Shanghai Girls (14 page)

May and I use the complexity, simplicity, or idiocy of these questions to prolong our stays. To the question “Did you have a dog in China?” May answers yes and I answer no. At our hearings two weeks later, the inspectors for each of our interrogations confront us with this discrepancy. May sticks with our story that we owned a dog, while I explain that we once had a dog but our father killed it so we could eat it for our last meal in China. In the next hearing, the inspectors announce that we’re both right: the Chin family owned a dog but it was eaten before our departure. The truth is we never had a dog and Cook never served dog—ours or anyone else’s—in our home. May and I laugh for hours about our tiny triumph.

“Where did you keep the kerosene lamp in your home?” Chairman Plumb asks one day. We had electricity in Shanghai, but I tell him that we kept the kerosene lamp on the left side of the table, while May says that it was kept on the right.

Let’s just say these are not the brightest men. In our Chinese jackets, they don’t notice the baby growing inside May or the pillow and bunched up clothes I shove into my pants. After Chinese New Year, I begin to waddle in and out of the interrogation room and exaggerate my efforts at sitting and rising. Naturally, this brings a new round of questions. Am I sure I got pregnant on the one night I spent with my husband? Am I positive of the date? Mightn’t there have been someone else? Was I a prostitute in my home country? Is my baby’s father who I say he is?

Chairman Plumb opens Sam’s file and shows me a photograph of a boy of seven. “Is this your husband?”

I study the photograph. It’s a little boy. It could be Sam when he went back to China with his parents in 1920; it could be someone else. “Yes, that’s my husband.”

The recorder keeps typing, our files keep expanding, and along the way I learn quite a bit about my father-in-law, Sam, Vernon, and the Louie family’s businesses.

“It says here that your father-in-law was born in San Francisco in 1871,” Chairman Plumb says as he leafs through Old Man Louie’s file. “That would make him sixty-seven years old. His father was a merchant. Are these facts correct?”

From the coaching book, I’d learned everything but the year of Old Man Louie’s birth. I take a chance and answer “Yes.”

“It says here he married a natural-footed woman in San Francisco in 1904.”

“I haven’t met her yet, but I’ve heard she has natural feet.”

“In 1907 they went to China, where their first son was born. They left him in the home village for eleven years before bringing him here.”

At this, Mr. White leans over and whispers in his superior’s ear. They both shuffle through the files. Mr. White then points to something on one of the pages. Chairman Plumb nods and says, “Your alleged mother-in-law has five sons. Why did she have only sons? Why were they all born in China? Doesn’t that seem suspicious to you?”

“Actually, the youngest son was born in Los Angeles,” I offer helpfully.

Chairman Plumb gives me a look. “Why would your in-laws leave four sons in China before bringing them here?”

I’ve wondered the same thing, but I recite what I memorized: “My husband’s brothers grew up in Wah Hong Village because it was cheaper than Los Angeles. My husband was sent back to China to meet his grandparents, learn the home language and traditions, and make offerings to the Louie family ancestors on his father’s behalf.”

“Have you met the brothers?”

“Only the one named Vernon. The rest not.”

Chairman Plumb asks, “If your in-laws were together in Los Angeles, why did they wait eleven more years to have a last child?”

I don’t know the answer to this, but I pat my stomach and say, “Some women don’t take the proper herbs, eat the proper foods, or follow the proper rules for their
chi
to accept sons from their husbands.”

My backward-village answer satisfies my questioners for the day, but a week later their thoughts turn to my father-in-law’s occupation, trying to make sure he isn’t in the prohibited class of laborer. During the past twenty years, Old Man Louie opened several businesses in Los Angeles. Currently, he has just one store.

“What’s the name of the shop and what does he sell?” Chairman Plumb asks.

I dutifully recite my answer. “It’s called the Golden Lantern. He sells Chinese and Japanese goods, including furniture, silks, rugs, slippers, and porcelains, with a value of fifty thousand dollars.” Just having that number in my mouth is like sucking on sugarcane.

“Fifty thousand dollars?” Chairman Plumb marvels, equally impressed. “That’s a lot of money.”

Again, he and Mr. White put their heads together, this time to talk about the severity of their country’s depression. I pretend not to listen. They check Old Man Louie’s file, and I hear them say that, later this year, he plans to move his original store and open an additional two shops, a ride for tourists, and a restaurant. I rub my fake belly and feign disinterest when Mr. White explains the Louie family’s situation.

“Our colleagues in Los Angeles visit the Louies every six months,” he says. “They’ve never seen a connection between your father-in-law and a laundry, lottery, lodging house, barbershop, pool or gambling hall, or anything else objectionable. Nor has anyone ever reported seeing him do manual labor. In other words, he appears to be a merchant of good standing in the community.”

What I learn in my next interrogation, as Mr. White reads aloud in English portions of Sam’s and his father’s transcripts, which are translated into Sze Yup by yet another interpreter who’s been sent to cover the hearing, absolutely stuns me. Old Man Louie reported to inspectors that his business lost two thousand dollars a year from 1930 through 1933. That was a huge amount of money in Shanghai. Just one year’s worth of that money would have saved my family: my father’s business, the house, and May’s and my savings. Yet Old Man Louie still managed to come to China to buy wives for his sons.

“The family has to be rich with hidden wealth,” May says that night.

Still, it all seems muddled and deliberately confused and confusing. Is Old Man Louie, whose file is only slightly larger than mine after having passed through this station numerous times, as much of a liar as May and I are?

One day Chairman Plumb finally loses his patience, slams his fist on the table, and demands, “How is it that you’re claiming to be the wife of a legally domiciled merchant
and
the wife of an American citizen? These are two different things, and only one is needed.”

I’ve asked myself the same question many times these past months, and I still don’t know the answer.

Sisters in Blood

A COUPLE OF
weeks later, I wake in the middle of the night from one of my bad dreams. Usually May is at my side, comforting me. But she isn’t there. I roll over, expecting to see her in the bunk across from mine. She isn’t there either. I lie still and listen. I don’t hear anyone weeping, whispering protective incantations, or padding across the dormitory floor, which means it has to be very late. Where’s May?

Lately, she’s had as much trouble sleeping as I do. “Your son likes to kick me as soon as I lie down and there’s no room inside me anymore for him and me. I need to go to the toilet all the time,” she confided a week ago with such tenderness—as if peeing is such a precious gift—that I couldn’t help but love her and the infant she carried for me. Still, we’ve promised each other that we won’t go alone to the toilets. I reach for my clothes and my pillow baby. Even this late at night, I can’t risk being seen not looking pregnant. I button my jacket over my fake belly and get up.

She isn’t in the toilets, so I move on to the showers. When I enter, my chest freezes and my stomach clenches. The room couldn’t look more different from the one in my dreams, but there on the floor is my sister with her pants off, her face white with pain, and her private parts … exposed, bulging, frightening.

May reaches an arm out to me. “Pearl—”

I run to her side, slipping on the watery tiles.

“Your son is coming,” she says.

“You were supposed to wake me up—”

“I didn’t realize things had gone so far.”

Many times late at night or when we could separate ourselves just a bit when the missionary ladies took us for our weekly walks around the property, we’ve discussed what we’d need when the time came. We’ve made plan after plan and gone over detail after detail. In my mind I tick off the things the women we quizzed had said: you experience pains until pretty soon you feel like you’re going to fart a winter melon, you go to a corner, squat, the baby falls out, you clean it, wrap it, and then rejoin your husband in the paddies with your baby tied to you by a long cloth. Of course, all this is very different from how things were done in Shanghai, where for months women retreated from parties, shopping, and dancing before going to a Western-style hospital, where they were put to sleep. When they woke up, they’d be handed their babies. Then, for the next two or three weeks, they’d stay in the hospital, entertaining visitors and being cherished for bringing a son to the family. Finally, they’d go home in time for the one-month party to introduce the baby to the world and receive praise from family, neighbors, and friends. The Shanghai way isn’t possible here, but as May has said so many times these past few weeks, “Country women have been having babies by themselves forever. If they can do it, I can too. And we’ve been through a lot. I haven’t had a lot to eat, and what I’ve eaten, I’ve thrown up. The baby won’t be big. It will come out easily.”

We’d talked about where the baby could be born and had settled on the showers as the one place where the other women were most afraid to venture. Even so, women sometimes took showers during the day. “I won’t let the baby come out then,” May had promised.

Now, thinking back on it, I realize that May has probably been in labor most of the day, resting on her bunk, her knees up, her legs crossed, keeping the baby inside.

“When did the pains start? How long between them?” I ask, remembering that these are clues to how much longer it will be until the baby breathes air.

“They started this morning. They weren’t so bad, and I knew I had to wait. Suddenly, I started feeling like I needed to use the toilet. The water came out when I came in here.”

That has to be the water soaking my feet and knees.

She clutches my hand when a contraction grips her. Her eyes shut and her face reddens as she swallows her agony. She squeezes my hand, digging her nails into my palm so deeply that I’m the one who wants to scream. When the contraction ends, she takes a breath and her hand relaxes in mine. An hour later, I see the top of the baby’s head.

“Do you think you can squat?” I ask.

May whimpers in response. I get behind her and pull her to a wall so she can prop herself against it. I get between her legs. I clasp my hands before me and close my eyes to gather my courage. I open my eyes, look into my sister’s pained face, and try to put as much conviction as I can into my voice as I repeat to her what she’s said to me so many times these past weeks. “We can do this, May. I know we can.”

When the baby slips out, it isn’t the son that we talked about. It’s a wet, mucus-covered girl—my daughter. She’s tiny, even smaller than I expected. She doesn’t cry. Instead, she makes little sounds like the plaintive calls of a baby bird.

“Let me see.”

I blink and look at my sister. Her hair hangs in wet strings, but all traces of pain have faded from her face. I hand her the baby and stand.

“I’ll be right back,” I say, but May isn’t listening to me. She’s wrapped her arms around the baby, protecting it from the shock of cold air and wiping away the goo from its face with her sleeve. I stare at them for a moment. This is all the time they’ll have together before I take the baby for my own.

As quickly and quietly as I can, I scurry back to the dormitory. I pull out one of the outfits May and I made, a ball of yarn, a small pair of scissors the missionary ladies gave us to help with our handiwork projects, some sanitary supplies, and two towels we bought from the concession stand. I grab the teapot from atop the radiator and hurry back to the showers. By the time I get there, May has expelled the afterbirth. I tie yarn around the umbilical cord and cut it. Then I dampen one end of the clean towel with hot water from the teapot and hand it to May to clean the baby. I use some of the water and the other towel to clean May. The baby was small, so the tearing isn’t all that bad compared with what happened to me down in that area. I hope she’ll heal without stitches. But in truth, what else can I do? I barely know how to sew a seam. How can I stitch my sister’s private parts?

While May dresses the baby, I wipe the floor and wrap the afterbirth in the towels. When everything’s as clean as I can make it, I stuff the soiled things in the trash.

Outside the sky turns pink. We don’t have much time.

“I don’t think I can get up by myself,” May says from the floor. Her pale legs tremble from cold and the exertion she’s been through. She scoots away from the wall, and I lift her to her feet. Blood trickles down her legs and spots the floor.

“Don’t worry,” she says. “Don’t worry. Here. Take her.”

She gives me the baby. I forgot to bring the blanket May knit, and the baby’s arms jerk awkwardly in their sudden freedom. I haven’t carried her inside me all these months, but I instantly love her as my own. I hardly pay attention to May as she puts a belt and napkin in place and pulls on her underwear and pants.

“I’m ready,” she says.

We look around the room. It won’t be a secret that a woman gave birth here. What matters is that no one suspect it was anything out of the ordinary, because I won’t be able to be examined by the station’s doctors.

I’M PROPPED IN
bed, holding my daughter, with May nestled beside me—dozing lightly, her head on my shoulder—when the other women rise. It takes a while before anyone notices us.

“Aiya!
Look who’s come in the night!” Lee-shee squeals excitedly.

The other women and their small children gather around, gently pushing against one another to get a better look.

“Your son arrived!”

“No son. A daughter,” May corrects. Her voice sounds so dreamy from exhaustion that for a second I worry she’ll give us away.

“A little happiness,” Lee-shee says sympathetically, using the traditional phrase to convey the disappointment in the birth of a girl. Then she grins. “But look around. Almost everyone here is a woman, except for the little boys who need their mothers. We must look at this as an auspicious occurrence.”

“It won’t remain auspicious if the baby stays dressed like that,” one of the women says forebodingly.

I look at the baby. Her clothes are the first May and I ever made. The buttons are crooked and the knit hat is lopsided, but apparently these aren’t the problems. The baby needs to be protected from bad elements. The women go away and return with gifts of coins to represent the care of “one hundred friends of the family.” Someone ties a red string in her black hair to give her luck. Then, one after the other, the women sew tiny charms depicting the animals of the zodiac onto her hat and the other clothes we made to protect her from evil spirits, bad omens, and sickness.

A collection is taken up, and someone is elected to give the money to one of the Chinese cooks to make a bowl of mother’s soup of pickled pigs’ feet, ginger, peanuts, and whatever hard liquor he can find. (Shaohsing wine is best, but whiskey will do if that’s all he has.) A new mother is depleted and suffers from too much cold
yin
. Most of the soup’s ingredients are considered hot and builders of
yang
. I’m told they will help shrink my womb, rid my body of stagnant blood, and bring in my milk.

Suddenly, one of the women reaches over and starts to unbutton my jacket. “You’ve got to feed the baby. We’ll show you how.”

I gently push away her hand.

“We’re in America now, and my daughter is an American citizen. I will do as the Americans do.”
And modern Shanghainese women too
, I think, remembering all the times May and I modeled for companies advertising powdered baby milk. “She will have baby formula.”

As usual, I translate the exchange from Sze Yup into the Wu dialect so May will understand.

“Tell her the bottles and the formula are in a package under the bed,” May rattles off quickly. “Tell her I don’t want to leave you, but if one of them could help us, I’d be grateful.”

While one of the women takes a bottle and mixes some of the powdered formula we bought from the concession stand with water from the teapot and places it on the windowsill to cool, Lee-shee and the others discuss the problem of the baby’s name.

“Confucius said that if names are not correct, then language and society are not in accordance with the truth of things,” she explains. “The child’s grandfather or someone of great distinction needs to name your baby.” She purses her lips, looks around, and observes theatrically, “But I don’t see anyone around here like that. Perhaps it’s just as well. You have a daughter. Such a disappointment! You wouldn’t want her to be named Flea, That Dog, or Dustpan, like my father named me.”

Naming is important, but it doesn’t belong to women. Now that we have the opportunity to name a child—a girl at that—we find it’s a lot harder than it seems. We can’t name the girl after my mother or even use our family name as her given name to honor my father, because these options are considered taboo. We can’t name her after a heroine or goddess either, because that’s presumptuous and disrespectful.

“I like Jade, because it conveys strength and beauty,” suggests a young detainee.

“The flower names are pretty. Orchid, Lily, Iris—”

“Oh, but they’re such common names and too frail,” Lee-shee objects. “Look where this baby was born. Shouldn’t she be named something like Mei Gwok?”

Mei Gwok
means
Beautiful Country
, which is the official Cantonese name for the United States, but it doesn’t sound melodious or pretty.

“You can’t go wrong using a two-character generational name,” another woman offers. This appeals to me, since May and I share the generational name
Long—
Dragon. “You could use
De—
Virtue—as the base and then name each daughter Kind Virtue, Moon Virtue, Wise Virtue—”

“Too much trouble!” Lee-shee exclaims. “I named my daughters Girl One, Girl Two, Girl Three. My sons are Son One, Son Two, Son Three. Their cousins are Cousins Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, and so on. Giving numbers reminds everyone where a child fits in the family.”

What she leaves unsaid is, Who wants to be bothered with names when too often children die? I don’t know how much of this May follows or how much she understands, but when she speaks the others quiet.

“Only one name is right for this baby,” May says in English. “She should be called Joy. We’re in America now. Let’s not burden her with the past.”

When May moves her head to look up at me, I realize that all this time she’s been staring at the baby. Even though I cradle Joy, May has managed to be physically closer to her than I have. She draws herself up, reaches around her neck, and takes off the pouch with the three coppers, three sesame seeds, and three green beans Mama gave her to keep her safe. My hand goes to the pouch I still wear. I don’t believe it protected me, but I still wear it and the jade bracelet as physical reminders of my mother. May places the leather string around Joy’s head and tucks the pouch inside her clothes.

“To keep you safe wherever you go,” May whispers.

The women around us weep at the beauty of her words and gesture, calling her a good auntie, but we all know this gift will be taken off Joy to keep her from strangling.