Lisa See - Shanghai Girls

“It’s beautiful,” I say.

“The three of us are going to fly it once it’s done,” Z.G. announces.

It isn’t an invitation, just a statement of fact. I think, if it doesn’t bother him that I made a fool of myself, then I can’t let it bother me either. I have to be tough to bear my deeper feelings, which threaten to overwhelm me.

“I’d love to do that,” I say. “May and I both would.”

They smile at each other, clearly relieved. “Great,” Z.G. says, rubbing his hands together. “Now let’s get to work.”

May steps behind a screen and changes into red shorts and a cropped yellow top that ties behind her neck. Z.G. puts a scarf over her hair and ties it beneath her chin. I slip into a red bathing suit decorated with butterflies. It has a little skirt and a belt cinched at the waist. Z.G. pins a red and white bow in my hair. May gets onto a bicycle, one foot on a pedal, the other balancing on the floor. I place one hand over hers on the handlebar. My other hand steadies the bike on the back of May’s seat. She glances over her shoulder at me, and I stare at her. When Z.G. says, “That’s perfect. Hold it,” not once am I tempted to look at him. I stay focused on May, smile, and pretend that I couldn’t be happier than to push my sister’s bike along a grassy hill overlooking the ocean to promote Earth fly and mosquito spray.

Z.G. recognizes that holding this particular pose is difficult, so after a while he lets us have a break. He works on the background for a time, painting a sailboat on the waves, and then he asks, “May, shall we show Pearl what we’ve been working on?”

While May goes behind the screen to change, Z.G. puts away the bike, rolls up the backdrop, and then pulls a low chaise to the middle of the room. May returns, wearing a light robe, which she drops when she gets to the chaise. I don’t know what’s more startling-that she’s naked or that she seems utterly at ease. She lies on her side, her elbow bent and her head resting on her hand. Z.G. drapes a piece of diaphanous silk over her hips and so lightly across her breasts that I can see her nipples. He disappears for a minute and returns with some pink peonies. He snips the stems and carefully places the blossoms around May. He then unveils the painting, which has been hidden under a cloth on an easel.

It’s almost finished, and it’s exquisite. The soft texture of the peony petals echoes that of May’s flesh. He’s used the rub-and-paint technique, working carbon powder over May’s image and then applying watercolors to create a rosy complexion on her cheeks, arms, and thighs. In the painting, she looks as though she’s just stepped from a warm bath. Our new diet of more rice and less meat and her paleness from the events of the past days give her an air of languorous lassitude. Z.G. has already dotted the eyes with dark lacquer so they seem to follow the viewer, beckoning, luring, and responding. What’s May selling? Watson’s lotion for prickly heat, Jazz hair pomade, Two Baby cigarettes? I don’t know, but looking from my sister to the painting, I see that Z.G. has achieved the effect of hua chin i tsai- a finished painting with lingering emotions-that only the great masters of the past realized in their work.

But I’m shocked, deeply shocked. I may have done the husband-wife thing with Sam, but this seems far more intimate. Yet again, it shows just how far May and I have fallen. I suppose this is just an inevitable part of our journey. When we first sat for artists, we were encouraged to cross our legs and hold sprays of flowers in our laps. This pose was a wordless reminder of courtesans from feudal times whose bouquets had been between their legs. Later we were asked to clasp our hands behind our heads and expose our armpits, a pose used since the beginning of photography to capture the allure and sensuous availability of Shanghai ’s Famous Flowers. One artist painted us chasing butterflies in the shade of willow trees. Everyone knows that butterflies are symbols for lovers, while “willow shade” is a euphemism for that hairy place on women down low. But this new poster is a long way from any of that and further still from the one of the two of us doing the tango that so upset Mama. This is a beautiful painting; May has to have lain naked for hours before Z.G.’s eyes.

But I’m not just shocked. I’m also disappointed in May for allowing Z.G. to talk her into this. I’m angry at him for preying on her vulnerability. And I’m heartsick that May and I have to take it. This is how women end up on the street selling their bodies. But then this is how it is for women everywhere. You experience one lapse in conscience, in how low you think you’ll go, in what you’ll accept, and pretty soon you’re at the bottom. You’ve become a girl with three holes, the lowest form of prostitute, living on one of the floating brothels in Soochow Creek, catering to Chinese so poor they don’t mind catching a loathsome disease in exchange for a few humping moments of the husband-wife thing.

As disheartened and disgusted as I am, I go back to Z.G.’s the next day and the day after that. We need the money. And soon enough, there I am practically naked. People say you need to be strong, smart, and lucky to survive hard times, war, a natural disaster, or physical torture. But I say emotional abuse-anxiety, fear, guilt, and degradation-is far worse and much harder to survive. This is the first time that May and I have ever experienced anything like this, and it saps our energy. While I find it almost impossible to sleep, May retreats to those numbing depths. She dozes in bed until noon. She takes naps. Some days at Z.G.’s she even starts to nod off as he paints. He lets her out of her pose so she can sleep on the couch. While he paints me, I look at May, her fingers placed just so but still not entirely covering her face, which is pensive even in sleep.

We’re like lobsters slowly boiling to death in a pot of water. We sit for Z.G., attend parties, and drink absinthe frappés. We go to clubs with Betsy, and let others pay for us. We go to movies. We window-shop. We simply don’t understand what’s happening to us.

THE DATE NEARS when we’re supposed to leave for Hong Kong to meet our husbands. May and I have no intention of getting on that boat. We couldn’t even if we wanted to because I threw away the tickets, but our parents don’t know that. May and I go through the motions of packing so they won’t be suspicious. We listen to Mama’s and Baba’s travel advice. The night before our scheduled departure, they take us out for dinner and tell us how much they’ll miss us. May and I wake up early the next morning, get dressed, and leave the house before anyone else rises. When we return home that evening-long after the ship has sailed-Mama weeps with pleasure that we are still here and Baba yells at us for not doing our duty.

“You don’t understand what you’ve done,” he shouts. “There’s going to be trouble.”

“You worry too much,” May says in her lightest voice. “Old Man Louie and his sons have left Shanghai, and in a few days they’ll leave China for good. They can’t do anything to us now.”

Baba’s face roils with anger. For a moment I think he’s going to hit May, but then he squeezes his hands into fists, marches off to the salon, and slams the door. May looks at me and shrugs. Then we turn ourselves over to our mother, who takes us into the kitchen and orders Cook to make tea and give us a couple of precious English butter cookies he has saved in a tin.

Eleven days later, it rains in the morning, so the heat and humidity are not as bad as usual. Z.G. splurges and hires a taxi to take us to the Lunghua Pagoda on the outskirts of the city to fly his kite. It isn’t the most beautiful place. There’s an airstrip, an execution ground, and a camp for Chinese troops. We tromp across the field until Z.G. finds a spot to stage the flight. Some soldiers-wearing ripped tennis shoes and faded, ill-fitting uniforms with insignia pinned to their shoulders-abandon a puppy they’re playing with to help us.