Dreams of Joy: A Novel (8 page)

“Has he been arrested?” I ask. When the girls don’t respond, I say, “I want the truth. All of it.”

“He’s gone of his own choice to the countryside to redeem himself, learn from the peasants to be more humble, and remember the goals of socialist art,” the head girl quickly recites before the other servants can start in again with their gibberish.

“When will he come home?” I ask.

“Don’t you mean,
will
he come home?” the girl with the bob asks. “A big tree catches the wind, after all.”

The one in charge pinches her subordinate to get her to stop talking, apparently not liking the lesser servants stepping out of their places.

“I remain hopeful,” the head servant says. “Otherwise, he wouldn’t have left money for me to take care of the house.”

“And to feed us too,” the quiet one mutters.

I glance from girl to girl. They’re all about Joy’s age. What kind of man is Z.G.? Is he still falling for any pretty face?

“Have you had any visitors?” I ask. “A young woman perhaps.”

“We get those all the time,” chirps the girl with the bob.

My jaw clenches. For so long, I felt I lived like a servant, but I wasn’t a servant. I wasn’t impudent…

“I’m looking for my daughter,” I say sternly. I start to put my wallet away.

“We know the one!”

“Yes! We do!”

“Tell me,” I say.

“She came the day Master Li was leaving. We heard her say she was his daughter. She came from a different place …”

“Like you.”

“Where is she now?” I ask.

“She went with him to the countryside.”

It’s not the worst thing I could hear, but it’s not the best either.

“Do you know where they went? To which village?”

They shake their heads. Even when I offer more money, they can’t help me.

After they let me out, I stand in the lane for some time. I’ve run up against a blank wall, and I’m unsure what to do next. I’m desperate and terrified for my daughter, who is with someone in such trouble that he appears to have chosen banishment over arrest. In my hopelessness, I find myself speaking to May, as though she could hear me so far away in Los Angeles.
I haven’t found our girl yet. She’s with Z.G., and he could cause problems for her—things we haven’t even thought of
.

I shake my head as Shanghai begins to push itself into my thoughts. I hear the sound of a trolley and the rumble of a bus or truck in the distance, but otherwise there’s very little traffic noise. All the elegant, low-slung foreign cars of the past have been replaced by pedicabs, bicycles, and donkey-drawn carts and wagons. I hear a food vendor calling out a treat. “Crisp and spicy olives! Fresh olives! Buy my olives!” I haven’t eaten Shanghai olives in twenty years, and I follow the cries to the corner and down the street to the left. I find a man with a basket hoisted on his shoulder. When I approach, he lowers the basket and lifts a damp towel off the contents. He has three types—fat, thin, and brown. I ask for some of the fat olives. I pop one in my mouth even before I pay the man. My eyes close in appreciation as the alkaline taste blossoms into something light, refreshing, and invigorating. I’m instantly transported back in time, eating olives with May and our friends—Tommy, Betsy, and Z.G.

Somehow this burst of flavor clarifies my mind. I’ll have to go back to the Artists’ Association to ask more questions, but first I need to figure out the best way either to get information from that woman in the lobby or to get past her. For now, though, I need a place to stay. I’m sure I can find someone to rent me a room, if I pay double or triple the standard rate, but I don’t want to do that.

Home
. Los Angeles is my home now—and how strange that is after all my years of homesickness for this place—but the word reminds me that I had a home here too. To get there, I’ll have to go to the Hongkew district across Soochow Creek. I don’t see any rickshaws, but I doubt I could ride in one now after being married to Sam. If I saw one, my heart might collapse in grief. Still, I can’t help wondering where the pullers are. What happened to them?

I hurry back to the Bund. I speak again to the inspector who helped Joy. I even slip him a bribe, but he insists he doesn’t know anything more, so this is just money down the drain. Then I have to pay what he calls a handling fee to watch my belongings overnight. I take my one travel bag and ask directions to a bus stop. The streets were crowded when I arrived. Now that work is done, the sidewalks are jammed with people and the roadways are a swelling mass of bicycles. The rings of all those bicycle bells sound almost calming, like cicadas on a hot summer night. I board the bus to take me to Hongkew. For years, May has picked up American phrases and used them until the rest of us were nearly crazy. One of those phrases was about being crowded together like sardines. Now I understand what she meant. People press against me on all sides. I feel the familiar panic rising, force myself to swallow it, and sway with the bony mass of humanity as the bus accelerates or stops.

I get off in my old neighborhood. It all looks familiar yet completely different. Vendors and little shops cram together, selling goods and services: bicycle tire repair, haircuts, and tooth pulling; oranges, eggs, and peanuts; Front Gate men’s underwear, Red Flag sanitary napkins, and White Elephant batteries. I turn onto my old street. The houses on my block all still stand. I remember how each spring our neighbors painted them in rich earth tones: dark purple, dark green, or dark red—colors that wouldn’t show the dust or the moss that grows so quickly in Shanghai’s humid climate. But the houses don’t look like they’ve been painted in years. Most of the paint has peeled away entirely, revealing dirty gray plaster.

The summer evening customs haven’t changed much since I was last here, however. Children play in the street. Women sit on steps stringing peas, shucking corn, or sorting rice. Men lounge on chairs or perch on upturned crates, smoking cigarettes and playing chess. Eyes begin to follow me. I’m afraid to look back. Do they recognize me?

My family home comes into view. The magnolia tree is huge now, making the house seem smaller than I remember. When I get closer, I see that the carved wooden screen that prevented evil spirits from entering the house still hangs above the door, but the jasmine and dwarf pines that our gardener once nursed are gone. My mother’s rose vines cling to the fence, still alive but dried out and uncared for. Mostly what’s “growing” is laundry draped on bushes and strung on lines. A lot of people must live here, but then a lot of people lived here when May and I left too. A man sitting on the front steps rises as I approach. I should have prepared an introduction, but it seems one isn’t necessary.

“Pearl? You’re Pearl, right? Pearl Chin?” He’s tall, thin, about my age, with a distinguished demeanor but wearing shabby clothes.

“That was my maiden name,” I answer, uncertain. Who is he?

He reaches out, takes my bag, and opens the front door. “Welcome home,” he says. “We’ve been waiting for you a long time.”

My shoes sound loud on the parquet floor. The salon is just as we left it. I can see down the hall and up the stairs, which also look the same. Meanwhile, the man who let me in is calling out names, and people are emerging from rooms, coming down the stairs, wiping their hands as they run from the kitchen. Just as on the bus, I’m surrounded on all sides. They stare at me expectantly. I stare at them, not knowing what to do or say.

“Don’t you know who we are?” a middle-aged woman asks.

When I shake my head, they begin to introduce themselves. They’re the people my parents let rooms to after my father lost our family’s money: the two dancing girls who moved into the attic (only they don’t look like dancing girls any longer in their worker outfits of dull blue baggy trousers and white blouses), the cobbler who lived under the stairs (as wiry and wizened as I remember), the woman who took up residence in the back of the house with her policeman husband and two daughters (except she’s a widow now and the daughters have married out), and the student who lived in the second-floor pavilion (the courtly man who answered the door is now a professor). I vaguely remember that he used to go by the Western name of Donald. Now he introduces himself as Dun-ao.

“How can you all still be here?” I ask in wonder. “What about the Green Gang? They were going to take the house.”

“They did,” the professor answers. “But Pockmarked Huang”—even hearing the name all these years later sends a ripple of fear down my spine—“went into exile in Hong Kong. The king of the underworld died there six years ago.” The professor snorts derisively. “By then the government had confiscated all his property anyway.”

“We’re allowed to stay here because we’ve always been here,” the widow says.

My eyes well up. May and I thought we were alone in the world, but here are people who knew us, and they survived. It’s a miracle, really.

They suddenly part to let someone through. I have a momentary hope it will be my father. I honestly don’t know how I’ll feel if it is. Baba’s gambling debts ruined our lives, and he was such a coward. But it’s not Baba. It’s Cook. As hard as I fight them, tears roll down my face. He was an old man when I was a girl. He’s probably in his eighties now. He looks frail, and the others treat him with reverence. That’s how it should be. The old have always been honored in China.

“May I stay here?” I ask.

“Do you have a residency permit?” The widow turns to Cook and says submissively, “None of us want to get in trouble, Director Cook.”

“No one will get in trouble,” Cook says. “This was her family home, and we’ve kept her room.” He turns and addresses me directly. “You may stay, but you must follow the rules of the house and the street, or I will report you to the higher-ups.”

It’s then I realize that the boarders don’t respect Cook for his age. They’re afraid of him. We kept him on after my father lost everything because he had nowhere else to go. Now, in the New Society, he’s respected and feared because he’s part of the red class. Director Cook. They don’t call him Director Wang, Lu, or Eng, because he never had a name. We called him Cook because that was his title. Now he’s running my family home.

The professor gently takes my elbow and leads me up the stairs.

“You must not think that because you’ve returned home things will be the same,” Cook calls after me. “Those days are over, Little Miss.”

But maybe not as much as he thinks or else he wouldn’t call me by that old endearment and he wouldn’t still be answering to Cook. He would have adopted a new name—like Always Red or Red Forever—to go with the New Society.

“You will clean your nightstool and make your own meals,” he continues. “You will wash your clothes and do chores. You will …”

I’ve had a lot of surprises today, but none is greater than when Dun-ao opens the door to my room. It’s just as May and I left it—two twin beds with white linen canopies embroidered in a wisteria pattern and our favorite beautiful-girl posters on the walls.

“I don’t understand,” I say. “How can everything be the same?”

“We knew your parents weren’t coming back. Director Cook sleeps in their room now. But we all suspected that you and your sister would return one day, and here you are. But no May …”

I suppose he expects me to say something about my sister, but I can’t. I look away from his kind face and see into the bathroom. The tile, the tub, the mirror … all exactly the same.

“Many houses in the city have rooms that look just like this,” Dun-ao says. “The Chinese government isn’t always good, but Chinese culture is always here, and it respects family. We all wait for those who left to return. Everyone comes back to Shanghai.”

I suppose he’s right. Z.G.’s landlady kept his things and he returned to claim them. This idea is even what the man at the family association told me was happening in the “ghost” villages just over the border from Hong Kong. But for my house and room to remain untouched all these years? I wish May could see it.

“You look like you need some rest,” he says. “I’m sure you have luggage somewhere. When you’re ready, I’ll go with you to get it. And don’t worry too much about Cook. He’s a petty tyrant, but we have many of those now. You’ll see that in his heart he’s still just Cook, the man who loved you as a little girl.” He smiles. “I know, because he’s told me this many times.”

After the professor leaves, I sit on the edge of the bed. Dust billows up around me. I smooth the bedcover and rake up dust with my hand. This room probably hasn’t been cleaned since May and I left. I get up and go to the closet. I remember the day my father-in-law ransacked this room, grabbing clothes for May and me to wear to work in China City. He left behind our Western-style dresses, and they’re all still here, as are the shoes, furs, and hats.

My eyes fall on a ermine-lined black brocade coat. It’s mine. Mama had matching coats made for May and me, but I was the one who really wanted it. I thought mine was elegant, but May said hers was too somber and made her look old. (Which, of course, was a not too veiled criticism of me.) May lost hers the winter before everything changed. I can still hear Baba scolding May for being forgetful and yelling at me for not being a better
jie jie
, who should have reminded her little sister to remember her coat. May was eighteen! Why should I be responsible for telling her to get her coat at a party or from a hatcheck girl at a club? Baba then told me to give May my coat. My sister, even though she didn’t like the coat, would have taken it too, except I was taller and she didn’t like that it hung down to her ankles.

I shut the closet door and turn away. I go to our dresser. Inside the drawers I find undergarments, cashmere sweaters, silk stockings, and bathing suits. I pull out a nightgown: flesh-colored silk trimmed with handmade lace. It can’t possibly still fit, but it does. I stare at myself in the mirror. Reflected around me are images of my sister and me. I’ve changed so much inside. I’m no longer the girl who was in those posters, but I’m slim as I was back then, and it seems I’ll be able to wear my old clothes, although I can’t imagine where I’ll ever wear them in Communist China.