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“You were already prepared to lie when the ship sailed into San Francisco,” I say finally. “That’s why you didn’t study the coaching book. You didn’t want to answer correctly. You wanted to end up here.”
“That’s not quite right. I hoped Spencer would help me—us. He made promises on the ship. He said he would take care of things so we wouldn’t have to go to Los Angeles. He lied.” She shrugs. “Does it surprise you after Baba? My next option was coming here. Don’t you see? If I have the baby here, they’ll never know it was mine.”
“They?”
“The Louies,” she says impatiently. “You have to take it. I’m giving him to you. You did the husband-wife thing with Sam. The timing is almost right.”
I pull my hands from hers and lean away from her.
“What are you saying?”
“The doctors said you probably can’t have a baby. This could save me and help you.”
But I don’t want a baby—not now, perhaps not ever. I don’t want to be married either—at least not through an arrangement or to pay my father’s debts. There has to be another way.
“If you don’t want it, then give it to the missionaries,” I suggest. “They’ll take him. They’ve got that Chinese Babies Aid society they’re always talking about. They’ll keep it separate from diseased women.”
“Pearl! This is my baby! What other ties do we have to Mama and Baba? We’re daughters—the end of the line. Couldn’t my son be the beginning of a new line here in America?”
Of course we assume the baby is a boy. Like Chinese everywhere, we can’t imagine a child other than a son, who will bring great happiness to his family and guarantee that the ancestors are fed in the afterworld. Nevertheless, May’s plan will never work.
“I’m not pregnant and I can’t have the baby for you,” I say, pointing out the obvious.
Once again, May shows how much she’s been thinking about all this.
“You’ll have to wear the peasant clothes I bought for you. They cover everything. Those country women don’t want anyone to see their bodies—not to attract a man, not to show they’re with c
hild. You didn’t notice how big my stomach had gotten, did you? Later, if you need to, you can put a pillow in your pants. Who’s going to look? Who’s going to care? But we do have to string out our time here.”
“For how long?”
“Another four months or so.”
I don’t know what else to do or say. She’s my sister, my only living relative as far as I know, and I promised Mama I’d take care of her. And like that, I make a decision that will affect the rest of my life … and May’s too.
“All right. I’ll do it.”
I’m so overwhelmed by everything that’s happened today that I don’t have the sense to ask how she’s going to deliver the baby and not have the authorities know about it.
THE HARSH REALITY of what we did by leaving China and coming here hits us hard in the coming weeks. Hopeful—stupid—people call Angel Island the Ellis Island of the West. Those who want to keep the Chinese out of America call it the Guardian of the Western Gate. We Chinese refer to it as the Isle of the Immortals. Time passes so slowly it feels as if we’re in the afterworld, that’s for sure. The days are long and staggered by a routine that is as expected and unremarkable as evacuating our bowels. Everything’s regulated. We have absolutely no choice about when or what we eat, when the lights are turned on or off, when we go to bed or get up. When you’re in prison, you lose all privileges.
When May’s belly gets larger, we move to a pair of adjacent lower bunks so she won’t have to climb so high. Every morning we wake up and dress. The guards escort us to the dining hall—a surprisingly small room given that on some days meals are served to over three hundred people. Like everything else on Angel Island, the dining hall is segregated. The Europeans, Asiatics, and Chinese all have their own cooks, food, and dining times. We have a half hour to eat breakfast and be completely out of the hall before the next group of detainees arrives. We sit at long wooden tables and eat bowls of jook, and then the guards escort us back to our dormitory and lock us in. Some women make tea using hot water from a pot kept atop the radiator. Others munch on food sent by family members in San Francisco: noodles, pickles, and dumplings. Most go back to sleep, waking only when the missionary ladies come to talk to us about their one God and teach us how to sew and knit. One matron feels sorry for me: pregnant and stranded on Angel Island. “Let me send a telegram to your husband,” she offers. “Once he knows you’re here and in the family way, he’ll come and sort out everything for you. You don’t want your baby to be born in this place. You’ll need a proper hospital.”
But I don’t want that kind of help, not yet anyway.
For lunch, we go to the dining hall for cold rice topped by bean sprouts that have been steamed to a soggy mess, jook with slivered pork, or tapioca soup with crackers. Dinner consists of one large dish—dried tofu and pork, potatoes and beef, lima beans and pork knuckles, or dried greens and sand dabs. They sometimes give us course red-grain rice barely fit to eat. Everything looks and tastes like it’s been chewed and swallowed once already. Some women take to putting pieces of meat from their bowls into mine. “For your son,” they say. I then have to find a way to transfer these luxuries to May.
“Why don’t your husbands come to visit?” a woman asks us one night at dinner. Her given name is Dustpan, but she goes by the married name of Lee-shee. She’s been detained even longer than May and I. “They could hire a lawyer for you. They could explain everything to the inspectors. You could leave tomorrow.”
May and I don’t answer that our husbands don’t know we’ve arrived and that they can’t know until the baby’s born, but sometimes I have to admit it would be a comfort to see them—even those nearly total strangers.
“Our husbands are far away,” May explains to Lee-shee and the other pitying women. “It’s very hard for my sister, especially at this time.”
Afternoons pass slowly. While the other women write to their families—people can send and receive as many letters as they want, although they have to pass through a censor’s hands—May and I talk. Or we look out a window—covered in wire mesh to make sure we don’t escape—and dream of our lost home. Or we work on our sewing and knitting, skills our mother never taught us. We sew diapers and little shirts. We try to knit baby sweaters, caps, and booties.
“Your son will be born a Tiger and will be influenced by the Earth element, which is strong this year,” a woman returning from a trip to her home village tells me during her three-day stay on Angel Island. “Your Tiger child will bring happiness and worry at the same time. He’ll be charming and bright, curious and inquisitive, affectionate and athletic. You’ll have plenty of exercise just keeping up with him!”
May usually remains silent during the advice given to us by the women, but this time she can’t help herself. “Will he truly be joyful? Will he have a happy life?”
