I made tea, put the pot and cups on a tray, and returned to the living room. Helen lay slumped against the couch’s back cushions, her hands splayed with every finger as white as bone, her legs open and limp. I poured the tea and handed cups to Ruby and Helen. Tears still ran from Ruby’s eyes-beyond her control. Helen chewed on her lips and sucked air in through her nose in tormented breaths. I pushed aside the coffee table and sat on the floor between them, tucking my legs beneath me.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Helen,” I said, yet the words sounded small and insignificant compared to what my friend had been through. “And yours too, Ruby.”
I rested my head on Ruby’s thigh and put a hand on Helen’s knee, letting them feel through my skin and my warmth that I was part of this too. But they were so locked into their own grief that I doubted they were aware of me or could even hear what they each said.
Over the next hour, Helen told us that when she turned sixteen her father had arranged her marriage into the Kwok family in Soochow. “Baba informed me that Lai Kai’s family was wealthy and that I would live a comfortable life. My future mother-in-law sent me his photo. He was so handsome. The story I told you about my family going back to China during the worst of the Depression was true, but they would have gone anyway for my wedding. I was married on my eighteenth birthday. Lai Kai and I had a traditional ceremony. I wore all red and a traditional headdress with beading that hung down so Lai Kai and I wouldn’t see each other before we reached the privacy of the bridal chamber. Baba threw some water on the ground when I left our family compound in the home village, saying, ‘Marrying out a daughter is like tossing out a cup of water.’ I loved Lai Kai from the first moment he removed my headdress.”
The family celebrations continued for another three days.
“After the festivities ended,” she went on, “my family stayed in the home village near Canton, while Lai Kai and I began our married life with his family in Soochow. He was an architect, and he had a special practice, restoring large private gardens.”
As she dabbed her eyes, I remembered all the times Helen had talked about China: how she’d traveled everywhere (probably on her honeymoon), how Hangchow was the most romantic city (and of course it was, because she was in love), how she’d adored Soochow’s beautiful gardens (because she’d spent a lot of time in them with her husband). But there were the other stories: the Japanese invading, the plane strafing Helen and Monroe, only it probably hadn’t been Monroe. She’d been married, and she was a widow, which was why she’d dressed the way she did…
“When we first met, it had barely been a year since I lost Lai Kai,” she said. “The two of you saved me.”
Helen had kept all this a secret from Ruby and me for three years. It was unbelievable. But I didn’t have time to sort that out in my mind, because it was Ruby’s turn.
“Hideo was only twenty-seven years old,” she told us. “He was not only my mother’s best student but he was good at judo and fishing and laughing too. Grace, you would have liked him. He loved movies. Any kind. Gangsters. Cowboys and Indians. War pictures. He was the eldest child and the best of us. My mom and pop must be heartbroken…” More tears. “I’m so scared. Where are my parents? Do you think the authorities have taken Yori already? What will happen to me?”
We had no answers, so Helen resumed her story: “Lai Kai took me with him everywhere, even though it wasn’t traditional for me to be out like that. He said, ‘You have learned a lot from watching your father and brothers. You have a good business mind. You can help me with my clients. You can negotiate with contractors, gardeners, and artisans. You can balance our books and make sure we don’t waste anything on our projects.’ ”
“He sounds perfect,” Ruby said.
“He was. We were like a pair of chopsticks-always in harmony. I expected we would be like that forever, even if chaff-eating days should come upon us. We were that happy. But you know what they say. Extreme joy begets sorrow.”
They went back and forth, sharing their sadness. It felt like they were behind a wall and nothing I could say or do could reach them.
Helen told us about the invasion itself. Four years ago, Japanese troops landed on the shores of Hangchow Bay for the march to Nanking. They killed everyone and everything they saw. At the same time, other Japanese-supposedly living peacefully in China-launched balloons in Shanghai and other cities around the country emblazoned with Chinese characters which read: ONE MILLION JAPANESE TROOPS LAND NORTH OF HANGCHOW.
“We heard the message was designed to ruin the morale of the Chinese troops,” Helen said. “But what if it was true?”
Separately, another Japanese force entered Soochow. Helen put a hand over her breast. “The scar you’ve seen. That didn’t happen in a car accident. It was made by a bayonet. I wish I’d died.”
“But you didn’t,” Ruby said. “You lived, and you got out.”
“They left me for dead. I stayed in the rice paddy until night, then I slipped from one paddy to the next, slithering through the muck like a water snake. I slept during the day. I lost track of time. I was a walking corpse. I had to get to Shanghai, where I’d be safe in the International Settlement. I don’t know how long it took to cover the seventy-five miles or so. I went to the American Embassy. At first they wouldn’t let me through the gate. You can imagine how I looked. But when I spoke, they heard I was an American.”
She was put on a boat and sent to her family in the south.
“A Chinese widow is at the mercy of her husband’s family,” Helen continued. “They can care for her, or they can throw her in the street. But my husband’s family was gone, so they couldn’t determine my future. My parents took me in and brought me back to San Francisco. I was shunned by everyone-girls I’d gone to school with and the women at the Chinese Telephone Exchange-because no one wanted my bad fate to leave dust on them. All because of the Japs. They did this to me.” She paused before adding, “That day, Grace, when you asked me to go upstairs with you into the Forbidden City, I went because I had nothing to lose. You rescued me from decades as a proper Chinese widow-”
“I had nothing to do with what happened to you, but how could you ever tolerate being around me?” Ruby asked. “You must see me and-”
“What about your family? Your father?” I cut in before Helen could respond to Ruby’s worries. This wasn’t about her.
“Since Lai Kai’s death, my life has been an abyss of suffering, filled with deep water and hot fire. I became a pariah even in my own family. They all ignored me. My parents, my brothers. Everyone except Monroe. Baba believes that a wife belongs to her husband, even in death. Marrying out a daughter is like tossing out a cup of water,” Helen repeated bitterly. “No life lay ahead of me, because no proper Chinese man would ever marry me. I truly was a worthless branch on the family tree and a reminder to all those in the compound that I’d survived while so many others had died. Baba said that, as a widow, my only purpose in life was to linger on before dying. Back then I thought-I hoped-there would be something I could do that would make him acknowledge my existence again. But after he found us that day outside the club… well, you saw what happened. He didn’t care enough about me to stop me from working there, although later he said I had no bottom to the depths I would go to embarrass and humiliate the family. I had disgraced myself as a widow, who would have been better off committing suicide. If I couldn’t do that, then I should live as a chaste widow. I slipped just once. I thought Tim would be a comfort. He wasn’t, and now I have Tommy.” Her eyes glistened wet again. “Eddie gave me a way to be a chaste widow for real.”