Shanghai Girls (Shanghai Girls #1)(98)

I put them within arm’s reach. “Your father will stay with you today. If you need anything, just call and he’ll come.”

I refuse to worry that something bad will happen if we leave the two of them home alone, because I know exactly what their day will be: Vern will work on his model, eat a simple lunch, mess his pants, and work on his model some more. Father Louie will do light chores around the house, make that simple lunch, avoid his son’s messy bottom by walking to the corner to buy his newspapers, and nap until we come home.

I give Vern a wave, and then I go to the living room, where Sam tends the family altar. He bows before Yen-yen’s photograph. Since we don’t have photographs of everyone who’s left us, he’s put one of Mama’s pouches on the altar and a miniature rickshaw to represent Baba. In a tiny box, there’s a clip of my son’s hair. Sam honors his entire family with ceramic fruit made in the country style.

I’ve grown to love this room. I’ve framed and hung family photos on the wall above the couch. Each winter since we’ve lived here, we’ve set up a flocked Christmas tree in the corner and decorated it with red balls. We outline our front windows with Christmas lights so that this room glows with the news of Jesus’ birth. On cold nights, May, Joy, and I take turns standing over the heater grate until our flannel nightgowns balloon out like we’re snow creatures.

I watch as Joy helps her grandfather to his recliner and serves him tea. I’m proud that Joy is a proper Chinese girl. She defers to her grandfather, the eldest in our family above everyone else, including her father and me. She understands that everything she does is not only her grandfather’s business but also his right to decide. He wants her to learn embroidery, sewing, cleaning, and cooking. In the curio shop after school, she does many of the jobs I once did—polishing, sweeping, and dusting. “Her training as a future wife and mother of my great-grandsons is important,” Father Louie says, and we all try to honor that. And even though all hope of returning to China is lost, he still says, “We don’t want Pan-di to become too Americanized. We’ll all go back to China one day.” Sentiments like this tell us he’s slipping. It’s hard to believe that he once ruled us with such authority or that we were all so afraid of him. We used to call him Old Man, but now he’s a very old man, slowly weakening, slowly drifting away from us, slowly losing his memories, his strength, and his connection to the things that have always driven him: money, business, and family.

Joy gives a half bow to her grandfather, and then the two of us walk to the Methodist church for the Sunday service. As soon as the sermon ends, Joy and I go to the Central Plaza in New Chinatown to meet Sam, May, and Uncle Fred, Mariko, and their daughters at one of the district association halls. We’ve joined a group—a union of sorts—composed of members from the Congregational, Presbyterian, and Methodist churches in Chinatown. We meet once a month. We stand erect and proud, place our hands over our hearts, and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Then all the families troop out to Bamboo Lane and pile into sedans for the drive to Santa Monica Beach. Sam, May, and I sit together in the front seat of our Chrysler, Joy and the two Yee girls—Hazel and her younger sister, Rose—squeeze together in the backseat, and then we head west in a caravan along Sunset Boulevard. Cars with huge fins shoot ahead of us, their windshields flashing in the summer glare. We go by old-fashioned clapboard houses in Echo Park and pink stucco mansions and rat-proofed palms in Beverly Hills, where we cut over to Wilshire Boulevard and continue west past supermarkets as massive as B-29 hangars, parking lots and lawns as big as football fields, and cascades of bougainvillea and morning glories.

Joy’s voice rises as she presses a point to Hazel and Rose, and I smile to myself. Everyone says my daughter has my gift for languages. At age fourteen, her Sze Yup and Wu dialects are as perfect as her English, and her mastery of written Chinese is excellent too. Each Chinese New Year or if someone is celebrating a happy occasion, people ask Joy to write appropriate couplets in her fine calligraphy, which is said by all to be tong gee—uncorrupted by adulthood. This praise isn’t enough for me. I know Joy can obtain more spiritual growth and learn more about Caucasians by going to church outside Chinatown, which we do once a month.

“God loves everyone,” I often remind my daughter. “He wants you to make a good living and have a happy life. This is true about America too. You can do anything in the U.S. You can’t say that about China.”

I tell Sam things like this too, because the Christian words and beliefs have taken deep root in me. My faith in God and Jesus is also very much a part of the patriotism and loyalty I feel for my daughter’s home country of America. And of course, being Christian these days is deeply tied to anti-Communist sentiment. No one wants to be accused of being a godless Communist. When asked about the war in Korea, we say we’re against Red China’s interference; when asked about Taiwan, we say we support the Generalissimo and Madame Chiang Kai-shek. We say we’re for moral rearmament, Jesus, and freedom. Going to a Western church is a practical thing to do, just as my going to a mission in Shanghai was. “You have to be sensible about these things,” I’ve told Sam, but inside I’ve become a one-Goder and he knows it.

Sam may not like it, but he comes to our church gatherings because he loves me, our family, Uncle Fred and his brood of girls, and these picnics. Our outings make him feel American. In fact, although our daughter has finally grown out of her cowgirl infatuation, almost everything we do makes us feel more American. On days like today, Sam ignores the God aspects and embraces the things he likes: preparing the food, eating slices of watermelon that we don’t have to worry have been injected with foul river water, and celebrating family fellowship. He considers these adventures purely social and purely for the children.