Lisa See - Shanghai Girls

I stare at the papers.

“I’m sorry about this,” he adds, and I almost believe him. “I’m sorry about everything.”

As he turns to leave, my father-suddenly remembering to be the gracious host-asks, “May I find you a rickshaw?”

Sam looks back at me and answers, “No, no, I think I’ll walk.”

I watch him until he turns the corner, and then I go inside the house and toss the papers he gave me in the trash. Old Man Louie, his sons, and my father have made a terrible mistake if they think this is going any further. Soon the Louies will be on a ship that will take them thousands of miles from here. They won’t be able to push or trick us into doing anything we don’t want to do. We’ve all paid a price for my father’s gambling. He’s lost his business. I’ve lost my virginity. May and I have lost our clothes and perhaps our livelihoods as a result. We’ve been hurt, but we’re not remotely poor or wretched by Shanghai standards.

NOW THAT THIS whole upsetting and exhausting episode is over, May and I retreat to our room, which faces east. This usually leaves the room a little cooler in summer, but it’s so hot and sticky that we wear practically nothing-just thin pink silk slips. We don’t cry. We don’t clean up the clothes Old Man Louie threw on the floor or the mess he left of our closet. We eat the food Cook leaves on a tray outside our door, but other than that we do nothing. We’re both too shaken to voice what happened. If the words come out of our mouths, won’t that mean that we’ll have to face how our lives have changed and figure out what to do next when at least for me my mind is in such a turmoil of confusion, despair, and anger that I feel like gray fog has invaded my skull? We lie on our beds and try to… I don’t even know the word. Recover?

As sisters, May and I share a particular kind of intimacy. May is the one person who’ll stand by me no matter what. I never wonder if we’re good friends or not. We just are. During this time of adversity-as it is for all sisters-our petty jealousies and the question of which one of us is loved more dissolve. We have to rely on each other.

Once I ask May what happened with Vernon, and she says, “I couldn’t do it.” Then she begins to weep. After that, I don’t ask about her wedding night and she doesn’t ask about mine. I tell myself that it doesn’t matter, that we’ve just done something to save our family. But no matter how many times I tell myself it wasn’t important, there’s no getting around the fact that I lost a precious moment. In truth, my heart is more broken by what happened with Z.G. than by my family losing its standing or by having had to do the husband-wife thing with a stranger. I want to bring back my innocence, my girlishness, my happiness, my laughter.

“Remember when we saw The Ode to Constancy?” I ask, hoping the memory will remind May of when we were still young enough to believe we were invincible.

“We thought we could put on a better opera,” she answers from her bed.

“Since you were younger and smaller, you got to play the beautiful girl. You always played the princess. I always had to be the scholar, prince, emperor, and bandit.”

“Yes, but look at it this way: You got to play four roles. I only got one.”

I smile. How many times have we had this same disagreement about the productions we used to stage for Mama and Baba in the main salon when we were young? Our parents clapped and laughed. They ate watermelon seeds and drank tea. They praised us but never offered to send us to opera school or to the acrobatic academy, because we were pretty terrible, with our squeaky voices, our heavy tumbling, and our improvised sets and costumes. What mattered was that May and I had spent hours plotting and staging in our room or running to Mama to borrow a scarf to use as a veil or begging Cook to make a sword from paper and starch for me to fight whatever ghost demons were causing trouble.

I remember winter nights when it was so cold that May crawled into my bed and we snuggled together to keep warm. I remember how she slept: her thumb resting on her jaw, the tips of her forefinger and middle finger balanced on the edges of her eyebrows just above her nose, her ring finger lightly placed on an eyelid, and her pinkie delicately floating in the air. I remember that in the morning she’d be cuddled against my back with her arm wrapped around me to hold me close. I remember exactly how her hand looked-so small, so pale, so soft, and her fingers as slender as scallions.

I remember the first summer I went to camp in Kuling. Mama and Baba had to bring May to see me, because she was so lonely. I was maybe ten and May only seven. No one had told me they were coming, but when they arrived and May saw me, she ran to me, stopping just in front of me to stare at me. The other girls teased me. Why did I need to bother with this little baby? I knew enough not to tell them the truth: I longed for my sister too and felt like a part of me was missing when we were separated. After that, Baba always sent the two of us to camp together.

May and I laugh about these things, and they make us feel better. They remind us of the strength we find in each other, of the ways we help each other, of the times that it was just us against everyone else, of the fun we’ve had together. If we can laugh, won’t everything be all right?

“Remember when we were little and we tried on Mama’s shoes?” May asks.

I’ll never forget that day. Mama had gone visiting. We’d sneaked into her room and pulled out several pairs of her bound-foot shoes. My feet were too big for the shoes, and I’d carelessly discarded them as I tried to squeeze my toes into pair after pair. May could get her toes in the slippers, and she’d tiptoed to the window and back, imitating Mama’s lily walk. We’d tittered and frolicked, and then Mama came home. She was furious. May and I knew we’d been bad, but we had a hard time suppressing our giggles as Mama tottered around the room, trying to catch us to pull our ears. With our natural feet and our unity, we escaped, running down the hall and out into the garden, where we collapsed in laughter. Our wickedness had turned into triumph.

We could always trick Mama and outrun her, but Cook and the other servants had little patience for our mischief, and they didn’t hesitate to punish us.

“Pearl, remember when Cook taught us to make chiao-tzu ?” May sits cross-legged on her bed across from me, her chin resting on her bunched fists, her elbows balanced on her knees. “He thought we should know how to make something. He said, ‘How are you girls going to get married if you don’t know how to make dumplings for your husbands?’ He didn’t know how hopeless we’d be.”

“He gave us aprons to wear, but they didn’t help.”

“They did when you started throwing flour at me!” May says.

What began as a lesson turned into a game and then finally into an all-out flour battle, with both of us getting really mad. Cook, who has lived with us since we moved to Shanghai, knew the difference between two sisters working together, two sisters playing, and two sisters fighting, and he didn’t like what he saw.

“Cook was so angry that he didn’t let us back in the kitchen for months,” May continues.

“I kept telling him I was just trying to powder your face.”

“No treats. No snacks. No special dishes.” May laughs at the memory. “Cook could be so stern. He said sisters who fight are not worth knowing.”

Mama and Baba knock on our door and ask us to come out, but we decline, saying we prefer to stay in our room awhile longer. Maybe it’s rude and childish, but May and I always deal with conflicts in the family this way-by holing up, and building a barricade between us and whatever has harmed us or we don’t like. We’re stronger together, united, a force that can’t be argued with or reasoned with, until others give in to our desires. But this calamity isn’t like wanting to visit your sister at camp or protecting each other from an angry parent, servant, or teacher.