The Gilded Age, a Time Travel (22 page)

There’s
a
ping
inside Zhu’s forehead, and the strange events of the day
fast-forward through her memory in a kaleidoscope of images—Daniel stalking
her, Daniel making love to her. The sign on the cigar wagon changing—she’s
sure
it changed!—and the driver of the wagon, first skinny, then stout. She herself
in a long silk dress nibbling on buttered toast. And now this, the girl who is
the object of her project, dolled up beyond recognition.

Reality
changing. Reality changing right before her eyes. And she’s aware of it. She’s
seeing
it!

“Wing
Sing?” Zhu whispers. “May I speak with you?”

This
fantastic creature called Wing Sing shrugs disdainfully. The other girls giggle
and whisper, their dark eyes darting back and forth. The gray-haired
gentleman—it
is
Mr. Heald—yawns, exposing his big yellow teeth, and
holds out his goblet for more plum wine. Wing Sing dutifully takes Zhu by the
hand and leads her upstairs to her bedroom. She lies down on the bed like a
mannequin and awaits her fate.

Zhu
closes the door and locks it with the flimsy little chain lock that could
easily be kicked apart by someone wanting in. She takes off the fedora, shakes
out her hair, takes the spectacles off her face, and reveals her eyes,
gene-tweaked green. “Hi. Remember me?”

The
girl sits up. Her painted mouth drops open, her painted eyes widen. “
Oy!
Jade Eyes?”

“Thank
goodness! Don’t yell. Call me ‘brother cousin,’ okay?” Zhu breathes a sigh of
relief. “So you
do
remember me?”

Wing
Sing nods—at least
that
part of reality hasn’t changed--and glances
fearfully at the door. “Sure, I remember you.” Someone listening at the
keyhole, apparently.

Zhu
pulls the girl to the farthest corner of the room. They crouch on the floor
beside a chamber pot.

“Are
you all right? How are they treating you?”

As
if it isn’t obvious how the madam is treating one of her girls. But Wing Sing
says, “I do okay, Jade Eyes.” In fact, she looks well-fed, healthy, even sleek beneath
the doll mask. No bruises, as far as Zhu can see. No disease. Not yet. “Chee
Song Tong pay much gold for me,” she says, glowing with pride. “Miss Selena
treat me nice. I lucky. I sign good contract. One day I go home.”

Go
home.
Yes. Zhu has got to get this girl to the home, to the
Presbyterian mission where she’ll be safe. But how, now that she’s working at
Selena’s? How, now that she believes she’s lucky, working at Selena’s?

“How
many johns do you see in a day?”

“Oh,
ten, maybe. Maybe ten more after that.”

“Wing
Sing, ten or twenty? There’s a big difference.”

She
only shrugs, no longer the frightened teenager. Even to herself, she’s become a
commodity. “I earn much gold.”

“Wing
Sing, do you still have your dowry box of jewelry?”

The
girl nods. She reaches beneath the bed, pulls out the rosewood box.

Zhu
inhales sharply, her breath catching in her throat. Oh! The aurelia? Is it
finally there?

Wing
Sing flips open the lid, flashes the contents at Zhu. “This jade, this gold.”

Is
that the curve of a golden wing? Zhu reaches for the box, but Wing Sing claps
the lid shut and shoves the box under the bed.

“Let
me see.”

“No.”
Wing Sing gives her a suspicious look. “Why you want to see my dowry, anyway?”

Zhu
sighs. Could the aurelia appear in the dowry box now, like it was supposed to be
there in the first place? Well, why not? Reality is shifting and changing all
around her, sometimes subtly, sometimes not so subtly. Why can’t something go
right for a change?

“I could
give you an appraisal. An idea of what it’s worth. With such a fine dowry,
you’ll surely find a husband, a man who will be happy to marry you. You’ll have
your own daughter, your own place in life. Your own home.”

Wing
Sing only stares, her dark eyes revealing nothing.

“Wing
Sing,” Zhu says, “isn’t that what you really want?”

The
girl shifts uncomfortably, and her eyes dart away.

“It’s
a lot to think about, I know.” Win her over. She’s got to win her over. “Why
don’t you tell me your story. How did you get to Gold Mountain?”

“Oh,
I like many northern girls,” she says, leaning back against the bed. “One day a
man come to my mama. He say he want to marry me. She cry, but she say okay. She
give me dowry box and I go. Then this man sell me in Shanghai to another man,
who take me to San Francisco. It is the way, Jade Eyes. It is my fate. Same for
many, many girls here.” There’s a little noise at the door. “Okay, brother cousin,”
Wing Sing calls out. “Listen, Jade Eyes, at first I scared. At first I want to
run away from Miss Selena. Now I see what I must do. I very, very lucky! I
finish contract with Miss Selena, then I go home, okay? I go home rich, Jade
Eyes.”

“Listen
to me, Wing Sing. You’re never going to get rich working here. If you stay
here, you’ll never go home. You’ll never have your own daughter. You’ll never have
your own home. It’s going to wear you out, Wing Sing. It’s going to make you
sick and sad and desperate. You’ll die before your contract is finished.”

The
girl’s face darkens. She plugs her fingers in her ears. “No. No!”

“You’ve
got to get out of here, Wing Sing. Get out before it’s too late.”

“But
how? Chee Song Tong kill me!”

“If
I could arrange it, if I could get you safely out of here and find a new life
for you, would you come with me?”

“I
do not know, Jade Eyes.”

“A
new life, Wing Sing. Where you’ll be safe from Chee Song Tong. Where you’ll
learn about this country and grow up like a normal girl. Where you’ll
eventually meet a good husband and have a family of your own. You want that,
don’t you? Oh, I
know
you want that!”

Wing
Sing stares at Zhu, trembling, as if she’s just offered her the moon. “Yes, I
go. You really take me?”

“Of
course!”

Someone
knocks furiously on the bedroom door. Wing Sing shrinks back against the bed,
curling up her legs. “Okay, brother cousin!” she calls out in a quavering voice.

Zhu
raises her hands—
stay calm
—and tidies her queue. “I can’t take you now.
I’ve got to go get help. But I’ll be back for you.”

“You
promise?”

“I
promise.”

“Oh,
but Jade Eyes, I cannot run. You have to carry me.”

She
stretches out her legs.

And
that’s when Zhu sees her feet.

In
the Japanese Tea Garden, Wing Sing’s feet were unfashionable peasant’s feet,
sturdy and whole. Feet made for standing while planting peas or millet. Feet made
for walking across the whole country if she had to, to find work. Zhu clearly
recalls the straw sandals threaded with green silk. Her big bare feet, her
knobby toes.

Zhu
rubs her forehead, and that little
ping
thumps behind her eyes again.

No.
No. No no no no no no.

Yes.
There is no mistaking the awful crippling inflicted on a girl-child in the
China of 1895 and in centuries past. Her toes have been broken and bent under
the rest of her foot and brutally tied there with strips of cloth. The bone of
her arch has been slowly bowed and broken over long torturous years so that the
whole of her foot resembles a clenched fist.

Wing Sing has bound feet.

A
Premonition

Selena
barges into the bedroom. “Time up!” she says and stands with her arms akimbo,
tapping her toe, her face taut with disapproval. “You go now, brother cousin.”

Zhu
jams the fedora on her head, jams the spectacles on her nose, lurches to her
feet. Panic skitters through her. She glances up from the impossible sight of
Wing Sing’s bound feet to the girl’s painted face.

Wing
Sing gazes back at her curiously, her head cocked to one side. A sly little
smile curves her lips. She’s the painted doll again, lacquered and masked. A
stranger.

“I
say go now, brother cousin,” says Miss Selena. “Louie? Louie?”

An
eager young tong man with superb muscle tone appears at the door. The bouncer,
of course.

“I’m
going.” Zhu’s mouth is dry. “Remember what I told you about home,” she says to
Wing Sing, hoping the girl catches her meaning.

But
Wing Sing purses her lips and shrugs. Well, of course. She mustn’t let on in
front of the madam. Still, the girl’s contempt is only too convincing.

Zhu
stumbles downstairs and out onto Terrific Street. Afternoon sun slants through
the telegraph wires, through the lacy red foliage of a Japanese maple tree.
Shadows dance and bob on the macadam. From the Barbary Coast, only a block
away, Zhu hears the sounds of drunken men guffawing, a woman shrieking, the
tinkle of an ineptly played piano. A sulky clatters down Pacific Avenue,
kicking up dust. Zhu jumps out of the way, sneezing violently. Three burly Germans
stumble drunkenly out of a bar down the block. One spots her and points. The
others turn, icy blue eyes staring.

A
slender little Chink is what they see, alone and out of his turf.

“Muse,”
Zhu whispers, “how do I get back to Sutter Street without going through the
Barbary Coast?”

Alphanumerics
flit through her peripheral vision. “Go back to Dupont,” Muse whispers back,
“go through Tangrenbu.”

I
should not sell girl like you to Jessie Malone
,
the eyepatch said. She’s guessing the eyepatch is not a man to linger long on
regrets. “I don’t think I want to go there, either.”

“Then
take Columbus to Montgomery,” Muse says. “Hurry.”

The
three Germans swagger toward her. She glimpses the gleam of their teeth beneath
enormous blond mustaches, their fists flexing, in the mood for blood sports. A
lone Chinaman shares the same plight as a lone sporting lady, and the cops
won’t help Zhu in either disguise.

She
sprints to the corner of Columbus and turns south, heading back downtown. At
Montgomery, pedestrian traffic thickens, and she loses them. She pauses at the
stairwell in front of Wells Fargo Bank where half a dozen gentlemen have parked
themselves for a smoke in the sun. She finds a secluded corner on a far step,
and huddles on the chilly granite. She pulls the fedora to one side, shielding
her face from the smokers. She cups her hand over her mouth as if she’s
lighting up one, too.

“Hey,
Muse. The girl I just spoke with is not the same girl we met in the Japanese
Tea Garden.”

“Of
course she is,” the monitor says. “She said she’s Wing Sing, didn’t she?”

“I’m
telling you, she’s not the same girl.” She shivers at the monitor’s nonchalant
tone. “She can’t be.”

“She
is as much that girl as any other.”

“Oh,
really? What about her feet?”

“She’s
got feet, hasn’t she?”

Well
yeah, she’s got feet. Bound feet. The kind of crippling that takes years of torture
starting with a young girl’s feet.
Really,
Zhu fumes. Bu there’s no
point in arguing with Muse, not now. She is definitely going to have a word
with Chiron about the monitor just as soon as she returns to her Now.

If
she returns.

“Forget
it,” she says to Muse. “What about the aurelia?”

“Did
you see it in her dowry box this time?”

“Nope.”

“Did
you
not
see it?”

That
flash of gold, that gleaming curve. “Okay, I didn’t
not
see it, either,”
Zhu says, exasperated.

“Very
good,” Muse says calmly. “Then she is as much
that
girl as she can be.”

“You’re
making no sense!”

“Z.
Wong, I recommend that you review your instructions.” Muse, the stupid
bureaucrat.

Zhu
blows out a breath. “No. No. I don’t want to read text right now. The print’s
too small.”

The
directory scrolls across her peripheral vision.

“You’re
giving me a headache, Muse!”

“I’m
activating your holoid capability. Relax your left eye, please.”

Zhu
has not taken advantage of this feature Muse possesses, though the monitor has
offered it on several occasions. A queasy feeling squeezes her gut, and a throb
commences behind her left eye like the start of a migraine.

“Turn
toward the building,” Muse commands.

She
turns, though she doesn’t really want to, filling her eyes with a view of plain
gray granite. Now data downloads through her optic nerve and projects itself
through her retina. And there! A tiny holoid field streams from the pupil of
her eye and hovers in front of her face. The holoid field is a slim block of
glowing blue light. Zhu sees Muse’s directory, white and gold alphanumerics
streaming by as hundreds of files scroll down.