Sister Noon (21 page)

Myrtle Rolphe had been very clear and quite insistent. Ti Wong would run any errand, she had said, except those that took him into Chinatown. His uncle and aunt were apparently resigned to his Christianity now, and to his new home at the Brown Ark, but they could always change their minds. Any new boat could bring additional relatives, or people who claimed to be additional relatives. Then poor Ti Wong would be taken away and forced to worship idols.

But surely he would be safe enough if he and Lizzie went to Chinatown together. They would take the mule
and then walk. Fresh air was always good for growing boys.

For many years a rumor had persisted that Chinatown existed as a false façade over a large underground city. Beneath the streets, the Chinese residents had dug a maze eight stories deep, where opium was smoked, slave girls hidden, gambling and tong wars pursued with Oriental implacability. In these tunnels a new race was feared to be evolving. These new, underground Chinese were said to be even more able to withstand hardship and deprivation than the originals. Someday they would come boiling out of their holes like ants.

There was another persistent rumor—that white women were kidnapped on the streets of Chinatown and kept as slaves in the dark below. Tell the proprietor I sent you, Mrs. Pleasant had said, Mrs. Pleasant about whom it was sometimes whispered that she sold white babies to Chinamen. From Lizzie’s point of view there was just enough danger in a trip to Chinatown to make it a pleasure and not so much as to make it an adventure.

The Hall of Joyful Relief was located on Washington Place. The streets were crowded and noisy, dark and narrow. It had rained in the night, the water rushing down California Street to puddle in the alleys and reflect the red and gilt of the balconies above. There was the smell of fish and incense. Ti Wong led Lizzie past a barbershop, where a man bent over a customer, reaching into his ear with a little black pick, then past a grocery, where sugar cane stalks leaned like fishing poles against the walls. Racks of plucked chickens hung by their necks in the windows. On the sidewalk were buckets of live crabs and turtles.

A white man emerged from an alleyway, winked at Lizzie rudely, and walked by. Nothing about him suggested that he was a gentleman. They passed a restaurant whose odors she had never encountered before and could not identify, but made her mouth water anyway. On Dupont, thin, reedy music floated down from an upper story. One huge golden tooth swung from the balcony railing of a building where, presumably, a dentist worked. On the next balcony over, Lizzie saw an old man smoking a pipe and staring back at her. They passed a house flying the dragon flag of China and a large sign in English that read: “Chow Loon, 4 family Parental Tablet Society.”

A woman with wooden soles and ankle bracelets walked by, her bracelets ringing, her shoes clapping. She wore rouge in a large red oval that covered her face, and her hair was oiled a shiny black. All San Francisco knew of the sad lives of Chinese slave women. The sight made Lizzie take hold of Ti Wong’s sleeve. He turned to look at her. She thought he might imagine she was trying to keep him, instead of her intention, which was to keep him safe. She let go.

In the window of the Hall of Joyful Relief, a row of green bottles caught the sun. Each bottle held a horned toad, pickled and standing on its head. The druggist sat at a table, writing something for another man who stood and dictated in rapid Chinese. When Lizzie and Ti Wong entered, the druggist held up one hand to silence them before they spoke. Lizzie watched him write. He held the brush upright with his thumb and index finger, but moved it down the page with the little finger. After he finished, the two men talked together briefly.

Then the druggist turned to Lizzie. “Tell him,” Lizzie
said to Ti Wong, “that I want a tea for headache. Tell him Mrs. Pleasant, the colored woman from Octavia Street, said he would know what to give me.”

She was embarrassed to have come. The bottles of toads did not look scientific to her. She had no faith in the enigmatic learning of the Orient. If their religion was primitive, wouldn’t their medicine be the same? She could just hear the bells of St. Mary’s tolling the hour, a reproachful, Christian sound. And yet, as administered by Mrs. Pleasant, the tea had seemed to help. To ignore actual experience was also a form of superstition.

The druggist reached over and took hold of Ti Wong’s clipped hair. He rubbed it with his fingers. Lizzie felt his disapproval. He touched the scars on Ti Wong’s throat. Next he reached past Ti Wong to Lizzie, grasping her wrist, pressing for her pulse. He spoke extensively in Chinese, then disappeared into the back of the shop, and returned with a paper envelope filled with dried leaves and flowers. He held up four fingers. Four cups of tea? Four cents? Lizzie turned to Ti Wong, who managed the purchase for her.

“What did he say to you?” she asked Ti Wong when they were on the street again.

“That Mrs. Pleasant very smart,” said Ti Wong. “That you have many headaches.”

It had been a much longer conversation than that, but Lizzie didn’t question him further. On the corner of Dupont and Washington, a bearded man sat at a table covered with red cloth on which were placed several painted boxes. He called to Ti Wong, reached into one box, pulled
out a paper, and read from it. He laughed, and all trace of expression left Ti Wong’s face. They walked on.

“Do you know that man?” Lizzie asked.

“Fortune-teller. Friend of uncle.”

“What did he say to you?”

Ti Wong fluttered his fingers along the scars on his neck as if he were playing a flute. Lizzie didn’t think he knew he was doing so. She wished it to be a cheerful mannerism, but feared it was a nervous one.

“My fortune,” he said. He wouldn’t look at her. “That Jesus boys be swimming soon, but Chinese boys stay happy and dry.”

a
fter living at the Ark in quarantine for so many weeks, Lizzie had been surprised by how hard it was to return to her solitary house. She’d thought she couldn’t wait for her quiet breakfasts again, with only the newspaper for company, for her own bedroom and her own bed, but sleep eluded her. Or so it seemed, though she must have dozed sometimes, because one morning she remembered a dream. She was in a boat with a blue-eyed man who turned out to be Mr. Finney. He stood. “Save me,” he said. He stepped onto the water and sank slowly, as if into mud—up to his knees, up to his waist, up to his shoulders, out of sight.

Lizzie had forgotten about Mr. Finney, and also about Jenny’s mother and her own plans regarding them. Currently she had no appetite for schemes of any kind. God
would do as God would do. Why meddle? Besides, she’d no way to contact Mr. Finney.

In fact, she could think of nothing worth getting out of bed for. Donations had more than doubled during the epidemics, while the number of wards had significantly dropped. Many of the survivors had been removed at the first chance by relatives. They would not be back until the specter of death faded from everyone’s mind. As a consequence there were beds and shoes enough for everyone. The larder was stocked. Lizzie didn’t suppose the budget had ever been so healthy.

Take a rest, everyone told Lizzie, take a trip. Just when she hadn’t heart enough for either.

She lay one morning, hardly moving, under her mother’s quilt, a pattern like a shackle of rings in blue and white. The white was turning to yellow and the fabric was beginning to fray. A large spider web filled the corner of the bedroom window. Lizzie couldn’t see the spider, but on the sill beneath the web lay the dry, hollow corpses of two flies. The window and the curtains needed washing. Nothing was as it should be. What kind of world was it that required the deaths of children? What kind of magical juncture was that?

Are you happy with your life? Mrs. Pleasant had asked her on that first afternoon in the House of Mystery, and ever since the question, and only since the question, the answer had become no. How did she used to do it, take such pleasure in small things? How would she ever be able to do so again?

If there had been someone to bring her breakfast, Lizzie wouldn’t have gotten up at all. She would have asked
for tea, blankets, a fire, a story with dragons in it—a story out of someone else’s childhood—or a lullaby from the same. But there was only the constant weight of Baby Edward, watching her lie there as if dead, when anyone could see she was anything but.

Finally she was too hungry. She went to the kitchen without combing her hair and made herself a poached egg on toast. Nothing spoiled food the way eating alone did. Flavors flattened, textures coarsened. Chocolate turned to copper. Chewing became audible and then thunderous. Lizzie looked back on her childhood in this very house, and it seemed to be all solitary meals, brought to her room on trays. She could not recall that she had eaten anything hot more than once or twice in her life before adulthood.

She decided to call on Mrs. Wright, who liked to tell stories and had few chances to do so. Lizzie had grown quite fond of her during their incarceration together. A visit would be an act of charity and, like all the best acts of charity, good for them both.

She found Mrs. Wright sitting in her chair in her bedroom at the Ark, facing the window, the curtains tightly pulled. There was little light in the room, and a cloying, medicinal smell, like fermented cloves. Mrs. Wright spoke before Lizzie had a chance to announce herself. “Did you have a nice time in the country, dear?”

Lizzie had talked of going to the country. “I haven’t left yet,” she said. She had no energy for holidays.

“You should. Birds and trees. God’s poetry. Nature triumphant. Of course, at my age the words bring that bit of a chill. Nature is as nature does.”

“Nonsense,” said Lizzie. “You’re in bloom.” After all,
Mrs. Wright couldn’t see herself. Perhaps she would believe this.

“Nonsense back to you.” Mrs. Wright’s voice was made of salt.

Lizzie went to open the curtains. The clouds hung low and unbroken. The light was sullen and turned everything it touched green.

She pulled a chair into place beside Mrs. Wright and described the light to her. “I feel that way myself today,” Lizzie finished. “Colorless, sunless.” It was an intimate revelation. There was no reason for her to trouble Mrs. Wright with it.

“I expect you’re just tired. You should buy yourself something. Ask Mr. McCallum at the Bank of California. He’ll give you a draft on my account.” Mrs. Wright waved her hands as if Lizzie had protested. “You know how I love to see you in something pretty.” She felt for Lizzie’s lap, patted it, found her hand and squeezed.

She’d drifted again. Lizzie was glad to see that she’d landed in a time when she had money and could be with someone she loved. “I’ll do that,” Lizzie said. “It’s very kind of you.”

The orange cat appeared outside. It was stalking something small, a rat perhaps, or a mole. The cat slid along the sand with focused, watery grace. Lizzie, whose heart was all with the world’s little victims, could do nothing but refuse to watch. She looked instead at the lowering sky. “The city feels different to me now that I’m out in it again,” she said. “It’s grown around us so quickly I don’t often notice, but I see it fresh just now. Like a scab laid over the past. I remember when this was all sand and
chaparral. I remember those gold and silver horses the Spanish used to ride. They were so beautiful. You never see those now. Of course, you remember it better than I.”

“Mostly I remember mud,” Mrs. Wright said, “with empty whiskey bottles sunk into it like cobblestones to make a sidewalk, and the way the fires kept on coming, one right after another.” She sucked on her false teeth with a wet, hissing sound, turned her face to Lizzie, her eyes white and veined as Florentine marble. “The land didn’t want us at first. We were the persistent ones, had to be. So bring on your tidal waves. We’ll survive them all right.”

Well, if nothing more than endurance was required, Lizzie decided she could do it. It occurred to her that probably some Indian woman about her age had once stood in these very sand dunes and thought the same thing. How many white people can there be? How long can they stay? How much can they change?

Still, some things do endure. All around us, all inside us, something ancient manages to survive. The cat had come up empty. It sat, licked at the bottom of one paw, and then turned its head so that Lizzie saw its blunt muzzle outlined against the sand.

M
ary Ellen Pleasant was called to testify on Allie Hill’s behalf six times during the years of the Sharon divorce case and was never cross-examined. Shortly before her death, she gave an interview in which she explained this fact. William Sharon had offered her $500,000 to quit the case. “Take the money,” he’d said. “Go away and be Queen of the Niggers.”

She’d refused the offer and the insult, but told him she would speak of both if his lawyers ever came after her on the stand.

Mrs. Pleasant was widely believed to be paying Allie Hill’s expenses, but what the trial really cost her was her reputation. The main thing Mrs. Pleasant was charged with was baby-farming. This was irrelevant to the Sharon case,
but went to character. Mrs. Pleasant had connections with foundling hospitals and prostitutes. She could tell any fun-loving man of influence and property that he’d had a child; he’d have no way of disproving it. She had a reckless unconcern for getting the correct baby into the correct family.