Peiling asked, her eyes darting around. “Baobao, are you troubling Big Sister?”
Of course the baby didn’t respond, so I did for him. “No trouble, Little Sister.”
Peiling suddenly asked, “Miss Camilla, can you sing us a song? I’m sure Baobao would love your singing.”
I felt a jolt. “Peiling! I told you I’m not Camilla, but just a fan. My name is Jasmine Chen, please remember. Just call me Big Sister.”
“Yes, of course, you’re Jasmine Chen, Big Sister. So, now can you sing me and Baobao a song?”
A strong and demanding little girl!
With everything on my mind, I wasn’t in the mood for singing. But since this would be the last time I saw her and her Baobao, I agreed.
As I was about to put down the baby, he had fallen asleep in my arms, his saliva making a dark stain on my blouse, Peiling reached her hand to take Baobao and placed him in her lap.
“Which song would you like to hear?” I asked.
“‘Looking for You.’”
As usual, I imagined that I was staring at the Huangpu River and waiting for the morning sun to rise.
Though this is a romantic love song, it did suit my present situation looking for Jinjin and Jinying.
Peiling smiled happily. “Big Sister, your singing is so beautiful!”
“Thank you, Peiling. If you practice hard, someday maybe you’ll sing like me.”
“You think so?”
Just then Baobao woke up crying.
Peiling said, “Can you hold him for a while? Baobao’s hungry, let me get him something to eat,” she said, then walked away.
The little one rubbed his head on my chest, his lips found my breasts as if seeking milk. I caressed his head and planted a kiss on his chubby cheek. Such a handsome baby, why would his parents have the heart to leave him as an orphan?
Seconds later, Peiling came back with what looked like a leftover bit of bun. She put it in her mouth, chewed it briefly to soften it, then put it on her finger and then into Baobao’s mouth. Baobao sucked with all his strength.
“Sorry, little baby, that’s all I could find.”
After the baby finished eating, I said, “Peiling, I need to go now, please take very good care of yourself and Baobao.”
I took several bills from my handbag and secretly put them in her pocket.
“Can you come back soon to sing and hold Baobao?”
“I’ll try,” I said, blinking back tears.
I wish I could.
PART FIVE
17
Goddess Behind the Secret Gate
After an uneventful voyage back to Hong Kong, I took a taxi straight back to my apartment, a small, inexpensive one in the Wanchai district, next to Victoria Harbor. The neighbors paid no notice of my leaving or coming back. It was a big building where people rented, sublet, even sub-sublet. Tenants tended to ignore each other and go about their own business like ghosts wandering in a cemetery.
So I found myself back in this run-down neighborhood of blue-collar workers, street vendors, shady businessmen, and families down on their luck. There was also a large contingent of foreigners, seeking the favors of the ladies of Hong Kong’s most famous red light district, especially those vagina-starved young men from the sea—American sailors. These transients sailed away soon after their nights of luxury between accommodating thighs, but left behind exotic, mixed-race children. In this atmosphere, a young single woman would not stand out as she might in a more respectable district.
My two-bedroom apartment had everything I needed, including a kitchen and even a flush toilet, so I didn’t have to share either the preparation of my food, or its end result, with denizens of the other apartments.
Lonely again, my only comfort in this place where I knew no one was gazing out my window overlooking Victoria Harbor. I liked to watch the fishing boats come and go, and steamships depart for remote places. In the mornings, when the ladies of the night were still asleep, I’d go out and take a walk, then either buy one of the long doughnuts or dim sum wrapped in yesterday’s newspaper.
Other times, I would go to a working men’s tea house and sit by myself amidst the din, reading my newspaper and enjoying a pork bun or flat rice noodles with shrimp. But my preoccupation was trying to figure out my next move. Unfortunately, there was not much news about Shanghai in the Hong Kong papers, so I still had no idea what had happened to the Shanghai gangs, my little Jinjin, his father, Jinying, and my other lover Gao, the bodyguard.
Jinying’s diary said he was in Hong Kong looking for me. But how could we find each other in this dense city of several million? We couldn’t put a missing person ad in a newspaper, or post flyers on lampposts and walls. Unless I used a fake name, but then how would he know it’s me?
The people close to my twenty-year-old life, whether enemies or loved ones, had vanished like the fogs above the Huangpu River. Feeling totally disheartened, I thought maybe I should just accept the fact and move on. But to where, and for what? I didn’t think my life would be complete without my Jinjin and his father.
I felt my life was like a train that kept rushing forward and never stopped at a station.
My young, torturous life that seemed to pass so quickly in Shanghai. Now in Hong Kong, it seemed to wobble along at the pace of a tortoise. I had to admit to myself that I missed the life I had striven so hard to escape.
Maybe I should take a break. Since I had money, why not explore Hong Kong while fate was giving me a respite? Maybe what I needed was some diversion to recharge my energy and give me some ideas as how to find my baby and his father. I’d never had a real vacation, or even thought it would be possible for me. True, I’d gone to Paris with Lung, Jinying, and Gao, but every moment was haunted by the possibility of Lung’s imminent murder.
So during the following weeks, I tried to put aside my worries and live in the here and now, letting myself do whatever I felt like: read, stroll, sleep, sing. Leisure was a luxury I’d never experienced before.
My life had seemed like a slippery fish always about to slide out of my grasp. Yet, now, after days of touring the city and the outlying islands in a tourist’s frame of mind, I began to think it might be possible to get a life, a normal one, even if only temporarily.
One day, flipping through a tourist guidebook, an area called Shek Tong Tsui caught my attention. A decade ago this place, which was close to Wanchai, not far from where I now lived, had been famous for prostitution houses. Like Shanghai Lily on the screen, Shek Tong Tsui’s night ladies had to “sell their smile,” meaning their body, to survive. Since I was an orphan and a spy, I felt a certain bond with women who live by love at society’s margins: prostitutes, mistresses, concubines.
I decided to visit this place where once lived these “goddesses behind the secret gate.”
So, on a pleasant, balmy evening, I found myself seated on the more expensive upper deck of a tram rumbling its way to Shek Tong Tsui. What you got from the extra ten cents difference was having a wide seat without being forced to rub your arms, back, and bottom against those of your fellow passengers, or of having their offensive body parts massage yours.
However, the young couple across from me who’d together splurged an extra twenty cents, only used the opportunity to rub against each other like their poorer comrades downstairs. A middle-aged man two rows in front of them was holding a radio from which spilled the song “When Will You Come Back?”