Shanghai Girls (Shanghai Girls #1)(40)

“How long has it been?”

She sits up, rubs her eyes with both hands, and then stares at me with sorrow, humiliation, and pleading. She pulls her legs under her so our knees touch, and then she slowly unbuttons the frogs of her peasant jacket and smoothes her hands over her shirt to reveal her belly. She’s pretty far along, which explains why she’s been hiding under baggy clothes almost from the moment we arrived at Angel Island.

“Was it Tommy?” I ask, hoping it was.

Mama always wanted May and Tommy to marry. With Tommy and Mama dead, wouldn’t this be a gift? But when May says, “He was just a friend,” I don’t know what to think. My sister went out with a lot of different young men in Shanghai, especially in those last days, when we were so desperate to forget our circumstances. But I don’t know their names, and I don’t want to interrogate her with questions like “Was it that young man that night at the Venus Club?” or “Was it that American Betsy used to bring around sometimes?” Wouldn’t that approach be as ridiculous and stupid as what I’ve gone through today? But I can’t keep my tongue from flapping.

“Was it that student who came to live in the second-floor pavilion?” I don’t remember much about him other than that he was thin, wore gray and kept to himself. What did he study? I can’t say, but I haven’t forgotten how he hovered over Mama’s chair the day of the bombing. Did he do that because he was in love with May, as so many young men were?

“I was already pregnant then,” May confesses.

A disgusting thought enters my mind. “Tell me it wasn’t Captain Yamasaki.” If May’s going to have a half-Japanese baby, I don’t know what I’ll do.

She shakes her head, and I’m relieved.

“You never met him,” May says in a quavering voice. “I barely met him. It was just a thing I did. I didn’t think this would happen. If I’d had more time, I would have asked an herbalist to give me something to expel the baby. But I didn’t. Oh, Pearl, everything’s my fault.” She grabs my hands and begins to weep again.

“Don’t worry. We’ll be all right,” I say, trying to sound comforting but knowing it’s an empty promise.

“How could we possibly be all right? Haven’t you thought about what this means?”

To tell the truth, I haven’t. I haven’t had months to think about May’s condition. I’ve had barely two minutes.

“We can’t go to Los Angeles right away.” May pauses and stares at me appraisingly “You understand we have to go there, right?”

“I haven’t seen another way. But even forgetting about this”—I point to her belly—“we don’t know if they’ll want us anymore.”

“Of course they will. They bought us! But there’s the problem of the baby. At first I thought I’d be able to get away with it. I didn’t do the husband-wife thing with Vernon, but he wasn’t going to say anything. Then Old Man Louie went through our sheets—”

“You knew even then?”

“You were there when I threw up in the restaurant. I was so scared. I thought someone would figure it out. I thought you would guess.”

Now, as I think about it, I realize many people understood what I was too ignorant and blind to see. The old woman whose house we stopped at on our first night out of Shanghai had taken particular care with May. The doctor in Hangchow had been very solicitous, wanting May to sleep. I’m May’s jie jie, and I’ve always thought we are as close as can be, but I’ve been so concerned with my own miseries—losing Z.G., leaving home, being raped, almost dying, getting here—that I haven’t paid attention every time May has thrown up these past weeks and months. I haven’t noticed whether or not the little red sister has visited May. And I can’t even remember the last time I saw her completely undressed. I’ve abandoned my sister when she needed me most.

“I’m so sorry—”

“Pearl! You aren’t paying attention to what I’m saying! How can we go to Los Angeles now? That boy is not the father and Old Man Louie knows it.”

All this is happening too fast, and it’s been a long, hard day. I haven’t eaten since the bowl of jook at breakfast, and I’m not going to get dinner. But I’m not so tired and worn out that I don’t see May has something in mind. After all, she told me she was pregnant only because I’d gotten mad at her because …

“You lied to the board on purpose. You did at the first interview.”

“The baby needs to be born here on Angel Island,” she says.

I’m the smart sister, but my mind races to keep up with her.

“You were already prepared to lie when the ship sailed into San Francisco,” I say finally. “That’s why you didn’t study the coaching book. You didn’t want to answer correctly. You wanted to end up here.”

“That’s not quite right. I hoped Spencer would help me—us. He made promises on the ship. He said he would take care of things so we wouldn’t have to go to Los Angeles. He lied.” She shrugs. “Does it surprise you after Baba? My next option was coming here. Don’t you see? If I have the baby here, they’ll never know it was mine.”

“They?”

“The Louies,” she says impatiently. “You have to take it. I’m giving him to you. You did the husband-wife thing with Sam. The timing is almost right.”