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But what can I do? For now I’m happy with the money I make. I give a third to Father Louie, as we all have called him since he and Sam came to their agreement, for the family pot. Another third is put aside for Joy. And I keep a third to spend as I please.
SIX MONTHS AFTER the fire, on August 2, 1939, China City has its second Grand Opening, with an opera, dragon parade, lion dance, magicians, devil dancers, and carefully monitored firecrackers. In the months that follow, the fragrances of incense and gardenias perfume the air. Soft Chinese music wafts down the alleyways. Children dart among tourists. Mae West, Gene Tierney and Eleanor Roosevelt visit. Shriners host events, and fraternities come to rush. Other groups go to the Chinese Junk Café—modeled on the command ship of a pirate fleet led by the greatest pirate in the world, who just happened to be a Chinese woman—“docked” in the Harbor of Whangpoo to eat “pirate chow” and drink “pirate grog” prepared by “an expert mixologist, a man of soft words but loud concoctions.” The alleyways are full of Occidentals, but China City will never be what it was.
Perhaps people begin to stay away because ma
ny of the original sets that had been a big draw are now reproductions. Maybe they stay away because New Chinatown is seen as more modern and fun. While we were closed, New Chinatown and its neon lights seduced visitors with the promise of late nights, dancing, and amusement, while China City—no matter how much pirate grog you imbibe—is peaceful, quiet, and quaint, with its little alleyways and people dressed as villagers.
I quit my job at Bullock’s and resume my old routine of cleaning and serving in China City. This time I’m properly paid for the work I do. May, however, doesn’t want to go back to the Golden Pagoda.
“Bak Wah Tom has offered me a full-time job,” she tells Father Louie, “helping him find extras, making sure everyone arrives on time for the bus to take them to the studio, and translating on sets.”
I listen to this in surprise. I’d be better at that job. I’m fluent in Sze Yup, for one thing—something even my father-in-law understands.
“What about your sister? She’s the smart one. She should do this work.”
“Yes, my jie jie is very smart, but—”
Before she can make her arguments, he tries a different tack. “Why do you want to be apart from the family? Don’t you want to stay with your sister?”
“Pearl doesn’t mind,” May answers. “I’ve given her plenty of things she would never have otherwise.”
Lately, whenever May wants something, she reminds me that she gave me a child and all the many secrets that go with that. Is this meant to be a threat—that if I don’t let her do this she’ll tell the old man Joy isn’t mine? Not at all. This is one of those times when May has thought things through very clearly. This is her way of reminding me that I have a beautiful daughter, a husband who loves me, and a little home for the three of us in our room, while she has no one and nothing. Shouldn’t I help her get something to make her life more bearable?
“May already has experience with people from Haolaiwu,” I tell my father-in-law. “She’ll be good at this.”
So May goes to work for Tom Gubbins, and I take her place in the Golden Pagoda. I dust from one end of the store to the other. I wash the floor and windows. I make lunch for Father Louie and then scrub his dishes in a tub, throwing the dirty water outside the door as if I’m a peasant’s daughter. And I take care of Joy.
Like women everywhere, I wish I were a better mother. Joy is seventeen months old and still in diapers that have to be washed by hand. She often cries in the afternoons, and I have to walk her back and forth for what seems like hours to calm her. It isn’t her fault. Because of her filming schedules, she doesn’t sleep well at night and she barely naps during the day. She eats American food on the sets and spits out the Chinese food I make for her. I try to hold her, snuggle her, and do all the things a mother’s supposed to do, but there’s a part of me that still doesn’t like to touch or be touched. I love my daughter, but she’s a Tiger child and not easy. And then there’s May, who now spends a lot of time with Joy. A kernel of bitterness begins to grow, which Yen-yen feeds and nourishes. I shouldn’t listen to that old woman, but I can’t get away from her.
“That May thinks only of herself. Her beautiful face hides a devious heart. She has just one thing to do and she doesn’t do it. Pearl, Pearl, Pearl, you sit here and take care of a worthless girl all day. But where is your sister’s child? Why won’t she bring us a son? Why, Pearl, why? Because she’s selfish, because she doesn’t think of helping you or anyone else in the family.”
I don’t want to believe these things are true, but I can’t deny that May is changing. As her jie jie, I should try to stop it, but my parents and I didn’t know how to do it when May was a little girl and I don’t know how to do it now.
To make things more difficult, May often calls me from the set, lowers her voice, and then asks, “How in the H do I tell these people they have to carry their firearms over their shoulders?” Or “How in the H do I tell them to huddle together when they’re being beaten?” And I tell her the Sze Yup words, because I don’t know what else to do.
By Christmas, our lives have settled. May and I have been here twenty months. Making our own money allows us to slip away for excursions and treats. Father Louie calls us spendthrifts, but we always weigh how to spend our cash. I want a more stylish haircut than I can get in Chinatown, but every time I go to a beauty parlor in the Occidental part of town, they say, “We don’t cut Chinese hair.” I finally get someone to cut my hair after hours, when white customers won’t be offended by my presence. A car would be nice too—we could get a used four-door Plymouth for five hundred dollars—but we have a long way to save for that.
In the meantime, we go to the movie palaces on Broadway. Even if we pay for the best seats, we have to sit in the balcony. But we don’t care, because movies perk up the spirits. We cheer when we glimpse May as a fallen woman begging a missionary for forgiveness or Joy as an orphan being handed onto a sampan by Clark Gable. Seeing my daughter’s beautiful face on the screen, I’m embarrassed by my dark skin. I take some of my money to the apothecary and buy face cream embellished with ground pearls, hoping to make my face as fair as Joy’s mother’s should be.
During our time here, May and I have changed from beautiful girls buffeted by fate and looking for escape to young wives not completely happy with our lots—but what young wives are? Sam and I are doing the husband-wife thing, but so are May and Vern. I know because the walls are thin and I can hear everything. We have accepted and adapted to what’s safe, and we do our best to find pleasure where we can. On New Year’s Eve, we dress up and go to the Palomar Dance Hall, only to be turned away because we’re Chinese. Standing on the street corner, I gaze up and see a full moon that looks worn and blurred, dulled by the lights and the exhaust that hang in the air. As one poet wrote, Even the best of moons will be tinged with sadness.
Haolaiwu
WE ARE BACK in Shanghai. Rickshaws clatter past. Beggars squat on the ground, their arms outstretched, their palms open. Barbecued ducks hang in the windows. Street vendors hover over carts, boiling noodles, roasting nuts, frying bean curd. Peddlers sell bok choy and melons from baskets. Farmers have come into the city, carrying bundles of live chickens, ducks, and pig parts hanging from poles slung over their shoulders. Women drift past in skintight cheongsams. Old men sit on upturned crates, smoking pipes, their hands tucked into their sleeves for warmth. Thick fog drapes itself around our feet, oozing into alleys and dark corners. Red lanterns hang above us, turning everything into an eerie dream.
“Places! Places, everyone!”
Home vanishes from my mind, and I’m back on the movie set I’m visiting with May and Joy. Bright lights turn on the fake scene. A camera rolls across the floor. A man positions a sound boom overhead. It’s September 1941.
“You should be proud of Joy,” May says, brushing a loose strand of hair from my daughter’s face. “No matter what studio we go to, everyone loves her.”
Joy sits on her aunt’s lap, looking content but alert. She’s three and a half years old and beautiful; “just like her aunt,” people always say. And what a perfect auntie May is, getting Joy jobs, taking her to movie sets, making sure she has good costumes and is always in the exact right spot when the director looks for an innocent face on which to focus his camera lens. This past year or so, Joy has spent so much time with her auntie that being with me is like spending time with a bowl of rancid milk. I discipline Joy and make her eat her supper, dress properly, and show respect to her grandparents, her uncles, and every other person older than she. May prefers to indulge Joy with treats, kisses, and letting her stay up all night on shoots like this.
People have always called me the smart one—even my father-in-law says so—but what seemed like a good idea a couple of years ago has turned out to be a big mistake. When I said May could take Joy to movie sets, I didn’t fully understand that my sister was going to provide my daughter with a different world, which was fun and completely separate from me. When I mentioned this to May, she frowned and shook
her head. “It’s not like that. Come with us and watch what we do. You’ll see how good she is, and you’ll change your mind.” But this isn’t just about Joy. May wants to show off her importance, and I’m supposed to tell her how proud of her I am. We’ve followed this same pattern since we were children.
So today, in the late afternoon, we boarded a bus with neighbors for whom May had also gotten jobs. When we reached the studio, we drove through a gate and straight to the wardrobe department, where women shoved clothes at us with no regard to our sizes. I was handed a filthy jacket and a wrinkled pair of loose trousers. I hadn’t worn clothes like these since May and I crept out of China and then languished on Angel Island. When I tried to exchange them, the wardrobe girl said, “You’re supposed to look dirty, plenty dirty, understand?” May, who usually plays someone glamorous and naughty, also took a set of peasant clothes so we’d be together in the scene.
