Shanghai Girls: A Novel Part 19

I see a small bungalow off Alpine Street. I'm told it has three small bedrooms, a screened porch that can be used for sleeping, and two bathrooms. A low chain-link fence covered with dormant Cecile Brunner roses surrounds the property. A huge pepper tree sways gently in the backyard. The lawn is a dried-out rectangle. Marigolds left over from summer lie shriveled and brown. Some chrysanthemums, which look like they've never been pruned, languish in a wilted heap. Above me, endless blue sky holds the promise of another sunny winter. I don't even have to enter the house to know I've found our home.

By now I understand that for every good thing that happens, something bad will happen too. When we're packing, Yen-yen says she's tired. She sits down on the couch in the main room and dies. Heart attack, her doctor says, because she's been working too hard taking care of Vern, but we know better. She died of a broken heart: her son melting before her eyes, a grandson born dead, most of her family wealth built over too many years turned to ash, and now this move. Her funeral is small. After all, she was not a person of importance, rather just a wife and mother. The mourners bow to her casket three times. Then we have a banquet of ten tables of ten at Soochow Restaurant, where the proper and plainly flavored dishes are served.

Her death is terrible for all of us. I can't stop crying, while Father Louie has retreated into pitiable silence. But none of us has time to spend our mourning period confined, quiet, and playing dominoes, as everyone does here in Chinatown, because the following week we move into our new home. May announces that she can't sleep in the same bed with Vern, and everyone understands. No one-no matter how loving or loyal-would want to sleep next to someone who's plagued by night sweats and a festering abscess on his spine that reeks of pus, blood, and decay the way Mama's bound feet once did. Two twin beds are put on the screened porch-one for my sister, one for my daughter. I hadn't considered this eventuality, and it worries me, but there's nothing I can do about it. May keeps her clothes in Vern's closet, where her rainbow of silk, satin, and brocade dresses bulge through the door, her matching purses spill from a high shelf, and her colorfully dyed shoes litter the floor; Joy is allotted two bottom drawers in the built-in linen closet in the hallway next to the bathroom shared by her, Father Louie, and May and to deal with Vern's needs.

Now each of us must find a way to help the family. I'm reminded of one of Mao's sayings that has been mocked in the American press: "Everybody works, so everybody eats." We're each given a task: May continues hiring extras for films and the new television shows, Sam runs Pearl's, Father Louie manages the curio shop, Joy studies hard in school and helps her family when she has free time. Yen-yen was supposed to take care of her ailing son, but that job comes to me. I like Vern well enough, but I don't want to be a nursemaid. When I walk into his room, the warm odor of sickly flesh hits my face. When he sits, his spine slides down until he looks like a toddler. His flesh feels soft and heavy, like when your feet go numb. I last one day, and then I go to my father-in-law to appeal the decision.

"When you don't want to help the family, you sound like you live in America," he says.

"I do live in America," I answer. "I care for my brother-in-law very much. You know that. But he's not my husband. He's May's husband."

"But you have a heart inside you, Pearl-ah." His voice chokes with emotion. "You're the only one I can trust to take care of my boy."

I tell myself that fate is inevitable and that the only provable fate is death, but I wonder why fate always has to be tragic. We Chinese believe that there are many ways to improve our fates: sewing amulets onto our children's clothes, asking for help from feng shui masters to pick propitious dates, and relying on astrology to tell us whether we should marry a Rat, a Rooster, or a Horse. But where is my fortune-the good that's supposed to come to us in the form of happiness? I'm in a new home, but instead of a baby son to dote on, I have to take care of Vern. I'm just so tired and worn down. And I'm afraid all the time. I need help. I need someone to hear me.

The following Sunday, I go to church with Joy as I usually do. Listening to the reverend, I remember the first time G.o.d came into my life. I was a little girl, and a lo fan man dressed in black came up to me on the street outside our house in Shanghai. He wanted to sell me a Bible for two coppers. I went home and asked Mama for the money. She pushed me away, saying, "Tell that one-G.o.der to wors.h.i.+p his ancestors instead. He'll be better off in the afterworld."

I went back outside, apologized to the missionary for keeping him waiting, and gave him Mama's message. At that, he gave me the Bible for free. It was my first book, and I was excited to have it, but that night, after I went to sleep, Mama threw it away. The missionary didn't give up on me though. He invited me to the Methodist mission. "Just come and play," he said. Later he asked me to attend the mission's school, also for free. Mama and Baba couldn't turn down a bargain like that. When May was old enough, she began coming with me. But none of that Jesus-thinking sank into us. We were rice Christians, taking advantage of the foreign devils' food and cla.s.ses while ignoring their words and beliefs. When we became beautiful girls, whatever tendrils of Christianity had wormed their way into us shriveled and died. After what happened to China, Shanghai, and my home during the war, after what happened to Mama and me in the shack, I knew there couldn't be a one-G.o.d who was benevolent and kind.

And now we have all of our recent trials and losses, the worst of which was the death of my son. All the Chinese herbs I took, all the offerings I made, all the questioning about the meaning of my dreams, did not, could not, save him, because I was looking for help in the wrong direction. As I sit on the hard bench in the church, I smile to myself as I remember the missionary I met on the street all those years ago. He always said that true conversion was inevitable. Now it has come at last. I begin to pray-not for Father Louie, whose lifetime of hard work is coming to an end; not for my husband, who bears the family's burdens on his iron fan; not for my baby in the afterworld; not for Vern, whose bones are collapsing before my eyes; but to bring peace of mind, to make sense of all the bad things in my life, and to believe that maybe all this suffering will be rewarded in Heaven.

Forever Beautiful I WATER THE eggplants and the tomatoes, then pull the hose to the cuc.u.mber vine that engulfs the trellis by the incinerator. When I'm done, I roll up the hose, duck under the clothesline, and head back toward the porch. It's still early on this Sunday morning in the summer of 1952, and it's going to be a scorcher. I love that American word-scorcher- because it makes so much sense in this desert of a city. Shanghai always felt like we were being steamed to death in the humidity.

When we first moved into this house, I told Sam, "I want us to have food to eat, and I also want to bring a little China here." So Sam and a couple of the uncles dug up the lawn and I planted a vegetable garden. I brought back to life the chrysanthemums, which bloomed beautifully last fall, and have nursed some geranium cuttings into thriving plants against the screened porch. During the past two years, I've added pots with cymbidiums, a k.u.mquat tree, and azaleas. I tried peonies-the most beloved of Chinese flowers-but it never gets cold enough here for them to grow properly. My rhododendrons failed too. Sam asked for a patch of bamboo; now we're forever hacking it back and seeing new shoots come up in places where we don't want it.

I climb the steps and enter the screened porch, where I toss my ap.r.o.n on the was.h.i.+ng machine, straighten May's and Joy's beds, and then go to the kitchen. Sam and I are co-owners of the property with the rest of the family, but I'm the eldest woman in the household. The kitchen is my territory, and this room literally holds my wealth. Under the sink are now two coffee cans: one for bacon grease, the other for Sam's and my savings for Joy to go to college. An oilcloth covers the table, and a thermos filled with hot water sits ready to make tea. A wok is set permanently on the stove; in a pot on one of the back burners some herbs boil for a tonic for Vern. I prepare a breakfast tray and take it through the living room and down the hall.

Vern's room belongs to a man forever a small child. Other than the closet with May's clothes-the one reminder that Vern is married-the many models that he's glued together and painted decorate the room. Fighter jets hang from fis.h.i.+ng line from the ceiling. s.h.i.+ps, submarines, and race cars line floor-to-ceiling shelves.

He's awake, listening to a radio commentary about the war in North Korea and the threat of Communism, and working on one of his models. I set down his tray, pull up the bamboo shades, and open the window so the glue won't go to his head too much.

"Can I get you anything else?"

He smiles at me sweetly. After three years of the soft-bone disease, he looks like a little boy, staying home sick from school for a day. "Paints and brushes?"

I put them within arm's reach. "Your father will stay with you today. If you need anything, just call and he'll come."

I refuse to worry that something bad will happen if we leave the two of them home alone, because I know exactly what their day will be: Vern will work on his model, eat a simple lunch, mess his pants, and work on his model some more. Father Louie will do light ch.o.r.es around the house, make that simple lunch, avoid his son's messy bottom by walking to the corner to buy his newspapers, and nap until we come home.

I give Vern a wave, and then I go to the living room, where Sam tends the family altar. He bows before Yen-yen's photograph. Since we don't have photographs of everyone who's left us, he's put one of Mama's pouches on the altar and a miniature rickshaw to represent Baba. In a tiny box, there's a clip of my son's hair. Sam honors his entire family with ceramic fruit made in the country style.

I've grown to love this room. I've framed and hung family photos on the wall above the couch. Each winter since we've lived here, we've set up a flocked Christmas tree in the corner and decorated it with red b.a.l.l.s. We outline our front windows with Christmas lights so that this room glows with the news of Jesus' birth. On cold nights, May, Joy, and I take turns standing over the heater grate until our flannel nightgowns balloon out like we're snow creatures.

I watch as Joy helps her grandfather to his recliner and serves him tea. I'm proud that Joy is a proper Chinese girl. She defers to her grandfather, the eldest in our family above everyone else, including her father and me. She understands that everything she does is not only her grandfather's business but also his right to decide. He wants her to learn embroidery, sewing, cleaning, and cooking. In the curio shop after school, she does many of the jobs I once did-polis.h.i.+ng, sweeping, and dusting. "Her training as a future wife and mother of my great-grandsons is important," Father Louie says, and we all try to honor that. And even though all hope of returning to China is lost, he still says, "We don't want Pan-di to become too Americanized. We'll all go back to China one day." Sentiments like this tell us he's slipping. It's hard to believe that he once ruled us with such authority or that we were all so afraid of him. We used to call him Old Man, but now he's a very old man, slowly weakening, slowly drifting away from us, slowly losing his memories, his strength, and his connection to the things that have always driven him: money, business, and family.

Joy gives a half bow to her grandfather, and then the two of us walk to the Methodist church for the Sunday service. As soon as the sermon ends, Joy and I go to the Central Plaza in New Chinatown to meet Sam, May, and Uncle Fred, Mariko, and their daughters at one of the district a.s.sociation halls. We've joined a group-a union of sorts-composed of members from the Congregational, Presbyterian, and Methodist churches in Chinatown. We meet once a month. We stand erect and proud, place our hands over our hearts, and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Then all the families troop out to Bamboo Lane and pile into sedans for the drive to Santa Monica Beach. Sam, May, and I sit together in the front seat of our Chrysler, Joy and the two Yee girls-Hazel and her younger sister, Rose-squeeze together in the backseat, and then we head west in a caravan along Sunset Boulevard. Cars with huge fins shoot ahead of us, their winds.h.i.+elds flas.h.i.+ng in the summer glare. We go by old-fas.h.i.+oned clapboard houses in Echo Park and pink stucco mansions and rat-proofed palms in Beverly Hills, where we cut over to Wils.h.i.+re Boulevard and continue west past supermarkets as ma.s.sive as B-29 hangars, parking lots and lawns as big as football fields, and cascades of bougainvillea and morning glories.

Joy's voice rises as she presses a point to Hazel and Rose, and I smile to myself. Everyone says my daughter has my gift for languages. At age fourteen, her Sze Yup and Wu dialects are as perfect as her English, and her mastery of written Chinese is excellent too. Each Chinese New Year or if someone is celebrating a happy occasion, people ask Joy to write appropriate couplets in her fine calligraphy, which is said by all to be tong gee-uncorrupted by adulthood. This praise isn't enough for me. I know Joy can obtain more spiritual growth and learn more about Caucasians by going to church outside Chinatown, which we do once a month.

"G.o.d loves everyone," I often remind my daughter. "He wants you to make a good living and have a happy life. This is true about America too. You can do anything in the U.S. You can't say that about China."

I tell Sam things like this too, because the Christian words and beliefs have taken deep root in me. My faith in G.o.d and Jesus is also very much a part of the patriotism and loyalty I feel for my daughter's home country of America. And of course, being Christian these days is deeply tied to anti-Communist sentiment. No one wants to be accused of being a G.o.dless Communist. When asked about the war in Korea, we say we're against Red China's interference; when asked about Taiwan, we say we support the Generalissimo and Madame Chiang Kai-shek. We say we're for moral rearmament, Jesus, and freedom. Going to a Western church is a practical thing to do, just as my going to a mission in Shanghai was. "You have to be sensible about these things," I've told Sam, but inside I've become a one-G.o.der and he knows it.

Sam may not like it, but he comes to our church gatherings because he loves me, our family, Uncle Fred and his brood of girls, and these picnics. Our outings make him feel American. In fact, although our daughter has finally grown out of her cowgirl infatuation, almost everything we do makes us feel more American. On days like today, Sam ignores the G.o.d aspects and embraces the things he likes: preparing the food, eating slices of watermelon that we don't have to worry have been injected with foul river water, and celebrating family fellows.h.i.+p. He considers these adventures purely social and purely for the children.

Sam pulls into a parking spot by the Santa Monica Pier, and we unload the car. Our feet burn as we cross the sand, roll out blankets, and set up umbrellas. Sam and Fred help the other men dig a pit for the barbecue. May, Mariko, and I a.s.sist the other wives and mothers setting out bowls of potato, bean, and fruit salads; Jell-O molds with marshmallows, walnuts, and grated carrots; and plates of cold cuts. As soon as the fire is ready, we give the men trays of chicken wings marinated in soy, honey and sesame seeds, and pork ribs steeped in hoisin sauce and five spice. The ocean air mixes with the scent of the roasting meat, children play in the surf, the men bend their heads over the barbecue, and the women sit on blankets and gossip. Mariko stands apart from us. She holds baby Mamie on her hip, while keeping a close eye on her other half-and-half daughters, Eleanor and Bess, who are building a sand castle.

My sister, childless, is known as Auntie May to everyone. Like Sam, she isn't a one-G.o.der. Far from it! She works hard, sometimes staying up late to arrange extras for a shoot or staying out all night on a set herself At least that's what she says. I honestly don't know where she goes, and I don't ask. Even when she's home and asleep, the phone might ring at four or five in the morning, a call from someone who's just lost all his money gambling and needs a job. None of this, none of this, matches well with my one-G.o.d beliefs, which is one reason I like to bring her on these excursions to the seash.o.r.e.

"Look at that FOB," May says, adjusting her sungla.s.ses and big hat. She tips her head delicately toward Violet Lee, who shades her eyes with her long, tapered fingers and peers out to the ocean, where Joy and her friends hold hands and jump over waves. Plenty of women here, including Violet, are fresh off the boat. Now almost forty percent of the Chinese population in Los Angeles is made up of women, but Violet wasn't a war bride or a fiancee. She and her husband came to UCLA to study: she bioengineering, Rowland engineering. When China closed, they were trapped here with their young son. They aren't paper sons, paper partners, or laborers, but they're still w.a.n.g k'uo nu- lost-country slaves.

Violet and I get along well. She has narrow hips, which Mama always said marked a woman with the gift of gab. Are we best friends? I sneak a glance at my sister. Never. Violet and I are good friends, like Betsy and I once were. May will always be not only my sister and my sister-in-law but also my best friend, forever. That said, May doesn't know what she's talking about. While it's true that many of the new women do seem FOB-just as we once did-most of them are exactly like Violet: educated, arriving in this country with their own money, not having to spend even a single night in Chinatown but buying bungalows and homes in Silver Lake, Echo Park, or Highland Park, where Chinese are welcomed. Not only do they not live in Chinatown, but they don't work there either. They aren't laundrymen, houseboys, restaurant workers, or curio-shop clerks. They're the cream of China-the ones who could afford to leave. Already they've gone further than we ever could. Violet now teaches at USC, and Rowland works in the aeros.p.a.ce industry. They come to Chinatown only to go to church and to buy groceries. They've joined our group so their son can meet other Chinese children.

May eyes a young man. "You think that FOB wants our ABC?" She asks suspiciously. The FOB she's speaking of is Violet's son; the ABC is my American-born Chinese daughter.

"Leon's a sweet boy and a good student," I say, watching as the boy dives smoothly into the surf. "He's at the top of his cla.s.s at his school, just as our Joy is at the top of hers."

"You sound like Mama talking about Tommy and me," May teases.

"It's not so bad if Leon and Joy get to know each other," I respond steadily, for once not offended that she's compared me with our mother. After all, the reason this union exists is that we want the boys and girls to get to know each other, hoping they'll marry one day. Implicit in this is the expectation that they'll marry someone Chinese.

"She's lucky she won't have an arranged marriage." May sighs. "But even with animals, you want a thoroughbred, not a mongrel."

When you lose your home country, what do you preserve and what do you abandon? We've saved only those things that are possible to save: Chinese food, Chinese language, and sneaking what money we can back to the Louie relatives in the home village. But what about an arranged marriage for my girl? Sam isn't Z.G., but he's a good and kind man. And Vern, forever damaged, has never beaten May or lost money gambling.

"Just don't push for marriage," May continues. "Let her get an education." (Something I've been working toward practically from the moment Joy was born.) "I didn't have what you had in Shanghai," my sister complains, "but she should go to college, like you did." She pauses, letting that sink in, as though I haven't heard this before too. "But it's nice she has such good friends," May adds as the girls cling to one another when a big wave approaches. "Remember when we could laugh like that? We thought nothing bad could happen to us."

"The essence of happiness has nothing to do with money," I say, and I believe it. But May bites her lip, and I see I've said the exact wrong thing. "We thought the world ended when Baba lost everything-"

"It did," May says. "Our lives would have been very different if he'd saved our money instead of lost it, which is why I work so hard to make it now."

Make it and spend it on clothes and jewelry for yourself, I think but don't say. Our differing att.i.tudes about money are among the many things that aggravate my sister.

"What I mean is," I try again, hoping not to further darken May's mood, "Joy's lucky to have friends, just as I'm lucky to have you. Mama married out and never saw her sisters again, but you and I will have each other forever." I put my arm around her shoulder and jiggle it affectionately. "Sometimes I think that one day we'll end up sharing a room just like when we were girls, only we'll be in the old folks' home. We'll have our meals together. We'll sell raffle tickets together. We'll make crafts together-"

"We'll go to matinees together," May adds, smiling.

"And we'll sing psalms together."

May frowns at that. I've made another mistake, and I hurry on.

"And we'll play mah-jongg! We'll be two retired ladies, fat and round, playing mah-jongg, and complaining about this and that."

May nods as she stares wistfully west across the sea to the horizon.

WHEN WE GET home, we find Father Louie asleep in his recliner. I give Joy, Hazel, and Rose some straws and send them out to the backyard, where they gather peppercorns off the ground, load up their straws, and blow the harmless pink pellets at one another, laughing, squealing, and running through the yard between the plants. Sam and I go to Vern's bedroom to change his diaper. The open window does little to blow away the smells of sickness, s.h.i.+t, urine, and pus. May comes in with tea. We sit together for a few minutes to tell Vern about the day, and then I go back to the kitchen. I unpack and begin getting things ready for dinner, was.h.i.+ng the rice, chopping ginger and garlic, and slicing beef.

Just before I start cooking, I send the Yee girls home. As I make curried tomato beef lo mein, Joy sets the table-a job that back in Shanghai had always been done by our servants under Mama's close watch. Joy lines up the chopsticks just so, making sure not to set out any uneven pairs, which would mean that the person using them will miss a boat, a plane, or a train (not that any of us are going anywhere). While I put the food on the table, Joy gets her aunt, father, and grandfather. I've tried to teach my daughter the things that Mama tried to teach me. The big difference is that my daughter has paid attention and learned. She never speaks at dinner-something May and I failed at miserably. She never drops her chopsticks for fear of bad luck, nor does she leave them upright in her rice bowl, because that's something done only at funerals and is impolite to her grandfather, who's been thinking about his own mortality lately.

When dinner's over, Sam helps Father back to his chair. I clean the kitchen, while May takes a plate of food to Vern. I'm standing with my hands in soapy water, staring out at the garden aglow in the last of the summer evening's light, when I hear my sister coming back through the living room. The sound of her steps is familiar and comforting. Then I hear her gasp-a breath so deep and sharp that I'm suddenly very afraid. Is it Vern? Father? Joy? Sam?

I rush to the kitchen door and peer around the jamb. May stands in the middle of the room, Vern's empty plate in her hand, her face flushed and with a look I can't comprehend. She's staring at Father's chair, and I think the old man must have died. I think if death has come today, then that's not so bad. He lived to be eighty-something, he spent a quiet day with his son, he had dinner with his family, and none of us can feel bad anymore about the relations between us.

I step into the room to face this sadness and then freeze, as shocked into immobility as my sister. The old man is alive all right. He sits there with his feet up on his lounger, his long pipe in his mouth, and a copy of China Reconstructs held in his hands so the two of us can see it. It's shocking enough to see him with this magazine. It comes out of Red China, and it's a piece of Communist propaganda. There've been rumors that the government has spies in Chinatown keeping track of who buys things like this. Father Louie, who cannot be called a supporter of the Communist regime by any measure, has told us to avoid the tobacconist and the paper goods store where the magazine is sold from under the counter.

But it's not the magazine that's the real shock; it's the front cover, which my father-in-law is displaying to us with such pride. The image is one that, even if we avoid these products, is familiar to us: the glory of New China as exemplified by two young women dressed in country clothes, their cheeks full of life, their arms loaded with fruits and vegetables, practically singing the glories of the new regime-all rendered in glowing red tones. Those two beautiful girls are instantly recognizable as May and me. The artist, who without hesitation has embraced the heightened, exuberant style favored by the Communists, is also clearly identifiable by the delicacy and precision of his brushstrokes. Z.G. is alive, and he hasn't forgotten me or my sister.

"I went to the tobacconist when Vern was sleeping. Look," Father Louie says, the pride in his voice unmistakable as he looks at the cover with May and me-not one question in my mind that it's us-selling not soap, face powder, or baby formula but a glorious harvest out by the Lunghua PaG.o.da, where Z.G., May, and I once flew kites. "You're still beautiful girls." Father sounds almost triumphant. He worked his whole life, and for what? He never went back to China. His wife died. His birth son is like a dried-up bedbug and about as companionable. He never had a grandson. His businesses have shriveled to one mediocre curio shop. But he did do one thing really, really well. He procured two beautiful girls for Vern and Sam.

May and I take a few tentative steps toward him. It's hard to say how I feel: surprised and stunned to see May and me looking the same as we did fifteen years ago with our pink cheeks, happy eyes, and luscious smiles, a bit fearful that these magazines are in the house, and almost overwhelmed by joy that Z.G. is still alive.

The next thing I know Sam is at my side, exclaiming, and gesturing in excitement. "It's you! It's you and May!"

My cheeks flush, as though I've been caught. I have been caught. I lift my eyes to May, looking for help. As sisters, we've always been able to say so much to each other with just a glance.

"Z.G. Li must have painted this," May says evenly. "How lovely that he has remembered us in this way. He made Pearl look especially beautiful, don't you think?"

"He's painted both of you exactly as I see you," says Sam, forever the good husband and appreciative brother-in-law. "Always beautiful. Forever beautiful."

"Beautiful enough," May agrees lightly, "although neither of us ever looked that good in peasant clothes."

Later that night, after everyone goes to asleep, I meet my sister on the screened porch. We sit on her bed, holding hands, staring at the magazine. As much as I love Sam, a part of me soars with the knowledge that across the ocean in Shanghai-I have to believe Z.G.'s there-in a country that is closed to me, the man I loved so long ago loves me still.

ONLY ONE WEEK later, we realize that Father's weakness and lethargy are more than just the usual slowing of age. He's sick. The doctor tells us it's lung cancer and there's nothing anyone can do. Yen-yen's death was so sudden and it came at such an inconvenient moment that we didn't have the opportunity to prepare for her death or mourn her properly when she pa.s.sed. This time each of us in our own way reflects back on the mistakes we've made over the years, and we try to make amends in the time we have left. During the coming months, many people visit, and I listen to them speak highly of my father-in-law, calling him a successful Gold Mountain man, but when I look at him during these final days, I see only a ruined man. He worked so hard, only to lose his businesses and property in China and almost everything he'd built for himself here. Now, in the end, he has to rely on his paper son for his housing, food, evening pipe, and copies of China Reconstructs that Sam buys from under the counter at the shop on the corner.

Father's only consolations in these final months, as the cancer eats his lungs, are the photographs I cut from the magazine and pin to the wall next to his recliner. So many times I see him with tears running down his sunken cheeks, staring at the country he left as a young man: the sacred mountains, the Great Wall, and the Forbidden City. He says he hates the Communists, because that's what everyone has to say, but he still has a love of the land, art, culture, and people of China that has nothing to do with Mao, the Bamboo Curtain, or fear of the Reds. He isn't alone in his nostalgia and desire for his homeland. Many of the old-timers, like Uncle Wilburt and Uncle Charley, come to the house and also pore over these captured images of their lost home; that's how deep their love of China is, no matter what it's become. But all this happens very fast, and too soon Father dies.

A funeral is the most important event in a person's life-more significant than a birth, a birthday, or a wedding. Since Father was a man and he lived into his eighties, his funeral is much larger than Yen-yen's. We hire a Cadillac convertible to drive through Chinatown with a large flower-wreathed photographic portrait of him propped on the backseat. The hea.r.s.e driver tosses spirit money out the window to pay off malevolent demons and other lowly ghosts who might try to bar the way. A bra.s.s band trails behind the hea.r.s.e, playing Chinese folks songs and military marches. At the hall for the ceremony, three hundred people bow three times to the casket and another three times to us, the grieving family members. We give coins to the mourners to disperse the sa hee- polluted air a.s.sociated with death-and candy to cleanse the bitter taste of death. Everyone wears white-the color of mourning, the color of death. Then we go to Soochow Restaurant for gaai wai jau-the traditional seven-course "plain" banquet of steamed chicken, seafood, and vegetables, designed to "wash away sorrow," wish the old man a long next life after this death, and launch us on our healing journey and encourage us to leave behind the vapors of death before returning home.

Over the next three months, women come to the house to play dominoes with May and me as we pa.s.s through the official mourning period. I find myself staring at the pictures I pinned to the wall above Father's recliner. Somehow I can't take them down.

Inch of Gold "WHY CAN'T I go?" Joy demands, her voice rising. "Auntie Violet and Uncle Rowland are letting Leon go."

"Leon's a boy," I say.

"It only costs twenty-five cents. Please."

"Your father and I don't think it's right for a girl your age to go around town by yourself-"

"I won't be by myself All the kids are going."

"You're not all the kids," I say. "Do you want people to look at you and see porcelain with scars? You have to guard your body like a piece of jade."

"Mom, all I want to do is go to the record hop at the International Hall."

Yen-yen sometimes said that an inch of gold could not buy an inch of time, but only recently have I begun to understand how precious time is and how quickly it pa.s.ses. It's 1956, the summer after Joy's high school graduation. In the fall, she'll be attending the University of Chicago, where she plans to study history. It's awfully far away, but we've decided to let her go. Her tuition has turned out to be more than we antic.i.p.ated, but Joy's received a partial scholars.h.i.+p and May's going to help out too. Every day Joy asks if she can go somewhere or other. If I say yes to this record hop-whatever that is-then I'll have to say yes to something else: the dance with the fifteen-piece orchestra, the birthday celebration in MacArthur Park, the party that will require a bus ride going and coming home.

"What do you think's going to happen?" Joy asks, not giving up. "We're only going to play records and dance a little."

May and I said things like that too when we were girls in Shanghai, and it didn't work out that well for either of us.

"You're too young for boys," I say.

"Young? I'm eighteen! Auntie May married Uncle Vern when she was my age-"

And already pregnant, I think to myself.

Sam has tried to pacify me by accusing me of being too strict. "You worry too much," he's said. "She's not aware of boy-girl interests."

But what girl of Joy's age isn't aware of those things? I was. May was. Now when Joy talks back, ignores what I say, or walks out of the room when I tell her to stay, even my sister laughs at me for getting upset, saying, "We did the exact same things at that age."

And look what it got us, I want to scream at her.

"I've never been to a single football game or dance," Joy resumes her complaints. "The other girls have gone to the Palladium. They've gone to the Biltmore. I never get to do anything."

"We need your help at Pearl's and in the shop. Your auntie needs your help too."

"Why should I help? I never get paid."

"All the money-"

"Goes into the family pot. You've been saving for me to go to college. I know. I know. But I only have two months left before I leave for Chicago. Don't you want me to have fun? This is my last chance to see my friends." Joy folds her arms over her chest and sighs as though she's the most burdened person in the world.

"You can do anything you want, but you have to do well in school. If you don't want to go to school-"

"Then I'm on my own," she finishes, reciting the line with the fatigue of centuries.

I'm Joy's mother and I see her with mother eyes. Her long black hair holds the blue of distant mountains. Her eyes are the deep black of a lake in autumn. She didn't have enough to eat in the womb, and she's smaller than I am, smaller than May. This gives her the appearance of a maiden from ancient times-lithe like willow branches swayed by the breeze, as delicate as the flight of swallows-but inside she's still a Tiger. I can try to tame her, but my daughter can't escape her essential nature, just as I can't escape mine. Since graduation, she's complained about the clothes I make for her. "They're so embarra.s.sing," she says. I made them out of love. I made them because there wasn't a place in Los Angeles like Madame Garnet's in Shanghai for me to take her to have dresses molded to her exact shape. What upsets Joy most of all is her perceived lack of freedom, but I know the kinds of things May and I-especially May, really only May-did when we were young.

A lot of this wouldn't happen if Father Louie were still alive. He's been gone four years now. Sam, Joy, and I could have used Father's death as our chance to move out on our own, but we didn't. Sam had made a promise when Father took him as more than just a paper son. I may not believe in ancestors anymore, but Sam lights incense for the old man and makes offerings of food and paper clothes to him during New Year's and other festivities. But beyond that, how could we leave Vern, who's lived longer than anyone expected? Who will explain to him that his parents are gone when he asks for them, as he does every day? How could we leave May to care for her husband, run the Golden Prop and Extras Company and the curio shop, and manage the house? But it goes even past loyalty to the family and promises made. We continue to be deeply afraid.

Every day the news from the government is bad. The U.S. consul in Hong Kong has accused the Chinese community of being inclined to fraud and perjury, since we "lack the equivalent of the Western concept of an oath." He says that everyone who comes through his office looking to go to the United States is using fake papers. Angel Island has long been closed, but he's devised new procedures requiring the answering of hundreds of questions, the filling out of dozens of forms, and the procurement of affidavits, blood tests, X-rays, and fingerprints, all in an effort to keep Chinese from coming to America. He says that almost every Chinese already in America-going all the way back to those who panned for gold more than a hundred years ago and helped build the transcontinental railroad eighty-some years ago-entered illegally and is not to be trusted. He says that we're responsible for trafficking in drugs, using fraudulent pa.s.sports and other papers, counterfeiting American dollars, and illegally collecting Social Security and veterans' benefits. Worse, he claims that for decades the Communists have sent paper sons-like Sam, Wilburt, Fred, and so many others-to America as spies. Every single Chinese living in America must be investigated, he insists.

For years, Joy has come home from school with stories about her duck-and-cover drills. Now it's as though we want to live each day in that coiled position-coc.o.o.ned in our houses with our families, hoping the windows, walls, and doors won't be shattered, immolated, and turned to bitter ashes. For all these reasons-love for one another, fear for one another-we've stayed together, and we've struggled to find balance and order, but with Father Louie gone, we're all slightly adrift, especially my daughter.

"You don't have to wash clothes for lo fan, make their meals, clean their houses, or answer their doors," I say. "You don't have to be an office girl or a clerk in a store either. When your baba and I first came here, all we could ever hope for was to have our own cafe and maybe one day live in a house."

"You and Dad got that-"

"Yes, but you can have and do so much more. Back when your aunt and I first arrived, only a handful of people could go into a profession. I can count them on one hand." And I do. "Y. C. Hong, the first Chinese-American lawyer in California; Eugene Choy the first Chinese-American architect in Los Angeles; Margaret Chung, the first Chinese-American doctor in the country-"

"You've told me this a million times-"

"All I'm saying is you can be a doctor, a lawyer, a scientist, or an accountant. You can do anything."

"Even climb a telephone pole?" she asks tartly.

"We just want you to get to the top of the heap," I reply calmly.