Dreams of Joy (Shanghai Girls 2)

“You’re willing to get in a basket?” The cousin looks at her like she’s crazy.

“We don’t have much time,” Joy responds briskly. “We must get out.”

Joy puts her sleeping baby in a basket with the piglets. Little snouts poke through the open sides.

Ta-ming has gone completely white. I can’t think of anything to say or do that will make him feel better. Then I remember my mother. I take the pouch with the three sesame seeds, three beans, and three coins from around my neck and put it around Ta-ming’s.

“This will protect you,” I say. “You’ll only be in there for a short time. I’ll talk to you the whole way, but you must remain very quiet.”

This child has been through so much, yet he obediently climbs into the barrel and hugs his legs. The false top is put on, the sea horses layered on top, and the barrel sealed.

Joy crawls inside a larger pig basket and is loaded into the middle of the truck. The basket with Samantha and the piglets is placed next to her, and then other pig baskets are pushed up against their sides and piled on top. I climb up on the truck with Ta-ming’s barrel. I step into a burlap sack, hundreds of small snakes dried into neat coils are thrown on top of me, and then the bag is tied shut. I hear three doors slam and the engines start. The truck with Joy, Samantha, and Z.G. leaves first, and then the truck I’m in lurches forward.

I’m in total darkness, covered with dried snakes, petrified. I talk to Taming, hoping he can hear me. I can’t see anything and can only intuit what’s happening from what I feel and hear. The truck begins to stop, wait, roll forward a few feet, and then stop again. I hear water. That must be the Sham Chun River, the border between mainland China and Hong Kong’s New Territories, which means we’re already on the Lo Wu Bridge. My father was right. This is a relatively easy crossing; the line moves fairly quickly.

I hear a man, presumably a guard, say, “Please produce your travel documents for inspection.” I’m scared, but I smile. The truck with Joy and the baby was ahead of us. Whatever happens now, my daughter and granddaughter are out. Z.G. too.

“I haven’t seen you in a while, Comrade Chin,” the guard says to my father.

“We’ve been busy in the commune,” my father replies.

“What are you bringing across the border today?”

My chest constricts, my stomach pushes up against my lungs, my heart beats so hard I can hear it.

“The usual. We’re on our way to the wholesale medicine market.”

“Ah, yes. All right then. I’ll see you on your way back later today.”

The truck’s gears grind and we roll across the bridge. The truck makes a few turns to the left and then a right. Finally, we stop. The truck door opens. In a minute, my bag is untied. I stand and brush the dried snakes from my body. I pop open the top of Ta-ming’s barrel and pull him out. He’s ghost white and trembling. I hug him. “We made it,” I tell him.

I help Ta-ming off the truck. My legs are wobbly from fear and from being scrunched in the burlap sack. Up ahead, the cousin and Z.G. are still moving the pig baskets. I hurry to them to help. In minutes, Joy and the baby—a little scratched up but still sound asleep—are on the roadway with us. We’re so emotionally and physically exhausted that we don’t cheer or hug each other. Still, I feel relief as three years of worry and stress begin to melt from my body. We’re all in a bit of a daze, and it will take a long time for everything to sink in, but we’re out. We might—and here’s a thought that would have been unthinkable even a few hours ago—get to May’s hotel in time for lunch.

“Here,” my father says. He presses a satchel into my hand. “This is for you and May. These are photographs and some things I wrote about your mother, what happened … everything.”

“I wish we had more time,” I say.

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“I wish we did too,” my father says. “Maybe one day we can all be together. Maybe one day you can bring May here and we can meet. Do you think the two of you might like that?”

I nod. I don’t have words for what I feel.

Then, to the cousin, he says, “We need to hurry. The earlier we get to market, the better prices we’ll get.” He gives me a last look before climbing back in his truck. “Continue on that road to the left. Pretty soon you’ll see a bus stop. The bus will take you into Kowloon. Once there, you can take the ferry to the Hong Kong side of the bay.”

WHEN WE REACH downtown Hong Kong, the busyness of the international port, the women dressed in vibrant hues, the white buildings against the emerald green slopes, and even the openness of the sky make everything seem brighter, lighter, freer. We walk up the hill and then along Hollywood Road past little antiques stands, where even now old beautiful-girl posters of May and me flap in the breeze, waiting for tourists to buy them and take them home. The proprietor at the hotel doesn’t recognize me, but she gives us May’s room number anyway. We walk up several flights of stairs, down a dingy corridor, and knock on the door. No one answers.

I knock again and call, “May, it’s me, Pearl.”

Almost as one, our little group steps back as the door opens. But it’s not my sister. It’s Dun.

Ta-ming is the first to react, running forward, squealing “Baba!”—the first time he has said this—and being lifted into Dun’s arms. And then we’re all crowding forward, pushing Dun back into the room, hugging him, patting him, still not believing he’s here. I think I can have no emotion left in me, yet my feelings are so very big, their borders can’t be seen. I put my arms around him and hold tight, never wanting to let go of him again. My eyes brim with tears of joy.

“How?” I’m finally able to ask.

“I had all the papers I needed. I proved who I was. I said I was to go to Hong Kong for family reunification. You want to know what they told me at the border? I was one less person to feed.”

“What about Tao?” Joy asks.