Shanghai Girls (Shanghai Girls 1)

He’s cold but unsystematic, ruthless but unknowledgeable. He either ignores our Western dresses or throws them on the floor, probably because he doesn’t know what’s fashionable in Shanghai this year. He doesn’t take the ermine wrap, because it’s white, the color of death, but he pulls out a fox stole that May and I bought used several years ago.

“Try these on,” he orders, handing me a stack of hats he’s pulled from the closet’s upper shelf. I do as I’m told. “That’s enough. You can keep the green one and that thing with the feathers. The rest are coming with me.” He glares at my father. “I’ll send people later to pack these things. I suggest that neither you nor your daughters touch anything. Do you understand?”

My father nods. The old man turns to me. Wordlessly, he appraises me from my face to my shoes and then back again.

“Your sister is ill. Be good and help her,” he says, and then he leaves.

I knock on the bathroom door and call softly. May opens the door a crack, and I let myself in. She lies on the floor, her cheek against the tile. I sit beside her.

“Are you all right?”

“I think it was the crab from dinner last night,” she answers. “It’s the wrong season and I shouldn’t have eaten it.”

I lean against the wall and rub my eyes. How is it that two beautiful girls have fallen so low so quickly? I let my hands drop and stare at the repeating pattern of yellow, black, and turquoise tile that climbs the wall.

LATER THAT DAY, coolies come to pack our clothes in wooden crates. These are loaded onto the back of a flatbed truck as our neighbors watch. In the midst of this, Sam arrives. Instead of approaching my father, he walks directly to me.

“You are to take the boat to meet us in Hong Kong on August seventh,” he says. “My father has booked passage for us to sail together to San Francisco three days later. These are your immigration papers. He says everything is in order and that we’ll have no problems landing, but he also wants you to study what’s in this coaching book—-just in case.” What he hands me isn’t a book but a few pieces of folded paper held together by hand stitching. “These are the answers you’ll need to give the inspectors if we have any trouble getting off the ship.” He pauses and frowns. He probably has the same thought as I: Why do we need to read the coaching book if everything’s in order? “Don’t worry about anything,” he goes on confidently as though I need my husband’s reassurance and will be comforted by his tone. “As soon as we’re through immigration, we’ll take another boat to Los Angeles.”

I stare at the papers.

“I’m sorry about this,” he adds, and I almost believe him. “I’m sorry about everything.”

As he turns to leave, my father—suddenly remembering to be the gracious host—asks, “May I find you a rickshaw?”

Sam looks back at me and answers, “No, no, I think I’ll walk.”

I watch him until he turns the corner, and then I go inside the house and toss the papers he gave me in the trash. Old Man Louie, his sons, and my father have made a terrible mistake if they think this is going any further. Soon the Louies will be on a ship that will take them thousands of miles from here. They won’t be able to push or trick us into doing anything we don’t want to do. We’ve all paid a price for my father’s gambling. He’s lost his business. I’ve lost my virginity. May and I have lost our clothes and perhaps our livelihoods as a result. We’ve been hurt, but we’re not remotely poor or wretched by Shanghai standards.

A Cicada in a Tree

NOW THAT THIS whole upsetting and exhausting episode is over, May and I retreat to our room, which faces east. This usually leaves the room a little cooler in summer, but it’s so hot and sticky that we wear practically nothing—-just thin pink silk slips. We don’t cry. We don’t clean up the clothes Old Man Louie threw on the floor or the mess he left of our closet. We eat the food Cook leaves on a tray outside our door, but other than that we do nothing. We’re both too shaken to voice what happened. If the words come out of our mouths, won’t that mean that we’ll have to face how our lives have changed and figure out what to do next when at least for me my mind is in such a turmoil of confusion, despair, and anger that I feel like gray fog has invaded my skull? We lie on our beds and try to … I don’t even know the word. Recover?

As sisters, May and I share a particular kind of intimacy. May is the one person who’ll stand by me no matter what. I never wonder if we’re good friends or not. We just are. During this time of adversity—as it is for all sisters—our petty jealousies and the question of which one of us is loved more dissolve. We have to rely on each other.

Once I ask May what happened with Vernon, and she says, “I couldn’t do it.” Then she begins to weep. A

fter that, I don’t ask about her wedding night and she doesn’t ask about mine. I tell myself that it doesn’t matter, that we’ve just done something to save our family. But no matter how many times I tell myself it wasn’t important, there’s no getting around the fact that I lost a precious moment. In truth, my heart is more broken by what happened with Z.G. than by my family losing its standing or by having had to do the husband-wife thing with a stranger. I want to bring back my innocence, my girlishness, my happiness, my laughter.

“Remember when we saw The Ode to Constancy?” I ask, hoping the memory will remind May of when we were still young enough to believe we were invincible.

“We thought we could put on a better opera,” she answers from her bed.

“Since you were younger and smaller, you got to play the beautiful girl. You always played the princess. I always had to be the scholar, prince, emperor, and bandit.”

“Yes, but look at it this way: You got to play four roles. I only got one.”

I smile. How many times have we had this same disagreement about the productions we used to stage for Mama and Baba in the main salon when we were young? Our parents clapped and laughed. They ate watermelon seeds and drank tea. They praised us but never offered to send us to opera school or to the acrobatic academy, because we were pretty terrible, with our squeaky voices, our heavy tumbling, and our improvised sets and costumes. What mattered was that May and I had spent hours plotting and staging in our room or running to Mama to borrow a scarf to use as a veil or begging Cook to make a sword from paper and starch for me to fight whatever ghost demons were causing trouble.

I remember winter nights when it was so cold that May crawled into my bed and we snuggled together to keep warm. I remember how she slept: her thumb resting on her jaw, the tips of her forefinger and middle finger balanced on the edges of her eyebrows just above her nose, her ring finger lightly placed on an eyelid, and her pinkie delicately floating in the air. I remember that in the morning she’d be cuddled against my back with her arm wrapped around me to hold me close. I remember exactly how her hand looked—so small, so pale, so soft, and her fingers as slender as scallions.

I remember the first summer I went to camp in Kuling. Mama and Baba had to bring May to see me, because she was so lonely. I was maybe ten and May only seven. No one had told me they were coming, but when they arrived and May saw me, she ran to me, stopping just in front of me to stare at me. The other girls teased me. Why did I need to bother with this little baby? I knew enough not to tell them the truth: I longed for my sister too and felt like a part of me was missing when we were separated. After that, Baba always sent the two of us to camp together.

May and I laugh about these things, and they make us feel better. They remind us of the strength we find in each other, of the ways we help each other, of the times that it was just us against everyone else, of the fun we’ve had together. If we can laugh, won’t everything be all right?

“Remember when we were little and we tried on Mama’s shoes?” May asks.

I’ll never forget that day. Mama had gone visiting. We’d sneaked into her room and pulled out several pairs of her bound-foot shoes. My feet were too big for the shoes, and I’d carelessly discarded them as I tried to squeeze my toes into pair after pair. May could get her toes in the slippers, and she’d tiptoed to the window and back, imitating Mama’s lily walk. We’d tittered and frolicked, and then Mama came home. She was furious. May and I knew we’d been bad, but we had a hard time suppressing our giggles as Mama tottered around the room, trying to catch us to pull our ears. With our natural feet and our unity, we escaped, running down the hall and out into the garden, where we collapsed in laughter. Our wickedness had turned into triumph.