Dragon Seed remains a highlight of May’s career. One of her most precious possessions becomes the photo of her with Katharine Hepburn on the set. They’re both wearing Chinese peasant clothes. Miss Hepburn’s eyes have been taped back and heavily lined with black. The famous actress doesn’t look even a little bit Chinese, but then neither do Walter Huston or Agnes Moorehead, who also star in the picture.
ON MY DRESSER, I put a photo of Joy at the orange juice stand we’ve set up for her outside the Golden Dragon Café. She’s surrounded by servicemen, who crouch around her, smiling and giving her a thumbs-up. The photograph captures a single moment but one that’s repeated day after day, night after night. The boys in uniform love to see my little girl—wearing cute silk pajamas and her hair in pigtails—squeezing oranges. They get to drink all they want for ten cents. Some of those boys will drink three or four glasses just to watch our Joy, her lips pursed in concentration, squeezing, squeezing, squeezing. Sometimes I look at that photograph and wonder if she knows how hard she’s working. Or does she see it as a break from all-night calls and her aunt’s demands? An added bonus: if men stop to look at this little Chinese girl—a curiosity—and drink her orange juice, which doesn’t poison them, then they might come in for a meal.
IN SEPTEMBER I get Joy ready for kindergarten. She wants to go to Castelar School in Chinatown with Hazel Yee and the other neighbor kids. But Sam and I don’t want her to go to the school that passed Vern from grade to grade even though he couldn’t read, write, or do sums. We want her to have a step up in the world. We want her to attend school outside Chinatown, which means Joy has to say she lives in that district. She also has to be taught the official family story. Father Louie’s lies about his status were passed to Sam, the uncles, and me. Now those lies go to a third generation. Joy will forever need to be careful when she applies for school, a job, or even her marriage certificate. All that starts now. For weeks we rehearse her as though she’s about to go through Angel Island: Where do you live? What’s the cross street? Where was your father born? Why did he return to China as a boy? What is your father’s job?
Not once do we tell her what’s true or what’s false. It’s better if she knows only fake truth.
“All little girls need to know these things about their parents,” I explain to Joy as I tuck her in her cot the night before school starts. “Don’t tell your teacher anything except what we’ve told you.”
The next day Joy puts on a green dress, a white sweater, and pink tights. Sam takes a photo of Joy and me standing on a step outside our building. She carries a new lunch box with a smiling and waving cowgirl sitting astride her trusty horse. I gaze at Joy with mother love. I’m proud of her, proud of all of us, for having come so far.
Sam and I take Joy by streetcar to the elementary school. We fill out the forms and lie about where we live. Then we walk Joy to her classroom. Sam stretches out Joy’s hand to the teacher, Miss Henderson, who stares at it and then asks, “Why can’t you foreigners just go back to your own countries?”
Just like that! Can you believe it? I have to respond before Sam works out what she’s said. “Because this is her home country,” I say, imitating the British mothers I used to see walking along the Bund with their children. “This is where she was born.”
We leave our daughter with that woman. Sam doesn’t say a word as we ride the streetcar back to China City, but when we reach the café, he pulls me to him and speaks to me in a voice ragged with emotion. “If they do something to her, I’ll never forgive them and I’ll never forgive myself.”
A week later, when I go to the school to pick up Joy, I find her crying on the curb. “Miss Henderson sent me to the vice principal’s office,” she says, tears dripping down her face. “She asked a lot of questions. I answered like you told me, but she called me a liar and said I can’t go here anymore.”
I walk to the vice principal’s office, but what can I do or say to change her mind?
“We keep an eye out for these infractions, Mrs. Louie,” the heavyset woman intones. “Besides, your daughter doesn’t belong here. Anyone can see that. Take her to the school in Chinatown. She’ll be happier there.”
The next day I walk Joy the couple of blocks to Castelar School, right in the heart of Chinatown. I see children from China, Mexico, Italy, and other European countries. Her teacher, Miss Gordon, smiles as she takes Joy’s hand. She escorts Joy into the classroom and shuts the door. In the weeks and months that follow, Joy—who’s been raised to be obedient, and refrain from doing something as wild as ride a bicycle, and been scolded by our neighbors for laughing too much and too loudly—learns to play hopscotch, jacks, and leapfrog. She’s happy to be in the same class with her best friend, and Miss Gordon seems like a nice enough person. We do the best we can at home. For me, this means making Joy speak English as much as possible, because she’s going to have to make a living in this country and because she’s an American. When her father, grandparents, or uncles speak to her in Sze Yup, she answers in English. Along the way Sam’s understanding of English—but not his pronunciation—improves. Still, the uncles constantly tease her about going to school. “Education is only trouble for a girl,” Uncle Wilburt cautions. “What do you want to do? Run away from us?” I find an ally in her grandfather. Not so long ago, he threatened May and me, telling us we’d have to put a nickel in a jar if we spoke any language other than Sze Yup in front of him. Now he tells Joy a variation of the same thing: “If I hear you speak something other than English, you will put a nickel in my jar.” Her English is almost as good as mine, but I still can’t imagine how she’ll break out of Chinatown completely.
IN LATE FALL we gather around the radio to hear that President Roosevelt has asked Congress to repeal the Chinese Exclusion Act: “Nations, like individuals, make mistakes. We must be big enough to acknowledge our mistakes of the past and correct them.” A few weeks later, on December 17, 1943, all exclusion laws are overturned, just as Betsy’s father hinted they would be.
We listen to Walter Winchell’s broadcast when he announces, “Keye Luke, Charlie Chan’s Number One Son, just missed being number one Chinese naturalized U.S. citizen.” Since Keye Luke is working in a picture that day, a Chinese doctor in New York becomes the first. Sam commemorates that moment of happiness by taking a picture of his daughter standing with one hand on her hip and her other hand resting on top of the radio. No cheongsams for her! Since Joy started school and we gave her that lunch box, she’s decided she loves cowgirls and cowgirl dresses. Her grandfather has even bought her a pair of cowgirl boots on Olvera Street, and once she has her outfit on, there’s no getting it off. She grins happily. Even though the rest of the family is not in the picture, I will always remember that we all smiled with her.
After that day, Sam and I talk about applying for naturalization, but we’re afraid, as are so many paper sons and the wives who squeaked in with them. “I have my fake citizenship from masquerading as Father’s real son. You have your Certificate of Identity through being married to me. Why should we risk losing what we have? How can we trust the government when our Jap neighbors are sent to internment camps?” Sam asks. “How can we trust the government after everything it’s done to us? How can we trust the government when the lo fan look at us funny—like we’re Japs too?” May is in a different situation than Sam and I. She’s married to a real American citizen, and she’s lived in the country for five years. She becomes the first person in our building to become a citizen through the naturalization process.
THE WAR DRAGS on month after month. We try to keep life as normal as possible for Joy, and it pays off She does so well in school that her kindergarten and first-grade teachers recommend her for a special second-grade program. I work with Joy all summer to get her prepared, and even Miss Gordon—who’s taken a continuing interest in our girl—comes to the apartment once a week to help my daughter with her sums and reading comprehension.
Maybe I push Joy too hard, because she gets a bad summer
cold. Then, two days after the bomb drops on Hiroshima, her cold takes a turn. Her fever rages, her throat burns red, and she coughs so hard and long that she throws up. Yen-yen goes to the herbalist, who makes a bitter tea for Joy to drink. The next day, when I’m working, Yen-yen takes Joy back to the herbalist, who blows an herb powder into her throat with the cap of a calligraphy brush. On the radio Sam and I hear that another bomb has been dropped—this one on Nagasaki. The broadcaster says that the destruction is terrible and vast. Government officials in Washington are optimistic that the war will end soon.
Sam and I close up the café and hurry to the apartment, wanting to share the news. When we get there, we see that Joy’s throat has become so swollen she’s starting to turn blue. Somewhere people are rejoicing—sons, brothers, and husbands will be coming home—but Sam and I are so afraid for Joy that we can’t think beyond our own fear. We want to take her to a Western doctor, but we don’t know one and we don’t have a car. We’re talking about how to find and hire a taxi when Miss Gordon arrives. In the chaos of the news of the bombs and the anxiety we feel for Joy, we’ve forgotten about the tutorial. As soon as Miss Gordon sees Joy, she helps me wrap her in a sheet, and then she drives us to General Hospital, where, she says, “They treat people like you.” Within minutes of our arriving at the hospital, a doctor cuts a hole in my daughter’s throat so she can breathe.
Less than a week after Joy’s encounter with death, the war ends and Sam—shaken by almost losing his little girl—takes three hundred dollars of our savings and buys a very used Chrysler. It’s old and dented, but it’s ours. In our last photograph from the war years, Sam sits in the Chrysler’s driver’s seat, Joy perches on the fender, and I stand by the passenger door. We’re about to go for a Sunday drive, our first.
Ten Thousand Happinesses
“FIFTEEN CENTS FOR one gardenia,” a melodious voice rings out. “Twenty-five cents for a double.” The little girl standing behind the table is adorable. Her black hair shimmers under the colored lights, her smile beckons, her fingers look like butterflies. My daughter, my Joy, has her own “place of business,” as she calls it, and she runs it wonderfully well for a child of ten. On weekend nights she sells gardenias from six to midnight outside the café, where I can keep watch on her, but she doesn’t need me or anyone else to protect her. She’s a Tiger—brave. She’s my daughter—persistent. She’s her aunt’s niece—beautiful. I have exciting news. I want to get May alone to tell her, but seeing Joy sell gardenias has us entranced and paralyzed.
“Look how precious she is,” May coos. “She’s good at this. I’m glad she likes it and that she earns a little money. It’s a good thing all the way around, isn’t it?”
May looks lovely tonight: like a millionaire’s wife in vermilion silk. She dresses well, because she can afford to spend the money she earns frivolously. She recently turned 29. Oh, the tears! As if she turned 129. But to me she hasn’t changed one bit since our beautiful-girl days. Still, every day she worries about gaining weight and forming wrinkles. Lately, she’s been stuffing her pillow with chrysanthemum leaves so she’ll wake with her eyes clear and moist.
“China City is a tourist place, so who do you think should be the seller? The smallest and the cutest, that’s who,” I agree. “And Joy’s smart. She watches to make sure nothing’s stolen.”
“For an extra penny, I’ll sing ‘God Bless America,’” Joy says to a couple who stop at her table. She doesn’t wait for an answer but begins to sing in a clear, high, and earnest voice. At American school, she’s learned all the patriotic songs—“My Country, ’Tis of Thee” and “You’re a Grand Old Flag”—as well as songs like “My Darling Clementine” and “She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain.” At the Chinese Methodist Mission on Los Angeles Street, she’s learned to sing “Jesus Is All the World to Me” and “Jesus Loves Even Me” in Cantonese. Between work, regular school, and Chinese school—which she attends Monday through Friday from 4:30 to 7:30 and Saturdays from 9:00 to 12:00—she’s a busy but happy little girl.
Joy glances at me and smiles as she holds out her hand to the couple. She’s learned this trick—getting people to pay for things they may not want—from her grandfather. The husband puts some change in Joy’s palm, and she closes her hand around it as fast as a monkey. She drops the change into a can and gives the woman a gardenia. Once done with these customers, Joy moves them along. She’s learned this from her grandfather too. Every night she counts the money and then turns it over to her father, who converts the change into dollars, which he then gives to me to hide with Joy’s college money.
“Fifteen cents for one gardenia,” Joy trills, a serious but endearing look on her face. “Twenty-five cents for a double.”
I link my arm through my sister’s. “Come on. She’s fine. Let’s get a cup of tea.”
“But not in the café, all right?” May doesn’t like to be seen in the café. It isn’t glamorous enough for her. Not these days.
“That’s fine,” I say. I nod to Sam, who’s behind the counter in the café, stir-frying an order in a wok. He’s the second cook now, but he can keep an eye on our daughter while I visit with May.
My sister and I swing through China City’s alleyways toward the costume and prop shop that came to her through Tom Gubbins. It’s been ten years since we arrived in Los Angeles, ten years since we stepped into China City. When I first passed through the miniature Great Wall, I felt no connection to this place. Now it feels like home: familiar, comfortable, and much loved. This isn’t the China of my past—the busy streets of Shanghai, the beggars, the fun, the champagne, the money—but I see reminders of it here in the laughing tourists, the traditionally costumed shop owners, the smells that come from the cafés and restaurants, and the stunning woman at my side, who happens to be my sister. As we stroll, I catch glimpses of us in the shopwindows and I’m transported to our girlhoods: the way we dressed in our room and stared at our reflections and those of our beautiful-girl images that hung on the walls around us, the way we walked together along Nanking Road and smiled at ourselves in store windows, and the way Z.G. captured and painted our perfect selves.
And yet we’ve both changed. Now I see myself—thirty-two years old, no longer a new mother but a woman content with herself My sister is a flower in full bloom. The desire to be looked at and admired still burns from deep within her. The more she feeds it, the more she needs. She’ll never be satisfied. This malady is in her bones—from birth, her essential character, her Sheep that wants to be taken care of, petted, and admired. She isn’t Anna May Wong and she never will be, but she gets more movie work and more varied roles—as a whimsical cashier, the giggly but ineffectual maid, or the stoic wife of a laundryman—than anyone else in Chinatown. This makes her a star in our neighborhood and a star to me.
May opens the door to her shop and flips on a light, and there we are—surrounded by the silks, embroideries, and kingfisher feathers of the past. She makes tea, pours it, and then asks, “So what’s this thing you’re so eager to tell me?”
“Ten thousand happinesses,” I say. “I’m pregnant.”
May clasps her hands together. “Really? Are you sure?”
“I went to the doctor.” I smile. “He says it’s true.”
May gets up, comes to me, and hugs me. Then she pulls away. “But how? I thought—”
“I had to try, didn’t I? The herbalist has been giving me wolfberry fruit, Chinese yam, and black sesame to put in our soup and other dishes.”
“It’s a miracle,” May says.
“Beyond a miracle. Unlikely, impossible—”
“Oh, Pearl, I’m so pleased.” Her joy mirrors mine. “Tell me everything. How far along are you? When is the baby coming?”
“I’m about two months.”
“Have you told Sam yet?”
“You’re my sister. I wanted to tell you first.”
“A son,” May says, smiling. “You’re going to have a precious son.”
Everyo
ne has this desire, and I flush with pleasure just hearing the word—son.
Then a shadow crosses May’s face. “Can you do this thing?”
“The doctor says I shouldn’t be so old, and I have my scars.”
“Women older than you have babies,” she says, but this isn’t the best thing to say given that Vern’s problems are often blamed on Yen-yen’s age. May winces at the insensitivity of her remark. She doesn’t ask about the scars, because we never talk about how I came to get them, so she shifts to more traditional questions about my condition. “Are you sleepy all the time? Are you sick to your stomach? I remember …” She shakes her head as if ridding herself of those memories. “They always say that life is extended only by having children.” She reaches over and touches my jade bracelet. “Think how happy Mama and Baba would have been.” May suddenly grins, and our sad feelings melt. “Do you know what this means? You and Sam have to buy a house.”
“A house?”
“You’ve been saving all these years.”
“Yes, for Joy to go to college.”
My sister brushes away that worry with a wave of her hand. “You have plenty of time to save for that. Besides, Father Louie will help you with the house.”
“I don’t see why. We have an arrangement—”
“But he’s changed. And this is for his grandson!”
“Maybe, but even if he does decide to help us, I wouldn’t want to be separated from you. You’re my sister and my closest friend.”
May gives me a reassuring smile. “You’re not going to lose me. You couldn’t even if you tried. I have my own car now. Wherever you move, I’ll come and visit.”
“But it won’t be the same.”
“Sure it will. Besides, you’ll come to China City every day to work. Yen-yen will want to take care of her grandson. I’ll need to see my nephew too.” She takes my hands. “Pearl, buying a house is the right thing to do. You and Sam deserve this.”