Free Shanghai Girls by Lisa See

availability of Shanghai’s Famous Flowers. One artist painted us chasing butterflies in the shade of willow trees. Everyone knows that butterflies are symbols for lovers, while “willow shade” is a euphemism for that hairy place on women down low. But this new poster is a long way from any of that and further still from the one of the two of us doing the tango that so upset Mama. This is a beautiful painting; May has to have lain naked for hours before Z.G.’s eyes.
    But I’m not just shocked. I’m also disappointed in May for allowing Z.G. to talk her into this. I’m angry at him for preying on her vulnerability. And I’m heartsick that May and I have to take it. This is how women end up on the street selling their bodies. But then this is how it is for women everywhere. You experience one lapse in conscience, in how low you think you’ll go, in what you’ll accept, and pretty soon you’re at the bottom. You’ve become a girl with three holes, the lowest form of prostitute, living on one of the floating brothels in Soochow Creek, catering to Chinese so poor they don’t mind catching a loathsome disease in exchange for a few humping moments of the husband-wife thing.
    As disheartened and disgusted as I am, I go back to Z.G.’s the next day and the day after that. We need the money. And soon enough, there I am practically naked. People say you need to be strong, smart, and lucky to survive hard times, war, a natural disaster, or physical torture. But I say emotional abuse—anxiety, fear, guilt, and degradation—is far worse and much harder to survive. This is the first time that May and I have ever experienced anything like this, and it saps our energy. While I find it almost impossible to sleep, May retreats to those numbing depths. She dozes in bed until noon. She takes naps. Some days at Z.G.’s she even starts to nod off as he paints. He lets her out of her pose so she can sleep on the couch. While he paints me, I look at May, her fingers placed just so but still not entirely covering her face, which is pensive even in sleep.
    We’re like lobsters slowly boiling to death in a pot of water. We sit for Z.G., attend parties, and drink absinthe frappés. We go to clubs with Betsy, and let others pay for us. We go to movies. We window-shop. We simply don’t understand what’s happening to us.
    THE DATE NEARS when we’re supposed to leave for Hong Kong to meet our husbands. May and I have no intention of getting on that boat. We couldn’t even if we wanted to because I threw away the tickets, but our parents don’t know that. May and I go through the motions of packing so they won’t be suspicious. We listen to Mama’s and Baba’s travel advice. The night before our scheduled departure, they take us out for dinner and tell us how much they’ll miss us. May and I wake up early the next morning, get dressed, and leave the house before anyone else rises. When we return home that evening—long after the ship has sailed—Mama weeps with pleasure that we are still here and Baba yells at us for not doing our duty.
    “You don’t understand what you’ve done,” he shouts. “There’s going to be trouble.”
    “You worry too much,” May says in her lightest voice. “Old Man Louie and his sons have left Shanghai, and in a few days they’ll leave China for good. They can’t do anything to us now.”
    Baba’s face roils with anger. For a moment I think he’s going to hit May, but then he squeezes his hands into fists, marches off to the salon, and slams the door. May looks at me and shrugs. Then we turn ourselves over to our mother, who takes us into the kitchen and orders Cook to make tea and give us a couple of precious English butter cookies he has saved in a tin.
    Eleven days later, it rains in the morning, so the heat and humidity are not as bad as usual. Z.G. splurges and hires a taxi to take us to the Lunghua Pagoda on the outskirts of the city to fly his kite. It isn’t the most beautiful