Lisa See - Shanghai Girls

“Good daughters to a worthless man are a waste,” the leader declares conversationally. He stands and strides to the middle of the room. His helpers come to his side. To Baba, he says, “You were allowed to stay in this house as long as you sent your daughters to their new homes. Since you have not done so, this is no longer your home. You must leave. And you must pay your debt. Shall I take your daughters with me now? We will find a good use for them.”

Afraid of what Baba will say, I jump in. “It’s not too late for us to go to America. There are other ships.”

“Pockmarked Huang doesn’t like liars. You have already been dishonest, and you are probably lying to me now.”

“We promise we’ll do what you say,” May mutters.

Like a cobra, the leader’s hand strikes out, grabs May’s hair, and yanks her to him. He brings her face close to his. He smiles and says, “Your family is broke. You should be living on the street. Please, I ask you again, wouldn’t it be better to come with us now? We like beautiful girls.”

“I have their tickets” comes a small voice. “I’ll make sure they leave and the deal you arranged for my husband to honor his debts is completed.”

At first I’m not even sure who spoke. None of us are. We all look around until we come to my mother, who has not said a word since the men entered our home. I see hardness in her that I’ve never seen before. Maybe we’re all like that with our mothers. They seem ordinary until one day they’re extraordinary.

“I have the tickets,” she repeats. She has to be lying. I threw them out, along with our immigration papers and the coaching book Sam gave me.

“What good are those tickets now? Your daughters missed their boat.”

“We will exchange them and the girls will go to their husbands.” Mama wrings a handkerchief in her hands. “I will see to it. And then my husband and I will leave this house. You tell that to Pockmarked Huang. If he doesn’t like it, then let him come here and discuss it with me, a woman-”

The sickening sound of a pistol being cocked stops my mother’s words. The leader holds up a hand, alerting his men to be ready. Silence hangs like a shroud over the room. Outside, ambulances scream and machine guns rattle and cough.

Then he snorts lightly. “Madame Chin, you know what will happen if we find you’re lying to us.”

When neither of our parents says anything, May finds the courage to ask, “How long do we have?”

“Until tomorrow,” he growls. Then he laughs roughly as he realizes the near impossibility of his demand. “It won’t be easy to leave the city though. If one good thing has come from today’s disaster, it is that many of the foreign devils will leave us. They will have first priority on the ships.”

His men begin to move toward May and me. This is it. We’re going to be the Green Gang’s property now. May grabs my hand. Then a miracle: the leader grinds out a new offer.

“I will give you three days. Be on your way to America by then, even if you have to swim. We will return tomorrow-and every day-to make sure you don’t forget what you must do.”

With the threat laid down and a deadline given, the three men leave, but not before they tip over a couple of lamps and use the club to smash Mama’s few vases and trinkets that have not yet been taken to the pawnshop.

As soon as they’re gone, May sinks to the floor. None of us move to help her.

“You lied to us,” I say to Baba. “You lied to us about Old Man Louie and the reason for our marriages-”

“I didn’t want you to worry about the Green Gang,” he admits feebly.

This response maddens and exasperates me. “You didn’t want us to worry?”

He flinches, but then he deflects my anger with a question of his own. “What difference does it make now?”

There’s a long moment of silence as we think about that. I don’t know what goes through Mama’s and May’s minds, but I can think of many things we might have done differently if we’d known the truth. I still believe that May and I wouldn’t have gotten on the ship to take us to our husbands, but we would have done something: run away, hidden ourselves at the mission, begged Z.G. until he agreed to help us…

“I’ve had to carry this burden too long.” Baba turns to my mother and asks pitiably, “What will we do now?”

Mama looks at him with scathing contempt. “We’re going to do what we can to save our lives,” she says, looping her handkerchief through her jade bracelet.

“Are you going to send us to Los Angeles?” May’s voice quavers.

“She can’t,” I say. “I threw away the tickets.”

“I pulled them out of the trash,” Mama announces.

I slip down next to May. I can’t believe Mama is willing to ship us to America to cure my father’s and her problems. But then isn’t that the kind of thing Chinese parents have done with worthless daughters for thousands of years-abandoned them, sold them, used them?

Seeing the looks of betrayal and fear on our faces, Mama hurries on. “We’re going to trade in your tickets to America and buy passage to Hong Kong for all of us. We’ve got three days to find a ship. Hong Kong is a British colony, so we don’t have to worry about the Japanese attacking there. If we decide it’s safe to come back onto the mainland, we’ll take the ferry or train to Canton. Then we’ll go to Yin Bo, your father’s home village.” Her jade bracelet hits the side table with a resolute thunk . “The Green Gang won’t find us there.”

THE NEXT MORNING, May and I start out for the Dollar Steamship Line’s office, hoping to exchange our tickets-from Shanghai to Hong Kong, from Hong Kong to San Francisco, and from San Francisco to Los Angeles-for just four tickets to Hong Kong. Nanking Road and the area around the racecourse remain closed so workers can clear away the mangled corpses and body parts, but this is the least of the city’s concerns. Thousands upon thousands of refugees continue to arrive, trying to stay ahead of the advancing Japanese. So many infants have been left to die on the streets by desperate parents that the Chinese Benevolent Association has established a special “baby patrol” to pick up the forsaken remains, pile them onto trucks, and take them to the countryside to be burned.

But for all the people coming into the city, thousands more try to leave. Many of my countrymen take trains back to their home villages in the interior. Friends we’ve known in the cafés-writers, artists, and intellectuals-make choices that will determine the rest of their lives: to go to Chungking, where Chiang Kai-shek has established his wartime capital, or to Yunnan to join the Communists. The wealthiest families-foreign and Chinese-leave by international steamers, which chug defiantly past the Japanese warships anchored off the Bund.

We wait for hours in a long queue. By five o’clock, we’ve moved perhaps ten feet. We return home with nothing resolved. I’m worn out; May looks distraught and depleted. Baba spent the day visiting friends, hoping to borrow money to help with our escape, but in these suddenly uncertain times, who can afford to be generous to an ill-fated man? The trio of toughs isn’t surprised by our lack of progress, but they’re hardly happy. Even they seem unnerved by the chaos surrounding us.

That night the house jumps from explosions in Chapei and Hongkew. Billowing ashes from these neighborhoods mingle with the smoke from the baby fires and the great pyres the Japanese use to burn their own dead.

IN THE MORNING, I get up quietly so I won’t disturb my sister. Yesterday she accompanied me without complaint. But a few times, when she thought I wasn’t looking, I’d caught her rubbing her temples. Last night she’d taken some aspirin and promptly thrown them up. She must have a concussion. I hope it’s mild, but how can I know for sure? At the very least, after everything that’s happened the last two days, she needs to sleep, because today is going to be another hard one. Tommy Hu’s funeral is at ten.