Our puller stops at the corner of Nanking Road. We pay the agreed-upon price and join the throng. Each plane that sweeps overhead brings whoops of encouragement and applause, but when every single bomb misses its target and falls harmlessly into the Whangpoo, cheers turn to boos. Somehow it all seems a funny game and eventually a dull one.
May and I stroll up Nanking Road, avoiding the refugees and eyeing Shanghainese and Shanghailanders to see what they’re wearing. Outside the Cathay Hotel we run into Tommy Hu. He wears a white duck suit and a straw hat tilted back on his head. He seems thrilled to see May, and she melts into her flirtatious mode. I can’t help wondering if they arranged to meet.
I cross the street, leaving May and Tommy with their heads together and hands gently touching. I’m just in front of the Palace Hotel when I hear a loud rat-a-tat coming from behind me. I don’t know what it is, but I duck instinctively. Around me, others fall to the ground or run for doorways. I look back toward the Bund and see a silver plane flying low. It’s one of ours. Antiaircraft fire sprouts from one of the Japanese ships. At first, it seems like the dwarf bandits missed their target, and a few people cheer. Then we see smoke spiral out of the plane.
Crippled by the antiaircraft fire, the plane veers over Nanking Road. The pilot must know he’s going to crash, because suddenly he lets the two bombs attached to the wing drop. They seem to take a very long time to fall. I hear whistling and then feel a sickening lurch accompanied by a shattering explosion as the first bomb lands in front of the Cathay Hotel. My eyes go white, my eardrums go silent, and my lungs stop working, as if the explosion has punched out my body’s knowledge of how to operate. A second later, another bomb goes through the roof of the Palace Hotel and explodes. Debris—glass, paper, bits of flesh, and body parts—hurtles down on me.
It’s said that the worst part of the bombing experience is the seconds of total paralysis and silence that immediately follow the initial concussion. It’s as though—and I think this is an expression used in every culture—time stands still. That’s how it is for me. I’m frozen in place. Smoke and plaster dust billow. Eventually I hear the tinkle of glass falling from the hotel’s windows. Someone moans. Someone else screams. And then total panic engulfs the street as another bomber wobbles through the air above us. A minute or two later, we hear and feel the impact of two more bombs. They land, I find out later, in the intersection of Avenue Edouard VII and Thibet Road near the racecourse, where many refugees have gathered to receive free rice and tea. Altogether the four bombs wound, maim, or kill thousands of people.
My immediate thought is for May. I have to find her. I stumble across a couple of mangled bodies. Their clothes have been ripped, shredded, and bloodied. I can’t tell if they were refugees, Shanghainese, or Shanghailanders. Severed arms and legs litter the street. A stampede of hotel guests and staff pushes and shoves through the Palace’s doors and pours out onto the street. Most of them are screaming, many of them bleeding.
People run over the injured and the dead. I join the panicked scramble, needing to make my way back to where I left May and Tommy. I can’t see anything. I rub my eyes, trying without success to rid them of dust and terror. I find what’s left of Tommy. His hat is gone and so is his head, but I still recognize the white of his suit. May isn’t with him, thank God, but where is she?
I turn back toward the Palace Hotel, believing I missed her in my rush. Nanking Road is carpeted with the dead and dying. A few badly injured men lurch drunkenly down the middle of the street. Several cars burn, while others have had their windows blown out. Inside them are more injured and dead. Cars, rickshaws, trams, wheelbarrows, and the people inside them have been pitted by shrapnel. Buildings, billboards, and fences are spattered with flecks of humanity. The sidewalk is slippery with clotted blood and flesh. Shattered glass glitters on the street like so many diamonds. The stench in the August heat burns my eyes and clogs my throat.
“May!” I call and take a few steps. I keep shouting her name, trying to hear her response through the panic that whirls around me. I stop to examine every injured or dead body. With so many dead, how can she have survived? She’s so delicate and easily hurt.
And then, amid all the blood and gore, I see through the crowd a patch of robin’s egg blue with a white plum blossom pattern. I run forward and find my sister. She’s partially buried in plaster and other debris. She’s either unconscious or dead.
“May! May!”
She doesn’t move. Fear grips my heart. I kneel beside her. I don’t see any wounds, but blood has soaked into her dress from a gruesomely injured woman lying next to her. I brush the debris from May’s dress and lean down close to her face. Her skin is as white as candle wax. “May,” I say softly. “Wake up. Come on, May, wake up.”
She stirs. I coax her again. Her eyes blink open, she groans, and closes her eyes again.
I pelt her with questions. “Are you hurt? Do you feel pain? Can you move?”
When she answers with a question of her own, my whole body relaxes in relief.
“What happened?”
“There was a bomb. I couldn’t find you. Tell me you’re all right.”
She twists first one shoulder and then the other. She winces, but not in agony.
“Help me up,” she says.
I put a hand behind her neck and pull her into a sitting position. When I let go, my hand is sticky with blood.
All around us people moan from their injuries. Some cry for help. Some gurgle final, tortured gasps for life. Some scream from the horror of seeing a loved one in pieces. But I’ve been on this street many times, and there’s an underlying silence that’s chilling, as if the dead are sucking sound into their dark emptiness.
I put my arms around May and get her to her feet. She sways, and I worry she’ll lose consciousness again. With my arm around her waist, we take a few steps. But where are we going? Ambulances haven’t arrived yet. We can’t even hear them in the distance, but from neighboring streets come people—unhurt and in surprisingly clean clothes. They rush from corpse to corpse, from injured to injured.
“Tommy?” May asks. When I shake my head, she says, “Take me to him.”
I don’t think that’s a good idea, but she insists. When we reach his body, May’s knees crumple. We sit on the curb. May’s hair is white with plaster dust. She looks like a ghost spirit. I probably look the same.
“I need to make sure you aren’t hurt,” I say, partly to take May’s attention away from Tommy’s body. “Let me take a look.”
May turns her back to me and away from Tommy. Her hair’s matted with already clotting blood, which I take to be a good sign. I carefully part the curls until I find a gash on the back of her head. I’m not a doctor, but it doesn’t look like it needs stitches. Still, she’s been knocked out. I want someone to tell me it’s safe to take her home. We wait and wait, but even after the ambulances come no one helps us. Too many others need immediate attention. As dusk settles, I decide we should go home, but May won’t leave Tommy.
“We’ve known him our entire lives. What would Mama say if we left him here? And his mother …” She trembles, but she doesn’t cry. Her shock is too deep for that.
Just as furniture vans arrive to take away the dead, we feel the concussion of bombs being dropped and hear the rattle of machine guns in the distance. None of us in the street has any illusions about what this means. The dwarf bandits are attacking. They won’t bomb the International Settlement or any of the foreign concessions, but Chapei, Hongkew, the Old Chinese City, and the outlying Chinese areas have to be under fire. People scream and cry, but May and I fight our fear and stay with Tommy’s body until it’s loaded onto a stretcher and put in the back of one of the vans.
“I want to go home now,” May says as the van pulls away. “Mama and Baba will be worried. And I don’t want to be out when the Generalissimo puts more of our planes back in the air.”
She’s right. Our air force has already proven it’s inept, and we won’t
be safe on the streets tonight if they take to the skies again. So we walk home. We’re both splattered with blood and plaster dust. Passersby pull away from us as though we’re bringing death with every step we take. I know Mama will lose control when she sees us, but I long for her concern and tears, followed by her inevitable anger that we placed ourselves in such danger.
We walk in the door and turn in to the salon. The dark green foreign-style drapes fringed with little velvet balls have been pulled shut. The bombing has disrupted the power lines, and the room is lit by soft, warm, and comforting candlelight. In the craziness of the day, I forgot about our boarders, but they haven’t forgotten about us. The cobbler sits on his haunches next to my father. The student hovers over Mama’s chair, trying to look reassuring. The two dancers stand with their backs against the wall nervously twisting their fingers. The policeman’s wife and two daughters perch on the stairs.
When Mama sees us, she covers her face and begins to cry. Baba pushes his way across the room, puts his arms around May, and half carries her to his chair. People cluster around her, pawing at her to make sure she’s unhurt—touching her face and patting her thighs and arms. Everyone chatters at once.
“Are you injured?”
“What happened?”
“We heard it was an enemy plane. Those monkey people are worse than turtles’ egg abortions!”
With all attention on May, the policeman’s wife and daughters come to me. I see dread in the woman’s eyes. The older girl pulls on my blouse. “Our baba hasn’t come home yet.” Her voice is hopeful and brave. “Tell us you saw him.”
I shake my head. The girl takes her little sister’s hand and skulks back to the stairs. Their mother’s eyes close in fear and worry.
Now that May and I are safe, the day’s events tumble through me. My sister’s fine and we made it home. The fear and excitement that kept me strong disappear. I feel empty, weak, and dizzy. The others must have noticed, because all of a sudden I feel hands on me, leading me to a chair. I let myself sink into the cushions. Someone brings a cup to my lips, and I sip lukewarm tea.
May, now standing, proudly lists what she considers to be my accomplishments. “Pearl didn’t cry. She didn’t give up. She looked for me and she found me. She took care of me. She brought me home. She—”
Someone or something pounds on the front door. Baba bunches his hands into balls, as if he knows what’s coming. We no longer have a houseboy to answer the door, but no one moves. We’re all afraid. Is it refugees begging for help? Have the dwarf bandits already marched into the city? Has the looting begun? Or have some clever souls already figured out they can get rich during the war by demanding protection money? We watch as May walks to the door—her hips swaying lightly—opens it, and then slowly takes several steps backward, her hands held before her as if in surrender.
The three men who enter are not in military uniform, but they’re immediately recognizable as dangerous nevertheless. They wear pointed leather shoes, the better to inflict damage with their kicks. Their shirts are made from fine black cotton, the better to hide bloodstains. They wear felt fedoras pulled low to shadow their features. One holds a pistol; another grips a club of some sort. The third carries his menace in his body, which is short but solid. I’ve lived in Shanghai almost my entire life and can spot—and then avoid—a member of the Green Gang on the street or in a club, but I never expected to see one, let alone three, in our home. I’ll say this: You’ve never seen a room empty faster. Our boarders—from the policeman’s daughters to the student and the dancing girls—scatter like leaves.
The three toughs ignore May and casually stroll into the salon. As warm as it is, I shiver.
“Mr. Chin?” the stocky man asks as he plants his feet in front of my father.
Baba—and I’ll never forget this—gulps and swallows, gulps and swallows again, like a fish gasping for air on a slab of hot concrete.
“You have a growth in your throat or what?”
The intruder’s mocking tone causes me to avert my eyes from my father’s face, and I see worse. His pants darken as his bladder lets go. The stocky man, the apparent leader of this small group, spits on the floor in disgust.
“You have failed to pay your debt to Pockmarked Huang. You cannot borrow money from him over many years to provide an extravagant life for your family and not pay it back. You cannot gamble in his establishments and not pay for your losses.”
This couldn’t be worse news. Pockmarked Huang’s control is so great that it’s said if a watch is stolen anywhere in the city, his minions will make sure it’s restored to its rightful owner within twenty-four hours—for a price, of course. He’s known to deliver coffins to people who have displeased him. He usually kills those who have cheated him in some way. We’re lucky we received this visit instead.
“Pockmarked Huang made a good arrangement for you to pay him back,” the gangster goes on. “It was complicated, but he was amenable. You had a debt and he was trying to decide what to do with you.” The thug pauses and stares at my father. “Are you going to explain this to them”—he motions to us casually, but somehow it still feels threatening—“or shall I?”
We wait for Baba to speak. When he doesn’t, the thug shifts his attention to the rest of us.
“There was an outstanding debt that needed to be paid,” he explains. “At the same moment, a merchant from America came to us looking to buy rickshaws for his business and wives for his sons. So Pockmarked Huang put together a three-way deal to benefit everyone.”
I don’t know about Mama and May, but I’m still hoping Baba will do or say something to make this horrible man and his sidekicks leave our home. Shouldn’t Baba do that—as a man, a father, and a husband?
The leader leans over Baba menacingly. “Our boss ordered you to fill Mr. Louie’s procurement needs by giving him your rickshaws and your daughters. No money would be paid by you, and you and your wife would be allowed to stay in your house. Mr. Louie would pay your debt to us with American dollars. Everyone would get what they needed, and everyone would live.”
I’m furious with my father for not telling us the truth, but that’s insignificant compared with the terror I feel, because now it’s not just my father who didn’t do what he was supposed to do. May and I were part of the deal. We too have crossed Pockmarked Huang. The gangster wastes no time getting to that point.
“While it’s true that our boss has profited nicely, there remains a problem,” he says. “Your daughters didn’t get on the boat. What kind of message will this send to others who owe Pockmarked Huang if he lets you get away with this?” The thug takes his eyes from my father and scans the room. He gestures first to me and then to May. “These are your daughters, yes?” He doesn’t wait for an answer. “They were supposed to meet their husbands in Hong Kong. Why didn’t that happen, Mr. Chin?”
“I—”
It’s a sad thing to know your father is weak, but it’s terrible to realize he’s pathetic.
Without thinking, I blurt, “It’s not his fault.”
The man’s cruel eyes turn to me. He comes to my chair, squats before me, puts his hands on my knees, and squeezes them hard. “How can this be, little girl?”
I hold my breath, petrified.
May darts across the room to my side. She begins to speak. Every statement of fact comes out as a question. “We didn’t know our father owed money to the Green Gang? We thought he only owed money to an Overseas Chinese? We thought Old Man Louie was unimportant, just a visitor?”
“Good daughters to a worthless man are a waste,” the leader declares conversationally. He stands and strides to the middle of the room. His helpers come to his side. To Baba, he says, “You were allowed to stay in this house as long as you sent your daughters to their new homes. Since you have not done so, this is no longer your home. You must leave. And you must pay your debt. Shall I take your daughters with me now? We will find a good use for them.”
Afraid of what Baba will say, I j
ump in. “It’s not too late for us to go to America. There are other ships.”
“Pockmarked Huang doesn’t like liars. You have already been dishonest, and you are probably lying to me now.”
“We promise we’ll do what you say,” May mutters.
Like a cobra, the leader’s hand strikes out, grabs May’s hair, and yanks her to him. He brings her face close to his. He smiles and says, “Your family is broke. You should be living on the street. Please, I ask you again, wouldn’t it be better to come with us now? We like beautiful girls.”
“I have their tickets” comes a small voice. “I’ll make sure they leave and the deal you arranged for my husband to honor his debts is completed.”
At first I’m not even sure who spoke. None of us are. We all look around until we come to my mother, who has not said a word since the men entered our home. I see hardness in her that I’ve never seen before. Maybe we’re all like that with our mothers. They seem ordinary until one day they’re extraordinary.
“I have the tickets,” she repeats. She has to be lying. I threw them out, along with our immigration papers and the coaching book Sam gave me.
“What good are those tickets now? Your daughters missed their boat.”
“We will exchange them and the girls will go to their husbands.” Mama wrings a handkerchief in her hands. “I will see to it. And then my husband and I will leave this house. You tell that to Pockmarked Huang. If he doesn’t like it, then let him come here and discuss it with me, a woman—”