by Aimee E. Liu
He listened but heard no sound of life. If she’d been on those stairs when they collapsed, she might now be lying beneath them. He inhaled sharply, cupped hands around his mouth, and, tipping his head back, howled her name.
“I’m here!” She scrambled to her feet. “I’m up here, Paul. Help me!
An instant, and their voices were flying. She must find her way to a window. Her bedroom was blocked. Another room, then. The spare room! In the madness of fear, the most obvious solutions go unseen. There was a ladder in the shed out back. He must bring that around. She would make a rope to lower herself.
“I receive you,” he called.
The door to the spare room opened just enough for her to twist through. The bureau here was on its side, surrounded by shards of broken mirror that reflected the brightening dawn. Spilled cedar chips and dried lavender carpeted the floor, along with skirts and stockings and corsets and waists out of the fallen armoire: Eleanor’s off-season wardrobe. Hope registered another clutch of guilt and took a step without looking, was sliding in blood.
“One thing at a time,” she told herself, extracting the sliver from her right heel. A Bible and a Sears Roebuck consumer’s guide lay within reach. She shook their pages free of debris and skated on the splayed bindings over to the window.
The world outside lay rearranged, but subtly. The front of a nearby barn tipped forward as cleanly as the lid off a crate, while the three houses within view all appeared undamaged except for their fallen chimneys. Down by Telegraph Avenue a motorcar sprawled, wheels to the sky, with a goat stepping circles on its upturned belly. Overall the scene was as quiet as if everyone had gone back to sleep. There had not been an aftershock in what seemed like hours, and the soft pewter light of daybreak promised the worst was over.
It occurred to Hope that she could simply pull back inside and wait. Paul would not be able to reach her without her throwing down a line. He would have to get help. Then they would not be alone.
But here he came now, hauling the ladder around the corner. He wore loose black pants and a blue tunic that sailed behind him as he moved. Long bare feet. Square shoulders. His dark hair still tumbled from sleep. She strained against herself, hoisting the sash, and waved.
“Hurry,” he replied, already positioning the ladder below.
Among the garments at her feet lay winter wrappers, nainsook skirts, muslin corset covers, and woolen stockings. She tied the sturdiest fabrics into a chain and secured one end around the leg of the bureau, dropped the other over the ledge. Below, he called that he was ready. She was reaching one last time into the pile of clothing when another aftershock rippled the house, driving clean out of her mind whatever she had been reaching for. She threw one leg over the windowsill, grabbed the rope with both hands, took a deep breath and brought the other leg over, and started down.
Hand over hand, soles clenched, she had descended only a foot or two when she felt her gown billowing out, the cold air painting her legs. Drawers. She’d been reaching for a pair of black and white striped drawers when the last shock emptied her mind.
The sudden dawning of her exposed and irretrievable condition caused her to clap her knees shut, skinning them on the shingle siding as she swung against the house. She clung to the rope with one hand and cinched the gown with the other, but it was impossible. She curled inward like a snail and dangled. “Go away,” she called over her shoulder. “Please.”
“Pu yao chin te,” he pleaded unintelligibly, still holding the rope beneath her.
He did not go, and she did not move. How long she would have hung there is difficult to say. She was stubborn and strong for her size. But the knots were slipping, the fabric stretching. The absurdity of her position came to her at last, along with the recognition that they were both equally compromised. Both compelled to see and feel nothing. She told herself this as she traded hands, dropping and clutching, dropping and clutching. She told herself he would not dare.
Then, as promised, he received her. His fingers encircled her ankle. The span of his palm covered her entire sole, but the intimacy of his touch and his relative size neither terrified nor humiliated, and for this reason posed a greater threat than if he had opened her flapping skirt and thrust a hand between her legs.
He guided her to the ladder’s top rung, then quickly let her go.
As soon as he had seen her safely on the ground, Paul started back up the ladder.
“This you room?” he called, pointing.
“Yes, but how will you get over there?”
He shook his head against her worry and pulled himself up the rope, then crept along the outer ledge and entered her bedroom through the broken window. It was not a selfless act. Although he had averted his eyes, he had seen enough during her descent to understand that she must be dressed before they were discovered together. Beyond this practical assessment he forbade his thoughts to travel.
Her tumbled belongings lay in a haze of fragrance—foreign flowers pulsing so strong he let out a violent sneeze and nearly cut his foot on her shattered mirror. Her dressing table stood in the center of the room surrounded by its former contents, which he combed through while berating himself for not being more observant. American women did not use sticks to hold up their hair. What, then? Hooks? Or pins? He swept the hardwood floor with his hand. Whatever she used, he must find it. He had not imagined such hair, the longing its dark, emancipated weight would arouse in him.
Among spilled powder and towels, the remnants of a pitcher and basin, he located ten brown hooks and a silver-backed brush. He pulled a tuft of her hair from the bristles and rubbed it between his thumbs as he considered what else he should bring her. On the floor beside the bed he found the white shirtwaist with the ruffled throat and black skirt she had worn the day they met; the high-collared dress, apricot with jade stripes, from his last lesson; small, brown buttoned boots; kid gloves; a jacket to match the skirt and another blouse. He made a bundle of this clothing and knelt to inspect her scattered books and papers.
There was the volume of Poe from which she had read to him, a photograph of an older man who might be her father, and here, a leather-bound notebook that swam with the markings of her pen. Page after page of fragile waves. He was not familiar with Western script, was about to fold the book closed when his name rushed out at him. LIANG PO-YU. PAUL LIANG. This alone she had inserted in legible black letters. He squinted, stared, but the surrounding lines tangled, obscuring whatever emotion or accusation they contained.
“Paul!” she called from outside. “Are you all right?” He tucked the diary inside the rolled clothing. Better he did not know her feelings. He had no right to know.
He was about to announce his descent when he noticed a heap of soft, pale garments. Lustrous pink and ivory fabric, with ruffles and tucks and long bony ridges. He held one of the corsets in his arm and traced its elaborate shape, lifted it to his nose and breathed a scent that was lighter, softer, more intoxicating than any supplied in a bottle. He had not touched the hidden clothing of a woman since leaving his wife for the last time, six years earlier. That was in summer, and the fabric had been silk of the finest quality, the fragrance within like a thrilling mountain fog. The woman herself was something quite different.
He added the garments and several pairs of stockings to the bundle already assembled. Hope Newfield, he told himself firmly, was nothing—nothing—like his wife.
While Paul was up in her room, Hope had safely retrieved from her shambled office her money purse, which held twenty-seven dollars, her bankbook, which registered another sixty-one in savings, and her black serge cloak and felt fedora. But the wreckage of the stairwell, now fully visible in the morning light, warned against spending any more time in the building than was absolutely essential, so when Paul descended with her clothing, she went to change in the cramped but intact garden shed out back.
Opening the bundle in the dusty light she expected at most a dress, a pair of boots, perhaps a jacket and hose. She was stunn
ed to find as well her most intimate possessions. Her petticoats he had touched, her corsets, her drawers. He had found her journal, with his name printed boldly inside, and surely his decision to salvage it showed he had read her mindless ramblings. Embarrassment scalded her. Even the inclusion of her father’s portrait seemed a presumptuous insult, the presence of the volume of Poe a humiliating reminder of her own carnal weakness and stupidity. But her rescuer’s gravest transgression was the burial, at the very center of this package, of those inlaid tortoiseshell hairpins. Those pins had been Frank Pearson’s final gift to her.
Hope felt that she had been rendered transparent, as if this man she barely knew could see through walls, her skin, her mind. She dressed in a rush, stumbling among the filthy tools, and a wave of nausea swept her. Then she was angry.
She had to get away. He would be waiting outside, but she could switch to the left around the side of the house and on out into the street. There must be people about by now. Perhaps even Collis. The thought of her suitor—fiancé—only stoked her fury. Of course, though he lived on the other side of Albany, Collis surely was on his way. Had she but waited he would have been her rescuer. She pinned her hair with tight, skewered twists and pushed it inside her hat, then rolled her remaining possessions into her cloak. She would leave, she decided, and if the Chinaman followed, she would scream.
But when she stepped from the shed, the small kitchen yard lay empty.
Good, she thought. She must walk toward town. If the streetcars, by some miracle, were running, she would board one for Oakland. If not, she would hire a cart to take her to Mary Jane’s. From there, she would figure out what to do about Collis. She would not think about Paul.
What prompted her before leaving, then, to glance back toward the kitchen garden? A prodding breeze, perhaps. The call of a bird. Or a sudden shift of light.
He was barely visible, a line of darkness in the darker shade beyond the old moss-covered privy. He had found a discarded bench overhung by ivy, and there sat erect, motionless. One bare foot rested on the opposite knee while his hands lay upturned in his lap in an attitude of serenity and complete detachment. His long neck rose like a stem from his mandarin collar. His eyes were closed.
She inched forward, stepping softly between rows of lavender and thyme as her anger turned to dust. She should thank him, she thought, and say goodbye. But he would not look up. She moistened her lips and cleared her throat. No reaction. A cold, certain knowledge rode through her now: he did not want her at all.
When at last his eyes fluttered open, they faced each other in unexpected but absolute stillness.
What were they thinking? Had they a plan as they set off that morning, her belongings under his arm, striding into public scrutiny? Certainly there were no stated intentions. They had to get away from that house, from the solitude it afforded and the resulting temptation, but they did not have to stay together. At the first raised eyebrow they would have parted. However, Berkeley was in a state of shock and utterly self-absorbed.
Before they’d even left the yard, one of the Burgess boys called to them from across the road. His parents lay pinned in their bed beneath a fallen bureau. By the time Hope and Paul had freed the trapped couple, helped to set their broken legs, and seen to the needs of their three young children, two hours had passed. The family found them food and water and put Paul in a pair of Mr. Burgess’s socks and bluchers. They offered a jacket and pants as well, but Hope’s neighbor weighed well over two hundred pounds. It was a miracle the shoes fit.
As they left, Hope glanced at Paul and was surprised to find him grinning broadly. She asked what was so funny. He pointed out that during all that time, Mrs. Burgess had never changed out of her nightdress or pinned up her hair.
“She does not even cover herself before a Chinaman.”
Hope asked if he thought Mrs. Burgess a loose woman because of this.
Whether he honestly didn’t understand, she would never know, but he answered with a quizzical, “She is not loose. She is broken.”
Hope laughed. Oh, how she laughed! Relief, gratitude, wonder flooded through her. It was going to be all right.
Of course, there were no streetcars, no electricity, no telephones or wire service, but there were plenty of carts and rigs for hire, and Hope still might have gone to Mary Jane’s. But she couldn’t imagine bringing Paul there. And she couldn’t leave him now. Every window on Shattuck was broken, and the street was awash with milk from tipped wagons and whiskey from capsized saloons. Turnips and onions that had rolled from the shops filled gutters and trolley tracks. Merchants stood scratching their heads and exchanging doomsday estimates of their losses, while the few shops that managed to open that day had customers lined up around the block. The talk was all of damage, of the fires flaring across the Bay, refugees coming. Someone shouted that they needed help over at the temporary hospital being set up at Hearst Hall. Paul never asked why Hope welcomed this announcement. But he came along.
In the makeshift hospital they were treated as partners for walking through the door together. Once the supervising nurse had established that neither of them needed treatment themselves, they were put to work rolling bandages, inventorying ointments and gauzes, setting up cots, and generally making ready for casualties from the city. According to the latest reports, San Francisco’s entire business district was on fire, with new flare-ups by the minute. The nurse said Hope and Paul should work as a team, because they’d be more efficient that way. Perhaps she meant it. Perhaps she didn’t trust Paul to work alone, but circumstances soon distracted her. Refugees from San Francisco were already streaming in. Burn victims, people with broken bones, lacerations, and shock.
The din of arriving patients and shouting would have made even casual conversation difficult, if casual conversation had even been desired. Sometime during the afternoon they were given sandwiches and milk, which they might have taken outside to the grass, but instead they gravitated to a couple of chairs in the central hallway. The unspoken reason was to avoid any semblance of intimacy, but Hope wasn’t prepared for the implicit intimacy of eating and drinking together, just the two of them in that sea of strangers. She noticed how he blotted his lips on the back of his hands after swallowing, that he handled the sandwich suspiciously, wouldn’t touch the milk at all. For most of the meal, however, her eyes were fixed on a rosette knot in the floorboard beside her right foot.
They had not really come as Samaritans, of course. That large, bustling hall was a safe zone. Hope could stand in public close enough to touch him, and occasionally their hands would meet, and no one else thought anything of it. While they were there, aid was their mission—and noble enough justification for Hope’s abandoning the wreckage of her home. (She did inquire about her landlady, and was assured that no E. Layton had been posted on any casualty lists.) But Hope’s and Paul’s medical skills were minimal, and once all civilian preparations were in order, their “team” was dismissed.
It was five o’clock and the western sky was solid with smoke. Hope could taste the creosote, see the ash descending in a lazy snow. Animals shaken to flight that morning formed roving packs that grew bolder as their numbers swelled. Rats streamed like shadows out of alleyways and basements. There were also packs of stray men. Signs had been posted warning that looters would be shot, and most merchants had already boarded up their shops in anticipation of trouble.
Hope and Paul found Miss Bertha’s boarding house vacant but unbroken. In Paul’s second-floor room fallen papers littered the floor, the desk stood askew, and the lacquered hide boxes containing his Chinese robes, scrolls, and what remained of the dried and pickled vegetables and medicinal roots he had brought from Hupei lay strewn about like dominoes. The heavier camphor chests containing his furs and winter garments remained securely wedged inside the small corner closet, while the limbs of his Western suits poked out from beneath the walnut dresser.
Paul pushed his narrow bed to the wall, tugged the covers taut, and sat down.
Hope had not asked, simply followed him upstairs, and now she knelt among his belongings, pushing books and ink sticks and papers into aimless piles. The light from the lantern washed her skin gold. She had removed her hat, let her hair slip loose about her face. One stray curl clung to her cheek, below a smudge of soot. She yawned broadly and rocked her upper body, never lifting her eyes. He could see she was exhausted. Yet she was alone with him in his room.
Outside men yelled and clattered dimly. He could not feel his own fatigue.
She picked up one of his writing brushes and drew it across her wrist. “What do we do?”
“You must rest.”
“Here?”
“You are safe here.”
“Am I?” Her voice arched, then she laughed and jabbed the brush behind her ear. A tear ran down her left cheek.
“I will sleep some other place,” he said.
She did not answer.
He came to her, bending, placed his fingertips lightly on her upturned wrist. “First I bring some food and water.”
“Paul?”
He pulled away.
“Thank you.”
A short while later, after he had left Hope to sleep, the two other boarders, Ma Lung-sing and Ho Yao-fan, burst into the kitchen. Their talk was all about the white devils they had watched struggling with their disaster. Ho was just asking where Paul had disappeared to that morning, when they were joined by Miss Bertha Miles. The landlady was so tall she had to bow to pass through the doorway, and she had a habit of rocking from one square hip to the other as she talked. Paul had lived in this house since his arrival in America more than a year earlier, but he never tired of looking at Miss Bertha. The first person with black skin he had ever met, she was so dark that in the beginning he could hardly believe her face and hands were not painted. They had become friends when she said she used to think exactly the same thing about Chinese eyes.