Isle of the Immortals
MAY ROLLS OVER and buries her face in her pillow to stifle her sobs. I look around, and it seems like the other women are either ignoring us or pretending to ignore us. It’s the Chinese way.
I kick off my shoes and climb up the bunk’s tiers and onto May’s bed.
“I thought you didn’t do the husband-wife thing with Vernon,” I whisper.
“I didn’t,” she manages to get out. “I couldn’t.”
A guard comes in and announces it’s time for dinner, and the women scurry to be first out the door. As bad as the food is, dinner is more important than an argument between two sisters. If any edible pieces exist in tonight’s meal, they want to be first to get them. After a few minutes, we’re alone and no longer have to whisper.
“Was it that boy you met on the ship?” I can’t even remember his name.
“It was before that.”
Before that? We were in the hospital in Hangchow and then the hotel in Hong Kong. I don’t see how anything could have happened during that time, unless it was when I was sick, or earlier, when I was unconscious. Was it one of the doctors who took care of me? Was she raped when we were trying to get to the Grand Canal? I’ve been too ashamed to talk about what happened to me. Has she kept a similar secret all this time? I creep around the topic by asking what seems like a practical question.
“How long has it been?”
She sits up, rubs her eyes with both hands, and then stares at me with sorrow, humiliation, and pleading. She pulls her legs under her so our knees touch, and then she slowly unbuttons the frogs of her peasant jacket and smoothes her hands over her shirt to reveal her belly. She’s pretty far along, which explains why she’s been hiding under baggy clothes almost from the moment we arrived at Angel Island.
“Was it Tommy?” I ask, hoping it was.
Mama always wanted May and Tommy to marry. With Tommy and Mama dead, wouldn’t this be a gift? But when May says, “He was just a friend,” I don’t know what to think. My sister went out with a lot of different young men in Shanghai, especially in those last days, when we were so desperate to forget our circumstances. But I don’t know their names, and I don’t want to interrogate her with questions like “Was it that young man that night at the Venus Club?” or “Was it that American Betsy used to bring around sometimes?” Wouldn’t that approach be as ridiculous and stupid as what I’ve gone through today? But I can’t keep my tongue from flapping.
“Was it that student who came to live in the second-floor pavilion?” I don’t remember much about him other than that he was thin, wore gray and kept to himself. What did he study? I can’t say, but I haven’t forgotten how he hovered over Mama’s chair the day of the bombing. Did he do that because he was in love with May, as so many young men were?
“I was already pregnant then,” May confesses.
A disgusting thought enters my mind. “Tell me it wasn’t Captain Yamasaki.” If May’s going to have a half-Japanese baby, I don’t know what I’ll do.
She shakes her head, and I’m relieved.
“You never met him,” May says in a quavering voice. “I barely met him. It was just a thing I did. I didn’t think this would happen. If I’d had more time, I would have asked an herbalist to give me something to expel the baby. But I didn’t. Oh, Pearl, everything’s my fault.” She grabs my hands and begins to weep again.
“Don’t worry. We’ll be all right,” I say, trying to sound comforting but knowing it’s an empty promise.
“How could we possibly be all right? Haven’t you thought about what this means?”
To tell the truth, I haven’t. I haven’t had months to think about May’s condition. I’ve had barely two minutes.
“We can’t go to Los Angeles right away.” May pauses and stares at me appraisingly “You understand we have to go there, right?”
“I haven’t seen another way. But even forgetting about this”—I point to her belly—“we don’t know if they’ll want us anymore.”
“Of course they will. They bought us! But there’s the problem of the baby. At first I thought I’d be able to get away with it. I didn’t do the husband-wife thing with Vernon, but he wasn’t going to say anything. Then Old Man Louie went through our sheets—”
“You knew even then?”
“You were there when I threw up in the restaurant. I was so scared. I thought someone would figure it out. I thought you would guess.”
Now, as I think about it, I realize many people understood what I was too ignorant and blind to see. The old woman whose house we stopped at on our first night out of Shanghai had taken particular care with May. The doctor in Hangchow had been very solicitous, wanting May to sleep. I’m May’s jie jie, and I’ve always thought we are as close as can be, but I’ve been so concerned with my own miseries—losing Z.G., leaving home, being raped, almost dying, getting here—that I haven’t paid attention every time May has thrown up these past weeks and months. I haven’t noticed whether or not the little red sister has visited May. And I can’t even remember the last time I saw her completely undressed. I’ve abandoned my sister when she needed me most.
“I’m so sorry—”
“Pearl! You aren’t paying attention to what I’m saying! How can we go to Los Angeles now? That boy is not the father and Old Man Louie knows it.”
All this is happening too fast, and it’s been a long, hard day. I haven’t eaten since the bowl of jook at breakfast, and I’m not going to get dinner. But I’m not so tired and worn out that I don’t see May has something in mind. After all, she told me she was pregnant only because I’d gotten mad at her because …
“You lied to the board on purpose. You did at the first interview.”
“The baby needs to be born here on Angel Island,” she says.
I’m the smart sister, but my mind races to keep up with her.
“You were already prepared to lie when the ship sailed into San Francisco,” I say finally. “That’s why you didn’t study the coaching book. You didn’t want to answer correctly. You wanted to end up here.”
“That’s not quite right. I hoped Spencer would help me—us. He made promises on the ship. He said he would take care of things so we wouldn’t have to go to Los Angeles. He lied.” She shrugs. “Does it surprise you after Baba? My next option was coming here. Don’t you see? If I have the baby here, they’ll never know it was mine.”
“They?”
“The Louies,” she says impatiently. “You have to take it. I’m giving him to you. You did the husband-wife thing with Sam. The timing is almost right.”
I pull my hands from hers and lean away from her.
“What are you saying?”
“The doctors said you probably can’t have a baby. This could save me and help you.”
But I don’t want a baby—not now, perhaps not ever. I don’t want to be married either—at least not through an arrangement or to pay my father’s debts. There has to be another way.
“If you don’t want it, then give it to the missionaries,” I suggest. “They’ll take him. They’ve got that Chinese Babies Aid society they’re always talking about. They’ll keep it separate from diseased women.”
“Pearl! This is my baby! What other ties do we have to Mama and Baba? We’re daughters—the end of the line. Couldn’t my son be the beginning of a new line here in America?”
Of course we assume the baby is a boy. Like Chinese everywhere, we can’t imagine a child other than a son, who will bring great happiness to his family and guarantee that the ancestors are fed in the afterworld. Nevertheless, May’s plan will never work.
“I’m not pregnant and I can’t have the baby for you,” I say, pointing out the obvious.
Once again, May shows how much she’s been thinking about all this.
“You’ll have to wear the peasant clothes I bought for you. They cover everything. Those country women don’t want anyone to see their bodies—not to attract a man, not to show they’re with c
hild. You didn’t notice how big my stomach had gotten, did you? Later, if you need to, you can put a pillow in your pants. Who’s going to look? Who’s going to care? But we do have to string out our time here.”
“For how long?”
“Another four months or so.”
I don’t know what else to do or say. She’s my sister, my only living relative as far as I know, and I promised Mama I’d take care of her. And like that, I make a decision that will affect the rest of my life … and May’s too.
“All right. I’ll do it.”
I’m so overwhelmed by everything that’s happened today that I don’t have the sense to ask how she’s going to deliver the baby and not have the authorities know about it.
THE HARSH REALITY of what we did by leaving China and coming here hits us hard in the coming weeks. Hopeful—stupid—people call Angel Island the Ellis Island of the West. Those who want to keep the Chinese out of America call it the Guardian of the Western Gate. We Chinese refer to it as the Isle of the Immortals. Time passes so slowly it feels as if we’re in the afterworld, that’s for sure. The days are long and staggered by a routine that is as expected and unremarkable as evacuating our bowels. Everything’s regulated. We have absolutely no choice about when or what we eat, when the lights are turned on or off, when we go to bed or get up. When you’re in prison, you lose all privileges.
When May’s belly gets larger, we move to a pair of adjacent lower bunks so she won’t have to climb so high. Every morning we wake up and dress. The guards escort us to the dining hall—a surprisingly small room given that on some days meals are served to over three hundred people. Like everything else on Angel Island, the dining hall is segregated. The Europeans, Asiatics, and Chinese all have their own cooks, food, and dining times. We have a half hour to eat breakfast and be completely out of the hall before the next group of detainees arrives. We sit at long wooden tables and eat bowls of jook, and then the guards escort us back to our dormitory and lock us in. Some women make tea using hot water from a pot kept atop the radiator. Others munch on food sent by family members in San Francisco: noodles, pickles, and dumplings. Most go back to sleep, waking only when the missionary ladies come to talk to us about their one God and teach us how to sew and knit. One matron feels sorry for me: pregnant and stranded on Angel Island. “Let me send a telegram to your husband,” she offers. “Once he knows you’re here and in the family way, he’ll come and sort out everything for you. You don’t want your baby to be born in this place. You’ll need a proper hospital.”
But I don’t want that kind of help, not yet anyway.
For lunch, we go to the dining hall for cold rice topped by bean sprouts that have been steamed to a soggy mess, jook with slivered pork, or tapioca soup with crackers. Dinner consists of one large dish—dried tofu and pork, potatoes and beef, lima beans and pork knuckles, or dried greens and sand dabs. They sometimes give us course red-grain rice barely fit to eat. Everything looks and tastes like it’s been chewed and swallowed once already. Some women take to putting pieces of meat from their bowls into mine. “For your son,” they say. I then have to find a way to transfer these luxuries to May.
“Why don’t your husbands come to visit?” a woman asks us one night at dinner. Her given name is Dustpan, but she goes by the married name of Lee-shee. She’s been detained even longer than May and I. “They could hire a lawyer for you. They could explain everything to the inspectors. You could leave tomorrow.”
May and I don’t answer that our husbands don’t know we’ve arrived and that they can’t know until the baby’s born, but sometimes I have to admit it would be a comfort to see them—even those nearly total strangers.
“Our husbands are far away,” May explains to Lee-shee and the other pitying women. “It’s very hard for my sister, especially at this time.”
Afternoons pass slowly. While the other women write to their families—people can send and receive as many letters as they want, although they have to pass through a censor’s hands—May and I talk. Or we look out a window—covered in wire mesh to make sure we don’t escape—and dream of our lost home. Or we work on our sewing and knitting, skills our mother never taught us. We sew diapers and little shirts. We try to knit baby sweaters, caps, and booties.
“Your son will be born a Tiger and will be influenced by the Earth element, which is strong this year,” a woman returning from a trip to her home village tells me during her three-day stay on Angel Island. “Your Tiger child will bring happiness and worry at the same time. He’ll be charming and bright, curious and inquisitive, affectionate and athletic. You’ll have plenty of exercise just keeping up with him!”
May usually remains silent during the advice given to us by the women, but this time she can’t help herself. “Will he truly be joyful? Will he have a happy life?”
“Happiness? Here in the Land of the Flowery Flag? I don’t know if happiness is possible in this country, but the Tiger has special attributes that could be helpful to your sister’s son. If he’s disciplined and loved equally, then a Tiger will respond with warmth and understanding. But you can never lie to a Tiger, because he will bound and thrash and do things that are wild and daring.”
“But aren’t those good characteristics?” May asks.
“Your sister is a Dragon. The Dragon and the Tiger will always fight for dominance. She must hope for a son—and what mother doesn’t wish for this thing?—because then their deeper positions will be clear. Every mother must obey her son, even if she is a Dragon. If your sister was a Sheep, I’d be concerned. The Tiger will usually protect its Sheep mother, but they are compatible only during good weather and easy times. Otherwise, the Tiger will leap away from the Sheep or he’ll tear her apart.”
May and I look at each other. We didn’t believe these things when Mama was alive. Why should we start now?
I TRY TO be sociable with detainees who speak the Sze Yup dialect, and my vocabulary improves as I remember words from my childhood, but truly, what’s the point in making conversation with these strangers? They never stay long enough for us to become friends, May can’t participate because she doesn’t understand them, and we both think it best if we keep to ourselves. We continue going to the communal toilets and the showers by ourselves, explaining that we don’t want to expose my son to the ghost spirits who linger in those areas. This, of course, doesn’t make sense. I’m not safer from ghosts when I go to the showers or toilet with just my sister instead of the group, but the women let it pass, agreeing I have the typical worries of an expectant mother.
The only changes in pattern come with our twice weekly excursions out of the Administration Building. On Tuesdays, we’re allowed to retrieve things from our bags on the wharf, and even though we never take anything new, it’s a relief to be in the fresh air. On Fridays, the missionary ladies lead us on a walk around the grounds. Angel Island is beautiful in many ways. We see deer and raccoons. We learn the names of the trees: eucalyptus, California live oak, and Torrey pine. We walk past the men’s barracks, which are segregated by race not only in the wings or floors but in the exercise yard as well. And while fences topped with barbed wire surround the entire Immigration Station, keeping it separated from whatever else is on the island, the men’s exercise yard has double fencing to keep them from escaping. But where could they escape to? Angel Island has been designed like Alcatraz, the island we passed on our way here. That too is an escape-proof prison. Those foolish or daring enough to swim for freedom are usually found days later washed up on a shore far from here. The difference between us and the inmates on the neighboring island is that we’ve done nothing wrong. Except that we have in the eyes of the lo fan.
In the Methodist mission school in Shanghai, our teachers talked about the one God and sin, about the virtues of Heaven and the horrors of Hell, but they hadn’t been completely forthright about how their compatriots felt about us. Between the women detainees and the interrogators, we learn that America doesn’t want us. Not only can we
not become naturalized citizens but the government passed a law in 1882 barring the immigration of all Chinese, except those in four exempt classes: ministers, diplomats, students, and merchants. Whether a Chinese in these exempt classes or an American citizen of Chinese descent, you need to have a Certificate of Identity to land. This document needs to be carried at all times. Are the Chinese singled out for this special treatment? It wouldn’t surprise me.
“You can’t pretend to be a minister, a diplomat, or a student,” Lee-shee explains, as we eat our first Christmas dinner in the new land. “But it’s not hard to fake being a merchant.”
“That’s right,” agrees Dong-shee, another married woman, who arrived a week after May and me. She’s the one who told us the reason we have brittle wire mesh to sleep on instead of mattresses is that the lo fan don’t think we’ll find beds comfortable. “They don’t want farmers like us. They don’t want coolies or rickshaw pullers or nightsoil collectors either.”
And I think, What country would? Those people are a necessity, but did we even want them in Shanghai? (See how sometimes I still don’t realize my place in world?)
“My husband bought a spot in a store,” Lee-shee boasts. “He paid five hundred dollars to become a partner. He’s not a real partner, and he didn’t pay the money either. Who has money like that? But he promised the owner he’d work until he paid his debt. Now my husband can claim he’s a merchant.”
“And that’s why they question us?” I ask. “They’re looking for fake merchants? It seems like a lot of trouble—”
“What they really want to catch are paper sons.”
Seeing the stupid expression on my face, the two women chuckle. May looks up from her bowl.
“Tell me,” she says. “Do they have a joke?”
I shake my head. May sighs and goes back to poking at the pig’s foot in her bowl. Across the table, the two women exchange knowing looks.
“You two don’t know very much,” Lee-shee observes. “Is that why you and your sister have been here for so long? Didn’t your husbands explain what you needed to do?”