Gold Mountain Men
“THAT’S NOT FUNNY!” May laughs lightly.
“I’m not joking,” Baba says. “I’ve arranged marriages for you.”
I’m still having trouble absorbing what he said. “What’s wrong? Is Mama ill?”
“I already told you, Pearl. You need to listen and you’re going to do as I say. I’m the father and you’re my daughters. This is how things are.”
I wish I could convey how absurd he sounds.
“I won’t do it!” May cries indignantly.
I try reason. “Those feudal days are over. It’s not like when you and Mama married.”
“Your mother and I were married in the second year of the Republic,” he says huffily, but that’s hardly the point.
“Yours was an arranged marriage nevertheless,” I counter. “Have you been answering inquiries from a matchmaker about our knitting, sewing, or embroidery skills?” Ridicule creeps into my voice. “For my dowry, have you bought me a nightstool painted with dragon-and-phoenix motifs to symbolize my perfect union? Will you give May a nightstool filled with red eggs to send her in-laws the message that she will have many sons?”
“Say what you want.” Baba shrugs indifferently. “You’re getting married.”
“I won’t do it!” May repeats. She’s always been good with tears, and she lets them flow now. “You can’t make me.”
When Baba ignores her, I understand just how serious this is. He looks at me, and it’s as though he’s seeing me for the first time.
“Don’t tell me you thought you were going to marry for love.” His voice is oddly cruel and triumphant. “No one marries for love. I didn’t.”
I hear a deep intake of breath, turn, and see my mother, still dressed in her pajamas, standing in the doorway. We watch as she sways across the room on her bound feet and sinks into a carved pearwood chair. She clasps her hands and looks down. After a moment, tears fall into her folded hands. No one speaks.
I sit up as straight as I can, so I can look down at my father, knowing he’ll hate that. Then I take May’s hand. We’re strong together, and we have our investments.
“I speak for both of us when I respectfully ask for the money you’ve put away for us.”
A grimace passes over my father’s face.
“We’re old enough now to be on our own,” I continue. “May and I will get an apartment. We’ll earn our own way. We plan to determine our own futures.”
As I speak, May nods and smiles at Baba, but she’s not her usual pretty self Her tears have turned her face splotchy and swollen.
“I don’t want you girls to be on your own like that,” Mama finds the courage to whisper.
“It’s not going to happen anyway,” Baba says. “There is no money—not yours, not mine.”
Again, stunned silence. My sister and mother leave it to me to ask, “What have you done?”
In his desperation, Baba blames us for his problems. “Your mother goes visiting and plays games with her friends. The two of you spend, spend, spend. None of you see what’s happening right under your noses.”
He’s right. Just last night I’d thought that a kind of shabbiness had settled over our house. I’d wondered about the chandelier, the wall sconces, the fan, and …
“Where are our servants? Where are Pansy, Ah Fong, and—”
“I dismissed them. They’re all gone, except for the gardener and Cook.”
Of course he wouldn’t let them go. The garden would die quickly and our neighbors would know something was wrong. And we need Cook. Mama only knows how to supervise. May and I don’t know how to make a single thing. We’ve never worried about it. We never expected that skill would be necessary. But the houseboy Baba’s valet, the two maids, and Cook’s helper? How could Baba hurt so many?
“Did you lose it gambling? Win it back, for God’s sake,” I spit out. “You always do.”
My father may have a public reputation as an important man, but I’ve always seen him as ineffectual and harmless. The way he looks at me now … I see him stripped to his core.
“How bad is it?” I’m angry—how can I not be?—but I feel a creeping sense of pity for my father and, more important, for my mother. What will happen to them? What will happen to all of us?
His head lowers. “The house. The rickshaw business. Your investments. What little savings I had. Everything is gone.” After a long while he looks back up at me, his eyes filled with hopelessness, misery, and pleading.
“There are no happy endings,” Mama says. It’s as if all her dour predictions have finally come to pass. “You can’t fight fate.”
Baba ignores Mama and appeals to my sense of filial piety and my duty as the elder daughter. “Do you want your mother begging on the street? And what about the two of you? As beautiful girls you’re already this close to becoming girls with three holes. The only question that remains is: Will you be kept by one man or fall as low as the whores who ply Blood Alley looking for foreign sailors? Which future do you want?”
I’m educated, but what skills do I have? I teach English to a Japanese captain three mornings a week. May and I sit for artists, but our earnings don’t begin to cover the cost of our dresses, hats, gloves, and shoes. I don’t want any of us to become beggars. And I certainly don’t want May and me to become prostitutes. Whatever happens, I need to protect my sister.
“Who are these grooms?” I ask. “Can we meet them first?”
May’s eyes widen.
“It’s against tradition,” Baba says.
“I won’t marry someone unless I meet him first,” I insist.
“You can’t think I’ll do it.” May says the words, but her voice tells us that she’s given in. We may look and act modern in many ways, but we can’t escape what we are: obedient Chinese daughters.
“They’re Gold Mountain men,” Baba says. “Americans. They’ve traveled to China to find brides. It’s good news, really. Their father’s family comes from the same district as ours. We’re practically related. You don’t have to go back to Los Angeles with your husbands. American Chinese are happy to leave their wives here in China to care for their parents and ancestors, so they can return to their blond lo fan mistresses in America. Consider this merely a business deal that will save our family. But if you decide to go with your husbands, you’ll have a beautiful house, servants to do the cleaning and washing, amahs to care for your children. You’ll live in Haolaiwu—Hollywood. I know how you girls love movies. You’d like it, May. You really would. Haolaiwu! Just think of it!”
“But we don’t know them!” May shouts at him.
“But you’ve met their father,” Baba responds evenly. “You know Old Man Louie.”
May’s lips twist in revulsion. We have indeed met the father. I’ve never liked Mama’s old-fashioned use of titles, but to May and me the wiry, stern-faced foreign Chinese has always been Old Man Louie. As Baba said, he lives in Los Angeles, but he comes to Shanghai every year or so to look in on the businesses he maintains here. He owns a factory that makes rattan furniture and another for cheap porcelain ware for export. But I don’t care how rich he is. I’ve never liked the way Old Man Louie looks at May and me, like he’s a cat licking us up. I don’t mind for myself—I can take it—but May was only sixteen the last time he came to town. He shouldn’t have drunk her in like that at his age, which had to be mid-sixties at least, but Baba never said a word, just asked May to pour more tea.