Shanghai Girls (3 page)

“Which one?” I ask, breaking my silence.

“I didn’t paint it, but it showed the two of you dancing the tango together. Pearl, you were dipping May back. It was very—”

“I remember that one! Mama was so upset when she saw it. Remember, Pearl?”

I remember all right. Mama was given the poster from the store on Nanking Road where she buys napkins for the monthly visit from the little red sister. She cried and railed and yelled that we were embarrassing the Chin family by looking and acting like White Russian taxi dancers. We tried to explain that beautiful-girl calendars actually express filial piety and traditional values. They are given away at Chinese and Western New Years as incentives, special promotions, or gifts to favored clients. From those good homes, they trickle down to street vendors, who sell them for a few coppers to the poor. We told Mama that a calendar is the most important thing in life for every Chinese, even though we didn’t believe it ourselves. Whether rich or poor, people regulate their lives by the sun, the moon, the stars, and, in Shanghai, by the tide of the Whangpoo. They refuse to enter into a business deal, set a wedding date, or plant a crop without considering the auspiciousness
of feng shui
. All this can be found in the borders of most beautiful-girl calendars, which is why they serve as almanacs for everything good or potentially dangerous in the year to come. At the same time, they are cheap decorations for even the lowest home.

“We’re making people’s lives more beautiful,” May explained to Mama. “That’s why we’re called beautiful girls.” But Mama only calmed down after May pointed out that the advertisement was for cod-liver oil. “We’re keeping children healthy,” May said. “You should be proud of us!”

In the end, Mama hung the calendar in the kitchen next to the phone so she could write important numbers—for the soy-milk vendor, the electrician, Madame Garnet, and the birth dates for all our servants—on our exposed, pale legs and arms. Still, after that incident, we were careful about which posters we brought home and worried about which ones might be given to her by one of the neighborhood tradesmen.

“Lu Hsün said that calendar posters are depraved and disgusting,” May picks up, barely moving her lips so she can keep her smile in place. “He said that the women who pose for them are sick. He said this kind of sickness doesn’t come from society—”

“It comes from the painters,” Z.G. finishes for her. “He considered what we’re doing decadent and said it won’t help the revolution. But tell me, little May, how will the revolution happen without us? Don’t answer. Just sit and be quiet. Otherwise, we’ll be here all night.”

I’m grateful for the silence. In the days before the Republic, I would have already been sent sight unseen to my husband’s home in a red lacquer sedan chair. By now I would have given birth to several children, sons hopefully. But I was born in 1916, the fourth year of the Republic. Footbinding was banned and women’s lives changed. People in Shanghai now consider arranged marriages backward. Everyone wants to marry for love. In the meantime, we believe in free love. Not that I’ve given it freely. I haven’t given it yet at all, but I would if Z.G. asked me to.

He’d positioned me so that my face would be angled to May’s, but he wanted me to look at him. I hold my pose, stare at him, and dream of our future together. Free love is one thing, but I want us to get married. Every night as he paints, I draw on the great festivities I’ve been to and imagine the wedding my father will host for Z.G. and me.

At close to ten, we hear the wonton soup peddler call, “Hot soup to bring sweat, cool the skin and the night.”

Z.G. holds his brush in midair, pretending to consider where next to apply paint, while watching to see which of us will break our pose first.

When the wonton man is just below the window, May jumps up and squeals, “I can’t wait any longer!” She rushes to the window, calls down our usual order, and then lowers a bowl attached to a rope that we’ve made by tying several pairs of our silk stockings together. The wonton man sends up bowl after bowl of soup, which we eat with relish. Then we retake our places and get back to work.

Not long after midnight, Z.G. sets down his brush. “We’re done for tonight,” he says. “I’ll work on the background until the next time you sit for me. Now, let’s go out!”

While he changes into a pin-striped suit, tie, and fedora, May and I stretch to loosen the stiffness from our bodies. We touch up our makeup and run combs through our hair. And then we’re back out on the streets, the three of us linking arms, laughing, and striding down the block, as food vendors call out their special treats.

“Hand-burning hot ginkgo nuts. Every one popped! Every one big!”

“Stewed plums besprinkled with licorice powder. Ah, sweet! Only ten coppers a package!”

We pass watermelon hawkers on nearly every corner, each with his own call, each promising the best, sweetest, juiciest, coldest melon in the city. As tempting as the watermelon sellers are, we ignore them. Too many of them try to make their melons sound heavier by injecting them with water from the river or one of the creeks. Even a single bite could result in dysentery, typhoid, or cholera.

We arrive at the Casanova, where friends will be meeting us later. May and I are recognized as beautiful girls and shown a good table near the dance floor. We order champagne, and Z.G. asks me to dance. I love the way he holds me as we spin across the floor. After a couple of songs, I glance back at our table and see May sitting alone.

“Maybe you should dance with my sister,” I say.

“If you’d like me to,” he answers.

We twirl back to our table. Z.G. takes May’s hand. The orchestra begins a slow tune. May rests her head on his chest as though listening to his heart. Z.G. moves May gracefully through the other couples. Once he catches my eye and smiles. My thoughts are so girlish: our wedding night, our married life together, the children we’ll have.

“Here you are!” I feel a peck on my cheek and look up to see my school friend Betsy Howell. “Have you been waiting long?”

“We just got here. Sit down. Where’s the waiter? We’re going to need more champagne. Have you eaten yet?”

Betsy and I sit shoulder to shoulder, touch glasses, and sip our champagne. Betsy’s an American. Her father works for the State Department. I like her mother and father because they like me and don’t try to prevent Betsy from socializing with Chinese as so many other foreign parents do. Betsy and I got to know each other at the Methodist mission, where she was sent to help the heathens and I’d been sent to learn Western ways. Are we best friends? Not really. May is my best friend. Betsy is a distant second.

“You look nice tonight,” I say. “I love your dress.”

“You should! You helped me buy it. I’d look like an old cow if it weren’t for you.”

Betsy’s a bit on the chunky side, and she’s burdened by one of those practical American mothers who know almost nothing about fashion, so I took Betsy to a seamstress to have some decent clothes made. Tonight she looks quite pretty in a sheath of vermilion satin with a diamond-and-sapphire brooch pinned above her left breast. Blond curls bubble loose on her freckled shoulders.

“Look how sweet they are,” Betsy says, nodding to Z.G. and May.

We watch them dance while we gossip about school friends. When the song ends, Z.G. and May come back to the table. He’s lucky to have three women in his company tonight, and he does the right thing by dancing with one after the other of us. At close to one o’clock, Tommy Hu arrives. Glowing warmth comes to May’s cheeks when she sees him.

Mama has played mah-jongg with his mother for years, and they have always hoped for a match between our families. Mama will be thrilled to hear about this encounter.

At two in the morning, we burst back out onto the street. It’s July, hot and humid. Everyone’s still awake, even children, even the old. It’s time for a snack.

“Will you come with us?” I ask Betsy.

“I don’t know. Where are you going?”

We all look to Z.G. He names a café in the French Concession known as a hangout for intellectuals, artists, and Communists.

Betsy doesn’t hesitate. “Come on then. Let’s take my dad’s car.”

The Shanghai I love is a fluid place, where the most interesting people mingle. Some days Betsy takes me out for American coffee, toast, and butter; sometimes I take Betsy into alleys for
hsiao ch’ih—
little eats, dumplings of glutinous rice wrapped in reed leaves or cakes made from cassia petals and sugar. Betsy’s adventurous when she’s with me; once she accompanied me into the Old Chinese City to buy cheap holiday gifts. Sometimes I’m nervous about entering parks in the International Settlement, which until I turned ten were prohibited to Chinese other than amahs with foreign children or gardeners who tended the grounds. But I’m never scared or nervous when I’m with Betsy, who’s gone into those parks her whole life.

The café is smoky and dark, but we don’t feel out of place in our fancy clothes. We join a group of Z.G.’s friends. Tommy and May push their chairs away from the table so they can talk quietly together and avoid a heated argument about who “owns” our city—the British, Americans, French, or Japanese? We hugely outnumber foreigners, even in the International Settlement, yet we have no rights. May and I don’t worry about things like whether we can testify in court against a foreigner or if they’ll let us into one of their clubs, but Betsy comes from another world.

“By the end of the year,” she says, her eyes clear and impassioned, “over twenty thousand corpses will have been picked up from the International Settlement’s streets. We step over those bodies every day, but I don’t see any of you doing anything about it.”

Betsy believes in the need for change. The question, I suppose, is why does she tolerate May and me when we so deliberately ignore what happens around us?

“Are you asking if we love our country?” Z.G. asks. “There are two kinds of love, wouldn’t you say?
Ai kuo
is the love we feel for our country and our people.
Ai jen
is what I might feel for my lover. One is patriotic, the other romantic.” He glances at me, and I blush. “Can’t we have both?”

We leave the café at close to five in the morning. Betsy waves, gets in her father’s car, and is driven away. We say good night—or good morning—to Z.G. and Tommy, and hail a rickshaw. Once again, we change rickshaws at the border between the French Concession and the International Settlement, and then we clatter down the cobblestones the rest of the way home.

The city, like a great sea, has never gone to sleep. The night ebbs, and now the morning cycles and rhythms begin to flow. Nightsoil men push their carts down the alleyways, calling “Empty your nightstool! Here comes the nightsoil man! Empty your nightstool!” Shanghai may have been one of the first cities to have electricity, gas, telephones, and running water, but we lag behind in sewage removal. Nevertheless, farmers around the country pay premium prices for our nightsoil because it’s known to be rich from our diets. The nightsoil men will be followed by the morning food vendors with their porridges made from the seeds of Job’s tears, apricot kernels, and lotus seeds, their steamed rice cakes made with rugosa rose and white sugar, and their eggs stewed in tea leaves and five spice.

We reach home and pay the rickshaw boy. We lift the latch to the gate and make our way up the path to the front door. The lingering night dampness magnifies the scent of the flowers, shrubs, and trees, making us drunk on the jasmine, magnolia, and dwarf pines our gardener raises. We climb the stone steps and pass under a carved wooden screen that prevents evil spirits from entering the house—in deference to Mama’s superstitions. Our heels sound loud as they hit the parquet floor in the entry. A light is on in the salon to the left. Baba is awake and waiting for us.

“Sit down and don’t speak,” he says, motioning to the settee directly across from him.

I do as I’m told, then fold my hands in my lap and cross my ankles. If we’re in trouble, looking demure will help. The anxious look he’s been wearing these past few weeks has turned into something hard and immobile. The words he next speaks change my life forever.

“I’ve arranged marriages for the two of you,” he says. “The ceremony will take place the day after tomorrow.”

Gold Mountain Men

“
THAT’S NOT FUNNY!
” May laughs lightly.

“I’m not joking,” Baba says. “I’ve arranged marriages for you.”

I’m still having trouble absorbing what he said. “What’s wrong? Is Mama ill?”

“I already told you, Pearl. You need to listen and you’re going to do as I say. I’m the father and you’re my daughters. This is how things are.”

I wish I could convey how absurd he sounds.

“I won’t do it!” May cries indignantly.

I try reason. “Those feudal days are over. It’s not like when you and Mama married.”

“Your mother and I were married in the second year of the Republic,” he says huffily, but that’s hardly the point.

“Yours was an arranged marriage nevertheless,” I counter. “Have you been answering inquiries from a matchmaker about our knitting, sewing, or embroidery skills?” Ridicule creeps into my voice. “For my dowry, have you bought me a nightstool painted with dragon-and-phoenix motifs to symbolize my perfect union? Will you give May a nightstool filled with red eggs to send her in-laws the message that she will have many sons?”

“Say what you want.” Baba shrugs indifferently. “You’re getting married.”

“I won’t do it!” May repeats. She’s always been good with tears, and she lets them flow now. “You can’t make me.”

When Baba ignores her, I understand just how serious this is. He looks at me, and it’s as though he’s seeing me for the first time.

“Don’t tell me you thought you were going to marry for love.” His voice is oddly cruel and triumphant. “No one marries for love. I didn’t.”

I hear a deep intake of breath, turn, and see my mother, still dressed in her pajamas, standing in the doorway. We watch as she sways across the room on her bound feet and sinks into a carved pearwood chair. She clasps her hands and looks down. After a moment, tears fall into her folded hands. No one speaks.

I sit up as straight as I can, so I can look down at my father, knowing he’ll hate that. Then I take May’s hand. We’re strong together, and we have our investments.

“I speak for both of us when I respectfully ask for the money you’ve put away for us.”

A grimace passes over my father’s face.

“We’re old enough now to be on our own,” I continue. “May and I will get an apartment. We’ll earn our own way. We plan to determine our own futures.”

As I speak, May nods and smiles at Baba, but she’s not her usual pretty self Her tears have turned her face splotchy and swollen.

“I don’t want you girls to be on your own like that,” Mama finds the courage to whisper.

“It’s not going to happen anyway,” Baba says. “There is no money—not yours, not mine.”

Again, stunned silence. My sister and mother leave it to me to ask, “What have you done?”

In his desperation, Baba blames us for his problems. “Your mother goes visiting and plays games with her friends. The two of you spend, spend, spend. None of you see what’s happening right under your noses.”

He’s right. Just last night I’d thought that a kind of shabbiness had settled over our house. I’d wondered about the chandelier, the wall sconces, the fan, and …

“Where are our servants? Where are Pansy, Ah Fong, and—”

“I dismissed them. They’re all gone, except for the gardener and Cook.”

Of course he wouldn’t let them go. The garden would die quickly and our neighbors would know something was wrong. And we need Cook. Mama only knows how to supervise. May and I don’t know how to make a single thing. We’ve never worried about it. We never expected that skill would be necessary. But the houseboy Baba’s valet, the two maids, and Cook’s helper? How could Baba hurt so many?

“Did you lose it gambling? Win it back, for God’s sake,” I spit out. “You always do.”

My father may have a public reputation as an important man, but I’ve always seen him as ineffectual and harmless. The way he looks at me now … I see him stripped to his core.

“How bad is it?” I’m angry—how can I not be?—but I feel a creeping sense of pity for my father and, more important, for my mother. What will happen to them? What will happen to all of us?

His head lowers. “The house. The rickshaw business. Your investments. What little savings I had. Everything is gone.” After a long while he looks back up at me, his eyes filled with hopelessness, misery, and pleading.

“There are no happy endings,” Mama says. It’s as if all her dour predictions have finally come to pass. “You can’t fight fate.”

Baba ignores Mama and appeals to my sense of filial piety and my duty as the elder daughter. “Do you want your mother begging on the street? And what about the two of you? As beautiful girls you’re already this close to becoming girls with three holes. The only question that remains is: Will you be kept by one man or fall as low as the whores who ply Blood Alley looking for foreign sailors? Which future do you want?”

I’m educated, but what skills do I have? I teach English to a Japanese captain three mornings a week. May and I sit for artists, but our earnings don’t begin to cover the cost of our dresses, hats, gloves, and shoes. I don’t want any of us to become beggars. And I certainly don’t want May and me to become prostitutes. Whatever happens, I need to protect my sister.

“Who are these grooms?” I ask. “Can we meet them first?”

May’s eyes widen.

“It’s against tradition,” Baba says.

“I won’t marry someone unless I meet him first,” I insist.

“You can’t think I’ll do it.” May says the words, but her voice tells us that she’s given in. We may look and act modern in many ways, but we can’t escape what we are: obedient Chinese daughters.

“They’re Gold Mountain men,” Baba says. “Americans. They’ve traveled to China to find brides. It’s good news, really. Their father’s family comes from the same district as ours. We’re practically related. You don’t have to go back to Los Angeles with your husbands. American Chinese are happy to leave their wives here in China to care for their parents and ancestors, so they can return to their blond
lo fan
mistresses in America. Consider this merely a business deal that will save our family. But if you decide to go with your husbands, you’ll have a beautiful house, servants to do the cleaning and washing, amahs to care for your children. You’ll live in
Haolaiwu—
Hollywood. I know how you girls love movies. You’d like it, May. You really would.
Haolaiwu!
Just think of it!”

“But we don’t
know
them!” May shouts at him.

“But you’ve met their father,” Baba responds evenly. “You know Old Man Louie.”

May’s lips twist in revulsion. We have indeed met the father. I’ve never liked Mama’s old-fashioned use of titles, but to May and me the wiry, stern-faced foreign Chinese has always been Old Man Louie. As Baba said, he lives in Los Angeles, but he comes to Shanghai every year or so to look in on the businesses he maintains here. He owns a factory that makes rattan furniture and another for cheap porcelain ware for export. But I don’t care how rich he is. I’ve never liked the way Old Man Louie looks at May and me, like he’s a cat licking us up. I don’t mind for myself—I can take it—but May was only sixteen the last time he came to town. He shouldn’t have drunk her in like that at his age, which had to be mid-sixties at least, but Baba never said a word, just asked May to pour more tea.

And then it hits me. “Did you lose everything to Old Man Louie?”

“Not exactly—”

“Then to whom?”

“These things are always hard to say.” Baba taps his fingers on the table and glances away. “I lost a little here, a little there.”

“I’m sure you did to have lost May’s and my money too. That must have taken you months … maybe even years—”

“Pearl—” My mother tries to stop me from saying anything more, but deep rage roars out of me.

“This loss had to be something very big. Something that would threaten all
this
.” I motion to the room, the furniture, the house, everything that my father built for us. “What exactly is your debt and how are you paying it back?”

May stops crying. My mother remains silent.

“I lost to Old Man Louie,” Baba grudgingly admits at last. “He’ll let your mother and me stay in the house if May marries the younger son and you marry the older son. We’ll have a roof to sleep under and something to eat until I get work. You, our daughters, are our only capital.”

May covers her mouth with the back of her hand, stands, and runs from the room.

“Tell your sister I will set up a meeting for this afternoon,” Baba acquiesces. “And be grateful I arranged marriages to a pair of brothers. You’ll always be together. Now go upstairs. Your mother and I have much to discuss.”

Outside the window, the breakfast sellers have moved on and been replaced by a stream of peddlers. Their voices sing to us, enticing us, tempting us.

“Pu, pu, pu
, reed root to brighten the eyes! Give to baby and he will be free from all summer rashes!”

“Hou, hou, hou
, let me shave your face, trim your hair, cut your nails!”

“A-hu-a, a-hu-a
, come out and sell your junk! Foreign bottles and broken glass exchanged for matches!”

A COUPLE OF
hours later, I walk into the Little Tokyo area of Hongkew for my noon appointment with my student. Why haven’t I canceled? The world falls apart and you cancel things, right? But May and I need the money.

In a daze, I ride the elevator to Captain Yamasaki’s apartment. He was on the Japanese Olympics team in 1932, so he likes to relive his glories in Los Angeles. He isn’t a bad man, but he’s obsessed with May. She made the mistake of going out with him a few times, so nearly every lesson begins with questions about her.

“Where is your sister today?” he asks in English, after we review his homework.

“She is sick,” I lie. “She is sleeping.”

“Sorry to hear such sad news. Every day I ask you when she will go out with me again. Every day you say you don’t know.”

“Correction. We see each other only three times a week.”

“Please help me marry May. I give you wedding …”

He hands me a piece of paper, which lists his marriage terms. I can see he used his Japanese-English dictionary, but this is too much. And today of all days. I glance at the clock. We still have fifty minutes to go. I fold the paper and put it in my purse.

“I will make the corrections and return this to you at our next lesson.”

“Give to May!”

“I’ll give
it
to her, but please know she is too young to marry. My father will not allow it.” How easily the lies pour from my mouth.

“He should. He must. This is a time of Friendship, Cooperation, and Co-prosperity The Asian races should unify against the West. Chinese and Japanese are brothers.”

Hardly. We call Japanese dwarf bandits and monkey people. But the captain often returns to this theme, and he’s done a good job of mastering the slogans in English and Chinese.

He stares at me sullenly. “You’re not going to give it to her, are you?” When I don’t respond quickly enough, he frowns. “I don’t trust Chinese girls. They always lie.”

He’s said this to me before, and I don’t like it any more today than I have in the past.

“I don’t lie to you,” I say, even though I have several times just since we started this tutorial.

“Chinese girls never keep promise. They lie in heart.”

“Promises. Their hearts,” I correct. I need to turn the conversation to a new subject. Today it comes easily. “Did you like Los Angeles?”

“It was very good. Soon I will go back to America.”

“For another swimming competition?”

“No.”

“As a student?”

“As a…” He switches back to Chinese and a word he knows very well in our language. “A conqueror.”

“Really? How?”

“We will march to Washington,” he responds, returning to English. “Yankee girls will do our laundry.”

He laughs. I laugh. And on it goes.

As soon as the hour’s up, I take my meager payment and go home. May’s asleep. I lie down beside her, put a hand on her hip, and close my eyes. I long for sleep, but my mind batters me with images and emotions. I thought I was modern. I thought I had choice. I thought I was nothing like my mother. But my father’s gambling has swept all that away. I’m to be sold—traded like so many girls before me—to help my family. I feel so trapped and so helpless that I can hardly breathe.

I try to tell myself things aren’t as bad as they seem. My father even said May and I won’t have to go with these strangers to a city across the world. We can sign the papers, our “husbands” will leave, and life will go on as before, with one big difference. We have to get out of my father’s house and make our own living. I’ll wait until my husband leaves the country, claim desertion, and get a divorce. Then Z.G. and I will get married. (It will have to be a smaller wedding than I imagined—maybe just a party in a café with our artist friends and some of the other beautiful-girl models.) I’ll get a real job during the day. May will live with us until she marries. We’ll take care of each other. We’ll make our way.

I sit up and rub my temples. I’m stupid with dreams. Maybe I’ve lived in Shanghai too long.