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Between Worlds
From Shanghai Girls, by Lisa See, a historical novel about two privileged Shanghai sisters who face straitened circumstances in America after the Japanese invade China.
Within fifteen minutes we’ve gone around the corner, crossed Los Angeles Street, climbed some stairs, and entered Soochow Restaurant for a combination wedding banquet and one-month party. Platters of hard-boiled eggs dyed red to represent fertility and happiness are set on a table just inside the entrance. Wedding couples hang on the walls. Thin slices of sweet pickled ginger to symbolize the continued warming of my yin after the strain of birth are set on each table.
The banquet, while not as lavish as I imagined in my romantic days in Z.G.’s studio, is still the best meal we’ve seen in months – a cold platter with jellyfish, soy-sauce chicken, and sliced kidneys, bird’s nest soup, a whole steamed fish, Peking duck, noodles, shrimp and walnuts – but May and I don’t get to eat.
Yen-yen – carrying her new grandchild – takes us from table to table to make introductions. Almost everyone here is a Louie, and they all speak Sze Yup.
“This is Uncle Wilburt. This is Uncle Charley. And here’s Uncle Edfred,” she says to Joy.
These men in nearly matching suits made from cheap fabric are Sam and Vern’s brothers. Are these names they were born with? Not possible. They’re names they took to sound more American, just as May, Tommy, Z.G., and I took Western names to sound more sophisticated in Shanghai.
Since May and I have been married for a while already, instead of the usual wedding banter about our husbands’ coming fortitude in the bed chamber or how my sister and I are about to be plucked, the teasing revolves around Joy.
“You cook baby fast, Pearl-ah!” Uncle Wilburt says in broken English. From the coaching book, I know he’s thirty one, but he looks much older. “That baby many weeks early?”
“Joy big for her age!” Edfred, who’s twenty-seven but looks a lot younger, chimes in. He’s quite emboldened by the mao tai he’s been drinking. “We can’t count, Pearl-ah.”
“Sam give you son next time!” Charley adds. He’s thirty, but it’s hard to tell because his eyes are red, swollen, and watery from allergies. “You cook next baby so good he come out even earlier!”
“You Louie men. All same!” Yen-yen scolds. “You think you count so good? You count how many days my daughters-in-law run from monkey people. You think she have hardship here? Bah! Baby lucky to be born at all! She lucky to be alive!
May and I pour tea for each guest and receive wedding gifts of lai see – red envelopes with gold good-luck characters and filled with money that will be ours alone – and more gold in the form of earrings, pins, rings, and enough bracelets to climb our arms to our elbows. I can barely wait for us to be alone so we can count the first of our escape money and figure out how to sell our jewelry.
Naturally, there are the predictable comments about Joy being a girl, but most people are delighted to see a baby – any baby. That’s when I realize that the majority of the guests are men, with very few wives and almost no children.
What we experienced on Angel island begins to make sense. The American government does everything possible to keep out Chinese men. It makes it even harder for Chinese women to enter the country. And in a lot of states it’s against the law for Chinese to marry Caucasians. All this ends in the desired result for the United States: with few Chinese women on American soil, sons and daughters can’t be born, saving the country from having to accept undesirable citizens of Chinese descent.
At table after table, the men want to hold joy. Some of them cry when they take her in their arms. They examine her fingers and toes. I can’t help it, but I fairly shine with my new status as mother. I’m happy – not in-the-stars happy but relieved happy. We survived. We made it to Los Angeles. Apart from Old Man Louie’s disappointment in Joy – and not in ten thousand years will I ever call her Pan Di – he’s arranged this celebration and we’re being welcomed.
But my sister – even as she performs her new-bride duties – seems pensive and withdrawn. My heart tightens. How cruel all this is for her, but she didn’t push me in a wheelbarrow for miles and nurse me back to health by being weak. Somehow my little sister has found a way to keep going forward.
It’s late by the time we get back to the apartment. We’re all tired, but Old Man Louie isn’t done with us.
“Give me your jewelry,” he says.
His demand shocks me. Wedding gold belongs to the bride alone. It’s the secret treasure she can draw on to buy herself a special treat without her husband’s criticism or use in times of emergency, as our mother did when Baba lost everything. Before I can protest, may says, “These things are ours. Everyone knows that.”
“I think you’re mistaken,” he asserts. “I’m your father-in-law. I’m the master here.” He could say he doesn’t trust us, and he’d be right. He could accuse us of wanting to use the gold to find a way out of here, and he’d be right. Instead, he adds, “Do you think you and your sister – smart and clever as you think you are with your Shanghai city ways – will know where to go tonight with that baby girl? Will you know where to go tomorrow? The blood of your father has ruined you both. This is why I can buy you for such a low price, but that doesn’t mean I’m willing to lose my goods so easily.”
We let the old man take our jewelry, but he doesn’t ask for the money hidden in our lai see. Maybe he knows that would be too much. But I feel no sense of triumph, and I can see May doesn’t either. She stands in the middle of the room, looking defeated, sad, and very much alone.
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