Dreams of Joy - Lisa See [31]
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.