Dreams of Joy (Shanghai Girls 2)

“I enjoy spending time with you,” he says. “I’d like us to do more things together, if you’d like.”

“I’d like that very much,” I respond. Then I tell him about my project.

“That’s perfect!” Dun says. “But do you know how to make shoes?”

“No, but Cook does.”

Even though Cook let me be attacked by the block committee, I know he loves me very much. In fact, as I think about it, he may have let the criticism against me be voiced so that I wouldn’t be attacked in a harsher or more dangerous way sometime down the line. Maybe Cook was planning ahead to the baby’s birth. After all, how many travel permits can one person get?

I go to my room, get my box out from under the bed, and then Dun and I go downstairs to the kitchen. Since it’s Sunday afternoon, most of the boarders are out—window-shopping, visiting friends and relatives, strolling along the Bund—but Cook is home, too old and frail for excursions. He gives me a toothless grin and rises to put on water for tea for his Little Miss.

“Director Cook,” I say, addressing him formally, “when I was a little girl you used to make soles for shoes right here on the kitchen table. Do you remember that?”

“Remember? Aiya! I remember how mad your mama used to get at me. She didn’t like the mess. She said she’d give me a pair of the master’s shoes if I’d stop mixing rice paste in her kitchen—”

“Do you think you could show us how to make soles? I’d like to make shoes to send to Joy and the children in her family. Most of them don’t have any shoes.”

I open the box and dump the scraps of May and me on the table. Cook gives me another toothless grin. “Smart, Little Miss, very smart.”

Cook gets up and makes a paste from rice. Then he shows Dun and me how to glue sheet upon sheet of paper in a time-consuming process to build a sole. The final step involves sewing cloth onto the soles, which I’ll do later in my room. What could be tedious work becomes a bit of a game as we try to guess which mouths, eyes, ears, and fingers are May’s and which are mine. Dun is particularly adept at singling out pieces of me in the pile, which pleases me greatly.

“Paper collectors from the feudal era would have been very upset to see us doing this,” Dun says. I watch his fingers as he picks up another of my noses, brushes it with glue, and applies it to the sole he’s been making for Jie Jie, the oldest of Tao’s sisters.

I smile and shake my head. He can’t help himself. He’s such a professor. “Which part?” I ask. “That we’re making shoes or that we’re using these funny pieces of paper?”

“Both,” he replies. “Does a paper sole show reverence for lettered paper? Not at all! You should never tread on lettered paper.”

“But not all of this is lettered,” I point out. And it’s true. While there’s writing on some of the slivers of May and me, most of the writing was at the bottom or along the sides of beautiful-girl posters.

“Nevertheless, the whole piece of paper was an advertisement,” Dun responds. “In olden days, this would have been considered a deliberate act of disrespect. Our lives could have been shortened by five years—”

“Ten years!” Cook corrects.

“Because we’d go to jail?” I ask.

“Nothing so simple,” Dun replies. “Maybe lightning would find you. Maybe you’d develop runny eyes or go blind or be born blind in your next life—”

“I remember a woman in my village who hid coins in her socks,” Cook says. “The coins had words on them. She tripped, fell in a well, and died.”

“And I remember a warning my mother gave me as a boy,” Dun adds. “She said, ‘If you use lettered paper to kindle the fire, then you will receive ten demerits in the underworld and you will be given itchy sons.’ ”

“As a paper collector, I should be eligible for an incredible reward then,” I say.

Dun nods. “My mother always said that he who roams the streets, collecting, storing, ritually burning, and then depositing lettered paper into the sea will receive five thousand merits, add twelve years to his life, and become honored and wealthy. His children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren will be virtuous and filial too.”

I apply several paper fingers along what I think will be the arch of a shoe for Joy. “All I do is strip paper from walls and clean alleyways,” I admit. “So maybe I don’t have reverence for lettered paper. Even so, I think what we’re doing right now is good. Joy may never know what’s layered here, but I hope she’ll feel my love.”

We work companionably for a while, until Dun bursts out, “I have an idea! What is paper for? Advertising, of course.” His hand sweeps across the table where May’s and my eyes, mouths, noses, fingers, and earlobes lie in little piles. “But what else?”

“It can be burned, to keep us warm,” Cook offers tentatively. “You can sleep under it. Or on top of it.” He really is red through and through. “You can eat it, if you’re hungry enough—”

“You can use it to make cigarettes,” Dun jumps in, and

then he turns to me expectantly.

“For books,” I say hesitantly. “To make Bibles. To print money.” I’m still unsure where he’s going with all this.

“But what’s the most important thing?” he asks. “Why even have reverence for lettered paper? It’s because the words themselves have reverence. The things my mother taught me are what made me want to read books, become a professor, and teach others to love the written word. She considered words to be magical—”