Violet and I get along well. She has narrow hips, which Mama always said marked a woman with the gift of gab. Are we best friends? I sneak a glance at my sister. Never. Violet and I are good friends, like Betsy and I once were. May will always be not only my sister and my sister-in-law but also my best friend, forever. That said, May doesn’t know what she’s talking about. While it’s true that many of the new women do seem FOB—just as we once did—most of them are exactly like Violet: educated, arriving in this country with their own money, not having to spend even a single night in Chinatown but buying bungalows and homes in Silver Lake, Echo Park, or Highland Park, where Chinese are welcomed. Not only do they not live in Chinatown, but they don’t work there either. They aren’t laundrymen, houseboys, restaurant workers, or curio-shop clerks. They’re the cream of China—the ones who could afford to leave. Already they’ve gone further than we ever could. Violet now teaches at USC, and Rowland works in the aerospace industry. They come to Chinatown only to go to church and to buy groceries. They’ve joined our group so their son can meet other Chinese children.
May eyes a young man. “You think that FOB wants our ABC?” She asks suspiciously. The FOB she’s speaking of is Violet’s son; the ABC is my American-born Chinese daughter.
“Leon’s a sweet boy and a good student,” I say, watching as the boy dives smoothly into the surf. “He’s at the top of his class at his school, just as our Joy is at the top of hers.”
“You sound like Mama talking about Tommy and me,” May teases.
“It’s not so bad if Leon and Joy get to know each other,” I respond steadily, for once not offended that she’s compared me with our mother. After all, the reason this union exists is that we want the boys and girls to get to know each other, hoping they’ll marry one day. Implicit in this is the expectation that they’ll marry someone Chinese.
“She’s lucky she won’t have an arranged marriage.” May sighs. “But even with animals, you want a thoroughbred, not a mongrel.”
When you lose your home country, what do you preserve and what do you abandon? We’ve saved only those things that are possible to save: Chinese food, Chinese language, and sneaking what money we can back to the Louie relatives in the home village. But what about an arranged marriage for my girl? Sam isn’t Z.G., but he’s a good and kind man. And Vern, forever damaged, has never beaten May or lost money gambling.
“Just don’t push for marriage,” May continues. “Let her get an education.” (Something I’ve been working toward practically from the moment Joy was born.) “I didn’t have what you had in Shanghai,” my sister complains, “but she should go to college, like you did.” She pauses, letting that sink in, as though I haven’t heard this before too. “But it’s nice she has such good friends,” May adds as the girls cling to one another when a big wave approaches. “Remember when we could laugh like that? We thought nothing bad could happen to us.”
“The essence of happiness has nothing to do with money,” I say, and I believe it. But May bites her lip, and I see I’ve said the exact wrong thing. “We thought the world ended when Baba lost everything—”
“It did,” May says. “Our lives would have been very different if he’d saved our money instead of lost it, which is why I work so hard to make it now.”
Make it and spend it on clothes and jewelry for yourself, I think but don’t say. Our differing attitudes about money are among the many things that aggravate my sister.
“What I mean is,” I try again, hoping not to further darken May’s mood, “Joy’s lucky to have friends, just as I’m lucky to have you. Mama married out and never saw her sisters again, but you and I will have each other forever.” I put my arm around her shoulder and jiggle it affectionately. “Sometimes I think that one day we’ll end up sharing a room just like when we were girls, only we’ll be in the old folks’ home. We’ll have our meals together. We’ll sell raffle tickets together. We’ll make crafts together—”
“We’ll go to matinees together,” May adds, smiling.
“And we’ll sing psalms together.”
May frowns at that. I’ve made another mistake, and I hurry on.
“And we’ll play mah-jongg! We’ll be two retired ladies, fat and round, playing mah-jongg, and complaining about this and that.”
May nods as she stares wistfully west across the sea to the horizon.
WHEN WE GET home, we find Father Louie asleep in his recliner. I give Joy, Hazel, and Rose some straws and send them out to the backyard, where they gather peppercorns off the ground, load up their straws, and blow the harmless pink pellets at one another, laughing, squealing, and running through the yard between the plants. Sam and I go to Vern’s bedroom to change his diaper. The open window does little to blow away the smells of sickness, shit, urine, and pus. May comes in with tea. We sit together for a few minutes to tell Vern about the day, and then I go back to the kitchen. I unpack and begin getting things ready for dinner, washing the rice, chopping ginger and garlic, and slicing beef.
Just before I start cooking, I send the Yee girls home. As I make curried tomato beef lo mein, Joy sets the table—a job that back in Shanghai had always been done by our servants under Mama’s close watch. Joy lines up the chopsticks just so, making sure not to set out any uneven pairs, which would mean that the person using them will miss a boat, a plane, or a train (not that any of us are going anywhere). While I put the food on the table, Joy gets her aunt, father, and grandfather. I’ve tried to teach my daughter the things that Mama tried to teach me. The big difference is that my daughter has paid attention and learned. She never speaks at dinner—something May and I failed at miserably. She never drops her chopsticks for fear of bad luck, nor does she leave them upright in her rice bowl, because that’s something done only at funerals and is impolite to her grandfather, who’s been thinking about his own mortality lately.
When dinner’s over, Sam helps Father back to his chair. I clean the kitchen, while May takes a plate of food to Vern. I’m standing with my hands in soapy water, staring out at the garden aglow in the last of the summer evening’s light, when I hear my sister coming back through the living room. The sound of her steps is familiar and comforting. Then I hear her gasp—a breath so deep and sharp that I’m suddenly very afraid. Is it Vern? Father? Joy? Sam?
I rush to the kitchen door and peer around the jamb. May stands in the middle of the room, Vern’s empty plate in her hand, her face flushed and with a look I can’t comprehend. She’s staring at Father’s chair, and I think the old man must have died. I think if death has come today, then that’s not so bad. He lived to be eighty-something, he spent a quiet day with his son, he had dinner with his family, and none of us can feel bad anymore about the relations between us.
I step into the room to face this sadness and then freeze, as shocked into immobility as my sister. The old man is alive all right. He sits there with his feet up on his lounger, his long pipe in his mouth, and a copy of China Reconstructs held in his hands so the two of us can see it. It’s shocking enough to see him with this magazine. It comes out of Red China, and it’s a piece of Communist propaganda. There’ve been rumors that the government has spies in Chinatown keeping track of who buys things like this. Father Louie, who cannot be called a supporter of the Communist regime by any measure, has told us to avoid the tobacconist and the paper goods store where the magazine is sold from under the counter.
But it’s not the magazine that’s the real shock; it’s the front cover, which my father-in-law is displaying to us with such pride. The image is one that, even if we avoid these products, is familiar to us: the glory of New China as exemplified by two young women dressed in country clothes, their cheeks full of life, their arms loaded with fruits and vegetables, practically singing the glories of the new regime—all rendered in glowing red tones. Those two beautiful girls are instantly recognizable as May and me. The artist, who without hesitation has embraced the heightened, exuberant style favored by the Communists, is also clearly identifiable by the delicacy and precision of his brushstrokes. Z.G. is alive, and he hasn’t forgotten me or my sister.
“I went to the tobacconist when Vern was sleeping. Look,” Father Louie says, the pride in his voice unmistakable as he looks at the cover with May and me—not one question in my mind that it’s us—selling not soap, face powder, or baby formula but a glorious harvest out by the Lunghua Pagoda, where Z.G., May, and I once flew kites. “You’re still beautiful girls.” Father sounds almost triumphant. He worked his whole life, and for what? He never went back to China. His wife died. His birth son is like a dried-up bedbug and about as companionable. He never had a grandson. His businesses have shriveled to one mediocre curio shop. But he did do one thing really, really well. He procured two beautiful girls for Vern and Sam.
May and I take a few tentative steps toward him. It’s hard to say how I feel: surprised and stunned to see May and me looking the same as we did fifteen years ago with our pink cheeks, happy eyes, and luscious smiles, a bit fearful that these magazines are in the house, and almost overwhelmed by joy that Z.G. is still alive.
The next thing I know Sam is at my side, exclaiming, and gesturing in excitement. “It’s you! It’s you and May!”
My cheeks flush, as though I’ve been caught. I have been caught. I lift my eyes to May, looking for help. As sisters, we’ve always been able to say so much to each other with just a glance.
“Z.G. Li must have painted this,” May says evenly. “How lovely that he has remembered us in this way. He made Pearl look especially beautiful, don’t you think?”
“He’s painted both of you exactly as I see you,” says Sam, forever the good husband and appreciative brother-in-law. “Always beautiful. Forever beautiful.”
“Beautiful enough,” May agrees lightly, “although neither of us ever looked that good in peasant clothe