Less than two months later, their emigration papers to Macao were approved. Mah-mee called them into her room, handed Joan and Emma each a suitcase.
“Take only what you can carry,” Mah-mee told them. “The steam ferry will be crowded enough.”
“Is Ba ba going?” Emma asked.
Mah-mee shook her head, straightened the collar of her cheungsam, then answered, “Auntie Go and Foon will be going with us. Ba ba has to stay here and watch the flat. Apparently, his only compensation for having done business in Japan for twenty years is an untouched flat! When things settle down, he’ll come to visit.” Mah-mee waved her hand at them. “Hurry now, go pack.”
Joan closed the door to her room. She hated the thought of leaving Ba ba, wanted to say something as she touched her cropped hair. She couldn’t wait to leave the strict confines of Japanese-occupied Hong Kong. Maybe in Macao her nightmares would go away. Sometimes, she tried to keep herself awake all night to escape the dark shadows that visited her sleep. The next morning, Joan was always so tired she could barely get through the day. Only then, if she was lucky enough, could she sleep through the night.
Chapter 3
Orphan Island Paradise—1942–45
Emma
The instant Emma stepped off the Macao ferry that afternoon in October of 1942, she felt protected, safe at last from all the Japanese devils. She turned to Joan, who appeared serene in a half-trance, her short black hair fluttering in the warm, salty wind. More than anything, Emma wanted her sister to regain her spirit, to laugh and act out movie scenes again. Ever since the night Joan was followed by the Japanese soldier, Emma had worried. Most of the time Joan seemed guarded, her words measured and brief, and when she did talk, Emma felt something cold and distant in her sister’s voice, some dark shadow in her mind that Emma prayed their time in Macao would help to erase.
Emma could feel their move already working. Back on the enclosed deck of the ferry, Mah-mee and Auntie Go had stood up and squeezed through the crowds to get tea. All around them high, whining voices reverberated in the crowded, airless space. Knowing Joan couldn’t resist Garbo, Emma hoped for some reaction when she called after them, “Give me a whiskey…and don’t be stingy, baby,” a terrible version of Garbo in Anna Christie.
Joan had sat motionless on the wooden bench, staring blankly out at the water. Emma waited for her to give any sign that she’d heard. The slightest smile would do. But Joan remained silent. Emma had shrugged and returned to reading her battered copy of Wuthering Heights when Joan’s hoarse whisper suddenly grazed her ear. “Gif me a viskey…and dawn’t be stingy, baby.”
Many of her family’s friends and relatives had already settled in Macao, and Emma was glad to join them in the safety of the tree-lined streets and Mediterranean architecture. Even as a little girl, she had dreamed of going to the faraway lands she’d read about, the wide open spaces of America, or the broad boulevards of Paris or Berlin. Hong Kong sometimes felt like a crowded room, the walls closed in all around her.
On the wharf, women sat behind crates selling fruits and flowers. Emma turned around to make sure Auntie Go and Foon were following. She wanted to laugh at the sight of her aunt almost a head taller than Foon as they walked side by side. She held on tight to her mother’s and Joan’s hands as they hurried away from the dock and through a lingering crowd. Along the main Avenida Amizade stood a line of tricycle-drawn, two-seater pedicabs, the drivers scrambling and hustling for customers. Foon hissed at them, “Get away, get away.” As they walked on, Emma felt both delighted and appalled that life in Macao had continued without pause, while less than three hours away, the war continued to turn lives around. The fresh air tasted faintly of exotic fruits. She breathed in great mouthfuls, unable to get enough.
With the help and connections of relatives, Mah-mee sold some of her jewelry to rent a small, comfortable house with a veranda that wrapped around it like a ribbon. Emma and Joan shared one bedroom, while Mah-mee and Auntie Go had the other. Foon occupied a small space off the kitchen.
Emma liked the house immediately. It was barely half the size of their Hong Kong flat, but there was something romantic about its simple, white stucco walls and red-tiled roof. She could already feel Joan more at ease, the small house somehow embracing them, keeping them safe from the Japanese.
The room she shared with Joan looked out on a quiet street lined with umbrella-shaped palm trees. One morning not long after they unpacked and settled in, Emma heard some sweet, melodious voices coming from outside. She ran to her bedroom window and peered out at a group of Macanese children skipping rope and dancing to tunes they sang aloud. Auntie Go had told her the children were a wonderful mixture of Portuguese, Chinese, Brazilian, and African. Emma envied their smooth, dark skin and quick steps. At twelve, she still felt as clumsy as a small child. When one of the Macanese girls looked up and caught her eye, Emma felt a warmth touch her cheeks before she shyly turned away.
The tiny Portuguese colony also gave Emma a taste of another world. Faint threads of Portuguese echoed through the cobblestone streets, sounding an exotic music that she loved. Macao never slept, but moved in a rhythm all its own. You could buy or sell anything for exorbitant prices. Enterprising men who had tapped into the black market became rich. No one knew when the war would end, and many were willing to pay dearly for luxuries such as cigarettes and silk stockings. Every day on their way to school, Emma and Joan tried to ignore the singsong call of “Missee, lookee, missee,” from merchants trying to sell them their wares. The girls walked freely down the wide, shaded boulevard of Avenida Almeida Ribeiro with many of their old Hong Kong friends. Sometimes they laughed and talked with the sweet, fragrant air of forgetting. But other times, they spoke wistfully of friends who had remained behind.
In some ways, Emma found each day in Macao similar to life in pre-occupation Hong Kong. Mah-mee resumed her social activities of leisurely lunches and mah-jongg games. Auntie Go worked in the garden and revived plans for her knitting business once the war was over. Foon spent more and more time in the kitchen. But it was Joan whom Emma watched most closely, quietly waiting for her to resemble again the sister Emma had always known.
Every morning when Joan picked up her hairbrush, Emma wondered what she was thinking as the bristles sailed through her short hair.
“Do you miss it?” Emma asked one morning, poised against the doorframe.
“What? Hong Kong?” Joan looked up as if noticing Emma for the first time.
“No. Do you miss your long hair?” Emma watched Joan stare back into the mirror, her hand sliding down the back of her head to the nape of her neck.
“Sometimes.”
Emma touched her own shoulder-length hair, her fingers loosening mild knots. “Me too.”
From the time they were babies, she and Joan had balanced on each side of their family seesaw, tilting more to one parent than the other in looks or temperament. Though they appeared so different and were almost opposite in personality, Emma sometimes saw the slightest similarities in their gestures, and in the way they laughed. But it was by their lustrous dark hair that they most resembled each another.
Emma loved going to the casinos and nightclubs that enlivened evenings in Macao and added to the prosperity of the colony. The loud hum of urgent voices in the casino below their favorite Chinese restaurant intrigued her. To reach the restaurant, she had to walk through the large, smoky casino filled with determined people betting on everything from pai gow to craps, oblivious to whether it was day or night. To Emma the gamblers seemed to be under some sort of spell, yelling wildly at dice and cards to do as they commanded.
“Seven! Seven!” one man sang to a pair of dice resting in the palm of his hand. The dice tumbled onto the worn green table and turned up a three and a one. “Death to you!” he yelled at them, his face becoming an angry mask.
Emma stopped and watched for as long as she could, until her mother or Auntie Go pushed her along.
While waiting for thei
r food, Emma begged to play dai-sui, a numbers game in which she selected either a small number between one and nine or a larger number between nine and eighteen. If she chose with luck, she doubled her money. To humor Emma, Mah-mee and Auntie Go usually let her play a round. Then Emma would stop eating and anxiously wait. When the dice were rolled, and the bulbs began lighting up, Emma’s eyes flashed to the board, her eager stare darting up and down between the number on the wall and the one on the piece of paper she held tightly in her hand. Even Joan, who often appeared bored by all the activity around her, stopped and watched as the bulbs came alive.
In the sultry winter nights of Macao, Emma delighted in watching Joan slowly unwind and become herself again. Within two months of their arrival, Joan’s hair grew into a short pageboy that for a while made her resemble Joan of Arc. On Saturday mornings, Emma and Joan often accompanied Foon to the market to help shop for their evening meals. After months of so little to eat in Hong Kong, they found rice, meat, and vegetables abundant, although expensive. Emma loved the musical cries of the vendors and the wooden crates stacked high, filled with everything from chickens to snakes. They stood by, entertained by Foon, who picked and haggled over everything, from oranges to bok choy.
“Too much! Too much!” Foon argued.
“You pay for what you get!” an old, toothless man returned. He dropped the dark green leaves into a bag, held it out to Foon. “You want it or not?”
Foon wavered. She picked up a bunch of green onions, wilted slightly at the tips, and held up the long, flowerless stems. “Include this, then I want it.”
The old man grinned, then nodded. “Okay, okay.” He leaned forward and opened the bag, mumbling something to himself as Foon dropped the green onions in.
At the same time, Joan began to show a real interest in cooking. The theatrics of the marketplace were far more entertaining than the same old Portuguese melodramas that played in the local theatre for months. Emma and Joan had seen them so often, they began to memorize the dialogue by heart, though they could never fully understand all of it. Lying in their beds at night, Joan mimicked the fluid Portuguese lines. “Eu te amo com todo cor a çâo,” I love you darling with all my heart, Joan spouted without a mistake.
“I do too,” Emma answered in English.
“Fique comigo para sempre,” come be with me for the rest of our lives, Joan said, and both of them burst out in laughter.
Still, Emma was amazed at how convincing Joan was, even in a foreign language.
Emma often found her sister in the small, hot kitchen, where Foon sliced slivers of beef and peeled lotus roots or turnips. Joan watched, absorbed, while softly reciting to herself the five great grains of Chinese cooking—wheat, sesame, barley, beans, and rice. Soon, she was slicing and frying alongside Foon, learning the small secrets of how to keep crispy chicken moist, or just how long to fry glass shrimp with ginger and garlic. “As soon as they turn milky white,” Foon directed, “don’t hesitate, don’t wait!” It wasn’t long before Joan could prepare a meal almost as well as Foon.
Emma remembered one time Mah-mee caught Joan in the kitchen cooking. Mah-mee stood on the threshold of the door, her flowery perfume mixing with the aroma of frying food. “Are you finished with your studies?” she asked Joan, her voice flat and stern.
Joan looked up, surprised. She had just begun tossing Chinese green beans and thin slices of pork in a large wok. “Yes,” she quickly answered, looking back down at the spitting oil.
As Foon ladled soup into four bowls, Mah-mee remained perfectly still, eyeing Joan. The kitchen felt hot and crowded. Emma stood quietly as she watched Mah-mee’s lips part then close again as if tasting the thick air. “Be careful,” Mah-mee finally said, turning around to leave. But even after the door closed behind her, her perfume lingered.
One afternoon in late February when Mah-mee and Auntie Go were out, Foon refused to let Emma into the kitchen. “No, no, not yet,” Foon said, pushing her back outside. Curious, Emma strained to look beyond her into the cluttered kitchen where Joan had been cooking. Soon, exotic aromas drifted through the closed door. Emma detected the sweet scent of coconut and curry, an aroma unlike that of any dish Foon had cooked in Hong Kong. Emma pressed her ear to the kitchen door thinking of any excuse to get in. Not that she had any real interest in recipes, but she wanted to know what the big secret was. The low, intimate whispering between Foon and Joan gave nothing away. Emma pushed hard against the locked door once more and gave up. She’d have to find something else to do.
Emma stepped out the front door and closed it softly behind her. It was the first time she had ventured out alone in Macao. The rains of the past few days had left a moist, pungent smell of earth. Cool and refreshed, the air enveloped her instantly and made her feel better. She was glad to be wearing a long-sleeved shirt and overalls. Emma skipped down the stone steps and stood under the cover of a large palm tree, not knowing which direction to go. At the sound of a sharp whistle, she turned to see the Macanese girl who lived next door standing a few feet from her. Since she’d first seen the girl singing and jumping rope outside her bedroom window, Emma had felt curious about her, often standing by her window watching the large, boisterous family at play, too shy to approach them.
“You going out?” the girl asked in heavily accented English. She held on to both ends of a jump rope, which she swung back and forth, wrapping and unwrapping it around her sturdy legs above open-toed sandals.
“Yes,” Emma shyly answered. The girl, no older than Emma, was slightly taller. Her curly hair was wild and she wore a light cotton jumper.
“You maybe want company?”
Emma heard the Portuguese lilt that laced each phrase. “If you’d like. I’m only going for a short walk.”
Without another word, the Macanese girl dropped the jump rope on the wet grass and Emma fell in step beside her. As they walked in silence, Emma glanced at the girl’s arm, where a long, faded white scar rose from her elbow to her broad shoulder. Her skin was the color of pale tea, and Emma thought she smelled faintly of cinnamon.
“You from Hong Kong like all the others?” the girl asked.
“Yes, I’m here with my family. All except for my father. He’s still back in Hong Kong.”
“My papai’s dead. He died in a fishing accident just after my youngest brother, José, was born.”
“I’m sorry.”
The girl kicked a rock out of their way, and Emma wondered how she didn’t hurt her toe. She turned to Emma and smiled.
“My name is Maria Theresa Felicite Barbosa, but most call me Lia.”
“I’m Emma Lew.” It was too humid to go through the slew of Chinese names given to her at birth.
“Hong Kong is grandioso I have heard.”
Emma nodded. “Hong Kong’s also noisy and crowded, not like here.”
“All kinds come to Macao,” Lia said, nudging a small lizard across the road. “Most now because of the Japanese. Others for the gambling, though I don’t know what they see in it.”
“I think it has to do with the excitement,” Emma blurted out. “Like chasing some kind of dream.” She couldn’t help remembering her own experiences playing dai-sui.
“Why chase something you can’t catch?”
Emma didn’t have a ready answer. She wanted to say because it was fun, but decided to keep quiet.
“I’ve never been farther than the islands,” Lia continued.
“Which islands?”
“Taipa and Colôane.” Lia swept her dark, curly hair out of her face. “They’re not far. Trees and hills mainly. My uncle Arturo takes all of us over in his boat.”
“How many brothers and sisters do you have?”
“Four brothers and one sister. All younger,” Lia said in one easy breath.
Emma smiled. “I have an older sister.”
“The short-haired one? Very bonita.”
“Yes, we’re very different.”
Emma felt Lia’s gaze fall heavy upon her, making he
r uncomfortable. She shoved her hands into her pockets.
“But isn’t that good?” Lia finally said. “What good is it if we all look and act the same?”
Emma shrugged and stopped. She felt herself blush, and she quickly changed the subject. “We better turn back now,” she said, thinking she ought to return home before Foon noticed her missing.
As they turned around, Lia began to hum a tune softly. Emma listened as the notes rose and filled the misty air. She was reminded once again of how she liked Macao, and of how she already liked this tea-colored girl with the wild, dark hair.
Just two days earlier, Joan had anxiously been waiting for Emma to come home. Joan took her by the arm the moment she stepped through the door. Joan’s face was dark and serious, her lips pressed tightly together.
“What’s wrong?” Emma asked when she saw her sister looking so despondent.
“Mah-mee doesn’t want me to spend so much time with Foon in the kitchen. She thinks it takes away from my studies and social life. I don’t know what I’ll do if I can’t cook.” Joan’s voice sounded tense and urgent.
“What can I do about it?” Emma asked, already knowing the answer.
“Talk to her, tell her how important it is to me,” Joan pleaded.
She doesn’t want you to cook, Emma thought to herself. You’re her only hope. She knows how beautiful you are and wants you to marry into a good family and have many children, Emma almost blurted out. Instead, she said, “I’ll try, if you think I can help.”
Joan smiled, coughing up a laugh. “Of course you can, Mah-mee loves you best.”
Emma often wondered how much her mother really loved her. She remembered waiting for all the approving smiles, the quick brush of Mah-mee’s cheek against her lips, the uncertainty of whether Mah-mee’s potent smell of Shalimar perfume meant she had just arrived or left the flat. Her mother’s affection had always felt like playing hide-and-seek to Emma—a game she always disliked.
Night of Many Dreams Page 4