Shanghai Girls (18 page)

From inside we hear Yen-yen coo to her son. “Boy-husband, it’s time for you to go to bed. Go get your wife and go to bed now.”

“I miss Mama and Baba. I miss our home. And this”—she gestures around the dark hallway—“is all so hard. I can’t do it without you.” Tears roll down her cheeks. She wipes them away roughly, takes a breath, and enters the apartment to go to her room with her boy-husband.

A few minutes later, I lay Joy in her drawer and get in bed. Sam rolls away from me, as he usually does, and I cling to the edge of the bed as far from him and as close to Joy as I can get. My feelings and thoughts are confused. The clothes are yet another unanticipated blow, but what about the other things May said? I hadn’t realized she was suffering too. And she was right about me. I have been afraid: to leave the apartment, to go to the end of Sanchez Alley, to enter the Plaza, to walk down Olvera Street, and to cross the street to China City. These past weeks, May had offered many times: “I’ll take you to China City whenever you want to go.” But I hadn’t gone.

I grab the pouch Mama gave me through my clothes. What’s happened to me? How have I become such a scared
fu yen?
.

ON JUNE 25
, just a few blocks away and less than three weeks later, New Chinatown has its Grand Opening. Big traditional Chinese carved gates stand stately and colorful at each end of the block. Anna May Wong, the glamorous movie star, leads the parade. A Chinese all-girl drum corps gives a rousing performance. Neon lights outline gaily painted buildings decorated with all manner of Chinese froufrou on the eaves and balconies. Everything seems bigger and better there. They have more firecrackers, more important politicians to cut the ribbons and make speeches, more sinuous and acrobatic crews to perform the dragon and lion dances. Even the people who’ve opened shops and restaurants there are considered better, wealthier, and more established than those of us in China City.

People say that the opening of these two Chinatowns is the beginning of good times for Chinese in Los Angeles. I say it’s the beginning of hard feelings. In China City, we have to do more and make a better effort. My father-in-law uses his iron fist to make us all work even longer hours. He’s relentless and often cruel. None of us disobey him, but I don’t see how we’ll ever catch up. How can you compete when others have a larger advantage? And with things the way they are, how are we ever going to make our own money to leave this place?

Scents of Home

I SHOULD BE
plotting where May, Joy, and I will go, but I find that nothing drives me to explore more than my stomach, where my loneliness has settled. I miss things like honey-covered dough confections, sugared rose cakes, and spiced eggs boiled in tea. Having lost even more weight from Yen-yen’s cooking than I did on Angel Island, I watch Uncle Wilburt and Uncle Charley, the first and second cooks at the Golden Dragon, and try to learn from them. They let me go with them to the Sam Sing Butcher Shop with its gold-leafed pig in the window to buy pork and duck. They take me to George Wong’s fish market, which backs up to China City on Spring Street, to teach me to buy only what’s still breathing. We cross the street to the International Grocery, and for the first time since being here, I smell the scents of home. Uncle Wilburt uses some of his own money to buy me a bag of salted black beans. I’m so grateful that after that the uncles take turns buying me other little treats: jujubes, honeyed dates, bamboo shoots, lotus buds, and mushrooms. Every few days, if we have a lull in the café, they let me join them behind the counter to show me how to cook a single and very quick dish using these special ingredients.

The uncles come to the apartment for dinner every Sunday night. I ask Yen-yen if she’ll let me make the meal. The family eats it. After that, I make every Sunday dinner. Pretty soon I can make dinner in thirty minutes, as long as Vern washes the rice and Sam chops the vegetables. At first, Old Man Louie isn’t pleased. “Why should I let you squander my money on food? Why should I let you
out
to buy food?” (This, although he doesn’t mind that we walk to and from work, where we cater to total strangers, white ones at that.)

I say, “I don’t waste your money, because Uncle Wilburt and Uncle Charley pay for the food. And I don’t walk alone, because I’m always with Uncle Wilburt and Uncle Charley.”

“This is even worse! The uncles are saving their money to go home. Everyone—including me—has the desire to return to China, if not to live then to die, if not to die then to have his bones buried there.” Like so many men, Old Man Louie wants to save ten thousand dollars and return a rich man to his ancestral village, where he’ll acquire a few concubines, have more sons, and spend his days sipping tea. He also wants to be recognized as a “big man,” which can’t be more American. “Every time I go back, I buy more fields. If they won’t let me own land here, then I’ll own it in China. Oh, I know what you’re thinking, Pearl. You’re thinking, But you were born here! You’re an American! I tell you, I may have been born here, but I’m Chinese in my heart. I will go back.”

He’s so predictable in his complaints and the way he can turn something about the uncles or anyone else into something about him, but I accept them, because he likes my cooking. He’ll never
say
that, but he does something even better. After a few Sundays, he announces, “I will give you money every Monday to buy food for all our meals.” Sometimes I’m tempted to put a little aside for myself, but I know how closely he watches every penny and receipt, and that he periodically checks with the people at the butcher, fish market, and dry goods store. He’s so careful with his money that he refuses to keep it in a bank. It’s all hidden, distributed in separate caches in the various Golden establishments to protect it from disaster and from
lo fan
bankers.

Now that I can go to the stores by myself, the shop owners begin to know me. They like my business—small as it is—and reward my loyalty to their roast duck, live fish, or pickled turnips by giving me calendars. The images are Chinafied, with brash reds, blues, and greens against harsh white backgrounds. Instead of beautiful girls reclining in their boudoirs, sending a feeling of ease, relaxation, and eroticism, the artists have chosen to paint uninspired landscapes of the Great Wall, the sacred mountain of Emei, the mystical karsts of Kweilin, or insipid-looking women wearing
cheongsams
made from shiny cloth in geometric patterns and sitting in poses meant to convey the virtues of moral rearmament. The artists’ technique is garish and commercial, with no delicacy or emotion, but I hang the calendars on the walls of the apartment, just as the poorest of the poor in Shanghai hung them in their sad little huts to bring a little color and wishful hoping into their lives. These things brighten the apartment as much as my meals, and as long as they’re given free, my father-in-law is satisfied.

CHRISTMAS EVE MORNING
I wake at five, get dressed, give Joy to my mother-in-law, and then walk with Sam to China City. It’s still early but strangely warm. Hot winds blew all night, leaving broken branches, dried leaves, confetti, and other trash from Olvera Street’s holiday revelers scattered on the Plaza and along Main Street. We cross Macy, enter China City, and follow our usual route, starting by the rickshaw stand in the Court of the Four Seasons and then edging around the chickens and ducks that peck at the ground in front of Wang’s Farmhouse. I still haven’t seen
The Good Earth
, but Uncle Charley has told me I should, saying, “It’s just like China.” Uncle Wilburt also wants me to see the movie. “If you go, watch for the mob scene. I’m in that one! You’ll see lots of uncles and aunties from Chinatown in that picture show.” But I don’t go to the movie and I don’t enter the farmhouse, because every time I pass it I’m reminded of the shack outside Shanghai.

From Wang’s Farmhouse, I follow Sam down Dragon Road. “Walk next to me,” he invites me in Sze Yup, but I don’t because I don’t want to encourage him. If I make small talk with him during the day or do something like walk next to him, then he’ll want to do the husband-wife thing.

Apart from the rickshaw rides, all the other Golden businesses are in the oval, where Dragon and Kwan Yin Roads meet. It’s along this route that the rickshaws make their serpentine loop. Only twice in the six months I’ve worked here have I ventured over to the Lotus Pool or into the covered area that houses a theater for Chinese opera, a penny arcade, and Tom Gubbins’s Asiatic Costume Company. China City may be one oddly shaped block bordered by Main, Macy, Spring, and Ord Streets—with over forty shops crammed together with all the cafés, restaurants, and other “tourist attractions” like Wang’s Farmhouse—but there are distinct enclaves inside the walls, and the people within them rarely associate with their neighbors.

Sam unlocks the door to the café, flips on the lights, and starts brewing coffee. As I refill the salt and pepper shakers, the uncles and the other workers straggle in and begin their chores. By the time the pies are sliced and put on display, the early-bird customers have arrived. I chat with our regulars—truck drivers and postal workers—take orders, and call them out to the cooks.

At nine, a pair of policemen come in and sit at the counter. I smooth my apron and allow my teeth to show in grinning welcome. If we don’t fill their bellies for free, they follow our customers to their cars and give them tickets. These last two weeks have been particularly bad as the police walked from one store to the next, collecting Christmas “presents” until their arms were loaded. A week ago, after they decided they hadn’t received enough gifts, they blocked the auto park, preventing customers from coming at all. Now everyone’s cowed, obedient, and willing to give whatever the policemen ask for so long as they let us keep our doors open.

Just as the police leave, a truck driver calls out to Sam, “Hey, buddy get me a piece of that blueberry pie to go, will ya?”

Maybe Sam’s still nervous about the policemen’s visit, because he ignores the request and continues washing glasses. By now it seems like an eternity ago that I learned from my coaching book that Sam was to be the manager of the café, but actually his position is somewhere between a glass washer and a dish washer. I watch him as I serve eggs, potatoes, toast, and coffee for thirty-five cents or a jelly roll and coffee for a nickel. Someone asks Sam for a coffee refill, but he doesn’t go over with the pot until the man taps the edge of his cup impatiently. A half hour later, that same man asks for his bill, and Sam points to me. Not once does he say a word to any of our customers.

The breakfast rush slows. Sam gathers dirty plates and silverware, while I follow after him with a wet cloth to wipe the tables and counters.

“Sam,” I say in English, “why don’t you talk to our customers?” When he doesn’t respond, I go on, still in English. “In Shanghai, the
lo fan
always said that Chinese waiters were surly and bad-mannered. You don’t want our customers to think that about you, do you?”

His look fades into nervousness, and he gnaws his lower lip.

I switch to Sze Yup. “You don’t know English, do you?”

“I know some,” he says. Then he amends this, smiling sheepishly. “A little. Very little.”

“How can that be?”

“I was born in China. Why would I know it?”

“Because you lived here until you were seven.”

“That was a long time ago. I don’t remember the words from then.”

“But didn’t you study it in China?” I ask. Everyone I knew in Shanghai learned English. Even May who was a very poor student, knows the language.

Sam doesn’t respond directly. “I can try to speak English, but the customers refuse to understand me. And when they talk to me, I don’t understand them either.” He nods to the wall clock. “You’d better go.”

He’s always pushing me out the door. I know he goes somewhere in the mornings and in the late afternoons, just as I do. As a
fu yen
it’s not my place to ask where he goes. If Sam is gambling or has hired someone to do the husband-wife thing with him, what can I do? If he’s one of those womanizer types, what can I do? If he’s a gambler like my father, what can I do? I learned to be a wife from my mother and from watching Yen-yen, and I know there’s nothing you can do if your husband wants to walk out on you. You don’t know where he goes. He comes back when he comes back, and that’s it.

I wash my hands and take off my apron. As I walk to the Golden Lantern, I think about what Sam said. How can he
not
know English? My English is perfect—and I’ve learned it’s polite to say
Occidental
instead of
lo fan
or
fan gwaytze
and
Oriental
instead
of Chinaman
or
Chink
—but I understand that isn’t the way to get a tip or make a sale. People come to China City to be entertained. Customers like me to speak wantee-chop-suey English—and how easy that is, after I’ve listened to Vern, Old Man Louie, and so many others, who were born here but speak crooked, misshapen English. For me, it’s an act; for Sam, it’s ignorance—country, and as distasteful to me as his secret dalliances with who knows who.

I reach the Golden Lantern, where Yen-yen sells curios and babysits Joy. Together we polish, dust, and sweep. When I finish, I play with Joy for a while. At 11:30, I once again leave Joy with Yen-yen and go back to the café, where as fast as I can I serve hamburgers for fifteen cents. Our hamburgers aren’t as popular as the Chinaburgers at Fook Gay’s Café, with their stir-fried bean sprouts, black mushrooms, and soy sauce, but we do well with our bowls of salted fish with pork for ten cents, and plain bowls of rice and tea for five cents.

After lunch, I work at the Golden Lotus, selling silk flowers until Vern arrives from school. Then I go to the Golden Pagoda. I want to talk to my sister about our plans for Christmas Day, but she’s busy convincing a customer that a piece of lacquer was painted on a raft in the middle of a lake lest a speck of dust mar the perfection of its surface, and I’m busy sweeping, dusting, polishing, and shining.

Before heading back to the café, I return to the Golden Lantern, pick up Joy, and take her for a short walk through China City’s alleys. Much like the tourists, she loves to watch the rickshaws. Golden Rickshaw rides are hugely popular—they’re Old Man Louie’s most successful enterprise. Johnny Yee, one of the local boys, pulls rickshaws for celebrities or for promotional photographs, but usually Miguel, Jose, and Ramon do the job. They earn tips and a small percentage of the twenty-five-cent fare for each ride. They get a little more if they can persuade a customer to buy a photo for an extra twenty-five cents.

Today a woman passenger kicks Miguel and then swats him with her purse. Why would she do that? Because she can. The way pullers were treated in Shanghai never bothered me. Was it because my father owned the business? Because I was like this white woman
—above
the pullers? Because in Shanghai pullers were barely better than dogs, whereas here May and I are now in their class? I have to say yes, yes, and yes again.

I drop Joy back with her grandmother, kiss my baby good night because I won’t see her again until I go home, and then spend the rest of the evening serving sweet-and-sour pork, cashew chicken, and chop suey—all dishes I never saw or even heard of in Shanghai—until closing time at ten. Sam stays to lock up, and I start out for the apartment alone, wending my way through the festive Christmas Eve crowds on Olvera Street rather than walk alone on Main.