Water Ghosts

by Shawna Yang Ryan

  I don’t know, Poppy says. She crushes her cigarette on the floor and kicks the crumple of paper and tobacco shreds away. How will I know if it’s a premonition or a dream?

  Always burn hell money. It never hurts. Like a hummingbird, lying limp in your hand. Your feet—those would be peasant feet back home.

  Girls don’t bind their feet anymore.

  Oh yes, he says in sudden remembrance. The revolution. You know, Sun Yat-sen came to the Delta. I saw the bed he slept in.

  You’ve mentioned that. Poppy takes the tone of a nurse guiding a patient back to bed: Can I get more water for you before I leave?

  Oh no, oh no. You just go. He sets his pipe back in his mouth. Poppy rises without a good-bye.

  As Poppy walks to the door, she tries to release everything she has absorbed through Happy’s bench. The scatter of his thoughts, most of them relating to money. The money he could have used to go home spent on opium instead. Before he quit working, he split his boardinghouse rent—five dollars a month—with another man and they alternated between staying there and in the field barracks. Happy came back on the weekends—a place to sleep during his stay in town; a place to store his things.

  Now the room is his own, and he shores up his walls with his possessions. Poppy travels with him, stepping into the small single-bed room, and eases herself through a narrow passageway to the bed. She sucks in her stomach when he does, shares his conscious moves to not tumble the stacks of old newspapers, empty jars, carefully folded rice sacks, three deflated bicycle tires (that surely can be mended), one bicycle handlebar, an electric fan (that snaps when plugged in but does not rotate), a gutted radio, four tin plates (one with a punctured bottom as if fork tines have pressed through), a jar of wooden chopsticks (tips singed from cooking), and a spoon of cheap metal bent awkwardly on its handle. All else Happy has forgotten, lost track of.

  Inside Happy’s mind, inside this room, Poppy is held in by these four walls of things—things that can be used and improved upon. Things that can be touched.

  12

  Like a Small Hummingbird (1865)

  THE SOFT RUSK of fingertips on a red-silk veil.

  He brought his finger to his mouth and bit. She giggled behind the fabric.

  Are you afraid? She asked. She was seventeen and bold.

  No, he said. He was eager. So eager, it made him afraid and his thighs quivered and his arms shook. The baubles and silver of her headdress tinkled. She took his hands and brought them to the edge of her veil.

  Lift, she ordered. Lift, or I’ll do it myself.

  He lifted up the whole headdress, careful not to knock off the glass beads. He kept his eyes on it as he set it down. He wanted to extend for a moment longer the anticipation of seeing her.

  She was pale and small-featured; her eyes, nose, and mouth gathered in the center of her face. A scatter of pimples on her temple. She smiled at him with small teeth centered in a red-heart mouth.

  You look so afraid! She placed her hand on his cheek.

  I’m not afraid, he claimed. He scratched at the light stubble on his chin. He had never kissed a girl. He breathed and concentrated on the smoky smell of the banquet still in his nostrils. She closed her eyes and pressed her lips to his. He moved his lips against hers, finding movement, rhythm, lips, tongue. He mingled the taste in his mouth with the waxy taste of her lip color. Her fingers fluttered at the frogs on his shirt and she pulled it back. He was bare skin to the waist. He pushed at her dress until it too fell away.

  Outside the window, groaning noises erupted, followed by laughter. Wedding night initiation from his friends. He raised his head in pause, and she gazed up at him, bare of lip color and panting. He went to the window and shouted good-natured threats at his friends until he heard the fading patter of their feet and laughter. He looked at her from the window: her persimmon-colored nipples and the goose pimples that broke across her flesh.

  He sat on the bed again. She sat up and brought her hands around to the back of his head. He felt his braid being loosened and then his hair tumbled down his back. She dragged her fingers through it. Longer than mine, she whispered.

  One by one, he pulled pins from her hair, and piece by piece it fell in odd waves and curls, solid with perfumed lard. one by one, the pins fell from his fingers to the floor and ticked against the tile.

  I think I will love you, she declared. She tried out the word: Husband.

  His fine hair fell around his face and hers and his heart pounded in her sticky smell. With an exploring nose, he sniffed out the musk behind her ear and on the pulsing point of her neck.

  Husband, husband, husband, she said, and let the word become familiar on her tongue—sung out in a trill to echo off the tiles.

  He leaned over and blew out the lamp.

  13

  CORLISSA BEGINS WITH the ABC’s.

  The first time through, she takes Sai Fung’s hand and guides her. Her pressure is gentle—anything more firm and she feels like she will sink through Sai Fung’s flesh. Sai Fung’s hand is cold despite a room so warm they don’t even dare to open the curtains to the sun’s glare. And in such proximity to Sai Fung, Corlissa feels dizzy, rocked on waves. A chill rides up her back. It must be the heat.

  She settles back and watches them write. So Wai sits on her left, copying the words Corlissa has laid out already on a lined sheet: Hello, Thank You, Dear Friend, Sincerely. Like a child’s primer, with the alphabet bordering the top. Their script is lovely—far more elegant than Corlissa’s. each stroke assertive, angling up or down with a flourish. Corlissa murmurs, Good, good. She says each letter, D, E, F.

  D, E, F.

  Good. Corlissa smiles. A tickle rises from her chest to her throat. She coughs. excuse me.

  Readjusts her sweaty grip on the pencil. She shows how to swoop around for the curve in a G, the architectural strictness of H and I.

  G, H, I.

  G, H, I.

  The humidity in the room grows. The curl is dropping from Corlissa’s hair; she’ll have to get it done. She pushes it off her neck with one hand and puts her other on So Wai’s hand. Goose bumps stipple her skin when So Wai speaks in her sharp, deep voice.

  J, K, L.

  Corlissa’s alphabet is nearly all lines and angles, while they manage to soften the letters, make them glide like arched bird bodies. So Wai’s skin is just as chilly as Sai Fung’s. It must be Corlissa who is withering in the heat.

  You before studied this? she asks in awkward Chinese.

  She doesn’t miss the look that stretches past her between Sai Fung and So Wai. Sai Fung says, I used to work in a silk factory. occasionally, a girl would come back from a city visit with sundries such as underwear and magazines. A tourist or missionary might pass an American magazine to her. I enjoyed looking at the letters, like little ants in busy formations.

  Corlissa doubts her comprehension. She makes up words for those she doesn’t understand, spackling the narrative into a type of poetry. Sai Fung continues, From what I understand, Sister So Wai has not studied english, but her calligraphy is wonderful. Right?

  So Wai touches her beak nose and responds in monotone, You flatter me.

  Corlissa turns to So Wai. Your husband when arrived here?

  Six years ago, but I have heard nothing from him for a year. He worked on a ranch somewhere near here. A letter every few months, then nothing. The waiting was driving me mad.

  Sai Fung—and you? You why came here? They answer her questions so readily, Corlissa pushes further.

  The silk factory meant life in the dormitory, Sai Fung says. Many women were married—wives of down-on-their-luck farmers who needed to support their families. others were single girls with few marriage prospects. I don’t need a husband, but striking out was preferable to living in a room with nine other women until my hair grayed. She giggles.

  Corlissa decides to cross the unasked. one never inquires how another arrived—on what sort of visa or lie. Those are the irrelevant fictions, but their spect
acular arrival still gnaws at her.

  How did you meet? on the boat, Sai Fung declares.

  An obvious answer. Corlissa blushes. She returns to the pages before her, readies for M, N, o, when So Wai says, There was an ocean. on one shore, it was gray. Black-bellied clouds, perpetual dusk. The people on the shore said the ocean was impassable. The horizon was the end of the world. She and I doubted them. Why else would there be a boat overturned and stuck in a sand drift? These were dead people who spent their days staring at the end of the world and lamenting. We cast off from the naysayers, floated for days across the sea. The end of the world was like a fleeing dragon’s tail that we always approached, but never caught. eventually, the sky lightened and land approached. Golden skies, sand like glittering glass. We’re very glad to be here.

  Corlissa frowns. The response is nonsensical to her. She understands each word, but put together, she loses their meaning. Literary allusions, metaphors, aphorisms and clichés she doesn’t have access to. They’re mocking her understanding, spinning a tale that would be absurd in any language. Drawn into their intimacy, then pushed out with a lie. She responds stiffly in english, Thank you for the story. Shall we get back to the lesson?

  They’re on her soil now. They might as well learn.

  SHE STEPS OVER glass jewels, curls of poems, and softening fruit. each has a tiny note tied to it with a greeting and a name. The men are indiscriminate about who their gifts go to. She’ll scoop them up later. A shirtless man in coveralls naps on the lawn. He jerks his head up, sees it is only she and settles back to sleep. This has become a common occurrence since the women arrived. Ignored, Corlissa continues on.

  CORLISSA NOTICES THE walls first. Despite the fancy, framed pictures of village scenes cut out of tissue and carried over from China, and the decorative shrimp made of plaited palm leaf, fingerprints mark the walls from customers’ children playing hide-and-seek among tables, or the proprietor’s own daughters trying to make some fun out of a long enclosed day. The red-cloth lanterns are outlined in dust. All this is especially clear to Corlissa in the afternoon light, which is pure white pouring through the windows. She glances from plate to plate on her way toward the back, hunger taking hold from her tongue to her stomach.

  Before the entrance to the kitchen, Yang’s wife, Lucy, and their niece sit at a table snapping beans. They talk as fast as their fingers move. The ends litter the floor and the beans are tossed back in the crate.

  Hello, Corlissa! Lucy’s switch into perfect english does not break her momentum. Take a seat. She tells her niece to fetch a drink and her uncle. Lucy is San Francisco born and she and Corlissa have bonded over these common roots.

  How’s business? Corlissa joins in with the beans.

  Lucy pushes hair off her face with the back of her hand. So-so. one cook found work in Isleton, ranch cook, so Jack’s been back in the kitchen.

  The news pleases Corlissa. And the help? she asks.

  Not bad. A lazy bunch when they started, but they’ve got it down now. Look at this—she waves her hand toward a piece of paper tacked to the wall near the kitchen door. The days of the week are written upon it in an awkward hand.

  They’re studying when they have a break. She smiles. How’s your daughter?

  Her eyes stay on her work; an offhand question.

  Corlissa bristles, then answers airily, Wonderful. She’s been such a help with the women. We’re teaching them english, though I’m not sure they’ll need it to find work.

  Our help has to be bilingual. Lots of Americans on the weekends. Another measured pause, then a nonchalant suggestion: The kids are going to pick seconds next month. Maybe Sofia would like to join. Something new, maybe interesting. Corlissa has heard of the summer ritual of letting kids loose on the remains of the pear harvest left in the orchards.

  If not these children, then who has Sofia been running around with . . .? Corlissa blinks away the doubt and says she will let Sofia know.

  So, how are they? I hear that Richard’s wife has barely left their house. I don’t know what he’s hiding up there. Afraid she’ll find out what kind of man her husband is. Corlissa marvels again at how quickly word travels in town. Lucy goes on: Strange. Why here? Show up with no connections, unable to trace back to anyone’s village or sister’s friend’s cousin’s husband or what-have-you.

  They’re fine. Helpful. Corlissa says it with the city dweller’s lingering need to put on a public face. Jack comes out in a dirty apron over a sweat-marked shirt and black slacks. He is just lighting a cigarette. He shakes her hand.

  Would you rather talk near the register?

  He’s always trying to keep things from me, his wife laughs. Jack pulls up a chair and smokes as he watches them with the beans.

  How’s Howar? His cigarette ashes fall onto the discarded bean ends.

  Busy. off to San Francisco a lot, working with a church there. The niece sets a soda in front of her. Corlissa thanks her and continues: He thinks, as I do, it might be very helpful for the women if they could maybe find some work. Not only for money, but to make some connections, get situated. With the side of her hand, she blades the condensation off the glass. She measures Jack’s expression.

  It’s a great idea, Lucy says. She starts to sweep the rest of the beans back into the waxed cardboard.

  Jack smashes his cigarette into a glass ashtray. He lights another. His fingernails are hard tortoise shells, work-scarred and ridged in white. He scratches his face with his pinky, carefully holding the cigarette away from his skin. He flicks more ash onto the floor. Corlissa sips her soda. Lucy makes a play of lining the beans up vertically in the box, a useless task to turn her face from the tension.

  I don’t know, Jack says. I already have too many without papers. I’m getting nervous. And two unmarried women? They’d have to live in our house so Lucy could keep an eye on them. He coughs smoke toward the floor.

  No, So Wai is married, Corlissa protests. She doesn’t understand the caginess, the reluctance.

  If you could get papers—any kind—I’d consider. He leans back and lets his arms fall by his side. I just have too many people right now. I can’t cut any hours.

  But Corlissa knows the hours are long, that most work all day, in every capacity, just for the housing and the tips. only economic diligence will allow them to eventually escape the arrangement. She’ll resort to blackmail. Threaten to turn them all in if he doesn’t comply. An anonymous note to the Sacramento sheriff. Say it in a calm, low voice, dripping with the reason of compliance. She can only purse her lips and nod.

  You’re sure, Jack? Lucy asks, looking at Corlissa.

  Jack presses his cigarette into the tray, where it lies a discarded body among other ashed corpses. He flicks the clinging ash off his fingers, turns his head at the sound of a bell, and says in Chinese, Customer. I’m sorry, Corlissa. Then he stands up and greets with smiles and loud words the white couple standing nervously at the door.

  14

  SHE LAYS ORANGE peel at the foot of the stairs, and in the morning the white pith crawls with snails. Richard tosses the peel and it disappears beneath the awkward foundation of the house next door. She was going to eat them. The kids still gather snails for their mothers to fry in garlic, but Richard has lost his taste for them. He rolls his neck on his shoulders in a cringing disgust. She might have fed them to him. He might have eaten them, thinking they were wedges of thick meat. He’ll have to show her the market and that food can be bought from orderly rows of stacked goods contained in clean and fresh boxes and jars, sanitized and preserved. He shudders again.

  The keys to the Lucky Fortune hang on a discreet brass ring that rests in his pocket. Twenty steps west and he is already on Main. The town is busy—the morning rush of people to work, stores opening, things forgotten the day before now purchased. The clamor will fall off during midmorning, rise up again for lunch, then slump until the late afternoon, when the men come in from the ranches, buy up the beer in the cold cases of the grocery sto
res and sit in the dropping sun, sighing off the day. Richard brushes past people on the narrow walk-way, hello here, hello there, and arrives at the bolted doors of the Lucky Fortune. The first key fits into this lock. He slides back the wood bar, reveals access to the second lock—the one embedded in the door itself. Second key, turn, and he opens the door.

  Complete darkness inside. No windows and even the skylight has been boarded up since the raid by the cops who came in blackface with more of their number dropping in from the top. He turns on the smoke-colored lights, then steps from table to table lighting the kerosene lamps as insurance to a blackout. That too a precaution from a robbery three years before: a man who backed up to the switch, scratched his back against the wall innocently, and turned off the lights so his partner could sweep the table and the register and disappear out the door with all the money by the time a hand could fumble to the switch again.

  Water is set boiling, newspapers straightened. He looks up at the framed map of China and imagines Ming Wai’s route—from their village settled just over the hill from the sea, through the water, off the map, ending somewhere near that wall groove. He turns the corner and unbolts the cashier’s office with the third key. He makes sure there is enough money in the till, and that all is ready for the “One Thousand Character” classic lottery that is played twice a day. The house-bound women send children out with their picks, but there are also two runners paid by the Lucky Fortune to go out collecting wagers. Ten characters for twenty-five cents. If all ten match those drawn, the winnings can be as high as a thousand dollars, guaranteeing a nice tip for the runner. The hope overcomes the risk.

  The front ringer squawks. Richard leaves the office, locks the door behind him and looks through the peephole. The guard, Perry. Richard unbolts the door and lets him in. Perry nods hello. He sucks on a butterscotch candy; his cheeks flutter like a nursing calf’s. Richard returns to the office; Perry will be left to check the peephole, let in customers, buzz the back if there is suspicion. With his straight-shouldered walk, he first goes to pour some tea before taking up his post at the front door.