Dreams of Joy - Lisa See [56]
“Oh, I know.” She shakes her head sympathetically. “After the bombing in 1937—such a long time ago now—we went to your home when I didn’t hear from your mother. We found boarders. Squatters more like it. They told us about the Green Gang. Uncle thought all four of you were dead, but I knew your mother. She wasn’t going to let anything happen to you two girls.”
“I don’t know what became of Baba, but Mama, May, and I left Shanghai together.” I reach up under my sleeve and pull my mother’s bracelet down to my wrist. Auntie Hu’s eyes flash in recognition. I don’t have to tell her the terrible details. I keep it simple. “She didn’t make it to Hong Kong.”
Auntie Hu nods somberly but offers no condolences. As she said earlier, we’ve all lost people.
“Anyway,” she picks up, “I’ve gone to your house every few years. I’ve seen how those boarders have treated it. But it could be worse. Your house was divided before Liberation. No new people were assigned to live there. Just don’t expect those nails ever to leave.”
“Nails?”
“The people who live in your house. Once they’re in, you can never pull them out. But it doesn’t have to look the way it does,” she scolds in a motherly tone. “Visit the pawnshops. I bet you could find and buy back some of your family’s belongings.”
“I doubt they’d still be there after all this time.”
“You’d be surprised. Who was going to buy anything during the war with the Japanese or later during the civil war? All those workers you see on the street? How would they know what to buy, even if they had money? They aren’t real Shanghainese. They don’t have hai pah. You shouldn’t be afraid of living as you once lived.”
“If what you’re saying is true, then where are the nightclubs? Where’s the music? Where’s the dancing?”
“Dancing in a club all night is completely different from having things. Besides, some people—very high up people—play Western instruments, dance to Western music … The Communists say they’re pure and for the masses, but you go high enough and they’re very corrupt. But none of that matters.” She leans forward and taps my knee. “You need to fix your house, even with those nails there.”
“How can I? Won’t I be reported?”
“I haven’t been reported.”
“You live alone.”
She winces, and I immediately regret my remark. But she’s a woman of old traditions. She chooses to ignore my rudeness, as though I’m merely an uneducated child.
“Never forget this is Shanghai. Never forget you are Shanghainese. Never forget your hai pah. You carry that inside you no matter what new campaign that fat chairman launches.”
Later, she walks me to the door. She takes my hand and stares at my mother’s bracelet. “Your mama always loved you best.” Then she wraps her fingers around the bracelet and slides it up under the sleeve of my jacket. “Please come back and see me.”
I spend another hour picking up paper before returning to the office to deliver most of what I’ve collected. It’s dark now, and I have a few last things to do before I go home. First, I survey the ships and security along the Bund. Chairman Mao does not command a great navy: laundry hangs on lines, hats and clothes drape on guns, sailors sit on decks eating bowls of noodles. The soup must be strong and tasty, because the scent of ginger, scallions, and fresh coriander wafts through the air to me. One thing is sure: the sailors aren’t paying much attention to anything beyond what they’re eating.
I nod to myself, and then, as I do every evening, I go to Z.G.’s house. A week ago, the servants finally became so irritated by my nightly ringing of the doorbell that I don’t bother with that anymore. Instead, I linger behind a shrub on the other side of the walk street and wait to see what lights come on in the house. One of these times I’m going to see my daughter but not tonight.
Then it’s on to the Methodist mission I attended as a girl. I come here every day. I, like many others, am afraid to enter. I sit on the curb across the street. I’m not alone for long. A few other women approach, and it’s as if they are dragging great shadows of memories behind