Lisa See - Shanghai Girls

Chairman Plumb gives his usual synopsis at the end of the interrogation, but he’s hardly happy when he comes to his concluding words: “The submission of this case has been delayed for over four months. While it is clear that this woman has spent very little time with her husband, who claims to be an American citizen, she has now given birth at our station. After considerable deliberation, we have come to agreement on the essential points. I therefore move that Louie Chin-shee be admitted to the United States as the wife of an American citizen.”

“I concur,” Mr. White says.

“I also concur,” the recorder says in the first and only time I hear him speak.

At four that same afternoon, the guard comes in and calls two names: Louie Chin-shee and Louie Chin-shee-May’s and my old-fashioned married names. “Sai gaai ,” he announces loudly in his usual mangling of the phrase that means good fortune . We’re handed our Certificates of Identity. I’m given a United States birth certificate for Joy, stating that she is “too small to be measured”-which means only that they didn’t bother to examine her. I hope these words will be useful in erasing any suspicions about dates and Joy’s size when Old Man Louie and Sam see her. The other women help us pack our things. Lee-shee weeps when she says good-bye. May and I watch the guard lock the dormitory door behind us, and then we follow him out of the building and down the path to the dock, where we pick up the rest of our luggage and board the ferry to take us to San Francisco.

WE PAY FOURTEEN dollars to take the Harvard steamship to San Pedro. On the voyage, having learned our lesson at Angel Island, we rehearse our stories for why we missed the ship all those months ago, how hard we tried to get out of China to come to our husbands, and how difficult our interrogations were. But we don’t need to tell any stories, real or otherwise. When Sam meets us at the dock, he says simply, “We thought you were dead.”

We’ve seen each other only three times: in the Old Chinese City, at our wedding, and when he gave me our tickets and other traveling papers. After Sam’s single sentence, he stares at me wordlessly. I look at him wordlessly. May hangs back, carrying our two bags. The baby sleeps in my arms. I don’t expect hugs or kisses, and I don’t expect him to acknowledge Joy in an extravagant way. That would be inappropriate. Still, our meeting after all this time is very awkward.

On the streetcar, May and I sit behind Sam. This is not a city of “magical tall buildings” like the ones we had in Shanghai. Eventually, I see one white tower to my left. After a few more blocks, Sam gets up and motions to us. Outside the window to the right is a huge construction zone. To the left stands a long block of two-story brick buildings, some of which have signs in Chinese. The streetcar stops, and we get off We walk up and around the block. A sign reads LOS ANGELES STREET. We cross the street, skirt a plaza with a bandstand in the center, walk past a firehouse, and then make a left down Sanchez Alley, which is lined by more brick buildings. We step through a door with the words GARNIER BLOCK carved above it, walk down a dark passageway, climb a flight of old wooden stairs, and wend our way along a musty corridor that reeks of cooked food and dirty diapers. Sam hesitates before the door to the apartment he shares with his parents and Vern. He turns and gives May and me a look that I read as sympathy. Then he opens the door and we enter.

The first thing that strikes me is just how poor, dirty, and shabby everything is. A couch covered in stained mauve material leans glumly against a wall. A table with six wooden chairs of no particular design or craftsmanship takes up space in the center of the room. Next to the table, not even tucked into a corner, sits a spittoon. A quick glance shows that it hasn’t been emptied recently. No photographs, paintings, or calendars hang on the walls. The windows are filthy and without coverings. From where I stand just inside the front door I can see into the kitchen, which is little more than a counter with some appliances on it and a niche for the worship of the Louie family ancestors.

A short, round woman with her hair pinned into a small bun at the back of her neck rushes to us, squealing in Sze Yup. “Welcome! Welcome! You’re here!” Then she calls over her shoulder. “They’re here! They’re here!” She flicks her wrist at Sam. “Go get the old man and my boy.” As Sam slumps through the main room and down a hall, she turns her attention back to us. “Let me have the baby! Oh, let me see! Let me see! I’m your yen-yen ,” she trills to Joy, using the Sze Yup diminutive for grandmother. Then to May and me, she adds, “You can call me Yen-yen too.”

Our mother-in-law is older than I expected, given that Vernon is just fourteen. She looks like she’s in her late fifties-ancient compared with Mama, who was thirty-eight when she died.

“I am the one who will see the child” comes a stern voice, also speaking in Sze Yup. “Give it here.”

Old Man Louie, dressed in a long mandarin robe, enters the room with Vern, who hasn’t grown much since we last saw him. Again, May and I expect questions about where we’ve been and why it took so long to get here, but the old man has no interest in us whatsoever. I hand Joy to him. He sets her on a table and roughly undresses her. She begins to cry-alarmed by his bony fingers, her grandmother’s exclamations, the hardness of the table against her back, and the sudden shock of being naked.

When Old Man Louie sees she’s a girl, his hands draw back. Distaste wrinkles his features. “You didn’t write that the child is a girl. You should have done that. We wouldn’t have prepared a banquet if we’d known.”

“Of course she needs a one-month party,” my mother-in-law chirps. “Every baby-even a girl-needs a one-month party. Anyway, no going back now. Everyone is coming.”

“You’ve planned something already?” May asks.

“Now!” Yen-yen rings out. “You took longer to get here from the harbor than we thought. Everyone is waiting at the restaurant.”

“Now?” May echoes.

“Now!”

“Shouldn’t we change?” May asks.

Old Man Louie scowls. “No time for that. You don’t need anything. You’re not so special now. No need to try to sell yourselves here.”

If I were braver, I’d ask why he’s so deliberately rude and mean, but we haven’t even been in his home ten minutes.

“She will need a name,” Old Man Louie says, nodding to the baby.

“Her name is Joy,” I say.

He snorts. “No good. Chao-di or Pan-di is better.”

The redness of anger creeps up my neck. This is exactly what the women on Angel Island warned us about. I feel Sam’s hand on the small of my back, but his gesture of comfort sends a ripple of anxiety along my spine and I step away from his touch.

Sensing something’s wrong, May asks in our Wu dialect, “What’s he saying?”

“He wants to name Joy Ask-for-a-Brother or Hope-for-a-Brother.”

May’s eyes narrow.

“You will not speak a secret language in my home,” Old Man Louie declares. “I need to understand everything you say.”

“May doesn’t know Sze Yup,” I explain, but inside I reel from what he’s proposing for Joy, whose cries are shrill in the disapproving silence around her.

“Only Sze Yup,” he says, emphasizing his point by sharply rapping the table. “If I hear the two of you speak another language-even English-then you’ll put a nickel in a jar for me. Understand?”

He isn’t a tall or heavily built man, but he stands with his feet planted as if daring any of us to defy him. But May and I are new here, Yen-yen has edged to a wall seemingly trying to make herself invisible, Sam has barely said a word since we got off the boat, and Vernon stands to the side, nervously shifting his weight from one foot to the other.