Shanghai Girls (Shanghai Girls 1)

“But it might have helped.”

“My mother always said, ‘Keep something for yourself,’” Mama explains. “I knew I might have to use these things one day. Now that day is here.”

She leaves the room. I linger, staring at the pho

tos: May as a baby, the two of us dressed for a party, Mama and Baba’s wedding photo. Happy memories, silly memories, dance before me. My eyes blur, and I blink back tears. I grab a couple photos, put them in my bag, and go downstairs. Mama and May wait for me on the front steps.

“Pearl, find us a wheelbarrow man,” Mama orders. Because she’s my mother and we don’t have any other options, I obey her—a bound-footed woman who never before had a plan for anything beyond her mah-jongg strategy.

I wait on the corner, watching for a wheelbarrow pusher who looks strong and whose cart appears sturdy and large. Wheelbarrow pushers are below rickshaw pullers and just slightly above nightsoil men. They’re considered part of the coolie class—poor enough that they’ll do anything to make a little money or receive a few bowls of rice. After several attempts, I find a pusher, so thin the skin on his belly seems to meet his spine, willing to enter serious negotiations.

“Who would try to leave Shanghai now?” he asks wisely. “I don’t want to be killed by the monkey people.”

I don’t tell him that the Green Gang is after us. Instead, I say, “We’re going home to Kwangtung province.”

“I’m not pushing you that far!”

“Of course not. But if you could get us to the Grand Canal…”

I agree to pay double his daily take.

We go back to the house. He packs our bags into the wheelbarrow. We prop the cloth-wrapped satchels filled with our dresses on the back of the wheelbarrow so Mama will have something to lean on.

“Before we go,” Mama says, “I want to give you girls these.” She loops a tiny cloth pouch hanging from a string around May’s neck and another around mine. “I bought them from a diviner. They hold three coppers, three sesame seeds, and three green beans. He said they will keep you safe from evil spirits, illness, and the dwarf bandits’ flying machines.”

My mother’s so susceptible, gullible, and old-fashioned. How much did she pay for this nonsense—fifty coppers apiece? More?

She climbs in the wheelbarrow and wiggles her bottom to get comfortable. In her hands she clasps our papers—the boat tickets, our marriage certificates, and the coaching book—wrapped in a piece of silk and tied with silk tape. Then we take one last look at the house. Neither Cook nor our boarders have come outside to wave good-bye or wish us luck.

“Are you sure we should leave?” May asks anxiously. “What about Baba? What if he comes home? What if he’s hurt somewhere?”

“Your father has a hyena’s heart and a python’s lungs,” Mama says. “Would he stay here for you? Would he come looking for you? If so, then why isn’t he here?”

I don’t believe Mama means to be so callous. Baba has lied to us and put us in a desperate situation, but he’s still her husband and our father. But Mama is right. If Baba is alive, he probably isn’t thinking about us. We can’t worry about him either, if we’re going to have any chance at survival.

The pusher grabs the wheelbarrow’s handles, Mama grips the sides, and they begin to move. For now, May and I walk on either side. We have a long way to go, and we don’t want the boy to tire too quickly. As they say, there is no light load if one has to carry it for a hundred paces.

We cross the Garden Bridge. Around us men and women dressed in thickly padded cotton carry everything they own: birdcages, dolls, sacks of rice, clocks, rolled up posters. As we walk along the Bund, I stare across the Whangpoo. Foreign cruisers gleam in the sun, black clouds streaming from their smokestacks. The Idzumo and her accompaniment sit on the water—solid, gray and still undamaged by Chinese fire. Junks and sampans bob on wakes. Everywhere, even now that war is upon us, coolies trudge back and forth, carrying heavy loads.

We turn right on Nanking Road, where sand and disinfectant have been used to clean away the blood and stink of death. Eventually, Nanking Road turns into Bubbling Well Road. The tree-shaded street is busy and hard to navigate all the way to the West Train Station, where we see people loaded onto railroad cars on four levels: the floors, the seats, the berths, and the roofs. Our pusher keeps going. Surprisingly quickly, concrete and granite give way to rice and cotton fields. Mama pulls out snacks for us to eat, making sure to give our pusher a generous portion. We stop a few times to relieve ourselves behind a bush or a tree. We walk through the heat of the day. I look back every once in a while and see smoke billowing from Chapei and Hongkew, and I wonder idly when the fires will burn themselves out.

Blisters form on our heels and toes, but we haven’t thought to bring bandages or medicine. When the shadows grow long, the pusher—without asking our opinions—turns down a dirt path that leads to a small farmhouse with a thatched roof. A tethered horse nibbles yellow beans from a bucket, and chickens peck the ground before the open door. As the pusher sets down the wheelbarrow and shakes out his arms, a woman emerges from the house.

“I have three women here,” our pusher says in his rough country dialect. “We need food and a place to sleep.”

The woman doesn’t speak but motions us to come inside. She pours hot water into a tub and points to May’s and my feet. We take off our shoes and put our feet in the water. The woman returns with an earthenware jar. She uses her fingers to slather a foul-smelling homemade poultice on our broken blisters. Then she turns her attention to Mama. She helps my mother to a stool in the corner of the room, pours more hot water into a tub, and then stands in such a way that she shields Mama from us. Even so, I can see Mama bend over and begin to unwrap her bindings. I turn away. Mama’s care of her feet is the most private and intimate thing she can do. I’ve never seen them naked, and I don’t want to.

Once Mama’s feet are washed and wrapped in clean bindings, the woman sets to making dinner. We give her some of our rice, which she pours into a pot of boiling water, and she begins the constant stirring that will turn the two ingredients into jook.

For the first time, I allow myself to look around. The place is filthy and I dread eating or drinking anything in this room. The woman seems to sense this. She puts empty bowls and tin soupspoons on the table along with a pot of hot water. She gestures to us.

“What does she want us to do?” May asks.

Mama and I don’t know, but our wheelbarrow pusher picks up the pot, pours it into the bowls, dips our spoons in the hot water, swirls the liquid, and then tosses the water on the hard-packed earthen floor, where it’s absorbed. The woman then serves us the jook, onto which she floats some stir-fried carrot greens. The greens are bitter in the mouth and sour on swallowing. The woman steps away and returns a moment later with some dried fish, which she drops into May’s bowl. Then she stands behind May and kneads her shoulders.

I have a flash of irritation. This woman—poor, obviously uneducated, and a total stranger—gave the wheelbarrow pusher the largest bowl of jook, provided Mama with privacy, and now frets over May. What is it about me that even strangers recognize as not being worthy?

After dinner, our pusher goes outside to sleep by his wheelbarrow, while we stretch out on straw mats laid on the floor. I’m exhausted, but Mama seems to burn with a deep fire. The petulance that’s always been so much a part of her character disappears as she talks about her own childhood and the house where she was raised.