The Gilded Age Part 27

"Yeah?" Jessie squares off with Cameron, and the two women look as if they're about to come to blows. Zhu steps between them, her pulse pounding in her throat. "The likes of me, Bible thumper, gives them poor girls a chance. If they groom themselves up like I teach 'em and stay shrewd and keep clean, they earn better pay than in a G.o.dd.a.m.n sweatshop, a nicer life than in a factory. My parlor gives 'em a taste of a fine life they'd never know otherwise."

"This is hardly a parlor," Cameron snaps.

"Ah, h.e.l.l, Bible thumper," Jessie spits back. "Wing Sing, here, can earn more in one day even in this lousy crib than she could earn in a fancy jewelry store. She can eat. She's not walking the streets. Who knows? She might even marry some fine young sailor who adores her and gives her a life when he comes a-sailin' home."

"You are a scourge upon our society," Cameron shoots back.

"I'm the Queen of the Underworld, and don't you forget it."

"You will perish. The drink or the drugs or the sickness or some hooligan will do you in."

Jessie seizes Cameron's collar at the throat, tearing at Cameron's Art Nouveau gold brooch. "What in h.e.l.l do you know about hooligans?"

"Jessie!" Zhu grabs her, pulls her away. Jessie is practically throttling Miss Cameron.

"What do you know?" Jessie sobs. "My Rachael knew, but you? Miss Holier-Than-Thou, you don't know a stinkin' thing about hooligans."

"Come on, Jessie," Zhu pleads, prying her away from Cameron. She's heard Jessie mention Rachael many times. There's a story in there, a story Zhu has yet to hear. But now is not the time. Zhu pulls Jessie into the hallway, summons a maid, and hands her another shot of gin. "Calm down," she whispers while the Queen of the Underworld pulls out a hankie and dries her eyes.

Then Zhu goes back inside Wing Sing's crib.

Donaldina Cameron and the cop stand over the girl, who stares back at them defiantly.

"Very well," Cameron is saying. "America is a free country and I will not force you to go with me if you will not go."

"Please go with her, Wing Sing," Zhu says, but she knows in her heart the girl won't. Never supposed to happen this way. What now? Will Zhu become unborn and disappear? If the past changes, the future changes, too, in unknowable, unthinkable ways. Zhu waits to disappear-snuff, she's gone, never born-but nothing happens.

Nothing she can see, anyway.

Cameron looks at her, those large expressive eyes avid with curiosity. "So. You did not persuade her to leave us?"

"Certainly not."

"It is inevitable that we shall lose some," Cameron says to Andrews, who stands impa.s.sively with his ax. To Wing Sing, "I must warn you, my girl, you will burn in h.e.l.l."

"So I burn," Wing Sing says, shrugging. "I have silk sahm; you ruin silk sahm. I have jade and gold; you take jade and gold. Maybe you burn in h.e.l.l, too, fahn quai."

Zhu expects Cameron to gasp in outrage at the girl's blasphemy, but she only nods. Is it true? Did Cameron take Wing Sing's little dowry box that was supposed to have contained the aurelia? The box that keeps surfacing like a marked card?

"Why did you take her jewelry, Miss Cameron?" Zhu demands. "I told you I happen to know her mother gave it to her."

"I beg your pardon, but I did not take her jewelry. Selena came to the home the day after the rescue. She had a warrant for Wing Sing's arrest. All quite legal. She claimed the girl stole the jewelry from her."

"But she didn't, I tell you!"

"And I believe you. I believe Wing Sing. But the madam demanded that the girl hand over the jewelry or face arrest. I would have had no choice but to surrender her to the police. Before you know it, the highbinders would have bailed her out or Selena would have gone to the jail and dropped charges. Either way, the highbinders would have seized custody of her again. They would have taken her to another parlor, perhaps even to another city, and we would never find her again. It's a common tactic of these people. Miss Culbertson lost many girls that way."

Zhu heaves a huge sigh. "So you handed the dowry box over to Selena?"

"Of course. I am truly sorry, but I a.s.sumed it was better to give up some trinkets than to lose this young soul."

Zhu takes Wing Sing's shoulders. "There, you see? Miss Cameron didn't steal your jewelry. You might as well say Selena did. I'm going over to Terrific Street right now and fetching it back. If I do, will you think about going back to the home with Miss Cameron?"

"I not scrub floor," Wing Sing says, pouting.

"Perhaps Miss Cameron could find something else more uplifting for you to do. Isn't that right, Miss Cameron?" She doesn't hide the sarcasm in her voice, and Cameron curtly nods. "Remember what I told you before, Wing Sing. You'll never find a husband and wear your dowry if you stay in a place like this. Even Rusty won't tolerate you staying here for very long."

The girl frowns, but Zhu can see that she's listening, considering Zhu's plea. "Okay, Jade Eyes. You get my dowry back, maybe I go." Fiercely to Cameron, "But I not wait tables."

Zhu turns to Cameron. "If she agrees to go, I'm begging you to take her back."

"Of course. I am a Christian." Cameron sweeps out of the crib, Andrews trailing behind her like a bodyguard. "Good luck, Miss Wong."

Zhu steps out, too, and finds Jessie standing just outside the door, another shot of gin in her hand. "I heard every d.a.m.n thing."

"Then you know I'm not drawing up a contract till I get Wing Sing's dowry from Selena and the girl decides what she wants to do."

"Why does this kid mean so much to you, missy?"

"Because I can't go home again till she does, too."

Zhu strides up Montgomery to Terrific Street. The morning sun sears her skin. The Block's fine microderm will protect her from sunburn, won't it? It's supposed to. Still, Zhu feels as if she's burning up. She slides her cuff up her arm, stops dead in her tracks. Her hand and wrist exposed below the cuff are browned, much darker than the skin covered by cloth.

"Muse," she whispers, "why is my skin tanning?"

Flicker of alphanumerics in her peripheral vision. "Your skin is not tanning, Z. Wong," Muse whispers.

"Excuse me, yes, it is. Does my Block need replacing?"

"I show no indication that your Block needs replacing. I show no indication that your skin is tanning."

"I can see it with my own eyes!" Careful. A pa.s.sing milkman swivels his head at her.

"Must be an illusion," Muse whispers, the bland synthetic voice in subaudio mode. "You're tired."

"That doesn't help me, Muse. You're supposed to help me. You're supposed to guide me through the Gilded Age Project, and you're not. Why is that?"

"You're very tired," Muse says.

No kidding, she's very tired, spending half the night with Daniel, then rousted out of bed at dawn by Jessie. She leans against a streetlight, suddenly feeling ill. Bile rises in her throat, and her pulse pounds in her stomach beneath the corset. Her clothes feel too tight. Lend the gray silk dress to Wing Sing, she's your size. No, she's not. Zhu is not the same size as Wing Sing. She's not the same size she was months ago, not anymore. She's been piling on fat from all the rich food Jessie feeds her. Some mornings she aches from the gluttony.

One morning, as Zhu retched in the water closet, Mariah asked casually, "You in the family way, Miss Zhu?"

"Certainly not," she snapped. But she fled to her bedroom and checked the contraceptive patch behind her right knee. The patch was still bright red. Meaning it was still effective, though of course she never planned on having an affair during the Gilded Age Project. The contraceptive patch blocks her menstrual cycle completely. She's had no menses at all. She still has no menses. But Mariah's question and her bulging belly sent a chill through her. She couldn't possibly be pregnant. She didn't eat a bite that day, pleading dyspepsia, and the next day she felt much better, trimmed by fasting, restored.

"Muse," she whispers now, "why are you tormenting me like this?"

"I am here to advise you, Z. Wong, and to monitor the progress of your project."

"Then advise me about my attempt to regain the girl's dowry from Selena."

"Proceed at once!" Muse urges. "Hurry!"

Oh, excellent. Hurry. Muse is defective, malfunctioning. Someone has sabotaged the Gilded Age Project, sabotaged her. But why? She'll file a full report when she returns to her Now. She's got six months behind her and three months to go till the Chinese New Year when she's scheduled to step through the shuttle and return to her Now. She's still got time to take Wing Sing back to Nine Twenty Sacramento Street. Time to convince her to stay, time to settle her in. Time to have a word with Miss Cameron about what she's got a right to require of the girl, especially now that Wing Sing is pregnant. Time. Nine months of time, altogether, that's the duration of the Project. Nine months, as long as it takes to bring a child to term.

As she strides up Montgomery, realization punches her in her swollen stomach. Nine months. A coincidence? Or some plan of the Archivists, a plan hidden from her? She wasn't supposed to connect with a man like this. She wasn't supposed to fall in love. In love? Is she in love with Daniel J. Watkins?

No, she can't be. He's the quintessential Victorian man, with his arrogance and ignorance about women. He's a monster with his cocaine and alcohol habits, his mental and physical abuse of her. He's the kind of man women will rebel against throughout the twentieth century, first by winning the women's vote, then by claiming women's equality in the workplace, in the universities, in the bedroom. And the struggle won't end in the twentieth century. Zhu has witnessed herself how long the struggle goes on and on.

"Daniel's going to die," she whispers to Muse, her heart heavy with longing, "and I can't save him. But I want to. Call me a crazy idealist, but I want to."

"Everyone dies," Muse whispers back.

Zhu trudges uphill to Terrific Street, steeling herself.

The red light is burning brightly at Selena's, the front door flung open, music blaring. The parlor is crowded with white men. From the conversation Zhu overhears, a convention of distillery owners from Philadelphia are visiting the Napa wineries and touring the San Francisco restaurants. Today, the gentlemen are sampling Chinese. Selena is only too happy to accommodate their tastes.

Zhu slips through the party. Selena's girls lounge about in silk slips, their satin robes flung open, their theatrical white makeup creating Kabuki masks of their faces. Should she take advantage of this huge diversion, break into Selena's room, rummage around? But the madam has probably placed the rosewood box in her safe, and the safe will surely be well hidden. Better to confront the madam, get it over with.

"Hey, Selena," Zhu says, tapping the madam on her shoulder. "I've come for Wing Sing's dowry box."

The madam whirls around indignantly, abandoning a sprightly conversation with a pock-faced gentleman. "Get out my house, you."

"Not till you give me the girl's jewelry. You've got no right to it, and you know it."

"No right! You got no right to steal our girl. Chee Song Tong pay gold for her. Mr. Gong!" she yells. "Mr. Gong, look who here. You don't got to go look for her. She come to you."

Hatchet men stroll out of the kitchen, flush with drink, their fingers oily from fried wontons, each with a moll hanging on his arm. The eyepatch wipes his hands on his companion's satin robe and shoves her away. The fat man throws the rest of his drink down his throat, the wiry fellow gobbles his wonton.

They surround Zhu.

She tenses, positioning her hands, crouching, summoning her strength. Yeah. Forget the skirts and corset and b.u.t.ton boots, she can fight anyone anytime, anywhere. The hatchet men haven't seen her in action, now have they? Not yet.

The eyepatch thrusts his face at her, running his eagle eye over her cerulean dress. "Pretty girl. And I thought you a good girl, Jade Eyes. You say you want to talk of family with little sister-friend, not go to fahn quai. Not help fahn quai steal our girl. Then you come back here, looking for her gold? This not good, Jade Eyes. What can we do about this?"

"I say put her to work," Selena says. "Girl for girl. That fair."

"No, Mr. Chee want blood payment," the eyepatch says. He reaches into his jacket, takes out a long, curved knife. A b.u.t.terfly knife. "We teach the people of Tan not to steal from Chee Song Tong."

The fat man and the wiry fellow grin, as if killing Zhu would be more gratifying than turning her out. Go figure nineteenth century men.

"Blood payment?" Selena shouts. "Fools! Not enough pretty Chinese tail in this town. I pay much gold for her myself, girl for girl. I get one on Jessie Malone."

Zhu finds herself silently thanking the despicable madam as the hatchet men circle around her, considering their possibilities. The eyepatch is as cold as ice. Any trace of a friendly connection between them has long since vanished.

But they're drunk, Zhu sober, and she seizes a spittoon, dashes the foul contents on the eyepatch, his fellow gangsters, and Selena. People start screaming, and the house maids and the bartender block the front door, the cook blocks the kitchen door. Zhu dashes up the stairs. Think! What did Cameron say before the raid and rescue of Wing Sing?

"Muse," she whispers, "didn't Cameron say there's a trapdoor?"

"Southeast bedroom," Muse whispers. "Goes to the roof. Narrow gap between the rooftops. Fire escape goes down from the next roof over. A butcher shop. Go, go, go!"

She dashes up the second flight of stairs, clatters down the hall. Dead end! She races down the other way, finds a third flight of stairs to a half story tucked around the corner. She finds the southeast bedroom, the door unlocked, dashes in, and locks the door behind her.

There, in the ceiling, a pull and a trapdoor like the entrance to an attic. That's it! Zhu slides a chair over, climbs up on the rickety seat. The chair wobbles with her frantic action, sending her skirts swaying. d.a.m.n these skirts! Careful, don't break your neck! She gives the pull a good yank and the trapdoor flips open, revealing blue skies above. A cast-iron stepladder gracefully telescopes out and down. Bootheels pound down the hall outside the bedroom. She scrambles up the stepladder onto the roof, pulls the ladder up behind her, slams the trapdoor shut. In a corner of the rooftop, she spies a barrel half-filled and no doubt heavy with dried-up tar. She half-scoots, half-rolls the barrel over the trapdoor, tearing a seam in her armhole.

Then, her heels sinking into the warm tar, she ventures to the roof's edge. There's a gap, all right, maybe two feet, between the house and the butcher's shop. That's supposed to be narrow? Oh, man! Her head swirls with vertigo to look down. She pulls off her b.u.t.ton boots, tosses them over, lifts and gathers her skirts, and works up a good run, pure fear propelling her. Help me, Kuan Yin. She leaps, her skirts billowing, and tumbles onto the next roof, blunting the impact of her landing with a practiced roll of her hips.

She leaps to her feet, untangling the skirts from her knees. The stink of offal and blood from the butcher's shop nearly makes her retch. She pulls on her b.u.t.ton boots, finds the fire escape. Breath ragged in her throat, heartbeat pounding in her chest, she climbs down as quickly and quietly as she can. A butcher leans out of a window as she pa.s.ses by, his hands smeared with blood and gobbets of flesh, his knife dripping.

She drops down into an alley half a block from Broadway, which bustles with traffic. The cries of the ragpickers rise over the clatter of fine carriages.

"Take Broadway to Stockton," Muse whispers in subaudio, "go through Tangrenbu. Hurry."

Tangrenbu is the last place she wants to go, but she follows Muse's instructions, slowing to a walk as the invisible barrier of Chinatown rises before her like a tangible thing. She's reasonably safe in her Western dress, her lungs heaving against the corset's constriction. Anonymous slim men in denim sahms crowd the street, their fedoras pulled low, their faces averted.

Zhu presses herself against a shop wall, glances down the block. The hatchet men are milling around on the sidewalk outside Selena's. The eyepatch spots her the moment she ventures across Pacific Avenue and hurries down Stockton. Well, of course. Who else in Tangrenbu would be dressed in cerulean silk? What she'd give right now for her denim sahm and fedora! She pushes men aside as the hatchet men pound down the block, scattering a basket of bok choy, kicking over a cage of clucking chickens.

"Turn left," Muse whispers, alphanumerics flickering in her peripheral vision. "Down that alley, turn right. Go in there."

Elaborate gingerbread, a curving roof, gilt balconies-it's the joss house she pa.s.sed by before. Zhu ducks inside, kicks off her b.u.t.ton boots.

"Joss house," Muse whispers, "means G.o.d house. From the Portuguese 'deos.' Corrupted to 'joss.'"

"Gosh, I always wanted to know that."

"Of course you did."

The joss house is smoky from burning incense and lit by a few flickering candles, but she's still too visible. Beneath the dress and underskirt, her slip, corset, and bloomers are white. She rips the cerulean dress off in front of the astonished priest, popping b.u.t.tons, and wads the silk into a bundle. She tears off her hat and veil, and approaches the shrine. If the other wors.h.i.+ppers notice her, they give no sign but serenely continue their meditations. She finds a place in their midst, bows her head, calms her beating heart, and sits cross-legged, smoothing her slip around her. You can bet no lady of this time would ever sit like this. But what will the eyepatch notice in the smoky dimness?

The hatchet men stride in, their Western boots a clattering contrast to the silence of Tangrenbu's sandals and slippers. Zhu huddles next to a wizened old man and instinctively, perhaps missing his wife or his daughter back in China, the old man pats her shoulder. She takes his arm, slings it across her shoulders, and huddles closer. The hush, the darkness, the flickering candlelight, the incense, and especially the large gilt deity reclining on the shrine piled high with gifts from the pious-all these subdue the eyepatch and his companions. Or maybe it's the tug of tradition. They glance around, jostle a wors.h.i.+pper, and quickly leave.

A hand on her arm, and Zhu cries out. The priest gently asks her something, but she can't understand his lilting words. A dialect she's not familiar with. She finds a coin in her feedbag purse, hands it to him. He nods and smiles.

She catches her breath, looks around. Paper flowers spill from the ceiling to the floor in long, sumptuous strands. Silk ta.s.sels, gold silk flags, loops of multicolored beads bedeck the shrine. The altarpiece is a huge slab of mottled green marble. Bronze bowls with the look of antiquity hold smoldering cones of incense.

She smiles at the wizened old man, whose face is now s.h.i.+ny with tears. She crawls toward the shrine in supplication. Thick yellow candles mounted in ma.s.sive bra.s.s candlesticks send forth their scent and soft golden light. Hundreds of slim sticks of incense arranged like smoking fans flank the shrine. Supplicants have heaped fresh fruit, left steaming teas in cloisonne teapots. There is a tray with a whole roasted pig, clay-pot chickens, bowls of rice. The scents of food and tea mingle with the incense, the candle smoke.

The priest takes a strip of parchment scrawled with calligraphy, burns it in a bra.s.s bowl, scoops the ashes into a bowl of water, and sucks the water into his mouth. He seizes a bra.s.s bell and, clanging the bell loudly, sprays ashy water from his mouth onto the floor as he whirls like a dervish.

The wors.h.i.+pers murmur in approval. "Cast demons out. Cast demons out."

Zhu crawls closer to the shrine, peering up at the impressive gilt deity. With a start, she recognizes Her-Kuan Yin.

Here in this joss house in San Francisco, in 1895?