Shanghai Girls (Shanghai Girls #1)(100)
Make it and spend it on clothes and jewelry for yourself, I think but don’t say. Our differing attitudes 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, shit, 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, washing 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 Pagoda, 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.