How can she possibly say that when I’ve sacrificed so much for her? My resentment has grown over the years, but it has never stopped me from giving May everything she wants.

“You’re always being given opportunities,” May continues, her voice gathering strength.

Now I understand what’s happening. If she can’t have her way, she’s going to fight me. But I’m not going to give in so easily this time.

“What opportunities?”

“Mama and Baba sent you to college-”

That’s going way back in time, but I say, “You didn’t want to go.”

“Everyone likes you more than they like me.”

“That’s ridiculous-”

“Even my own husband prefers you to me. He’s always nice to you.”

What’s the point in arguing with May? Our disagreements have always been about the same things: our parents liked one or the other of us more, one of us has something better-whether it’s a better flavor ice cream, a prettier pair of shoes, or a more companionable husband-or one of us wants to do something at the expense of the other.

“I can scream just as well as you,” May persists. “I’m asking again. Please let me do it.”

“What about Joy?” I ask softly, attacking my sister’s vulnerable spot. “You know Sam and I are saving for her to go to college one day.”

“That’s fifteen years away, and you’re assuming an American college will take Joy-a Chinese girl.” My sister’s eyes, which earlier tonight had sparkled with pleasure and pride, suddenly glare at me. For an instant I’m thrown back in time to our kitchen in Shanghai when Cook tried to teach us how to make dumplings. It had started out as something fun for May and me to do and had ended in a terrible fight. Now, all these years later, what was supposed to be an enjoyable outing has turned bitter. When I look at May, I see not just jealousy but hate. “Let me have this part,” she says. “I earned it.”

I think about how she works for Tom Gubbins, how she doesn’t have to stay confined in one of the Golden enterprises all day, how she gets to come to sets like these with my daughter and be out of Chinatown and China City for a while.

“May-”

“If you’re going to start in with all your grudges against me, I don’t want to hear them. You refuse to see how lucky you are. Don’t you know how jealous I am? I can’t help it. You have everything. You have a husband who loves you and talks to you. You have a daughter.”

There! She said it. My reply comes out of my mouth so fast, I don’t have a chance to think about it or stop it.

“Then why is it that you spend more time with her than I do?” As I speak, I’m reminded of the old saying that diseases go in through the mouth, disasters come out of the mouth, meaning that words can be like bombs themselves.

“Joy prefers being with me because I hug and kiss her, because I hold her hand, because I let her sit on my lap,” May snaps back.

“That’s not the Chinese way to raise a child. Touching like that-”

“You didn’t believe that when we lived with Mama and Baba,” May says.

“True, but I’m a mother now and I don’t want Joy to grow up to be porcelain with scars.”

“Being hugged by her mother won’t cause her to become a loose woman-”

“Don’t tell me how to raise my daughter!” At the sharp tone in my voice, some of the extras peer at us curiously.

“You won’t let me have anything, but Baba promised that if we agreed to our marriages I would get to go to Haolaiwu.”

That’s not how I remember it. And she’s changing the subject. And she’s confusing things.

“This is about Joy,” I say, “not your silly dreams.”

“Oh? A few minutes ago you were accusing me of embarrassing the Chinese people. Now you’re saying it’s bad for me but fine if you and Joy do it?”

This is a problem for me and one I don’t know how to reconcile in my mind. I’m not thinking properly, but I don’t think my sister is either.

“You have everything,” May repeats as she begins to weep. “I have nothing. Can’t you let me have this one thing? Please? Please?”

I shut my mouth and let the heat of my anger burn my skin. I refuse to believe or acknowledge any of her reasons for why she-and not I-should have this part in the movie, but then I do what I’ve always done. I give in to my moy moy. It’s the only way for her jealousy to dissipate. It’s the only way for my resentment to go back to its hiding place while giving me time to think about how to get Joy out of this business without creating more friction. May and I are sisters. We’ll always fight, but we’ll always make up as well. That’s what sisters do: we argue, we point out each other’s frailties, mistakes, and bad judgment, we flash the insecurities we’ve had since childhood, and then we come back together. Until the next time.

May takes my daughter and my place in the scene. The director doesn’t notice that my sister isn’t me. To him, it seems one Chinese woman dressed in black trousers, smeared with fake mud and blood, and carrying a little girl is interchangeable with the next. For the next few hours, I listen to my sister scream again and again. The director’s never satisfied, but he doesn’t replace May either.

ON DECEMBER 7, 1941, three months after my night on the film set, the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor and the United States enters the war. The very next day, the Japanese attack Hong Kong. On Christmas Day, the British surrender the island. Also on December 8, at precisely 10:00 A.M., the Japanese seize the International Settlement in Shanghai and raise their flag atop the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank on the Bund. During the next four years, foreigners imprudent enough to have remained in Shanghai live in internment camps, while in this country, the Angel Island Immigration Station is turned over to the U.S. Army to house Japanese, Italian, and German prisoners of war. Here in Chinatown, Uncle Edfred-without giving any of us a chance to weigh in-joins the first group of men to enlist.

“What! Why would you do that?” Uncle Wilburt demands in Sze Yup when his birth son announces the news.

“Because I feel patriotic!” comes Uncle Edfred’s jubilant answer. “I want to fight! Number one reason: I want to help defeat our shared enemy-the Jap. Number two reason: If I enlist, I can become a citizen. A real citizen. Down the line, of course.” If he lives, the rest of us think. “All the laundrymen are doing it,” he adds when he sees our lack of enthusiasm.

“Laundrymen! Bah! Some people will do anything not to be laundrymen.” Uncle Wilburt sucks air through his teeth in worry.

“What did you do when they asked about your citizenship status?” This comes from Sam, who’s always anxious that one of us will be caught and we’ll all be sent back to China. “You’re a paper son. Are they going to come looking for the rest of us?”

“I admitted my status straight out. I told them I came over on fake papers,” Edfred answers. “But they didn’t seem too interested. When they asked anything that I thought might come back to the rest of you, I said, ‘I’m an orphan. Now do you want me to fight or not?’”

“But aren’t you too old?” Uncle Charley asks.

“On paper I’m thirty, but I’m really only twenty-three. I’m fit and I’m willing to die. Why wouldn’t they take me?”

A few days later, Edfred enters the café and announces, “The Army told me to buy my own socks. Where do I do that?” He’s lived in Los Angeles for seventeen years, but he still doesn’t know where or how to get even the most basic necessities. I offer to take him to the May Company, but he says, “I need to go by myself. I’ve got to learn to be on my own now.” He returns a couple of hours later scraped up and with holes in the knees of his baggy pants. “I bought the socks all right, but when I left the store, some men pushed me in the street. They thought I was a Jap.”