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“In my old house, but it doesn’t look like this.”
“Oh, I know.” She shakes her head sympathetically. “After the bombing in 1937—such a long time ago now—we went to your home when I didn’t hear from your mother. We found boarders. Squatters more like it. They told us about the Green Gang. Uncle thought all four of you were dead, but I knew your mother. She wasn’t going to let anything happen to you two girls.”
“I don’t know what became of Baba, but Mama, May, and I left Shanghai together.” I reach up under my sleeve and pull my mother’s bracelet down to my wrist. Auntie Hu’s eyes flash in recognition. I don’t have to tell her the terrible details. I keep it simple. “She didn’t make it to Hong Kong.”
Auntie Hu nods somberly but offers no condolences. As she said earlier, we’ve all lost people.
“Anyway,” she picks up, “I’ve gone to your house every few years. I’ve seen how those boarders have treated it. But it could be worse. Your house was divided before Liberation. No new people were assigned to live there. Just don’t expect those nails ever to leave.”
“Nails?”
“The people who live in your house. Once they’re in, you can never pull them out. But it doesn’t have to look the way it does,” she scolds in a motherly tone. “Visit the pawnshops. I bet you could find and buy back some of your family’s belongings.”
“I doubt they’d still be there after all this time.”
“You’d be surprised. Who was going to buy anything during the war with the Japanese or later during the civil war? All those workers you see on the street? How would they know what to buy, even if they had money? They aren’t real Shanghainese. They don’t have hai pah. You shouldn’t be afraid of living as you once lived.”
“If what you’re saying is true, then where are the nightclubs? Where’s the music? Where’s the dancing?”
“Dancing in a club all night is completely different from having things. Besides, some people—very high up people—play Western instruments, dance to Western music … The Communists say they’re pure and for the masses, but you go high enough and they’re very corrupt. But none of that matters.” She leans forward and taps my knee. “You need to fix your house, even with those nails there.”
“How can I? Won’t I be reported?”
“I haven’t been reported.”
“You live alone.”
She winces, and I immediately regret my remark. But she’s a woman of old traditions. She chooses to ignore my rudeness, as though I’m merely an uneducated child.
“Never forget this is Shanghai. Never forget you are Shanghainese. Never forget your hai pah. You carry that inside you no matter what new campaign that fat chairman launches.”
Later, she walks me to the door. She takes my hand and stares at my mother’s bracelet. “Your mama always loved you best.” Then she wraps her fingers around the bracelet and slides it up under the sleeve of my jacket. “Please come back and see me.”
I spend another hour picking up paper before returning to the office to deliver most of what I’ve collected. It’s dark now, and I have a few last things to do before I go home. First, I survey the ships and security along the Bund. Chairman Mao does not command a great navy: laundry hangs on lines, hats and clothes drape on guns, sailors sit on decks eating bowls of noodles. The soup must be strong and tasty, because the scent of ginger, scallions, and fresh coriander wafts through the air to me. One thing is sure: the sailors aren’t paying much attention to anything beyond what they’re eating.
I nod to myself, and then, as I do every evening, I go to Z.G.’s house. A week ago, the servants finally became so irritated by my nightly ringing of the doorbell that I don’t bother with that anymore. Instead, I linger behind a shrub on the other side of the walk street and wait to see what lights come on in the house. One of these times I’m going to see my daughter but not tonight.
Then it’s on to the Methodist mission I attended as a girl. I come here every day. I, like many others, am afraid to enter. I sit on the curb across the street. I’m not alone for long. A few other women approach, and it’s as if they are dragging great shadows of memories behind them. They sit on the curb next to me.
Chairman Mao is against all religions, whether Chinese or Western, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. One-Goders like me have been told to “walk the road of socialism,” “expose rightist elements hiding behind the veil of Christianity,” and “resolutely struggle against anti-Communist, anti-socialist activities conducted by reactionaries, vagabonds, and wicked elements using the fronts of church or free preaching.” They can tell me what to do, but they can’t keep me from praying.
I tell Him about the loneliness I feel for places and people that are lost to me. I ask about Joy. Does she miss Chinatown as I missed Shanghai as a young woman in a new country? Does she miss her grandparents, her aunt and uncle, her mother and father as I’ve missed my parents, my sister, and Sam? I let the grief I feel for Sam well up inside me. My head hangs low, my shoulders sink, and my back weakens.
Maybe it’s better to be in Shanghai. At home, everything would have been a reminder of him: his recliner, his favorite bowl, his clothes, which still hang in the closet where he committed suicide. If I left my house in Chinatown, I’d see the places we went together, the café where we worked, the beach where we picnicked. I wouldn’t want to turn on the television either, because I wouldn’t want to see any of the shows we watched together. And what if I heard one of our favorite songs on the radio? Any one of these things would have been devastating. But I’m in Shanghai now. I can’t turn back the clock, change the present, or influence the future.
I end with a special plea for God to watch over my daughter and Z.G. I haven’t once forgotten that his servants said he was in trouble, so wherever they are, I hope he’s protecting her. I recite the Lord’s Prayer and then I get up. A knife grinder rolls his cart down an alley to my right, shaking metal rattles and calling, “Sharpen your scissors to snip away bad fortune. Make your cleavers sharp enough to cut through all disasters.”
The bus is crowded, as usual. I get off at my stop and then hurry to our neighborhood’s political meeting. I’ve been told I’ve done a good job “participating actively” in what I can only call brainwashing. I listen to the lessons, recite slogans in a loud voice, and join others in criticizing a neighbor for his bourgeois behavior and someone else for her right-leaning tendencies. I keep my actual thoughts to myself. In my own neighborhood, I can’t masquerade as an illiterate paper collector. My neighbors know about my decadent past and my long sojourn in the West. I’m considered a person with “a historical problem.” I could be attacked at any moment, but, as Dun has advised me, the more I go along with everything that’s drilled into me, the better off I’ll be. The more I confess—and how easy it is, really—the more I’m trusted.
The streets are mostly empty as I start home. If I had to
give a single example that shows how much Shanghai has changed, it’s that the city is asleep by nine in the evening. Even cars are not allowed on the streets after nine unless they have a special permit. As soon as I get home, I check the table by the front door to see if I’ve received any mail. I’ve been waiting such a long time to hear from May that I’ve nearly given up hope, but tonight there’s a package with handwriting I don’t recognize. The postmark shows that it’s come from Wah Hong Village. The box has been opened and carelessly resealed. I grab it, run upstairs to my room, and lock the door.
I rip off the paper. The box contains some clothes and other items. An envelope with May’s handwriting sits on top. I open the letter and read just the first line—“Good news! A letter has come from Joy”—before quickly searching through the box for another envelope with my daughter’s handwriting. I find some sweaters, a packet of sanitary supplies, and the hat with feathers I wore out of China many years ago. I’ll be grateful for the sweaters this winter, if I’m still here. The pads are a true blessing compared with what I’ve found at the local dry-goods store. But I don’t find Joy’s letter. I pick up the hat. I hid our coaching papers in its lining when we arrived at Angel Island, and later I hid money there. It took me a minute, but only I would understand the significance of this particular hat. I carefully peel back the lining and pull out a twenty-dollar bill and two more envelopes, neither with writing on them.
I open one of the envelopes, and there’s my daughter’s precise handwriting. The letter begins, “Dear Pearl and May,” as though we’re friends and not her mother and aunt. Her formality is like a knife in my heart.
I’m writing this on the boat to Shanghai and am giving it to the captain to mail when he returns to Hong Kong. You must be worried about me. Or maybe you’re mad at me. Either way, I want you to know I’m fine. I really am. I never felt at home in Chinatown. I’m going to my proper home now. I know you doubt me, and I can practically hear Uncle Vern saying bad things about communism. Please trust that I know what I’m doing. I appreciate what you did for me, but from now on Chairman Mao will be my mother and my father. If I’m wrong in my thinking—but I’m not—I’ll live with the consequences. You both taught me how to do that … live with the consequences. I was a consequence. I know that now.
