Shanghai Girls (Shanghai Girls #1)

I put Sam’s ironed shirt on a hanger and then sit next to my daughter. “I want to tell you how they’re looking for people, so you’ll know in case anyone approaches you. They’re looking for people who sent tea money back to China—”

“Grandpa Louie did that.”

“Exactly. And they’re looking for people who’ve tried—legally—to get their families out of China since it closed. They want to know where people’s loyalties lie—in China or in the United States?” I pause to see if she’s following me. Then I say “Our Chinese way of thinking doesn’t always apply here in America. We believe that being humble, respectful, and truthful will give us a better understanding of every situation, prevent others from being hurt, and result in an all-good end. That way of thinking could hurt us and many other people now.”

I take a deep breath and tell her something I was afraid to write to her. “You remember the Yee family?” Of course she does. She was great friends with the oldest girl, Hazel, and spent plenty of time with the other Yee kids at our union gatherings. “Mr. Yee is a paper son. He brought Mrs. Yee in through Winnipeg.”

“He’s a paper son?” Joy asks, surprised, maybe impressed.

“He decided to confess so he could stay here with his family, since the four children are American citizens. He told the INS he had brought in his wife using his false status. Now he’s an American citizen, but the INS has started deportation proceedings against Mrs. Yee, because she’s a paper wife. They still have two children at home who are not yet ten years old. What will they do without their mama? The INS wants to send her back to Canada. At least she won’t be going to China.”

“Maybe she’d be better off in China.”

When I hear this, I don’t know who’s talking—a silly parrot who must repeat everything this Joe has told her or from somewhere deep inside an eruption of her blood-mother’s deliberate childish stupidity.

“That’s Hazel’s mother you’re talking about! Is that how you would want them to feel if I was sent back to China?” I wait for an answer. When she doesn’t give me one, I get up, fold and put away the ironing board, and go check on Vern.

That night Sam carries Vern out to the couch so we can have dinner and watch Gunsmoke together. The evening’s hot, so dinner is cool and simple—-just big wedges of watermelon made as cold as possible in our Frigidaire. We’re trying to follow what Miss Kitty is telling Matt Dillon when Joy starts up about the People’s Republic of China all over again. For nine months her absence felt like a hole in our family. We missed the sound of her voice and her beautiful face. But during that time we filled that hole with the television, with quiet conversation among the four of us, and with little projects that May and I did together. After Joy’s been home for two weeks, it’s like she takes up too much space with her opinions, her desire for attention, her need to tell us how wrong and backward we are, and the practiced way she has always divided her auntie and me, when all we want to do is find out if the marshal is ever going to kiss that Miss Kitty or not.

Sam, usually accepting of whatever comes out of his daughter’s mouth, finally can’t take any more and asks in Sze Yup in his quietest and calmest manner, “Are you ashamed of being Chinese? Because a proper Chinese daughter would be quiet and let her parents, auntie, and uncle watch their show.”

It is the absolute wrong question, because suddenly terrible things pour out of Joy’s mouth. She mocks our frugality: “Being Chinese? I don’t see why being Chinese means having to save gallon-size soy sauce containers to turn into waste bins.” She makes fun of me: “Only superstitious Chinese believe in the zodiac. Oh, Tiger this, Tiger that.” She hurts her aunt and uncle: “And what about arranged marriages? Look at Auntie May, married forever to someone who … who …” She hesitates as we all have from time to time until she settles on “never touches her with love or affection.” Her face rumples into an expression of distaste. “And look at how you all live together.”

Listening to her, I hear May and me twenty years ago. I’m sad for how we treated our parents, but when Joy starts hurting her father …

“And if Chinese means being like you … The food you cook in the café stinks your clothes. Your customers insult you. And the dishes you make are too greasy, too salty, and have too much MSG.”

These words hit Sam hard. Unlike May and me, he’s loved Joy without regret, without conditions, without once holding back his heart.

“Take a look in the mirror,” he says slowly. “What do you think you are? What do you think the lo fan see when they look at you? You’re nothing but a piece of jook sing—hollow bamboo.”

“Dad, you should speak to me in English. You’ve lived here for almost twenty years. Can’t you speak it yet?” She blinks a few times and then says, “You’re just so … so … so FOB.”

The silence in the living room is cruel and deep. Realizing what she’s done, she tilts her head, ruffles her pixie cut, and then smiles in what I immediately recognize as May’s from long ago. It’s a smile that says, I’m naughty, I’m disobedient, but you can’t help but love me. I see, even if Sam can’t, that all this has less to do with Mao, Chiang Kai-shek, Korea, the FBI, or how we’ve chosen to live our lives these last twenty years than it does with how our daughter feels about her family. May and I once thought Mama and Baba were old-fashioned, but Joy is embarrassed by and ashamed of us.

“Sometimes you think you have all of tomorrow ahead of you,” Mama often said. “When the sun is shining, think of the time it won’t be, because even when you’re sitting in your house with the doors shut, misfortune can fall from above.” I ignored her when she was alive and I didn’t pay enough attention as I got older, but after all these years I have to accept that Mama’s foresight is what saved us. Without her hidden savings, we all would have died right there in Shanghai. Some deep instinct motivated her and kept her going when May and I were nearly paralyzed with fear. She was like a gazelle who, under hopeless circumstances, still tried to save her calves from the lion. I know I have to protect my daughter—from herself, from this Joe boy and his romantic ideas about Red China, from making the kinds of mistakes that so dampened May’s and my choices—but I don’t know how.


I’M GOING TO Pearl’s to pick up takeout for Vern when I see the FBI agent stop Uncle Charley on the sidewalk. I pass the two men—with Uncle Charley ignoring me as though he doesn’t know me—and enter the café, leaving the door wide open. Inside, Sam and our workers go about their business while listening as hard as they can to what floats through the door. May comes out of her office, and we linger by the counter, pretending to talk but watching and listening to everything.

“So, Charley, you went back to China,” the agent says suddenly in Sze Yup in a voice so loud I look at my sister in surprise. It’s as though he wants not only to have us hear what he’s saying but also to let us know that he’s fluent in the dialect of our district.

“I went to China,” Uncle Charley admits. We can barely hear him, his voice quavers so. “I lost my savings, and I came back here.”

“We hear you’ve said bad things about Chiang Kai-shek.”

“I haven’t.”

“People say you have.”

“What people?”

The agent doesn’t answer that question. Instead he asks, “Isn’t it true you blame Chiang Kai-shek for losing your money?”

Charley scratches at his rash-covered neck and sucks on his lips.

The agent waits and then asks, “Where are your papers?”

Uncle Charley glances through the plate-glass window, looking for help, for encouragement or possible escape.

The agent—a big lo fan with sandy-colored hair and freckles on his nose and cheeks—smiles and says, “Yes, let’s go inside. I’d like to meet your family.”

The agent enters the café, and Uncle Charley follows with his head hung down. The lo fan walks right up to Sam, flashes his badge, and says in Sze Yup, “I’m Special Agent Jack Sanders. You’re Sam Louie, right?” When Sam nods, the agent goes on. “I always say there’s no point in wasting time on these things. Someone told us you used to buy the China Daily News.”

Sam stands absolutely still, measuring the stranger, thinking about his answer, emptying his face of emotion. The few customers, who can’t possibly understand the words but certainly know that the flashing badge can’t mean anything good, seemingly hold their breath to see what Sam will do.

“I bought the paper for my father,” Sam says in Sze Yup, and I see the disappointment on our customers’ faces that they aren’t going to be able to follow this as closely as they’d like. “He died five years ago.”

“That paper is sympathetic to the Reds.”

“My father read it sometimes, but he subscribed to Chung Sai Yat Po.”

“Seems like your father was sympathetic to Mao though.”

“Not at all. Why would he support Mao?”

“Then why did he buy China Reconstructs too? And why have you continued to buy it after his passing?”

I have a sudden desire to use the toilet. Sam can’t possibly answer with the truth—that his wife’s and sister-in-law’s faces have appeared on the covers of those magazines. Or does the FBI man already know that those are our faces? Or does he look at the pretty girls in the drab green uniforms with red stars on their caps and think all Chinese look alike?

“I’m told that in your living room above your couch you have pages from the magazine taped to the wall—pictures of the Great Wall and the Summer Palace.”

This means someone—a neighbor, a friend, a competitor who has been inside our home—has reported this. Why didn’t we take the pictures down after Father died?

“In his last months, my father liked to look at those attractions.”

“Maybe he had so much sympathy for Red China he wanted to go back home—”

“My father was an American citizen. He was born here.”

“Then show me his documents—”

“He’s dead,” Sam repeats, “and I don’t have them here.”

“Then perhaps I should pay a visit to your home, or would you prefer to come to our office? That way you can bring your documents too. I want to believe you, but you have to prove your innocence.”

“Prove my innocence or prove I’m a citizen?”

“They are the same, Mr. Louie.”

When I get home with Vern’s lunch, I don’t say anything to him or to Joy. I don’t want them to worry. When Joy asks if she can go out that night, I say as lightly as I can, “Fine. Just try to be back by midnight.” She thinks she’s finally triumphed over her mother, but I want her out of the house.

As soon as Sam and May come home, we strip the pictures the agent talked about off the walls. Sam bags up every copy of the China Daily News that my father-in-law saved because of some article or other. I order May to go into her drawer and pull out the magazine covers that Z.G. painted of the two of us.

“I don’t think this is necessary,” May says.

I respond sharply: “Please, for once, don’t argue with me.” When May doesn’t move, I sigh impatiently. “They’re only pictures on magazine covers. Now if you won’t get them, I will.”

May purses her mouth and turns to go out to the screened porch. Once she’s left, I look for photographs that I think might be—and here’s a word I never thought I’d use—incriminating.

While Sam makes another tour through the house, May and I take what we’ve gathered to burn in the incinerator. I set fire to my pile of photographs and wait for May to throw in the magazine covers, which she hugs to her chest. When she doesn’t move, I wrest them from her arms and drop them in the fire. As I watch the face—my face—that Z.G. so beautifully and perfectly painted curl in the flames, I wonder why we let any of these things creep into the house. I know the answer. Sam, May, and I are no better than Father Louie. We’ve become American with our clothes, our food, our language, our desire for Joy’s education and future, but not once in all these years have we stopped missing our home country.

“They don’t want us here,” I say softly my eyes on the flames. “They’ve never wanted us. They’re going to try to trick us, but we need to trick them in return.”

“Maybe Sam should confess and get it over with,” May suggests. “That way he’ll get his citizenship and we won’t have to worry about any of this.”

“You know it’s not enough for him just to confess his own status. He’ll have to expose others—Uncle Wilburt, Uncle Charley, me—”

“You should all confess together. Then you can all get your legal citizenship. Don’t you want it?”

“Of course I want it. But what if the government is lying?”

“Why would the government lie?”

“When hasn’t it lied?” And then, “What if they decide to deport us? If Sam is proved to be illegal, then I’ll be eligible for deportation too.”

My sister considers that. Then she says, “I don’t want to lose you. I promised Father Louie that I wouldn’t let them send you away. Sam has to confess for Joy, for you, for all of us. This is a chance for amnesty, to bring the family together, and to rid ourselves finally of our secrets.”

I don’t understand why my sister doesn’t—won’t—see the problems, but then she’s married to an actual citizen, came here as his legal wife, and isn’t facing the same threat that Sam and I are.

My sister puts an arm around my shoulder and pulls me close. “Don’t worry, Pearl,” she reassures me, as if I’m the moy moy and she’s the jie jie. “We’ll hire a lawyer to take care of things—”

“No! We’ve gone through this before, you and I, at Angel Island. We won’t let them do anything to Sam, to me, to any of us. We’re going to work together to turn their accusations against them, like we did on Angel Island. We’ve got to confuse them. What’s important is to keep our story straight.”

“Yes, that’s true,” Sam says, stepping through the darkness and feeding another stack of newspapers and memories into the incinerator. “But more than anything we have to prove we’re the most loyal Americans who ever existed.”

May doesn’t like this, but she’s my moy moy and a sister-in-law, and she has to obey.

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