Shanghai Girls

Make it and spend it on clothes and jewelry for yourself, I think but don’t say. Our differing attitudes about money are among the many things that aggravate my sister.

“What I mean is,” I try again, hoping not to further darken May’s mood, “Joy’s lucky to have friends, just as I’m lucky to have you. Mama married out and never saw her sisters again, but you and I will have each other forever.” I put my arm around her shoulder and jiggle it affectionately. “Sometimes I think that one day we’ll end up sharing a room just like when we were girls, only we’ll be in the old folks’ home. We’ll have our meals together. We’ll sell raffle tickets together. We’ll make crafts together-”

“We’ll go to matinees together,” May adds, smiling.

“And we’ll sing psalms together.”

May frowns at that. I’ve made another mistake, and I hurry on.

“And we’ll play mah-jongg! We’ll be two retired ladies, fat and round, playing mah-jongg, and complaining about this and that.”

May nods as she stares wistfully west across the sea to the horizon.

WHEN WE GET home, we find Father Louie asleep in his recliner. I give Joy, Hazel, and Rose some straws and send them out to the backyard, where they gather peppercorns off the ground, load up their straws, and blow the harmless pink pellets at one another, laughing, squealing, and ru

Just before I start cooking, I send the Yee girls home. As I make curried tomato beef lo mein, Joy sets the table-a job that back in Shanghai had always been done by our servants under Mama’s close watch. Joy lines up the chopsticks just so, making sure not to set out any uneven pairs, which would mean that the person using them will miss a boat, a plane, or a train (not that any of us are going anywhere). While I put the food on the table, Joy gets her aunt, father, and grandfather. I’ve tried to teach my daughter the things that Mama tried to teach me. The big difference is that my daughter has paid attention and learned. She never speaks at di

When di

I rush to the kitchen door and peer around the jamb. May stands in the middle of the room, Vern’s empty plate in her hand, her face flushed and with a look I can’t comprehend. She’s staring at Father’s chair, and I think the old man must have died. I think if death has come today, then that’s not so bad. He lived to be eighty-something, he spent a quiet day with his son, he had di

I step into the room to face this sadness and then freeze, as shocked into immobility as my sister. The old man is alive all right. He sits there with his feet up on his lounger, his long pipe in his mouth, and a copy of China Reconstructs held in his hands so the two of us can see it. It’s shocking enough to see him with this magazine. It comes out of Red China, and it’s a piece of Communist propaganda. There’ve been rumors that the government has spies in Chinatown keeping track of who buys things like this. Father Louie, who ca

But it’s not the magazine that’s the real shock; it’s the front cover, which my father-in-law is displaying to us with such pride. The image is one that, even if we avoid these products, is familiar to us: the glory of New China as exemplified by two young women dressed in country clothes, their cheeks full of life, their arms loaded with fruits and vegetables, practically singing the glories of the new regime-all rendered in glowing red tones. Those two beautiful girls are instantly recognizable as May and me. The artist, who without hesitation has embraced the heightened, exuberant style favored by the Communists, is also clearly identifiable by the delicacy and precision of his brushstrokes. Z.G. is alive, and he hasn’t forgotten me or my sister.

“I went to the tobacconist when Vern was sleeping. Look,” Father Louie says, the pride in his voice unmistakable as he looks at the cover with May and me-not one question in my mind that it’s us-selling not soap, face powder, or baby formula but a glorious harvest out by the Lunghua Pagoda, where Z.G., May, and I once flew kites. “You’re still beautiful girls.” Father sounds almost triumphant. He worked his whole life, and for what? He never went back to China. His wife died. His birth son is like a dried-up bedbug and about as companionable. He never had a grandson. His businesses have shriveled to one mediocre curio shop. But he did do one thing really, really well. He procured two beautiful girls for Vern and Sam.

May and I take a few tentative steps toward him. It’s hard to say how I feel: surprised and stu

The next thing I know Sam is at my side, exclaiming, and gesturing in excitement. “It’s you! It’s you and May!”

My cheeks flush, as though I’ve been caught. I have been caught. I lift my eyes to May, looking for help. As sisters, we’ve always been able to say so much to each other with just a glance.

“Z.G. Li must have painted this,” May says evenly. “How lovely that he has remembered us in this way. He made Pearl look especially beautiful, don’t you think?”

“He’s painted both of you exactly as I see you,” says Sam, forever the good husband and appreciative brother-in-law. “Always beautiful. Forever beautiful.”

“Beautiful enough,” May agrees lightly, “although neither of us ever looked that good in peasant clothes.”

Later that night, after everyone goes to asleep, I meet my sister on the screened porch. We sit on her bed, holding hands, staring at the magazine. As much as I love Sam, a part of me soars with the knowledge that across the ocean in Shanghai -I have to believe Z.G.’s there-in a country that is closed to me, the man I loved so long ago loves me still.

ONLY ONE WEEK later, we realize that Father’s weakness and lethargy are more than just the usual slowing of age. He’s sick. The doctor tells us it’s lung cancer and there’s nothing anyone can do. Yen-yen’s death was so sudden and it came at such an inconvenient moment that we didn’t have the opportunity to prepare for her death or mourn her properly when she passed. This time each of us in our own way reflects back on the mistakes we’ve made over the years, and we try to make amends in the time we have left. During the coming months, many people visit, and I listen to them speak highly of my father-in-law, calling him a successful Gold Mountain man, but when I look at him during these final days, I see only a ruined man. He worked so hard, only to lose his businesses and property in China and almost everything he’d built for himself here. Now, in the end, he has to rely on his paper son for his housing, food, evening pipe, and copies of China Reconstructs that Sam buys from under the counter at the shop on the corner.