Shanghai Girls (15 page)

When the missionary ladies come, I refuse to let them escort me to the station’s hospital. “It’s not the Chinese way,” I say. “But if you could send a telegram to my husband, I would be most grateful.”

The message is short and to the point:
MAY AND PEARL ARRIVED ANGEL ISLAND. SEND TRAVEL FUNDS. BABY BORN. PREPARE ONE-MONTH BIRTHDAY
.

That night, the women return from dinner with the special mother’s soup. Over the objections of the women who cluster around, I share the soup with my sister, saying that she worked as hard as I did. They tsk-tsk and shake their heads, but May needs the soup far more than I do.

CHAIRMAN PLUMB IS
thoroughly stumped when I walk into my next hearing wearing one of my prettiest silk dresses and my hat with the feathers—with the coaching book well studied by both May and me hidden inside the lining—speaking perfect English and carrying a baby decorated with charms. I answer every question correctly and without hesitation, knowing that in another room May is doing the exact same thing. But my actions and those of May are irrelevant, as is the whole legally domiciled merchant/wife of an American citizen question. What are the officials going to do with this baby? Angel Island is part of the United States, yet no one’s citizenship or status is acknowledged until that person
leaves
the island. It’s easier for the officials to release us than for them to deal with the bureaucratic problems Joy presents.

Chairman Plumb gives his usual synopsis at the end of the interrogation, but he’s hardly happy when he comes to his concluding words: “The submission of this case has been delayed for over four months. While it is clear that this woman has spent very little time with her husband, who claims to be an American citizen, she has now given birth at our station. After considerable deliberation, we have come to agreement on the essential points. I therefore move that Louie Chin-shee be admitted to the United States as the wife of an American citizen.”

“I concur,” Mr. White says.

“I also concur,” the recorder says in the first and only time I hear him speak.

At four that same afternoon, the guard comes in and calls two names: Louie Chin-shee and Louie Chin-shee—May’s and my old-fashioned married names.
“Sai gaai
,” he announces loudly in his usual mangling of the phrase that means
good fortune
. We’re handed our Certificates of Identity. I’m given a United States birth certificate for Joy, stating that she is “too small to be measured”—which means only that they didn’t bother to examine her. I hope these words will be useful in erasing any suspicions about dates and Joy’s size when Old Man Louie and Sam see her. The other women help us pack our things. Lee-shee weeps when she says good-bye. May and I watch the guard lock the dormitory door behind us, and then we follow him out of the building and down the path to the dock, where we pick up the rest of our luggage and board the ferry to take us to San Francisco.

A Single Rice Kernel

WE PAY FOURTEEN
dollars to take the
Harvard
steamship to San Pedro. On the voyage, having learned our lesson at Angel Island, we rehearse our stories for why we missed the ship all those months ago, how hard we tried to get out of China to come to our husbands, and how difficult our interrogations were. But we don’t need to tell any stories, real or otherwise. When Sam meets us at the dock, he says simply, “We thought you were dead.”

We’ve seen each other only three times: in the Old Chinese City, at our wedding, and when he gave me our tickets and other traveling papers. After Sam’s single sentence, he stares at me wordlessly. I look at him wordlessly. May hangs back, carrying our two bags. The baby sleeps in my arms. I don’t expect hugs or kisses, and I don’t expect him to acknowledge Joy in an extravagant way. That would be inappropriate. Still, our meeting after all this time is very awkward.

On the streetcar, May and I sit behind Sam. This is not a city of “magical tall buildings” like the ones we had in Shanghai. Eventually, I see one white tower to my left. After a few more blocks, Sam gets up and motions to us. Outside the window to the right is a huge construction zone. To the left stands a long block of two-story brick buildings, some of which have signs in Chinese. The streetcar stops, and we get off We walk up and around the block. A sign reads
LOS ANGELES STREET.
We cross the street, skirt a plaza with a bandstand in the center, walk past a firehouse, and then make a left down Sanchez Alley, which is lined by more brick buildings. We step through a door with the words
GARNIER BLOCK
carved above it, walk down a dark passageway, climb a flight of old wooden stairs, and wend our way along a musty corridor that reeks of cooked food and dirty diapers. Sam hesitates before the door to the apartment he shares with his parents and Vern. He turns and gives May and me a look that I read as sympathy. Then he opens the door and we enter.

The first thing that strikes me is just how poor, dirty, and shabby everything is. A couch covered in stained mauve material leans glumly against a wall. A table with six wooden chairs of no particular design or craftsmanship takes up space in the center of the room. Next to the table, not even tucked into a corner, sits a spittoon. A quick glance shows that it hasn’t been emptied recently. No photographs, paintings, or calendars hang on the walls. The windows are filthy and without coverings. From where I stand just inside the front door I can see into the kitchen, which is little more than a counter with some appliances on it and a niche for the worship of the Louie family ancestors.

A short, round woman with her hair pinned into a small bun at the back of her neck rushes to us, squealing in Sze Yup. “Welcome! Welcome! You’re here!” Then she calls over her shoulder. “They’re here! They’re here!” She flicks her wrist at Sam. “Go get the old man and my boy.” As Sam slumps through the main room and down a hall, she turns her attention back to us. “Let me have the baby! Oh, let me see! Let me see! I’m your
yen-yen
,” she trills to Joy, using the Sze Yup diminutive for grandmother. Then to May and me, she adds, “You can call me Yen-yen too.”

Our mother-in-law is older than I expected, given that Vernon is just fourteen. She looks like she’s in her late fifties—ancient compared with Mama, who was thirty-eight when she died.

“I am the one who will see the child” comes a stern voice, also speaking in Sze Yup. “Give it here.”

Old Man Louie, dressed in a long mandarin robe, enters the room with Vern, who hasn’t grown much since we last saw him. Again, May and I expect questions about where we’ve been and why it took so long to get here, but the old man has no interest in us whatsoever. I hand Joy to him. He sets her on a table and roughly undresses her. She begins to cry—alarmed by his bony fingers, her grandmother’s exclamations, the hardness of the table against her back, and the sudden shock of being naked.

When Old Man Louie sees she’s a girl, his hands draw back. Distaste wrinkles his features. “You didn’t write that the child is a girl. You should have done that. We wouldn’t have prepared a banquet if we’d known.”

“Of course she needs a one-month party,” my mother-in-law chirps. “Every baby—even a girl—needs a one-month party. Anyway, no going back now. Everyone is coming.”

“You’ve planned something already?” May asks.

“Now!” Yen-yen rings out. “You took longer to get here from the harbor than we thought. Everyone is waiting at the restaurant.”

“Now?” May echoes.

“Now!”

“Shouldn’t we change?” May asks.

Old Man Louie scowls. “No time for that. You don’t need anything. You’re not so special now. No need to try to sell yourselves here.”

If I were braver, I’d ask why he’s so deliberately rude and mean, but we haven’t even been in his home ten minutes.

“She will need a name,” Old Man Louie says, nodding to the baby.

“Her name is Joy,” I say.

He snorts. “No good. Chao-di or Pan-di is better.”

The redness of anger creeps up my neck. This is exactly what the women on Angel Island warned us about. I feel Sam’s hand on the small of my back, but his gesture of comfort sends a ripple of anxiety along my spine and I step away from his touch.

Sensing something’s wrong, May asks in our Wu dialect, “What’s he saying?”

“He wants to name Joy Ask-for-a-Brother or Hope-for-a-Brother.”

May’s eyes narrow.

“You will not speak a secret language in my home,” Old Man Louie declares. “I need to understand everything you say.”

“May doesn’t know Sze Yup,” I explain, but inside I reel from what he’s proposing for Joy, whose cries are shrill in the disapproving silence around her.

“Only Sze Yup,” he says, emphasizing his point by sharply rapping the table. “If I hear the two of you speak another language—even English—then you’ll put a nickel in a jar for me. Understand?”

He isn’t a tall or heavily built man, but he stands with his feet planted as if daring any of us to defy him. But May and I are new here, Yen-yen has edged to a wall seemingly trying to make herself invisible, Sam has barely said a word since we got off the boat, and Vernon stands to the side, nervously shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

“Get Pan-di dressed,” Old Man Louie orders. “The two of you brush your hair. And I want you to wear these.” He reaches into one of the deep pockets of his mandarin robe and brings out four gold wedding bracelets.

He grabs my hand and locks a solid gold, three-inch-wide bracelet on my wrist. Then he attaches one to the other wrist, roughly pushing my mother’s jade bracelet up my arm and out of his way. While he locks May’s bracelets in place, I look at mine. They’re beautiful, traditional, and very expensive wedding bracelets. Here at last is material evidence of the wealth I expected. If May and I can find a pawnshop, then we can use the money …

“Don’t just stand there,” Old Man Louie snaps. “Do something to make that girl stop crying. It’s time to go.” He looks at us in disgust. “Let’s get this over with.”

WITHIN FIFTEEN MINUTES
we’ve gone around the corner, crossed Los Angeles Street, climbed some stairs, and entered Soochow Restaurant for a combination wedding banquet and one-month party. Platters of hard-boiled eggs dyed red to represent fertility and happiness are set on a table just inside the entrance. Wedding couplets hang on the walls. Thin slices of sweet pickled ginger to symbolize the continued warming of my
yin
after the strain of birth are set on each table. The banquet, while not as lavish as I imagined in my romantic days in Z.G.’s studio, is still the best meal we’ve seen in months—a cold platter with jellyfish, soy-sauce chicken, and sliced kidneys, bird’s nest soup, a whole steamed fish, Peking duck, noodles, shrimp and walnuts—but May and I don’t get to eat.

Yen-yen—carrying her new grandchild—takes us from table to table to make introductions. Almost everyone here is a Louie, and they all speak Sze Yup.

“This is Uncle Wilburt. This is Uncle Charley. And here’s Uncle Edfred,” she says to Joy.

These men in nearly matching suits made from cheap fabric are Sam and Vern’s brothers. Are these the names they were born with? Not possible. They’re the names they took to sound more American, just as May, Tommy, Z.G., and I took Western names to sound more sophisticated in Shanghai.

Since May and I have been married for a while already instead of the usual wedding banter about our husbands’ coming fortitude in the bedchamber or how my sister and I are about to be plucked, the teasing revolves around Joy.

“You cook baby fast, Pearl-ah!” Uncle Wilburt says in broken English. From the coaching book, I know he’s thirty-one, but he looks much older. “That baby many weeks early!”

“Joy big for her age!” Edfred, who’s twenty-seven but looks a lot younger, chimes in. He’s quite emboldened by the
mao tai
he’s been drinking. “We can count, Pearl-ah.”

“Sam give you son next time!” Charley adds. He’s thirty, but it’s hard to tell because his eyes are red, swollen, and watery from allergies. “You cook next baby so good he come out even earlier!”

“You Louie men. All same!” Yen-yen scolds. “You think you count so good? You count how many days my daughters-in-law run from monkey people. You think you have hardship here?
Bah!
Baby lucky to be born at all! She lucky to be alive!”

May and I pour tea for each guest and receive wedding gifts of
lai see—
red envelopes embossed with gold good-luck characters and filled with money that will be ours alone—and more gold in the form of earrings, pins, rings, and enough bracelets to climb our arms to our elbows. I can barely wait for us to be alone so we can count the first of our escape money and figure out how to sell our jewelry.

Naturally, there are the predictable comments about Joy being a girl, but most people are delighted to see a baby—any baby. That’s when I realize that the majority of the guests are men, with very few wives and almost no children. What we experienced on Angel Island begins to make sense. The American government does everything possible to keep out Chinese men. It makes it even harder for Chinese women to enter the country. And in a lot of states it’s against the law for Chinese to marry Caucasians. All this ends in the desired result for the United States: with few Chinese women on American soil, sons and daughters can’t be born, saving the country from having to accept undesirable citizens of Chinese descent.

At table after table, the men want to hold Joy. Some of them cry when they take her in their arms. They examine her fingers and toes. I can’t help it, but I fairly shine with my new status as mother. I’m happy—not in-the-stars happy but relieved happy. We survived. We made it to Los Angeles. Apart from Old Man Louie’s disappointment in Joy—and not in ten thousand years will I ever call her Pan-di—he’s arranged this celebration and we’re being welcomed. I glance at May hoping she’s feeling what I’m feeling. But my sister—even as she performs her new-bride duties—seems pensive and withdrawn. My heart tightens. How cruel all this is for her, but she didn’t push me in a wheelbarrow for miles and nurse me back to health by being weak. Somehow my little sister has found a way to keep going forward.

I remember back on Angel Island before the baby was born talking with May about the importance of the special mother’s soup and whether or not we should ask someone to see if the chefs would make it for us. “I’ll need it to help with my bleeding,” May had decided practically, while knowing it would also bring in her milk. So May and I had shared the soup. Then, when Joy was three days old, May went to the showers and didn’t return. I left the baby with Lee-shee and went to look for my sister. My fear was great. I worried what May might do if left alone. I found her in the shower, crying not from sorrow but from the agony in her breasts. “It’s worse than when the baby came out,” she said between sobs. Yes, her womb had shrunk, and even naked she barely looked like she’d had a baby, but her breasts were swollen and hard as rocks from milk that had nowhere to go. The hot water helped, and the milk streamed out, dripping from her nipples and mingling in the water before disappearing down the drain.

Some might say, Well, how stupid could you have been to let her eat a soup that would make her milk come in like that? But remember, we didn’t know about having babies. We didn’t know enough about the milk or how painful it would be. A few days later, when May discovered that every time the baby cried, milk would start to empty out of her breasts, she moved to a bunk at the far end of the room. “That baby cries too much,” she told the others. “How can I help my sister at night if I don’t get some sleep during the day?”

Now I watch May pour tea for a table of lonely men and scoop up the red envelopes and tuck them in her pocket. The men do their duty by joking, teasing, and mocking her, and she does hers by putting on a smiling face.

“Your turn next, May,” Wilburt hoots when we circle back to the uncles’ table.

Charley appraises her up and down, and then says, “You small, but hips good.”

“You give the old man the grandson he wants, you’ll become his favorite,” promises Edfred.