Lisa See - Shanghai Girls

And I think, What country would? Those people are a necessity, but did we even want them in Shanghai? (See how sometimes I still don’t realize my place in world?)

“My husband bought a spot in a store,” Lee-shee boasts. “He paid five hundred dollars to become a partner. He’s not a real partner, and he didn’t pay the money either. Who has money like that? But he promised the owner he’d work until he paid his debt. Now my husband can claim he’s a merchant.”

“And that’s why they question us?” I ask. “They’re looking for fake merchants? It seems like a lot of trouble-”

“What they really want to catch are paper sons.”

Seeing the stupid expression on my face, the two women chuckle. May looks up from her bowl.

“Tell me,” she says. “Do they have a joke?”

I shake my head. May sighs and goes back to poking at the pig’s foot in her bowl. Across the table, the two women exchange knowing looks.

“You two don’t know very much,” Lee-shee observes. “Is that why you and your sister have been here for so long? Didn’t your husbands explain what you needed to do?”

“We were supposed to travel with our husbands and my father-in-law,” I answer truthfully. “We got separated. The monkey people-”

They nod sympathetically.

“You can also enter America if you’re the son or daughter of an American citizen,” Dong-shee goes on. She’s barely touched her food, and the heavily starched sauce congeals in her bowl. “My husband is a paper son. Is your husband one too?”

“Forgive me, but I don’t know what that is.”

“My husband bought the paper to become the son of an American. Now he can bring me in as his paper wife.”

“What do you mean he bought a paper?” I ask.

“Haven’t you heard of paper sons and paper-son slots?” When I shake my head, Dong-shee puts her elbows on the table and leans forward. “Suppose a Chinese man born in America travels to China to get married. When he comes back to America, he tells the authorities that his wife had a baby.”

I’m listening carefully for the loopholes, and I think I’ve found one. “Did she actually have the baby?”

“No. He only tells them that, and the officials at the embassy in China or here on Angel Island aren’t going to go to some village to check if he’s telling the truth. So this man, who is a citizen of the United States, is given a paper saying that he has a new son, who is also a citizen because of his father. But remember, this son was never born. He only exists on paper. So now the man has a paper-son slot to sell. The man waits ten years, twenty years. He then sells the paper-the slot-to a young man in China, who adopts his new family name and comes to America. He’s not a real son. He’s only a paper son. The immigration officials here on Angel Island will try to trick him into admitting the truth. If he’s caught, he’ll be sent back to China.”

“And if he isn’t?”

“Then he’ll go to his new home and live as a paper son with false citizenship, a false name, and a false family history. These lies will stay with him for as long as he remains here.”

“Who would want to do that?” I ask, skeptical because we come from a country where family names are hugely important and can sometimes be traced back twelve or more generations. The idea that a man would willingly change his family name to come here just doesn’t seem plausible.

“Plenty of young men in China would love to buy that paper and pretend to be the son of someone else if it meant they could come to America-the Gold Mountain, the Land of the Flowery Flag,” Dong-shee answers. “Believe me, he will suffer many indignities and work hard, but he’ll make money, save it, and return home rich one day.”

“It sounds easy-”

“Look around! It’s not that easy!” Lee-shee interrupts. “The interrogations are bad enough, and the lo fan are always changing the rules.”

“What about a paper daughter?” I ask. “Do women come here that way too?”

“What family would waste an opportunity so precious on a daughter? We’re lucky we can take advantage of our husbands’ fake status to come here as paper wives.”

The two women laugh until tears gather in the corners of their eyes. How is it that these illiterate peasants know more about these things and are clearer about what has to be done to get into this country than we are? Because they’re the targeted class, while May and I shouldn’t be here. I sigh. Sometimes I wish we could just be sent back, but how can we go back? China is lost to the Japanese, May’s pregnant, and we have no money and no family.

Then, as usual, the talk turns to the foods we miss: roast duck, fresh fruit, and black bean sauce-anything other than the overcooked garbage they feed us.

AS MAY PLANNED, I wear the loose clothes I’d worn to escape from China. Most women aren’t here long enough to notice that both May and I seem to be growing plumper by the day. Or maybe they do but are as reticent as our own mother would have been about something so private.

My sister and I grew up in a cosmopolitan city. We acted like we knew a lot, but we were ignorant in many ways. Mama-typical for those days-had been unforthcoming about anything that had to do with our bodies. She never even warned us about the visit from the little red sister, and when it first came I was terrified, thinking I was bleeding to death. Even then Mama didn’t explain what was happening. She sent me to the servants’ quarters to have Pansy and the others teach me what to do to take care of myself and how a woman could get pregnant. Later, when the little red sister visited May, I told her what I’d learned, but we still didn’t know much about pregnancy or the process of giving birth. Fortunately, we’re now housed with women who know all about it and have all kinds of hints for me, but I grow to count on Lee-shee’s advice.

“If your nipples are small like the seeds of a lotus,” she counsels, “then your son will rise in society. If your nipples are the size of dates, then your son will sink into poverty.”

She tells me to strengthen my yin by eating pears cooked in syrup, but we don’t have any of those in the dining hall. When May starts having pains in her abdomen, I tell Lee-shee that I am having these pains, and she explains that this is a common ailment for women whose chi is stagnating around the womb.

“The best cure is to eat five slices of daikon radish sprinkled with a little sugar three times a day,” she recommends. But I have no way to get fresh daikon, and May continues to suffer. This prompts me to sell the last piece of jewelry from Mama’s dowry bag to a woman from a village near Canton. From now on, whenever May needs something, I’ll be able to buy it outright at the concession stand or pay a bribe to one of the guards or cooks to get it for me. So, when May develops indigestion, I complain accordingly. The women in our dormitory argue over the best remedy for me, suggesting that I suck on whole cloves. These I procure easily, but Lee-shee isn’t satisfied.

“ Pearl either has a weak stomach or a weak spleen-both signs of deficiencies in her Earth functions,” Lee-shee tells the other women. “Does anyone here have any tangerines or fresh ginger we could use to make a tea for her?”

These items are bought without difficulty and bring May relief, which makes me happy, which in turn pleases the other detainees for being able to help a pregnant woman.

MORE TIME GROWS between our interrogations. This is common practice for those whose hearings have problems. The inspectors think that long hours spent in the dormitory will weaken us, intimidate us into forgetting our memorized stories, and trick us into making mistakes. After all, if you’re interrogated only once a month for eight hours straight, how can you remember exactly what you said one, two, six, or eighteen months ago, how that conforms to the coaching book that you destroyed, or what your relatives and acquaintances, who aren’t on the island, said about you in their hearings?