Still, Emma had never dreamed she’d leave home before Joan—Joan, the beautiful Lew daughter, the one primed since her youth for a good marriage, as ever, the main topic of their mother’s mah-jongg games. However plain Emma was, she’d never been reduced to that and felt sad overhearing such conversations. Fortunately, Mah-mee wouldn’t begin to worry about finding her a husband until Joan had settled down. It was painful to think that her sister had been so badly deceived after loving someone as much as Joan loved Joseph. But worse was the thought that the voyage to America made Emma the beneficiary of Joan’s failure in love.
After Joan’s breakup with Joseph, Mah-mee had returned to matchmaking with a vengeance. Emma couldn’t understand why Joan consented to date a string of listless boyfriends who grew progressively worse.
First, there was the son of a rich recluse, the father having made a fortune during the war selling his own patented Chinese medicine. It was said to cure everything from a toothache to malaria. Mah-mee had arranged for Joan to meet the son through the sister of the recluse. All the young man’s invitations were delivered by his chauffeur, who came to the house in a full brass-buttoned uniform to ask formally, “Would Miss Joan Lew join Mr. Lum at eight o’clock tomorrow evening for dinner?” Emma could hardly prevent herself from laughing out loud every time she saw the massive, black 1947 Mercury parked outside. This continued for about a month, until Joan grew tired of the young man’s pretentious games and the uniformed messages quickly disappeared.
Then there was the thin, short son of a family friend. He would have given his right arm to marry Joan, though most of the time she treated him like a distant relative. His small, slight frame made him seem more like a boy than a man, as did his chronic stuttering. “Is J-J-Joan h-h-home?” he would ask when Emma answered the door. Emma would usher him into the living room, hoping his tongue would untie before Joan appeared. But he only grew more nervous at the sight of her, and his whole body seemed to stutter involuntarily. After three months’ effort, he never again rang the bell nor shyly bowed his head as he walked past Emma into the house.
In the last year, only one boyfriend, an architect, showed any character. He was funny and intelligent in the same way that Joseph was handsome and charming. In Emma’s eyes, he was the sole prospect with any real possibilities after Joseph, until they found out he had earlier applied for a visa to leave Hong Kong and Joan for America.
Emma knew Joan had had some feelings for the architect by the careful way she applied the deliberate lines and curves that darkened her eyes and eyebrows when she dressed for their dates. A few months later, when the architect left without a word, Emma found Joan in her room staring out the window.
“Are you all right?” Emma tentatively asked.
Joan turned around with a tired smile. “Yes, I’m fine.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Better to find out sooner than later,” Joan said quietly. “Maybe my luck’s getting better.” She tried to laugh, but it came out high and false.
Still, Emma was thankful he didn’t leave the same kind of devastation Joseph had. She watched Joan closely, somehow sensing her sister was better prepared this time, protected against another blow. Maybe it was different after the first time. As with an open wound, Joan had healed tougher.
As dawn approached, a gray light filtered into Emma’s room. She dozed on and off, then sat up suddenly wide awake, listening to the wind snap against her window. She heard Foon moving about beyond the closed door in the pale morning hour, breathing life into the cold kitchen. Emma’s eyes teared at the thought of missing these echoes and whispers of her childhood—the soft clink of the wok on the fire, the high whine of the fruit vendor selling oranges and bananas from worn baskets balanced on a pole across his neck and shoulders. she’d even miss the pungent odor of salted fish drying in courtyards, dangling from lines like the leather soles of shoes. Until that very moment, she’d taken the habits of her daily life for granted. Everything in America would be new and strange to her. She longed to ride the cable cars up and down the steep hills she’d read about, and to hear the deep moan of foghorns blaring soulful warnings to ships entering the Golden Gate. Still, Emma felt anxious. She tried to ignore it, remembering Mah-mee’s reassurance: “When you’ve seen enough, and your mouth waters for Foon’s cooking, you can always come home.”
Emma tapped lightly on Joan’s door across the hall and heard a surprisingly wide-awake “Come in!” Joan’s room was bright with lamplight. “You’re up early,” Emma said, stepping over the cashmere cardigan, silk cheungsam, black slip, and half dozen movie magazines that cluttered the floor. The sweet scent of Revlon powder and Joan’s favorite perfume, My Sin, hung over it all.
“I couldn’t sleep.” Joan lay in bed, propped up by three green brocade pillows, flipping through a Movie Mirror magazine. “Oh! Bette Davis has a new movie out called All About Eve. No one plays a home wrecker better than Bette Davis, except maybe Li Lihua. It’s all in their eyes!”
“What’s it about?” Joan’s regained passion for the movies delighted Emma. Even in this severe light, Joan looked just like a movie star herself, dressed in the cream-colored silk pajamas she’d bought at Lane Crawford’s.
“Eve, apparently!” Joan laughed.
She raised herself up from her pillows, threw her magazine aside. “I’ve been thinking….” She adapted a casual pose, though Emma saw her upper lip quiver. “I mean…what would you say if I told you I wanted to act?”
“Act?” Emma swallowed a small stone of surprise and sat down on Joan’s bed. At twenty-four, Joan had never expressed a wish for any kind of career, except part-time work at Auntie Go’s knitting factory. “Gosh, you really want to act?”
Joan smiled. “Maybe if I became an actress, I could follow you to California someday.”
Emma looked away and didn’t know what to say. Sometimes decisions came so easily for her sister—too easily—while Emma worried about everything. Still, there was nothing more natural than for Joan to act. She’d been doing it all her life.
“How would you go about it?” Emma asked, always practical, then remembered their aunt’s knitting company. “And what about Auntie Go? She’s hoping you’ll take over.”
Joan hugged one of the brocade pillows, half hiding her face. “Part-time never meant lifetime. Auntie Go knows my heart’s not in it. And I’ve been at the library researching the Hong Kong movie industry,” she said, her voice growing in excitement.
“You, at the library! You must really want to act.” Emma laughed.
Joan threw the pillow at her. “I bet you didn’t know this.” Joan rose to her knees and flung her arms out like an opera singer. “Ever since the Japanese invasion of Shanghai in 1937,” she said, her voice dark and dramatic, “Chinese directors and actors have gradually made their way from Shanghai to Hong Kong. In the past few years, Hong Kong has become the major moviemaking mecca of both Mandarin- and Cantonese-speaking movies.”
“I guess you have been to the library,” Emma teased.
Joan crossed her eyes. “And God knows I’ve seen enough movies! But lately, I’ve been seeing beyond just what’s up there on the screen. Each gesture, each look, can tell you something different. It’s like a whole new world to me!”
Emma smiled. Joan certainly had enough beauty and drama to fill up the big screen. “One day you’ll be as big as Joan Crawford!”
Joan leaned forward and threw her arms around Emma. “I’m really going to miss you, moi-moi.”
Emma pulled back. Her hopes never came without doubts. “Will you be all right?”
Joan gave her another squeeze. “You don’t have to worry about me. I’ll be fine. I promise,” she said, falling back into her pillows.
Joan talked happily of her new aspiration, while Emma balanced on the bedside, trying to memorize Joan’s unblemished profile as she shared in her sister’s joy. Soon shivers of excitement overtook her in the cold morning air. Then, without a pause in t
he soft ring of her words, Joan raised her green silk comforter and Emma crawled in.
Emma cried as she peered from the small window of the airplane and waved good-bye to Mah-mee, Auntie Go, and Joan. Foon had refused to accompany them to the airport, mumbling, “Not a bird. Not right to be in the air so long.”
At the dinner table the night before, Emma knew how sad they were by their sudden loss of words. Even Mah-mee fell silent, and Auntie Go seemed to be watching Emma’s every move. She was grateful when Joan finally spoke up. Joan had read in one of her movie magazines about a new American television show called The Lone Ranger.
“It stars a mysterious, masked cowboy who rides around on a horse helping people.”
Emma had listened, wishing the masked man would guide her safely to America.
Emma fastened her seat belt, her throat dry and scratchy. She felt a jet of cool air coming from one of the many nozzles overhead. Outside her window, propellers roared to life and spun in a noisy blur. She breathed in and out, thrilled, yet frightened, and took a quick look around her. The plane resembled a large, hollow tube with seats on both sides of a narrow aisle. Tall American women in pressed navy-blue uniforms and crisp white blouses smiled at everyone as they helped passengers stow away their belongings. Emma glanced quickly around at the rows of faces. Half the passengers were Japanese or British businessmen, so formal and polite with one another that she could scarcely believe they’d been at war just five years ago. Emma leaned back, grateful that the seat next to her was empty. She looked past it out the window as the plane jerked and moved slowly forward. The harbor glimmered on either side of the runway, as if the plane were gliding across the glassy water, crowded now with ships from all over the world. She remembered again the awful stillness when they’d returned from Macao. All she’d wanted to do then was to turn around and go back to Lia.
In her purse was the letter she had received from Lia a few weeks ago, the music of her voice in each word…. I take the bus every Friday to our neighbor island, Taipa. It’s where Antonio, my boyfriend, lives while he works on his papai’s fishing boat. You would like him. Makes me laugh all the time. Makes life lighter. Which reminds me to tell you I’ve decided to study nursing. I’ve been taking care of my sister and my brothers’ scrapes and cuts all these years anyway. Why not make it a career? Blood and bones have never frightened me. It’s the things I can’t see!…
Emma had written back that she was finally leaving for California, the words on the paper sliding from her pen feeling foreign and complicated. Now Emma missed Lia all over again.
When the plane suddenly lifted off the ground, Emma’s stomach sank. She closed her eyes and repeated a prayer she’d learned in sixth grade at St. Cecilia’s, before advancing to the Chinese middle school. O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended thee, and I detest all my sins….
After five hours in the air, Emma was anesthetized by the low hum vibrating through the droning plane. But when it began to descend toward Tokyo, all her fears reawakened. She felt hot and sweaty at the thought of the big plane landing. Emma leaned back, praying that Ba ba would be there waiting for her. She checked her passport case again for his address and the money Mah-mee had given her. The plane dipped lower and lower. Emma panicked and closed her eyes tight. Her heart beat wildly when the plane bucked, but at last she felt the wheels bounce once and bump along the ground. Her feet pushed hard against the seat in front of her until the plane came to a full stop.
Emma was relieved to see Ba ba at the gate. He looked old and tired and seemed to have shrunk in the months since she’d seen him.
“Ba ba, I’m so glad to see you,” Emma said, hugging his thin body.
“How was your flight?” he asked, taking her suitcase.
“Frightening.”
“You sound like your mother.” Ba ba smiled. “She doesn’t believe me, but it does get easier. How are Mah-mee, Go, and Joan?”
“They’re all fine.”
“Come, let’s get the rest of your luggage.”
They waited at the baggage claim for Emma’s trunk, the same one Mah-mee had used on countless trips between Hong Kong and Japan. Emma loved every scratch and dent marring its brown leather surface. As it rumbled up the conveyor belt, Emma began to worry. Had she packed everything she needed? Would a woolen coat and three cashmere sweaters keep her warm in San Francisco? Did she bring enough shoes? Emma finally relaxed when Ba ba laughed and said, “Moi-moi, you can always buy or send for whatever you’ve forgotten.”
He led her out to a waiting car, and they drove through heavy traffic to his small apartment. Tokyo was large and almost as crowded as Hong Kong. It amazed Emma to think that all these strangers had been her enemy just a few years back. Now they walked down the streets in colorful kimonos and Western clothing, apparently shy and harmless.
It was still warm for late September. Emma rolled down the window. The sounds and smells of Tokyo were so different from Hong Kong—lighter and fresher. Ba ba leaned over and showed her some rose-purple flowers growing by the roadside. “Those are called lespedeza. They’re a type of bush clover, known here as one of the seven flowers of autumn.” Before Emma asked what the other six flowers were, he pointed at the butterfly petals falling like snowflakes, blanketing the ground. They seemed to muffle the car horns, the cries of babies, the shrieking voices. Ba ba smiled. In that instant, Emma began to understand why Ba ba preferred to do business in Japan.
That evening Ba ba took Emma to a small Japanese restaurant on the Ginza for dinner. She had changed into a midcalf, yellow linen cheungsam. As they sipped tea and ate quietly together, Emma tried to remember how many years had passed since she’d been out alone with her father at a restaurant. She had grown up in the company of her mother, aunt, and sister. Her father was only a shadow who materialized for short visits. His sweet, flowery cologne reached across the table, familiar as ever, but his lean body had softened with age. Now Emma looked away, aware that it wasn’t polite to stare. How could she have grown up without knowing him better? Suddenly she yearned to expand her childhood vision of him. As she picked at her rice and vegetables, she was filled with a sad, urgent need to take some small part of her father with her to America.
“Is everything all right?” He had a calm, melodious voice, which Joan had been lucky enough to have inherited. Emma’s carried the high, excited edge of Mah-mee’s.
“Yes,” Emma answered, looking up from her food.
“Is there anything else you’d like?”
Emma smiled shyly. “Will you come to California and visit?”
Ba ba smiled. “If my work permits. Don’t worry moi-moi, I don’t think you will have any trouble settling in. It’s what you’ve always wanted.”
Emma sipped some green tea, watched his kind, tired eyes. A small lump caught in the middle of her throat as she let her fingers lightly touch the sleeve of his linen jacket.
“I’ll still miss you,” she said at last.
Ba ba poured more green tea into her clay cup. “So will I. Just as always.”
The President Coolidge jerked several times, then slowly eased away from the harbor, letting out a deep, hollow moan that Emma felt throughout her body. Just before she boarded—amidst a blaring, staticky version of “Auld Lang Syne”—Ba ba had hugged her tightly, slipped her an envelope, and said, “Take care, moi-moi, and don’t open this until the ship sets sail.”
Emma could still detect his flowery cologne above the rank harbor smells. She cried, even as she willed herself not to, grasping the envelope as tightly as if it were her father’s hand. Emma squeezed her way through the crowd on the deck and leaned heavily against the rail, watching until Ba ba and the last dim outlines of Tokyo were no longer in sight.
Emma turned around, engulfed by the lingering crowds. Her romantic notions of long strolls on empty decks would never be realized, she thought. As it was, she could barely make her way through all the people to her cabin below. Loud voices and strange faces came at he
r from all directions. She’d never seen so many Americans in one place before. This must be what it would be like in California! She was entirely on her own! Emma felt dizzy. Ba ba was already so far away, and there was no Mah-mee, Auntie Go, or Joan to rescue her. She pushed through the crowds until she reached the lobby and felt she could breathe again.
Emma’s cabin was half the size of her room at home, and her bags and trunk were the only familiar things in it. She sat on the hard single bed and took a deep breath until another deep wail of the ship’s horn startled her to her feet. The floor vibrated beneath her as she pushed open her small porthole. They were under way, the ship already dancing from side to side as it pushed through rough seas out of Tokyo Bay.
Emma looked down at the envelope still clutched in her hand. Her fingers clumsily opened it to find two one-hundred-dollar bills in American money. Emma wished she could give Ba ba another hug. Instead, she replaced the crisp bills in the envelope, then hid them at the bottom of her purse.
Suddenly Emma’s stomach churned. She sat down on the bed and inhaled deeply. The nausea lessened as she breathed slowly out. It was just all the excitement, she told herself, taking another breath, then releasing it. She kicked off her shoes and lay down on her small bed. As she waited for the feeling to pass, she recited over and over again the comforting old dry chant: wheat, sesame, barley, beans, rice. Foon would be proud to know that Emma was sailing to America with the five great grains of Chinese cooking.
That night at dinnertime, Emma struggled into a beige lace cheungsam. She dragged herself through a maze of identical hallways until a sign pointed her to the dining room’s tall doors. Her stomach still churned, but she hoped that eating something might settle it.
Night of Many Dreams Page 13
