Shanghai Girls (12 page)

I’m torn between berating myself and May for not being more diligent in working on our stories and questioning why any of this matters.

“We had civilized weddings,” I say, “but neither of us wore veils.”

“Did you raise your veil during the wedding banquet?”

“I already told you I didn’t wear a veil.”

“Why do you say only seven people came to the banquet, when your husband, father-in-law, and sister say there were many occupied tables in the room?”

I feel sick to my stomach. What’s happening here?

“We were a small party in a hotel restaurant where other guests were dining.”

“You said your family home consists of six rooms, but your sister says many more and your husband stated the house is grand.” Chairman Plumb’s face turns crimson as he demands, “Why are you lying?”

“There are different ways to count the rooms and my husband—”

“Let’s go back to your wedding. Was your wedding banquet on the first floor or upstairs?”

And on it goes: Did I take a train after my marriage? Did I ride on a boat? Are the houses where I lived with my parents built in rows? How many houses stood between our house and the main street? How do I know if I was married according to the old custom or the new custom if I had a matchmaker and didn’t wear a veil? Why don’t my alleged sister and I speak the same dialect?

The questioning continues for eight straight hours—with no break for lunch or to use the toilet. By the end, Chairman Plumb is red-faced and weary. As he recites his synopsis for the stenographer, I boil with frustration. Every other sentence begins “The applicant’s alleged sister states …” I can understand—barely—how my responses might be taken to mean something different from those given by Sam or Old Man Louie, but how could May have given such completely different answers from mine?

The interpreter shows no emotion as he translates Chairman Plumb’s conclusion: “It would appear that there are many contradictions which should not exist, particularly concerning the home the applicant shared with her alleged sister. While the applicant adequately answers the queries concerning her alleged husband’s home village, her alleged sister seems to have no knowledge whatsoever of her husband, his family, or his family home, either in Los Angeles or in China. Therefore it is the unanimous opinion of the board that this applicant, as well as her alleged sister, be reexamined until the contradictions can be resolved.” The interpreter then looks at me. “Have you understood everything that’s been asked of you?”

I answer, “Yes,” but I’m furious—with these awful men and their persistent questioning, with myself for not being smarter, but most of all with May. Her laziness has caused us to be detained even longer on this horrible island.

She isn’t in the holding cage when I leave the room and I have to sit there and wait for another woman whose interrogation also hasn’t gone well. After another hour, the woman is pulled from her hearing room by her arm. The cage is unlocked and the guard motions to me, but we don’t go back to the dormitory on the second floor of the Administration Building. Rather, we walk across the property to another wood-framed building. At the end of the hall is a door with a small window covered with fine mesh and
ROOM NO. I
printed above it. We may feel like we are in jail on this island and in our locked dormitory, but this is the real door to imprisonment. The woman wails and tries to pull away from the guard, but he’s far stronger than she could ever be. He opens the door, pushes her into the darkness, and locks her inside.

I’m now alone with a very large white man. I have nowhere to go, nowhere to escape. I shake uncontrollably. And then the strangest thing happens. His contemptuous sneer melts into something resembling compassion.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” he says. “We’re just short-handed tonight.” He shakes his head. “You don’t understand a word I’m saying, do you?” He gestures back toward the door we entered. “We need to go that way, so I can take you back to the dormitory,” he goes on, elongating and exaggerating the words so that his lips stretch into the twisted features of a temple demon statue. “Got it?”

Later, as I walk the length of the dormitory back to May’s and my bunks, my emotions are in a frenzy—yes, that’s the word—of anger, fear, and frustration. The other women’s eyes follow each step as my high heels click on the linoleum floor. Some of us have lived together for a month now and in very close quarters. We’re attuned to one another’s moods and know when to back off or offer comfort. Now I feel the women ripple away from me, as though I’m a large boulder that’s been dropped into a very peaceful pond.

May perches on the edge of her bunk, her legs dangling. She cocks her head in the way she has since she was a small girl and knew she was in trouble.

“What took so long? I’ve been waiting for you for hours.”

“What have you done, May? What have you
done
?”

She ignores my questions. “You missed lunch. But I brought you some rice.”

She opens her hand and shows me a misshapen ball of rice. I slap it from her palm. The women around us look away.

“Why did you lie in there?” I ask. “Why would you do that?”

Her legs swing back and forth like she’s a child whose feet don’t yet reach the floor. I stare up at her, breathing heavily through my nose. I’ve never been this angry with her. This isn’t a pair of muddied shoes or a borrowed blouse that’s been stained.

“I didn’t understand what they were saying. I don’t know that singsong Sze Yup. I only know the northern song of Shanghai.”

“And that’s
my
fault?” But even as I say it, I realize I share some responsibility for this. I know she doesn’t understand the dialect of our ancestral home. Why didn’t I think of that? But the Dragon in me is still stubborn and mad.

“We’ve been through so much, but you couldn’t take five minutes on the ship to look at the coaching book.”

When she shrugs, a wave of fury sweeps through me.

“Do you want them to send us back?”

She doesn’t respond, but the predictable tears form.

“Is that what you want?” I persist.

Now those predictable tears fall and drip onto her baggy jacket, staining the cloth with slowly spreading blue splotches. But if she’s predictable, so am I.

I shake her legs. The older sister, who’s always right, demands, “What’s wrong with you?”

She mumbles something.

“What?”

She stops swinging her legs. She keeps her face tucked low, but I’m looking up at her and she can’t avoid me. She mumbles again.

“Say it so I can hear it,” I rasp impatiently.

She tilts her head, meets my eyes, and whispers just loud enough for me to hear. “I’m pregnant.”

Isle of the Immortals

MAY ROLLS OVER
and buries her face in her pillow to stifle her sobs. I look around, and it seems like the other women are either ignoring us or pretending to ignore us. It’s the Chinese way.

I kick off my shoes and climb up the bunk’s tiers and onto May’s bed.

“I thought you didn’t do the husband-wife thing with Vernon,” I whisper.

“I didn’t,” she manages to get out. “I couldn’t.”

A guard comes in and announces it’s time for dinner, and the women scurry to be first out the door. As bad as the food is, dinner is more important than an argument between two sisters. If any edible pieces exist in tonight’s meal, they want to be first to get them. After a few minutes, we’re alone and no longer have to whisper.

“Was it that boy you met on the ship?” I can’t even remember his name.

“It was before that.”

Before that? We were in the hospital in Hangchow and then the hotel in Hong Kong. I don’t see how anything could have happened during that time, unless it was when I was sick, or earlier, when I was unconscious. Was it one of the doctors who took care of me? Was she raped when we were trying to get to the Grand Canal? I’ve been too ashamed to talk about what happened to me. Has she kept a similar secret all this time? I creep around the topic by asking what seems like a practical question.

“How long has it been?”

She sits up, rubs her eyes with both hands, and then stares at me with sorrow, humiliation, and pleading. She pulls her legs under her so our knees touch, and then she slowly unbuttons the frogs of her peasant jacket and smoothes her hands over her shirt to reveal her belly. She’s pretty far along, which explains why she’s been hiding under baggy clothes almost from the moment we arrived at Angel Island.

“Was it Tommy?” I ask, hoping it was.

Mama always wanted May and Tommy to marry. With Tommy and Mama dead, wouldn’t this be a gift? But when May says, “He was just a friend,” I don’t know what to think. My sister went out with a lot of different young men in Shanghai, especially in those last days, when we were so desperate to forget our circumstances. But I don’t know their names, and I don’t want to interrogate her with questions like “Was it that young man that night at the Venus Club?” or “Was it that American Betsy used to bring around sometimes?” Wouldn’t that approach be as ridiculous and stupid as what I’ve gone through today? But I can’t keep my tongue from flapping.

“Was it that student who came to live in the second-floor pavilion?” I don’t remember much about him other than that he was thin, wore gray and kept to himself. What did he study? I can’t say, but I haven’t forgotten how he hovered over Mama’s chair the day of the bombing. Did he do that because he was in love with May, as so many young men were?

“I was already pregnant then,” May confesses.

A disgusting thought enters my mind. “Tell me it wasn’t Captain Yamasaki.” If May’s going to have a half-Japanese baby, I don’t know what I’ll do.

She shakes her head, and I’m relieved.

“You never met him,” May says in a quavering voice. “
I
barely met him. It was just a thing I did. I didn’t think
this
would happen. If I’d had more time, I would have asked an herbalist to give me something to expel the baby. But I didn’t. Oh, Pearl, everything’s my fault.” She grabs my hands and begins to weep again.

“Don’t worry. We’ll be all right,” I say, trying to sound comforting but knowing it’s an empty promise.

“How could we possibly be all right? Haven’t you thought about what this means?”

To tell the truth, I haven’t. I haven’t had months to think about May’s condition. I’ve had barely two minutes.

“We can’t go to Los Angeles right away.” May pauses and stares at me appraisingly “You understand we have to go there, right?”

“I haven’t seen another way. But even forgetting about this”—I point to her belly—“we don’t know if they’ll want us anymore.”

“Of course they will. They bought us! But there’s the problem of the baby. At first I thought I’d be able to get away with it. I didn’t do the husband-wife thing with Vernon, but he wasn’t going to say anything. Then Old Man Louie went through our sheets—”

“You knew even then?”

“You were there when I threw up in the restaurant. I was so scared. I thought someone would figure it out. I thought you would guess.”

Now, as I think about it, I realize many people understood what I was too ignorant and blind to see. The old woman whose house we stopped at on our first night out of Shanghai had taken particular care with May. The doctor in Hangchow had been very solicitous, wanting May to sleep. I’m May’s
jie jie
, and I’ve always thought we are as close as can be, but I’ve been so concerned with my own miseries—losing Z.G., leaving home, being raped, almost dying, getting here—that I haven’t paid attention every time May has thrown up these past weeks and months. I haven’t noticed whether or not the little red sister has visited May. And I can’t even remember the last time I saw her completely undressed. I’ve abandoned my sister when she needed me most.

“I’m so sorry—”

“Pearl! You aren’t paying attention to what I’m saying! How can we go to Los Angeles now? That boy is not the father and Old Man Louie knows it.”

All this is happening too fast, and it’s been a long, hard day. I haven’t eaten since the bowl
of jook
at breakfast, and I’m not going to get dinner. But I’m not so tired and worn out that I don’t see May has something in mind. After all, she told me she was pregnant only because I’d gotten mad at her because …

“You lied to the board on purpose. You did at the first interview.”

“The baby needs to be born here on Angel Island,” she says.

I’m the smart sister, but my mind races to keep up with her.

“You were already prepared to lie when the ship sailed into San Francisco,” I say finally. “That’s why you didn’t study the coaching book. You didn’t want to answer correctly. You wanted to end up here.”

“That’s not quite right. I hoped Spencer would help me—us. He made promises on the ship. He said he would take care of things so we wouldn’t have to go to Los Angeles. He lied.” She shrugs. “Does it surprise you after Baba? My next option was coming here. Don’t you see? If I have the baby here, they’ll never know it was mine.”

“They?”

“The Louies,” she says impatiently. “You have to take it. I’m giving him to you. You did the husband-wife thing with Sam. The timing is almost right.”

I pull my hands from hers and lean away from her.

“What are you saying?”

“The doctors said you probably can’t have a baby. This could
save
me and
help
you.”

But I don’t want a baby—not now, perhaps not ever. I don’t want to be married either—at least not through an arrangement or to pay my father’s debts. There has to be another way.

“If you don’t want it, then give it to the missionaries,” I suggest. “They’ll take him. They’ve got that Chinese Babies Aid society they’re always talking about. They’ll keep it separate from diseased women.”

“Pearl! This is my baby! What other ties do we have to Mama and Baba? We’re daughters—the end of the line. Couldn’t my son be the beginning of a new line here in America?”

Of course we assume the baby is a boy. Like Chinese everywhere, we can’t imagine a child other than a son, who will bring great happiness to his family and guarantee that the ancestors are fed in the afterworld. Nevertheless, May’s plan will never work.

“I’m not pregnant and I can’t have the baby for you,” I say, pointing out the obvious.

Once again, May shows how much she’s been thinking about all this.

“You’ll have to wear the peasant clothes I bought for you. They cover everything. Those country women don’t want anyone to see their bodies—not to attract a man, not to show they’re with child. You didn’t notice how big my stomach had gotten, did you? Later, if you need to, you can put a pillow in your pants. Who’s going to look? Who’s going to care? But we do have to string out our time here.”

“For how long?”

“Another four months or so.”

I don’t know what else to do or say. She’s my sister, my only living relative as far as I know, and I promised Mama I’d take care of her. And like that, I make a decision that will affect the rest of my life … and May’s too.

“All right. I’ll do it.”

I’m so overwhelmed by everything that’s happened today that I don’t have the sense to ask how she’s going to deliver the baby and not have the authorities know about it.

THE HARSH REALITY
of what we did by leaving China and coming here hits us hard in the coming weeks. Hopeful—stupid—people call Angel Island the Ellis Island of the West. Those who want to keep the Chinese out of America call it the Guardian of the Western Gate. We Chinese refer to it as the Isle of the Immortals. Time passes so slowly it feels as if we’re in the afterworld, that’s for sure. The days are long and staggered by a routine that is as expected and unremarkable as evacuating our bowels. Everything’s regulated. We have absolutely no choice about when or what we eat, when the lights are turned on or off, when we go to bed or get up. When you’re in prison, you lose all privileges.

When May’s belly gets larger, we move to a pair of adjacent lower bunks so she won’t have to climb so high. Every morning we wake up and dress. The guards escort us to the dining hall—a surprisingly small room given that on some days meals are served to over three hundred people. Like everything else on Angel Island, the dining hall is segregated. The Europeans, Asiatics, and Chinese all have their own cooks, food, and dining times. We have a half hour to eat breakfast and be completely out of the hall before the next group of detainees arrives. We sit at long wooden tables and eat bowls
of jook
, and then the guards escort us back to our dormitory and lock us in. Some women make tea using hot water from a pot kept atop the radiator. Others munch on food sent by family members in San Francisco: noodles, pickles, and dumplings. Most go back to sleep, waking only when the missionary ladies come to talk to us about their one God and teach us how to sew and knit. One matron feels sorry for me: pregnant and stranded on Angel Island. “Let me send a telegram to your husband,” she offers. “Once he knows you’re here and in the family way, he’ll come and sort out everything for you. You don’t want your baby to be born in this place. You’ll need a proper hospital.”

But I don’t want that kind of help, not yet anyway.

For lunch, we go to the dining hall for cold rice topped by bean sprouts that have been steamed to a soggy mess,
jook
with slivered pork, or tapioca soup with crackers. Dinner consists of one large dish—dried tofu and pork, potatoes and beef, lima beans and pork knuckles, or dried greens and sand dabs. They sometimes give us course red-grain rice barely fit to eat. Everything looks and tastes like it’s been chewed and swallowed once already. Some women take to putting pieces of meat from their bowls into mine. “For your son,” they say. I then have to find a way to transfer these luxuries to May.

“Why don’t your husbands come to visit?” a woman asks us one night at dinner. Her given name is Dustpan, but she goes by the married name of Lee-shee. She’s been detained even longer than May and I. “They could hire a lawyer for you. They could explain everything to the inspectors. You could leave tomorrow.”

May and I don’t answer that our husbands don’t know we’ve arrived and that they can’t know until the baby’s born, but sometimes I have to admit it would be a comfort to see them—even those nearly total strangers.

“Our husbands are far away,” May explains to Lee-shee and the other pitying women. “It’s very hard for my sister, especially at this time.”

Afternoons pass slowly. While the other women write to their families—people can send and receive as many letters as they want, although they have to pass through a censor’s hands—May and I talk. Or we look out a window—covered in wire mesh to make sure we don’t escape—and dream of our lost home. Or we work on our sewing and knitting, skills our mother never taught us. We sew diapers and little shirts. We try to knit baby sweaters, caps, and booties.

“Your son will be born a Tiger and will be influenced by the Earth element, which is strong this year,” a woman returning from a trip to her home village tells me during her three-day stay on Angel Island. “Your Tiger child will bring happiness and worry at the same time. He’ll be charming and bright, curious and inquisitive, affectionate and athletic. You’ll have plenty of exercise just keeping up with him!”

May usually remains silent during the advice given to us by the women, but this time she can’t help herself. “Will he truly be joyful? Will he have a happy life?”

“Happiness? Here in the Land of the Flowery Flag? I don’t know if happiness is possible in this country, but the Tiger has special attributes that could be helpful to your sister’s son. If he’s disciplined and loved equally, then a Tiger will respond with warmth and understanding. But you can never lie to a Tiger, because he will bound and thrash and do things that are wild and daring.”