Shanghai Girls (Shanghai Girls 1)

I don’t move.

“Can we get on a new ship?” I ask.

He hits the grate that separates us. “You stupid!” It seems everyone feels the same way about me today. Then he grabs the grate and shakes it. “No tickets left! All gone! Next! Next!”

I see in him the same frustration and hysteria I saw in Z.G.’s landlady. May reaches out and puts her fingers on his. Touching between sexes—strangers!—is frowned upon. Her act stuns him into silence. Or maybe he’s suddenly calmed by the beautiful girl who speaks to him in a mellifluous voice.

“I know you can help us.” She tilts her head and lets a small smile transform her face from desperation to serenity. The effect is immediate.

“Let me see your tickets,” the clerk says. He studies them intently and checks a couple of logbooks. “I’m sorry, but these won’t help you leave Shanghai,” he says at last. He pulls out a pad, fills in a form, and then passes it and our tickets back to May. “If you can get to Hong Kong, go to our office there and give them this. You’ll be able to trade your tickets for new berths to San Francisco.” After a long pause, he repeats, “If you can get to Hong Kong.”

We thank him, but he hasn’t helped us at all. We don’t want to go to San Francisco. We want to go south to escape the Green Gang’s reach.

Feeling defeated, we start home. Never has the traffic noise, the smell of exhaust, and the stink of perfume seemed so oppressive. Never has the unscratchable itch for money, the flagrant openness of criminal behavior, and the dissolution of the spirit seemed so forlorn and futile.

We find Mama sitting on the front steps, where once our servants pridefully ate their meals.

“Did they come back?” I ask. I don’t have to specify who. The only people we’re truly afraid of are the Green Gang thugs. Mama nods. May and I let that sink in. What Mama says next sends a ripple of dread down my spine.

“And your father still hasn’t returned.”

We sit on either side of our mother. We wait, searching both ends of the street, hoping to see Baba turn the corner. But he doesn’t come home. Darkness falls and with it intensified bombardment. The night glows from fires raging in Chapei. Searchlights streak across the sky. Whatever happens, the International Settlement and the French Concession, as foreign territories, will be safe.

“Did he say if he was going somewhere after the funeral?” May asks, her voice as tiny as a girl’s.

Mama shakes her head. “Maybe he’s looking for a job. Maybe he’s gambling. Maybe he’s seeing a woman.”

Other options flash through my mind, and when I look over Mama’s head to May, I see she shares them with me. Has he deserted us, leaving his wife and daughters to deal with the consequences? Has the Green Gang decided to kill Baba before the deadline as a warning to us? Or has antiaircraft fire or shrapnel fallen to earth and found him?

At about two in the morning, Mama pats her thighs decisively. “We should get some sleep. If your father doesn’t come home—” Her voice catches. She takes a deep breath. “If he doesn’t come home, then we’ll still go ahead with my plan. Your father’s family will take us in. We belong to them now.”

“But how are we going to get there? We can’t change our tickets.”

Desperation grips Mama’s features as she hastily tosses out an idea. “We could go to Woosong. That’s only a few miles from here. I could walk it if I had to. Standard Oil has a wharf there. With your marriage papers, maybe they’ll give us space on one of their launches to some other city. From there we could go south.”

“I don’t think that will work,” I say. “Why would the oil company want to help us?”

Mama comes back with another proposal. “We could try to find a boat to take us up the Yangtze—”

“What about the monkey people?” May asks. “There are a lot of them on the river. Even the lo fan are leaving the interior to come here.”

“We could go north to Tientsin and look for passage on a ship,” Mama tries again, but this time she holds up a hand to keep my sister and me from speaking. “I know. The monkey people are there already. We could go east, but how long before those areas are invaded?” She pauses to think. It’s as though I can see through her skull and into her brain as she anticipates the dangers of different ways out of Shanghai. Finally, she leans forward and confides in a low but steady voice, “Let’s go southwest to the Grand Canal. Once we reach the canal, we ought to be able to get a boat—a sampan, anything—and continue on to Hangchow. From there we can hire a fishing boat to take us to Hong Kong or Canton.” She looks from me to May and then back. “Do you agree?”

My head swims. I have no idea what we should do.

“Thank you, Mama,” May whispers. “Thank you for taking such good care of us.”

We go inside. Moonlight streams through the windows. Only when we say good night does Mama’s voice break, but then she goes into her room and shuts the door.

In the darkness, May looks at me. “What are we going to do?”

I think the better question is, What’s going to happen to us? But I don’t ask it. As May’s jie jie, I have to hide my fears.

The next morning, we hurriedly pack what we consider to be practical and useful: sanitary supplies, three pounds of rice per person, a pot and eating utensils, sheets, dresses, and shoes. At the last minute, Mama calls me to her room. From a dresser drawer she pulls out some papers, including our coaching book and marriage certificates. On her vanity, she’s gathered together our photo albums. They’ll be too heavy to carry so I think Mama’s going to take a few photos as memories. She pulls one from the black paper. Behind it is a folded bill. She repeats the process again and again until she’s put together a small stack of bills. She tucks the cash in her pocket, then asks me to help her move the dresser away from the wall. Hanging from a nail is a small bag, which she takes. “This is all that remains of my bride-price,” she tells me.

“How could you have kept these things hidden?” I ask indignantly. “Why didn’t you offer to pay off the Green Gang?”

“It wouldn’t have been enough.”