May tries to comfort me, but I’m inconsolable. It’s not long before guilt takes over.
“She hasn’t just gone to find her father.” My words come out ragged and broken. “Her whole world has been split apart. Everything she thought she knew was wrong. She’s running away from us. Her real mother … and me.”
“Don’t say that. You are her real mother. Look at the letter again. She called me Auntie and you Mom. She’s your daughter, not mine.”
My heart throbs with grief and fear, but I grab on to one word: Mom.
May dabs away my tears. “She is your daughter,” she repeats. “Now stop crying. We have to think.”
May’s right. I have to regain control of my emotions, and we have to figure out how to stop my daughter from making this terrible mistake.
“Joy will need a lot of money if she wants to get to China,” I say thinking aloud.
May seems to understand what I mean. She’s been modern for a long time and has kept her money in a bank, but Sam and I followed Father Louie’s tradition of keeping our earnings nearby. We hurry to the kitchen and look under the sink for the coffee can where I keep most of my savings. It’s empty. Joy’s taken the money, but I don’t lose hope.
“When do you think she left?” I ask. “The two of you stayed up talking—”
“Why didn’t I hear her get up? Why didn’t I hear her pack?”
I have these same self-recriminations, and a part of me is still angry and confused about everything I learned last night, but I say, “We can’t worry about things like that right now. We have to concentrate on Joy. She can’t have gone far. We can still find her.”
“Yes, of course. Let’s get dressed. We’ll take two cars—”
“What about Vern?” Even in this moment of terror and bereavement, I can’t forget my responsibilities.
“You drive to Union Station and see if she’s there. I’ll get Vern situated, and then I’ll drive to the bus station.”
But Joy isn’t at the train station, and she isn’t at the bus station either. May and I meet back at the house. We still don’t know for sure where Joy has gone. It’s hard to believe that she’ll really try to go to China, but we have to act as though that’s what she’s doing if we’re to have any chance at stopping her. May and I make a new plan. I drive to the airport, while May stays at home and makes phone calls: to the Yee family to see if Joy said anything to the girls; to the uncles on the chance she sought their advice about getting into mainland China; and to Betsy and her father in Washington to check if there’s an official way to catch Joy before she leaves the country. I don’t find Joy at the airport, but May receives two distressing pieces of information. First, Hazel Yee said that early this morning Joy called in tears from the airport to say she was leaving the country. Hazel didn’t believe Joy and didn’t ask where she was going. Second, May learned from Betsy’s father that Joy can apply for and receive a visa to Hong Kong upon landing.
Since we haven’t eaten, May opens two cans of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup and begins to heat them on the stove. I sit at the table, watching my sister and worrying about my daughter. My beautiful, wild Joy is running headlong to the one place she shouldn’t go: the People’s Republic of China. But Joy—as much as she thinks she’s learned about China from the movies, that boy Joe, that dumb group she joined, and whatever her professors might have taught her in Chicago—doesn’t know what she’s doing. She’s followed her Tiger nature, acting out of anger, confusion, and misplaced enthusiasm. She’s acted out of last night’s passions and confusions. As I told May, I believe that Joy’s rushing off to China is as much a flight from us—the two women who have fought over her from birth—as it is about finding her real father. And Joy can’t possibly understand how traumatic—not to mention dangerous—finding Z.G. could be.
But if Joy can’t avoid her essential nature, then I can’t escape mine either. The pull of motherhood is strong. I think of my own mother and all she did to save May and me from the Green Gang and protect us from the Japanese. Mama may have agonized over her decision to leave my father behind, but she did it. Surely she was terrified to step into the room with the soldiers, but she didn’t hesitate then either. My daughter needs me. No matter how perilous the journey or how great the risks, I have to find her. She needs to know that I’ll stand by her, unconditionally, without question, whatever the situation.
A small smile comes to my lips as I realize that for once not being a U.S. citizen is going to help me. I don’t have a U.S. passport. I have only my Certificate of Identity, which will allow me to leave this country that has never wanted me. I have some money tucked in the lining of my hat, but it isn’t enough to get me to China. It will take too long to sell the café. I could go to the FBI and confess everything and more, say I’m a rabid Communist of the worst kind, and hope to be deported …
May pours the soup into three bowls, and we go to Vern’s room. He’s pale and confused. He ignores the soup and nervously twists his bed-sheets.
“Where is Sam? Where is Joy?”
“I’m sorry, Vern. Sam died,” May tells him for what I know must be the twentieth time today. “Joy has run away. Do you understand, Vern? She isn’t here. She’s gone to China.”
“China’s a bad place.”
“I know,” she says. “I know.”
“I want Sam. I want Joy.”
“Try to eat your soup,” May says.
“I need to go after Joy,” I announce. “Maybe I can find her in Hong Kong, but I’ll go into China if I have to.”
“China’s a bad place,” Vern repeats. “You die there.”
I put my bowl on the floor. “May, can you lend me the money?”
She doesn’t hesitate. “Of course, but I don’t know if I have enough.”
How could she when she’s spent her money on clothes, jewelry, entertaining, and her fancy car? I shove those feelings aside, reminding myself that she also helped buy this house and pay for Joy’s tuition …
“I do,” Vern says. “Bring me boats. Lots of boats.”
May and I look at each other, not understanding.
“I need boats!”
I hand him the closest one. He takes it and throws it on the floor. The model shatters, and inside is a roll of bills held together with a rubber band.
“My money from the family pot,” Vern says. “More boats! Give me more!”
Soon the three of us are smashing Vern’s collection of ships, planes, and race cars on the floor. The old man had been stingy and cheap but always fair. Of course he gave Vern a portion of the family pot, even after he became an invalid. But Vern, unlike the rest of us, never spent his money. I can remember only one time I saw him use money: when he took May, Sam, Joy, and me to the beach on the streetcar our first Christmas in Los Angeles.
May and I gather up the wads of cash and count the money on Vern’s bed. There’s more than enough for a plane ticket and even bribes, if I need them.
“I’ll come with you,” May says. “We’ve always done better when we’re together.”
“You need to stay here. You need to take care of Vern, the coffee shop, the house, and the ancestors—”
“What if you find Joy and then the authorities won’t let you leave?” May asks.
She’s worried about this. Vern’s worried about this. And I’m terrified. We’d be stupid if we weren’t. I allow myself a wan smile.
“You’re my sister, and you’re very smart. You’re going to start working from this end.”
As my sister absorbs this, I can practically see her forming a list in her mind.
“I’m going to call Betsy and her father again,” she says. “And I’ll write Vice President Nixon. He helped other people get out of China when he was a senator. I’ll make him help us.”
I think but don’t say: This isn’t going to be easy. Again, I’m not a U.S. citizen, and I don’t have a passport for any country. And we’re dealing with Red China. But I have to believe she’ll do ever
ything she can to get Joy and me out of China, because she got us out once before.
“I spent my first twenty-one years in China and my last twenty in Los Angeles,” I say, my voice as steady as my resolve. “I don’t feel like I’m going home. I feel like I’m losing my home. I’m counting on you to make sure Joy and I have something to come back to.”
The next day I pack the Certificate of Identity I was given on Angel Island and the peasant clothes May bought me to wear out of China. I take photos of Sam to give me courage and of Joy to show to people I meet. I go to the family altar and say good-bye to Sam and the others. I remember something May said a few years ago: Everything always returns to the beginning. I finally understand what she meant now as I begin this new journey—not only will mistakes be repeated but we will also be given chances to fix them. Twenty years ago I lost my mother as we fled China; now I’m returning to China, as a mother, to make things—so many things—right. I open the little box where Sam placed the pouch Mama gave me. I put it around my neck. It protected me in my travels once before, just as I hope that the one May gave Joy before she went away to college is protecting her now.
I say good-bye and thank you to the boy-husband, and then May drives me to the airport. As palm trees and stucco houses drift past my window, I go back over my plan: I’ll go to Hong Kong, put on my peasant clothes, and walk across the border. I’ll go to the Louie and Chin home villages—both places Joy has heard about—to make sure she isn’t there, but my mother’s heart tells me she won’t be there. She’s gone to Shanghai to find her real father and learn about her mother and her aunt, and I’m going to be right behind her. Of course I’m afraid I’ll be killed. But more than that, I’m afraid for all the things we still could lose.
I glance at my sister, who sits behind the wheel of the car with such determination. I remember that look from when she was a toddler. I remember it from when she hid our money and Mama’s jewelry on the fisherman’s boat. We still have so much to say to each other to make things right between us. There are things I’ll never forgive her for and things I need to apologize for. I know for sure that she was dead wrong about how I feel about being in America. I may not have my papers, but after all these years, I am an American. I don’t want to give that up—not after everything I’ve gone through to have it. I’ve earned my citizenship the hard way; I’ve earned it for Joy.
At the airport, May walks me to my gate. When we get there, she says, “I can never apologize enough about Sam, but please know I was trying to help the two of you.” We hug, but there are no tears. For every awful thing that’s been said and done, she is my sister. Parents die, daughters grow up and marry out, but sisters are for life. She is the only person left in the world who shares my memories of our childhood, our parents, our Shanghai, our struggles, our sorrows, and, yes, even our moments of happiness and triumph. My sister is the one person who truly knows me, as I know her. The last thing May says to me is “When our hair is white, we’ll still have our sister love.”
As I turn away and board the plane, I wonder if there was anything I could have done differently. I hope I would have done everything differently, except I know everything would have turned out the same. That’s the meaning of fate. But if some things are fated and some people are luckier than others, then I also have to believe that I still haven’t found my destiny. Because somehow, some way, I’m going to find Joy, and I’m going to bring my daughter, our daughter, home to my sister and me.
Acknowledgments
Shanghai Girls is a historical novel. Pockmarked Huang, Christine Sterling, and Tom Gubbins were real people. But Pearl, May, and the rest of the characters are fictional, as is the plot. (The Louie family didn’t own the Golden Pagoda, the rickshaw stand, plus a café and various other shops, although many families did own multiple businesses in China City. May didn’t buy the Asiatic Costume Company from Tom Gubbins; the Lee family did.) However, some people may read these pages and recognize particular details, experiences, and anecdotes. Off and on during the last nineteen years—and maybe my entire life—I’ve been fortunate to get to talk to people who lived in some of the places and through some of the events that I wrote about in Shanghai Girls. There were countless happy memories, but for some, sharing their stories took incredible bravery, because they were still unsettled by what had happened to them in China during the war years, embarrassed by the humiliations of Angel Island or the Confession Program, or ashamed of the poverty and hardship they had experienced in Los Angeles Chinatown. Some of them have asked to remain nameless. To them and to everyone else who helped me, I say, this book wouldn’t exist without your stories and your devotion to the truth.
Many thanks to Michael Woo for giving me a copy of the handwritten remembrances of his mother, Beth Woo, of teaching English to Japanese military men, the written marriage terms they showed her, and what it was like to escape from China on a fishing boat and live in Hong Kong during the war. Beth’s husband, Wilbur Woo, who was separated from his wife here in Los Angeles, shared with me many stories of those days and introduced me to Jack Lee, who told me about the FBI agent who used to hang out in Chinatown during the Confession Program era. Phil Young introduced me to his mother, Monica Young, whose memories of being an orphan sent back to China during the Sino-Japanese War were invaluable. She also lent me a copy of Alice Lan and Betty Hu’s reminiscence, We Flee from Hong Kong, in which the two missionaries described the cold cream and cocoa powder concoction that served as part of their disguise while they and their charges tried to stay ahead of the Japanese.
Ruby Ling Louie and Marian Leng, whose families each had businesses in China City, shared with me maps, photographs, brochures, and other memorabilia, including Paul Louie’s excellent slide show on China City. An extra thank-you to Marian for her discussion of the difference between fu yen and yen fu. Others who graciously shared their time and stories include Dr. Wing and Joyce Mar, Gloria Yuen, Mason Fong, and Akuen Fong. Ruth Shannon allowed me to use her dear husband’s name. (On the surface, my Edfred couldn’t be more different from Ruth’s, but they were both kind in heart.) Eleanor Wong Telemaque and Mary Yee told me stories of what happened to their families during the Confession Program.
I also went back to interviews I did years ago when I was researching On Gold Mountain. Two sisters, Mary and Dill Louie, both gone now, reminisced about the Chinese in Hollywood. Jennie Lee talked to me about the years her husband worked for Tom Gubbins and what it was like to own the Asiatic Costume Company after the war. I wish, once again, to acknowledge the National Archives in San Bruno. The interrogation scenes in Shanghai Girls are taken almost verbatim from the entrance examinations of Mrs. Fong Lai (Jung-shee), the wife of one of my great-grandfather’s paper partners, and from hearing transcripts belonging to my great-grandfather Fong See and his brother Fong Yun.
I owe a deep debt of gratitude to Yvonne Chang at the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California for giving me access to the transcripts from an oral history project about Los Angeles Chinatown conducted between 1978 and 1980. Some of the participants have now passed on, but their stories have been captured and saved. The CHSSC is currently collaborating with the Los Angeles Chinatown Youth Council to create the Chinatown Remembered Community History Project, a filmed oral history project focusing on the 1930s and 1940s. I would like to thank the CHSSC and Will Gow, the project director, for giving me a first peek at those transcripts. The CHSSC’s publications—Linking Our Lives, Bridging the Centuries, and Duty and Honor—greatly contributed to my creation of time and place for this story. Suellen Cheng, of the Chinese American Museum and El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument, has once again given me encouragement, advice, and insights.
Since I am neither a historian nor an academician, I have relied on the works of Jack Chen, Iris Chang, Ronald Takaki, Peter Kwong, Dušanka Mišcevic, and Icy Smith. Amy Chen’s documentary, The Chinatown Files, helped to illustrate the lingering bitterness, guilt, and sadness that resulted from
the Confession Program. Special shout-outs to Kathy Ouyang Turner of the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation, for taking me to the island; Casey Lee, for guiding us on the island; Emma Woo Louie, for her research on Chinese-American names; Sue Fawn Chung and Priscilla Wegars, for their work on Chinese-American death rituals; Theodora Lau, for her brilliant examination of the Chinese horoscope; Liz Rawlings, who now lives in Shanghai, for a bit of fact checking; and Judy Yung for Unbound Feet, for her family’s personal stories, for collecting the stories about Angel Island and the war years from so many others, and for answering my questions. I’m grateful as well for Ruthanne Lum McCunn’s friendship, recommendations, and advice. Him Mark Lai, the godfather of Chinese-American studies, answered numerous e-mails and proved to be thoughtful and thought-provoking, as always. Island, written and compiled by Him Mark Lai, Genny Lim, and Judy Yung, and Chinese American Portraits by Ruthanne Lum McCunn inspired me in the past and continue to inspire me.
I’ve been to Shanghai several times, but the works of Hallet Abend, Stella Dong, Hanchao Lu, Pan Ling, Lynn Pan, and Harriet Sergeant also contributed greatly to this novel. In a series of e-mails Hanchao Lu also clarified some lingering questions I had about Shanghai’s geographic boundaries in the 1930s. The character of Sam, although he has a much different destiny and outlook on life, was influenced by Lao She’s proletarian novel Rickshaw. For the history of Shanghai advertising, poster girls, and dress, I’m indebted to the works of Ellen Johnston Laing, Anna Hestler, and Beverley Jackson. I also immersed myself in the works of Chinese writers active between 1920 and 1940, particularly those of Eileen Chang, Xiao Hong, Luo Shu, and Lu Xun.
I wish to acknowledge Cindy Bork, Vivian Craig, Laura Davis, Mary Healey Linda Huff, Pam Vaccaro, and Debbie Wright—who participated in a monthlong Barnes & Noble on line discussion with me—for their insights and thoughts; the 12th Street Book Group for reminding me that sisters are for life; and Jean Ann Balassi, Jill Hopkins, Scottie Senalik, and Denise Whitteaker—who won me in a silent auction and then flew to Los Angeles, where I gave them a tour of Los Angeles Chinatown and introduced them to various family members—for helping me find the emotional heart of the novel.