Every day May tells me of her adventures, her cheeks pink from fresh air, her face lit with pleasure. I’m the older sister, and I’m suffering from red-eye disease, envy. I’ve always been the first to discover new things, but now May’s the one who reports about the shops and stores and fun things that are being planned at China City. She tells me that a lot of it is being built from used movie sets, which she describes in such detail that I’m sure I’ll recognize them all and know their backstories when I finally see them. But I can’t lie. It bothers me that she gets to be a part of the excitement, while I have to stay with my mother-in-law and Joy in the grimy apartment, where the dust floating in the air leaves me feeling suffocated and dizzy. I tell myself this is just temporary, like Angel Island was temporary, and soon—somehow—May and I will escape.
In the meantime, Old Man Louie continues to punish me for having a daughter by ignoring me. Sam mopes about with a sullen look on his face, because I refuse to do the husband-wife thing with him. Every time he approaches, I cross my arms and clasp my elbows. He slinks away as though I’ve wounded him deeply. He rarely speaks to me, and when he does it’s in the Wu dialect of the streets, like I’m beneath him. Yen-yen responds to my obvious unhappiness and frustration with a lesson on marriage: “You must get used to it.”
At the beginning of May, after we’ve been here for two weeks, my sister asks for and receives permission from Yen-yen to take Joy and me outside for a walk. “Across the Plaza is Olvera Street, where Mexican people have little shops for tourists,” May says, pointing in the general direction. “Beyond that is China City. From there, if you walk up to Broadway and turn north, you’ll feel like you’ve entered a postcard of Italy. Salami hangs in the windows and … Oh, Pearl, it’s as foreign and strange as how the White Russians lived in the French Concession.” She pauses and laughs to herself. “I almost forgot. There’s a French Concession here too. They call it French Town, and it’s on Hill Street just up one block from Broadway. They have a French hospital and cafés and … Never mind all that for now. Let’s just talk about Broadway. If you go south on Broadway, you’ll come to American movie palaces and department stores. If you go north through Little Italy, you’ll come to a whole other Chinatown that’s being built. It’s called New Chinatown. I’ll take you there whenever you want to go.”
But I don’t feel like going right then.
“This isn’t like Shanghai, where we were separated by race, money, and power but still saw each other every day,” May makes clear the next week, when she takes Joy and me around the block again. “We walked on the streets together, even if we didn’t go to the same nightclubs. Here everyone is separated from everyone else—Japanese, Mexicans, Italians, blacks, and Chinese. White people are everywhere, but the rest of us are at the bottom. Everyone wants to be a single rice kernel better than his neighbor. Remember in Shanghai how important it was to know English and how people prided themselves on their American or British accents? Here people are split by whose Chinese is better and where and from whom they learned it. Did you learn it in one of the missions here in Chinatown? Did you learn it in China? You know how it is between Sze Yup and Sam Yup speakers? One won’t talk to the other. One won’t do business with the other. If that weren’t enough, the American-born Chinese look down on people like us, calling us fresh off the boat and backward. We look down on them, because we know that American culture isn’t as good as Chinese culture. People stick together by name too. If you’re a Louie, you have to buy from a Louie, even if you have to pay five cents more. Everyone knows no help will come from the lo fan, but even a Mock, Wong, or SooHoo won’t help a Louie.”
She points out the filling station, although we have yet to meet anyone who owns a car. She walks me past Jerry’s Joint—a bar with Chinese food and a Chinese atmosphere but not owned by a Chinese. Every non-business space is a flophouse of one sort or another: tiny apartments like the one we live in for families, boardinghouses for a few dollars a month for Chinese bachelor-laborers like the uncles, and rooms lent out by the missions, where men truly down on their luck can sleep, eat, and make a couple of dollars a month in exchange for keeping the place tidy.
After a month of these excursions around the block, May takes me into the Plaza. “This used to be the heart of the original Spanish settlement. Did we have Spanish people in Shanghai?” May asks lightly, almost gaily. “I don’t remember meeting any.”
She doesn’t give me a chance to answer, because she’s so intent on showing me Olvera Street, which is just opposite Sanchez Alley on the other side of the Plaza. I don’t want to see it particularly, but after many days of her complaining and insisting, I cross the open space with her and venture into the pedestrian way filled with colorfully painted plywood stalls displaying embroidered cotton shirts, heavy clay ashtrays, and lollipops shaped like pointed spires. People in lacy costumes make candles, blow glass, and hammer soles for sandals, while others sing and play instruments.
“Is this how people in Mexico really live?” May asks.
I don’t know if it’s at all like Mexico, but it’s festive and vibrant compared with our dingy apartment. “I have no idea. Maybe.”
“Well, if you think this is funny and cute, wait until you see China City.”
About halfway down the street, she stops abruptly. “Look, there’s Christine Sterling.” She nods toward an elderly but elegantly dressed white woman sitting on the porch of a house that looks like it was made from mud. “She developed Olvera Street. She’s behind China City too. Everyone says she has a big heart. They say she wants to help Mexicans and Chinese have their own businesses during these hard times. She came to Los Angeles with nothing, just like we did. Now she’s about to have two tourist attractions.”
We reach the end of the block. A flock of American cars trawl and beep their way along the roadway. Across Macy Street, I see the wall that surrounds China City.
“I’ll take you over there, if you’d like,” May offers. “All we have to do is cross the street.”
I shake my head. “Maybe another time.”
As we walk back through Olvera Street, May waves and smiles to shop owners, who don’t wave or smile back.
WHILE MAY WORKS with Old Man Louie and Sam is getting things ready in China City, Yen-yen and I do our piecework in the apartment, look after Vernon when he comes home from school, and take turns carrying Joy during the long afternoons, when she cries endlessly for who knows what reason. But even if I could go visiting, who would I meet? There’s only about one woman or girl here for every ten men. Local girls May’s and my age are often forbidden to go out with boys, and the Chinese men living here don’t want to marry them anyway.
“Girls born here are too Americanized,” Uncle Edfred says when he comes to Sunday dinner. “When I get rich, I’ll go back to the home village to get a traditional wife.”
Some men—like Uncle Wilburt—have wives back in China they don’t see for years at a time. “I haven’t done the husband-wife thing with my wife since forever. Too expensive to go to China for that. I’m saving my money to go home for good.”
With thinking like this, most girls remain unmarried. During the week, they go to American school and then Chinese-language school at one of the missions. On weekends, they work in their families’ businesses and go to the missions for Chinese culture instruction. We don’t fit in with those girls, and we’re too young to fit in with the other wives and mothers, who seem backward to us. Even if they were born here, most of them—like Yen-yen—didn’t even complete elementary school. That’s how isolated, guarded, and protected they are.
One evening at the end of May, thirty-nine days after we arrived in Los Angeles and a few days before China City opens, Sam comes home and says, “You can go outside with your sister, if you want. I can give Joy her bottle.”
I’m reluctant to leave her with him, but these past weeks I’ve seen that she responds well to the awkward way he holds her, whispers in her ear, and tickles her tummy
. Seeing her content—and knowing that Sam would just as soon have me gone so he won’t have to make conversation with me—May and I go out into the spring night. We walk to the Plaza, where we sit on a bench, listen to Mexican music wafting over from Olvera Street, and watch children play in Sanchez Alley, using a paper bag plumped with wadded newspapers and tied with a string as their ball.
At last May is no longer trying to show me things or trying to get me to cross this or that street. We can just sit and—for a few minutes—be ourselves. We have no privacy in the apartment, where everyone can hear everything that’s said and everything that’s done. Now, without so many listening ears, we’re able to talk freely and share secrets. We reminisce about Mama, Baba, Tommy, Betsy, Z.G., and even our old servants. We talk about the foods we miss and Shanghai’s scents and sounds, which seem so distant to us now. Finally, we pull ourselves away from the loneliness of lost people and places and force ourselves to focus on what’s happening right around us. I know every time Yen-yen and Old Man Louie do the husband-wife thing from the creaking of their mattress. I know as well that Vern and May haven’t done anything like that yet.
“You haven’t done it with Sam either,” May retorts. “You’ve got to do it. You’re married. You have a baby with him.”
“But why should I do it when you haven’t done it with Vern?”
May makes a face. “How can I? There’s something wrong with him.”
Back in Shanghai, I’d thought she was just being unkind, but now that I’ve lived with Vern and spent far more time with him than May has, I know she’s right. And it’s not just that he hasn’t begun his growth into manhood.
“I don’t think he’s retarded,” I say, trying to be helpful.
May impatiently waves away the idea. “It’s not that. He’s … damaged.” She searches the canopy of tree branches above us, as though she might find an answer there. “He talks, but not much. Sometimes he doesn’t seem to understand what’s happening around him. Other times he’s completely obsessed—like with those model airplanes and boats the old man is always buying for him to glue together.”
“At least they take care of him,” I reason. “Remember the boy we saw on the boat on the Grand Canal? His family kept him in a cage.”
Either May doesn’t remember or she doesn’t care, because she goes on without acknowledging me. “They treat Vern like he’s special. Yen-yen irons his clothes and lays them out for him in the morning. She calls him Boy-husband—”
“She’s like Mama that way. She calls everyone by title or rank in the family. She even calls her husband Old Man Louie!”
It feels good to laugh. Mama and Baba had called him that as a sign of respect; we’d always called him that because we didn’t like him; Yen-yen calls him that because that’s how she sees him.
“She has natural feet, but she’s far more backward than Mama ever was,” I continue. “She believes in ghosts, spirits, potions, the zodiac, what to eat and not eat, all that mumbo jumbo—”
May snorts in disgust and irritation. “Remember when I made the mistake of saying I had a cold and she brewed me a tea of ginger and dried scallions to clear my chest and made me breathe steamed vinegar to relieve my congestion? That was disgusting!”
“But it worked.”
“Yes,” May admits, “but now she wants me to go to the herbalist to make me more fertile and attractive to the boy-husband. She tells me that the Sheep and the Boar are among the most compatible of the signs.”
“Mama always said that the Boar has a pure heart, that it has great honesty and simplicity.”
“Vern’s simple all right.” May shudders. “I’ve tried, you know. I mean …” She hesitates. “I sleep in the same bed with him. Some people would say the boy’s lucky to have me there. But he won’t do anything, even though he has everything below that he needs.”
She lets that hang in the air for me to consider. We’re both killing time here in this horrible limbo, but anytime I think things are bad for me, all I have to do is think about my sister in the next room.
“And then when I go to the kitchen in the morning,” May says, “Yen-yen asks, ‘Where’s your son? I need a grandson.’ When I came home from China City last week, she pulled me aside and said, ‘I see the visit from the little red sister has come again. Tomorrow you will eat sparrow kidneys and dried tangerine peel to strengthen your chi. The herbalist tells me this will make your womb welcome my son’s vital essence.’”
The way she imitates Yen-yen’s high-pitched, squeaky voice makes me smile, but May doesn’t see the humor.
“Why don’t they make you eat sparrow kidneys and tangerine peel? Why don’t they send you to the herbalist?” she demands.
I don’t know why Old Man Louie and his wife treat Sam and me differently. Yen-yen may have a title for everyone, but I’ve never heard her call Sam anything—not by title, not by his American name, not even by his Chinese name. And except for that first night, my father-in-law rarely speaks to either of us.
“Sam and his father don’t get along,” I say. “Have you noticed that?”
“They fight quite a bit. The old man calls Sam toh gee and chok gin. I don’t know what they mean, but they aren’t compliments.”
“He’s saying Sam’s lazy and empty-headed.” I don’t spend much time with Sam, so I ask, “Is he?”
“Not that I’ve seen. The old man keeps insisting Sam run the rickshaw rides when China City opens. He wants Sam to be a puller. Sam doesn’t want to do it.”
“Who would?” I shudder.
“Not here, not anywhere,” May agrees. “Not even if it’s just an entertainment for people.”
I wouldn’t mind talking about Sam a bit more, but May circles back to the problem of her husband.
“You’d think they’d treat him like the other boys around here and have him work with his father after school. He could help Sam and me unpack crates and put merchandise on the shelves for when China City opens, but the old man insists that Vern go straight home to the apartment to do his homework. I think all he does is go to his room and work on his models. And not very well from what I can see.”
“I know. I see more of him than you do. I’m with him every day.” I don’t know if May hears the sourness in my voice, but I do and I hurry to hide it. “Everyone knows a son is precious. Maybe they’re preparing him to take over the businesses one day.”
“But he’s the youngest son! They aren’t going to let him do that. It wouldn’t be right. But Vern’s got to learn how to do something. It’s like they want to keep him a little boy forever.”
“Maybe they don’t want Vern to leave. Maybe they don’t want any of us to leave. They’re just so backward. The way we all live together, the way the businesses are kept within the family, the way they keep their money hidden and protected, the way they don’t give us any spending money.”
That’s right. May and I don’t receive a household allowance. Of course, we can’t say that we want our own money to escape from this place and start over again.
“It’s like they’re a bunch of bumpkins from the countryside,” May says bitterly. “And the way Yen-yen cooks,” she adds almost as an afterthought. “What kind of a Chinese woman is she?”
“We don’t know how to cook either.”
“But we were never expected to cook! We were going to have servants for that.”
We sit and think about that for a while, but what’s the point of dreaming about the past when it’s gone? May looks over to Sanchez Alley. Most of the children have returned to their apartments. “We’d better get back before Old Man Louie locks us out.”
We walk back to the apartment arm in arm. My heart feels lighter. May and I are not only sisters but sisters-in-law as well. For thousands of years, daughters-in-law have complained about the hardship of life in their husbands’ homes, living under the iron fists of their fathers-in-law and under the calloused thumbs of their mothers-in-law. May and I are very lucky to have each other.
br /> Dreams of Oriental Romance
ON JUNE 8, almost two months after we arrived in Los Angeles, I cross the street at last and enter China City for the Grand Opening. China City is enclosed by a miniature Great Wall—although it’s hard to call it “Great” when it looks just like cardboard cutouts placed on top of a narrow wall. I pass through the main gate and encounter a thousand or so people grouped together in a big open area called the Court of the Four Seasons. Dignitaries and movie stars give speeches, firecrackers spit and crackle, a dragon parades, and lion dancers frolic. The lo fan look glamorous and fashionable: the women in silks and furs, gloves and hats, and shiny lipstick; the men in suits, wing tips, and fedoras. May and I wear cheongsams, but as sleek and beautiful as we look in them, I feel we appear outdated and foreign compared with the American women.
“Dreams of Oriental romance are woven like silk threads through the little fabric that is China City,” Christine Sterling proclaims from the stage. “We ask Your Honorable Person to see the brilliant colors of its hopes and ideals and to forget the imperfections in its creation, because these will fade with the passing years. Let those who have peopled the generations of China’s existence, who have survived catastrophes of every kind in their motherland, find a new haven, where they can perpetuate their desire for collective identity, follow in the footsteps of their ancestors, and ply the trades and arts of their heritage in all tranquillity.”