The Celestials

by Karen Shepard

  The unhappiness the knowledge incited sat across Lucy’s chest. After a moment, she said, “Oh, but they do. I have seen evidence of the strongest feeling between them.”

  Ida was stricken.

  “It is most genuine,” Lucy added.

  Later that night, Ida would request that she not speak of her ridiculous theories to anyone else. She would insist on Lucy’s word on this matter, but for now, she sat at her place, speaking of other concerns.

  Lucy kept her spoon in constant and easy motion, but in the years to come it would be this moment to which she returned. The simplicity of Ida’s feelings for the Celestial and the way concern for him took priority over all else, even her own suffering. The surprise of the hurt this inflicted on Lucy. Ida had been the only one who after the attack had known how to care for the wounds and then the scars in such a way as to ease suffering rather than increase it. She had not, as others had, told Lucy that everything would be better; she had told her that some things would improve, and others she could stand. Lucy had loved her for that.

  The next day at lessons, Lucy slipped a short, unsigned note into Ah Chung’s primer making clear what Low Yuen was accused of and who had done the accusing. It would be of no solace that she had kept her promise to Ida and had kept her silence with all others, abstaining from mentioning Charlie’s name even in her conversations with God.

  On that Monday morning, Ah Chung threatened Charlie Sing with the ex-foreman’s own gun. Sing would withdraw the accusations he’d made. A formal apology would be offered. He must quit the factory or be shot. Charlie’s sadness was still so overwhelming that he watched the action as if from above, a monkey in a tall tree, briefly curious about the odd creatures below.

  He was surprised at Ah Chung’s antics. He understood the boy to be opportunistic but had the misguided sense that, as a result, he could rely on him for a certain degree of pragmatism. He had perceived a calculated bluster and not the extremity he now witnessed.

  Ah Chung and five of his most devout followers stood between Charlie and the bunk room exit. Charlie held his hands palm up. He avoided eye contact. Ah Chung took small, bouncing steps toward him, and Charlie moved back until he hit the far wall. Another forty or fifty workers were gathered outside the door. He understood that although they might not engage in whatever happened next, neither would he receive aid from their quarter. In his faraway manner, he felt this too to be fair.

  His voice was calm when he suggested they summon Mr. Sampson or Mr. Chase. All could be resolved, he said. Nothing was yet beyond repair.

  The group moved in on him. Later, he would recall his vague understanding that together these boys fashioned something quite different than they did when apart. He had the sensation he’d once had as a boy swimming in the sea when a cloud had passed before the sun and the underwater world had turned sinister in one smooth stroke.

  Ah Chung stood close to him, the toes of his black cloth shoes nearly touching Charlie’s leather boots. “You have behaved in a way that shames us all,” he said. He listed the fates that the man deserved: May he never return to his homeland. May his family hear of his behavior and close their doors to him. May he have no descendents to sweep his grave.

  Charlie wept in silence. It was a detail he would never share with Ida.

  Something in the group relaxed, and in that moment, Constable Hunter made his way into the room, Sampson close behind.

  “Nothing can justify the brutality,” the Transcript would declare on the following Thursday. And the town would, for years, be ashamed of what had been uncovered beneath the surface of the village and its occupants.

  Ah Chung was arrested, the pistol removed from him. All the while, he made his accusations: Charlie Sing had accused an innocent man. Charlie Sing had, once again, sacrificed another to save himself. Sampson kept the implications of the boy’s claims at bay. That afternoon, and for all following days, months, years, it was as if the implications existed not at all.

  Constable Hunter escorted the boy to the town lockup accompanied by forty agitated Celestials. By the time they reached the building, a large crowd of all classes had gathered.

  The sight of their leader being locked in the cell sent the Celestials to his rescue. They surrounded Officer Quinn at the outer door, trying with the physicality of boys to remove him from their path, jockeying and shoving and throwing the occasional inexpert clout. The two officers endeavored to keep the Celestials from the building, dealing out blows only when, they later argued, absolutely necessary. But the Chinese aggression was too much and, the onlookers argued, too unfamiliar. The Celestials, whom the town had come to embrace, had undergone some astonishing transformation. These were not the boys the town had called their own, and the officers were compelled to call on the crowd for assistance.

  Alfred was at the front of that crowd. Finally, he remembered thinking.

  “The blows fell without mercy upon the heads of the bewildered and half-crazed Chinamen,” reported the Transcript. The fists, clubs, and stones used were “unmerciful and uncalled for.” It was “a shocking scene of wanton cruelty.”

  Charlie and Sampson remained in the factory, sitting in each other’s company in the Celestial bunk room. They could hear the disturbance, and still they did not move. Once, Sampson cleared his throat and Charlie looked over at him, but Sampson said nothing and Charlie looked away again.

  He remained against the back wall. Sampson sat on a stool, and this is where they were found when the two most seriously injured Celestials were carried in for care.

  Ah Chung was fined five dollars and costs, amounting to nearly a month’s wages. He paid the fine on Wednesday morning and, effectively bankrupted, was forced to quit town.

  For several days, Charlie was given an armed guard until the rebellious Celestials were discharged and removed themselves from town.

  The following Tuesday morning a new importation of fifteen Chinamen arrived from California. They lived with the orderly ones already employed in quarters separate from those engaged in Monday’s events. Sampson instructed that there was to be no suspension of business and there was not, and he announced to the papers his hope that the usually quiet life of the Celestial American would not again be interrupted.

  But in the privacy of conversation with his wife, he outlined in ferocious detail the particulars of the riot that he had gathered from various sources. He spoke plainly, refusing to cease even when her eyes would no longer hold his.

  The baby was not safe there, he said.

  Julia was sitting in the large wingback by the fire. Alice lay on her back along the length of Julia’s lap. Sampson crossed the room and stood above them, cupping the baby’s head with his short, wide hand.

  “It has been made clear to me that the recent unrest is linked to your Alice,” he said quietly.

  Julia offered her fingers to her baby’s curling fists and said nothing. Alice arched her neck to take in Sampson’s face behind her.

  “People were hurt,” he said. “On both sides.”

  Julia swiped at her eyes.

  “I think we must make some hard decisions,” he said.

  He promised they would be temporary. He promised to find a way for the three of them to have the life she desired. Perhaps another town, another business. He repeated that it would be temporary, but he did not see any other way for the immediate future. They must, he finally said, find a temporary place for the child. For her own sake.

  For several moments, Julia wept, and then she gathered herself and told her husband that if he feared for his daughter’s safety, then he must fear for his wife’s as well, and so both daughter and wife would quit this town for as long as he felt it necessary.

  It took Sampson several seconds to comprehend her meaning. Her clarity of vision, and the determination to see that vision attained, was not something he had expected. For her to say something like that was not in any way to his advantage, and so his ears refused for a moment to hear her.

  A
nd, astonishingly, he had not predicted this reaction. He had just assumed that his way would be had. The distances that had been laid between them in the previous months had been nearly unbearable. To imagine them enlarged was impossible. His anger and frustration swelled inside of him like dammed river water.

  “She is not my daughter,” he said. “You, on the other hand, are my wife.” His voice was mean and small, and Julia stiffened as if bearing up under its blow.

  “I am her mother before I am anything else to anyone else,” she said, knowing that her words were inflicting the sharpest kind of pain on the man she had pledged herself to, in this life and the next.

  The Saturday before Thanksgiving, the thin November sun occasionally made an appearance from behind the low clouds, but its warmth was imagined more than felt by the holiday travelers on the station platform. The morning train west was to be nearly at capacity, as so many were quitting the village for annual visits to far-flung family. Julia and Sampson had delicately agreed on this as a departure date, implying without saying aloud that her departure might be less noticeable as a result.

  Julia tucked Alice’s fur blanket around her in her basket and pulled her woolen bonnet lower over her brow with two expert tugs. Sampson and Charlie watched. The luggage was stowed in the baggage car, the tickets checked twice. Sampson had that morning in their apartment seen her make secure her purse of coins within her skirts. He had cleared his throat and said that of course whatever further funds she needed, he would wire immediately to her sister’s bank in Cassopolis.

  So now on the platform, all three of them turned against the wind and stamping their feet like pastured horses were at a loss.

  Charlie held no understanding of why Sampson had asked him to accompany them, but he had been unable to resist the opportunity. It was how he had felt about Julia from the very beginning: that no matter what their destinations would be, he wanted the chance to speak with her one more time along the way. He had passed the previous few weeks in various forms of argument with her, privately overt and publicly covert. And even now, when she had made herself abundantly clear, he had to resist the urge to grab her arm and run.

  He pulled the small black shoes from his coat pocket. Still wrapped in muslin, they made an odd, lumpy bundle. He held them out to her in one hand, and unwrapped them with the other.

  “For Alice,” he said. He gestured at the frayed cloth. “Made from my own shoes,” he explained.

  She made no move to take them.

  “These shoes were made for the Chinese military thousands of years ago,” he said. “Very strong. Very comfortable.”

  She glanced at her husband. “How kind of you, Mr. Sing,” she said, rewrapping the muslin and tucking the shoes into Alice’s basket. “They are too big for her now, of course,” she said. “But it is a most thoughtful gift.”

  How kind, he thought. How thoughtful. The politeness of strangers.

  “They will fit her someday, I think,” he said.

  Every one of his arguments had come back to the simple premise that he wanted to make a family with her and her husband did not. And every one of her responses had been equally plain: she would rather be on her own with Alice than with him.

  Each time she had made this apparent, he had understood it but not believed it. Even now he waited for her to turn, one foot on the train’s first step, and offer herself to him with a small beckoning wave. This was why he had accepted Sampson’s invitation: because if she were to make the offer, he must be there to receive it.

  Sampson, too, had no understanding as to why he had asked for the man’s company, though he found himself vaguely comforted by his presence. Ah Chung’s accusations still rose through his mind like steam, but he liked Charlie, he had trusted Charlie from the outset. He had made an investment in the man, and he did not like to think he had been so wrong about so many things. His wife’s straight back, her face turned away from him, toward the train that would take her miles away, was reminder enough of what had come of his instincts and aspirations.

  Even this morning, watching her pack the last of Alice’s things, folding them into the most extraordinarily tiny bundles, securing them in the carryall as though executing a difficult jigsaw puzzle, he had thought: I could fix this. And yet he had known he would not. Had all that had passed between them fashioned him into a different man, or had his genuine form been revealed? He imagined it was a question that circled her as well, and he took some small solace in that.

  The first whistle sounded, and most of the travelers hurried aboard, eager to be out of the damp and wind.

  He touched Julia on the elbow, and when she turned, said, “Stay.”

  She glanced at Charlie, and he took a few delicate steps away. He could give her at least that, he thought, his heart breaking.

  She turned back to her husband, her eyes filled with tears, and held gloved fingers to his chapped lips. “When you can convince me that you are asking that of Alice as much as of me, I will,” she said. “On the first train.”

  Charlie had not stepped far enough away to keep her words from his ears. I am asking that of you, he wanted to scream. That is what I am saying. He imagined throwing himself around her heavily skirted legs. He imagined announcing his love in his best English. He, too, had not expected any of what had come to pass, but here it was, here they were. This is my child, he imagined saying to the other travelers.

  He had not expected to fall in love with a pale, blue-eyed American woman, but here it was, here they were, and what he feared she might have already forgotten was: The child is ours. There was you and then there was me and now there is this, and she is ours.

  But he said nothing, which was completely characteristic, surprising no one, least of all himself.

  Julia shook his hand and then embraced her husband, hefting Alice in her basket, waving their offers of assistance away. As she climbed the train’s steps and found her compartment, settling her hand luggage above her seat, her breathing settled for the first time in weeks. Of course, there was much about which to fret; she was not naïve about the worries ahead. She felt sure she would return, later if not sooner. How, after all, could a single woman with such a baby make her way in this world? An hour into the trip, the train’s compartment would seem large and bullying, and her mind would fill with the ways things could go wrong. She would recheck the bag of coins secured in her skirt and rewrap the bread and cheese in her basket. She had never done anything of this enormity. She had never been brave enough to try. Suppose she was not saving Alice, but destroying her best chance for happiness? She would think of Abraham and Lot’s wife and Noah and Job, all those difficult choices with all those possible outcomes, so many of them dire.

  But for now, the train still at the platform, she lifted Alice out of the basket and held her to the window, waving her tiny fist at Sampson and Charlie standing shoulder to shoulder.

  Sampson returned the wave as if in a parade, and Charlie gave the baby a bow.

  “Say good-bye, Alice,” Julia whispered into the pucker of her daughter’s perfect ear. “That’s my good girl. That’s my own good girl.”

  27 September 1893

  Chapter Eighteen

  On Wednesday the twenty-seventh of September 1893, Charlie Sing descended the metal steps of the 6:15 from New York City. The sun was low, its light a pale mix of summer and the promise of winter. Its heat was pushed aside by the briefest of breezes and he wished he had carried a warmer coat. He had not expected to return to North Adams in this lifetime and felt the wary anticipation of a disobedient dog returning to an owner’s outstretched hand.

  Sampson was dying. Charlie and Ida had known for weeks, since Lucy Robinson’s letter. But a second, more recent, missive contained the unexpected news that Julia, too, was ill. From the shock of her husband’s failing health and the fatigue of caring for him, the doctors were saying. Neither was expected to survive the week. Ida read aloud, standing at their kitchen window on Third Avenue in New York City. She
had been his wife for over fifteen years. They had married in the United Baptist Church, Richardsville, Virginia, before God and Ida’s wary mother, grim father, and six angry brothers on the twenty-third of July 1878. She was the mother of their five surviving children, whose sounds in the small apartment filled him with pleasure. Each time Ida had carried a child, the adjustments to her figure had amazed them both. Having missed this experience with Julia, he had found the incremental changes riveting and tremendous, as if he’d been allowed to glimpse the busy life of an underwater world. Watching her negotiate the maneuvers of daily life, he had been filled with warmth and gratitude, and had often crossed the room to take her hand and press it to his mouth.

  Lucy’s second letter did not mention Alice, and they did not speak direct of her either, but Ida looked up from the small, neat pages and said, “You must go.”

  On September 27, Alice May Sampson woke before light. She was two months beyond her twentieth birthday and lying in her childhood bed, surrounded by the detritus of her early life, felt herself ill-equipped to manage what needed managing. Though the Wilson House apartment had been busy with strangers and friends, clergy and physicians, she felt, as she often did, that what was of relevant concern to those around her did not bear on her own province.

  In late June, her father’s health had showed some improvement, and the Sampson family had returned to North Adams from their home of the last three years, Washington, DC, with wary hopes and cautious optimism. Her father’s meetings with friends were cheery, and she grew impatient with the length of time the short walk through the lobby of the Wilson House and down only a block of Main Street took, halted as they were by well-wishers of all shapes and sizes, people at whom she smiled and nodded whether she recalled them or not.

  She resented this as she always resented time with her father taken from her. She had spent most of her young life feeling as though she were in competition for his attentions. On one side of the field stood clergy and bankers, hospital builders and school fund-raisers, sadness and regret, missionary societies and worthy individuals, bravado and pride. On the other, Alice. She had felt more guilt than usual about this resentment when, by late August, his health had taken one turn for the worse after another, and the family left for Saratoga in search of some relief. Less than a month later, a week prior, they had returned to North Adams, none of them relieved of their sufferings. It had been necessary to have her father transported in a chair from carriage to apartment, which Alice found both saddening and mortifying.