Lisa See - Shanghai Girls

“Get Pan-di dressed,” Old Man Louie orders. “The two of you brush your hair. And I want you to wear these.” He reaches into one of the deep pockets of his mandarin robe and brings out four gold wedding bracelets.

He grabs my hand and locks a solid gold, three-inch-wide bracelet on my wrist. Then he attaches one to the other wrist, roughly pushing my mother’s jade bracelet up my arm and out of his way. While he locks May’s bracelets in place, I look at mine. They’re beautiful, traditional, and very expensive wedding bracelets. Here at last is material evidence of the wealth I expected. If May and I can find a pawnshop, then we can use the money…

“Don’t just stand there,” Old Man Louie snaps. “Do something to make that girl stop crying. It’s time to go.” He looks at us in disgust. “Let’s get this over with.”

WITHIN FIFTEEN MINUTES we’ve gone around the corner, crossed Los Angeles Street, climbed some stairs, and entered Soochow Restaurant for a combination wedding banquet and one-month party. Platters of hard-boiled eggs dyed red to represent fertility and happiness are set on a table just inside the entrance. Wedding couplets hang on the walls. Thin slices of sweet pickled ginger to symbolize the continued warming of my yin after the strain of birth are set on each table. The banquet, while not as lavish as I imagined in my romantic days in Z.G.’s studio, is still the best meal we’ve seen in months-a cold platter with jellyfish, soy-sauce chicken, and sliced kidneys, bird’s nest soup, a whole steamed fish, Peking duck, noodles, shrimp and walnuts-but May and I don’t get to eat.

Yen-yen-carrying her new grandchild-takes us from table to table to make introductions. Almost everyone here is a Louie, and they all speak Sze Yup.

“This is Uncle Wilburt. This is Uncle Charley. And here’s Uncle Edfred,” she says to Joy.

These men in nearly matching suits made from cheap fabric are Sam and Vern’s brothers. Are these the names they were born with? Not possible. They’re the names they took to sound more American, just as May, Tommy, Z.G., and I took Western names to sound more sophisticated in Shanghai.

Since May and I have been married for a while already instead of the usual wedding banter about our husbands’ coming fortitude in the bedchamber or how my sister and I are about to be plucked, the teasing revolves around Joy.

“You cook baby fast, Pearl-ah!” Uncle Wilburt says in broken English. From the coaching book, I know he’s thirty-one, but he looks much older. “That baby many weeks early!”

“Joy big for her age!” Edfred, who’s twenty-seven but looks a lot younger, chimes in. He’s quite emboldened by the mao tai he’s been drinking. “We can count, Pearl-ah.”

“Sam give you son next time!” Charley adds. He’s thirty, but it’s hard to tell because his eyes are red, swollen, and watery from allergies. “You cook next baby so good he come out even earlier!”

“You Louie men. All same!” Yen-yen scolds. “You think you count so good? You count how many days my daughters-in-law run from monkey people. You think you have hardship here? Bah! Baby lucky to be born at all! She lucky to be alive!”

May and I pour tea for each guest and receive wedding gifts of lai see- red envelopes embossed with gold good-luck characters and filled with money that will be ours alone-and more gold in the form of earrings, pins, rings, and enough bracelets to climb our arms to our elbows. I can barely wait for us to be alone so we can count the first of our escape money and figure out how to sell our jewelry.

Naturally, there are the predictable comments about Joy being a girl, but most people are delighted to see a baby-any baby. That’s when I realize that the majority of the guests are men, with very few wives and almost no children. What we experienced on Angel Island begins to make sense. The American government does everything possible to keep out Chinese men. It makes it even harder for Chinese women to enter the country. And in a lot of states it’s against the law for Chinese to marry Caucasians. All this ends in the desired result for the United States: with few Chinese women on American soil, sons and daughters can’t be born, saving the country from having to accept undesirable citizens of Chinese descent.

At table after table, the men want to hold Joy. Some of them cry when they take her in their arms. They examine her fingers and toes. I can’t help it, but I fairly shine with my new status as mother. I’m happy-not in-the-stars happy but relieved happy. We survived. We made it to Los Angeles. Apart from Old Man Louie’s disappointment in Joy-and not in ten thousand years will I ever call her Pan-di-he’s arranged this celebration and we’re being welcomed. I glance at May hoping she’s feeling what I’m feeling. But my sister-even as she performs her new-bride duties-seems pensive and withdrawn. My heart tightens. How cruel all this is for her, but she didn’t push me in a wheelbarrow for miles and nurse me back to health by being weak. Somehow my little sister has found a way to keep going forward.

I remember back on Angel Island before the baby was born talking with May about the importance of the special mother’s soup and whether or not we should ask someone to see if the chefs would make it for us. “I’ll need it to help with my bleeding,” May had decided practically, while knowing it would also bring in her milk. So May and I had shared the soup. Then, when Joy was three days old, May went to the showers and didn’t return. I left the baby with Lee-shee and went to look for my sister. My fear was great. I worried what May might do if left alone. I found her in the shower, crying not from sorrow but from the agony in her breasts. “It’s worse than when the baby came out,” she said between sobs. Yes, her womb had shrunk, and even naked she barely looked like she’d had a baby, but her breasts were swollen and hard as rocks from milk that had nowhere to go. The hot water helped, and the milk streamed out, dripping from her nipples and mingling in the water before disappearing down the drain.

Some might say, Well, how stupid could you have been to let her eat a soup that would make her milk come in like that? But remember, we didn’t know about having babies. We didn’t know enough about the milk or how painful it would be. A few days later, when May discovered that every time the baby cried, milk would start to empty out of her breasts, she moved to a bunk at the far end of the room. “That baby cries too much,” she told the others. “How can I help my sister at night if I don’t get some sleep during the day?”

Now I watch May pour tea for a table of lonely men and scoop up the red envelopes and tuck them in her pocket. The men do their duty by joking, teasing, and mocking her, and she does hers by putting on a smiling face.

“Your turn next, May,” Wilburt hoots when we circle back to the uncles’ table.

Charley appraises her up and down, and then says, “You small, but hips good.”

“You give the old man the grandson he wants, you’ll become his favorite,” promises Edfred.

Yen-yen joins in the laughter, but before we move to the next table she hands Joy to me. Then she takes May’s arm and begins to walk, rattling off several sentences in Sze Yup. “Don’t let all these men bother you. They’re lonely for their wives back home. They’re lonely for wives they don’t even have! You came here with your sister. You helped bring this baby to us. You’re a brave girl.” Yen-yen stops in the aisle and waits for me to finish translating. When I come to the end, she takes May’s hands in her own. “You can be freed from one thing, but that only puts you in a tight spot somewhere else. Understand?”