Dreams of Joy (Shanghai Girls 2)

I’ve got to hold myself together. I really do. Think! I’m going to need a hotel. I’m going to need to return to the Bund for a fresh start. First, though, I need something to eat and drink.

I find my way back to Nanking Road and after a short walk come to a huge park, where I see a couple of vendor carts. I bought a salty cake stuffed with minced pork and chopped greens wrapped in a piece of wax paper. At another cart, I buy tea served in a thick ceramic cup, and then sit on a nearby bench. The cake is delicious. The hot tea makes me sweat even more than I already am, but my mom always claimed that a cup of tea on a hot day has a cooling effect. It’s late afternoon and the temperature hasn’t dropped at all. It’s still so humid—and without a hint of a breeze—that I really can’t tell if the tea has a cooling effect or not. Still, the food and the liquid revive me.

This isn’t like any park I’ve been in before. It’s flat and appears to go on for blocks. A lot of it is paved so that it seems like it’s more for mass meetings than for play or recreation. Even so, there are plenty of grandmothers minding small children. The babies are tied in slings to their grandmothers’ backs. The toddlers paddle about in pants split at the crotch. I see one little girl squat and pee right on the ground! Some of the older kids—not one of them over four or five—play with sticks. One grandmother sits on a bench across from me. Her granddaughter looks to be about three and is really cute, with her hair tied up in ribbons so that it sprouts from her head like little mushrooms. The child keeps peeking at me. I must look like a clown to her. I wave. She hides her eyes in her grandmother’s lap. She peers at me again, I wave, and she buries her face back in her grandmother’s lap. We go through this a few times before the little girl wiggles her fingers in my direction.

I take my ceramic cup back to the tea vendor, and when I return to the bench to get my suitcase, the little girl leaves the safety of her grandmother and approaches me.

“Ni hao ma?” I ask. “How are you?”

The little girl giggles and runs back to her grandmother. I really should be going, but the child is so charming. More than that, playing with her gives me a sense that I belong and that everything will work out. She points at me and whispers to her grandmother. The old woman opens a bag, fishes around, and then places something in her granddaughter’s tiny hand. The next thing I know, the little girl is back in front of me, her arm fully outstretched, offering me a shrimp cracker.

“Shie-shie.”

The girl smiles at my thank-you. Then she climbs up next to me and starts swinging her legs and jabbering about this and that. I thought I was pretty good at the Shanghai dialect, but I don’t understand her nearly as well as I’d hoped. Finally, her grandmother comes over to where we’re sitting.

“You’ve met our disappointment,” she says. “Next time my husband and I hope for a grandson.”

I’ve heard things like this my entire life. I pat the little girl’s knee, a gesture of solidarity.

“You don’t look like you’re from Shanghai,” the old woman goes on. “Are you from Peking?”

“I’m from far away,” I respond, not wanting to tell my whole story. “I’m here to visit my father, but I’m lost.”

“Where do you need to go?”

I show her my map.

“I know where this is,” she says. “We could take you there, if you’d like. It’s on our way home.”

“I’d be very grateful.”

She picks up her granddaughter, and I pick up my suitcase.

A few minutes later, we reach the Artists’ Association. I thank the old woman. I look through my purse, find the last of a roll of Life Savers, and give it to the little girl. She doesn’t know what to make of it.

“It’s candy,” I explain. “A sweet for a sweet.” A memory of my aunt saying that to me gives me a sharp pang of anguish. I’ve come this far and still my mother and aunt are with me.

After a few more thank-yous, I turn away and enter the building. I was hoping for air-conditioning, but the lobby is just as oppressively hot as the street. A middle-aged woman sits behind a desk in the center of the room. She smiles and motions me to step forward.

“I’m looking for an artist named Li Zhi-ge,” I say.

The woman’s smile fades and blooms into a scowl. “You’re too late. The meeting is almost over.”

I stand there, bewildered.

“I’m not going to let you in there,” she snaps harshly, gesturing in annoyance to a set of double doors.

“You mean he’s in there? Right now?”

“Of course, he’s in there!”

My mother would say it’s fate that I should find my father so easily. But maybe it’s serendipity. Whatever it is, I’m lucky, even if it’s only dumb luck. But I still don’t understand why the receptionist won’t let me in.

“I need to see him,” I plead.

Just then, the doors open and a group of people stream out.

“There he is now,” the receptionist says with a sneer.