by Stacey Lee
39
ELODIE TAKES ONE LOOK AT THE APPARITION and screams loud enough to wake the mummies in ancient Egypt. She whips around and starts to bolt, but I rein her back.
“Let me go!” she cries.
I double over, unable to answer.
“What . . . why are you just standing there?” she demands.
The apparition begins laughing in a hearty voice. “You were so skeered!” Katie gasps.
Next to her, also convulsed in giggles, stands Harry of the eerie singing voice. Francesca hides a smile with a hand to her mouth.
Elodie spends a moment with her face frozen into a guard lion’s stony grimace, but hilarity, like fear, has a way of getting under your skin. By the time we crest the top of Strawberry Hill, Elodie is giggling with the rest of us. I guess the other girls needed to even the score with the old shark before officially letting her swim beside us.
A coliseum for viewing stars crowns Strawberry Hill, but the stonework has cracked and the columns that once held it up now lean to one side, like a line of dominoes mid-fall. My good mood fades. While the only light comes from the stars and our small lantern, it’s enough to see that neither Forgivus nor the deaf man are here.
The girls fan out around the small hilltop, but I settle on top of a long, flat rock that has broken off from the coliseum, suddenly weary. Francesca sits next to me. “I guess they flew away.”
I study the feather of the moon, almost expecting to see a cow jumping over it. I was mad to think a man and his cow could grant me the forgiveness I seek, anyway. I let myself believe that Minnie Mae’s delusion was real. Maybe grief is like a prison, and once you’re there, everything starts looking like a way out, patterns in the stars or the behavior of bovines. Maybe there is no way out, and you just have to serve your time.
I lean back on my elbows, letting sounds and smells fill in where the eye cannot. There is the burping of the bullfrogs, eerily in time with the frawnking squawk of a blue heron, and the gurgle of running water. Strawberries and something herbaceous cut the singed scent of the air.
Harry, Katie, and Elodie squeeze in between us, huddling for warmth. A cool wind skims across my cheeks, and I let it numb some of my sadness.
I sigh and quote one of my favorite gravestones to them. “‘One day, I shall sail into the Pacific, and wherever the winds carry me, there shall I be.’”
“You want to go sailing?” asks Katie.
“Sort of. I was planning to buy a whole fleet of ships for my global business. I was going to see the world.” The words come out sounding flat.
Maybe, after the city is rebuilt, the old rules will no longer apply. We could live wherever we want. After all, over a hundred people passed through the Kitchen of Mercy tonight, a hundred people with nothing in common except for a tragedy. The cost has been great. I implore whoever’s listening to let it not be for naught.
Harry stirs beside me. “I admire that about you. You always know what you want.”
“More like, I know what I don’t want.”
Elodie’s clear voice chimes out, “I know what I don’t want. I don’t want to see another bar of chocolate for as long as I live.”
Our gazes fold into her, sitting in the middle. She shrugs. “I’m allergic.”
“I never want to stop feeding people,” says Francesca. “I love seeing their faces after they’ve eaten something I’ve made.” She stretches her feet. “What about you, Katie?”
“Me?” Katie frowns at the blackness. “Well, I like being helpful. So I guess what I don’t want is for people to stop needing me.”
It occurs to me that’s why Harry and Katie are such good friends; Harry needs Katie’s fearlessness, and Katie needs to be needed.
“The day we no longer need our friends is the day we put on our wooden overcoats,” I say.
“Amen,” says Francesca.
“I don’t want to be alone,” Harry says quietly. “When my parents left me with the nuns, I thought I was going to die of loneliness.”
I nudge her side. “That was a rotten thing to do, for sure. But parents who don’t want you are parents who don’t deserve you.”
“Mercy’s right,” says Francesca. “On the bright side, you don’t have to worry about parents telling you who to marry.”
“Or parents who disappoint you,” says Elodie. “Or are disappointed by you.”
“Your father isn’t disappointed by you,” I say to Elodie.
“He will be. Once I tell him I’m planning to sell Maman’s shares of the business. She told me she would leave them to me in her will.”
“Well, don’t sell them yet. San Francisco’s not exactly a viable market right now.”
Elodie shoots me one of her piercing looks. “I’m not as dumb as you think, Mercy. Eventually, I want to use the money to do something Maman would be proud of.”
Francesca plays with the light from the lantern with her fingers. “I wish we could keep the Kitchen open longer.” She looks at all of us in turn. “We have a businesswoman, a singer, a hostess, an all-around helper, and me of course, a cook. What more could a restaurant want?”
“Dashing waiters,” Elodie suggests.
It feels good to laugh.
Katie sighs. “Tonight was the most fun I’ve had in a long time. Someone even asked Harry for an autograph.” She gives us a conspiratorial wink.
I nudge Harry, who’s blushing beside me. “When you rise to fame and fortune, and Miss Du Lac watches you sing at the fancy opera house, don’t you forget about the side of beef that put you there.”
Elodie rolls her eyes back so far, her head tilts back, and Harry giggles.
“You know what I think?” says Katie. “Our Kitchen was like Strawberry Hill. A little island away from everything.”
“Without the ghost,” adds Elodie.
I lean forward to get a look at their faces. “It’s almost as if people needed a place to do normal things again like eat, drink, and be merry.”
Harry nods. “Katie and I heard that the cannery on Folsom might be giving away their inventory if things don’t improve.”
Francesca glances down the lane at me. “Maybe Mr. Fordham and Mr. Chance could help us ‘borrow’ a stove like the one that lady had.”
“Well, we don’t have to borrow it; we could buy it.” Elodie holds up her purse. “Mercy and I each have five dollars.”
“But you might be catching a train,” I say to Katie.
She swats a moth fluttering around her head. “Gran is probably on her way here already. Headmistress Crouch thought we should get a ticket, anyway, but maybe we can change her mind. What about your folks?” she asks Francesca.
“They leave all the worrying to my brother, and he’s leaving it to Marcus, apparently. To be honest, I would rather not go home yet.”
We all look at Elodie, and she shrugs. “Far as I know, the people I’m staying with don’t know I’m coming.”
Francesca sits up straight. “So we can have another feast.”
I hold up my hand. “Hold the ponies. None of us has had a good meal since Tuesday, and we smell like smoked meat. Not to mention, we look like farmers.”
“Speak for yourself.” Elodie rolls her shoulders back. “I feel very au courant.”
While I look manly in my army getup, she manages to look rather smart with her neatly folded sleeves and pant legs. She even daisy-chained a necklace.
I study the cut on my hand from running through the burning city yesterday, still a red line but slowly knitting together. Modest as it was, putting on this feast filled some of the hole in my heart left by Jack’s and Ma’s deaths. Sure, it’s only a teaspoon of dirt in a cavity the size of Texas, but it’s a start. And that was just one dinner.
Maybe this was the kind of business I was meant for. Free dinners—with entertainment, too—where everyone is
welcome: fancy folks, and plain ones, those sporting bowlers, and those who prefer black skullcaps.
The city may have been laid to waste, but our bellies still need filling. Our hearts still need cheering.
It’s not sustainable for the long-term without capital and a good fiscal plan, not to mention I’ll be on my own once the girls go home. But as Ma said, a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. And with bossy cheeks and running feet, I will cover those thousand miles one day.
“Let’s do it,” I tell them.
“Pile on the pancakes.” Katie sticks her hand out, and one by one, we place ours on top. “Like Gran always says: ‘Teamwork makes the dream work.’”
Something blows at a dusty corner of my mind. Mrs. Lowry said the same thing. Come to think of it, she lives in Texas, too. “Did your gran ever read The Book for Business-Minded Women by Evelyn Lowry?”
Katie looks at me as if I just said I was running for president. “Read it? She wrote it.”
“Holy Nine Fruits of Mother Mary, I am her number one admirer!” I babble. “I’ve read her book at least a dozen times.”
Katie and I grin at each other like we just discovered teeth. All this time, I’ve been rubbing elbows with the great woman’s granddaughter, a girl who, in her own way, was a needed candle in my dark moments. If Katie’s gran being Mrs. Lowry isn’t a sign that the universe is beginning to mind its posture, then I don’t know what is.
40
THAT NIGHT, WHILE THE OTHERS RUMBLE and sigh, I barely sleep a wink. Somehow, it seems that destiny was leading me, like a fish on a line that’s just slack enough not to feel the tug. Ba would say God was holding the pole, and I own it could be true. Or maybe, as Ma believed, a not-so-random sequence of events conspired to carry me here.
If I hadn’t gotten the job at the cemetery, I would never have discovered Mrs. Lowry’s book. Without her book, I would never have considered going to St. Clare’s. If I hadn’t attended St. Clare’s, I would not have met these girls, including Katie.
Though I won’t be going to Texas just yet, I know I will meet Mrs. Lowry one day. I can feel it in my bones, the way one knows a sneeze is coming. Surely, if anyone knows how to operate a business that gives away its product for free, it would be her.
Feasts every night, people sharing, children laughing.
Children like Jack. My brave little soldier, you’re the reason for the Kitchen, you and Ma. The world lost something good when you died, and if it takes the rest of my life, I will put that good back where it belongs.
Something wet nudges my nose. A black kitten. Francesca is no longer beside me, only Katie and Harry, snoozing back to back. I prop myself up onto my elbows and let the kitten wander into my hands. “Guess you took a wrong turn.” Guess we all did. I scratch it behind the ears. But we’re still here, aren’t we?
Ma and Mrs. Lowry were right. It matters not how many wrong turns you make, but that you keep moving. Eventually we’ll find our way out, given enough time.
I set the kitten down and roll over, feeling something hard on my back. It’s Elodie’s journal. I hesitate a moment, then open the book. She ripped out the first half. All the remaining pages are blank, except at the top of the first page, in her precise penmanship, she wrote: For your letters to the dead.
The sound of low talking filters through the canvas walls. Beyond the open flap, I can see Ah-Suk and Headmistress Crouch sitting on crates eating breakfast. Something Ah-Suk says makes her laugh, the kind of laugh that falls out without effort.
What an unlikely pair. I never thought either of them were the sort to have friends, or any kind of companion for that matter. After Ah-Suk’s wife died when Tom was ten, we always assumed he would remain a bachelor because of the laws prohibiting Chinese women from immigrating. As for Headmistress Crouch, I pegged her as the type who wouldn’t have a mate, either because of her exacting standards, or because she ate him for dinner.
The nutty scent of oatmeal reaches me, and my stomach groans. I grab my Chinese pants, jacket, and shirt, and quickly change. Then I scoop up the kitten and crawl out of the tent.
Francesca stirs a pot, humming to herself. On the painter’s cart, the irises are laughing. Two new crates lie beside the cart, filled with sacks stamped with words like oats, apricots, and jerky. I also spy several bottles of tinned milk, and ale. God bless the US Army. It came through after all.
Francesca gives me a bright smile, and I want to speak with her before the others, but Headmistress Crouch calls to me in her schoolmarm’s voice, sharp enough to bridge the twenty paces between us. “Good morning, Miss Wong. I would like a word with you.”
Ah-Suk greets me with a nod.
“Yes, ma’am.” I return the kitten to the Bostons’ tent, then hurry back to where Ah-Suk is helping her to her feet. Has Francesca told her about the Kitchen Part II, and will a scolding be unfolding?
The headmistress grabs my arm much like a bird of prey grabs a stick. “Walk with me.”
She steers me through the campsite. Harry and Katie poke their heads out of our tent, solemnly watching as if witnessing a man being wheeled to the gallows. Headmistress Crouch glares at them, and they disappear back inside.
“Are you feeling well, Miss?” The woman’s breathing seems even, and her cornflower eyes are clear as a looking glass.
“Don’t play the simpleton with me, Miss Wong. I’m quite aware of what you did.”
I glance back at Ah-Suk, serenely staring into the fire. Did he tell her about the leeches? I swallow hard. “You are?”
“Dr. Gunn and I had quite a long chat about my condition.”
“You did?”
“Yes.” The word comes out sounding as if she is holding a knife between her teeth. “What you did was brazen, and it is well within my right to be quite furious.”
I try to read her expression. There are the permanently arched eyebrows of disapproval and the square cheekbones giving dimension to her papery skin. The pencil dots of her pupils unnerve me more than anything, like the iron sights of a firearm that she’s continually aiming at the world.
She doesn’t say a word, and so I ask, “So . . . are you furious?”
“As a matter of fact . . .”—she pauses long enough for a sweat to gather on my brow—“no. I’ve never felt better in my life. I have to admit, the idea of sea horse in my tea still makes my stomach buckish, but it worked, and you were right not to tell me, else I would have watered the ground with it. Close your mouth; we are not goldfish.”
My jaw snaps closed. Ah-Suk is full of surprises.
We continue circumscribing a wide circle around our camp. It is impossible to walk in a straight line more than twenty paces without bumping into a tent, or a tree.
At a park bench alongside one of the walkways, a man is shelling sunflower seeds. Headmistress Crouch lifts an eyebrow, and the man jumps to his feet. “Ma’am.” He brushes the shells from the bench with his cap, then hurries away.
She carefully lowers herself onto the now-unoccupied bench and peers up at me. “Well, are you waiting for an engraved invitation? Sit down.”
I do it.
“Now, I wish to discuss your present circumstances.” She knits her hands together and places them on her lap. “The other girls have families to return to, but you—”
“My father will find me, or I will find him.” She frowns at my interruption but does not rebuke me. “I will be fine.”
She tilts her chin to one side, and her pale profile reminds me of a crescent moon. I’m struck by how looking at something from a different angle makes you notice things you didn’t notice before, like the tiny mole on her earlobe, an indication of wealth, or how she looks almost frail from the side.
“Casualties have been estimated in the thousands. We have to prepare for the possibility that your father will not return.”
I lick my lips. G
od wouldn’t be so cruel, would He? Ma didn’t predict Ba’s death. “No. He will find me.”
“Perhaps. But it is hard to tell what the future will bring. The only thing we can do is prepare, and hope it knocks gently when it comes. You are a practical girl. Recalcitrant, but practical. You must consider your alternatives in the event . . .”
Her voice trails off, and I am left imagining Ba crushed in the debris of a falling building, or run over by a panicked crowd, or worse. Like a spooked horse, my mind careens from scenario to scenario, and I feel myself sway.
Headmistress Crouch has started talking again, and I force myself to pay attention.
“—significant aptitude, and therefore, I would like to propose an arrangement. My mother left me a house in San Mateo. Assuming it is still standing, you may live there with me until St. Clare’s is rebuilt. I am a woman of considerable means, not just a woman who is considerably mean”—she hooks one eyebrow at me—“and I will see the school rebuilt if it is the last thing I do.”
“That is very generous of you, ma’am,” I say slowly. “But, I don’t need your charity.” My ears burn with the memory of the dressing-down she gave me yesterday before her collapse.
She sighs. “I am not in the habit of apologizing, for the fact is, I am hardly ever wrong.” She glances up, daring God to disagree. “But I suppose I should make an exception in this case for my reprobation. I am sorry.”
The words drop as light as a feather from her mouth. I almost don’t hear them, much less feel them.
She continues, “In my defense, you do have a penchant for disregarding the rules, a penchant that borders on severe affliction. That combined with your”—she searches for the word on my forehead—“utter lack of self-preservation, well, I had every right to believe last night’s feast would spell the end. Not just for you, but for all my charges, who, for better or worse, look to you for leadership. I spoke hastily, but my intent was pure.”
It is not the apology of my dreams, but since it is probably the only one I will get from her in this lifetime, I accept it as one accepts an unexpected bit of meat in the bowl. You don’t question it; you just eat it.