—
When the Lums invited the Hus to join them for dinner at their home after the parade, Grace was grateful to accept. The day had been exhilarating but exhausting, and she didn’t want it to end by taking the children home to their small, dark apartment.
Grace had often secretly envied the Lums. There was something very appealing to her about their large, boisterous family, with many generations and cousins all living together above their restaurant. And she admired the ease with which Ruby Lum, Shirley’s mother, managed the entire household. There was a time, before Lily was born, when Grace had thought she would move to China with Joseph and be part of his family, as was proper for a Chinese wife, but the Japanese invasion of Shanghai had scuttled those plans. Sometimes she was still resentful about it. Instead of taking her rightful position in Joseph’s family as the wife of the eldest son, she had been relegated to this faraway city alone. She knew she should be grateful to her mother for moving in with her to help with the children while Joseph was in the army, but she struggled to find her gratitude. She felt as if she had somehow moved home again, like a penniless widowed daughter, even though the situation was the opposite.
She could never let Joseph know she felt this way. To think that she would envy the wife of a restaurant owner—even a successful one!—over her own position as the wife of a Stanford-educated doctor. In China, Joseph’s family would outrank the Lums, but here in America, Grace wasn’t sure the same social stratification applied. People treated Joseph with respect to his face, but Grace knew that to many of Chinatown’s residents—all those old bachelors crowded six to a room—Dr. Joseph Hu was an uppity Shanghainese who didn’t speak their language.
All of this crossed her mind as she followed her mother up the stairs to the Lums’ living room. She wondered what Madame Chiang would think of the Lums. Their home was cluttered with Chinese furniture and paintings, but it was a pleasant sort of clutter, speaking to the family’s success. Lily and Shirley were already running back to the room Shirley shared with her sisters, and though Grace told them to be quiet, she knew they wouldn’t listen. Eddie was fussy, and he took some time to settle down for a much-needed nap. By the time Grace returned to the living room, Ruby had already had food brought up from the restaurant downstairs. On the dining table were platters of fried noodles, water spinach, and braised fish. Rosie, the oldest Lum daughter, carried in a stack of bowls, a dozen flat-bottomed spoons and a container of chopsticks, and Ruby brought a tureen of pork bone soup from the family’s small kitchen.
The dinner was casual and loud. Rice wine was poured, and the older men of the Lum family (the younger ones had enlisted in the army) started to talk very brashly about the war—how America would send airplanes and guns and soldiers and bombs, how the Japanese would be slaughtered as ruthlessly as they had slaughtered the Chinese.
Ruby and Grace shared a skeptical glance that turned into a smile, and then Ruby gestured for Grace to move with her to the sofa. One of the restaurant’s waiters had brought up a basket of steamed custard buns, and they each took one along with a cup of tea over to the quieter half of the living room, sitting near Grace’s mother.
“Do you think they’re right?” Grace asked, eyeing the men. “Will America really send all that aid to China?”
Ruby shrugged. “Who can tell? The president has said he would, but so far America has not lived up to its promises.”
“If anyone can persuade President Roosevelt to help China, Madame Chiang can,” Grace said. “Have you seen the way the newspapers cover her? They love her.”
“They love the woman she presents to them.”
“You think she’s putting on a false front?”
Ruby shook her head. “Not false. Practiced. Prepared. She’s so American—that’s why they love her.”
“They love her because she’s beautiful,” Grace’s mother said.
The men burst into laughter over some joke that Grace didn’t hear; it was jarring in the wake of her mother’s statement. Grace said, “She’s intelligent too.”
“Of course she is,” Ruby said. “She’s intelligent enough to make sure she’s beautiful. Oh, I know you like her, Grace. I like her too. But she’s still a woman. Can she really persuade all those Caucasian men to help China? They might love her, but I’m not so sure they love China.”
“They love it more than Japan,” Grace pointed out. Out of the corner of her eye she glimpsed Lily running into the living room, and she called out, “Lily! No running!”
Lily slowed down, but then Shirley grabbed her hand and tugged her toward the windows at the front of the living room. The curtains were still drawn back, and the red-and-white neon of the Eastern Pearl’s sign glowed through the glass. Shirley dragged a low ottoman over to the window and climbed on top of it. Lily followed, and Grace was about to warn her daughter to be careful when she realized what they were doing. Standing on the ottoman, the windowsill was at the girls’ waist level, and they leaned against it as if it were a balcony. They each clutched a white restaurant napkin in their right hands and waved them at the dark street below.
PART V
Lush Life
December 1954—January 1955
30
Kath was alone when Lily met her on their designated corner the night of December thirtieth. “Jean’s not coming,” Kath said as soon as she saw Lily. “She’s saving up for tomorrow night. It’s going to be a big show apparently.”
“I’m sorry you won’t get to see that,” Lily said, though she felt a twinge of relief at Jean’s absence.