Shanghai Girls (Shanghai Girls 1)

“That’s what Mrs. Howell and I tell ourselves.”

“All you can do is hope.”

He lets out a knowledgeable snort. “That’s so like you, Pearl. Always looking at the bright side. That’s why you did so well in Shanghai. That’s why you got out before bad things happened. All the smart people got out in time.”

When I don’t say anything, he stares at me. After a long while, he says, “I’m here for Madame Chiang Kai-shek’s visit. I’ve been traveling with her on her American tour. Last week we were in Washington, where she appealed to Congress for money to help China in its fight against our common enemy and reminded the men who listened that China and the United States cannot be true allies with the Exclusion Act still on the books. This week she’s going to speak at the Hollywood Bowl and—”

“Participate in a parade here in Chinatown.”

“It sounds like you know all about it.”

“I’m going to the Bowl,” I say. “We’re all going, and we’re looking forward to having her here.”

Hearing the word we, for the first time he seems to absorb his surroundings. I watch as his cheerless eyes see past his memories of a girl who perhaps never existed. He takes in the grease on my clothes, the tiny wrinkles around my eyes, and my chapped hands. Then his understanding expands as he assesses the smallness of the café, the walls painted baby-shit yellow, the dusty fan spinning overhead, and the wiry men wearing ME NO JAP armbands gawking at him as though he were a creature from beneath the waves.

“Mrs. Howell and I live in Washington now,” he says carefully. “Betsy would be angry with me if I didn’t invite you to come home with me. I could get you a job. With your language skills, there’s a lot you could do to help the war effort.”

“My sister’s here with me,” I respond, without thinking.

“Bring May too. We have room.” He pushes away his plate of chow mein. “I hate to think of you here. You look…”

It’s funny how in that moment I see things clearly. Am I beaten down? Yes. Have I allowed myself to become a victim? Somewhat. Am I afraid? Always. Does some part of me still long to fly away from this place? Absolutely. But I can’t leave. Sam and I have built a life for Joy. It isn’t perfect, but it’s a life. My family’s happiness means more to me than starting over again.

If in the canteen photos I’m smiling, the one from this day shows me at my worst. Mr. Howell—wearing an overcoat and a fedora—and I are posed next to the cash register, onto which I’ve taped a handmade sign that reads: ANY RESEMBLANCE TO LOOKING JAPANESE IS PURELY OCCIDENTAL. Usually our customers get a big kick out of that, but no one’s showing teeth in the photograph. Even though it’s in black and white, I can almost see the redness of shame on my cheeks.

A FEW DAYS later, the whole family gets on a bus and rides to the Hollywood Bowl. Because Yen-yen and I have worked so hard raising money for China Relief, our family has good seats just behind the fountain that separates the stage from the audience. When Madame Chiang steps on the stage wearing a brocade cheongsam, we applaud like crazy people. She’s splendid and beautiful.

“I implore the women here today to become educated and take an interest in politics both here and in the home country,” she proclaims. “You can churn the wheel of progress without jeopardizing your roles as wives and mothers.”

We listen attentively as she asks us and the Americans to help raise money and support for the Women’s New Life Movement, but the whole time she speaks we ooh and aah over her appearance. My thoughts about my clothes change once again. I see that the cheongsam, which I’ve had to wear to please the tourists in China City and meet Mrs. Sterling’s lease requirements, can be a patriotic, and fashionable, symbol.

When May and I go home, we bring our most precious cheongsams out of their chests and put them on. Inspired by Madame Chiang, we want to be as stylish and as loyal to China as possible. Instantly, we’re once again beautiful girls. Sam takes our picture, and for a moment it feels as though we’re back in Z.G.’s studio. But why, I wonder later, didn’t we ask Sam to take a photograph of Yen-yen and me when we were invited to shake Madame Chiang Kai-shek’s hand?

TOM GUBBINS RETIRES and sells his business to Father Louie. It becomes the Golden Prop and Extras Company. Father Louie puts May in charge, even though she doesn’t know beans about running a business. She now earns as much as $150 a week as a technical director, supplying extras, costumes, props, translation, and advice. She continues to work in countless films, which are now sent around the world and viewed by millions of people to show how bad the Japanese are. Her parts are small: a hapless Chinese maiden, a servant to some colonel or other, a villager being saved by white missionaries. But May is best known for her screaming roles, and, with the war on, she’s played victim after victim in films like Behind the Rising Sun, Bombs over Burma, The Amazing Mrs. Holliday, in which an American woman tries to smuggle Chinese war orphans into the United States, and China, with its tagline, “Alan Ladd and twenty girls—trapped by the rapacious Japs!” May seems to be well liked by the various studios, especially MGM. “They call me the Cantonese ham,” she boasts. She brags that she once earned one hundred dollars in one day for her screaming abilities.

Then May gets the call to supply MGM with extras for the filming of Dragon Seed, which will be released next summer in 1944. She contacts the Chinese Cinema Club on Main and Alameda, where members of the Chinese Screen Extras Guild hang out, to hire people, making a commission of ten percent for each extra, and she works in the motion picture herself.

“I tried to get Metro to let Keye Luke play one of the Jap captains, but the studio doesn’t want to ruin his image as Charlie Chan’s Number One Son,” she says. “They have the prize Chinese egg, and they don’t want it to go bad. It isn’t easy to fill all the roles. I need hundreds of people to play Chinese peasants. For the Jap soldiers, the studio told me to hire Cambodians, Filipinos, and Mexicans.”

Ever since my night on the movie set, I’ve been torn between my distaste for Haolaiwu and my desire to put money aside for my little girl. Joy has worked steadily since the war began, and I’ve made a good start on what I imagine she’ll need for an education. My chance to pull her away from that world comes one night when Joy and May return from the set. Joy’s crying and goes straight to our room, where she now has a little cot in the corner. May’s furious. I’ve gotten mad at Joy sometimes. What mother doesn’t get upset with her children on occasion? But this is the first time I’ve seen May angry at Joy, ever.

“I had a great role for Joy as Third Daughter,” May fumes. “I made sure she got a good costume, and she looked darling. But just before the director called her, Joy went to the toilet. She missed her opportunity! She embarrassed me. How could she do that to me?”

“How?” I ask. “She’s five years old. She needed to use the pot.”

“I know, I know,” May says, shaking her head. “But I really wanted this for her.”

Grasping at my opportunity before it disappears, I continue. “Let’s have Joy work in one of the stores with her grandparents for a while. That way she’ll learn to be more appreciative of everything you do for her.” I don’t say that I won’t let her go back to Haolaiwu, that in September Joy will start American school, or that I don’t know how I’ll save enough for Joy to go to college, but May’s so mad she agrees with me.

Dragon Seed remains a highlight of May’s career. One of her most precious possessions becomes the photo of her with Katharine Hepburn on the set. They’re both wearing Chinese peasant clothes. Miss Hepburn’s eyes have been taped back and heavily lined with black. The famous actress doesn’t look even a little bit Chinese, but then neither do Walter Huston or Agnes Moorehead, who also star in the picture.

ON MY DRESSER, I put a photo of Joy at the orange juice stand we’ve set up for her outside the Golden Dragon Café. She’s surrounded by servicemen, who crouch around her, smiling and giving her a thumbs-up. The photograph captures a single moment but one that’s repeated day after day, night after night. The boys in uniform love to see my little girl—wearing cute silk pajamas and her hair in pigtails—squeezing oranges. They get to drink all they want for ten cents. Some of those boys will drink three or four glasses just to watch our Joy, her lips pursed in concentration, squeezing, squeezing, squeezing. Sometimes I look at that photograph and wonder if she knows how hard she’s working. Or does she see it as a break from all-night calls and her aunt’s demands? An added bonus: if men stop to look at this little Chinese girl—a curiosity—and drink her orange juice, which doesn’t poison them, then they might come in for a meal.

IN SEPTEMBER I get Joy ready for kindergarten. She wants to go to Castelar School in Chinatown with Hazel Yee and the other neighbor kids. But Sam and I don’t want her to go to the school that passed Vern from grade to grade even though he couldn’t read, write, or do sums. We want her to have a step up in the world. We want her to attend school outside Chinatown, which means Joy has to say she lives in that district. She also has to be taught the official family story. Father Louie’s lies about his status were passed to Sam, the uncles, and me. Now those lies go to a third generation. Joy will forever need to be careful when she applies for school, a job, or even her marriage certificate. All that starts now. For weeks we rehearse her as though she’s about to go through Angel Island: Where do you live? What’s the cross street? Where was your father born? Why did he return to China as a boy? What is your father’s job?

Not once do we tell her what’s true or what’s false. It’s better if she knows only fake truth.

“All little girls need to know these things about their parents,” I explain to Joy as I tuck her in her cot the night before school starts. “Don’t tell your teacher anything except what we’ve told you.”