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“When you don’t want to help the family, you sound like you live in America,” he says.
“I do live in America,” I answer. “I care for my brother-in-law very much. You know that. But he’s not my husband. He’s May’s husband.”
“But you have a heart inside you, Pearl-ah.” His voice chokes with emotion. “You’re the only one I can trust to take care of my boy.”
I tell myself that fate is inevitable and that the only provable fate is death, but I wonder why fate always has to be tragic. We Chinese believe that there are many ways to improve our fates: sewing amulets onto our children’s clothes, asking for help from feng shui masters to pick propitious dates, and relying on astrology to tell us whether we should marry a Rat, a Rooster, or a Horse. But where is my fortune—the good that’s supposed to come to us in the form of happiness? I’m in a new home, but instead of a baby son to dote on, I have to take care of Vern. I’m just so tired and worn down. And I’m afraid all the time. I need help. I need someone to hear me.
The following Sunday, I go to church with Joy as I usually do. Listening to the reverend, I remember the first time God came into my life. I was a little girl, and a lo fan man dressed in black came up to me on the street outside our house in Shanghai. He wanted to sell me a Bible for two coppers. I went home and asked Mama for the money. She pushed me away, saying, “Tell that one-Goder to worship his ancestors instead. He’ll be better off in the afterworld.”
I went back outside, apologized to the missionary for keeping him waiting, and gave him Mama’s message. At that, he gave me the Bible for free. It was my first book, and I was excited to have it, but that night, after I went to sleep, Mama threw it away. The missionary didn’t give up on me though. He invited me to the Methodist mission. “Just come and play,” he said. Later he asked me to attend the mission’s school, also for free. Mama and Baba couldn’t turn down a bargain like that. When May was old enough, she began coming with me. But none of that Jesus-thinking sank into us. We were rice Christians, taking advantage of the foreign devils’ food and classes while ignoring their words and beliefs. When we became beautiful girls, whatever tendrils of Christianity had wormed their way into us shriveled and died. After what happened to China, Shanghai, and my home during the war, after what happened to Mama and me in the shack, I knew there couldn’t be a one-God who was benevolent and kind.
And now we have all of our recent trials and losses, the worst of which was the death of my son. All the Chinese herbs I took, all the offerings I made, all the questioning about the meaning of my dreams, did not, could not, save him, because I was looking for help in the wrong direction. As I sit on the hard bench in the church, I smile to myself as I remember the missionary I met on the street all those years ago. He always said that true conversion was inevitable. Now it has come at last. I begin to pray—not for Father Louie, whose lifetime of hard work is coming to an end; not for my husband, who bears the family’s burdens on his iron fan; not for my baby in the afterworld; not for Vern, whose bones are collapsing before my eyes; but to bring peace of mind, to make sense of all the bad things in my life, and to believe that maybe all this suffering will be rewarded in Heaven.
Forever Beautiful
I WATER THE eggplants and the tomatoes, then pull the hose to the cucumber vine that engulfs the trellis by the incinerator. When I’m done, I roll up the hose, duck under the clothesline, and head back toward the porch. It’s still early on this Sunday morning in the summer of 1952, and it’s going to be a scorcher. I love that American word—scorcher— because it makes so much sense in this desert of a city. Shanghai always felt like we were being steamed to death in the humidity.
When we first moved into this house, I told Sam, “I want us to have food to eat, and I also want to bring a little China here.” So Sam and a couple of the uncles dug up the lawn and I planted a vegetable garden. I brought back to life the chrysanthemums, which bloomed beautifully last fall, and have nursed some geranium cuttings into thriving plants against the screened porch. During the past two years, I’ve added pots with cymbidiums, a kumquat tree, and azaleas. I tried peonies—the most beloved of Chinese flowers—but it never gets cold enough here for them to grow properly. My rhododendrons failed too. Sam asked for a patch of bamboo; now we’re forever hacking it back and seeing new shoots come up in places where we don’t want it.
I climb the steps and enter the screened porch, where I toss my apron on the washing machine, straighten May’s and Joy’s beds, and then go to the kitchen. Sam and I are co-owners of the property with the rest of the family, but I’m the eldest woman in the household. The kitchen is my territory, and this room literally holds my wealth. Under the sink are now two coffee cans: one for bacon grease, the other for Sam’s and my savings for Joy to go to college. An oilcloth covers the table, and a thermos filled with hot water sits ready to make tea. A wok is set permanently on the stove; in a pot on one of the back burners some herbs boil for a tonic for Vern. I prepare a breakfast tray and take it through the living room and down the hall.
Vern’s room belongs to a man forever a small child. Other than the closet with May’s clothes—the one reminder that Vern is married—the many models that he’s glued together and painted decorate the room. Fighter jets hang from fishing line from the ceiling. Ships, submarines, and race cars line floor-to-ceiling shelves.
He’s awake, listening to a radio commentary about the war in North Korea and the threat of Communism, and working on one of his models. I set down his
tray, pull up the bamboo shades, and open the window so the glue won’t go to his head too much.
“Can I get you anything else?”
He smiles at me sweetly. After three years of the soft-bone disease, he looks like a little boy, staying home sick from school for a day. “Paints and brushes?”
I put them within arm’s reach. “Your father will stay with you today. If you need anything, just call and he’ll come.”
I refuse to worry that something bad will happen if we leave the two of them home alone, because I know exactly what their day will be: Vern will work on his model, eat a simple lunch, mess his pants, and work on his model some more. Father Louie will do light chores around the house, make that simple lunch, avoid his son’s messy bottom by walking to the corner to buy his newspapers, and nap until we come home.
I give Vern a wave, and then I go to the living room, where Sam tends the family altar. He bows before Yen-yen’s photograph. Since we don’t have photographs of everyone who’s left us, he’s put one of Mama’s pouches on the altar and a miniature rickshaw to represent Baba. In a tiny box, there’s a clip of my son’s hair. Sam honors his entire family with ceramic fruit made in the country style.
I’ve grown to love this room. I’ve framed and hung family photos on the wall above the couch. Each winter since we’ve lived here, we’ve set up a flocked Christmas tree in the corner and decorated it with red balls. We outline our front windows with Christmas lights so that this room glows with the news of Jesus’ birth. On cold nights, May, Joy, and I take turns standing over the heater grate until our flannel nightgowns balloon out like we’re snow creatures.
I watch as Joy helps her grandfather to his recliner and serves him tea. I’m proud that Joy is a proper Chinese girl. She defers to her grandfather, the eldest in our family above everyone else, including her father and me. She understands that everything she does is not only her grandfather’s business but also his right to decide. He wants her to learn embroidery, sewing, cleaning, and cooking. In the curio shop after school, she does many of the jobs I once did—polishing, sweeping, and dusting. “Her training as a future wife and mother of my great-grandsons is important,” Father Louie says, and we all try to honor that. And even though all hope of returning to China is lost, he still says, “We don’t want Pan-di to become too Americanized. We’ll all go back to China one day.” Sentiments like this tell us he’s slipping. It’s hard to believe that he once ruled us with such authority or that we were all so afraid of him. We used to call him Old Man, but now he’s a very old man, slowly weakening, slowly drifting away from us, slowly losing his memories, his strength, and his connection to the things that have always driven him: money, business, and family.
Joy gives a half bow to her grandfather, and then the two of us walk to the Methodist church for the Sunday service. As soon as the sermon ends, Joy and I go to the Central Plaza in New Chinatown to meet Sam, May, and Uncle Fred, Mariko, and their daughters at one of the district association halls. We’ve joined a group—a union of sorts—composed of members from the Congregational, Presbyterian, and Methodist churches in Chinatown. We meet once a month. We stand erect and proud, place our hands over our hearts, and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Then all the families troop out to Bamboo Lane and pile into sedans for the drive to Santa Monica Beach. Sam, May, and I sit together in the front seat of our Chrysler, Joy and the two Yee girls—Hazel and her younger sister, Rose—squeeze together in the backseat, and then we head west in a caravan along Sunset Boulevard. Cars with huge fins shoot ahead of us, their windshields flashing in the summer glare. We go by old-fashioned clapboard houses in Echo Park and pink stucco mansions and rat-proofed palms in Beverly Hills, where we cut over to Wilshire Boulevard and continue west past supermarkets as massive as B-29 hangars, parking lots and lawns as big as football fields, and cascades of bougainvillea and morning glories.
Joy’s voice rises as she presses a point to Hazel and Rose, and I smile to myself. Everyone says my daughter has my gift for languages. At age fourteen, her Sze Yup and Wu dialects are as perfect as her English, and her mastery of written Chinese is excellent too. Each Chinese New Year or if someone is celebrating a happy occasion, people ask Joy to write appropriate couplets in her fine calligraphy, which is said by all to be tong gee—uncorrupted by adulthood. This praise isn’t enough for me. I know Joy can obtain more spiritual growth and learn more about Caucasians by going to church outside Chinatown, which we do once a month.
“God loves everyone,” I often remind my daughter. “He wants you to make a good living and have a happy life. This is true about America too. You can do anything in the U.S. You can’t say that about China.”
I tell Sam things like this too, because the Christian words and beliefs have taken deep root in me. My faith in God and Jesus is also very much a part of the patriotism and loyalty I feel for my daughter’s home country of America. And of course, being Christian these days is deeply tied to anti-Communist sentiment. No one wants to be accused of being a godless Communist. When asked about the war in Korea, we say we’re against Red China’s interference; when asked about Taiwan, we say we support the Generalissimo and Madame Chiang Kai-shek. We say we’re for moral rearmament, Jesus, and freedom. Going to a Western church is a practical thing to do, just as my going to a mission in Shanghai was. “You have to be sensible about these things,” I’ve told Sam, but inside I’ve become a one-Goder and he knows it.
Sam may not like it, but he comes to our church gatherings because he loves me, our family, Uncle Fred and his brood of girls, and these picnics. Our outings make him feel American. In fact, although our daughter has finally grown out of her cowgirl infatuation, almost everything we do makes us feel more American. On days like today, Sam ignores the God aspects and embraces the things he likes: preparing the food, eating slices of watermelon that we don’t have to worry have been injected with foul river water, and celebrating family fellowship. He considers these adventures purely social and purely for the children.
Sam pulls into a parking spot by the Santa Monica Pier, and we unload the car. Our feet burn as we cross the sand, roll out blankets, and set up umbrellas. Sam and Fred help the other men dig a pit for the barbecue. May, Mariko, and I assist the other wives and mothers setting out bowls of potato, bean, and fruit salads; Jell-O molds with marshmallows, walnuts, and grated carrots; and plates of cold cuts. As soon as the fire is ready, we give the men trays of chicken wings marinated in soy, honey and sesame seeds, and pork ribs steeped in hoisin sauce and five spice. The ocean air mixes with the scent of the roasting meat, children play in the surf, the men bend their heads over the barbecue, and the women sit on blankets and gossip. Mariko stands apart from us. She holds baby Mamie on her hip, while keeping a close eye on her other half-and-half daughters, Eleanor and Bess, who are building a sand castle.
My sister, childless, is known as Auntie May to everyone. Like Sam, she isn’t a one-Goder. Far from it! She works hard, sometimes staying up late to arrange extras for a shoot or staying out all night on a set herself At least that’s what she says. I honestly don’t know where she goes, and I don’t ask. Even when she’s home and asleep, the phone might ring at four or five in the morning, a call from someone who’s just lost all his money gambling and needs a job. None of this, none of this, matches well with my one-God beliefs, which is one reason I like to bring her on these excursions to the seashore.
“Look at that FOB,” May says, adjusting her sunglasses and big hat. She tips her head delicately toward Violet Lee, who shades her eyes with her long, tapered fingers and peers out to the ocean, where Joy and her friends hold hands and jump over waves. Plenty of women here, including Violet, are fresh off the boat. Now almost forty percent of the Chinese population in Los Angeles is made up of women, but Violet wasn’t a war bride or a fiancée. She and her husband came to UCLA to study: she bioengineering, Rowland engineering. When China closed, they were trapped here with their young son. They aren’t paper sons, paper part
ners, or laborers, but they’re still wang k’uo nu— lost-country slaves.
