in a large shipment of Louis Vuitton trunks from France to Bombay. They’re the flat-topped ones I want. I also need two steamer bags, the small ones. And tell him he better not think I won’t know if he slips me the counterfeit …”
She threw her choice of gowns onto the bed. She was bringing so many, I figured she would attend balls as soon as she stepped off the boat. But then she called in Golden Dove and told her to be honest in saying which dresses were more flattering, which brought out the color of her eyes, her complexion, and her mahogany brown hair, and which of these would American women envy, and which would cause them to think she was an immoral woman.
Golden Dove disapproved of all her choices. “You designed those dresses to be shocking and to lure men to your side. And all the American women I’ve seen staring at you in the park were hardly clapping with admiration.”
Instead of having to choose, Mother took most of her evening gowns, as well as her newer dresses, coats, and hats. My four dresses dwindled to the two I would wear during our journey. She promised that many beautiful frocks awaited me, better than those I now owned. My favorite books were not necessary to bring either, nor were my schoolbooks, since those could be easily replaced with better ones in San Francisco, where I would also have better tutors than the ones here in Shanghai. I should simply enjoy a little holiday from study on our voyage.
Into my valise, she placed a maroon box with my jewelry, two other boxes she retrieved from a drawer, two scrolls wrapped in silk, and a few other valuables. On top of this, she placed her fox fur wrap, believing, I suppose, she might need a bit of glamour as we stood on deck and watched Shanghai recede from view.
At last we were done. Mother now needed only to find from among her coterie of influential foreigners someone to buy us passage to America. She gave Cracked Egg a dozen letters to deliver.
A day went by, then a week. The werefox eyes left and her old self returned, the one that was agitated and snappish. She gave Cracked Egg another packet of letters. Two berths, that was all we needed. What was so difficult about that? Every message came back the same: Her American compatriots were also anxious to leave Shanghai, and they, too, had found that others before them had grabbed every berth on ships for the next month.
During our wait I showed Little Ocean how to make a nest of my silk quilts for Carlotta. Ocean was eight, and as she petted Carlotta, she whispered to her, “I will be your obedient attendant.” Carlotta purred and rolled onto her back. My chest ached to see how happy Carlotta already was.
After eleven days of waiting, Fairweather sauntered through Mother’s bedroom door, without announcement. He had good news.
I KNOW WHY my mother had once loved Fairweather. He was adept at teasing her out of her bad moods. He was funny, a cure for worry. He made her laugh and feel beautiful. He said he adored her for all her unusual features and manners. He gave her exaggerated looks of befuddled love. He spoke of heartfelt emotions, all of them ones he claimed he had never known with any other woman. And he gave her sympathy for all her indulgent woes. He put her head on his shoulder and told her to cry until her heart was empty of poisonous grief. He shared her indignation when her clients had unfairly used knowledge she had given them in trust.
They had become friends more than nine years ago, and whatever she had needed then, he had given her. They alluded to times in her life when she had suffered a betrayal, a loss of confidence, when she had worried over money. He knew about her early success, about the death of a man who had taken her in when she first came to Shanghai. Remember, remember, remember, he said, to draw out the painful emotions of the past, so he could console her.
I hated that he treated my mother with easy familiarity. He called her “Lu,” “Lovely Lulu,” “Lullaby,” and “Luscious.” When she was peeved, he restored her humor by acting like a whipped schoolboy or an errant knight. He recited asinine jokes, and she returned laughter. He purposely embarrassed her in front of others—and in flattering and disgusting ways. At dinner, I watched him obscenely rotate his lips and tongue, claiming there was something stuck on the roof of his mouth. “Wipe that chimpanzee grin off your face,” she would say. And he would laugh long and hard, before standing up and bidding her adieu with a comic wink. He would then wait for her in her bedroom. With him, she was weak, no longer herself. She was often silly, drank too much, and laughed too hard. How could she be so stupid?
All the servants at Hidden Jade Path liked Fairweather because he greeted them in Shanghainese and he thanked them for every little thing. They were accustomed to being treated by others as if they were appendages to trays of tea. Everyone made guesses as to where Fairweather might have learned to speak their native tongue. From an amah? A courtesan? A mistress? Clearly a Chinese woman gave him his good Chinese heart. Among Chinese men, he had earned the fond title “Chinese-style foreign dignitary.” Although everyone knew his charm, there was little else known about him. Where in the United States did he hail from? Or was he indeed an American? Perhaps an American fugitive? They did not know his true name. He joked he had not used his name for so long, he had forgotten what it was. He simply went by the nickname Fairweather, which his fraternity brothers had given him years ago when he attended a nameless university he had described as “one of those hallowed halls.”
“Fair weather followed me wherever I went,” he said, “and so my dear friends welcomed me everywhere.” In Shanghai, he was invited to parties all over town, and he was the last to leave, unless he spent the night. Yet, oddly enough, no one faulted him for hosting no parties in return.
His popularity, one of the courtesans said, had to do with a skilled man who made counterfeit certificates of every kind. This clever man made visas, birth certificates, wedding certificates, and a valuable supply of documents stamped with the official consular seal, on which he had written in Chinese and English the various “herewith” and “henceforth” proclamations that the person whose name was inscribed had impressed the American consul as having “good character.” Fairweather sold them to his “special Chinese friends,” as he called them, so special he charged them five times what he paid the translator. They were happy to hand over the money. Any Chinese person, whether a businessman, courtesan, or madam, could wave his or her magic certificate of good character in any court in the International Settlement and have the Stars and Stripes defend his or her honor. No Chinese bureaucrat would have wasted his time challenging an American’s opinion, because in those courts, the Chinese would always lose. Since the certificate was good for only one year, Fairweather could assess how special his friends truly were on a regular and profitable basis.
I was the only person who did not fall for his greasy charms. I had suffered much pain seeing how my mother preferred his company to mine. And that pain enabled me to see how false he was. He used rehearsed words of concern, the same ones, the same gestures and gentlemanly offers of help. To him, people were prey easily brought down. I knew this because he tried his tricks and charm on me, even though he knew that I saw through his deceit. He sprinkled me with mocking flattery, extolling my messy hair, my bad elocution, the childish book I had chosen to read. I did not smile at him. I was curt if required to speak. My mother scolded me often for being rude to him. He simply laughed. I made it clear through my expression and stiff posture that I found him tiresome. I sighed or rolled my eyes. I did not show him my rage, because that would mean he had won. I left the gifts he brought me on the table in my mother’s office. Later, I would return to the table, and sure enough, the gifts would be gone.
Shortly after New Year’s Day, Fairweather and my mother had a falling-out. She had learned from Golden Dove that he had been sharing Puffy Cloud’s bed before and after he had been with her. My mother had made no claim to monogamy. After all, she took other lovers from time to time. But Fairweather was her favorite, and she had assumed that her lovers would not go poking a subordinate in her own house. I listened as Golden Dove told my mother the truth, preceded by this scolding remark: “I told you nine years ago that this man would use you as a fool. Lust leaves you blind long after you’ve lost your mind in bed.” Golden Dove had extracted from her maid the facts and said she would not spare Mother from hearing any of the details so that she would finally banish Fairweather from her bed. “Over the last year, he’s been filling her to the brim with so much ecstasy all the maids thought her cries were caused by a sadistic