by Stacey Lee
The man grunts, then grabs a pole with a hook. I only spot two split sides, and one is definitely bigger than the other.
I point to the bigger slab. “We’ll take that one.”
Burkhard’s thin lips part, and I think he’s going to argue again, but to my surprise, he nods and points at the chosen piece. The German hooks our slab and sets it on the counter.
“And we’ll need a receipt,” Elodie says primly.
With an exaggerated sigh, Burkhard scratches up a receipt while the German begins to work a sack over our meat.
“Aren’t you going to cut it for us?” I ask.
“That’ll cost extra.” Burkhard passes the receipt to Elodie, who tucks it into her purse.
“My butcher never charges extra for cutting!” I protest.
“Today, it’s extra. See all these flies? We’ve got to get our product cut before we get maggots.”
“How much to cut it?” I ask.
“A dollar.”
Now that’s looting. “But we just gave you an heirloom ring!” I almost stamp my foot, feeling more indignant than I have a right to feel. It’s the principle of it.
“I don’t usually accept jewelry for my meat. I’m doing you a favor.”
Elodie shoots me a warning glance and folds her arms. “Fine. Please have your man deliver this to Alvord Lake.”
Burkhard snorts. “That’ll be another dollar extra. And seeing as you don’t have it, I guess you’ll have to carry it yourself.”
“Carry it?” Elodie explodes. “No one said anything about carrying it. I don’t want it anymore. Give me back my ring.”
The German heaves up the quarter-carcass and brings it around the counter to us.
“Sorry. We have a strict no-return policy.”
I fix Elodie with a hard look—we need this meat—but before I can protest further, the German drops the burlap sack in front of us. We catch it, but only barely. It must weigh more than either of us.
He salutes us with the tip of his broom. “Good day, ladies.”
Elodie fixes him with a piercing look. “This will be the last time my shadow crosses your doorstep.”
“Me too,” I agree emphatically.
We stumble out into the hazy sunlight, dragging the carcass. This might be the first time Elodie and I have ever agreed on anything.
33
WE HAUL OUR LOAD ACROSS THE STREET.
The uneven weight of our burden requires us to constantly adjust our holds. To pile on the agony, I’ve developed sore spots in my boots from all this walking on uneven streets.
People stare as we pass. Let them. We have our receipt, thanks to Elodie’s quick thinking. In fact, if it were not for her, we would not have our main course at all. I just focus on not dropping my end. The burlap has developed wet, bloody marks where I’ve been gripping it.
“You had to pick the heaviest one,” Elodie pants.
“You were going to give it back!”
Elodie stops to wipe her bloody palm on her dress. “Can you blame me? This is the most revolting thing I’ve ever done.” She blows hair out of her face. “There is no way I am eating this tonight.”
“Tell that to your stomach in a few hours.”
We rest at the foot of the path into Golden Gate Park to catch our breath. We’ll never get back to camp at this rate. “How about we take the shortcut up that hill instead of zigzagging around? Or is that too challenging for you?”
“What is challenging for me is hearing you boss everyone around nonstop for the past two days. It’s enough to put anyone in the nut hatch.”
It didn’t take long for us to return to bickering.
Up the hill we go, each step a labor, and I immediately rethink the decision to take the direct route. But Elodie seems determined to plow ahead, and I would rather jump into a barrel of leeches than back down first.
There’s not a lick of shade on this knoll, and the smoke-filled air is too warm, like the inside of an oven. I would give a year of my life for a drink of water. But on we climb, bearing our burden as if this were the last side of beef on earth, and we, its chosen protectors.
A fly buzzes around my head, and I try to blow it away. So intent am I on shooing the damn fly that I step on a loose rock and stumble. I grab for something to steady myself, but there’s only the carcass, and Elodie. With a yelp, I fall backward, pulling the engine and the cargo with me.
Before I can form a clear thought, I’m tumbling down the hill.
I roll and roll, managing to find every painful rock or stick this knoll offers. Elodie finds them, too; I can hear each of her yelps a few moments after mine. My head continues to spin even after I’ve stopped rolling. So this is how it feels to be bread dough.
Something lands on top of me, and then another something follows, shrieking loudly in my ear.
Elodie and I lie heaving in a tangle of limbs, bruised and bloodied. The sky looks like the eight-treasure juk I once made of black sesame and millet. I boiled it too long, and it became eight horrors, with little specks and brown clots floating in the ashy liquid.
After a moment, I sit up with a grimace and pick hay from my hair. Lincoln Street lies twenty feet to my left. Elodie shakily sits up as well. Grass stains cover her uniform, and one sleeve has torn away from her dress under the arm. A clump of mud sticks to her ear, and there’s a reddish-purple bruise developing on her cheek.
A sneeze wracks her body. She managed to hang onto her purse, and from it, she pulls out her peacock handkerchief that she embroidered for the Wilkes boys. She dabs at her eyes, blots her face, then finishes the job with a loud honk.
When she’s done, she stares at me. “Tell me I don’t look like you.”
“You don’t. You look worse.” I glance at the meat, which is lying in silent repose between us. “But not as bad as him. You think he cracked any ribs?”
Her face twitches, and then a smile elbows its way out. Her shoulders begin to quake, and I realize she’s laughing. It’s as contagious as applause. We snort and guffaw, seized by a kind of fit that is hard to shake off.
“So that’s—” She tries to get it out, but another wave of laughter shivers through her. “That’s”—gasp—“how you make a rolled rump roast!”
A fresh wave of giggling consumes us, and I wipe tears from my eyes.
Oh, Jack would’ve laughed to see me at the bottom of this knoll covered with grass and bested by a beef.
Before I realize it, my throat tightens, and the tears of laughter run bitter. I dreamed of the day I could afford to buy Jack not just the bones of the ox, but the meat, too. Now that day will never come. His bowl will never again need filling.
To my surprise, Elodie begins to weep, too.
How fine the line is between hilarity and grief. I’ve seen it happen at the cemetery, where in the middle of a service, someone will be hit by a funny thought, and then the laughter will spread like wildfire, made funnier by the inappropriateness of it all.
Maybe sorrow and its opposite, happiness, are like dark and light. One can’t exist without the other. And those moments of overlap are like when the moon and the sun share the same sky.
A middle-aged couple has stopped to stare at us. The woman puts a black-gloved hand to her mouth and turns her wide eyes to her husband. Untucking his arm from her, the man crosses the lawn to us. Elodie stops crying and begins to quietly hiccup.
The man’s horrified gaze flits from the bloodied burlap sack to each of us, with our puffy eyes and tearstained faces. “We’re so sorry for your loss. Take this, and God bless.” The man tucks a five-dollar bill in each of our hands, then hurries back to the woman.
He thinks we’re mourning a body.
The woman twists her head back a few times as they leave. Elodie stares at the money in her dirty hand, then lifts her astonished eyes to me.
I smile, and she grins back. It’s funny how one little moment of truth can undo hours of hostility.
“Well, now we have enough money to get this cut and delivered,” I say.
“Are you kidding? I’m not giving Blowhard another red cent. We can handle Brisky, as long as we don’t climb any more hills.” She gives me a firm look, but it is hard to feel chastened by anyone who names her meat Brisky.
We haul ourselves up and take the gentler zigzagging path. Somehow, Brisky feels lighter than when we started out.
34
WE CARRY BRISKY PAST A GROVE OF PINE trees, where men are installing hammocks.
“So, who is Mrs. Lowry?” Elodie asks after a while.
I gape at the burrs stuck to the back of her hair and almost stop walking. “How do you know about her?”
“You talk in your sleep. You’ve said things like, ‘Mrs. Lowry says, if you don’t like the rules, change them.’”
Well, that’s a revelation, and a notch disturbing. I’d take snoring over sleep talking, even if I don’t have many secrets worth guarding. “She wrote a book called The Book for Business-Minded Women. It taught me a lot about life . . . and business. For example, she says, ‘Adversity makes a great teacher.’ I’ve had to use that one a lot lately.”
She stops in the shadow of a bush with popcorn flowers. “Brisky needs a rest.”
We sit side by side and watch people lighting fires and brushing the ground with branches of longleaf pine. I suppose it is the natural thing to do—make house, even when you don’t have one. Ma said, a clear mind starts with a swept porch.
Most folks have tents by now, and some have personalized theirs with ribbons, flowers, or even pussy willows. Sonoran women in bright shawls fan themselves with magnolia leaves, while their children play hide-and-seek. A white woman approaches one of the children—a girl about five—and offers a basket of crackers. Before she can take one, the girl’s mother places a firm hand on her daughter’s shoulder. The two women lock gazes, and though no words are spoken, a complex tide of emotions ebbs and flows between them: sorrow, embarrassment, pride, empathy, and gratitude.
At last, the Sonoran woman nods, and her daughter takes a cracker.
Maybe some of the invisible walls are beginning to crack.
“I had nothing to do with that prank with your uniform, you know.” Elodie’s gaze is fixed straight ahead on a baby crawling in the dirt. “I think maybe Letty did it. But I don’t know for sure. She was never happy about moving rooms.”
To my surprise, I don’t feel angry at Wood Face. It doesn’t seem to matter anymore. “Why do you think Headmistress Crouch made us room together?”
“Papa requested it. He thought it would be easier for you to keep your secret that way. And he said I might learn something from you.”
“That was nice of him.” The baby waves her fist in the air.
“Self-serving, you mean. As I recall, he had a stake in your secrets.”
“Why did you hate our arrangement so much? You and your mother wouldn’t have to work if your father was making more money.” I take turns rubbing both arms, which feel like they’ve stretched a few inches longer since we picked up Brisky.
“Maman wasn’t working because she had to.” Elodie’s voice turns scornful, but for once, the scorn is not directed at me. “She wanted to keep her hand in the business. She was trying to protect herself.”
“From what?”
“From him.” She shakes her head. “When Maman came down with arthritis in her hip, Papa started traveling to New York, and sometimes when he came back, his clothes would smell of honeysuckle. Maman confronted him about having a mistress, and he said if she didn’t like it, she could leave.”
The baby has crawled closer and finally notices our dirty selves. He begins to cry. A woman rushes over to pick him up, giving us an apologetic and slightly confused smile.
“Of course, there’s no place in our circles for a divorced woman—a cripple, too. It was better for her to stay, and save for a rainy day.” Elodie’s eyes cut to me.
Her mother was probably finding ways to skim, something I might do, too, if I were in her situation. I wonder if Elodie would be horrified or relieved to find out she did find comfort of a sort in the church.
“I’m sorry.”
She plucks at the grass and tosses it away. “I hoped Papa would give me the business one day, so I could help her, but he never listens to anything I say.”
No wonder she despised me. Her father was taking a risk on me, a stranger, which means he had faith in my abilities. “So you weren’t really second-in-command.”
“In name only.”
Then all that work we did at the association meeting would not have mattered, anyway. I should be angry, but all I can manage is a disappointed sigh.
She levels her gaze at me. “I would have fought to hire those workers, though. It was a good plan.”
I nod. A corner of her journal peeks out from her beaded purse. “What have you been writing in there?”
She pushes it back into the bag. “I wrote Maman a letter, telling her how sorry I was that I wasn’t there when she died. I wish I knew how it happened.”
I will never tell, but I can’t help wanting to give her some resolution, the sort I would like to have.
“My ma was a fortune-teller, and she believed you could see someone’s character in their face. Your mother’s face was narrow, which means she was practical, and disciplined. I bet she wasn’t the type of person to sit and feel sorry for herself. When life dropped an eggshell in her omelet, I bet she just picked it out and moved on.”
Elodie nods, her chin resting in her palm, eyebrows tightly furrowed.
“Her eyes were clear and open, which means she was intelligent. And there were no hollow spots underneath, which means she had a loving relationship with her child. Her daughter probably meant the world to her.”
Elodie turns away for a moment, and I can hear snuffling.
My eyes grow moist again thinking about Ma, whose eyes also had no hollow spots underneath. What was her last thought as she died? Did she know how much she meant to me?
“Brisky stinks,” Elodie says after a moment. “We should get him to the pot.”
I take up my end again. “Chinese write messages on little slips of paper, then burn them so they reach the dead. You could burn the letter.”
She looks up at the sky, and I wonder if she’s trying to see her mother in the shifting clouds. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t looking for mine, too.
As we pass the Sonoran women, I invite them to our dinner. They nod politely, not making any promises. Maybe our bloody appearance worries them. But they do have many mouths to feed.
We pass the carousel and approach the field. At last, I can see our little encampment from here. The Pang family’s tent rises on our left, cheerfully adorned with drying laundry. I wonder if they will show up tonight. Maybe this whole dinner will be a bust.
My thoughts are cut short when I see Ah-Suk chatting over a pot of tea with Headmistress Crouch. I nearly drop my side of the beef. He lifts his teacup to me and nods. Headmistress Crouch, caught mid-sip, lowers her cup, and her face seems to curdle, the way cream does when you squeeze lemon onto it. Did she find out about the leeches, and if so, why would she be taking tea so civilly with Ah-Suk? And if she doesn’t know—again, why would she be taking tea so civilly with Ah-Suk?
Perhaps her love of tea outweighs her dislike of barbarians. As for Ah-Suk, maybe his loneliness outweighs his distrust of foreigners. Whatever the case, seeing them together reminds me of two chess pieces from opposite sides of the board meeting in the middle.
Minnie Mae meanders in our direction leading Forgivus. The girl seems to have weaned herself from Georgina, and now spends nearly every minute with the cow. She can move her beef faster than we can move ours, even
with Forgivus stopping to mow down every dandelion she sees.
When they get close enough, Minnie Mae barely seems to notice our bloodied selves, focusing more on our sack. “I hope that’s not one of Forgivus’s brethren,” she whispers, as if she actually thinks the cow can understand.
Elodie practically growls. “It better be or someone’s getting a taste of my fist.”
I grimace, having had a sample of that before. I try to quickly change the subject. “Has the army brought any more supplies?”
“No, but the Red Cross brought blankets, candles, a washtub, and clothes.” She ticks them off on her fingers.
“What about food?” I ask.
“They said food would be coming by tomorrow.”
Forgivus moos, and Minnie Mae checks her faucets. “Milking time.” She scratches the cow on her ears. “Good girl, you’ve been giving milk all day. We should start calling you Saint Forgivus.”
As we make our way into our campsite, I see the place has been transformed. A line of pinecones draws a wide circle around our four tents. On the painter’s cart, a boot full of irises forms an odd but striking centerpiece. Francesca fries something on one of the stoves, while Harry and Katie are hanging a wagon wheel from a tree with rope. One end of a flowered bedsheet has been gathered around the wheel, forming a privacy curtain. Now we don’t have to use the bushes for a privy.
Wouldn’t Tom have liked to see that bit of ingenuity?
I picture him aboard the Heavenly Blessing, as resolute as a masthead with his jaw pointed north. Or maybe word has traveled and he’s pleading with Captain Lu to reverse course. I miss him as much as a flame misses its shadow.
We are fine, Tom. Your father is a hero and in good spirits. Wherever you are, do not worry. Just take care of yourself.
Georgina and the Bostons huddle by their tent, rubbing rags over fruit jars and an assortment of utensils. They came through for us after all. Their kittens huddle together in a pie pan, a pile of black and orange fur, still managing to hold on to life with four claws. One of the girls tickles a kitten with a soaked rag, and the animal flips onto its back, trying to suck at it. The girls squeal.