Shanghai Girls (Shanghai Girls 1)

From the moment May and I arrived in Los Angeles, we’ve been thinking of ways to escape. If only we—I—had known Sam felt the same way.

“I began to think you, Joy, and I could go home together, but how could I allow our baby to travel in steerage? She could die down there.” He squeezes my hands in his. He stares directly into my eyes, and I don’t look away. “I’m not like the others. I don’t want to go back to China anymore. Here, I suffer every day, but it’s a good place for Joy.”

“But China’s our home. The Japanese will tire eventually—”

“But what is there for Joy in China? What is there for any of us? In Shanghai, I was a rickshaw puller. You were a beautiful girl.”

I hadn’t realized he’d known this about May and me. The way he says it strips me of the pride I’ve always felt for what we’d done.

“I don’t care to hate anyone, but I can hate my fate—and yours too,” he says. “We can’t change the people we are or what’s happened to us, but shouldn’t we try to change our daughter’s fate? What road awaits her in China? Here, I can pay back the old man and eventually earn our freedom. Then we will give Joy a proper life—a life of opportunities that you and I will never have. Maybe she could even go to college one day.”

He speaks to my mother’s heart, but the practical part of me that survived my father losing everything and my body being torn apart by monkey people doesn’t see how his dreams can become real.

“We’ll never be able to break away from this place and these people,” I say. “Look around. Uncle Wilburt has worked for the old man for twenty years and he still hasn’t paid his debt.”

“Maybe he’s paid his debt and is saving his treasure to return home a wealthy man. Or maybe he’s happy where he is. He has a job, a place to live, a family to have dinner with on Sunday nights. You don’t know what it’s like to live in a village with no electricity or running water. Maybe you have one room for the whole family, maybe two. You eat only rice and vegetables, unless there’s a festival or a celebration, but even that takes great sacrifice.”

“All I’m saying is that one man by himself is barely able to support himself. How are you going to help the four of us?”

“Four? You mean May.”

“She’s my sister, and I promised my mother I’d take care of her.”

He considers that for a moment. Then he says, “I’m patient. I can wait and I can work hard.” He smiles shyly and then says, “In the morning when you go to the Golden Lantern to help Yen-yen and see Joy, I work at the Temple of Kwan Yin, where I have an extra job selling incense to the lo fan to stick in the big bronze burners. I’m supposed to say, Your dreams will come true, for the blessings of this graceful deity are limitless,’ but my mouth can’t form those words in English. Still, the people seem to take pity on me and buy my incense.”

He gets up and walks to the dresser. He’s such a sadly thin man, but I don’t know how I didn’t recognize his iron fan before this. He rummages through the top drawer and then returns to the bed with a sock that bulges at the toe. He turns the sock upside down, and nickels, dimes, quarters, and a few dollar bills spill on the mattress.

“This is what I’ve saved for Joy,” he explains.

I run my hands over the money. “You are a good man,” I say, but it’s hard to imagine this pittance changing Joy’s life.

“I know it isn’t much,” he admits, “but it’s more than I made as a rickshaw puller, and it will add up. And maybe, in another year or so, I can become a second cook. If I learn to be a first cook, I might make as much as twenty dollars a week. Once we can afford to go out on our own, I will become a fish peddler or maybe a gardener. If I’m a fish peddler, then we can always eat fish. If I’m a gardener, then we can always eat vegetables.”

“My English is good,” I offer tentatively. “Maybe I could look for a job outside Chinatown.”

But honestly, what makes either of us think Old Man Louie will ever release us? And even if he does, don’t I have to tell Sam the truth too? Not the part about Joy not being his! That secret belongs to May and me, and I’ll never reveal it, but I have to tell him what the monkey people did to me and how they killed Mama.

“I’ve been smeared with mud that I’ll never be able to wipe clean,” I tentatively begin, hoping that what Mama said about the Ox is true: that he won’t abandon you in times of trouble, that he’ll stick by you faithfully, and that he is charitable and good. Don’t I have to believe her now? Still, the emotions that play across his face—anger, disgust, and pity—don’t make it easy for me as I tell my story.

When I’m done, he says, “You went through all that and still Joy came out perfectly. She must have a precious future.” He puts a finger to my lips to keep me from saying anything more. “I would rather be married to broken jade than flawless clay. And my father used to say that anyone can add an extra flower to brocade, but how many women will fetch the coal in winter? He was talking about my mother, who was a good and loyal woman, just as you are.”

We hear the others enter the apartment, but neither of us moves. Sam leans close and whispers in my ear. “On the bench in Yu Yuan Garden, I said I liked you and I asked if you liked me. You only nodded. In an arranged marriage this is more than we can hope for. I never expected happiness, but shouldn’t we try to look for it?”

I turn to him. Our lips nearly touch as I whisper, “What about more children?” As close as I feel to him now, I find it hard to tell him the whole truth. “After Joy came out, the doctors at Angel Island told me I’d never be able to have another baby.”

“As boys, we are told that if we don’t have a son by age thirty, we are unlucky. The worst insult you can yell on the street is ‘May you die son-less!’ We are told that if we don’t have a son, we should adopt one to carry on the family name and care for us when we become ancestors. But if you have a son who is … who has … who can’t…” He struggles, as May and I often have, to put a name to Vernon’s problem.

“You buy a son, as Old Man Louie bought you,” I finish for him, “so that you can care for him and Yen-yen when they become ancestors.”

“And if not me, then the son we might give them one day. A grandson would ensure them a happy existence here and in the afterworld.”

“But I can’t give them that.”

“They don’t have to know, and I don’t care. And who knows? Maybe Vern will give your sister a son, and all debts and obligations will be paid.”

“But, Sam, I can’t give you a son.”

“People say a family is incomplete without a son, but I am happy with Joy. She is my heart’s blood. Every time she smiles at me, grasps my finger, or stares at me with her black eyes, I know I’m lucky.” As he speaks, I bring his hand to my cheek, and then I kiss his fingertips. “Pearl, you and I may have been given bad fates, but she is our future. With just one child, we can give her everything. She can have the education I didn’t have. Maybe she will be a doctor or… These things don’t matter so much, because she will always be our consolation and our joy.”