If only he could help me write a letter to the Ivory family informing them of his death. They had idolized him, their only son. What guise could I take? What tone should I use? A doctor, the ineffectual Dr. Albee? An official who set rules and regulations for handling the bodies?
Magic Gourd brought me a letter. “It’s from Lu Shing. If you want, I can throw it away.”
“I do not need to be protected from anything Lu Shing might have to say. The worst has happened. Everything will seem like bad weather in comparison.”
Dear Mrs. Ivory,
I am deeply saddened by the passing of your husband and the son of friends I have known for over twenty years. I hope you will continue to reside in the house. All arrangements have been made for your continued comfort. If you are in need of any assistance in matters big or small, please do not hesitate to let me know directly.
Yours,
Lu Shing
He called me Mrs. Ivory. He acknowledged both the distance between us and my new status as Edward’s wife. I sent a reply asking him to write the letter to the Ivory family—his good friends for over twenty years—informing them of Edward’s death: Their beloved son, Edward, had succumbed to influenza, quickly and without suffering. I told Lu Shing he should not mention Little Flora or me.
I had once reviled him for not acknowledging that I existed. I was now asking him to continue to do so.
My passport arrived the next day, along with a birth certificate for Little Flora. It sickened me to see the bottom half of it.
Flora Violet Ivory, born January 18, 1919, in Shanghai, China
Father: Bosson Edward Ivory III, businessman
Age 26. Race: White. Birthplace: Croton-on-Hudson, New York
Mother: Minerva Lamp Ivory, housewife
Age 23. Race: White. Birthplace: Albany, New York
I DEVOTED MYSELF to Little Flora’s future. She would never be aware of my past, never aware of the circumstances of her birth. I remade myself into Edward’s legal wife and widow, Minerva Lamp Ivory. To impersonate her and not raise suspicion, the new Mrs. Ivory spoke no Chinese in public. She wore a hairstyle different from mine, parted on the opposite side of my natural one. She had her hair bobbed and waved. Her clothes were tailored, conservative, and not fashionable by my standards. And she joined the American Club, where she attended tedious luncheons for wives, listened to lectures on buying porcelain, volunteered to assist with a charity ball to raise money for Russian refugees, and explained repeatedly with genuine pain that her husband had died of influenza and that she was living alone in a house on Bubbling Well Road with their only child. The street name let them know Mrs. Ivory was well off.
During the day, Little Flora and I visited the park, went to the movie theater for foreigners, and rode in the car along the Bund, passing the building of the Ivory Shipping Company. In my role as Mrs. Minerva Ivory, I was at first easily unnerved. I would see the face of a woman emerge from the blurred crowd to stare at me. Each disapproving face was different, but all were foreign, and they seemed to be saying that they knew I was not who I said I was. I recalled that my mother had said that I should disregard anyone who disapproved of me. I had the freedom to think for myself. But that was not true now. I had to think about Little Flora.
I had no true friends, other than Magic Gourd. Ever since Edward died, she had softened in manner and showed more concern than criticism. She had once refused to be Little Flora’s amah. But she now believed that the amah was going deaf. She called her several times the other day when the amah was facing the other way, and she did not respond. What if Little Flora fell and cried for help? She insisted on accompanying Little Flora on our outings.
“If you can pretend to be a woman you do not want to be,” she said, “then I can pretend to be an amah.”
At the shops, she bought good tea for us and bright yarn for the amah. The amah now knit dresses, shoes, hats, coats, blankets, and mittens for Little Flora, day and night, it seemed. When Little Flora outgrew them, another set was ready. We gave the old clothes to the American Club, which donated them to a rotating list of charities for the poor. I learned one of them was the orphanage for mixed-caste girls, and I was glad.
“Could any of the girls ever pass for white?” I asked the woman in charge of charity donations.
“I’ve seen some who at first glance seem as white as you or me,” she said. “But on second glance, you see the eyes are slightly slanted or the lips are thick and the skin has a yellowish cast.”
By her answer, I knew she believed the girls’ Chinese blood was inferior. I used to worry incessantly over being exposed as Chinese for that reason. I had suffered as a child, feeling ashamed, or suspicious that I was being insulted. I did not belong to the good society of either the American or Chinese worlds. Little Flora would never suffer from doubts over where she belonged.
One afternoon, I returned home and heard Flora’s squeals of laughter in the library. She and Magic Gourd were kneeling before a low table with a photo of Edward, incense bowls, plates of fresh fruit and candies. Magic Gourd held incense sticks with curling smoke. “If only your Edward were alive to hear my thanks,” she said to me. “At least I can send him my admiration, wherever he is.”
Edward would have thought it a charming tribute. I wondered whether Little Flora would one day believe incantations for Chinese ghosts were backward superstitions.
September 1922
Three and a half years had passed since Edward’s death.
Edward’s vividness receded from me. When it was a month after his passing, I felt he had been gone a very long time and that it was also a moment ago. I marked the passing months by the new clothes that the amah knit for Little Flora: green and yellow in April, yellow and blue in July, lavender and rose in September. I noted the week that different flowers bloomed and when the trees lost their leaves and when bright green buds appeared on twigs. I counted the number of times Flora asked to be lifted, or turned her head to smile at me, or came running on her little legs calling my name, a number that became as innumerable as the number of days since Edward had been gone.
I found the journal Edward had started just before he died. How sad that he did not have enough time to fill a hundred more. I used this one to record Little Flora’s new words, funny sentences, and precocious ideas. Soon I could not keep up. I would have had to spend the entire day writing down all that made her special. I loved in turn the succession of toys she loved: the rag doll, the balls that fit into holes on a wooden board, and, when she was three, the sketch pad and crayons, on which she drew a sleet of colors and bent lines.
I kept Edward’s habit of reading the newspapers. Little Ram brought me two newspapers each day, a Chinese one and a Western one. I had no one except Magic Gourd to discuss the events of the day. At first, she took no interest. But then a story arose—the murder of a Western child and the uproar that arose among all foreigners in the International Settlement. She protested that a thousand little Chinese girls could be murdered and they mattered to no one. I agreed that was true, but I also worried that the murderer, who had not been found, might snatch Little Flora next. After that, when I read the news to Magic Gourd, she had an opinion on everything.
Outside our haven, Shanghai was becoming a different place. There was more of everything—and they were more modern, more fashionable, more luxurious, more bizarre, more exciting. The villas were larger, the cars more numerous, a sign of how rich you were. And there were movie stars. Whatever they did became instantly popular. The three movies Magic Gourd and I saw concerned young innocent girls who had been lured to the big city and forced into prostitution. Magic Gourd cried throughout the first movie, whispering, “That’s my story,” but at the end, she complained: “That kind of happy ending never happens.” At the end of another, she said, “Many girls kill themselves for the same reason.”
I watched what was happening in Shanghai through the eyes of a mother. To protect Little Flora, I needed to know where the da
ngers were. Shanghai was being pulled and stretched, tense with foreigners and Chinese living side by side, disregarding each other as best they could. There were days when we thought the air between them might snap and explode again. The university students found more reasons to protest the rights of foreigners and the ill-treatment given to Chinese workers. An anti-Christian campaign was the latest, and we watched to see if there were signs that it would spread and become more serious, as had happened during the Boxer Rebellion. I was frightened that violence would break out and put Little Flora in peril. My life had changed when the emperor abdicated. During revolution, there were heroes and enemies, but there were also hoodlums who grabbed whatever they could when everyone else was busy fighting. For now, the protests had led to strikes but not violence. And the longest one started just after the Paris Peace Treaty was signed.
“If I were educated,” Magic Gourd said, “I probably would be a revolutionary right this minute.”
I wondered what Edward would have thought of Woodrow Wilson now. Instead of returning Shandong Province to China, the Allies had decided it was best to let the Japanese continue to occupy and control it. In the United States and Europe, they celebrated the Peace Treaty. In Shanghai, the students called for strikes and the universities, workers, and merchants all joined in and everything shut down. When the strikes stretched on for months, Magic Gourd joked she should go on strike, too. We couldn’t buy anything or go to the movies. There was no gasoline for the car. I was disturbed by what I heard at luncheons with the ladies at the American Club. They saw no harm in Japan retaining Shandong Province. After all, Japan had joined the war against Germany earlier than China had and they were also very good managers. They were puzzled why the Chinese government would have believed the transfer of the province back to them was practically guaranteed.
I was most puzzled by my own reaction. No matter how American I was—or wanted to be—China was, in my heart, my homeland. In my opinion, what the Allies had done to China was wrong. That meant I was not a patriotic American. I resented what Woodrow Wilson had done.
What would Edward have thought of that? I could no longer guess. We had once been able to guess what the other was thinking. Now that he had been dead longer than we had known each other, I felt I had hardly known him. I knew less and less of him, because what I wished I had known grew vast. He would always remain deeply loved, the romantic who saved my life, the one who knew me best and laid to rest all doubts that he truly loved me.
Through Little Flora, he returned to me. I thought of him when little moments caught me by surprise, and I thought of them as his moments. This morning, it was a fly that had landed on Little Flora’s toast. She asked why I said the fly was dirty when he was washing his hands. She transformed what might be ordinary and annoying into his humor and new wonder. Edward would have laughed so many times. I could imagine that clearly.
In appearance and manner, Little Flora was Edward’s child. Her lank hair was his shade of ripe wheat with its variations in shadow and sun. It swung as she ran on her sturdy legs. Her hazel eyes were set deep. She had his thin ears, which were a nearly transparent pink. He had teased me that she had my expressions: the frown of worry, a different frown for displeasure, the reluctant smile, the stiff stubborn chin, the openmouthed surprise.
One day I watched her pluck a hydrangea ball in the garden and examine its hundreds of petals. She pressed it with her palms, peered inside, and then held it up, as if she had discovered the secret of life. Edward had shown me that same look when he examined my face.
I wanted to give her my best qualities—my honesty, persistence, and curious mind. I did not want her to have my worst, the contradictions that also existed in me: my dishonesty, hopelessness, and skeptical mind. I did not want her to waver, as I had, between what she believed to be true of herself and who others thought she should be. She would not be a captive figure in a painting, like my mother had been.
Before she was born, I believed she would be the girl I was supposed to have been. But she was not. She was her own self-being. How lucky I was.
WE HAD THREE unexpected visitors, who came on the most ordinary of days.
It was September 16, in the hot mid-afternoon. We were in the garden, under the shade of the elm tree. Little Ram had planted a lawn that ringed the tree. The violets I had planted over Edward’s grave three and a half years ago had gone wild and ran under the stone bench, around the lawn, and up the path to the house. We had brought out a sofa and two wicker chairs, small tables, and a quilt. Our picnic was over and I was on the sofa reading a story in a magazine. Little Flora was napping with her head in my lap. She wore two periwinkle ribbons in her hair. Magic Gourd was furiously fanning herself. The amah had fallen asleep, still holding her knitting needles and the beginning of Little Flora’s new dress. Above the whirring sounds of summer insects, we heard the crunch of wheels over gravel, a door slam, and voices. Little Ram gave a shout, and a moment later, he was running toward us. He had only enough time to say that three people had pushed their way through the gate and demanded to see me immediately.
There they stood, three Westerners in clothes unsuited for a hot day: a tall man with spectacles and a mustache, a woman with a mannish jaw and high-rounded brow, and a younger woman with blond hair and a bland face. Her eyes darted nervously at Flora and me. I did not invite them into the shade. I lifted Flora and put her against me. She awoke and made small protests as she was dragged away from dreams.
”Are you Minerva Lamp Ivory?” the man said. And when I affirmed that I was, the square-jawed woman said, “That is a lie. This is Minerva Lamp Ivory.” She pointed to the younger woman. “And Bosson Edward Ivory III was her husband.”
Edward was right in how he had described Minerva. There was nothing about her that would have bound him to her. Her eyes showed no spark or intelligence, hardly any expression other than puzzlement and discomfort. Her lips were pressed tightly in the manner of a child who had been told to be quiet. She appeared to be thirty-five, although I knew she was younger, and she was dressed like a schoolgirl in a white blouse and gray pleated skirt. A damp fringe of pale blond hair lay flattened against her forehead.
The man introduced himself as an American lawyer in Shanghai, Mr. Tillman. He handed me a document with blocks of tiny black words, and pronounced in an unemotional voice the charges against me:
IMPERSONATION OF BOSSON EDWARD IVORY’S WIFE, MINERVA LAMP IVORY, EMBEZZLEMENT, FRAUD, AND THEFT, AND THE UNLAWFUL POSSESSION OF FLORA VIOLET IVORY, DAUGHTER OF BOSSON EDWARD IVORY III AND MINERVA LAMP IVORY.
I had to use all my wits to not appear shaken. I had expected this day, had imagined many versions of it. “You are here uninvited and must leave,” I said. “If you wish to discuss anything, we can arrange to do so at your lawyer’s offices.” I gestured toward the direction of the gate and then let Magic Gourd know in a few words what was happening and that we should hurry to the house and have Little Ram and Bright lock the doors. I started to leave, and Tillman blocked my way and commanded in English that I could not take the child. Magic Gourd gathered herself up, as if she could stretch and become his height. “Fuck your mother and your dog,” she said in Chinese. Little Flora told Magic Gourd in Chinese that she had spoken bad words. Magic Gourd pointed to the three people and said, “They are bad people and you should tell them to leave.”
Flora twisted around to look at them and repeated Magic Gourd’s Chinese words. The two women were startled. Flora turned back and wrapped her arms around my neck and made a few snuffling complaints about the sun. I whispered that as soon as the people went away, we could go to the ice cream shop.
Flora looked up at them and said in English, “Go away.” Again, the women were stunned. Little Flora had the powers of a goblin. The older woman nudged the younger one.
“Flora,” Minerva said weakly, and took a step toward us. Little Flora eyed her with suspicion.
“Don’t you dare come near my child,” I said. “You frighten
her.”
“We have proof that you are not the mother of this child,” the lawyer said in his laconic voice. He drew out two pieces of paper. “This is the birth certificate of Minerva Lamp Ivory.” He handed it to me and I let it fall to the ground. “And this is Minerva Lamp Ivory.” He gestured toward blank-eyed Minerva and then retrieved the paper.
The older woman broke in: “You will find my name recorded there as Minerva’s mother. Mildred Racine Lamp.” She smiled. “There is no question that I am not your mother.”
“I am glad to hear it, Mrs. Lamp.” I received the reaction I intended.
Mr. Tillman pulled out another piece of paper. “This is the birth certificate for Flora Violet Ivory.” I refused to look at it. “The father is Bosson Edward Ivory III. The recorded name of the mother is Minerva Lamp Ivory. I think you have seen this document before. We received it from the American Consulate.”
I spoke directly to Minerva. She was the weak one. “Do you claim you gave birth to my daughter while you were in New York? Did she spill from your womb? By what religious miracle?”
Minerva started to speak and her mother said that the lawyer should speak for her. “We are referring to the legal record, not biology,” Tillman said. “Do you dispute that the names on the documents were not the recorded ones. If so, that will be the assertion you will have to defend in the American Court in Shanghai.”
“What you assert to do is to steal my child.” I saw that Mrs. Lamp was wearing a necklace with a small silver cross. “That is evil condemned by God.”
“Who are you to accuse us of evil?” Mrs. Lamp said. “You stole Minerva’s name to steal Edward’s money. Minerva Ivory—it’s on Edward’s passport, the birth certificate, and the bank account. Minerva Ivory, wife of Bosson Edward Ivory III. We have the marriage certificate. You were his half-Chinese mistress—a woman who lured him to become his concubine. That’s the word you use here, isn’t it?”