Shanghai Girls (Shanghai Girls #1)(83)
“I tried to get Metro to let Keye Luke play one of the Jap captains, but the studio doesn’t want to ruin his image as Charlie Chan’s Number One Son,” she says. “They have the prize Chinese egg, and they don’t want it to go bad. It isn’t easy to fill all the roles. I need hundreds of people to play Chinese peasants. For the Jap soldiers, the studio told me to hire Cambodians, Filipinos, and Mexicans.”
Ever since my night on the movie set, I’ve been torn between my distaste for Haolaiwu and my desire to put money aside for my little girl. Joy has worked steadily since the war began, and I’ve made a good start on what I imagine she’ll need for an education. My chance to pull her away from that world comes one night when Joy and May return from the set. Joy’s crying and goes straight to our room, where she now has a little cot in the corner. May’s furious. I’ve gotten mad at Joy sometimes. What mother doesn’t get upset with her children on occasion? But this is the first time I’ve seen May angry at Joy, ever.
“I had a great role for Joy as Third Daughter,” May fumes. “I made sure she got a good costume, and she looked darling. But just before the director called her, Joy went to the toilet. She missed her opportunity! She embarrassed me. How could she do that to me?”
“How?” I ask. “She’s five years old. She needed to use the pot.”
“I know, I know,” May says, shaking her head. “But I really wanted this for her.”
Grasping at my opportunity before it disappears, I continue. “Let’s have Joy work in one of the stores with her grandparents for a while. That way she’ll learn to be more appreciative of everything you do for her.” I don’t say that I won’t let her go back to Haolaiwu, that in September Joy will start American school, or that I don’t know how I’ll save enough for Joy to go to college, but May’s so mad she agrees with me.
Dragon Seed remains a highlight of May’s career. One of her most precious possessions becomes the photo of her with Katharine Hepburn on the set. They’re both wearing Chinese peasant clothes. Miss Hepburn’s eyes have been taped back and heavily lined with black. The famous actress doesn’t look even a little bit Chinese, but then neither do Walter Huston or Agnes Moorehead, who also star in the picture.
ON MY DRESSER, I put a photo of Joy at the orange juice stand we’ve set up for her outside the Golden Dragon Café. She’s surrounded by servicemen, who crouch around her, smiling and giving her a thumbs-up. The photograph captures a single moment but one that’s repeated day after day, night after night. The boys in uniform love to see my little girl—wearing cute silk pajamas and her hair in pigtails—squeezing oranges. They get to drink all they want for ten cents. Some of those boys will drink three or four glasses just to watch our Joy, her lips pursed in concentration, squeezing, squeezing, squeezing. Sometimes I look at that photograph and wonder if she knows how hard she’s working. Or does she see it as a break from all-night calls and her aunt’s demands? An added bonus: if men stop to look at this little Chinese girl—a curiosity—and drink her orange juice, which doesn’t poison them, then they might come in for a meal.
IN SEPTEMBER I get Joy ready for kindergarten. She wants to go to Castelar School in Chinatown with Hazel Yee and the other neighbor kids. But Sam and I don’t want her to go to the school that passed Vern from grade to grade even though he couldn’t read, write, or do sums. We want her to have a step up in the world. We want her to attend school outside Chinatown, which means Joy has to say she lives in that district. She also has to be taught the official family story. Father Louie’s lies about his status were passed to Sam, the uncles, and me. Now those lies go to a third generation. Joy will forever need to be careful when she applies for school, a job, or even her marriage certificate. All that starts now. For weeks we rehearse her as though she’s about to go through Angel Island: Where do you live? What’s the cross street? Where was your father born? Why did he return to China as a boy? What is your father’s job?
Not once do we tell her what’s true or what’s false. It’s better if she knows only fake truth.
“All little girls need to know these things about their parents,” I explain to Joy as I tuck her in her cot the night before school starts. “Don’t tell your teacher anything except what we’ve told you.”
The next day Joy puts on a green dress, a white sweater, and pink tights. Sam takes a photo of Joy and me standing on a step outside our building. She carries a new lunch box with a smiling and waving cowgirl sitting astride her trusty horse. I gaze at Joy with mother love. I’m proud of her, proud of all of us, for having come so far.
Sam and I take Joy by streetcar to the elementary school. We fill out the forms and lie about where we live. Then we walk Joy to her classroom. Sam stretches out Joy’s hand to the teacher, Miss Henderson, who stares at it and then asks, “Why can’t you foreigners just go back to your own countries?”
Just like that! Can you believe it? I have to respond before Sam works out what she’s said. “Because this is her home country,” I say, imitating the British mothers I used to see walking along the Bund with their children. “This is where she was born.”
We leave our daughter with that woman. Sam doesn’t say a word as we ride the streetcar back to China City, but when we reach the café, he pulls me to him and speaks to me in a voice ragged with emotion. “If they do something to her, I’ll never forgive them and I’ll never forgive myself.”