Water Ghosts

by Shawna Yang Ryan

  Richard has been manager of the Lucky Fortune for four years. At first, he was ambitious. He politicked to become a partner so he could get the merchant status that would allow him to bring over Ming Wai. The competition was tight—everyone needed those papers. He’d bribed a little, argued some, then finally settled into his current position without complaint. The women were soft to him, sympathetic, leaned closer because he was safe. They treated him, a lonely husband, like an orphaned child. They stroked his hair, forgave his tantrums.

  He sweeps out the office, dumps the dust and paper bits into the trash bin. The other two guards arrive, then the dealers. At ten, the men start trickling in; the flow rises until noon, when the tables are full, the refreshments on the back table gone, and Richard must refill the tea.

  He is paid in a cut of the house. He soothes the customers, offers perks to remain competitive with the Ho Yoi Ling Sing next door. He supposes that each of the gambling places in Locke have a certain clientele. The Lucky Fortune has higher stakes, better snacks and faster dealers. Though most of the gamblers are ranch workers, it boasts a fair number of out-of-towners and weekend revelers from beyond the Delta. Richard’s english skills have also drawn a certain percentage of whitemen. And then there is his friendship (yes, friendship now—no longer love, he thinks, surprised) with Madam See. A boy sent across the street like a call ahead. He provides the men; she provides the women.

  Leaning on the counter, toothpick held between his teeth, Richard watches the noon hum and thrum. He reaches over and brushes some tobacco off the counter with his hand. Free Prince Albert tobacco for all the patrons. A man comes over to exchange buttons for cash. They’d replaced the chips and other paraphernalia with more innocuous items, like buttons and thimbles, after the raid. Lack of evidence meant one less thing they could be charged for. Richard watches over the exchange between the cashier and the customer. The toothpick has softened and splayed. He drops it into a spittoon behind the counter.

  He believes in a grim watchfulness rather than open friendliness. He smiles occasionally, always listens in on the dirty jokes, but tries to maintain the distinction that marks him as a manager. Better than all that. Shirts pressed, pants creased, cuff links even. He has Poppy shave him and massage his face with her lotions. He thinks that hair kept a little longer than is the fashion shows the luxury to wash and brush it. He’d once heard one man say he was a dandy. He scoffed and threw the man out.

  Richard leaves the cashier’s office again, locking in the cashier behind him, and steps up the narrow stairs that turn once on a three-foot-wide landing. The ceiling is low, more like a rising tunnel to the top floor. He emerges into the slanted, low-roofed upstairs room. A twin bed with an iron frame for napping guards or the occasional night watchman. Dusty screens are built into the walls, shaded so that one can look down over the gambling floor beneath without being noticed. He keeps his dealers honest this way. In the attic heat, he rolls his sleeves, unbuttons the top of his shirt. He looks over the whole of the Lucky Fortune as if it is a toy world, manipulated by his godly hand.

  He moves between the overlook room and the downstairs throughout the day. He moves among the customers, glancing over tables, saying hello, asking about a business venture, a wife or a mistress. He pours tea for some, rolls a cigarette for one. The afternoon cook fixes him some food that he eats upstairs; then he cleans his teeth with another toothpick, chewed on until long after lunch. In the alley next to the Lucky Fortune, he leans against the wall, feels nothing of the excitement flashing inside, and watches Manny Chow cheat people out of their winnings with a few thrown marbles. The day is falling off and the alley lights have come up.

  At ten, he goes through the process in reverse: money in the safe, locked, cashier’s office locked, burner turned off, kerosene lamps extinguished, lights off, door locked and bolted. Confucius believed ritual was the key to discipline. Here, his ritual is disrupted. He turns west, rather than east, and goes to Chloe, rather than home.

  SOFIA COMES OUT the back door, a blanketed girl descending into fog. Chloe turns and leads. Bare feet against the damp sawdust-laid path between the gardens and through a tunnel of fennel that rises above their heads. To their right, just beyond the fog, pigs grunt outside the slaughterhouse. The coyotes, prone to a howl on bright-moon nights, are silent.

  They go to the Hangman’s Tree, a wild-haired oak with claw branches. A few years before, children pushing their way to the river had come upon feet, then looked up to see a man’s dangling body. The place where the rope met the branch creaked with his weight. The men came and cut him down and the children, hand-whittled fishing poles still slung against shoulders, gasped as the body thudded onto the grass.

  But that is a few years past and Chloe doesn’t believe in ghosts, she whispers to Sofia. She breaks her way through the sedge. It saws against her trousers and folds under her heels. She nestles into a wide rising root. Sofia pushes in beside her.

  Chloe removes a brown soda-water bottle from her jacket and pries out the bit of broken cork that she has stuffed in its opening. The smell is instant.

  I brought this for you.

  Rice wine? Sofia asks.

  Just a bit I siphoned out of a bottle.

  You won’t get in trouble?

  No.

  The glass is heavy and thick and the liquor inside faintly cloudy. Sofia puts her lips to the bottle and tips it slowly. At first touch of liquor to tongue, she rights the bottle.

  It’s so strong! Mrs. Chow makes this in her bathtub?

  Chloe laughs. Not her bathtub, but yes, she made it. You have such a daydream of my life, don’t you? She might have gotten mixed up. You know, she hides the stuff with her bathroom cleaners.

  Sofia readjusts the blanket around her shoulders and tries the bottle again. Her face, under the canted light sifting through the oak branches, is dappled silver and dark curves. one brown eye brightly lit.

  Mama acts as if she knows something, Sofia says.

  How do you know? embarrassment spills over Chloe’s face like a knocked glass of red wine. Being an outcast is still a fresh wound.

  Oh, she never says anything. It’s looks, just looks. Sofia plays down the gossipy aspect of her revelation by running her fingers over the blanket piping and watching the piling brush down.

  We don’t have to meet.

  She doesn’t know. She thinks it’s a boy.

  Everybody knows. It’s a small town. They just act as if they don’t.

  I don’t care. Sofia’s face turns pink from the liquor. Have some, Chloe.

  Chloe refuses. She rests her head against the tree trunk and pulls at the grass.

  Tell me what you do up there.

  Chloe closes her eyes. Her fingers twist over and under blades of grass.

  Tell me. Why doesn’t Mama think you’re worth saving?

  The ground beneath rumbles. A vibration that grows and rocks and then is joined by the chuffing of an approaching train. A whistle sounds. Chloe puts her hands over her ears. Sofia takes another swig.

  The branches shake; an acorn falls. The grindstone squeak of metal against the rails. The rising falling rising falling sound fades as the train heads south.

  If you don’t answer me, I’m going home.

  Chloe tries to gauge what Sofia wants. What will satisfy her? Only grit. Sofia wants grit and dirtiness. Chloe can show her that. She undoes her shirt buttons and pulls her collar to the left, juts forth her shoulder. Despite the dark, Sofia can make out the bruise that sits beneath the ledge of Chloe’s collarbone. You know what this is? Chloe asks.

  Sofia recoils a little—Chloe sees the small pull backward, the reassessment of the situation made in the flutter of blinking lashes.

  A hickey. Chloe drops her hand. The shirt stays open, revealing pale skin and a camisole strap. Richard Fong, she says.

  Sofia settles back into the trunk, gathering her damp dark nightgown around her knees. I think I’m drunk.

  Chloe splits strands of
grass. Shredded slivers fall to the ground. It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, does it?

  Sofia puts her hand on Chloe’s. Stop moving. Her hand slips from Chloe’s waist to the small of her back. Her head on Chloe’s shoulder. Rice wine odor flares from her nostrils. She burps and giggles.

  Chloe stays very still.

  Sofia unfolds her legs. The wine bottle falls over and drains with a glug glug. Her nose down Chloe’s jaw, tracking a scent. Drugstore perfume splashed onto a finger and smudged along the side of a neck. It begins sweet and fades like rubbing alcohol. It’s late, she whispers. Only the pulse in Chloe’s neck against Sofia’s mouth moves.

  It’s time to go. I’ve been gone too long.

  Sofia jolts away, regathers her blanket, burns with liquor and embarrassment. Chloe sees her wake from the slow time of being tipsy, not quite sure what she’s done or revealed.

  15

  Spring Morning Sun (1928)

  YOU NOTICED HER and your stomach went weak the way it never had. She was just a whore, you told yourself, and you scanned her from the gleam of her rayon stockings to her over-rouged cheeks. She was just a whore, and maybe it was this that excited you. She was more exotic than anything else—a whitewhore in a Chinese town—the lowest of the low. She was silent and conspicuous, blond-haired, in the grocery store, her heels clicking down the wood floors. And nobody seemed to notice, but they moved aside at just the right moment, pressed closer to the shelves of oatmeal and cereal and boxed dried grits. She was the same height as you, maybe a bit taller, but she had breasts, and hips, and you measured yourself against her in a second-long look. You watched her go to the counter and try to smile at the grocer, so you stepped away from the magazines, closer to her.

  She was buying a cola. She held out her palm, and the nickel that lay there was damp and warm, a talisman against the nonlooks and turned heads. All for a bottle of cola, already starting to sweat a few moments out of the fridge.

  It was the first day of spring. Not by the calendar, but by the weather, and you were new to town, new to the valley. You were unused to mornings that started out warm and got warmer.

  You followed her out—you didn’t know why. Your mother would have whipped you if she knew and yet you kept walking, pushed through the doors and onto the sun-warmed storefront. She sat on the bench and there was a hiss when she tapped the bottle against the edge of the wood and the cap popped off. She was pretty, and you compared her to the only truly beautiful thing you had seen in your life—strips of burnt wallpaper floating across the bay and falling into the sea. She was pretty like singed paper on the wind.

  But you didn’t have these words—only a faint sense of the image and the feeling that arose. You couldn’t even really think about your pulse, as you felt it in your chest and neck and wrists and thighs, or what your skin-flush in the spring morning sun meant, because this you had never even conceived of: that a girl could love a girl.

  16

  THE SOFT-PAD SOUND of skin on wood. A feral cat stink rises from under the buildings, where chicken wire has failed to keep the cats from nesting. Her mind is on sneaking, on a missed appointment, and on what has and has not happened. The tickle of Sofia’s mouth on her neck like a phantom itch disturbs her. She peeks onto Main Street, switches her head back and forth. empty. She scurries across and up to the side of the brothel. George naps on a stool just inside the door. He stutters out a greeting and pushes up his sleeves, exposing an epic tapestry of hunchbacked philosopher men with walking sticks and long wispy beards, fat-mouthed carp with scales outlined in green and filled in orange, gowned maidens making love to huge squid.

  M-M-Mr. Fong is u-upstairs. His voice is soft, hesitant; it anticipates its own hiccuping sound. D-do you want me to c-come along?

  Chloe shakes her head. She wipes each foot on the trouser leg of the opposite. She goes upstairs to the red room. Small earthquakes shudder her chest.

  Richard sits in the chair facing the door. one booted foot propped on the other knee, he leans back in a pose of languor.

  Ten-thirty, we said ten-thirty, right? he asks. He slowly unbuttons his right cuff and folds it back to look at his watch. Chloe shuts the door, but does not move from the doorway.

  And here, it says eleven-thirty.

  Chloe keeps her hand at the knob. She rubs her heel on top of her other foot. She glances down. There is still damp grass clinging to her toes.

  Frolicking? he asks. Sit down. On the bed.

  Such a strange word to use: frolicking. Chloe sits at the edge of the bed.

  He leans forward and chucks her chin. He pushes some hair behind her ear. Leans back. I didn’t see my wife for years. She might think it had something to do with you.

  I’m sorry. Her meek words barely drift from her mouth. She braces a moment; the force of his palm knocks her jaw into her shoulder. The pain is surface, the stinging skin. She won’t cry. Her heart pounds, but she won’t cry.

  It won’t leave a mark, he says. It’s because of me that you eat. That other men don’t fuck you. He places his hand over the shape of it on Chloe’s cheek.

  Chloe is no longer there. She is at a hundred different points in her life. She is in the same body she had at thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, with all the same feelings. She deserves this. She has been good, as good as she can be. What she thought she has paid back has returned: the wrath of her dead baby played out in the hand of a full-grown man. She doesn’t think of Richard, or the reaching light, the streaks of red and gray stretching up and down the walls. She just feels familiar. She feels like home.

  Who was it?

  No one. I was out for a walk. I lost track of time.

  Who were you out with? He walks back and forth with the pace of a smoking man.

  She shouldn’t shout. Indifference. She decides upon indifference. Lies back on the bed and looks for funny shapes in the texture of the wallpaper. A dancing goat, a little old man with sorrowful eyes. Richard holds a tight, thin roll of bills toward her. She ignores his hand and he sets it on the nightstand.

  She unbuttons her shirt, flays it open. Unhooks her cami-sole, frees one arm from its strap, exposes a breast. She looks up at him and her fingers go to the button of her pants. His faith in his own good looks and charm leads him astray. He reaches out and touches the hickey. She wriggles her hips and slides her pants down.

  Stop, he says. She follows his eyes to the waistband that girdles her thighs. I don’t want you tonight. He picks up his money from the nightstand, unrolls and snaps out the bills. A moistened finger strums the top as he counts. Pull up your pants. It’s one thing to be a whore; it’s another thing to act like one.

  Takes the hat off the peg behind the door. He leaves without a good-bye.

  Chloe takes a small tin of ointment from the nightstand drawer. She’s been toyed with, threatened with affection and desire by both of them. She dips her finger in. The ointment is half gone. The petroleum dollop is cold on her fingers. She rubs it onto her cheek and the hot handprint turns to ice. Her cheek numbs. She replaces the lid and pushes the tin back into the drawer.

  THE WALK FROM Chloe’s to home. Richard presses one hand against the other and feels the strain all the way down to the tendons in his wrist. A faint tingling on his palm. He decides to go to the river.

  He is walking past the packing shed when he hears a splash. Quiet, like a fish leaping for a fly. But then there’s a whisper.

  He eases his hands along the seam of the door, pushes gent-ly to see if it will yield. It is locked, but there, around the corner, the platform edges over the water and he remembers that there is a ladder nailed to the side. He steps over quietly. A wind nips around the building and the river is veiled with mist. Splashing again; it comes from beneath him. He kneels, slowly, curls his hands over the edge, straightens onto his stomach, and looks over. He finds the bodies where they break the light on the water. They’re only kids. Her hair is wet, slicked back, dripping onto the water. His hands are on her cheeks. S
he smiles, but his face is darkened and absent under her shadow.

  Culled fruit and cores bob in the water around them.

  Richard’s disgusted that they would swim in such water, so late at night you can’t see what’s beneath, all for the sake of a tryst. He prefers the strictures of a set love affair. The couple moves into something more intimate and, despite his urge to watch and watch, he pushes himself up, brushes his hands together, and continues home.

  Chloe’s light is off already. Shame settles on him. Maybe he should apologize. But he feels this same guilt every time (never more than that first time, when she cried like she’d never been hit before) and he knows it will pass. Across from Wah Lee’s boot place, he turns between the fish market and his house. His front door is recognizable by the odor of fish guts, dumped into a pit by the market, to be burned twice a week. The knotholes are enough to release the scent. on the days between burnings, cats yowl over the boards. Richard stamps his feet at the cats and goes inside.

  Ming Wai has fallen asleep on the sofa. There is something sunken about her; she appears the color of old chicken skin. Richard steps forward to rouse her, pauses. She smells unclean, as if the baths he insists she takes, the perfumes he insists she wears, cannot scrub the sea from her.

  He is intoxicated by women. He likes the folds where their secret smells lie, the pungent odors specific to them. Wispy hair and small ears and coquettish looks. He likes the coyness, the shyness that hints at something ravenous below the surface. The jut of a hip, the places where weight settles on the thighs. He wants it all. But Ming Wai seems too much.

  Ming Wai wants touching. She trails him around the house, makes careful quiet note of every blink and swipe. The house, which once smelled like him—a smell absent in its familiarity, but to a stranger: cedar, aftershave, and sweat—now relents to her. Her breath, her gas, her sweat. With every breath, he is reminded she is here.