Mary McGladery
The Chinese culture that I now distance my self from places a lot of emphasis on fortune and good luck. Usually I do not believe in such superstitious practice but I can't help but wonder if there is some truth to this belief. Today my husband Joseph and I live in a comfortable life in San Francisco where we have a flourishing delivery and funeral business. Even our home is a symbol of our arduous climb up the social ladder. We don't live in Chinatown with the other Chinese laundry women and merchants. No, we live in a beautiful and clean middle class neighborhood where no traces of Chinese-ness can be found except for the occasional visit by the Chinese farmer who sells us our bok choy and bamboo shoots.
But as I was saying, fortune actually might mean something... This morning I was looking through an old dusty trunk that we chucked in the back of our bedroom closet and I came across this photograph of myself from my days in "orphanage." Instantly, once I laid eyes on the picture, my vision was quickly blurred by the welling of hot tears as memories from those horrid 10 years flooded my mind.
I remember when I first arrived at the orphanage the madame treated me so kindly. She gave me dumplings, hot soup and tea for almost every meal and insisted on giving me these new clothes she had. I couldn't believe that I had found such a refuge, especially here in America, a foreign country, when I had been abandoned by my own family.
However, my disillusion quickly disappeared. After two weeks or so of being babied and pampered by madame, she began talking about a debt that I owed to her and the orphanage. At first I didn't understand. The syrupy sweet smile on her lips didn't seem to match the words that leaving her mouth. "You don't actually think we are taking care of you for free, do you? Everything cost in this world Mary..." This woman, who for the past two weeks had taken care of me as a mother and had even given me her surname, was now betraying me.
Although I was still terribly confused after our talk, I quickly began to understand my situation better when I saw more and more often girls whom I had considered my big sisters going into rooms with white men off the street for an hour or so and walking out sore, tired, and disheveled. The reality of this world was no longer hidden from me.
For 10 years until Joseph married me, I witnessed and later partook in this orphanage system to pay off my mountain of debt. I remember think at the time that I would remain a sex slave forever, having to go into prostitution after I reached 18 since sex was the only trade I knew. Fortunately, Joseph came into my life. I don't think he realizes to this day how he saved me from a life of hell. If not for him, I would be haggard old woman still luring white men off the street with promises of fulfilling their every desire, no matter how perverted or abusive.
I'm lucky and I know it. There are literally hundreds of young girls that came before and after me who have fallen to this same fate that I just described above. But just as I am tempted to embrace this Chinese culture of luck and fortune, I remember that Chinese-ness or Chinese anything will ruin everything that Joseph and I have built together. My culture and my heritage is worth the price of living the life that we do.
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