Shanghai Girls (Shanghai Girls #1)(9)

His head lowers. “The house. The rickshaw business. Your investments. What little savings I had. Everything is gone.” After a long while he looks back up at me, his eyes filled with hopelessness, misery, and pleading.

“There are no happy endings,” Mama says. It’s as if all her dour predictions have finally come to pass. “You can’t fight fate.”

Baba ignores Mama and appeals to my sense of filial piety and my duty as the elder daughter. “Do you want your mother begging on the street? And what about the two of you? As beautiful girls you’re already this close to becoming girls with three holes. The only question that remains is: Will you be kept by one man or fall as low as the whores who ply Blood Alley looking for foreign sailors? Which future do you want?”

I’m educated, but what skills do I have? I teach English to a Japanese captain three mornings a week. May and I sit for artists, but our earnings don’t begin to cover the cost of our dresses, hats, gloves, and shoes. I don’t want any of us to become beggars. And I certainly don’t want May and me to become prostitutes. Whatever happens, I need to protect my sister.

“Who are these grooms?” I ask. “Can we meet them first?”

May’s eyes widen.

“It’s against tradition,” Baba says.

“I won’t marry someone unless I meet him first,” I insist.

“You can’t think I’ll do it.” May says the words, but her voice tells us that she’s given in. We may look and act modern in many ways, but we can’t escape what we are: obedient Chinese daughters.

“They’re Gold Mountain men,” Baba says. “Americans. They’ve traveled to China to find brides. It’s good news, really. Their father’s family comes from the same district as ours. We’re practically related. You don’t have to go back to Los Angeles with your husbands. American Chinese are happy to leave their wives here in China to care for their parents and ancestors, so they can return to their blond lo fan mistresses in America. Consider this merely a business deal that will save our family. But if you decide to go with your husbands, you’ll have a beautiful house, servants to do the cleaning and washing, amahs to care for your children. You’ll live in Haolaiwu—Hollywood. I know how you girls love movies. You’d like it, May. You really would. Haolaiwu! Just think of it!”

“But we don’t know them!” May shouts at him.

“But you’ve met their father,” Baba responds evenly. “You know Old Man Louie.”

May’s lips twist in revulsion. We have indeed met the father. I’ve never liked Mama’s old-fashioned use of titles, but to May and me the wiry, stern-faced foreign Chinese has always been Old Man Louie. As Baba said, he lives in Los Angeles, but he comes to Shanghai every year or so to look in on the businesses he maintains here. He owns a factory that makes rattan furniture and another for cheap porcelain ware for export. But I don’t care how rich he is. I’ve never liked the way Old Man Louie looks at May and me, like he’s a cat licking us up. I don’t mind for myself—I can take it—but May was only sixteen the last time he came to town. He shouldn’t have drunk her in like that at his age, which had to be mid-sixties at least, but Baba never said a word, just asked May to pour more tea.

And then it hits me. “Did you lose everything to Old Man Louie?”

“Not exactly—”

“Then to whom?”

“These things are always hard to say.” Baba taps his fingers on the table and glances away. “I lost a little here, a little there.”

“I’m sure you did to have lost May’s and my money too. That must have taken you months … maybe even years—”

“Pearl—” My mother tries to stop me from saying anything more, but deep rage roars out of me.

“This loss had to be something very big. Something that would threaten all this.” I motion to the room, the furniture, the house, everything that my father built for us. “What exactly is your debt and how are you paying it back?”

May stops crying. My mother remains silent.

“I lost to Old Man Louie,” Baba grudgingly admits at last. “He’ll let your mother and me stay in the house if May marries the younger son and you marry the older son. We’ll have a roof to sleep under and something to eat until I get work. You, our daughters, are our only capital.”

May covers her mouth with the back of her hand, stands, and runs from the room.

“Tell your sister I will set up a meeting for this afternoon,” Baba acquiesces. “And be grateful I arranged marriages to a pair of brothers. You’ll always be together. Now go upstairs. Your mother and I have much to discuss.”

Outside the window, the breakfast sellers have moved on and been replaced by a stream of peddlers. Their voices sing to us, enticing us, tempting us.

“Pu, pu, pu, reed root to brighten the eyes! Give to baby and he will be free from all summer rashes!”

“Hou, hou, hou, let me shave your face, trim your hair, cut your nails!”

“A-hu-a, a-hu-a, come out and sell your junk! Foreign bottles and broken glass exchanged for matches!”


A COUPLE OF hours later, I walk into the Little Tokyo area of Hongkew for my noon appointment with my student. Why haven’t I canceled? The world falls apart and you cancel things, right? But May and I need the money.