Shanghai Girls: A Novel Part 16

"This is about Joy," I say, "not your silly dreams."

"Oh? A few minutes ago you were accusing me of embarra.s.sing the Chinese people. Now you're saying it's bad for me but fine if you and Joy do it?"

This is a problem for me and one I don't know how to reconcile in my mind. I'm not thinking properly, but I don't think my sister is either.

"You have everything," May repeats as she begins to weep. "I have nothing. Can't you let me have this one thing? Please? Please?"

I shut my mouth and let the heat of my anger burn my skin. I refuse to believe or acknowledge any of her reasons for why she-and not I-should have this part in the movie, but then I do what I've always done. I give in to my moy moy. It's the only way for her jealousy to dissipate. It's the only way for my resentment to go back to its hiding place while giving me time to think about how to get Joy out of this business without creating more friction. May and I are sisters. We'll always fight, but we'll always make up as well. That's what sisters do: we argue, we point out each other's frailties, mistakes, and bad judgment, we flash the insecurities we've had since childhood, and then we come back together. Until the next time.

May takes my daughter and my place in the scene. The director doesn't notice that my sister isn't me. To him, it seems one Chinese woman dressed in black trousers, smeared with fake mud and blood, and carrying a little girl is interchangeable with the next. For the next few hours, I listen to my sister scream again and again. The director's never satisfied, but he doesn't replace May either.

Snapshots ON DECEMBER 7, 1941, three months after my night on the film set, the j.a.panese bomb Pearl Harbor and the United States enters the war. The very next day, the j.a.panese attack Hong Kong. On Christmas Day, the British surrender the island. Also on December 8, at precisely 10:00 A.M., the j.a.panese seize the International Settlement in Shanghai and raise their flag atop the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank on the Bund. During the next four years, foreigners imprudent enough to have remained in Shanghai live in internment camps, while in this country, the Angel Island Immigration Station is turned over to the U.S. Army to house j.a.panese, Italian, and German prisoners of war. Here in Chinatown, Uncle Edfred-without giving any of us a chance to weigh in-joins the first group of men to enlist.

"What! Why would you do that?" Uncle Wilburt demands in Sze Yup when his birth son announces the news.

"Because I feel patriotic!" comes Uncle Edfred's jubilant answer. "I want to fight! Number one reason: I want to help defeat our shared enemy-the j.a.p. Number two reason: If I enlist, I can become a citizen. A real citizen. Down the line, of course." If he lives, the rest of us think. "All the laundrymen are doing it," he adds when he sees our lack of enthusiasm.

"Laundrymen! Bah! Some people will do anything not to be laundrymen." Uncle Wilburt sucks air through his teeth in worry.

"What did you do when they asked about your citizens.h.i.+p status?" This comes from Sam, who's always anxious that one of us will be caught and we'll all be sent back to China. "You're a paper son. Are they going to come looking for the rest of us?"

"I admitted my status straight out. I told them I came over on fake papers," Edfred answers. "But they didn't seem too interested. When they asked anything that I thought might come back to the rest of you, I said, 'I'm an orphan. Now do you want me to fight or not?'"

"But aren't you too old?" Uncle Charley asks.

"On paper I'm thirty, but I'm really only twenty-three. I'm fit and I'm willing to die. Why wouldn't they take me?"

A few days later, Edfred enters the cafe and announces, "The Army told me to buy my own socks. Where do I do that?" He's lived in Los Angeles for seventeen years, but he still doesn't know where or how to get even the most basic necessities. I offer to take him to the May Company, but he says, "I need to go by myself. I've got to learn to be on my own now." He returns a couple of hours later sc.r.a.ped up and with holes in the knees of his baggy pants. "I bought the socks all right, but when I left the store, some men pushed me in the street. They thought I was a j.a.p."

While Edfred is at boot camp, Father Louie and I go through the store to check each item, removing stickers that say MADE IN j.a.pAN and replacing them with new stickers that read 100% CHINESE PRODUCT. He starts to buy curios made in Mexico, which puts us in direct compet.i.tion with the merchants on Olvera Street. Oddly, our customers don't seem to notice the difference between something made in China, j.a.pan, or Mexico. It's foreign, simple as that.

We too are forever foreign, which makes us suspect. The family a.s.sociations in Chinatown print up signs that read CHINA: YOUR ALLY for us to hang in the windows of our businesses, homes, and automobiles to announce that we aren't j.a.panese. They make armbands and badges, which we wear to make sure we aren't attacked in the street or rounded up, stuck on a train, and sent to one of the internment camps. The government, aware that most Occidentals think all Orientals look alike, issues special registration certificates that verify that we're "members of the Chinese Race." None of us can let down our guard.

But when Edfred comes to Los Angeles to visit after his military training, people salute him on the street. "When I wear my uniform, I know I'm not going to be kicked around. It tells folks I have as much right to be here as anyone else," he explains. "Now I have number three reason: in the Army I'm getting a fair chance-one that's based not on my being Chinese but on my being a man in uniform fighting for the United States."

That day I buy a camera and take my first photograph. I still keep my photographs of Mama and Baba hidden for when the immigration inspectors make their periodic checks, but seeing Uncle Edfred go to war is different. He'll be fighting for America ... and for China. The next time the inspectors come, I'll proudly show my snapshot of Uncle Edfred, forever China-skinny dressed in his uniform, beaming at the camera, his cap tilted at a jaunty angle, and having just told us, "From now on, just call me Fred. No more Edfred. Got it?"

What the photo doesn't show is my father-in-law, standing a few feet away, looking devastated and scared. My feelings about him have changed the past few years. He has almost nothing here in Los Angeles: he's a third-cla.s.s citizen, he faces the same discrimination we all do, and he will never break out of Chinatown. Now his adopted country, America, is also fighting j.a.pan. Since the commercial s.h.i.+pping channels are closed, he no longer receives goods from his rattan and porcelain factories in Shanghai or earns money from bringing in paper partners, but he continues to send "tea money" back to his relatives in Wah Hong Village, not only because an American dollar goes a long way in China but because his longing for his home country has never diminished. Yen-yen, Vern, Sam, May, and I have no one to send money to, so Father Louie's remittances are from all of us-for all the villages, homes, and families we've lost.

"THOSE WHO CAN'T fight need to produce," Uncle Charley tells us one day. "You know the Lee boys? They've gone over to Lockheed to build airplanes. They say there's a place for me, and it's not making chop suey They say every blow I strike in building planes is a blow of freedom for the land of our fathers and for the land of our new home."

"But your English-"

"No one cares about my English as long as I work hard," he says. "You know, Pearl, you could get a job over there too. The Lee boys took their sisters to work with them. Now Esther and Bernice are driving rivets in bomber doors. You want to know how much money they're making? Sixty cents an hour during the day and sixty-five cents an hour for the night s.h.i.+ft. You want to know what I'm going to make?" He rubs his eyes, which look particularly painful and swollen from his allergies.

"Eighty-five cents an hour. That's thirty-four dollars a week. I tell you, Pearl-ah, those are good wages."

My photograph shows Uncle Charley sitting at the counter, his sleeves rolled up, a piece of pie in front of him, his ap.r.o.n and paper hat discarded on a vacant stool.

"WHAT CAN MY boy do for the war?" my father-in-law asks when Vern, who graduated the previous June from high school, where they didn't want him and didn't bother to educate him, receives his draft notice. "He's better off at home. Sam, go with him and make sure they understand."

"I'll take him," Sam says, "but I'm going to enlist. I want to become a real citizen too."

Father Louie doesn't try to change Sam's mind. Citizens.h.i.+p is one thing and the risks of being questioned can affect many people, but we all know what this war is about. I'm proud of Sam, but that doesn't mean I'm not worried. When Sam and Vern return to the apartment, I know things didn't go well. Vern was turned down for obvious reasons, but, surprisingly, Sam was cla.s.sified 4-F.

"Flat feet, and yet I pulled a rickshaw through the streets and alleyways of Shanghai," he complains to me when we're alone in our room. Once again, he's been belittled and dismissed as a man. In so many ways, he continues to eat bitterness.

Not long after this, May picks up the camera and takes a photograph. In it, you can see how much the apartment has changed since May, Joy, and I first arrived. Bamboo shades are rolled above the windows, but we can let them down for privacy. On the wall above the couch hang four calendars depicting the four seasons that we received over four years from Wong On Lung Market. Old Man Louie sits on a straight-backed chair, looking coc.o.o.ned and solemn. Sam gazes out the window. His posture is erect and held up by his iron fan, but his face looks as though he's been punched. Vern-content in the womb of his family-sprawls on the couch, holding a model airplane. I sit on the floor, painting a banner advertising the sale of war bonds in China City and New Chinatown. Joy hovers nearby, building a ball of rubber bands. Yen-yen scrunches used tinfoil into compact lumps. Later that day we plan to take these things over to Belmont High School and deposit them in the collection boxes.

To me, this photograph shows how we sacrifice in big and small ways. We can finally afford to buy a was.h.i.+ng machine, but we don't because metal is so scarce. We promote the boycott of j.a.panese silk stockings and wear cotton stockings instead, using the motto "Be in style, wear lisle," and, sure enough, women all over the city join the Non-Silk Movement. Everyone suffers from shortages of coffee, beef, sugar, flour, and milk, but in the cafe and in Chinese restaurants all over the city, we suffer even more because ingredients like rice, ginger, tree-ear mushrooms, and soy sauce no longer cross the Pacific. We learn to subst.i.tute sliced apple for water chestnuts. We buy rice grown in Texas instead of fragrant jasmine rice from China. We use oleo, squirt yellow food coloring in it, knead it, and press it into bar-shaped molds so it will look like b.u.t.ter when we cut it into pats for the cafe. Sam gets eggs on the black market, paying five dollars for a case. We save our bacon grease in a coffee can under the sink to take to the collection center, where we're told it will be used in the production of armaments. I stop feeling resentful that I have to spend so much time stringing peas and peeling garlic in the restaurant, because now we're serving our boys in uniform and we need to do everything we can for them. And at home we begin to eat American dishes-pork and beans, grilled Spam sandwiches with cheese and sliced onion, creamed tuna, and ca.s.seroles made with Bisquick-that will spread our ingredients the furthest.

SNAP: THE CHINESE New Year Fund-raiser. Snap: Double-ten Fundraiser. Snap: China Night, with your favorite movie stars. Snap: the Rice Bowl Parade, where the women of Chinatown carry a gigantic Chinese flag by its edges and ask bystanders to throw coins onto the flag. Snap: the Moon Festival, where Anna May Wong and Keye Luke serve as the mistress and master of ceremonies. Barbara Stanwyck, d.i.c.k Powell, Judy Garland, Kay Kyser, and Laurel and Hardy wave to the crowd. William Holden and Raymond Ma.s.sey stand around, looking debonair, while the girls in the Mei Wah Drum Corps march in their V for Victory formation. The monies raised buy medical supplies, mosquito nets, gas masks, and other necessities for refugees, as well as ambulances and airplanes, which are sent across the Pacific.

Snap: the Chinatown Canteen. May poses with soldiers, sailors, and flyboys, who leave Union Station during their layovers, cross Alameda, and visit the canteen. These boys have come from all over the country.

Many of them have never seen a Chinese before, and they say things like "golly" and "gee whillikers," which we adopt and use ourselves. Snap: I'm surrounded by airmen sent by Chiang Kai-shek to train in Los Angeles. It's wonderful to hear their voices, learn news of our home country, and know that China still fights hard. Snap, snap, snap: Bob Hope, Frances Langford, and Jerry Colonna come to the canteen to put on shows. Girls between sixteen and eighteen years old-wearing white pinafores, red blouses, and saddle shoes with red socks-volunteer as hostesses to jitterbug with the boys, hand out sandwiches, and listen with sympathetic ears.

My favorite photograph shows May and me chaperoning at the canteen just before closing time on a Sat.u.r.day night. We wear gardenias pinned in our hair, which falls in soft curls around our shoulders. Our sweetheart necklines show a lot of pale flesh but somehow look girlish and chaste. Our dresses are short, and our legs are bare. We may be married women, but we look pretty and cheerful. May and I know what it means to live through war, and being in Los Angeles isn't that.

OVER THE NEXT fifteen months, many people pa.s.s through the city: servicemen going to or coming from the Pacific Theater, wives and children journeying to see husbands and fathers in military hospitals, and diplomats, actors, and salesmen of every sort involved in the war effort. I never think I'll see someone I know, but one day in the cafe a man's voice calls my name.

"Pearl Chin? Is that you?"

I stare at the man sitting at the counter. I know him, but my eyes refuse to recognize him because my humiliation is instantaneous and deep.

"Aren't you the Pearl Chin who used to live in Shanghai? You knew my daughter, Betsy."

I set down his plate of chow mein, turn away, and wipe my hands. If this man truly is Betsy's father-and he is-he's the first and only person from my past to see just how far I've fallen. I was once a beautiful girl, whose face decorated walls in Shanghai. I was smart and clever enough to be allowed into this man's home. I turned his daughter from a dowdy mess into someone half fas.h.i.+onable. Now I'm mother to a five-year-old, wife to a rickshaw puller, and waitress in a cafe in a tourist attraction. I paste a smile on my face and turn to look at him.

"Mr. Howell, it's wonderful to see you again."

But he doesn't look so happy to see me. He looks sad and old. I may be humbled, but his grief is elsewhere.

"We came looking for you." He reaches across the counter and grabs my arm. "We thought you were dead in one of the bombings, but here you are."

"Betsy?"

"She's in a j.a.p camp out by the Lunghua PaG.o.da."

A memory of flying kites with Z.G. and May flashes through my mind, but I say, "I thought most Americans left Shanghai before-"

"She got married," Mr. Howell says sadly. "Did you know that? She married a young man who works for Standard Oil. They stayed in Shanghai after Mrs. Howell and I left. The oil business, you know how it is."

I come around the counter and sit on the stool next to Mr. Howell, aware of the curious looks Sam, Uncle Wilburt, and the other cafe helpers shoot my way. I wish they'd stop staring at us like that-their mouths hanging open like they're street beggars-but Betsy's father doesn't notice. I want to say my feeling of disgrace is hard to find, but I'm ashamed to admit it's hidden just beneath the surface of my skin. I've been in this country for almost five years and still haven't been fully able to accept my situation. It's as if in seeing this face from the past all the goodness in my life is reduced to nothing.

Betsy's father probably still works for the State Department, so maybe he's aware of my discomfort. At last he fills the silence between us. "We heard from Betsy after Shanghai became the Lonely Island. We thought she was safe, since she was in British territory. But after December eighth, there was nothing we could do to get her back. Diplomatic channels don't work so well now." He stares into his cup of coffee and smiles ruefully.

"She's strong," I say, trying to bolster Mr. Howell's spirits. "Betsy's always been smart and brave." Is that even true? I remember her as being pa.s.sionate about politics when May and I just wanted to have another gla.s.s of champagne or another twirl around the dance floor.

"That's what Mrs. Howell and I tell ourselves."

"All you can do is hope."

He lets out a knowledgeable snort. "That's so like you, Pearl. Always looking at the bright side. That's why you did so well in Shanghai. That's why you got out before bad things happened. All the smart people got out in time."

When I don't say anything, he stares at me. After a long while, he says, "I'm here for Madame Chiang Kai-shek's visit. I've been traveling with her on her American tour. Last week we were in Was.h.i.+ngton, where she appealed to Congress for money to help China in its fight against our common enemy and reminded the men who listened that China and the United States cannot be true allies with the Exclusion Act still on the books. This week she's going to speak at the Hollywood Bowl and-"

"Partic.i.p.ate in a parade here in Chinatown."

"It sounds like you know all about it."

"I'm going to the Bowl," I say. "We're all going, and we're looking forward to having her here."

Hearing the word we, for the first time he seems to absorb his surroundings. I watch as his cheerless eyes see past his memories of a girl who perhaps never existed. He takes in the grease on my clothes, the tiny wrinkles around my eyes, and my chapped hands. Then his understanding expands as he a.s.sesses the smallness of the cafe, the walls painted baby-s.h.i.+t yellow, the dusty fan spinning overhead, and the wiry men wearing ME NO j.a.p armbands gawking at him as though he were a creature from beneath the waves.

"Mrs. Howell and I live in Was.h.i.+ngton now," he says carefully. "Betsy would be angry with me if I didn't invite you to come home with me. I could get you a job. With your language skills, there's a lot you could do to help the war effort."

"My sister's here with me," I respond, without thinking.

"Bring May too. We have room." He pushes away his plate of chow mein. "I hate to think of you here. You look..."

It's funny how in that moment I see things clearly. Am I beaten down? Yes. Have I allowed myself to become a victim? Somewhat. Am I afraid? Always. Does some part of me still long to fly away from this place? Absolutely. But I can't leave. Sam and I have built a life for Joy. It isn't perfect, but it's a life. My family's happiness means more to me than starting over again.

If in the canteen photos I'm smiling, the one from this day shows me at my worst. Mr. Howell-wearing an overcoat and a fedora-and I are posed next to the cash register, onto which I've taped a handmade sign that reads: ANY RESEMBLANCE TO LOOKING j.a.pANESE IS PURELY OCCIDENTAL. Usually our customers get a big kick out of that, but no one's showing teeth in the photograph. Even though it's in black and white, I can almost see the redness of shame on my cheeks.

A FEW DAYS later, the whole family gets on a bus and rides to the Hollywood Bowl. Because Yen-yen and I have worked so hard raising money for China Relief, our family has good seats just behind the fountain that separates the stage from the audience. When Madame Chiang steps on the stage wearing a brocade cheongsam, we applaud like crazy people. She's splendid and beautiful.

"I implore the women here today to become educated and take an interest in politics both here and in the home country," she proclaims. "You can churn the wheel of progress without jeopardizing your roles as wives and mothers."

We listen attentively as she asks us and the Americans to help raise money and support for the Women's New Life Movement, but the whole time she speaks we ooh and aah over her appearance. My thoughts about my clothes change once again. I see that the cheongsam, which I've had to wear to please the tourists in China City and meet Mrs. Sterling's lease requirements, can be a patriotic, and fas.h.i.+onable, symbol.

When May and I go home, we bring our most precious cheongsams out of their chests and put them on. Inspired by Madame Chiang, we want to be as stylish and as loyal to China as possible. Instantly, we're once again beautiful girls. Sam takes our picture, and for a moment it feels as though we're back in Z.G.'s studio. But why, I wonder later, didn't we ask Sam to take a photograph of Yen-yen and me when we were invited to shake Madame Chiang Kai-shek's hand?

TOM GUBBINS RETIRES and sells his business to Father Louie. It becomes the Golden Prop and Extras Company. Father Louie puts May in charge, even though she doesn't know beans about running a business. She now earns as much as $150 a week as a technical director, supplying extras, costumes, props, translation, and advice. She continues to work in countless films, which are now sent around the world and viewed by millions of people to show how bad the j.a.panese are. Her parts are small: a hapless Chinese maiden, a servant to some colonel or other, a villager being saved by white missionaries. But May is best known for her screaming roles, and, with the war on, she's played victim after victim in films like Behind the Rising Sun, Bombs over Burma, The Amazing Mrs. Holliday, in which an American woman tries to smuggle Chinese war orphans into the United States, and China, with its tagline, "Alan Ladd and twenty girls-trapped by the rapacious j.a.ps!" May seems to be well liked by the various studios, especially MGM. "They call me the Cantonese ham," she boasts. She brags that she once earned one hundred dollars in one day for her screaming abilities.

Then May gets the call to supply MGM with extras for the filming of Dragon Seed, which will be released next summer in 1944. She contacts the Chinese Cinema Club on Main and Alameda, where members of the Chinese Screen Extras Guild hang out, to hire people, making a commission of ten percent for each extra, and she works in the motion picture herself.

"I tried to get Metro to let Keye Luke play one of the j.a.p 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 j.a.p 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 embarra.s.sed 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 Cafe. 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 gla.s.ses 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 rehea.r.s.e 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 cla.s.sroom. 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 cafe, 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."

A week later, when I go to the school to pick up Joy, I find her crying on the curb. "Miss Henderson sent me to the vice princ.i.p.al's office," she says, tears dripping down her face. "She asked a lot of questions. I answered like you told me, but she called me a liar and said I can't go here anymore."

I walk to the vice princ.i.p.al's office, but what can I do or say to change her mind?

"We keep an eye out for these infractions, Mrs. Louie," the heavyset woman intones. "Besides, your daughter doesn't belong here. Anyone can see that. Take her to the school in Chinatown. She'll be happier there."

The next day I walk Joy the couple of blocks to Castelar School, right in the heart of Chinatown. I see children from China, Mexico, Italy, and other European countries. Her teacher, Miss Gordon, smiles as she takes Joy's hand. She escorts Joy into the cla.s.sroom and shuts the door. In the weeks and months that follow, Joy-who's been raised to be obedient, and refrain from doing something as wild as ride a bicycle, and been scolded by our neighbors for laughing too much and too loudly-learns to play hopscotch, jacks, and leapfrog. She's happy to be in the same cla.s.s with her best friend, and Miss Gordon seems like a nice enough person. We do the best we can at home. For me, this means making Joy speak English as much as possible, because she's going to have to make a living in this country and because she's an American. When her father, grandparents, or uncles speak to her in Sze Yup, she answers in English. Along the way Sam's understanding of English-but not his p.r.o.nunciation-improves. Still, the uncles constantly tease her about going to school. "Education is only trouble for a girl," Uncle Wilburt cautions. "What do you want to do? Run away from us?" I find an ally in her grandfather. Not so long ago, he threatened May and me, telling us we'd have to put a nickel in a jar if we spoke any language other than Sze Yup in front of him. Now he tells Joy a variation of the same thing: "If I hear you speak something other than English, you will put a nickel in my jar." Her English is almost as good as mine, but I still can't imagine how she'll break out of Chinatown completely.

IN LATE FALL we gather around the radio to hear that President Roosevelt has asked Congress to repeal the Chinese Exclusion Act: "Nations, like individuals, make mistakes. We must be big enough to acknowledge our mistakes of the past and correct them." A few weeks later, on December 17, 1943, all exclusion laws are overturned, just as Betsy's father hinted they would be.

We listen to Walter Winch.e.l.l's broadcast when he announces, "Keye Luke, Charlie Chan's Number One Son, just missed being number one Chinese naturalized U.S. citizen." Since Keye Luke is working in a picture that day, a Chinese doctor in New York becomes the first. Sam commemorates that moment of happiness by taking a picture of his daughter standing with one hand on her hip and her other hand resting on top of the radio. No cheongsams for her! Since Joy started school and we gave her that lunch box, she's decided she loves cowgirls and cowgirl dresses. Her grandfather has even bought her a pair of cowgirl boots on Olvera Street, and once she has her outfit on, there's no getting it off. She grins happily. Even though the rest of the family is not in the picture, I will always remember that we all smiled with her.

After that day, Sam and I talk about applying for naturalization, but we're afraid, as are so many paper sons and the wives who squeaked in with them. "I have my fake citizens.h.i.+p from masquerading as Father's real son. You have your Certificate of Ident.i.ty through being married to me. Why should we risk losing what we have? How can we trust the government when our j.a.p neighbors are sent to internment camps?" Sam asks. "How can we trust the government after everything it's done to us? How can we trust the government when the lo fan look at us funny-like we're j.a.ps too?" May is in a different situation than Sam and I. She's married to a real American citizen, and she's lived in the country for five years. She becomes the first person in our building to become a citizen through the naturalization process.

THE WAR DRAGS on month after month. We try to keep life as normal as possible for Joy, and it pays off She does so well in school that her kindergarten and first-grade teachers recommend her for a special second-grade program. I work with Joy all summer to get her prepared, and even Miss Gordon-who's taken a continuing interest in our girl-comes to the apartment once a week to help my daughter with her sums and reading comprehension.

Maybe I push Joy too hard, because she gets a bad summer cold. Then, two days after the bomb drops on Hiros.h.i.+ma, her cold takes a turn. Her fever rages, her throat burns red, and she coughs so hard and long that she throws up. Yen-yen goes to the herbalist, who makes a bitter tea for Joy to drink. The next day, when I'm working, Yen-yen takes Joy back to the herbalist, who blows an herb powder into her throat with the cap of a calligraphy brush. On the radio Sam and I hear that another bomb has been dropped-this one on Nagasaki. The broadcaster says that the destruction is terrible and vast. Government officials in Was.h.i.+ngton are optimistic that the war will end soon.

Sam and I close up the cafe and hurry to the apartment, wanting to share the news. When we get there, we see that Joy's throat has become so swollen she's starting to turn blue. Somewhere people are rejoicing-sons, brothers, and husbands will be coming home-but Sam and I are so afraid for Joy that we can't think beyond our own fear. We want to take her to a Western doctor, but we don't know one and we don't have a car. We're talking about how to find and hire a taxi when Miss Gordon arrives. In the chaos of the news of the bombs and the anxiety we feel for Joy, we've forgotten about the tutorial. As soon as Miss Gordon sees Joy, she helps me wrap her in a sheet, and then she drives us to General Hospital, where, she says, "They treat people like you." Within minutes of our arriving at the hospital, a doctor cuts a hole in my daughter's throat so she can breathe.

Less than a week after Joy's encounter with death, the war ends and Sam-shaken by almost losing his little girl-takes three hundred dollars of our savings and buys a very used Chrysler. It's old and dented, but it's ours. In our last photograph from the war years, Sam sits in the Chrysler's driver's seat, Joy perches on the fender, and I stand by the pa.s.senger door. We're about to go for a Sunday drive, our first.

Ten Thousand Happinesses "FIFTEEN CENTS FOR one gardenia," a melodious voice rings out. "Twenty-five cents for a double." The little girl standing behind the table is adorable. Her black hair s.h.i.+mmers under the colored lights, her smile beckons, her fingers look like b.u.t.terflies. My daughter, my Joy, has her own "place of business," as she calls it, and she runs it wonderfully well for a child of ten. On weekend nights she sells gardenias from six to midnight outside the cafe, where I can keep watch on her, but she doesn't need me or anyone else to protect her. She's a Tiger-brave. She's my daughter-persistent. She's her aunt's niece-beautiful. I have exciting news. I want to get May alone to tell her, but seeing Joy sell gardenias has us entranced and paralyzed.

"Look how precious she is," May coos. "She's good at this. I'm glad she likes it and that she earns a little money. It's a good thing all the way around, isn't it?"

May looks lovely tonight: like a millionaire's wife in vermilion silk. She dresses well, because she can afford to spend the money she earns frivolously. She recently turned 29. Oh, the tears! As if she turned 129. But to me she hasn't changed one bit since our beautiful-girl days. Still, every day she worries about gaining weight and forming wrinkles. Lately, she's been stuffing her pillow with chrysanthemum leaves so she'll wake with her eyes clear and moist.

"China City is a tourist place, so who do you think should be the seller? The smallest and the cutest, that's who," I agree. "And Joy's smart. She watches to make sure nothing's stolen."

"For an extra penny, I'll sing 'G.o.d Bless America,'" Joy says to a couple who stop at her table. She doesn't wait for an answer but begins to sing in a clear, high, and earnest voice. At American school, she's learned all the patriotic songs-"My Country, 'Tis of Thee" and "You're a Grand Old Flag"-as well as songs like "My Darling Clementine" and "She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain." At the Chinese Methodist Mission on Los Angeles Street, she's learned to sing "Jesus Is All the World to Me" and "Jesus Loves Even Me" in Cantonese. Between work, regular school, and Chinese school-which she attends Monday through Friday from 4:30 to 7:30 and Sat.u.r.days from 9:00 to 12:00-she's a busy but happy little girl.