I lie down. It’s much too hot to pull the quilt over me, and not a breath of fresh air comes through the opening where a glass window would ordinarily be. I fall asleep to the sound of mice scratching and scuttling in the rafters.
Pearl
A WIDOW SHOULD …
I’M ON A plane to Hong Kong, a place I haven’t been since my sister and I left China twenty years ago. As I sit in my cramped seat, my past churns through my mind. My sister—a self-centered woman, whom I’ve tried to protect since she was a baby and who repaid me by betraying me again and again and again—haunts me. My daughter fills my heart with worry. My husband, Sam … Oh, Sam…
I’m a widow now. My mother used to say that a widow is the unluckiest person on earth, because either she committed an unforgivable crime in a previous life or her lack of devotion to her husband caused him to die. Either way, she’s doomed to live out her life unloved by another man, for no good family will accept a widow into their home. And even if a family would take a widow, she would know better than to accept, because the world knows that a decent woman should never go with a second man. A miserable existence should be anticipated and accepted.
A widow should pray, fast, and recite sutras. (I’ll omit the sutras and confine myself to prayers.) She should dedicate herself to doing good deeds at her place of worship. (This I might only be able to do in my heart for now, since I have no idea what I’ll find for a Methodist like me in the People’s Republic of China.) She should spend the rest of her life in chastity. (Something that doesn’t break my heart, if I’m honest.) She should give up material possessions and devote herself to others like me: the socially dead. (Instead, I’m flying across the world to find my daughter.) I’ve often been told that a widow’s suffering will overcome vanity and attachment by wearing it out. (I’ve never been vain—that was something I left to my sister—but I cannot give up attachment if it means giving up on my daughter.) A proper widow should confine herself to dark colors and maybe a few pieces of jade of good quality. But why am I even thinking about these things when I’m on a frantic and unplanned search for Joy?
It’s fair to say I don’t know what I’m doing. I like to plot my life and proceed carefully, but life doesn’t always follow a plan. As a young woman I loved Z.G., but I was forced into an arranged marriage to pay my father’s debts. Now, as I think about how I raised May’s daughter as my own, never knowing that Z.G. was Joy’s father, my chest constricts in sorrow and embarrassment at the idea of May and Z.G. together. She is a Sheep, while he is a Rabbit. This is one of the most ideal matches, and yet I believed that Z.G. and I were the ones meant to be together. The knowledge is devastating and it breaks my heart, but right now I have other things to worry about.
We cross the International Date Line, which means it’s now been seventeen days since Sam committed suicide, thirteen days since his funeral, and two days since Joy ran away. There was never any question that I’d be the one to chase after Joy. A kind person would say that May wouldn’t want to leave Vern, her invalid husband who was never right in the head to begin with, but I know her. She wouldn’t want to leave her business or put herself in danger. What’s that phrase she uses? She wouldn’t want to break a fingernail. Joy may not be my birth daughter, but she is mine and I’ll do anything for her. I keep thinking of my mother, who used to tell me I should beware the trait I carry common to all those born in the Year of the Dragon: a Dragon, believing he is just, will often bound headlong into a disastrous situation. My mother was right about many things.
“You’re very brave,” the woman sitting next to me says as the plane bumps through the air. She’s white with fear and her hands grip the armrests. “You must have done this before.”
“This is my first time on a plane,” I say after a long moment. I’m so paralyzed by grief for my husband and terror for my daughter that I wasn’t afraid when the plane took off and have barely noticed the turbulence that started after we refueled in Tokyo. I turn back to the window and stare into the darkness. Later, I hear the woman throw up into a bag.
Finally, the plane begins its descent into Hong Kong’s Kai Tak Airfield. Small islands jut up out of the sea, fishing boats glide on the waves, and palm trees bend in the wind. Then we fly right into the city, between apartment buildings, so close I can see through the windows men wearing undershirts and drinking tea, laundry hanging on the backs of chairs, and women cooking. We land, and a group of bare-chested men roll a set of stairs to the plane. I gather my belongings and follow the other passengers to the exit. The scents of coal smoke, roast duck, and ginger mixed into the heavy, humid air fill my lungs. I’m only in Hong Kong, a British colony, but it smells like China to me.
An immigration official asks for my final destination. As a Dragon, I want to dash straight into China, slash my way across the country, and pry open doors with my long claws to find my daughter, but I have things to do first. To do them, I need to go into the city.
“Hong Kong,” I answer.
The airport is on the Kowloon side of Hong Kong. As darkness falls, my taxi weaves through the crowded streets toward the Star Ferry Terminal. Garish neon lights edge upturned eaves, scrawl out the names of restaurants in English and Chinese, and advertise everything from free drinks and dancing girls for American sailors to herbs and tonics to bring robust and healthy baby sons. I’m awash in memories. Twenty years ago, this city was a gateway between May’s and my escape out of China and getting on the boat to go to America. Again, it’s a British colony, but I’m overwhelmed by how Chinese it is. The border with China is about twenty miles away, with Canton about eighty miles beyond that.
I board the Star Ferry and take it across the bay to the Hong Kong side, where tall white buildings grow on the verdant hills. I make my way to the same cheap hotel where May and I stayed twenty years ago. After checking in, I go to my room and shut the door behind me. It’s as if all the grief I should have been feeling as a widow suddenly hits me, while the terror I feel for Joy is overpowering. I’ve experienced many terrible things in my life, but my daughter’s running away is the worst. I’m afraid I won’t be the strong mother I need to be. Maybe I never was a strong mother. Maybe I’ve never been good enough to be Joy’s mother. Because, of course, I’m not Joy’s mother.
My mind goes to one terrible place after another before spinning uncontrollably to an even worse one. The shame I feel for failing my husband and daughter burns my skin. I have no one. Not even my sister. I doubt I’ll ever forgive her for reporting Sam to the FBI. She gave me her apologies, and when we stood at the airport, she said, “When our hair is white, we’ll still have our sister love.” I listened, but I didn’t believe her. I didn’t say anything because, whether I liked it or not, we had to come together as sisters to find Joy. That said, when I allow myself to think about the things May accused me of that last night, I know she was right in many ways. She pointed out that I’d gone to college in Shanghai, but I’d never done anything with it. I’d never taken advantage of the opportunities that were given to me in Los Angeles either. May said I preferred to be a victim and wallow in my sacrifices. She taunted me for being afraid and for running from the past. But May also used to say, Everything always returns to the beginning. She would laugh to see me now, because I’ve run so
hard and for so long that I’ve run full circle into the heart of my past.
And look at me! Just as May said, I am afraid. I’ve always been hopelessly and pathetically afraid, but my sister has never given up. Twenty years ago, as we were escaping Shanghai, she didn’t leave me in the shack after I was raped and beaten by Japanese soldiers nearly unto death. Instead, she piled me—unconscious—into a wheelbarrow and pushed me through the countryside to safety. She didn’t wither into nothing when she had to give me the daughter she’d carried and loved for nine months. Nor did she ever once falter in acting as Joy’s aunt for nineteen years. She kept the secret. She honored her daughter and me by keeping that secret. She would not be in a hotel room, weeping and mourning all night.
Just before dawn, I get up, take a shower, and get dressed. I look in the mirror. I’m forty-one, and, even after everything I’ve been through, I don’t have a single gray hair. I’ve never been like my sister, whose face is her fortune. Nevertheless, despite the trials of these past weeks, my cheeks are still pink. Only in my eyes do I see the depth of my struggling heart, a maelstrom of sadness and loss.
I go downstairs and order a bowl of rice porridge and a pot of jasmine tea. The meal is as plain as I can make it. I’m a widow, who’s lost everything. How could I ever eat a Hong Kong English breakfast of eggs, bacon, stewed tomatoes, and toast?
After breakfast, I stop at the front desk to ask directions to the Soo Yuen Benevolent Association, hoping to get advice about going into China and also how to deal with mail to and from my sister once I get there. The association was founded to help people of the Louie, Fong, and Kwong families. My father-in-law used its services for years. Father Louie remained connected to his home village of Wah Hong after nearly a lifetime spent in America. He sent tea money to his relatives, even if it meant we had to sacrifice. When China closed, he had to use the association to get money across the border to his family. After Father Louie died, Sam kept sending money to Wah Hong, which the FBI and INS agents considered one of his biggest crimes. I can almost hear Sam say to them, “We do what we can for our relatives who are trapped in a bad place.” That didn’t matter to the agents, obviously. So I know that, if May sends letters and money straight to me in Red China, she’ll be attacked for being a Communist sympathizer by the FBI, just as Sam was. At the same time, what waits for me on the other side of the border is a mystery. We’ve heard mail is often opened, read, and censored, or tossed in the dustbin. I know as well that people in China who dare to send letters abroad or receive them—no matter how innocent the content—can also be accused of being secret capitalists or spies.
So, out into the streets. Hong Kong bustles with life: flower and bird sellers, street markets, British businessmen in three-piece suits, beautifully dressed women holding umbrellas to shield them from the sun. I could say that Hong Kong is just a bigger, gaudier, richer, more cosmopolitan version of Chinatown, but then I’d have to admit that it isn’t like my adopted home much at all, except for the food, the streams of white tourists, and the Chinese faces. I could say Hong Kong is closer to how I remember Shanghai, with its lively waterfront, the sex and sin for sale, and the smells of perfume, coal, and delectable treats being cooked right on the street, except that it isn’t nearly as grand or wealthy as the city of my girlhood.
An hour later, I reach the Soo Yuen Benevolent Association’s office and approach a thin man of about fifty years, wearing a cheap suit, standing behind a counter, drinking tea. I extend my hand. “I’m Pearl Louie and I’m from Los Angeles,” I blurt. “My daughter was born in America. She looks Chinese on the outside, but she’s an American. My daughter …” Tears well in my eyes, and I manage to hold them back. “She’s only nineteen and she’s run away to China—Shanghai, I’m pretty sure—to find her father. She thinks she’s smart and she has a lot of enthusiasm for what’s happening there, but she doesn’t know anything about it.”
How can I say these things to a total stranger? Because I can’t expect this man to help me, if I’m not honest with him.
“Are you planning on going to the People’s Republic of China?” he asks, unimpressed.
“You say that like it’s nothing, but China is a Communist country. It’s closed.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he says in a bored tone. “The Bamboo Curtain and all that.”
I can’t believe his attitude. I just poured out my sorrows and worries and he acts like neither thing is important.
I rap my knuckles on the counter to get his attention. “Are you going to help me or not?”
“Look, lady, it’s a bamboo curtain, not an iron curtain. People go in and out of China all the time. It’s not a big deal.”