Shanghai Girls (11 page)

“Tell them what I told you to say and everything will be fine,” I whisper to May as we wait in the cage. “Then we’ll be able to leave this place.”

She nods thoughtfully. When the guard calls her name, I watch her enter a room and the door close. A moment later, the same guard motions me to another room. I put on a false smile, straighten my dress, and stride in with what I hope is an air of confidence. Two white men—one nearly bald, one with a mustache, and both wearing glasses—sit behind a table in the windowless room. They don’t return my smile. At a table set to the side, another white man busily cleans the keys on his typewriter. A Chinese man in an ill-fitting Western-style suit studies a file in his hands, looks at me and then back at the file.

“I see you were born in Yin Bo Village,” he says to me in Sze Yup as he passes the file to the bald man. “I am happy to speak to you in the dialect of the Four Districts.”

Before I can say that I know English, the bald man says, “Tell her to sit down.”

The interpreter motions to a chair. “I am Louie Fon,” he goes on in Sze Yup. “Your husband and I share the same clan name and the same home district.” He sits to my left. “The bald one before you is Chairman Plumb. The other one is Mr. White. The recorder is Mr. Hemstreet. You don’t have to concern yourself with him—”

“Let’s get on with it,” Chairman Plumb cuts in. “Ask her …”

Things go well at first. I know the date and year of my birth in both the Western and the lunar calendars. They ask the name of the village where I was born. Then I name the village where Sam was born and the day we were married. I recite the address where Sam and his family live in Los Angeles. And then …

“How many trees are in front of your alleged husband’s home in his village?”

When I don’t answer right away, four sets of eyes stare at me—curious, bored, triumphant, snide.

“Five trees stand before the house,” I answer, remembering what I read in the coaching book. “The right side of the house has no trees. A ginkgo tree grows on the left.”

“And how many rooms are in the house where your natal family lives?”

I’ve been so focused on the answers from Sam’s coaching book that I haven’t considered they’d ask anything so detailed about me. I try to think what the right answer would be. Count the bathrooms or not? Count before or after the rooms were divided for our boarders?

“Six main rooms—”

Before I can explain myself, they ask how many guests were at my “alleged” wedding.

“Seven,” I answer.

“Did you and your guests have anything to eat?”

“We had rice and eight dishes. It was a hotel dinner, not a banquet.”

“How was the table set?”

“Western style but with chopsticks.”

“Did you serve betel nuts to the guests? Did you pour tea?”

I want to say I’m not a country bumpkin, so under no circumstances would I have served betel nuts. I would have poured tea if I’d had the wedding I’d dreamed of, but that night was hardly festive. I remember how dismissively Old Man Louie waved away my father’s suggestion that May and I perform the ritual.

“It was a civilized wedding,” I say. “Very Western—”

“Did you worship your ancestors as part of the ceremony?”

“Of course not. I’m Christian.”

“Do you have any documentary evidence for your alleged marriage?”

“In my luggage.”

“Is your husband expecting you?”

This question momentarily takes me aback. Old Man Louie and his sons know we didn’t show up in Hong Kong to take the ship here with them. They certainly notified the Green Gang that we failed to fulfill our part of the contract, but did they tell the Angel Island inspectors any of that? And do the old man and his sons still expect us to arrive?

“My sister and I were delayed in our travels because of the monkey people,” I say. “Our husbands long for our arrival.”

After the interpreter relays this, the two inspectors speak between themselves, not knowing I understand every word.

“She seems honest enough,” Mr. White says. “But her papers claim she’s the wife of a legally domiciled merchant
and
the wife of an American citizen. She can’t be both.”

“This could be an error in past paperwork. Either way, we’d have to let her in.” Chairman Plumb grimaces sourly. “But she hasn’t proven
either
status. And look at her face. Does she look like a merchant’s wife to you? She’s so dark. I bet she’s worked in rice paddies her entire life.”

There it is. The same old complaint. I look down, afraid they’ll see the flush creep up my neck. I think of the girl on the boat we took to Hong Kong and how the pirate appraised her. Now these men are doing the same with me. Do I really appear that country?

“But consider how she’s dressed. She doesn’t look like a laborer’s wife either,” Mr. White points out.

Chairman Plumb thrums his fingers on the table. “I’ll let her through, but I want to see her marriage certificate showing she’s married to a legitimate merchant or something proving her husband’s citizenship.” He looks at the interpreter. “On what day are the women allowed to go to the wharf to get things from their luggage?”

“Tuesdays, sir.”

“All right then. Let’s hold her over until next week. Tell her to bring her marriage certificate next time.” He nods to the recorder and begins dictating a synopsis, ending with “We are deferring the case for further investigation.”

FOR FIVE DAYS
May and I wear the same clothes. At night we wash our underwear and hang it to dry with the laundry the other women drape above our heads. We still have a little money to buy toothpaste and other toiletries from a small concession stand open during mealtimes. When Tuesday arrives, we line up with women who want to get things from their luggage and are escorted by white missionary women to a warehouse at the end of the wharf May and I get our marriage papers, and then I check to see if the coaching book is still hidden. It is. No one has bothered to search inside my hat with the feathers. I now pull at the lining and hide it properly. Then I grab fresh undergarments and a change of clothes.

Every morning, embarrassed to be seen naked by the other women, I dress under the blanket on my bed. Then I wait to be called back to the hearing room, but no one comes for us. If we aren’t called by nine, then we know nothing will happen that day. When afternoon arrives, a new feeling of anticipation and dread fills the room. At precisely four, the guard enters and calls,
“Sai gaai
,” which is a bastardization of one of the Cantonese dialects for
hou sai gaai
, which means
good fortune
. Then he lists the names of those allowed to get on the boat to complete the final leg of their journey to America. Once the guard approaches a woman and rubs his eyes as though he were crying. He laughs when he tells her she’s being sent back to China. We never learn the reason for her deportation.

Over the next few days, we watch as the women who arrived the same day we did are allowed to continue to San Francisco. We see new women land, have their hearings, and leave. Still no one comes for us. Every night, after another disgusting meal of pig knuckles or stewed salted fish with fermented bean curd, I take off my dress under the blanket, hang it on the line above me, and try to sleep, knowing I’ll be locked in this room until morning.

But the feeling of being locked in and trapped extends far, far beyond this room. In a different time, in a different place, and with more money maybe May and I could have escaped our futures. But here we don’t have choice or freedom. Our whole lives up to now have been lost to us. We know no one in the United States other than our husbands and our father-in-law. Baba had said that if we went to Los Angeles, we’d live in beautiful houses, have servants, see movie stars, so maybe this is the path May and I were supposed to be on all along. We could consider ourselves lucky we’ve married so well. Women—whether in arranged marriages or not, whether in the past or right now, in 1937—have married for money and all that it brings. Still, I have a secret plan. When May and I get to Los Angeles, we’ll skim money from what our husbands give us to buy clothes and shoes, beautify ourselves, and keep our households running, and use it to escape. I lie on the wire mesh that is my bed, listen to the low, mournful sound of the foghorn and to the women in the room cry snore, or whisper among themselves, and plot how May and I will leave Los Angeles one day and disappear to New ’York or Paris, cities we’ve been told are equal to Shanghai in splendor, culture, and riches.

TWO TUESDAYS LATER
, when we’re allowed to retrieve things from our luggage again, May fishes out the peasant clothes she bought for us in Hangchow. We wear them in the afternoons and at night, because it’s too cold and dirty in this place to wear our good dresses, which we put on in the mornings in case we’re called to finish our hearings. In the middle of the following week, May takes to wearing our travel clothes all the time. “What if we’re called for an interview?” I ask. We sit on our top bunks with a little valley of space separating us and clothes hanging like banners all around us. “Do you think this is so different from Shanghai? Our clothes matter. Those who are well dressed leave sooner than those who look like …” My voice trails off.

“Peasants?” May finishes for me. She folds her arms over her stomach and lets her shoulders fall. She doesn’t look like herself. We’ve been here a month now, and it feels like all the courage she showed getting me to safety has somehow been sucked out of her. Her skin looks pasty. She isn’t terribly interested in washing her hair, which, like mine, has grown out into a straggly mess.

“Come on, May, you have to try. We won’t be here much longer. Take a shower and put on a dress. You’ll feel better.”

“Why? Just tell me why. I can’t eat their terrible food, so I rarely use their toilets,” she says. “I don’t do anything, so I don’t sweat. But even if I did, why would I take a shower where people can see me? The humiliation is so great I wish I could wear a sack over my head. Besides,” she adds pointedly, “I don’t see you going to the toilets or showers.”

Which is true. Sadness and despair overwhelm those who stay here too long. The cold wind, the foggy days, the shadows on the walls, depress and frighten all of us. In just this month, I’ve seen many women, some who’ve already come and gone, refuse to take showers during their entire stays, and not just because they don’t sweat. Too many women have committed suicide in the showers by hanging or by sharpening chopsticks and driving them through their ears and into their brains. No one wants to go to the showers not only because no one likes to do her private business with others around but because nearly everyone here is afraid of the ghosts of the dead, who, without proper burial rites, refuse to leave the nasty place where they died.

We decide that, from now on, May will go with me to the communal toilets or showers, check to see if they’re empty, and then stand outside the door to keep the other women out. I’ll do the same for her, although I’m not sure why she’s become so modest since arriving here.

AT LAST THE
guard calls us for our interrogations. I run a brush through my hair, take a few sips of cold water to calm myself, and slip on my heels. I glance back to see May trailing after me, looking like a beggar magically dropped here from a Shanghai alley. We wait in the cage until our turns come. This is our last step and then we’ll be transferred to San Francisco. I give May an encouraging smile, which she doesn’t return, and then I follow the guard into the hearing room. Chairman Plumb, Mr. White, and the stenographer are there, but this time I have a new interpreter.

“I’m Lan On Tai,” he says. “From now on you will have a different interpreter for each hearing. They don’t want us to become friends. I will speak to you in Sze Yup. Do you understand, Louie Chin-shee?”

In the old Chinese tradition a married woman is known by her clan name with
shee
attached to it. This practice can be traced back three thousand years to the Chou dynasty and it’s still common with farmers, but I’m from Shanghai!

“That is your name, isn’t it?” the interpreter asks. When I don’t answer right away, he glances at the white men and then back at me. “I shouldn’t tell you this, but your case has problems. It’s best if you accept what’s in your record. Don’t change your story now.”

“But I never said my name was—”

“Sit down!” Chairman Plumb orders. Even though I pretended not to know English during our last meeting and now, after the interpreter’s warning, feel sure I should stick to my feigned ignorance, I obey, hoping that the chairman will believe the tone in his voice scared me. “In your last interview you said you had a civilized wedding, which is why you didn’t worship your ancestors as part of the ceremonies. We have your husband’s file right here, and he says you did worship your ancestors.”

I wait for the interpreter to relay this, then reply, “I told you before, I’m a Christian. I don’t worship ancestors. Perhaps my husband worshipped his after we parted.”

“How long were you together?”

“One night.” Even I know this sounds bad.

“Do you expect us to believe you were married for one day and now your husband has sent for you?”

“Our marriage was arranged.”

“By a matchmaker?”

I try to think how Sam would have responded to this question in his interrogation.

“Yes, a matchmaker.”

The interpreter gives a subtle nod to let me know I answered correctly.

“You said you didn’t serve betel nuts and tea, but your sister says you did,” Chairman Plumb says, tapping another file, which I assume covers May’s case.

As I look at the bald man before me, waiting for the interpreter to finish the translation, I wonder if this is a trick. Why would May have said that? She wouldn’t.

“Neither my sister nor I served tea or betel nuts.”

This is not the answer the two men want. Lan On Tai looks at me with a combination of pity and aggravation.

Chairman Plumb moves on. “You said you had a civilized wedding, but your sister says that neither of you wore a veil.”