Maybe I only think I whisper this, because Mama doesn’t seem to pay attention to my warning. I hear her creep closer, and then I feel her fingers on my cheek. Mama, whom I’ve always thought of as physically weak, pulls me onto her lap. She leans back against the mud wall of the shack.
“Your father named you Pearl Dragon,” Mama says, as she smoothes my hair, “because you were born in the Year of the Dragon and the Dragon likes to play with a pearl. But I liked the name for another reason. A pearl grows when a piece of sand lodges in the oyster. I was young, just fourteen, when my father arranged my marriage. That husband-wife thing we have to do was my duty and I did it, but what your father put inside me was as unpleasant as sand. But look what happened. My Pearl came out.”
She hums for a while. I feel drowsy. My whole body aches. Where is May?
“There was a typhoon the day you were born,” Mama suddenly goes on, switching to Sze Yup, the language of my childhood and the language that keeps secrets from May. “It is said that a Dragon born in a storm will have a particularly tempestuous fate. You always believe you are right, and this makes you do things you shouldn’t—”
“Mama—”
“Just listen to me this one time … and then try to forget… everything.” She leans down and whispers in my ear. “You’re a Dragon, and of all the signs only a Dragon can tame the fates. Only a Dragon can wear the horns of destiny, duty, and power. Your sister is merely a Sheep. You have always been a better mother to her than I have.” I stir, but Mama holds me still. “Don’t argue with me now. We don’t have time for that.”
Her voice sounds beautiful. Never before have I felt her mother love so strongly. My body relaxes in her arms, slowly drifting into darkness.
“You have to take care of your sister,” Mama says. “Promise me, Pearl. Promise me right now.”
I promise. And then, after what seems like days and weeks and months, blackness comes over my eyes.
Eating Wind and Tasting Waves
I WAKE ONCE to find a moist cloth wiping my face. I open my eyes and there’s May—as pale, beautiful, and tremulous as a spirit. I see the sky above her. Are we dead? I close my eyes again and feel myself lurching and bumping.
The next thing I know I’m on a boat of some kind. I fight hard to stay awake this time. I look to my left and see netting. I look to my right and see land. The boat moves in a steady pull, pull, pull. The lack of waves tells me we aren’t on the ocean. I lift my head and see a cage just beyond my feet. Inside, a boy of about six—retarded, insane, diseased?—twitches and shimmies. I close my eyes and let myself be lulled by the steady rhythm of the boat as it’s rowed through the water.
I don’t know how many days we travel. Momentary images tear across my eyes and echo in my ears: the moon and the stars above, the incessant croaking of frogs, the sorrowful sound of a pi-pa being played, the splash of an oar, the raised voice of a mother calling to a child, the crack of rifle shots. Into the anguished hollows of my mind, I hear a voice say, “Is it true that dead men float facedown in water but women look to the sky?” I don’t know who asked the question or if it was asked at all, but I’d prefer to stare down into an eternity of watery blackness.
Once I lift my arm to block the sunlight and feel something heavy slide toward my elbow. It’s my mother’s jade bracelet, and I know she’s dead. My insides boil with fever, while my skin shivers uncontrollably with cold. Gentle hands lift me. I’m in a hospital. Soft voices say words like “morphine,” “lacerations,” “infection,” “vagina,” and “surgery.” Whenever I hear my sister’s voice, I feel safe. When I don’t, I despair.
Finally, I come back from my wandering among the nearly dead. May dozes in a chair by the hospital bed. Her hands are so thickly bandaged that she looks like she has two huge white paws lying in her lap. A doctor—a man—stands over me and puts a forefinger to his lips. He jerks his head in May’s direction and whispers, “Let her sleep. She needs it.”
When he leans over me, I try to pull away, but my wrists have been tied to the bed rails.
“You’ve been delirious for some time and you fought us pretty hard,” he says gently. “But you’re safe now.” He puts a hand on my arm. He’s Chinese, but a man nevertheless. I fight the urge to scream. He looks into my eyes, searching, and then he smiles. “Your fever’s gone. You’re going to live.”
In the coming days, I learn that May put me in the wheelbarrow and pushed me herself until we reached the Grand Canal. Along the way, she discarded or sold much of what we’d brought with us. Now our sole possessions are three outfits apiece, our papers, and what remains of Mama’s dowry. At the Grand Canal, May used some of Mama’s money to hire a fisherman and his family to take us on their sampan to Hangchow. I was near death by the time she got me to the hospital. When they took me in for surgery, other doctors worked on May’s hands, which were blistered and worn raw from pushing the wheelbarrow. She paid for our treatment by selling some of Mama’s wedding jewelry at a local pawnshop.
Gradually May’s hands heal, but I require another two surgeries. One day the doctors come in with grim faces to tell me they doubt I’ll ever be able to have children. May weeps, but I don’t. If having a baby means doing the husband-wife thing again, I’d rather die. Never again, I tell myself Never ever again will I do that thing.
After nearly six weeks in the hospital, the doctors finally agree to discharge me. With this news, May disappears to make arrangements for us to go to Hong Kong. On the day she’s to pick me up, I step into the bathroom to change. I’ve lost a lot of weight. The person who stares back at me in the mirror looks no more than twelve years old—tall, gawky, and skinny—but with hollowed-out cheeks and dark circles under the eyes. My bob has grown out, and my hair hangs limp and dull. The days spent unde
r the sun without benefit of an umbrella or a hat have left my skin ruddy and tough. How infuriated Baba would be if he saw me now. My arms are so emaciated that my fingers look overly long, like talons. The Western-style dress I put on hangs on me like loose drapery.
When I come out of the bathroom, May’s sitting on my bed, waiting. She takes one look at me and tells me to take off the dress.
“A lot has happened while you’ve been recovering,” she says. “The monkey people are like ants looking for syrup. They’re everywhere.” She hesitates. She hasn’t wanted to talk about what happened that night in the shack, for which I’m grateful, but it hangs between us with every word, every look. “We need to fit in,” she goes on with false brightness. “We need to look like everyone else.”
She sold one of Mama’s bracelets and used the money to buy two changes of clothes: native black linen trousers, loose blue jackets, and kerchiefs to cover our hair. She hands me a set of the rough peasant clothes. I’ve never had any shyness around May. She’s my sister, but I don’t think I can bear for even her to see me naked now. I take the clothes and go back into the bathroom.
“And I have one other idea,” she calls from the opposite side of the closed and locked door. “I can’t say it’s my own and I don’t know if it will work. I heard it from two Chinese missionary ladies. I’ll wait until you get out here to show you.”
This time when I stare in the mirror I almost laugh. In the last two months I’ve changed from a beautiful girl into a pitiful peasant, but when I come out of the bathroom, May doesn’t comment on how I look. She just motions me to the bed. She pulls out a jar of cold cream and a tin of cocoa powder and sets them on my night table. From my breakfast tray—she frowns when she sees I haven’t eaten anything again—she takes the spoon, scoops out some of the cold cream, and drops two big dollops of it on the tray.
“Pearl, pour some of the cocoa powder in here.” I look at her quizzically. “Trust me,” she says and smiles. I shake the powder into the jar, and she begins to stir the disgusting combination. “We’re going to wear this on our hands and faces, so we’ll look darker, more country.”
It’s a clever idea, but my skin is already dark and that didn’t save me from the soldiers’ madness. Still, from the moment I leave the hospital, I wear May’s concoction.
WHILE I WAS in the hospital, May found a fisherman who’s discovered a new and better way of making a fortune than looking beneath the waves by transporting refugees on the waves from Hangchow to Hong Kong. When we board his boat, we join another dozen or so passengers in a small and very dark hold once used for storing fish. Our only light comes from between the slats of the deck above us. The lingering smell of fish is overpowering, but we set to sea, tossing in the tail of a typhoon. It doesn’t take long before people get seasick. May has it the worst.
On our second day out, we hear shouts. A woman next to me begins to weep. “It’s the Japanese,” she cries. “We’re all going to die.”