Shanghai Girls (8 page)

“Who would try to leave Shanghai now?” he asks wisely. “I don’t want to be killed by the monkey people.”

I don’t tell him that the Green Gang is after us. Instead, I say, “We’re going home to Kwangtung province.”

“I’m not pushing you that far!”

“Of course not. But if you could get us to the Grand Canal…”

I agree to pay double his daily take.

We go back to the house. He packs our bags into the wheelbarrow. We prop the cloth-wrapped satchels filled with our dresses on the back of the wheelbarrow so Mama will have something to lean on.

“Before we go,” Mama says, “I want to give you girls these.” She loops a tiny cloth pouch hanging from a string around May’s neck and another around mine. “I bought them from a diviner. They hold three coppers, three sesame seeds, and three green beans. He said they will keep you safe from evil spirits, illness, and the dwarf bandits’ flying machines.”

My mother’s so susceptible, gullible, and old-fashioned. How much did she pay for this nonsense—fifty coppers apiece? More?

She climbs in the wheelbarrow and wiggles her bottom to get comfortable. In her hands she clasps our papers—the boat tickets, our marriage certificates, and the coaching book—wrapped in a piece of silk and tied with silk tape. Then we take one last look at the house. Neither Cook nor our boarders have come outside to wave good-bye or wish us luck.

“Are you sure we should leave?” May asks anxiously. “What about Baba? What if he comes home? What if he’s hurt somewhere?”

“Your father has a hyena’s heart and a python’s lungs,” Mama says. “Would he stay here for you? Would he come looking for you? If so, then why isn’t he here?”

I don’t believe Mama means to be so callous. Baba has lied to us and put us in a desperate situation, but he’s still her husband and our father. But Mama is right. If Baba is alive, he probably isn’t thinking about us. We can’t worry about him either, if we’re going to have any chance at survival.

The pusher grabs the wheelbarrow’s handles, Mama grips the sides, and they begin to move. For now, May and I walk on either side. We have a long way to go, and we don’t want the boy to tire too quickly. As they say,
there is no light load if one has to carry it for a hundred paces
.

We cross the Garden Bridge. Around us men and women dressed in thickly padded cotton carry everything they own: birdcages, dolls, sacks of rice, clocks, rolled up posters. As we walk along the Bund, I stare across the Whangpoo. Foreign cruisers gleam in the sun, black clouds streaming from their smokestacks. The
Idzumo
and her accompaniment sit on the water—solid, gray and still undamaged by Chinese fire. Junks and sampans bob on wakes. Everywhere, even now that war is upon us, coolies trudge back and forth, carrying heavy loads.

We turn right on Nanking Road, where sand and disinfectant have been used to clean away the blood and stink of death. Eventually, Nanking Road turns into Bubbling Well Road. The tree-shaded street is busy and hard to navigate all the way to the West Train Station, where we see people loaded onto railroad cars on four levels: the floors, the seats, the berths, and the roofs. Our pusher keeps going. Surprisingly quickly, concrete and granite give way to rice and cotton fields. Mama pulls out snacks for us to eat, making sure to give our pusher a generous portion. We stop a few times to relieve ourselves behind a bush or a tree. We walk through the heat of the day. I look back every once in a while and see smoke billowing from Chapei and Hongkew, and I wonder idly when the fires will burn themselves out.

Blisters form on our heels and toes, but we haven’t thought to bring bandages or medicine. When the shadows grow long, the pusher—without asking our opinions—turns down a dirt path that leads to a small farmhouse with a thatched roof. A tethered horse nibbles yellow beans from a bucket, and chickens peck the ground before the open door. As the pusher sets down the wheelbarrow and shakes out his arms, a woman emerges from the house.

“I have three women here,” our pusher says in his rough country dialect. “We need food and a place to sleep.”

The woman doesn’t speak but motions us to come inside. She pours hot water into a tub and points to May’s and my feet. We take off our shoes and put our feet in the water. The woman returns with an earthenware jar. She uses her fingers to slather a foul-smelling homemade poultice on our broken blisters. Then she turns her attention to Mama. She helps my mother to a stool in the corner of the room, pours more hot water into a tub, and then stands in such a way that she shields Mama from us. Even so, I can see Mama bend over and begin to unwrap her bindings. I turn away. Mama’s care of her feet is the most private and intimate thing she can do. I’ve never seen them naked, and I don’t want to.

Once Mama’s feet are washed and wrapped in clean bindings, the woman sets to making dinner. We give her some of our rice, which she pours into a pot of boiling water, and she begins the constant stirring that will turn the two ingredients into
jook
.

For the first time, I allow myself to look around. The place is filthy and I dread eating or drinking anything in this room. The woman seems to sense this. She puts empty bowls and tin soupspoons on the table along with a pot of hot water. She gestures to us.

“What does she want us to do?” May asks.

Mama and I don’t know, but our wheelbarrow pusher picks up the pot, pours it into the bowls, dips our spoons in the hot water, swirls the liquid, and then tosses the water on the hard-packed earthen floor, where it’s absorbed. The woman then serves us the
jook
, onto which she floats some stir-fried carrot greens. The greens are bitter in the mouth and sour on swallowing. The woman steps away and returns a moment later with some dried fish, which she drops into May’s bowl. Then she stands behind May and kneads her shoulders.

I have a flash of irritation. This woman—poor, obviously uneducated, and a total stranger—gave the wheelbarrow pusher the largest bowl of
jook
, provided Mama with privacy, and now frets over May. What is it about me that even strangers recognize as not being worthy?

After dinner, our pusher goes outside to sleep by his wheelbarrow, while we stretch out on straw mats laid on the floor. I’m exhausted, but Mama seems to burn with a deep fire. The petulance that’s always been so much a part of her character disappears as she talks about her own childhood and the house where she was raised.

“In the summer when I was a girl, my mama, aunties, my sisters, and all my girl cousins used to sleep outside on mats just like this,” Mama remembers, speaking low so as not to disturb our hostess, who rests on a raised platform by the stove. “You’ve never met my sisters, but we were a lot like the two of you.” She laughs ruefully. “We loved each other and we knew how to argue. But on those summer nights when we were out under the sky we didn’t fight. We listened to my mother tell us stories.”

Outside cicadas hum. From the far distance comes the concussion of bombs being dropped on our home city. The explosions reverberate through the ground and into our bodies. When May whimpers, Mama says, “I guess you’re not too old to hear one now …”

“Oh, yes, Mama, please,” May urges. “Tell us the one about the moon sisters.”

Mama reaches over and pats May lovingly. “In ancient days,” she begins in a voice that transports me back to my childhood, “two sisters lived on the moon. They were wonderful girls.” I wait, knowing exactly what she’ll say next. “They were beautiful like May—slender as bamboo, graceful as willow branches swaying in the breeze, with faces like the oval seeds of a melon. And they were clever and industrious like Pearl—embroidering their lily shoes with ten thousand stitches. All night the sisters embroidered, using their seventy embroidery needles. Their fame grew, and soon people on earth gathered to stare at them.”

I know by heart the fate that awaits the two mythical sisters, but I feel Mama wants us to hear the story differently tonight.

“The two sisters knew the rules for maidenly conduct,” she goes on. “No man should see them. No man should
stare
at them. Each night, they became more and more unhappy. The older sister had an idea. We shall change places with our brother.’ The younger sister wasn’t so sure, for she had a tiny bit of vanity in her, but it was her duty to follow her
jie jie’s
instructions. The sisters put on their most beautiful red gowns embroidered with dragons dashing through fiery blooms and went to visit their brother, who lived in the sun. They asked to trade places with him.”

May, who’s always liked this part, picks up the story. “‘More people walk the earth by day than by night,’ their brother scoffed. ‘You will have more eyes on you than ever before.’”

“The sisters wept, much like you used to, May, when you wanted something from your father,” Mama continues.

Here I am, lying on a dirt floor in some hovel, listening to my mother trying to comfort us with childhood stories, and my heart wrinkles with bitter thoughts. How can Mama talk about Baba so easily? As bad as he is—was?—shouldn’t she be grieving? And, worse, how can she choose this time to remind me that I’m less precious to him? Even when I cried, Baba never gave in to my tears. I shake my head, trying to expel the unkind thoughts I have about my father when I should be worrying about him, and telling myself that I’m too tired and scared to be thinking properly. But it hurts, even in this moment of hardship, to know I’m not as loved as my sister.

“The brother adored his sisters and finally agreed to change places with them,” Mama says. “The sisters packed up their embroidery needles and went to their new home. Down on earth, the people looked up and saw a man in the moon. ‘Where are the sisters?’ they asked. ‘Where have they gone?’ Now when anyone looks at the sun, the sisters use their seventy embroidery needles to stab at those who dare to stare too long. Those who refuse to turn away go blind.”

May lets her breath out slowly. I know her so well. In moments she’ll be asleep. From the platform in the corner, our hostess grunts. Did she not like the story either? I ache all over, and now my heart aches too. I close my eyes to keep the tears from falling.

Soaring Through the Night Sky

THE NEXT MORNING
, the woman boils water so we can wash our faces and hands. She makes tea and gives us each another bowl
of jook
. She smears more of her country medicine on our feet. She gives us old but clean footbinding cloths to use as bandages. Then she follows us outside and helps my mother back into the wheelbarrow. Mama tries to pay her, but she waves it away, refusing even to look at us again she’s so insulted.

All that morning we walk. Mist hovers above the fields. The smell of rice cooking over straw fires wafts to us from the villages we pass. May’s green hat and my hat with the feathers—both saved during Old Man Louie’s rampage—were carefully packed, so as the day wears on our skin parches and burns. Eventually May and I join Mama in the wheelbarrow. Our pusher never complains, never threatens to abandon us, never asks for more money. He stoically just keeps putting one foot in front of the other.

In the late afternoon, just as the day before, he turns down a pathway toward a farm that seems even poorer than the last one. The wife sorts seeds with a sleeping baby tied to her back. A couple of sickly children do other chores with extreme lassitude. The husband looks us over, calculating how much he should charge. When his eyes find my mother’s feet, he grins toothlessly. We pay more than we should for some dry patties made from ground corn.

Mama and May fall asleep before I do. I stare at the ceiling. I listen to a rat skitter along the walls of the room, stopping to gnaw on this and that. My whole life I was spoiled with what I ate, what I wore, where I slept, how I moved from one place to another. Now I think how easy it would be for May, my mother, me, and people like us—privileged and cared for—to die out here on the road. We don’t know what it means to get by on almost nothing. We don’t know what it takes to survive day to day. But the family that lives here and the woman who took us in last night do. When you don’t have much, having less isn’t so bad.

The next morning we walk around a village that’s been burned to the ground. On the road we see those who tried unsuccessfully to escape: men bayoneted and shot, babies abandoned, and women, wearing only tunics, with the bottom halves of their bodies exposed and their bloody legs splayed at odd angles. Just after noon, we pass dead Chinese soldiers moldering in the hot sun. One is curled into a ball. The back of his hand rests in his mouth as if in his last moments he was biting back pain.

How far have we gone? I don’t know. Maybe fifteen miles a day? How far do we have to go? None of us knows that either. But we have to keep going and hope that we don’t encounter any Japanese before we reach the Grand Canal.

That evening, our pusher repeats his pattern of turning down a dirt path toward a shack, only this time the people are gone, as though they just stepped out. But all of their belongings seem to be here, including their chickens and ducks. Our pusher rummages through the shelves until he finds a jar of salted turnips. We watch—useless and helpless—as he makes the rice. How is it that after three full days together we still don’t know his name? He’s older than May and me but younger than my mother. Still, we call him Boy, and he responds with the respect his low position requires. After we’ve eaten, he looks around until he finds some mosquito incense, which he lights. Then he goes outside to sleep by the wheelbarrow. We go into the other room, which has a bed made from two sawhorses and three wooden planks. Mats stretch across the boards, and a quilt stuffed with cotton batting lies at the foot of the bed. It’s too hot to sleep under the quilt, but we roll it out over the mats so we’ll have a little padding between our bones and hardness.

That night the Japanese come. We hear the scuffling of their boots, their harsh, guttural voices, and the wheelbarrow pusher’s cries for mercy. Whether on purpose or not, his suffering and death give us time to hide. But we’re in a two-room shack. Where can we conceal ourselves? Mama tells us to take the planks from the sawhorses and lean them against the wall.

“Slide in behind,” she orders. May and I look at each other.
What’s Mama thinking?
“Do it!” she hisses. “Do it now!”

Once May and I get behind the planks, Mama reaches in. She holds her bride-price bag and our papers wrapped in silk. “Take these.”

“Mama—”

“Shhh!”

She grabs my hand and wraps it around the bag and package. We hear her scrape one of the sawhorses across the floor. The planks push up against my sister and me, forcing us to turn our faces to the side. That’s how tight a space Mama has made. But we’re hardly hidden. It will be only a matter of time before the soldiers find us.

“Stay here,” she whispers. “Don’t come out no matter what you hear.” She grabs my wrist and shakes it. She switches to the Sze Yup dialect, not wanting May to understand. “I mean it, Pearl. Stay here. Don’t let your sister move from this place.”

We hear Mama leave the room and shut the door. Next to me May takes shallow breaths. Each exhale falls on my face warm and moist. My heart thumps in my chest.

From the other room we hear the door being kicked open, the stomp of boots, loud military voices, and soon enough Mama pleading and bargaining with the soldiers. At one point, the door to this room swings open. Lantern light flickers in from the sides of our hiding place. Mama screams—sharp and shrill—the door shuts, and the light goes away.

“Mama,” May mewls.

“You have to be quiet,” I whisper.

We hear grunting and laughing, but nothing from our mother. Is she already dead? If she is, then they’ll come in here. Don’t I have to do something to give my sister a chance? I drop the things Mama gave me, and then I slide to my left.

“No!”

“Quiet!”

In our flattened space, May holds on to my arm with one hand.

“Don’t go out there, Pearl,” she pleads. “Don’t leave me.”

I jerk my arm, and May’s hand falls away. As quietly as possible, I edge out from behind the planks. Without hesitation I walk to the door, open it, step into the main room, and close the door behind me.

Mama’s on the floor with a man inside her. I’m struck by how thin her calves are, the result of nearly a lifetime of walking—rather, not walking—on her bound feet. Another dozen or so soldiers in yellow uniforms, leather shoes, and carrying rifles slung over their shoulders stand around, watching, waiting their turns.

Mama groans when she sees me.

“You promised you would stay where you were.” Her words are weak with pain and sorrow. “It was my honor to save you.”

The dwarf bandit atop my mother slaps her. Strong hands grab me and pull me this way and that. Who will get me first? The strongest? The man in my mother suddenly stops what he’s doing, pulls up his trousers, and bullies his way through the others to try to seize me for his prize.

“I told them I was alone,” Mama mutters in despair. She tries to stand but gets only as far as her knees.

In the insanity of the moment, somehow I remain calm.

“They can’t understand you,” I say, coolly, unfazed, not thinking for fear.

“I wanted you and May to be safe,” Mama says as she weeps.

Someone pushes me. A couple of the soldiers go back to Mama and hit her on the head and shoulders. They shout at us. Maybe they don’t want us talking, but I’m not sure. I don’t know their language. Finally one of the soldiers tries English.

“What is the old woman saying? Who else are you hiding?”

I see greed in his eyes. There are so many soldiers and only two women, one of whom is a mother.

“My mother is upset because I didn’t stay hidden,” I answer in English. “I am her only child.” I don’t have to pretend to weep. I begin to sob, terrified of what’s going to happen next.

There are certain moments when I fly away, when I leave my body, the room, the earth, and just soar through the night sky searching for people and places I love. I think of Z.G. Would he see what I’ve done as a supreme act of filial piety? I think of Betsy. I even think of my Japanese student. Is Captain Yamasaki nearby, aware that it’s me, hoping that May will be discovered? Is he thinking about how he wanted her as a wife but now he could have her as a war trophy?

My mother’s beaten, but even her blood and her screams don’t stop the soldiers. They unwrap her feet, the bindings swirling through the air like acrobats’ ribbons. Her feet look the color of a corpse gone cold—bluish white with shades of green and purple beneath the crushed flesh.

The soldiers pull and prod them. Then they stomp on her feet to try to bring them back into “normal” shape. Her cries are not those of footbinding or childbirth. They’re the deep, anguished screams of an animal experiencing agony beyond comprehension.

I close my eyes and try to ignore everything they’re doing, but my teeth itch to bite the man on top of me. In my mind I keep seeing the bodies of the women we passed on the road earlier today, not wanting to see my own legs in those unnatural, inhuman angles. I feel tearing—not like on my wedding night—but something much worse, something searing, as though my insides are being torn apart. The air is thick and gummy with the suffocating smells of blood, mosquito incense, and Mama’s exposed feet.

A few times—when Mama’s cries are the worst—I open my eyes and see what they’re doing to her.
Mama, Mama, Mama
, I want to cry out, but I don’t. I won’t give these monkey people the pleasure of hearing my terror. I reach out and grab her hand. How can I describe the look that passes between us? We’re a mother and daughter being raped repeatedly, for all we know until we both die. I see in her eyes my birth, the endless tragedies of mother love, a total absence of hope, and then somewhere deep, deep in those liquid pools a fierceness I’ve never seen before.

The whole time I silently pray that May will stay hidden, that she won’t make a sound, that she won’t be tempted to peek out the door, that she won’t do anything stupid, because the one thing I won’t be able to bear is for her to be in this room with these … men. Pretty soon I don’t hear Mama anymore. I lose all awareness of where I am and even what’s happening to me. All I feel is pain.

The front door scrapes open, and I hear the sound of more boots tramping on the hard-packed earth. The whole thing is horrible, but this is my worst moment, knowing that there’s more to come. But I’m wrong. A voice—angry, authoritative, and as rough as grating gears—bellows at the men. They scramble to their feet. They adjust their trousers. They smooth their hair and wipe their mouths with the backs of their hands. Then they stand at attention and salute. I lie as still as possible, hoping they’ll think I’m dead. The new voice yelps out orders—or is it a reprimand? The other soldiers bluster.

The cold edge of a bayonet or a saber presses against my cheek. I don’t react. A boot kicks me. Again, I don’t want to react
—be dead, be dead, be
dead, and maybe it won’t begin again—
but my body curls in on itself like a wounded caterpillar. No laughing this time, only terrible silence. I wait for the stab of the bayonet.

I feel a wave of cool air and then the soft settling of cloth over my naked body. The gruff soldier—directly above me, I realize, as he shouts his orders and I hear the shuffling of boots when the others file out—reaches down, adjusts the cloth over my hip, and then leaves.

For a long while, black silence fills the room. Then I hear Mama shift her weight and moan. I’m still afraid, but I whisper, “Be still. They may come back.”

Maybe I only think I whisper this, because Mama doesn’t seem to pay attention to my warning. I hear her creep closer, and then I feel her fingers on my cheek. Mama, whom I’ve always thought of as physically weak, pulls me onto her lap. She leans back against the mud wall of the shack.

“Your father named you Pearl Dragon,” Mama says, as she smoothes my hair, “because you were born in the Year of the Dragon and the Dragon likes to play with a pearl. But I liked the name for another reason. A pearl grows when a piece of sand lodges in the oyster. I was young, just fourteen, when my father arranged my marriage. That husband-wife thing we have to do was my duty and I did it, but what your father put inside me was as unpleasant as sand. But look what happened. My Pearl came out.”

She hums for a while. I feel drowsy. My whole body aches. Where is May?

“There was a typhoon the day you were born,” Mama suddenly goes on, switching to Sze Yup, the language of my childhood and the language that keeps secrets from May. “It is said that a Dragon born in a storm will have a particularly tempestuous fate. You always believe you are right, and this makes you do things you shouldn’t—”

“Mama—”

“Just listen to me this one time … and then try to forget… everything.” She leans down and whispers in my ear. “You’re a Dragon, and of all the signs only a Dragon can tame the fates. Only a Dragon can wear the horns of destiny, duty, and power. Your sister is merely a Sheep. You have always been a better mother to her than I have.” I stir, but Mama holds me still. “Don’t argue with me now. We don’t have time for that.”

Her voice sounds beautiful. Never before have I felt her mother love so strongly. My body relaxes in her arms, slowly drifting into darkness.