Shanghai Girls (19 page)

I’m ashamed that May and I have ended up here. I blame myself that we work so hard and never receive even one of the
lo fan
dimes. Once when I held out my hand to Old Man Louie and asked for pay, he spit on my palm. “You have food to eat and a place to sleep,” he said. “You and your sister don’t need any money.” And that was the end of that, except that I’m starting to get a sense of what we might be worth. Most people in China City make thirty to fifty dollars a month. Glass washers make only twenty dollars a month, while dish washers and waiters take home between forty and fifty dollars a month. Uncle Wilburt earns seventy dollars a month, which is considered a very good wage.

“How much money did you make this week?” I ask Sam every Saturday night. “Have you put any money aside?” I hope that someday, somehow, he will give me some of those funds to leave this place. But he never tells me what he earns. He just bends his head, cleans a table, scoops Joy off the floor, or goes down the hall to the bathroom and shuts the door.

Looking back, I can see how Mama, Baba, May, and I believed Old Man Louie was wealthy. In Shanghai, our family had been well-to-do. Baba had his own business. We had a house and servants. We thought the old man had to be considerably richer than we were. Now I see things differently. An American dollar went a long way in Shanghai, where everything from housing and clothes to wives like us was cheap. In Shanghai, we looked at Old Man Louie and saw what we chose to see: a man who bragged through money. He made us look and feel insignificant by treating Baba with great disdain during his visits. But it was all a lie, because here in the Land of the Flowery Flag, Old Man Louie is better off than most in China City but poor nevertheless. Yes, he has five businesses, but they’re small—minuscule really, at fifty square feet here and a hundred square feet there—and even together don’t add up to much. After all, his fifty thousand dollars in merchandise has zero value if no one buys it. But if my family had come here, we would have been at the bottom of the heap with the laundrymen, glass washers, and vegetable peddlers.

On that dreary thought, I climb the stairs to the apartment, strip off my smelly clothes, and leave them in a pile in a corner of the room. I get in bed and try to stay awake to enjoy a few minutes of quiet and stillness with my baby already asleep in her drawer.

ON CHRISTMAS MORNING
, we dress and join the others in the main room. Yen-yen and Old Man Louie repair broken vases that arrived in a shipment from a curio shop in San Francisco that went out of business. May stirs a pot
of jook
on the hot plate in the kitchen. Vern sits with his parents, looking around, hopeful yet forlorn. He’s grown up here and goes to American school, so he knows about Christmas. In the last two weeks, he’s brought home a few Christmas decorations that he made in art class, but other than these there isn’t a single thing to suggest the holiday: no stockings, no tree, and no gifts. Vern looks like he wants to celebrate, but what can he do or say? He’s a son in his parents’ home and he has to accept their rules. May and I glance at each other, then at Vern, and back at each other. We understand how he feels. In Shanghai, May and I celebrated the birth of the baby Jesus at the mission school, but it wasn’t a holiday Mama and Papa acknowledged in any way. Now that we’re here, we want to celebrate like
lo fan
.

“What shall we do today?” May asks optimistically. “Shall we go to the Plaza church and Olvera Street? They’ll have festivities.”

“We don’t do things with those people,” Old Man Louie says.

“I’m not saying we have to
do
something with them,” May responds. “I just think it would be interesting to see how they celebrate.”

But by now May and I have learned there’s no point in arguing with our in-laws. We just have to be happy that we have a day off from work.

“I want to go to the beach,” Vern suggests. He so rarely speaks that when he does we know he really wants something. “Take the streetcar.”

“Too far,” the old man objects.

“I don’t need to see their ocean,” Yen-yen scoffs. “Everything I want is right here.”

“You stay home,” Vern says, startling everyone in the room.

May raises her eyebrows. I can see she really wants to go, but I have no intention of dipping into our wedding money for something so frivolous, and I’ve never seen Sam with money in his hands other than at the restaurant.

“We can have a nice time here,” I say. “We can walk along the
lo fan
part of Broadway and look in the department store windows. Everything is decorated for Christmas. You’ll like that, Vern.”

“I want the beach,” he insists. “I want the ocean.” When no one says anything, he scrapes back his chair, trudges to his room, and slams the door. He emerges a few minutes later with several dollars crushed in his fist. “I will pay,” he says shyly.

Yen-yen tries to take the money, telling the rest of us, “A Boar and his money are easily parted, but you shouldn’t take advantage of him.”

Vern shakes her hands off his and then holds his arm above his head so she can’t reach the money. “It is a Christmas present for my brother, May, Pearl, and the baby. Mama and Baba, you stay home.”

Not only is it the most I’ve ever heard him say, but it may be the most any of us have heard him say. So we do as he wants. The five of us go to the beach, stroll on the pier, and dip our toes in the freezing Pacific. We take care not to let Joy get burned by the unseasonably bright winter sun. The water shimmers against the sky. In the distance, green hills roll into the sea. May and I go for a walk by ourselves. We let the wind and sounds of the waves wash away our worries. On the way back to where Vern and Sam sit with the baby under an umbrella, May says, “It’s sweet of Vern to do this for us.” It’s the first nice thing she’s said about him.

TWO WEEKS LATER
, a group of women from United China Relief invite Yen-yen to go to Wilmington to picket the shipyards for sending scrap iron to Japan. I’m sure Old Man Louie will say no when she asks permission to accompany them, but he surprises us all. “You can go if you take Pearl and May.”

“It will leave you with too few workers,” Yen-yen says, hope that this might happen and fear that he will change his mind glossing the edges of her voice.

“No matter. No matter,” he says. “I’ll have the uncles work extra hours.”

Yen-yen would never do anything like smile broadly to let us see how happy she is, but we all hear the lilt in her voice as she asks May and me, “Will you come?”

“Absolutely,” I say. I’ll do everything I can to raise money to fight the Japanese, who’ve been brutal and systematic in their policy of “the three alls”—kill all, burn all, and destroy all. It’s my duty to help women who are being raped and killed. I turn to May. Surely she’ll want to join us, if for nothing else than that she’ll get out of China City for a day, but she shrugs off the invitation.

“What can we do? We’re only women,” she says.

But it’s because I’m a woman that I dare to go. Yen-yen and I walk to the meeting place and board a bus to drive us to the shipyards. The organizers hand us printed placards. We march, we shout our slogans, and I experience a sense of freedom, which I owe entirely to my mother-in-law.

“China is my home,” she says on the bus back to Chinatown. “It will always be my home.”

After that day, I keep a cup on the counter in the café for people to put their change. I wear a United China Relief pin on my dress. I picket to stop those scrap-iron shipments and join other demonstrations to stop the sale of aviation fuel for the monkey people’s planes. I do all this because Shanghai and China are never far from my heart.

Eating Bitterness to Find Gold

CHINESE NEW YEAR
arrives. We follow all the traditions. Old Man Louie gives us money to buy new clothes. I put together an outfit for Joy that will celebrate her Tiger sign: a pair of baby slippers shaped like Tiger cubs and an orange-and-gold baby hat with little ears on top and a tail made from twisted embroidery thread coming out the back. May and I pick out American cotton dresses in floral prints. Then we have our hair washed and styled. At home, we take down the picture of the Kitchen God and burn it in the alley so he’ll travel to the afterworld to report on our activities during the past year. We put away knives and scissors to make sure we won’t cut our good fortune. Yen-yen makes offerings to the Louie ancestors. Her wishes and prayers are simple. “Bring a son to Boy-husband. Make that wife of his pregnant. Give me a grandson.”

In China City, we hang red gauze lanterns and couplets in red and gold paper. We arrange for dancers, singers, and acrobats to entertain children and their parents. We search out special ingredients to make holiday dishes in the café that will be Chinese in feeling but appeal to Occidental palates. We expect big crowds, so Old Man Louie hires extra help for his various enterprises, but he needs even more people to assist with what he anticipates will be the most profitable business on New Year’s Day: the rickshaw rides.

“We have to beat the people in New Chinatown,” he tells Sam on New Year’s Eve. “How can we do that if I have Mexican boys pulling my rickshaws on the most Chinese day of the year? Vern’s not strong enough, but you are.”

“I’ll be too busy in the café,” Sam says.

My father-in-law has asked Sam to pull rickshaws other times, and he always has some excuse not to do it. I can’t say what it will be like on New Year’s, but I know how busy we’ve been on other festival days. We’ve never been so overwhelmed that I haven’t been able to follow my usual routine of working in the café, the flower shop, the curio shop, and the antiques store. I know Sam’s lying, and so does Old Man Louie. Ordinarily my father-in-law’s anger would be great, but this is New Year’s, when no harsh words should be spoken.

On New Year’s morning, we dress in our new clothes, putting Chinese custom above Mrs. Sterling’s rules about wearing costumes to work. These things are factory-made, but it’s wonderful to have something fresh and Western on our skins again. Joy, who’s eleven months old, looks adorable in her Tiger hat and slippers. I’m her mother, so of course I think she’s beautiful. Her face is round like the moon. White as clean as new snow circles the black of her eyes. Her hair is wispy and soft. Her skin is as pale and translucent as rice milk.

I didn’t believe in the Chinese zodiac when Mama talked about it, but the more time that’s passed since her death, the more I understand that the things she said about May and me might have been true. Now when I hear Yen-yen talk about a Tiger’s traits, I see my daughter very clearly. Like a Tiger, Joy can be temperamental and volatile. One minute she’s brimming over with giddiness; the next she can dissolve into tears. A minute later, she might try to climb up her grandfather’s legs, wanting and getting his attention. She may be a worthless girl in his eyes—forever Pan-di, Hope-for-a-Brother—but the Tiger in her has pounced into his heart. Her temper is greater than his. I think he respects that.

I know the exact moment when New Year’s Day starts to turn rotten. While May and I fix each other’s hair in the main room, Yen-yen has Joy on her back on the floor, tickling her stomach, building anticipation by zooming in and out with her fingers and by raising and lowering her voice, only the words that come out of her mouth do not match her happy actions.

“
Fu yen
or
yen fu?
” Yen-yen asks, as Joy squeals in expectation. “Would you rather be a wife or a servant? Women everywhere would rather be a servant.”

Joy’s giggles do not have their usual melting effect on her grandfather, who watches sourly from a chair.

“A wife has a mother-in-law,” Yen-yen trills. “A wife has the despair of her children. She must obey her husband even when he is wrong. A wife must work and work but never receive a word of thanks. It’s better to be a servant and the mistress of yourself. Then, if you want, you can jump in the well. If only we had a well…”

Old Man Louie pushes himself away from the table. Wordlessly, he gestures to the door, and we leave the apartment. It’s still early morning, and already ill-omened words have been spoken.

Thousands of people come to China City, and the festivities are great. The firecrackers are loud and plentiful. The dragon and lion dancers wiggle and squirm from shop to shop. Everyone wears such bright colors it’s as if a great rainbow has come to earth. In the afternoon even more people come. Whenever I look out the window, another rickshaw rushes past. By evening, the Mexican pullers look exhausted.

During dinner, the Golden Dragon is completely full, and perhaps two dozen people stand just inside the door, waiting for a table to become free. Around 7:30, my father-in-law enters and pushes his way through the clustered customers.

“I need Sam,” he says.

I look around and spot Sam setting a table for eight. Old Man Louie follows my glance, strides across the room, and speaks to Sam. I can’t hear what he says, but Sam shakes his head no. Old Man Louie says something else, and Sam shakes his head again. At the third refusal, my father-in-law grabs Sam’s shirt. Sam pushes his hand away. Our customers stare.

The old man raises his voice, spitting the Sze Yup dialect out of his mouth like phlegm. “Don’t disobey me!”

“I told you I won’t do it.”

“Toh gee! Chok gin!”

I’ve been working at Sam’s side for months now, and I know he’s neither lazy nor empty-headed. Old Man Louie yanks his son across the room, bumping past tables and through the crowd by the door. I follow them outside, where my father-in-law shoves Sam to the ground.

“When I tell you to do something, you do it! Our other pullers are tired, and you know how to do this.”

“No.”

“You’re my son and you’ll do as I say,” my father-in-law pleads. His face quavers, and then his moment of weakness hardens. When he next speaks, his voice sounds like grinding rocks. “I’ve promised everything to you.”

This is not one of the pretty dramas with singing and dancing that are happening elsewhere in China City as part of tonight’s festivities. The tourists don’t understand what’s being said. Still, this is a captivating and entertaining spectacle. When my father-in-law begins to kick Sam down the alley, I trail along with the others. Sam doesn’t fight or cry out. He just takes it. What kind of man is he?

When we reach the rickshaw stand in the Court of the Four Seasons, Old Man Louie looks down at Sam and says, “You’re a rickshaw puller and an Ox. That’s why I brought you here. Now do your job!”

Fear and shame wash the color from Sam’s face. Slowly he gets to his feet. He’s taller than his father, and for the first time I see that this is as distressing to the old man as my height was to Baba. Sam takes a step toward his father, looks down at him, and says in a trembling voice, “I won’t pull your rickshaw. Not now. Not ever.”

Then it’s as though both men become aware of the silence around them. My father-in-law brushes at his mandarin robe. Sam’s eyes dart about uncomfortably. When he sees me, his whole body cringes. Then he takes off, sprinting through the gawking tourists and our curious neighbors. I run after him.

I find him in our windowless room in the apartment. His fists are bunched. His face is red with anger and hurt, but his shoulders are back, his posture upright, and his tone defiant.

“For so long I’ve been embarrassed and ashamed before you, but now you know,” he says. “You married a rickshaw puller.”

In my heart I believe him, but my mind thinks otherwise. “But you’re the fourth son—”

“Only a paper son. Always in China people ask,
‘Kuei hsing?’
—What’s your name?—but really it means, ‘What is your precious family name?’ Louie is just a
chi ming—
a paper name. I’m actually a Wong. I was born in Low Tin Village, not far from your home village in the Four Districts. My father was a farmer.”

I sit on the edge of the bed. My mind spins: a rickshaw puller and a paper son. This makes me a paper wife, so we’re both here illegally. I feel sick to my stomach. Still, I recite the facts from the coaching book: “Your father is the old man. You were born in Wah Hong. You came here as a baby—”

Sam shakes his head. “That boy died in China many years ago. I traveled here using his papers.”

I remember Chairman Plumb showing me a picture of a little boy and thinking that it didn’t look all that much like Sam. Why hadn’t I questioned that more? I need to hear the truth. I need it for me, for my sister, and for Joy. And I need him to tell me
everything—
without having him close up and slump away as he usually does. I use a tactic I learned from my weeks of interrogations at Angel Island.

“Tell me about your village and your real family,” I say, hoping my voice doesn’t shake too much from the emotions I feel and believing if he talks about these comfortable things, then maybe he’ll tell me the truth about how he came to be a paper son to the Louies. He doesn’t answer right away. He stares at me in the way he has so many times since the first day we met. Always I’ve seen that look as sympathy for me, but maybe he’s been trying to show compassion for our shared troubles and secrets. Now I try to match his expression. The funny thing is, I mean it.

“We had a pond in front of our house,” he murmurs at last. “Anyone could throw fish in it and raise them. You could dip a crock in the water, pull it out, and there’d be fish in your crock. No one had to pay. When the pond ran dry, you could pick up fish sitting in the mud. Still, no one had to pay. In the field behind our house, we grew vegetables and melons. We raised two pigs a year. We were not rich, but we were not poor either.”

It sounds poor to me. His family had lived from dirt to mouth. He seems to sense my understanding as he goes on haltingly.

“When the drought came, my grandfather, father, and I worked hard, trying to make the ground yield to our desires. Mama went to other villages to earn money by helping others plant or harvest rice, but those places also suffered from no rain. She wove cloth and took it to market. She tried to help our family, but it wasn’t enough. You can’t live on air and sunshine. When two of my sisters died, my father, my second brother, and I went to Shanghai. We wanted to earn enough to go back to Low Tin Village and farm again. Mama stayed home with my youngest brother and sister.”

In Shanghai, they found not promise but hardship. They didn’t have connections, so they couldn’t get factory jobs. Sam’s father took work as a rickshaw puller, while Sam, who’d just turned twelve, and his brother, who was two years younger, scavenged for small jobs. Sam sold matches on street corners; his brother ran after coal trucks to pick up pieces that fell from the beds to sell to the poor. They ate watermelon rinds plucked from trash pits in summer and watered down
jook
in winter.

“My father pulled and pulled,” Sam continues. “At first he drank tea with two lumps of sugar to restore his strength and cool his skin. When money ran low, he could only afford cheap tea made from dust and stems and no sugar. Then, like so many pullers, he began smoking opium. Not real opium! He couldn’t afford that! And not for pleasure either. He needed it for stimulation, to keep pulling in the hottest weather or if there was a typhoon. He bought the dregs left over from the rich and sold by servants. The opium gave my father false vigor, but his strength was eaten and his heart shriveled. Pretty soon he began to cough blood. They say that you never see a rickshaw puller reach age fifty and that most pullers are already past their best days by the time they turn thirty. My father died when he was thirty-five. I wrapped him in a straw mat and put him on the street. Then I took his place, selling my sweat by pulling a rickshaw. I was seventeen and my brother was fifteen.”

As he talks, I think about all the rickshaws I’ve ridden in and how I never really thought about the men who pulled them. I hadn’t considered pullers actual people. They’d seemed barely human. I remember how many of them had not owned shirts or shoes, the way their spines and shoulder blades had protruded from their skin, and the sweat that had oozed from their bodies even in winter.

“I learned all the tricks,” Sam goes on. “I learned I could get an extra tip if I carried a man or woman from my rickshaw to the door during typhoon season so they wouldn’t ruin their shoes. I learned to bow to women and men, invite them to ride in my
li-ke-xi
, call them
Mai-da-mu
for
Madame
or
Mai-se-dan
for
Master
. I hid my shame when they laughed at my bad English. I made nine silver dollars a month, but I still couldn’t afford to send money home to my family in Low Tin. I don’t know what happened to them. They’re probably dead. I couldn’t even take care of my brother, who joined other poor children helping to push rickshaws over the arched bridges at Soochow Creek for a few coppers a day. He died of the blood-lung disease the next winter.” He pauses, his mind back in Shanghai. Then he asks, “Did you ever hear the rickshaw pullers’ song?” He doesn’t wait for me to answer but begins to sing: