and black-coated members of the notorious Green Gang. Yesterday this mingling seemed exciting. Today it looks sordid and oppressive. The Whangpoo River slinks past us to our left like an indolent snake, its grimy skin rising, pulsing, slithering. In Shanghai, you can’t escape the river. It’s the dead end for every eastbound street in the city. On this great river float warships from Great Britain, France, Japan, Italy, and the United States. Sampans-hung with ropes, laundry, and nets-cluster together like insects on a carcass. Nightsoil boats jostle for right-of-way through ocean-liner tenders and bamboo rafts. Sweating coolies stripped to the waist clutter the wharves, unloading opium and tobacco from merchant ships, rice and grain from junks that have come from upriver, and soy sauce, baskets of chickens, and great rolls of rattan matting from flat-bottomed riverboats. To our right rise grand five-and six-story edifices-foreign palaces of wealth, greed, and avarice. We wheel past the Cathay Hotel with its pyramid-shaped roof, the Custom House with its great clock tower, and the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank with its majestic bronze lions, who beckon passersby to rub their paws to bring good luck to men and sons to women. At the border of the French Concession, we pay the rickshaw puller and then continue on foot along what becomes the Quai de France. After a few blocks, we turn away from the river and enter the Old Chinese City. Coming here is ugly and hardly auspicious, like stepping into the past, which is precisely what Baba wants us to do with these marriages. Still, May and I have come, obedient as dogs, stupid as water buffalo. I cover my nose with a lavender-scented handkerchief to help block the smells of death, sewage, rancid cooking oil, and raw meat for sale spoiling in the heat. Ordinarily I ignore my home city’s ugly sights, but today my eyes are drawn to them. Here are beggars with eyes gouged out and limbs burned into stumps by their parents to make them all the more pitiable. Some have putrefying sores and horrendous growths blown up to disgusting size with bicycle pumps. We make our way through alleys strung with drying bound-foot bandages, diapers, and tattered trousers. In the Old Chinese City, the women who wash these items are too lazy to wring them out. Water drips down on us like rain. Every step reminds us where we might end up if we don’t go through with these marriages. We find the Louie sons at the gate to the Yu Yuan Garden. We try English, but they don’t seem interested in responding to us in that language. Their father is from the Four Districts of Canton, so naturally they speak the Sze Yup dialect, which May doesn’t know, but I translate for her. Like so many of us, they’ve taken Western names. The older one points to himself and says, “Sam.” Then he gestures to his younger brother and declares in Sze Yup, “His name is Vernon, but the parents call him Vern.” I love Z.G., so no matter how perfect this Sam Louie is, I’m not going to like him. And May’s groom, this Vern, is only fourteen years old. He hasn’t even begun to grow into manhood. He’s still a little boy Baba neglected to mention that. We all look from face to face. None of us seems to like what we see. Eyes dart to the ground, to the sky, anywhere. It occurs to me that maybe they don’t want to marry us either. If that’s the case, we can “Maybe we should walk,” I suggest. No one responds, but when I start to walk, the others follow, our shoes scuffing along the labyrinthine pathways past pools, rockeries, and grottoes. Willows sway in the hot air, giving the illusion of coolness. Pavilions of carved wood and gold lacquer evoke the deep past. Everything is designed to create a feeling of balance and unity, but the garden has broiled under the July sun all morning, and the afternoon air hangs heavy and viscous with fecundity. The boy, Vern, runs to one of the rockeries and scampers up the craggy wall. May looks at me, silently asking “I’ve been here before,” he murmurs tentatively in Sze Yup. “Do you know the story of how the rock came to be here?” I don’t tell him that I usually avoid the Old Chinese City. Instead, trying to be polite, I say, “Let’s sit down and you can tell it to me.” We find a bench and stare at the rock, which seems like any other rock to me. “During the Northern Sung dynasty, Emperor Hui Tsung had a great thirst for curiosities. He sent envoys across the southern provinces to find the best examples in the land. They found this rock and loaded it on a ship. But the rock never made it to the palace. A storm-perhaps a typhoon, perhaps angry river gods-sank the ship on the Whangpoo.” Sam’s voice is quite pleasant-not too loud, bossy, or superior. As he speaks, I stare at his feet. He stretches his legs out in front of him with his weight resting on the heels of his new leather shoes. I get my nerve up to look from those feet to his face. He’s attractive enough. I’ll go so far as to say he’s handsome. He’s quite thin. His face is long like a rice seed, which seems to exaggerate the sharpness of his cheekbones. His skin tone is darker than I like, but that’s understandable. He comes from Hollywood. I’ve read that movie stars like to bathe in the sunshine until their skin turns brown. His hair isn’t pure black. Touches of red catch the sunlight. Here it’s said that this color variation comes to those too poor to have a proper diet. Perhaps in America the food is so plentiful and rich that it also causes this change. He’s smartly dressed. Even I recognize that his suit has been recently tailored. And he’s a partner in his father’s business. If I weren’t already in love with Z.G., then Sam would seem like a good prospect. “The Pan family pulled the rock from the river and brought it here,” Sam continues. “You can see that it satisfies all the requirements for a good rock. It looks porous like a sponge, it has a handsome shape, and it makes you think of its thousands of years of history.” He falls silent again. In the distance, May circles the rockery, hands on her hips, her annoyance radiating across the garden. She calls up one last time, then looks around to find me. She raises her hands in defeat and begins walking toward us. Next to me, Sam says, “I like you. Do you like me?” Nodding seems the best response. “Good. I will tell my father that we will be happy together.” AS SOON AS we wave good-bye to Sam and Vern, I find a rickshaw. May climbs in, but I don’t follow her. “You go on home,” I tell her. “I have something I need to do. I’ll catch up to you later.” “But I need to talk to you.” Her hands grip the rickshaw’s armrests so hard that her knuckles have gone white. “That boy didn’t say a word to me.” “You don’t speak Sze Yup.” “It’s not just that. He’s like a little boy. He “It doesn’t matter, May.” “You can say that. You got the handsome one.” I try to explain that this is just a business deal, but she won’t listen. She stamps her foot, and the puller struggles to keep the rickshaw steady. “I don’t want to marry him! If we have to do it, let me have Sam.” I sigh impatiently. These flashes of jealousy and stubbornness are so like May, but they’re as harmless as rain on a summer afternoon. My parents and I know the best way to handle them is to indulge her until they blow away. “We’ll talk about it later. I’ll see you at home.” I nod to the puller, who gives the rickshaw a heave and trots on his bare feet down the cobblestone road. I wait until they turn the corner and then walk to the Old West Gate, where I find another rickshaw. I give him Z.G.’s address in the French Concession. When we arrive at Z.G.’s building, I run up the stairs and pound on the door. He answers it wearing a sleeveless undershirt and loose khakis held up with a tie wrapped through the belt loops. A cigarette dangles from his lips. I fall into his arms. All the tears and frustration I’ve held inside pour out. I tell him everything: that my family’s broke, that May and I are to be married to foreign Chinese, and that I love him. On the ride here, I thought of the different ways he might react. I considered that he might say something along the lines of “I don’t believe in marriage, but I love you and want you to live here with me.” I thought he might be valiant: “We’ll get married. Everything will be fine.” I thought he would ask about May and invite her to live with us. “I love her as a sister,” he would say. I even considered that he might get angry, rush out to find Baba, and give him the beating he deserves. In the end, Z.G. says the one thing I didn’t expect. “You should marry the man. He sounds like a good match, and you have a duty to your father. When a girl, obey your father; when a wife, obey your husband; when a widow, obey your son. We all know this is true.” “I don’t believe in any of that! And I didn’t think you did either. That kind of thinking is for my mother, not for you!” I’m hurt, but more than anything I’m angry. “How could you say that to me?” I demand. “We love each other. You don’t say things like that to the woman you love.” He doesn’t speak, but his expression manages to convey weariness and irritation that he has to deal with someone so childish. Because I’m bruised, indignant, and too young to know any better, I flee. I make a great show of stomping down the stairs, crying, and making myself look foolish in front of Z.G.’s landlady by acting as spoiled as my sister. It doesn’t make sense, but many women-and men too-have acted just as rashly. I think… I don’t know what I think… That he’ll rush down the stairs after me. That he’ll sweep me into his arms like in the movies. That he’ll whisk me away from my parents’ home tonight and we’ll elope. Even if worse comes to worst, I’ll marry Sam and then have a lifelong affair with the person I love, as so many women in Shanghai do these days. That isn’t such an unhappy ending, is it? When I tell my sister what happened with Z.G., her face pales in compassion. “I didn’t know you felt that way about him.” Her voice is so soft and comforting, I barely hear her. She holds me as I weep. Even after I stop crying, I feel sympathetic trembling coming from deep within her. We couldn’t be closer. Whatever happens, we’ll survive together. I’VE DREAMED OF my wedding to Z.G. for so long, but what I get with Sam is nothing like what I imagined. No Chantilly lace, no veil eight yards long, no fragrant cascades of flowers for the Western ceremony. For the Chinese banquet, May and I don’t change into red embroidered gowns and phoenix headdresses that quiver when we walk. There’s no big gathering of the families, no gossiping or jokes traded, no small children running, laughing, and hollering. At two in the afternoon, we go to the courthouse and meet Sam, Vern, and their father. Old Man Louie is just as I remembered him: wiry and stern-faced. He clasps his hands behind his back and watches the two couples sign the papers: married, July 24, 1937. At four, we go to the American Consulate and fill out forms for nonquota immigration visas. May and I check boxes verifying that we’ve never been in prison, an almshouse, or a hospital for the insane, that we’re not alcoholics, anarchists, professional beggars, prostitutes, idiots, imbeciles, feebleminded, epileptic, tubercular, illiterate, or suffering from psychopathic inferiority (whatever that is). As soon as we sign our forms, Old Man Louie folds them and tucks them into his jacket. At six, we meet our parents at a nondescript hotel that caters to Chinese and foreigners down on their luck, and then we have dinner in the main dining room: four newlyweds, my parents, and Old Man Louie. Baba tries to keep the conversation going, but what can anyone say? The orchestra plays, but none of us dance. Dishes come and go, but even the rice seems to choke me. Baba tells May and me to pour tea, as is the custom for brides, but Old Man Louie waves away the offer. Finally, it’s time for us to retire to our respective bridal chambers. My father whispers in my ear, “You know what you need to do. Once it’s done, all this will be over.” Sam and I go to our room. He seems more tense than I am. He sits on the edge of the bed, hunched over, staring at his hands. If I’ve spent hours imagining my wedding to Z.G., then I’ve also spent hours envisioning our wedding night and how romantic it would be. Now my mother comes into my mind, and I realize at last why she always speaks so poorly of the husband-wife thing. “You just do it and then you forget about it,” she’s often said. I don’t wait for Sam to come to me, hold me in his arms, or soften me with kisses on my neck. I stand in the middle of the room, unbutton the frog at my neck, move my fingers to the one above my breast, and then undo the top one under my armpit. Sam looks up and watches as I open all thirty frogs that go from my armpit down my right side. I let my dress slip off my shoulders. I sway unsteadily, chilled even on this hot night. My courage has brought me this far, but I’m unsure what to do next. Sam stands, and I bite my lip. It’s all very awkward. Sam seems nervous about touching me, but we both do what’s expected of us. One burst of pain and it’s over. Sam stays on his elbows above me for a moment and looks into my face. I don’t meet his gaze. Instead, I stare at the braided sash that holds back the curtain. I was so intent on getting this over with that I didn’t close the curtains. Does that make me brazen or desperate? Sam rolls off me and turns onto his side. I don’t move. I don’t want to talk, but I can’t fall asleep either. Maybe this one night and this one time won’t matter out of a lifetime of nights with my real husband, whoever he might be. But what about May? I get up while it’s still dark, take a bath, and dress. Then I sit in a chair by the window and watch Sam sleep. He wakes with a start just before dawn. He looks around, seemingly unsure of where he is. He sees me and blinks. His features are open, raw somehow. I can guess what he’s feeling: supreme embarrassment at being in this room and something like panic that he’s naked, that I’m sitting a few feet from him, and that he somehow has to get out of the bed and get dressed. As I did the night before, I look away. He slides to what had been my side of the bed, slips out from between the sheets, and pads quickly into the bathroom. The door shuts, and I hear the tap begin to flow. When we get to the dining room, Vern and May are already seated with Old Man Louie. May’s skin has taken on the color of alabaster-white with a green tint hidden beneath the surface. The boy scrunches the tablecloth with his fists. He doesn’t look up when Sam and I sit down, and I realize I have yet to hear Vernon speak. “I’ve ordered already,” Old Man Louie says. He turns his attention to the waiter. “Make sure everything arrives at the same time.” We sip our tea. No one comments on the view or the hotel’s decor or what sights these Chinese from America might take in today. Old Man Louie snaps his fingers. The waiter returns to our table. My father-in-law-the title alone is strange to consider-motions the waiter to lean down and then whispers in his ear. The waiter straightens, purses his lips, and leaves the room. He returns a few minutes later with two maids, each carrying bundled cloth. Old Man Louie signals one of the girls to approach and takes the bundle from her. As he pulls the fabric through his hands, I realize with absolute horror that he has the bottom sheet from either May’s or my bed. The diners around us take this in with varying degrees of interest. Most of the foreigners don’t seem to understand what’s happening, although one couple does, and they look appalled. But the Chinese in the room-from the customers to the hotel staff-seem amused and curious. Old Man Louie’s hands stop when he comes to a bloody splotch. “What room did this come from?” he asks the maid. “Room three hundred seven,” the girl answers. Old Man Louie looks from one son to the other. “Who had that room?” “It was mine,” Sam answers. The sheet falls from his father’s hands. He motions for May’s sheet, and he once again begins his nasty pawing. May’s lips part. She breathes softly through her mouth. The sheet keeps moving. People around us stare. Under the table, I feel a hand on my knee. It’s Sam’s. When Old Man Louie comes to the end of the sheet without finding a bloodstain, May leans over and throws up all over the table. That ends breakfast. A car is ordered, and within minutes May, Old Man Louie, and I are on our way back to our parents’ home. Once we arrive, there’s no small talk, tea served, or words of congratulation, only recriminations. I keep my arm around May’s waist when Old Man Louie begins speaking to my father. “We had an arrangement.” The tone is harsh and doesn’t allow room for discussion. “One of your daughters failed you.” He holds up a hand to prevent my father from offering an excuse. “I will forgive this. The girl is young and my boy…” I’m relieved-beyond relieved-that Old Man Louie has made the assumption that my sister and Vern didn’t do what they were supposed to do last night, instead of that they did it and she wasn’t a virgin. The result of that second possibility is almost too gruesome to contemplate: an examination by a doctor. If things were found intact, then we wouldn’t be any worse off than we are now. If they weren’t, there’d be a forced confession from my sister, the dissolution of her marriage on grounds that May had already done the husband-wife thing with someone else, my father’s money problems returned to us and perhaps multiplied, our futures once again unstable, not to mention that May’s reputation would be forever marred-even in these modern times-and the chances of her marrying into a good family-like that of Tommy Hu-destroyed. “Never mind all that,” the old man says to my father, but it feels as if he’s responding to my thoughts. “What matters is that they are married. As you know, my sons and I have business in Hong Kong. We are leaving tomorrow, but I’m concerned. What guarantee do I have that your daughters will meet us? Our ship sails to San Francisco on August tenth. That’s only seventeen days from now.” My insides feel like they’ve fallen through the floor. Baba lied to us again! May breaks away from me and runs up the stairs, but I don’t follow her. I stare at my father, hoping he’ll say something. But he doesn’t. He wrings his hands, acting as subservient as a rickshaw puller. “I’m taking their clothes,” Old Man Louie announces. He doesn’t wait for Baba to argue or for me to object. When he starts up the stairs, my father and I follow. Old Man Louie opens each door until he finds the room with May crying on her bed. When she sees us, she runs into the bathroom and slams the door. We hear her vomit again. The old man opens the closet, grabs an armload of dresses, and tosses them on the bed. “You can’t take those,” I say. “We need them for modeling.” The old man corrects me: “You’ll need them in your new home. Husbands like to see pretty wives.” He’s cold but unsystematic, ruthless but unknowledgeable. He either ignores our Western dresses or throws them on the floor, probably because he doesn’t know what’s fashionable in Shanghai this year. He doesn’t take the ermine wrap, because it’s white, the color of death, but he pulls out a fox stole that May and I bought used several years ago. “Try these on,” he orders, handing me a stack of hats he’s pulled from the closet’s upper shelf. I do as I’m told. “That’s enough. You can keep the green one and that thing with the feathers. The rest are coming with me.” He glares at my father. “I’ll send people later to pack these things. I suggest that neither you nor your daughters touch anything. Do you understand?” My father nods. The old man turns to me. Wordlessly, he appraises me from my face to my shoes and then back again. “Your sister is ill. Be good and help her,” he says, and then he leaves. I knock on the bathroom door and call softly. May opens the door a crack, and I let myself in. She lies on the floor, her cheek against the tile. I sit beside her. “Are you all right?” “I think it was the crab from dinner last night,” she answers. “It’s the wrong season and I shouldn’t have eaten it.” I lean against the wall and rub my eyes. How is it that two beautiful girls have fallen so low so quickly? I let my hands drop and stare at the repeating pattern of yellow, black, and turquoise tile that climbs the wall. LATER THAT DAY, coolies come to pack our clothes in wooden crates. These are loaded onto the back of a flatbed truck as our neighbors watch. In the midst of this, Sam arrives. Instead of approaching my father, he walks directly to me. “You are to take the boat to meet us in Hong Kong on August seventh,” he says. “My father has booked passage for us to sail together to San Francisco three days later. These are your immigration papers. He says everything is in order and that we’ll have no problems landing, but he also wants you to study what’s in this coaching book-just in case.” What he hands me isn’t a book but a few pieces of folded paper held together by hand stitching. “These are the answers you’ll need to give the inspectors if we have any trouble getting off the ship.” He pauses and frowns. He probably has the same thought as I: Why do we need to read the coaching book if everything’s in order? “Don’t worry about anything,” he goes on confidently as though I need my husband’s reassurance and will be comforted by his tone. “As soon as we’re through immigration, we’ll take another boat to Los Angeles.” I stare at the papers. “I’m sorry about this,” he adds, and I almost believe him. “I’m sorry about everything.” As he turns to leave, my father-suddenly remembering to be the gracious host-asks, “May I find you a rickshaw?” Sam looks back at me and answers, “No, no, I think I’ll walk.” I watch him until he turns the corner, and then I go inside the house and toss the papers he gave me in the trash. Old Man Louie, his sons, and my father have made a terrible mistake if they think this is going any further. Soon the Louies will be on a ship that will take them thousands of miles from here. They won’t be able to push or trick us into doing anything we don’t want to do. We’ve all paid a price for my father’s gambling. He’s lost his business. I’ve lost my virginity. May and I have lost our clothes and perhaps our livelihoods as a result. We’ve been hurt, but we’re not remotely poor or wretched by Shanghai standards. |
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