Dreams of Joy (18 page)

Chairman Mao is against all religions, whether Chinese or Western, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. One-Goders like me have been told to “walk the road of socialism,” “expose rightist elements hiding behind
the veil of Christianity,” and “resolutely struggle against anti-Communist, anti-socialist activities conducted by reactionaries, vagabonds, and wicked elements using the fronts of church or free preaching.” They can tell me what to do, but they can’t keep me from praying.

I tell Him about the loneliness I feel for places and people that are lost to me. I ask about Joy. Does she miss Chinatown as I missed Shanghai as a young woman in a new country? Does she miss her grandparents, her aunt and uncle, her mother and father as I’ve missed my parents, my sister, and Sam? I let the grief I feel for Sam well up inside me. My head hangs low, my shoulders sink, and my back weakens.

Maybe it’s better to be in Shanghai. At home, everything would have been a reminder of him: his recliner, his favorite bowl, his clothes, which still hang in the closet where he committed suicide. If I left my house in Chinatown, I’d see the places we went together, the café where we worked, the beach where we picnicked. I wouldn’t want to turn on the television either, because I wouldn’t want to see any of the shows we watched together. And what if I heard one of our favorite songs on the radio? Any one of these things would have been devastating. But I’m in Shanghai now. I can’t turn back the clock, change the present, or influence the future.

I end with a special plea for God to watch over my daughter and Z.G. I haven’t once forgotten that his servants said he was in trouble, so wherever they are, I hope he’s protecting her. I recite the Lord’s Prayer and then I get up. A knife grinder rolls his cart down an alley to my right, shaking metal rattles and calling, “Sharpen your scissors to snip away bad fortune. Make your cleavers sharp enough to cut through all disasters.”

The bus is crowded, as usual. I get off at my stop and then hurry to our neighborhood’s political meeting. I’ve been told I’ve done a good job “participating actively” in what I can only call brainwashing. I listen to the lessons, recite slogans in a loud voice, and join others in criticizing a neighbor for his bourgeois behavior and someone else for her right-leaning tendencies. I keep my actual thoughts to myself. In my own neighborhood, I can’t masquerade as an illiterate paper collector. My neighbors know about my decadent past and my long sojourn in the West. I’m considered a person with “a historical problem.” I could be attacked at any moment, but, as Dun has advised me, the more I go along with everything that’s drilled into me, the better off I’ll be. The more I confess—and how easy it is, really—the more I’m trusted.

The streets are mostly empty as I start home. If I had to give a single example that shows how much Shanghai has changed, it’s that the city is asleep by nine in the evening. Even cars are not allowed on the streets after nine unless they have a special permit. As soon as I get home, I check the table by the front door to see if I’ve received any mail. I’ve been waiting such a long time to hear from May that I’ve nearly given up hope, but tonight there’s a package with handwriting I don’t recognize. The postmark shows that it’s come from Wah Hong Village. The box has been opened and carelessly resealed. I grab it, run upstairs to my room, and lock the door.

I rip off the paper. The box contains some clothes and other items. An envelope with May’s handwriting sits on top. I open the letter and read just the first line—“Good news! A letter has come from Joy”—before quickly searching through the box for another envelope with my daughter’s handwriting. I find some sweaters, a packet of sanitary supplies, and the hat with feathers I wore out of China many years ago. I’ll be grateful for the sweaters this winter, if I’m still here. The pads are a true blessing compared with what I’ve found at the local dry-goods store. But I don’t find Joy’s letter. I pick up the hat. I hid our coaching papers in its lining when we arrived at Angel Island, and later I hid money there. It took me a minute, but only I would understand the significance of this particular hat. I carefully peel back the lining and pull out a twenty-dollar bill and two more envelopes, neither with writing on them.

I open one of the envelopes, and there’s my daughter’s precise handwriting. The letter begins, “Dear Pearl and May,” as though we’re friends and not her mother and aunt. Her formality is like a knife in my heart.

I run a finger over Joy’s words and try to imagine her as she wrote them. Did she cry as I’m crying now? She’s so sure of herself, but anyone can be sure at nineteen. How can she possibly say she never felt at home in Chinatown? We did everything—
everything
—to give her a good home, so my delight at reading my daughter’s letter is tempered with disappointment. It’s with that feeling that I open the other envelope.

I rifle through the things May sent to find her original letter. It’s been written in a style to get past the censors. It contains innocuous news about Chinatown, the weather, and a dinner she went to where the hostess
served a green Jell-O mold with bananas. Not once did May mention Hollywood, her own business, or anything about herself in either letter. I don’t take that to mean she’s miraculously changed.

Then I go back to Joy’s letter and read it several more times. It doesn’t bring me any closer to finding her, but I’m elated to have heard from her, relieved that May and I will be able to communicate, and awfully happy to have seen Auntie Hu too. What a day this has been, after so many weeks of monotony.

I get up off the bed and add the poster I salvaged to a collection of others I’ve hidden in my closet. I place the fragments of my sister’s and my eyes, ears, and mouths in a pear-wood box tucked under my bed. I’m taking a risk keeping these memories of the past, but I can’t help myself. If Z.G. can have framed posters on his walls, why can’t I keep these things in my room? I know the answers too well: Z.G. may be in trouble, but he’s still important, and this isn’t even
my
room anymore. So where will I hide Joy’s and May’s letters? For now I tuck them back in the hat and put it on an upper shelf in my closet.

Today’s visit to Auntie Hu and the blast of hope I’ve received from my daughter have revitalized me. I peel off my work clothes, leave them in a rumpled pile on the floor, and take a bath. Feeling inspired, I go through my closet and drawers again. I put on a custom-made bra and panties in soft pink silk edged with handmade French lace. Over these, I slip a dress of crimson wool that was made for me by Madame Garnett, who once was one of the finest seamstresses in the city. The dress fits perfectly, but what was elegant and beautifully made twenty years ago is now long out of fashion. I put on a pair of alligator pumps that have turned a warm amber hue from age. The silk and wool are soft on my skin after the coarseness of my work clothes. My jade bracelet feels cool and heavy on my wrist.

When I go back downstairs, I try to look at everything from Joy’s perspective. Although I still don’t know where she is, I have renewed faith that she’s coming back here, and soon. When she does, I want the house to look good. Auntie Hu was right; I just hadn’t analyzed it properly before. The boarders have lived here twenty years, but they haven’t sold or thrown away any of my family’s belongings as far as I can tell. That doesn’t mean they’ve taken good care of things either. The wallpaper is stained, dirty, and torn in places. The rugs, draperies, and upholstery are
all in terrible shape. But I’m back now, and I’m going to follow Auntie Hu’s advice. On my next free day, I’ll visit a pawnshop and a flea market. I’m going to buy some things for the house and get myself a camera. I remember how strict the guards were on the train, closing the shades so people couldn’t see bridges or military installations. I don’t know what would happen if, for example, I tried to take a photo of the navy ships moored at the Bund, but I don’t plan on doing that. If I can, I’ll find a place to develop my photographs so I can send them to May. In the meantime, looking through a lens again will give me pleasure. I’m also going to complete what I started by accident this morning: clean the house. I’ll do it carefully, when the public rooms are empty. Maybe the boarders will notice. Maybe they won’t.

The squabbling in the kitchen that started this morning continues for the evening meal. The professor stands at the stove making a pot of noodles.

“You’re taking too long,” one of the former dancing girls complains.

“And you’ve made too much food for just one person,” her roommate observes. “You shouldn’t be so wasteful.”

“I’m not being wasteful,” he responds, as he ladles the soup into two bowls and puts them on one of my mother’s trays along with two pairs of chopsticks and two porcelain soupspoons. He looks at me and asks, “Would you care to join me for noodles in the second-floor pavilion?”

The silence this morning when they saw me cleaning the spot on the floor is nothing like the silence that freezes everyone now. Then they’re all squawking at once.

“The second-floor pavilion is your bedroom!”

“You never share your noodles with us!”

“You have no socialist spirit!”

Cook stops their twittering with a stern rebuke directed at me. “Little Miss, bad ways will not be tolerated in this house.”

I don’t say a word as I follow Dun out the door and upstairs to the pavilion. I haven’t been in this room since my parents carved up the house to rent to boarders, but here is another oasis in the sea of communist gray that Shanghai has become. My mother must have felt sorry for her poor student renter, because he has some pieces of furniture that I thought had long ago been sold. The bed is neatly made, and the shelves are filled with books. He also has an old typewriter with English
letters and a phonograph, which I remember from when May and I were kids.

Dun sets the tray on the table, which also functions as a desk. He gestures for me to sit in the chair, and then he pulls over a stool.

“I hope we don’t get in trouble,” he says. “I don’t want you to be reported to the block committee.” What he says next is even more troublesome. “You look beautiful tonight.”

I’m a recent widow. I should get right up and go back to my room. Instead, I take a different approach. Dun and I are friends. That’s all we can be.

“Thank you,” I say, acknowledging his compliment as though it had come from Auntie Hu or even Cook. “And thank you for inviting me to dinner.”

“Would you care for a glass of wine?”

He opens the window and brings in a bottle of Lotus wine, which has been chilling on the sill. The flavor is light on my tongue, but it instantly spreads warmth through my chest. We eat in companionable silence for a while. Dun is a kind man—dignified and gentle. He has an elegance about him that surprises me when so much of the city has turned uniformed and dreary. In another lifetime—if things had been different—I might have married someone like him.

When the other residents turn on the radio in the salon for the nightly Russian-language lesson, I push back my chair to leave. I don’t have an interest in learning Russian, just as I have no interest in going to see a Russian film in one of the movie palaces where May and I fell in love with
Haolaiwu
. But we’re all supposed to want to learn from Old Big Brother—art, science, everything—so in the evenings we learn Russian from the radio. If we have any time left after that, then we can engage in political study, write letters, or mend clothes.

“Before you go,” Dun says, “I was wondering if you would consider giving me English lessons.”

“English lessons? Wouldn’t that be worse than having a woman in your room?”

He ignores my question. “Your mother told me you used to give English lessons. When I was a student, English literature was my subject. Now I teach the literature of socialism and communism—
The Grapes of Wrath
and books like that. Sadly, my English is not as good as it once was.”

“Why does it matter?”

“Because it will help me teach, and I like to think I’m a good teacher.” He allows himself a small smile. “And one day I hope to go to America.”