by Judith Pella
She tried not to let it bother her. After all, she knew that the women had only accepted her in their circle because of Anna. She had told no one, except for Anna, of her family’s wealth and strong ties to eastern railroads. She had wanted to exist on her own merits rather than those of the prestigious Baldwin family. She reminded herself that she was an O’Connor now, and that as such, she had her place, and it wasn’t among those who graced the lovely mansions of Sacramento’s finer neighborhoods.
Laying out the dress, she double-checked to make sure there were no new holes or worn seams. Satisfied that the gown was in proper order, Victoria hurriedly brushed out her waist-length ebony hair and braided it into a tight single braid. Winding this into a neat coil, she quickly pinned the mass in place and went back to check on the water.
Finding the chill barely off the kettle, she sighed and settled for a bit of breakfast. She toasted a piece of bread, then slathered it with fresh butter, compliments of Kong Li, Anna’s former maid. The young Chinese woman had become one of Victoria’s only friends, and because her husband had managed to afford a milk cow, Li was often sharing milk and butter with Victoria. Of course, more often than not, it was butter rather than milk, as Li had nine-month-old Jia, her son, to consider.
Victoria finished her toast and washed it down with a cup of cold water before checking the kettle again. This time the water felt more tepid, edging close to lukewarm. It would suffice, she decided, and quickly ladled out a portion into her washbasin. Taking the basin back to her bedroom, Victoria slipped out of her flannel nightgown and hurried to wash. The spring morning appeared bright and sunny outside, but here in her room, the temperature was less than agreeable. Shivering, she completed her task with only one longing look at the now empty bed.
Within minutes she was hastily donning her clothes, pulling on black wool stockings and worn-out brown shoes to complete her ensemble. Not wishing to waste any of the water she’d had to carry upstairs from the community pump on the first floor, Victoria set the basin aside for washing out clothes the following morning. It was a hard, depressing life at times, but the worst of it was facing her days alone.
Kiernan was the first and only man she had ever loved. She had defied her parents’ dreams for her to receive an education and had desired nothing more than marriage to this poor Irishman. She couldn’t resist a slight smile when she remembered their wedding. Kiernan had cut a dashingly handsome figure in his new suit, but he’d been so uncomfortably out of place. Her parents had lavished upon them such gifts of clothes and parties and revelry that they had scarcely had a single evening to themselves. But this wasn’t a world in which Kiernan felt at ease. Victoria might have been born to wealth, but Kiernan had been born into poverty and had grown up in such. He knew how to work with his hands and how to force a living from the land, but he knew very little of dancing and parlor games.
She smiled again, however, remembering how hard he had tried on her account. He couldn’t have been nicer about the fanfare and attention given them both. And he had made very few mistakes, easily winning people over with his Irish charm and quick wit. If he stepped on toes either literally or figuratively, he was quick with an apology or easy explanation to point out his own error on such occasions.
Pulling her shawl from the back of a rocker Kiernan had made her as a birthday gift just a few weeks earlier, Victoria felt as though she might burst into tears. Her heart longed for his company; her arms ached to hold him close. The separations were impossible. Sometimes when the railroad work was halted for one reason or another, he was home for weeks. And other times, he was gone for just as long or longer. She had once broached the subject of accompanying him on the line, but nothing much was said about it. After that, Victoria had determined to remain silent and be good-natured, no matter where that left her.
“Oh, Lord,” she prayed. “I want to be a good wife and not give my husband anything further to grieve himself with. But I miss him, and I need to be with him.”
She remembered her mother saying similar things when she uprooted Victoria and her younger siblings and took them away from the comfort of Baltimore to a wilderness home near the tunnel construction her father was supervising. Victoria had nearly hated her mother for her decision. She had missed her father, too, and could understand her mother’s desire to have him at home again, but it certainly didn’t merit moving to that horrible little town so far away from the comfortable home Victoria had always known. But moving there had allowed her to find Kiernan, and the years they shared while Victoria finished growing up were precious and dear to them both. Ironically, returning to Baltimore, once her father’s job had been completed, had given Victoria pains of misery until Kiernan had announced his intent to join them.
“We vowed never to be separated again,” Victoria murmured, running her hand along the back of the rocker. “Yet here we are, so very far apart.”
A light knock sounded from the front door, startling Victoria for a moment. She glanced at the clock on the living room wall as she made her way through the small apartment. Who would be coming to call on Sunday morning?
She opened the door to find Kong Li and baby Jia on the other side. The woman’s dark eyes seemed to plead with Victoria before her mouth ever uttered a single word.
“You would please to help me with baby?” she asked in a soft, nondemanding voice.
“But of course, Li, what’s wrong?” Victoria ushered the younger woman into her home and closed the door.
“Baby sick,” Li said, holding Jia up as if for proof. The lethargic infant barely resembled the normally happy baby Victoria had enjoyed during Li’s brief visits.
“Oh my!” Victoria reached to take hold of the baby. She instantly felt the heat of the child’s fever through his wrapping. “How long has he had a fever?”
“Two day, maybe three. He not eat good for three day now.”
Victoria gently placed the infant on her tiny sofa and unwrapped him in order to better ascertain what might be making him ill. She pulled away his tiny gown and noted reddish spots on his chest and belly.
Hiding a frown, Victoria swallowed hard. “I think it’s the measles, Li.”
“Mee-sil?”
Victoria nodded, and Jia began to fuss very softly. “He’s very sick,” Victoria told her gently. “We should get the doctor.”
“No doctor. No money,” Li replied, her voice edged with fear.
Victoria knew Li and her husband were very poor. Probably worse off than the O’Connor family. Struggling to remember the time when her youngest brother Nicholas had suffered a bout of measles, Victoria tried to figure out what they could do.
“We need to bring the fever down,” she said authoritatively. “We’ll bathe him with cool water.” Li only nodded and looked to Victoria as though she held all the answers to their problems. “You can stay here with me,” Victoria told her. Li didn’t seem to understand, and Victoria didn’t wish to insult her by suggesting that the Kong home was less than satisfactory. But given that Li and her husband Kong Xiang lived in a tent not far from the river, Victoria felt certain she could offer Jia a better environment in which to recuperate.
“It’s warmer here,” Victoria tried to explain. “While we want to bring the fever down, we don’t want the baby to get chilled.”
Li nodded. “I go get our things and tell husband.”
Victoria was surprised that she would just leave Jia behind, but then quickly realized the woman could move much more easily without the sick infant and was probably thinking more of the baby’s needs than of her own. With a quick nod, Li headed for the door.
“I be back plenty fast,” she told Victoria confidently.
Victoria watched her go, then picked up the fussy baby and held him close. How she longed for a child of her own. She felt goose bumps form on her skin at the very touch of this child against her breast. Would she ever know what it was to hold her own baby? To nurse him? To love him?
Jia protested weakly at her t
ight grip. Victoria loosened her hold and smoothed his silky black hair. He wanted no part of her comfort. He was miserable with the fever but too weak to really fight her. Quickly Victoria went to work, holding him in the crook of her left arm, while she gathered up rags and a pitcher of water with her free hand. She forced herself to remember the remedies her mother had taught her. A little whiskey and honey were often used for sore throats and coughs. Plasters were made for chest ailments, but what would work best in this situation?
Victoria felt inadequate to the task as she settled down to the kitchen table and began to undress little Jia. That Li would break with her own culture’s traditions spoke to the influence of the missionaries who had helped bring her into a better life. Her husband, Xiang, was also a Christian and had faced a great deal of ridicule from his fellow Chinese. Their refusal to follow the old ways was perhaps their greatest testimony to having accepted the Christian God and the white man’s religion. And even now, with Jia’s very life on the line, Victoria thought it most admirable of Li that she had not sought out some Chinese herbalist or remedy maker. Overwhelmed with the weight of her new responsibility, Victoria began to pray, even as she wiped the baby with cool water.
“Dear Father, please teach me what to do. Let me remember what I’ve been taught or at least figure out the particular thing that might help Jia. Please don’t let him grow even sicker or die.” She shuddered at the very thought, thinking how very hard it was to be without a child, but how much worse it would be to have one and watch him die.
She continued to pray as she tended to the baby. There had to be someone with the knowledge they needed. Perhaps one of Anna’s old friends might share their wisdom. Then Victoria remembered that most of them would quickly call upon the skills of a doctor whenever the need arose. Perhaps she could go speak to that nice doctor who had cared for her when she’d first arrived in Sacramento. She’d been quite ill with pneumonia, and Dr. Benson had been the man Anna Judah had brought to see to Victoria’s needs. Maybe she could at least ask him what might be done, even if he wouldn’t see the child because of Li’s lack of money or even the color of her skin. It seemed so unfair that there were such prejudices against the Chinese people. Victoria easily remembered such attitudes toward the slaves of the South. Often, even when northerners spoke of freeing their oppressed black brothers, they still held them in contempt, believing them to be somehow less than human. Victoria saw the Chinese treated in the same manner. Especially when their religious views came to light. They held ceremonies that non-Chinese found difficult to understand. They had ancestral worship and honored the dead in ways that Christians found offensive. It only added to the separation of their worlds and caused great strife among the population.
Looking at Jia, once again lethargic, Victoria couldn’t understand how anyone could allow their opinions, founded or unfounded, to endanger the life of a child. Couldn’t they understand what they were doing to one another? Couldn’t they see the hatred they were sowing by refusing to care for even the least of these—a tiny, helpless babe?
“Please, God,” Victoria whispered. “Please help this child.” It seemed so inadequate to be able to do little but pray, yet Victoria knew that it offered the very best she had. Faith. Faith that God would hear her prayer and heal little Jia. Faith that God was bigger than all the prejudice and hatred in the world.
7
Victoria and Li continued to work at bringing Jia’s fever down. Victoria admired the petite Chinese woman. Her patience seemed endless and her love for Jia quite evident. She rocked the baby and hummed songs unfamiliar to Victoria, but all the while she endured this hardship as Victoria had seen her endure others—with a quiet, gentle regard that appeared to need no words.
Victoria stoked the fire in the hearth, knowing she was burning precious fuel that she could hardly afford to spare. Still, she couldn’t let the room grow chilly. She had closed down all the windows and built fires in both the fireplace and the stove, and while the room had taken on a warm, stuffy feeling, Victoria worried incessantly that it would not be enough to keep the baby from further harm.
As the days passed and Jia continued to fight his illness, Victoria fretted over one thing and another, but nothing worried her quite so much as the fever’s continued hold. It was this concern that drove her to seek out medical advice, but it was clearly God who caused the good doctor to cross Victoria’s path. She had barely walked a block from her home when she found Dr. Benson preparing to mount his carriage. Apparently he’d just come from visiting a patient, because he still held his black bag in his hand.
“Dr. Benson,” she called, hoping he would hear her and pause long enough for her to question him.
“Mrs. O’Connor, isn’t it?” the small man asked. He lowered his spectacles a bit in order to assess her more clearly.
“Yes,” she said enthusiastically. She quickened her step. “I apologize if I’m delaying you, but I have something I need to ask you.”
“I see,” the man replied, putting his black bag into the carriage. “And what would that be?”
“There’s a small Celestial baby in my care. Actually, both he and his mother are staying with me temporarily. He has the measles and a high fever. I’m hard pressed to know what to do. We’ve been trying to bring the fever down by swabbing him with soda water, but it doesn’t seem to be helping. Also he refuses to take any milk.”
“No, milk would just curdle in his stomach. I suggest a bit of ginseng tea. The mother will know how to make it. Their constitution is different from ours, don’t you know? He’ll respond better if given something his own kind is familiar with. Maybe have the mother boil in a little wild lettuce to ease the child’s pain. Keep the room dark; the light can cause blindness in measles victims. Especially in the weaker Chinese.”
Victoria bristled at his suggestion that the Chinese were somehow inferior to their race. Still, she recalled that her mother’s freed slave Miriam had many remedies that her own people had used for generations. Remedies that the doctors scoffed at and chided as being “black medicine.” Were they really so different in their body’s construction that they required two different kinds of medicine? Had she caused baby Jia more harm than good?
But as if receiving affirmation that her choices had been wise, she found Jia feeling a little better when she returned to the apartment. He actually smiled at her for just a moment before snuggling back to sleep in his mother’s arms.
“He not so hot now. I think fever not so high,” Li told Victoria.
Victoria reached out to touch the child and smiled. Jia’s skin felt cooler to the touch. “Yes, I think you’re right.”
“You talk to doctor?” Li asked, knowing that this had been Victoria’s plan.
“Yes. He said not to give the baby milk. But instead to make tea. Ginseng tea, with a little wild lettuce boiled in.”
Li nodded. “I can make this.” She got up and put the now sleeping infant in the padded dresser drawer Victoria had arranged for him. “I go home and make tea.”
“You can make it here, but you’ll have to bring the ingredients,” Victoria said apologetically. “I’m afraid I have neither ginseng nor wild lettuce.”
Li nodded and bowed slightly. “I have both.” She pulled on her straw hat and headed to the door without any further explanation.
Victoria smiled and watched the woman hurry away, her linen sahm fluttering gracefully. Unlike many Chinese women, Li’s feet had never been bound, thus she had no difficulty running or walking great distances. Her parents had been poor farmers in China—at least this was what Victoria understood from Li. They needed Li’s help in the fields, and bound feet were of no use to them. However, Li had explained, without bound feet she could never hope to be given in marriage to a wealthy man of influence.
Li had known a very hard life in China. Her family barely kept food in the mouths of their five children. Victoria frowned as she remembered Li speaking of being sold to a Chinese merchant in order to save th
e family after a particularly bad harvest. He was supposed to take her to work for his family; instead, he sold her again to a grizzled old sea captain who was headed to America with a cargo of Chinese and a variety of antiquities. The life Victoria had known in California had been hard, but it was nothing compared to the horror stories told to her by Li. She was still lost in such thoughts when Li returned with the needed ginseng root and dried lettuce.
“Husband back from railroad,” Li told her. “He say they will let him come to do laundry. We will go soon.”
Victoria had known that Xiang was absent from Sacramento. Men from the board of directors had sent him up the line to visit with construction supervisors to inquire about the need or interest in setting up his business along the railroad. Li had proudly told Victoria of Xiang’s desires to make a business for their family by taking in laundry and mending. Now it appeared Xiang had received the approval he needed in order to feel confident of taking his family from their meager comforts in Sacramento.
“I wish you didn’t have to go,” Victoria replied. “Or better yet, if it would take me closer to Kiernan, I wish I were going along.”
“You come with us. I think husband not mind. I will ask.”
Victoria smiled and shook her head. “I don’t think that would work. At least not right now. Kiernan would have to be consulted.”
“Con-so-ted?” Li questioned.