by Lisa See
I’m sorry I’ve been a burden to you both. I’m sorry I was a mistake that you had to endure for so many years. Don’t worry about any of that now. I’ll love you both forever.
Love, Joy
I run a finger over Joy’s words and try to imagine her as she wrote them. Did she cry as I’m crying now? She’s so sure of herself, but anyone can be sure at nineteen. How can she possibly say she never felt at home in Chinatown? We did everything—everything—to give her a good home, so my delight at reading my daughter’s letter is tempered with disappointment. It’s with that feeling that I open the other envelope.
Dear Pearl,
If you’re reading this, then you know our mail system works. I put some money in the hat and in the box. If any of it is gone, then someone has pilfered it somewhere along the way. The cousins in Wah Hong? The censors?
I’ll keep sending clothes. Search them for hidden messages and money. Have you read Joy’s letter yet? Some of the things she wrote break my heart. Maybe you have found her by now. I hope so.
I’m doing my best to manage the café. It will be here when you return. Vern is sad and lonely. The people he loved most in the world—Sam, Joy, and you—have disappeared. His confusion shows me how much he’s grieving. I worry about the strain on his health.
Pearl, everyone at your church is praying for you and Joy. I pray for you too and think of you every day. The main thing is we’ve heard from Joy. I hope you’re as relieved as I am.
You have great courage, Pearl. If our Joy is at all like you—and how can she not be?—then she will survive. You have done a lot for me over the years, but I’ve never been so proud or honored to have you as my sister as I am now.
Stay safe and all my love,
May
I rifle through the things May sent to find her original letter. It’s been written in a style to get past the censors. It contains innocuous news about Chinatown, the weather, and a dinner she went to where the hostess served a green Jell-O mold with bananas. Not once did May mention Hollywood, her own business, or anything about herself in either letter. I don’t take that to mean she’s miraculously changed.
Then I go back to Joy’s letter and read it several more times. It doesn’t bring me any closer to finding her, but I’m elated to have heard from her, relieved that May and I will be able to communicate, and awfully happy to have seen Auntie Hu too. What a day this has been, after so many weeks of monotony.
I get up off the bed and add the poster I salvaged to a collection of others I’ve hidden in my closet. I place the fragments of my sister’s and my eyes, ears, and mouths in a pear-wood box tucked under my bed. I’m taking a risk keeping these memories of the past, but I can’t help myself. If Z.G. can have framed posters on his walls, why can’t I keep these things in my room? I know the answers too well: Z.G. may be in trouble, but he’s still important, and this isn’t even my room anymore. So where will I hide Joy’s and May’s letters? For now I tuck them back in the hat and put it on an upper shelf in my closet.
Today’s visit to Auntie Hu and the blast of hope I’ve received from my daughter have revitalized me. I peel off my work clothes, leave them in a rumpled pile on the floor, and take a bath. Feeling inspired, I go through my closet and drawers again. I put on a custom-made bra and panties in soft pink silk edged with handmade French lace. Over these, I slip a dress of crimson wool that was made for me by Madame Garnett, who once was one of the finest seamstresses in the city. The dress fits perfectly, but what was elegant and beautifully made twenty years ago is now long out of fashion. I put on a pair of alligator pumps that have turned a warm amber hue from age. The silk and wool are soft on my skin after the coarseness of my work clothes. My jade bracelet feels cool and heavy on my wrist.
When I go back downstairs, I try to look at everything from Joy’s perspective. Although I still don’t know where she is, I have renewed faith that she’s coming back here, and soon. When she does, I want the house to look good. Auntie Hu was right; I just hadn’t analyzed it properly before. The boarders have lived here twenty years, but they haven’t sold or thrown away any of my family’s belongings as far as I can tell. That doesn’t mean they’ve taken good care of things either. The wallpaper is stained, dirty, and torn in places. The rugs, draperies, and upholstery are all in terrible shape. But I’m back now, and I’m going to follow Auntie Hu’s advice. On my next free day, I’ll visit a pawnshop and a flea market. I’m going to buy some things for the house and get myself a camera. I remember how strict the guards were on the train, closing the shades so people couldn’t see bridges or military installations. I don’t know what would happen if, for example, I tried to take a photo of the navy ships moored at the Bund, but I don’t plan on doing that. If I can, I’ll find a place to develop my photographs so I can send them to May. In the meantime, looking through a lens again will give me pleasure. I’m also going to complete what I started by accident this morning: clean the house. I’ll do it carefully, when the public rooms are empty. Maybe the boarders will notice. Maybe they won’t.
The squabbling in the kitchen that started this morning continues for the evening meal. The professor stands at the stove making a pot of noodles.
“You’re taking too long,” one of the former dancing girls complains.
“And you’ve made too much food for just one person,” her roommate observes. “You shouldn’t be so wasteful.”
“I’m not being wasteful,” he responds, as he ladles the soup into two bowls and puts them on one of my mother’s trays along with two pairs of chopsticks and two porcelain soupspoons. He looks at me and asks, “Would you care to join me for noodles in the second-floor pavilion?”
The silence this morning when they saw me cleaning the spot on the floor is nothing like the silence that freezes everyone now. Then they’re all squawking at once.
“The second-floor pavilion is your bedroom!”
“You never share your noodles with us!”
“You have no socialist spirit!”
Cook stops their twittering with a stern rebuke directed at me. “Little Miss, bad ways will not be tolerated in this house.”
I don’t say a word as I follow Dun out the door and upstairs to the pavilion. I haven’t been in this room since my parents carved up the house to rent to boarders, but here is another oasis in the sea of communist gray that Shanghai has become. My mother must have felt sorry for her poor student renter, because he has some pieces of furniture that I thought had long ago been sold. The bed is neatly made, and the shelves are filled with books. He also has an old typewriter with English letters and a phonograph, which I remember from when May and I were kids.
Dun sets the tray on the table, which also functions as a desk. He gestures for me to sit in the chair, and then he pulls over a stool.
“I hope we don’t get in trouble,” he says. “I don’t want you to be reported to the block committee.” What he says next is even more troublesome. “You look beautiful tonight.”
I’m a recent widow. I should get right up and go back to my room. Instead, I take a different approach. Dun and I are friends. That’s all we can be.
“Thank you,” I say, acknowledging his compliment as though it had come from Auntie Hu or even Cook. “And thank you for inviting me to dinner.”
“Would you care for a glass of wine?”
He opens the window and brings in a bottle of Lotus wine, which has been chilling on the sill. The flavor is light on my tongue, but it instantly spreads warmth through my chest. We eat in companionable silence for a while. Dun is a kind man—dignified and gentle. He has an elegance about him that surprises me when so much of the city has turned uniformed and dreary. In another lifetime—if things had been different—I might have married someone like him.
When the other residents turn on the radio in the salon for the nightly Russian-language lesson, I push back my chair to leave. I don’t have an interest in learning Russian, just as I have no interest in going to see a Russian f
ilm in one of the movie palaces where May and I fell in love with Haolaiwu. But we’re all supposed to want to learn from Old Big Brother—art, science, everything—so in the evenings we learn Russian from the radio. If we have any time left after that, then we can engage in political study, write letters, or mend clothes.
“Before you go,” Dun says, “I was wondering if you would consider giving me English lessons.”
“English lessons? Wouldn’t that be worse than having a woman in your room?”
He ignores my question. “Your mother told me you used to give English lessons. When I was a student, English literature was my subject. Now I teach the literature of socialism and communism—The Grapes of Wrath and books like that. Sadly, my English is not as good as it once was.”
“Why does it matter?”
“Because it will help me teach, and I like to think I’m a good teacher.” He allows himself a small smile. “And one day I hope to go to America.”
I give him a skeptical look. How will he ever be able to leave?
“I can dream, can’t I?” he says.
“Let’s say Tuesday and Thursday evenings,” I tell him. “But no wine.”
Joy
LOYALTY OF REDNESS; EXPERTISE OF BRUSH
“I KEEP TELLING you, Deping, to hold your brush this way,” Z.G. instructs. “Concentrate! Your turnip doesn’t look at all like the one on the table. Look at it! Really look at it! What do you see?”
It’s been hard for us not to notice Z.G.’s impatience, but even I feel exasperated and disappointed. A few days ago, Party Secretary Feng Jin informed us that he’d received word from the capital that our time in Green Dragon is done. Z.G. and I are to leave in the morning and make our way south to Canton for a fair of some sort. He’s happy to leave. We’ve been here for two months and the villagers still refuse to hold their brushes the correct way. They ignore what Z.G. says about the amount of ink to soak into their brushes, and the paintings themselves have a crude quality.
“Everyone examine what Tao has painted,” Z.G. says. “He uses his brush to put down what he sees. You can see clouds moving across the sky. You can see cornstalks bending in the breeze. You can see a turnip!”
We all know that Tao is in a different category from the rest of us. He isn’t confined to black ink. Instead, Z.G. has given Tao (and recently me) a box of watercolors. The result is lusciously vivid images in which the greens, blues, yellows, and reds have great depth and luminosity.
“When you look at his painting,” Z.G. goes on, “you feel inspired but also tranquil. Tao believes in what he paints, and he makes us believe in it too.”
Tao sits back on his haunches and beams with pleasure. His clothes have been washed so many times they’ve been bleached nearly white by the sun and many scrubbings. I’d love to be able to create that color—the hidden blues and grays that still linger in the fabrics—in a painting.
“Now let’s consider my daughter’s work,” Z.G. continues, as he makes his way over to me. Here it comes … again … the usual unfavorable critique. “As you know, she’s been working on a portrait of our great Chairman. She’s never met him, but she believes in him.”
“As we all do,” one of the students calls out.
“When we first came to your village,” Z.G. says, “my daughter was weak in her technique and she was afraid of color. But what she lacked in skill, she made up for in enthusiasm for the New China. Who can tell me what is best about her portrait?”
“She made his mole not too big and not too small.” This comes from Deping, who was so soundly criticized for his turnip.
“I like his blue suit. It fits him perfectly,” adds Kumei.
“Yes, and she’s made him a little thinner than he is in real life,” Z.G. adds with a chuckle, and the others laugh along with him.
“Didn’t you tell us that the best art glorifies Party leaders, Party history, and Party policies?” Tao asks.
“Absolutely,” Z.G. agrees amiably. “These things are the backbone of the New China.”
“The next best art recognizes workers, peasants, and soldiers,” Tao adds.
“They are the flesh of our country,” Z.G. agrees, but he’s not done with me. “My daughter has done a good job. I think”—he takes his eyes away from the others to look right at me—“that my daughter is not bad. She’s not bad at all.”
Which makes me feel like I’m learning … finally.
When the class ends, Tao helps Z.G. and me carry the art supplies back to the villa. I know that Tao and I are not allowed to be by ourselves anymore, but I want to have some private time with him before I leave Green Dragon. I’m trying to figure out how to ask Z.G. for permission when he says, “Just be back in an hour.”
Tao and I hurry out the gate, turn left, and then follow the stream until we reach the path that leads up to the Charity Pavilion. We’re barely inside the pavilion when Tao pulls me into his arms. I’m kissing him, he’s kissing me, and it’s all very frantic, hurried, and desperate. For too long we’ve been allowed only to look at each other across a table, separated by my father, during our private lessons. We’ve had to sit on opposite sides of the ancestral hall while Z.G. conducted his art classes. We’ve purposely walked to the fields at different times and chosen different jobs to do: picking or shucking corn, harvesting or separating rice, packing or carrying baskets of tomatoes.
Tao’s lips are on my neck and he’s fumbling with the frogs on my blouse when I pull away. I take a breath and then another. Tao struggles to regain control of himself too. I take another deep breath, let it out slowly, and turn to face the view. When I first came here, the fields spread out before us like green satin. Now it looks like Los Angeles at this time of year, when weeds, grass, and gardens turn biscuit brown. I’m going to miss this place. I’m going to miss the smell of the earth, the sunsets, and the quiet paths that snake through the hillsides and into the valleys. But most of all I’m going to miss Tao. He stands behind me, his hands on my shoulders, his mouth by my ear, his body up against my back.
“May I call you Ai-jen—Beloved?” he asks. His voice holds neither fear nor brashness. He is merely frank and honest. I’ve heard many of the younger married couples refer to each other by this endearment. Can I really be Tao’s beloved?
“Are you sure?” I ask.
“I knew the night you arrived. Chairman Mao says women hold up half the sky. Can’t we hold up the sky together? My house is small, and we’d have to live with my family—”
“Wait!” I shake my head, certain that I’m hearing him wrong. “What are you saying?”
“You’re the right age. I’m the right age. We aren’t blood relatives up to the third degree of relationship. Neither of us has any diseases. Let’s go to the Party secretary and his wife to ask permission to marry.”
Marry? His proposal, such as it is, causes something wonderful to happen. My mind empties of all worries and memories.
“We barely know each other,” I say.
“We know each other a lot more than people did in feudal days. Back then, boys and girls didn’t meet until their wedding day.”
But marriage isn’t something I’ve been thinking about. Still, to stay here in what seems like a million miles and a million lifetimes from Los Angeles Chinatown, where no one knows me or my past, would be a cure for the guilt and shame I carry with me everywhere I go.
“We both want the same things—to paint, to grow crops, and to help build the New Society,” Tao continues.
“I agree, but do you love me?” I have a crush on Tao, no question about it. I can’t stop thinking about him. And the fact that he’s been forbidden to me these past weeks makes him all the more desirable.
“I wouldn’t ask you to marry me if I didn’t love you.” He grins. “And you love me too. I saw that the first time we met.”
I want to say yes. I want to make love to Tao. I want us to be together. But as sure as I am about how I feel for him, I’m not ready. I’ve just met my birth
father and I hardly know him yet. Then there’s China. I’m nineteen, and I have an opportunity to do something few other girls get to do. I’d like to see Canton, Peking, Shanghai, and the rest of China while I can.
“Yes, I love you,” I say, and I believe I do. I’m sure I do. “But do you want people in the collective to think we were sneaking off together? And what about your mother and my father? I don’t think your mother is ready to have me in her house.” (This is an understatement. His mother clearly doesn’t like me.) “And I doubt my father’s ready to say good-bye to me just yet.”
“We don’t need their permission.”
“I know, but their blessing would be wonderful.”
He puts forth a few more reasons why we should act immediately, but after a while he gives in.
“All right,” he says. “I’ll wait.”
Then he’s kissing me again, and I’m happy—truly happy.
“I wish you could come with me,” I whisper in his ear. “We could see China together.”
“I want to leave this place more than anything,” he responds, sounding hopeful and eager. “But I’d need an internal passport and I don’t have one of those. Maybe your father can get me one.”
Chairman Mao introduced the internal passport just last year. The government wants to keep peasants from flooding the cities, but the new passport has barred peddlers, doctors, and entertainers—apart from those sanctioned by the government—from traveling as well. This keeps villages pure, but it also keeps them isolated. It’s one of the things I’ve liked best about being here.
