Shanghai Girls

  “No, Sam ruined his life.”

  “That’s so like you, May, placing fault on someone other than yourself.”

  “I never would have spoken to Agent Sanders if I’d thought there was any danger to Sam or you. I can’t believe you’d think that about me.” She seems to gather strength, standing there in her emerald satin. “Agent Sanders and the other one gave you every chance—”

  “If you call intimidation a chance.”

  “Sam was a paper son,” May goes on. “He was here illegally. For the rest of my life I’m going to blame myself for Sam’s suicide, but that doesn’t change the fact that what I did was right for the both of you and for our family. All you and Sam had to do was tell the truth—”

  “Didn’t you consider what the consequences of that would be?”

  “Of course I did! I’ll say it again: Agent Sanders said that if you and Sam confessed, then you’d receive amnesty. Amnesty! Your papers would have been stamped, you would have become legal citizens, and that would have been that. But you and Sam were too stubborn, too country-Chinese and ignorant to be Americans.”

  “So now you’re blaming me for everything that’s happened?”

  “I don’t want to say that, Pearl.”

  But she just did say it! I’m so angry I can’t think straight. “I want you to move out of my house,” I seethe. “I never want to see you again. Not ever.”

  “You’ve always blamed me for everything.” Her voice is calm, calm.

  “Because everything that’s been bad in my life is because of you.”

  My sister stares at me, waiting, as if she’s ready to hear what I have to say. If that’s what she wants …

  “Baba loved you more,” I say. “He had to sit next to you. Mama loved you so much she had to sit right across from you, so she could stare at her beautiful daughter and not the one with the ugly red face.”

  “You’ve always suffered from red-eye disease.” My sister sniffs, as though my accusations are insignificant. “You’ve always been jealous and envious of me, but you were the one who was cherished by Mama and Baba. Who loved who more? I’ll tell you. Baba liked to look at you. Mama had to sit next to you. The three of you always spoke in Sze Yup. You had your own secret language. You always left me out.”

  This freezes me in place for a moment. I’ve always believed they spoke to me in Sze Yup to shield May from this or that, but what if they’d been doing it as an endearment, as a way of showing I was special to them?

  “No!” I say as much to her as to myself “That’s not how it was.”

  “Baba cared enough about you to criticize you. Mama cared enough about you to buy you pearl cream. She never gave me anything precious—not pearl cream, not her jade bracelet. They sent you to college. No one asked if I wanted to go! And even though you went, did you do anything with it? Look at your friend Violet. She did something, but you? No. Everyone wants to come to America for the opportunities. They came your way, but you didn’t take them. You preferred to be a victim, a fu yen. But what does it matter who Baba and Mama loved more or whether or not I had the same opportunities as you? They’re dead, and that was a long time ago.”

  But it isn’t to me, and I know it isn’t to May either. Just consider how our competition for our parents’ affection has been repeated in our battle for Joy. Now, after our whole lives together, we say what we truly feel. The tones of our Wu dialect rise and fall, shrill, caustic, and accusatory as we empty all the evil we’ve stored up on each other’s heads, blaming each other for every single wrong and misfortune that’s happened to us. I haven’t forgotten about Sam’s death and I know she hasn’t either, but neither of us can help ourselves. Maybe it’s easier to fight about the injustices we’ve carried for years than to face May’s betrayal and Sam’s suicide.

  “Did Mama know you were pregnant?” I ask, voicing a suspicion I’ve harbored for years. “She loved you. She made me promise to take care of you, my moy moy, my little sister. And I have. I brought you to Angel Island, where I was humiliated. And since then I’ve been stuck in Chinatown, taking care of Vern, and working here in the house while you’ve been in Haolaiwu, going to parties, having fun, doing whatever you do with those men.” Then, because I’m so angry and hurt, I say something I know I’ll regret forever, but there’s enough truth in it that it flies out of my mouth before I can stop it. “I had to take care of your daughter even when my own baby died.”

  “You’ve always been bitter about having to care for Joy, but you’ve also done everything possible to keep me away from her. When she was a baby, you left her in the apartment with Sam when I took you out for walks—”

  “That wasn’t the reason.” (Or was it?)

  “Then you blamed me and everyone else for making you stay home with her. But when any of us offered to take Joy for a while, you turned us down.”

  “That’s not true. I let you take her to film sets—”

  “And then you wouldn’t allow me even that happiness anymore,” she says sadly. “I loved her, but she was always a burden to you. You have a daughter. I have nothing. I’ve lost everyone—my mother, my father, my child—”

  “And I was raped by too many men to protect you!”

  My sister nods as though she was expecting me to say this. “So now I get to hear about that sacrifice? Again?” She takes a breath. I can see she’s trying to calm down. “You’re upset. I understand that. But none of this has anything to do with what happened to Sam.”

  “But of course it does! Everything between us has to do with either your illegitimate child or what the monkey people did to me.”

  The muscles in May’s neck tighten and her anger roars back, matching mine. “If you really want to talk about that night, then fine, because I’ve been waiting a lot of years for this. No one asked you to go out there. Mama very clearly told you to stay with me. She wanted you to be safe. You’re the one she talked to in Sze Yup, whispering her love to you, as she always did, so I wouldn’t understand. But I understood that she loved you enough to say loving words to you and not to me.”

  “You’re changing the truth, like you always do, but it won’t work. Mama loved you so much she faced those men alone. I couldn’t let her do that. I had to help her. I had to save you.” As I speak, memories of that night fill my eyes. Wherever Mama is now, is she aware of everything I sacrificed for my sister? Did Mama love me? Or had Mama in her last moments been disappointed in me one final time? But I don’t have time for these questions when my sister is standing before me, her hands on her hips, her beautiful face contorted in exasperation.

  “That was one night. One night out of a lifetime! How long have you used it, Pearl? How long have you used it to keep distance between you and Sam, between you and Joy? When you were in and out of consciousness, you told me some things you obviously don’t remember. You said that Mama groaned when you stepped into the room with the soldiers. You said you thought she was upset because you weren’t protecting me. I think you were wrong. She must have been heartbroken that you weren’t saving yourself. You’re a mother. You know what I say is true.”

  This hits me like a slap to my face. May’s right. If Joy and I were in the same situation ….

  “You think you’ve been brave and given up so much,” May continues. I don’t hear condemnation or taunting in her voice, just relentless anguish, as though she’s the one who’s suffered. “But really you’ve been a coward: afraid, weak, and uncertain all these years. Never once have you asked what else happened in the shack that night. Never once have you thought to ask me what it was like to hold Mama in my arms as she died. Did you ever once think to ask where, how, or if she was buried? Who do you think took care of that? Who do you think got us away from that shack when the sensible thing would have been to leave you behind to die?”

  I don’t like her questions. I like the answers that run through my mind even less.

  “I was only eighteen years old,” May goes on. “I was pregnant and terrified. But
I pushed you in the wheelbarrow. I got you to the hospital. I saved your life, Pearl, but you’re still carrying resentment and fear and blame after all these years. You believe you’ve sacrificed so much to take care of me, but your sacrifices have only been excuses. I’m the one who sacrificed to take care of you.”

  “That’s a lie.”

  “Is it?” She pauses briefly and then says: “Have you ever once thought what life has been like for me here? To see my daughter every day but always be kept at a distance? Or do the husband-wife thing with Vern? Think about that, Pearl. He could never be a real husband.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “That we never would have ended up here in this place that seems to have caused you so much misery if it hadn’t been for you.” As the fight falls from her voice, her words dig deep into me, unsettling my blood and bones. “You let one night, one terrible, tragic night, make you run and run and run. And I, as your moy moy, followed. Because I love you, and I knew you were forever damaged and would never be able to see the beauty and fortune in your life.”

  I close my eyes, trying to steady myself I never want to hear her voice again. I never want to see her again. “Won’t you please just leave?” I beg.

  But she comes right back at me. “Just answer me honestly. Would we be here in America if it hadn’t been for you?”

  Her question thrusts into me sharp as a knife, because so much of what she’s been saying is true. But I’m still so angry and hurt that she turned Sam in that I respond with the one thing that will be most spiteful. “Absolutely not. We wouldn’t be here in America if you hadn’t done the husband-wife thing with some nameless boy! If you hadn’t made me take your baby—”

  “He wasn’t nameless,” May says, her voice as soft as clouds. “It was Z.G.”

  I thought I’d been hurt as much as I could and still survive. I was wrong.

  “How could you? How could you hurt me that way? You know I loved Z.G.”

  “Yes, I know,” she admits. “Z.G. thought it was funny—the way you stared at him during our sittings, the way you went begging to him—but I felt terrible about it.”

  I stagger back. Betrayal upon betrayal upon betrayal.

  “This is another of your lies.”

  “Really? Joy saw it: Who had the red face of a peasant on the covers of China Reconstructs and whose face was painted with love?”

  As she speaks, images from the past tumble through my mind: May resting her head against Z.G.’s heart as they danced, Z.G. painting every last strand of her hair, Z.G. placing peonies around her naked body …

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “That was cruel. I know you’ve held him in your heart all these years, but that was a girlish crush from long ago. Can’t you see that? Z.G. and I…” Her voice catches. “You had a lifetime with Sam. Z.G. and I had a few weeks.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I knew you had feelings for him. That’s why I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to hurt you.”

  And like that I understand what’s been before me for the last twenty years. “Z.G. is Joy’s father.”

  “Who is Z.G.?”

  It’s the one voice that neither my sister nor I want to hear. I turn and there’s Joy, standing in the kitchen doorway, her eyes like black pebbles at the bottom of a bowl of narcissus. Her look—cold, expressionless, and unforgiving—tells me she’s been listening far too long. I’m devastated by Sam’s death and my sister’s version of our lives, but I feel absolute horror that my daughter has heard any of this. I take two steps toward Joy but she edges away from me.

  “Who is Z.G.?” she asks again.

  “He is your real father,” May answers, her voice gentle and filled with love. “And I am your real mother.”

  The three of us stand in the living room like statues. I see May and me through Joy’s eyes: a mother—who has tried to teach her daughter to be filial in the Chinese way and brilliant in the American way—wearing an old nightgown, with a face red from tears, sorrow, and anger; and another mother—who has indulged her daughter with treats and exposed her to the glamour and money of Haolaiwu—looking radiant and elegant. Freed from two decades of secrets, May seems at peace, despite everything that’s happened tonight. My sister and I have fought over shoes, over who’s had the better life, and over who’s smarter and prettier, but this time I don’t have a chance. I know who will win. For so long I’ve wondered about my destiny. It wasn’t enough for me to lose my baby son and my husband. Now the tears of the greatest loss of my life roll down my cheeks.

  When Our Hair Is White

  I LIE ON my bed, a huge hole in my chest where my heart used to be. Destroyed, that’s how I feel. I listen to May and Joy murmur together. Later, I hear raised voices and doors slam, but I don’t go back out there and fight for my daughter. I don’t have any fight left in me. But then maybe I never did. Maybe May was right about me. I am weak. Maybe I’ve always been afraid, a victim, a fu yen. May and I grew up in the same home with the same parents, and yet my sister has always been able to look out for herself She grabbed at opportunities: my willingness to take Joy, Tom Gubbins’s offer of a job and what that turned into, her constant striving to go out and have fun, while I accepted the bad as merely my unlucky fate.

  Later still, I hear water running in the bathroom and the toilet flush. I hear Joy opening and shutting her drawers in the linen closet. As silence finally settles over the house, my mind goes to deeper and darker places. My sister has made me think about things in a whole new way, but none of that changes what happened to Sam. I’ll never forgive her for that! Except… except… maybe she was right about seeking amnesty. Maybe not voluntarily stepping forward was a dreadful mistake on Sam’s and my parts, which resulted in terrible tragedy for Sam. But why hadn’t May told us she was going to report us, even if it was for our own good? I know the answer too well: Sam and I were always afraid of anything new. We were afraid to leave the family and go out on our own, afraid to leave Chinatown, afraid to let our daughter become what we said we wanted her to be: American. If May had tried to tell us, we wouldn’t have been able to hear her.

  I know that, in the worst of my Dragon aspects, I can be stubborn and proud. Cross a female Dragon and the sky will fall. Indeed, tonight the sky has fallen, but I need to tell Joy that she is and will always be my daughter and that no matter what she feels about me or Sam or her auntie, I will love her forever and ever. I will make her understand how much she’s been loved and protected and how much pride I have in her as she begins her life. I have ten thousand hopes that she’ll forgive me. As for May, I don’t know if I can find a way to absolve her or even if I want to. I don’t know if I want to have a relationship with her at all, but I’m willing to give her a chance to explain everything to me again.

  I should go out to the screened porch, wake them up, and do all this right now, but it’s late and it’s quiet out there and too much has happened on this terrible night.

  “WAKE UP! Wake up! Joy is gone!”

  I open my eyes to my sister shaking me. Her face is frantic. I sit up, fear pulsing through my body.

  “What?”

  “It’s Joy. She’s gone.”

  I’m up, out of the room, and running to the screened porch. Both beds look to me like they’ve been slept in. I take a breath and try to relax.

  “Maybe she’s gone for a walk. Maybe she went to the cemetery.”

  May shakes her head. Then she looks down at a piece of crumpled paper she holds in her hand. “I found this on her bed when I woke up.”

  May smoothes the paper and hands it to me. I begin to read:

  Mom,

  I don’t know who I am anymore. I don’t understand this country anymore. I hate that it killed Dad. I know you’ll think I’m confused and foolish. Maybe I am, but I have to find answers. Maybe China is my real home after all. After everything Auntie May told me last night, I think I should meet my real father. Don’t worry about me, Mom. I have great belief in
China and everything Chairman Mao is doing for the country.

  Joy

  I take a breath, and the pounding in my heart slows. I know that Joy can’t possibly mean what she’s written. She’s a Tiger. It’s her nature to flail and strike out, which is exactly what she’s done in her note, but there’s no possible way she’s done what she’s written here. May seems to believe it though.

  “Has she really run away?” May asks when I look up from the letter.

  “I’m not worried and you shouldn’t be either.” I’m irritated with May for starting the day with more drama when I hoped to talk things through, but I put a reassuring hand on her arm, trying to keep some semblance of calm between us. “Joy was upset last night. We all were. She probably went over to the Yees’ house to talk to Hazel. I bet she’ll be home for breakfast.”

  “Pearl.” My sister swallows and then inhales before continuing. “Last night Joy asked about Z.G. I told her I think he still lives in Shanghai since his magazine covers always show something about the city. I’m pretty sure that’s where she’s gone.”

  I wave off the idea. “She’s not going to China to look for Z.G. She can’t just get on a plane and fly to Shanghai.” I tick off the reasons on my fingers, hoping logic will soothe May’s concerns. “Mao took over the country eight years ago. China is closed to Westerners. The United States doesn’t have diplomatic relations—”

  “She could fly to Hong Kong,” May cuts in haltingly. “It’s a British colony. From there she could walk into China, just like Father Louie used to hire people to walk tea money in to his family in Wah Hong Village.”

  “Don’t even think that. Joy is not a Communist. All that talk has been just that—talk.”

  May points to the note. “She wants to meet her real father.”

  But I refuse to accept what my sister is saying. “Joy doesn’t have a passport.”

  “Yes, she does. Don’t you remember? That Joe boy helped her get one.”

  At that, my knees buckle. May grabs me and helps me to the bed, where we sit down. I begin to weep. “Not this. Not after Sam.”