Shanghai Girls (Shanghai Girls #1)(109)

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.”