Lisa See - Shanghai Girls

“Why do you say only seven people came to the banquet, when your husband, father-in-law, and sister say there were many occupied tables in the room?”

I feel sick to my stomach. What’s happening here?

“We were a small party in a hotel restaurant where other guests were dining.”

“You said your family home consists of six rooms, but your sister says many more and your husband stated the house is grand.” Chairman Plumb’s face turns crimson as he demands, “Why are you lying?”

“There are different ways to count the rooms and my husband-”

“Let’s go back to your wedding. Was your wedding banquet on the first floor or upstairs?”

And on it goes: Did I take a train after my marriage? Did I ride on a boat? Are the houses where I lived with my parents built in rows? How many houses stood between our house and the main street? How do I know if I was married according to the old custom or the new custom if I had a matchmaker and didn’t wear a veil? Why don’t my alleged sister and I speak the same dialect?

The questioning continues for eight straight hours-with no break for lunch or to use the toilet. By the end, Chairman Plumb is red-faced and weary. As he recites his synopsis for the stenographer, I boil with frustration. Every other sentence begins “The applicant’s alleged sister states…” I can understand-barely-how my responses might be taken to mean something different from those given by Sam or Old Man Louie, but how could May have given such completely different answers from mine?

The interpreter shows no emotion as he translates Chairman Plumb’s conclusion: “It would appear that there are many contradictions which should not exist, particularly concerning the home the applicant shared with her alleged sister. While the applicant adequately answers the queries concerning her alleged husband’s home village, her alleged sister seems to have no knowledge whatsoever of her husband, his family, or his family home, either in Los Angeles or in China. Therefore it is the unanimous opinion of the board that this applicant, as well as her alleged sister, be reexamined until the contradictions can be resolved.” The interpreter then looks at me. “Have you understood everything that’s been asked of you?”

I answer, “Yes,” but I’m furious-with these awful men and their persistent questioning, with myself for not being smarter, but most of all with May. Her laziness has caused us to be detained even longer on this horrible island.

She isn’t in the holding cage when I leave the room and I have to sit there and wait for another woman whose interrogation also hasn’t gone well. After another hour, the woman is pulled from her hearing room by her arm. The cage is unlocked and the guard motions to me, but we don’t go back to the dormitory on the second floor of the Administration Building. Rather, we walk across the property to another wood-framed building. At the end of the hall is a door with a small window covered with fine mesh and ROOM NO. I printed above it. We may feel like we are in jail on this island and in our locked dormitory, but this is the real door to imprisonment. The woman wails and tries to pull away from the guard, but he’s far stronger than she could ever be. He opens the door, pushes her into the darkness, and locks her inside.

I’m now alone with a very large white man. I have nowhere to go, nowhere to escape. I shake uncontrollably. And then the strangest thing happens. His contemptuous sneer melts into something resembling compassion.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” he says. “We’re just short-handed tonight.” He shakes his head. “You don’t understand a word I’m saying, do you?” He gestures back toward the door we entered. “We need to go that way, so I can take you back to the dormitory,” he goes on, elongating and exaggerating the words so that his lips stretch into the twisted features of a temple demon statue. “Got it?”

Later, as I walk the length of the dormitory back to May’s and my bunks, my emotions are in a frenzy-yes, that’s the word-of anger, fear, and frustration. The other women’s eyes follow each step as my high heels click on the linoleum floor. Some of us have lived together for a month now and in very close quarters. We’re attuned to one another’s moods and know when to back off or offer comfort. Now I feel the women ripple away from me, as though I’m a large boulder that’s been dropped into a very peaceful pond.

May perches on the edge of her bunk, her legs dangling. She cocks her head in the way she has since she was a small girl and knew she was in trouble.

“What took so long? I’ve been waiting for you for hours.”

“What have you done, May? What have you done ?”

She ignores my questions. “You missed lunch. But I brought you some rice.”

She opens her hand and shows me a misshapen ball of rice. I slap it from her palm. The women around us look away.

“Why did you lie in there?” I ask. “Why would you do that?”

Her legs swing back and forth like she’s a child whose feet don’t yet reach the floor. I stare up at her, breathing heavily through my nose. I’ve never been this angry with her. This isn’t a pair of muddied shoes or a borrowed blouse that’s been stained.

“I didn’t understand what they were saying. I don’t know that singsong Sze Yup. I only know the northern song of Shanghai.”

“And that’s my fault?” But even as I say it, I realize I share some responsibility for this. I know she doesn’t understand the dialect of our ancestral home. Why didn’t I think of that? But the Dragon in me is still stubborn and mad.

“We’ve been through so much, but you couldn’t take five minutes on the ship to look at the coaching book.”

When she shrugs, a wave of fury sweeps through me.

“Do you want them to send us back?”

She doesn’t respond, but the predictable tears form.

“Is that what you want?” I persist.

Now those predictable tears fall and drip onto her baggy jacket, staining the cloth with slowly spreading blue splotches. But if she’s predictable, so am I.

I shake her legs. The older sister, who’s always right, demands, “What’s wrong with you?”

She mumbles something.

“What?”

She stops swinging her legs. She keeps her face tucked low, but I’m looking up at her and she can’t avoid me. She mumbles again.

“Say it so I can hear it,” I rasp impatiently.

She tilts her head, meets my eyes, and whispers just loud enough for me to hear. “I’m pregnant.”

MAY ROLLS OVER and buries her face in her pillow to stifle her sobs. I look around, and it seems like the other women are either ignoring us or pretending to ignore us. It’s the Chinese way.

I kick off my shoes and climb up the bunk’s tiers and onto May’s bed.

“I thought you didn’t do the husband-wife thing with Vernon,” I whisper.

“I didn’t,” she manages to get out. “I couldn’t.”

A guard comes in and announces it’s time for dinner, and the women scurry to be first out the door. As bad as the food is, dinner is more important than an argument between two sisters. If any edible pieces exist in tonight’s meal, they want to be first to get them. After a few minutes, we’re alone and no longer have to whisper.

“Was it that boy you met on the ship?” I can’t even remember his name.

“It was before that.”

Before that? We were in the hospital in Hangchow and then the hotel in Hong Kong. I don’t see how anything could have happened during that time, unless it was when I was sick, or earlier, when I was unconscious. Was it one of the doctors who took care of me? Was she raped when we were trying to get to the Grand Canal? I’ve been too ashamed to talk about what happened to me. Has she kept a similar secret all this time? I creep around the topic by asking what seems like a practical question.