by Ann Hood
For Pearl, who had never even seen running water until they settled into a boardinghouse on Bubbling Well Road, all of the opulence of Shanghai made her homesick for Horse Street and the veranda that looked out over the Yangtze River.
“I hate it here,” she would say repeatedly throughout the day.
Felix tried to hide his excitement at seeing yet another new place. He didn’t want Pearl to feel even worse.
But Maisie kept trying to point out all of the positive things about Shanghai.
“I, for one, like being able to sit in a bathtub with cool water on these awful, hot days,” Maisie said.
Pearl stared at her long and hard.
“You’re used to that, though, aren’t you? Coming from Shanghai in the first place,” Pearl said.
Maisie had forgotten their story of running away from their parents in Shanghai and hopping on a junk to Zhenjiang.
“I am used to it,” Maisie said. “Yes.”
“But you don’t seem to have any idea where anything in the city is,” Pearl said, narrowing her blue eyes. “And neither does Felix.”
Maisie chewed her bottom lip, trying to think up a good answer.
“You didn’t come from Shanghai, did you?” Pearl asked.
When Maisie didn’t answer, Pearl said, “It’s all right. I won’t tell.”
More and more, Mrs. Sydenstricker talked about America and how safe they would be there. Sighing as she filled the bathtub for Pearl and Grace, she told them about how back home in West Virginia they would have running water and electric lights and all of the things they’d lived so long without.
“But what about Amah?” Pearl cried. “What about our little house and—”
“Shhhh,” her mother said. “Your father isn’t about to leave China.”
Mr. Sydenstricker stayed in Zhenjiang all of that summer. He continued to wear a suit and his preacher’s collar and to preach in the streets. Every time someone came to the boardinghouse on Bubbling Well Road with news, the family feared it would be news of his death. Despite being attacked with stones and sticks, he managed to avoid serious injuries.
One hot August evening, Mrs. Sydenstricker took Pearl, Maisie, and Felix to the Astor House Hotel in the Hongkou District. The Astor House Hotel was world famous, the most elegant hotel in Shanghai. In all of the Far East. Every important person in Shanghai met there at eleven in the morning to discuss world affairs and the problems in China. Tonight, a ball was being held at the Astor House Hotel, and Mrs. Sydenstricker wanted to see the women’s gowns and furs as they arrived.
At first, Pearl refused to go.
“Please come, Pearl,” Felix pleaded. “It won’t be as much fun without you.”
“Who knows what we’ll see there,” Maisie said. “Maybe something you can use in one of your stories.”
“I only tell stories about China,” Pearl said. But she softened a bit that Maisie thought of her as a storyteller.
“But this is part of China, too,” Maisie added.
“A terrible part,” Pearl said.
She put on her red hat with the gold Buddhas and tucked her thick, blond hair beneath it. Here in Shanghai, she didn’t need to hide her blond hair. It was perfectly all right for her to wear it down. Maisie was happy to, but Pearl insisted on that hat.
They stood on the banks of the Huangpu River and stared across it to downtown Shanghai. Its hustle and bustle reminded Maisie of New York City.
“Look,” Mrs. Sydenstricker said, stopping.
Her hand swept the air as if to take in everything that lay in front of them.
“This is the skyline of Shanghai,” she said. She sounded as awestruck as Maisie and Felix felt.
Mrs. Sydenstricker first pointed out the wooden bridge that stretched across the Huangpu River.
“That’s the Garden Bridge—” she began.
But Pearl interrupted her. “Waibaidu Qiao,” she corrected.
Her mother laughed. Normally she would have scolded Pearl for being rude, but it was clear that Mrs. Sydenstricker was so happy to be here that she forgave Pearl immediately.
“My little jewel of the East,” she said.
Then Mrs. Sydenstricker pointed out the large post office, the Richards Hotel, and the imposing and elegant Astor House Hotel, which was the largest of the three buildings.
As they stood there, the streetlights came on, and she sighed happily.
“Do you know that Shanghai is called the City without Nights? It’s the first city here to have electric lights, and more than half of them are in the Astor House Hotel,” she explained dreamily.
They crossed the street, past Chinese people in long robes with pigtails down their backs and Westerners in suits and dresses.
The Astor House Hotel was enormous, made up of four brick buildings connected by elaborate stone passageways. The front of the hotel was illuminated by large, red Chinese lanterns. Chinese men, dressed in red-and-white uniforms with gold fringe on their shoulders, stood stiffly at the doors. In metal urns along the entryway, fires burned in different colors: blue, orange, green, and violet. Although the hotel reminded Maisie and Felix of fancy hotels they had seen in New York and Newport, the Astor House Hotel emitted a different aura. It was old-fashioned and regal, an interesting combination of East and West.
A small crowd already waited at the entrance, and Mrs. Sydenstricker and the children joined them.
In no time, elegant horse-drawn carriages began to arrive. The horses were shiny and wore ornate silk on their heads. They walked in high steps, their hooves clacking against the stones like music. The carriages were polished to a bright sheen, with gold trim and lush-red or emerald-green or rich-yellow interiors. From them stepped beautiful women wearing fitted ball gowns and fur stoles. Chinese footmen appeared seemingly out of nowhere to help them out of the carriages. The women were followed by men in tuxedos and tall, silk top hats.
Maisie watched Mrs. Sydenstricker’s face as she took it all in. She seemed filled with such longing that Maisie wished she could take her back to the United States immediately. If she knew how to get back. If she were speaking to her brother, she would whisper this to him. She would ask him what he thought happened to Pearl and her family. Maisie wanted to do this desperately, but she just couldn’t let herself forgive him.
“Maisie?” Pearl was saying. “Mother’s asking if we’d like to get tea at some dreadful British tea shop nearby.”
“Oh. Sure,” Maisie said.
She caught sight of Felix watching her hopefully as if he’d read her mind and knew how close she’d come to confiding her thoughts about the Sydenstrickers to him. As they followed Pearl’s mother away from the Astor House Hotel, Maisie made a point of glaring at Felix just so he knew that she did not have any intention of forgiving him.
Pearl liked only one thing about Shanghai: the parks. Even in the heat and humidity of summer, the parks’ grass stayed bright green and flowers managed to bloom. Felix liked the lotus flowers that seemed to float in the ponds in all of the parks, and Maisie pointed out all the different peonies that grew everywhere in different sizes and colors from white to pink to violet to one that looked almost black.
“You’re a true Pickworth,” Felix told her one day as they walked across a park with an unusual amount of peonies.
Their great-great-grandfather Phinneas Pickworth had cultivated the Pickworth peony, a hot-pink variety that filled the gardens at Elm Medona.
“What’s a Pickworth?” Pearl asked.
Felix explained about Phinneas and Elm Medona.
“You mean you’re rich?” Pearl said, surprised. “I thought you were poor runaways.”
“We are,” Felix said. “We live up in the servants’ quarters.”
“It’s dreadful,” Maisie said. Of course, she thought just about anywhere was better than Newport and Elm Medona.
“I’m worried that we’re going to leave,” Pearl said. “Mother talks about it all the time.”
“Leave S
hanghai?” Maisie asked, concerned. “Or leave China?”
“China,” Pearl said sadly.
What would she and Felix do if the Sydenstrickers left China? Unlike the other times they’d time traveled, Maisie had not thought much about how or when to get home. If Pearl and her family left, what would she and Felix do?
“Well,” Felix said, “if you leave, I suppose we would go home, too.”
“How did you get to Zhenjiang?” Pearl asked, delighted with a possible tale of adventure.
“It’s complicated,” Maisie said.
Pearl didn’t ask any more questions. She was content to let her imagination fill in the blanks so she could make up her own stories.
Pausing to admire her favorite statue in this park, a tiny, stone boy holding an umbrella, she said, “Nî hao xiaô haí ér.”
“What did you say?” Felix asked, relieved that Pearl wasn’t pursuing her questioning.
“I said, ‘Hello, little boy!’”
“Oh,” Felix said. “How would I say ‘Hello, friend’?”
Maisie rolled her eyes. “Or, ‘Hello, Lily’?”
“Pangyou nî hao,” Pearl said. “That’s ‘Hello, friend.’ But who is this Lily?”
“Nobody,” Felix muttered, flushing with embarrassment.
By now they had reached the small zoo in the middle of the park. Pearl told Maisie and Felix to stay there and look at the animals while she went to arrange a surprise for the three of them. The zoo had kangaroos and monkeys and brightly colored parrots, a strange menagerie of animals that all looked pretty miserable. Felix thought about the Central Park Zoo, how his father sometimes took them there on Saturday mornings in time to watch the seals get fed. He used to worry about one of the polar bears that used to pace in a perfect square, tracing the four invisible sides. In his mind, Felix could still feel what it had been like to be little enough to sit on his father’s shoulders, to ride high enough to see above the crowd at the zoo, to see the penguins in the distance. If he closed his eyes right now, he could perfectly picture the small bald spot on the top of his father’s head, the pink scalp peeking through.
“Maisie,” Felix said, his stomach clenching.
She pretended not to hear.
“Maisie,” he said again, this time grabbing her shoulder and forcing her to face him.
“We need to go back,” he said.
At first she looked confused as if he meant they needed to leave the zoo and go back to the boardinghouse on Bubbling Well Road. But then she understood that he meant back—to Newport and Elm Medona.
“No,” she said, shaking his hand from her shoulder.
“Please,” Felix said. “Just hear me out.”
She narrowed her eyes at him defiantly but didn’t walk away.
“As far as we know, when we get back it will still be the Christmas party, right?”
“I suppose so,” she said slowly. “And your girlfriend will be standing in The Treasure Chest where you brought her without me.”
He waved his hand as if to erase her words. “It will be December 9. Like two weeks before Dad is due to arrive.”
“So?” Maisie said, crossing her arms over her chest.
“So if we go home now, we’ll be like fifteen days away from seeing him again. The longer we stay here, the longer it will be before we get to see him. And Maisie,” Felix added, his voice cracking, “I want to see Dad. I want to start counting down those fifteen days.”
She didn’t say anything, but Felix could tell she was considering what he’d told her. Here in China in 1900, days still took twenty-four hours to pass. Each day spent here felt like another day away from getting to see their father, even if back home time was standing still.
In the distance, they could see Pearl approaching. They could see her red hat with the gold Buddhas and a big smile on her face.
“How do we do it?” Maisie said softly.
It was true. They had figured out some things: that they needed to both hold the object in The Treasure Chest, that they needed to give the object to the right person. But they had not yet figured out how to get back home. The first time, they had tried to both hold the object again as if it might work in reverse. Nothing. The second time they had returned so suddenly that they had no idea what had brought them back.
“We need to re-create exactly what was happening both times when we traveled back,” Felix said.
Pearl was waving something at them.
“I have enough yuan to ride the tortoise!” she shouted.
“Did she say tortoise?” Maisie repeated. “Like a giant turtle?”
Once again, Felix grabbed his sister’s shoulder and turned her so that she faced him.
“Think!” he said, hearing the desperation in his voice.
But there was no time to think. Pearl had arrived and was tugging at their hands, pulling them across the park where a giant tortoise sat in the hot Shanghai sun, dry and brown and wrinkly, giving rides to children for a couple of yuan. Maisie and Felix had no choice but to stand in the line with Pearl and wait their turn. Then, first Felix, then Maisie, and finally Pearl, stepped through the small gate into the dirt circle where the tortoise waited.
An olive-skinned man with a big mustache took the yuan, then motioned for them to sit on the tortoise. Its shell was as hard and brown as a horse’s saddle, its neck long and thick. The tortoise swung its head back, its small, beady eyes staring blankly. The man hit the tortoise with a switch of a green branch, and it began to move slowly around the circle.
Felix didn’t tell Pearl that he didn’t especially enjoy sitting on that tortoise. It smelled faintly like sewage, and it was inhumane to ride a tortoise. His father had explained to him a long time ago one of those Saturday afternoons at the zoo that zoos used to be cruel to animals, caging them and even shackling them in place. What good would it do to tell Pearl that this poor tortoise belonged in a nice pond somewhere? She had been so excited to pay for their rides, he didn’t want to make her feel bad. For a moment, he found himself holding his breath, hoping that Maisie didn’t offend Pearl. But his sister stayed quiet and thoughtful during their tortoise ride and the whole way back to Bubbling Well Road.
Felix woke to a rough shaking. He opened his eyes and found Maisie kneeling beside him and trying hard to wake him up.
“I haven’t slept at all,” she whispered.
“How come?” he asked through a yawn.
“Because I’ve been trying to figure out how we got back the other times,” she said.
“And?” Felix asked. He reached for his glasses. Somehow wearing them helped make him more alert.
“And we did nothing. Nothing at all,” Maisie said, her voice rising.
“Shhh,” Felix said.
He glanced around the small room to be sure Pearl was still asleep. When he saw that she was, he got out of bed and tiptoed toward the door. Maisie followed him, and together they went down the wooden stairs, through the front parlor with its worn furniture, and out into the hot Shanghai night.
The air was sweet with the smell of flowers that neither of them could name. The black sky seemed to drip stars. Maisie and Felix stood in their cotton pants and tunics—his navy blue and hers powder blue—gazing up. Shanghai was a noisy city, always bursting with ships’ horns, carriage wheels, vendors hawking their goods, and all of the other sounds of city life. But out here, this late at night, all they could hear was the constant chirp of crickets. Standing there, they both felt the vastness of China stretching out before them. Felix almost told Maisie that he felt small, like a drop of water in history, both insignificant and somehow important.
But Maisie was already getting agitated.
“I’ve gone over it a million times,” she said. “At Clara’s, we were outside talking and then without any warning we were back home. And we were in the cemetery with Alexander and—same thing. All of a sudden we’re back.”
“We’re missing something,” Felix said.
He had thought
about it, too, and he remembered it exactly as Maisie did.
“They had the objects,” Maisie said.
“Definitely.”
“I remember Clara telling us about her aunt, the nurse, right before.”
Felix nodded. “That’s right.”
“And we were standing in the cemetery with Alexander and he was talking about having been orphaned so young and working for Beekman and Cruger.”
“Okay,” Felix said, wishing he had a pen to make notes. “They had the objects. We both were with them.” He thought hard. “Time of day maybe?”
“No,” Maisie said, disappointed. “Clara was in the afternoon, and Alexander was superearly in the morning. Remember, I followed him out there at dawn when he used to go and study?” The memory made her feel sad. Maisie missed listening to Alexander, and she knew that Felix missed Clara, too.
Felix sighed. “So Clara was talking about her aunt, and Alexander was talking about his parents…”
They looked at each other hopelessly.
“Maybe it’s out of our control?” Felix offered. “Maybe we go back when we’re done.”
“Done with what?” Maisie said, frustrated.
“I don’t know. Maybe we help them somehow? In some other way?”
Now Maisie sighed. “That’s not it. If anything, they help us. They take us in and feed us. They give us clothes.”
“And tortoise rides,” Felix said, smiling.
But Maisie didn’t smile back at him. “Joke all you want, but we’ll never get home if we don’t figure this out.” Her face changed, and then she added softly, “I want to count down the twelve days, too.”
As soon as she said the words out loud, Maisie got hit with the strongest feeling of missing her father that she had ever felt. All these months since the divorce, she had thought about him and missed him like crazy. She’d spent so much time homesick for their old life in New York that she hadn’t even made one friend in Newport. But ever since Felix had explained why he thought they should go back, Maisie had started to realize that her father was becoming a fuzzy memory. Sometimes she couldn’t remember what his voice sounded like. Sometimes it took her several minutes before his face changed from blurry to sharp in her mind. Every time these things happened, she panicked. Her heart beat too fast, and she couldn’t catch her breath until she could bring him back to her.