The Last Rose of Shanghai(76)

His face looked thinner, which made his eyebrows look darker and thicker. There was a rare haggard look on his face, and his usually smooth hair was loose.

I had to look away.

His scarf slipped onto the floor. “I didn’t mean to scream at you like this . . . you are . . . almost naked . . . I lost myself . . . you used to love me. You used to want me . . . I always thought you’d be my wife.”

There was something like a sniff. He picked up his scarf, turned on his heels, opened the latch on the door, and walked out.



Sitting on the bed, I hugged my knees. The room was warm, with the smell of cheap Snow Flake facial cream and Cheng’s scent. My head was pounding from the exhaustion, the shock, and something else.

It was confusing to see the hurt in his eyes, confusing to hear him pleading. This was not Cheng, the fiancé who constantly criticized me, the boss boy who threw tantrums when things didn’t go his way, the spoiled man with no interest in making conversation. It seemed even though we had grown up together, familiar with each other’s needs, I had never truly understood him.

He hadn’t forced himself on me; he had stayed away. Maybe I was wrong about him.

A cramp rose in my lower abdomen. I massaged it, waiting for the pain to dissipate. Then I stopped, a shiver running through me. I had been careful, but for the entire time I’d been living in this inn, I had not bled.



For the whole evening I agonized, thinking of Mother and how she had protected me. Her toes broken as a toddler, she had refused to break mine, even though my relatives urged it. She was a tiny woman with a small face, her hair always discreetly tied in a knot. She talked in a soft but stern voice of a matriarch, always remaining placid among squabbles of my uncles and aunts.

I remembered hearing her sobs and groans in her bedroom while Father thrashed her. I would have taken a fist for her, protected her, if I could. Once she lay in bed for a month because of a dislocated shoulder, and she said she had fallen off the bed while sleeping.

Even a woman like her dared not to break the wall built by traditions, traditions such as women must never divorce, traditions that women suffering domestic violence must stay quiet.

And what had I done? Her favorite daughter, engaged to one man but impregnated by another, and worse—I carried a child out of wedlock, a child of mixed races, a shame to her family. Mother would never forgive me, and she would have beaten me, had she been alive.



I made love to Ernest with urgency and ferocity I had not thought I was capable of. I wanted him to shatter me; I wanted to leave behind the pit of darkness and fear that threatened to drown me. I had gone too far. Falling in love is like teetering on the edge of a precipice blindfolded, Emily had said. She could have warned me about this—the point of no return.

I should never make love again, yet he was all I had. I lay on my stomach, spent.

Ernest was talking about a Russian, some loan, and his decision to help refugees—more of the same stuff he had been saying lately. He would also be busy from now on, and he would like me to meet his people in the bakery.

“Someday,” I said, preoccupied by the thought of whether or not to tell him of my pregnancy. I never liked children, and what a disaster it would be to have a child of ours, not Chinese, not European, without a safe home. I knew too well of the fate of those children, despised and denounced. “Do you like children, Ernest? I have many nephews and nieces at home. Those scamps. I don’t like them.”

His hand smoothed my stomach. “When I can take care of you better, we’ll have a family.”

I nodded glumly. In fact, nothing he said would lift my spirits. “Yes, let’s live somewhere else. I don’t want to live here anymore.”

Yet there were not many places for us. The Japanese had occupied the Settlement and the Concession. My family home was not welcoming to Ernest or even me. The only option would be the apartment Ernest lived in, but was I ready to see those condemning looks and hear snide remarks?

I held his face close to me. There were his eyes, a lively spring pond. I wanted to smile but also wanted to cry. I was trapped. Now there were three of us.





61


ERNEST


It was tiresome, hard work. For three weeks he labored with his employees in the bakery. They kneaded when the electricity was on, baked when the electricity was cut off, and slept whenever they could. No one complained. When the oven was fired up, the heat was unbearable, and he’d head out the door for some cool air—the early summer rain provided huge relief from the bakery’s scorching heat.

Once bread was baked, Ernest packed the loaves in baskets tied on the back of bikes, covered them with oiled newspapers to prevent them from being soaked in the rain, and asked Sigmund and Miriam to deliver them to the Heime. As Mr. Bitker predicted, the bread was rationed out, often with many disappointed people complaining. Eventually, some refugees from the Heime came to fetch bread themselves, but soon loaves began disappearing mysteriously from the kitchen, and the goal of 2,400 a day was not able to be met.

He hardly had the time to see Aiyi anymore. When he did, he wanted no more than sleep. Remembering how he had neglected Miriam, he did his best to listen to Aiyi, but it was difficult. The anxiety of keeping the bakery running, keeping the refugees fed, gnawed at Ernest. He was running out of flour, yeast, sugar, salt, and even coal. Mr. Bitker, who had to purchase wheat and flour with the loan, had not paid him, so Ernest had used his own savings to give overtime wages to his employees.