by Carla Baku
“I have miles to make up,” the man said. His voice was calm, but Ya Zhen, who had managed to sit slightly on the bed, could see his pulse pounding in a fat vein that branched like lightning across his forehead.
“What I have to show this child won’t slow you much.” She closed the door. When she turned to Ya Zhen, all the caustic humor had left her face. “Listen to me, now,” she said. “You must change that dressing once every day.”
“Keep me here.” Ya Zhen’s voice was a dry croak.
There was a long silence. Ya Zhen, propped on the mat, watched the woman stare into the corner as if something was written there. Finally, she sighed and took Ya Zhen’s hand. Into it, she folded a rag pouch the size of a big turnip. “This is what I can do for you. Change the dressing. Do it the way I showed you before, yes?” Ya Zhen nodded. Her fear sat like a stone on her chest, making it hard to breathe. The woman had dressed her in an old tunic and trousers that were soft with age and frayed at the cuffs, but otherwise sound. She tucked the pouch into her pocket.
“Those three,” the woman said, tilting her head toward the door, “are dogs. Sometimes a dog can run a tiger into a corner, but this never works out well for the dog.” A tear ran down Ya Zhen’s cheek, and the old woman brushed it away. Her fingertips felt stiff as tanned hide. “It is better to be the tiger, little girl.”
She went to the door and pulled it open. “Carry her,” she ordered the ox-driver. “As if she was your own grandmother.”
He ducked into the room and lifted Ya Zhen. She closed her eyes, not wanting to see his face so close to hers. Back she went into the cart among the bags of grain, clutching the tiny bundle of her belongings to her chest. Her bedroll had been spread, and she lay back on it, thankful for the small comfort. The ēn mā shuffled out and passed a gourd of broth to Ya Zhen, stoppered with a piece of moss.
“Help her out into the bushes midday and when you stop at night,” she told the ox-driver. She ignored the two horsemen altogether. Ya Zhen could see the ox driver was afraid of the old woman. “Otherwise, keep your hands off her, and you might outrun your own sorry luck.” She turned without further comment and stalked into her small hovel.
When the door closed, Ya Zhen felt as though any hope of kindness in her life had been extinguished, like spitting on a candle. She lay back, feeling the humped shapes of the grain bags under her, and watched the sky pass as they started down the road again. The winter sun had come out, low in the sky and lacking real warmth, but strong enough to cast a few narrow shadows. She spread her thin blanket over her, trying very hard not to make movements that strained her belly. Lying flat with her belongings tucked under her head again, the pain faded somewhat and the movement of the cart lulled her into a shallow doze that lasted all afternoon.
The men did not help her into the bushes, and she did not ask for help. When they stopped, Ya Zhen inched herself out of the cart and squatted to piss, holding onto the wheel. Her hot urine burned and she chewed the inside of her cheek to stifle a cry. The second horseman came around the wagon and watched her, and there was nothing she could do but relieve herself and crawl back into the wagon. But the men did not interfere with her again, not on the rest of the long trip out of the hills and into Guangdong Province, not once for the next eleven days. The ox-driver brought her tea and food when they stopped for the night, and after the men were asleep Ya Zhen wet a fresh mass of the ēn mā’s herbs to pack around her wounds.
When they reached the port at Guangdong on the morning of the twelfth day and turned Ya Zhen over to the broker who had purchased her, she was able to walk by herself. Even thin as she now was, she was deemed acceptable and herded onto a steamship with fifteen other girls. Some seemed as young as Hong-Tai. Several wept, but most wore the shocked and hollow face that Ya Zhen saw when she caught her own reflection in the water. The ship’s crew shouted and hectored until the girls were below deck. They all crouched there in the dark, and now the weeping became a tide of broken voices, almost all of them calling for mothers. Ya Zhen kept her own mouth closed and would not cry.
One month they stayed on the ship from Guangdong, girls packed into the lower hold like salted fish in a barrel. Rough seas and no latrine, no way to clean the feces or vomit. Ya Zhen learned during the second week that a young sailor would look the other way, allow her to sit huddled into a corner on the upper deck, if she first let him run his hands under her shirt and between her legs and rub himself furiously against her. It didn’t last long. She understood that the hour or two she could stay out in the fresh air, clutching her few belongings, might save her life. Three young women had already sickened and died; their bodies hauled out and tossed into the sea like spoiled vegetables. Many more were too ill to get up off their soiled mats.
Ya Zhen began to know that she would not die and the knowledge brought no relief. One day, while squatting above decks, men began to shout and point over the rails. Faint on the horizon there were dark smudges. This was land, finally. The men called it by name and Ya Zhen tried to repeat the two strange words, but could not: San Francisco.
Chapter 2
They forced ten girls into a long, low building. Three had died on the trip from Guangdong and two were so ill that they stayed behind, limp on their meager pallets. Ya Zhen’s legs shook during the short walk from the docks. Other girls couldn’t seem to make their feet work properly and were half carried by the ones who could help. Only one girl cried, her tears steady and silent and her face expressionless. They all smelled like shit and old meat.
Ya Zhen, at the back of their trembling assemblage, craned her neck, trying to understand something about the city bursting up on all sides. The brief glimpse only confused her. To what could she even compare what she saw? Not even the busy port city where she had gone onto the ship in China looked anything like this. The roads were filled with people and wagons and horses, creating a tumult of sound. Chimneys, smokestacks, steamships and locomotives added hazy layers to the smutty skyline. The cobbled hills seemed to rise straight into the chilly air. Huge, ornate houses sat almost on top of each other and she couldn’t imagine how many families must live in each one. A woman walking nearby glanced in her direction but turned her head strenuously away when she saw the girls. It seemed to Ya Zhen that the woman was being swallowed by her clothing. The garment was severely constricted at her waist, yet ballooned out and trailed behind in voluminous swathes of fabric. On her head was a gigantic hat, sprouting so many feathers it looked as if a large brown bird had settled there and built a nest.
“Get inside.” A burly man took Ya Zhen by the upper arm and gave her a push. He shut the door behind him and stood in front of it, feet spread and arms crossed over his great hanging gut.
The room was large and tall-ceilinged, and although it was nearly empty, there was a strong smell of heavily-greased machinery. Men stood in several small groups. Some were Chinese. Some were white, with faces the color of a duck egg. They chatted among themselves, eyed the girls who huddled in the center of the room. It was cold enough that their combined breath rose over them in a small cloud. Three women stood by, faces flinty. Their clothes were similar to the woman outside, but coarser. None wore hats.
One of the men, dressed stiffly in spotless black clothing, pulled a gold watch from his pocket, clicked it open, and nodded at the women. They began to shout at the girls, harsh and unintelligible, pushing them into a single line. Marks were chalked onto the floor —numbers, Ya Zhen thought— and each girl was jostled into place behind a mark. A tall woman with a beaky nose walked down the line barking words, pulling up the chins of girls who looked at the plank floor. The crying girl let her face bow again when the woman passed; the woman turned on her heel and yanked the girl’s hair, jerking her head back. This time, the girl kept her chin raised and the tears dripped steadily from the line of her jaw onto her slight bosom.
When the tall woman passed near the end of the line, Ya Zhen stood erect and stared at the opposite wall. This was a way stat
ion and these men were another version of the three men with the oxcart. The woman put her hands on Ya Zhen’s rolled belongings, and Ya Zhen stepped backward. The woman wrenched the bundle from Ya Zhen and tossed it to the floor, then grabbed her by one earlobe and yanked her back into line.
“You don’t want to get fresh, little girl,” she said. “I’ll take you out back of here and teach you to be pert.” Ya Zhen didn’t understand the words, but the woman’s meaning was clear. She stood straight; when the woman walked away, she maneuvered the bundle close and pressed it between her feet.
“Now, gentlemen,” the finely-dressed man announced. “I expect some decorum here. Do not touch the young ladies. If you have questions about a particular girl you may address it to Mrs. Caruthers or one of her assistants.” The sharp-faced woman nodded her head once. “In the interest of time they’ve come straight from their journey. But not to worry—I guarantee they’ll clean up fine.” This elicited a bit of laughter from the men. “When you make a decision,” he said, smiling, “see me.”
The waiting men converged on the line of girls, looking them over front and back. The sharp-faced woman called Mrs. Caruthers, and her helpers, scurried back and forth as men called out or crooked their fingers. Three men looked at Ya Zhen, two Chinese and one white man. The Chinese men whispered together, too low for Ya Zhen to hear. When they gestured, one of the women went behind Ya Zhen and pulled her hair out of its braid. She gingerly ran her fingers through Ya Zhen’s hair, which fell almost to her knees, and turned her around for the men to see.
“No lice,” the woman lied. “Her head is clean.” She made Ya Zhen face forward again.
The white man leaned so close that Ya Zhen could smell whatever grease he had used to comb back his own dark hair. The smell was acrid yet floral, a combination that made Ya Zhen’s empty stomach churn.
“You’d best check the rest of her for vermin,” he said. “Pull those britches down for us.”
The woman curled her lip at him like an agitated dog. “You have to pay earnest money before we do that.”
“How much?”
“Ten percent and you can step behind that curtain and have a good look. But no refunds.”
Ya Zhen recognized the flat greed in the man’s eyes. Her hands and feet prickled. Although her body had healed well after the ēn mā poulticed her, she felt an echo of that burning, low inside. Meanwhile, the two Chinese men, seeing the seriousness of the smelly man’s intentions, moved on.
Up the line, someone burst out in sobs. Everyone looked. A slender girl, perhaps twelve years old, wept while a white woman yanked the girl’s trousers down to reveal her nearly-naked lower body. The other helper lifted the girl’s tunic, exposing tiny breasts set above a wasted ribcage.
“Convinced?” said the man with the round hat.
The interested shopper took his time looking at the girl. “That’s fine,” he said, in an odd, high-pitched voice. “I just heard that sometimes you fellas try to pass off a pretty boy. I didn’t want to put no money down on a boy.”
They pulled the girl’s clothing back in place. She put her forearm over her eyes and keened a single word, Maaa, a high, piercing note that seemed to cleave the air in the cold room. The girl next to her began to cry as well and Mrs. Caruthers hissed at them both to be quiet.
The man who had wanted to see the crying girl’s body fished in his pocket and tried to poke something into her hand.
“Here’s a little sweet. That’s not so bad, is it?”
She kept her arm over her face and let the hard candy fall through her fingers onto the floor. The girl next to her picked it up, smelled it and put it in her mouth. Some of the men laughed.
The man interested in Ya Zhen smirked. “Earnest money, eh? Why’d he get a free peek?”
“Mr. Salyer,” said Mrs. Caruthers, “we’ve done business in the past. You know you’ll get your money’s worth today. Have you made a decision?”
The man nodded. “She’ll do.”
Mrs. Caruthers looked over her shoulder at the finely-dressed man and snapped her fingers. He sauntered over, a small smile flickering on his clean-shaven face.
“You’ve chosen well, Clarence.” He cupped a hand under Ya Zhen’s chin. His touch was gentle and his hand warm and soft. Ya Zhen could smell a trace of mint on his skin. “She’s a treasure. I’m sure you’ll have a lucrative association.”
“Let’s get down to it, Bishop. I have a ship to catch at noon.”
“Plenty of time.” The finely-dressed man clapped the man called Salyer on the shoulder. “Step over here and we’ll have you on your way. Mrs. Carruthers,” he said, nodding at a desk near the back of the room, “bring the girl.”
The woman took Ya Zhen by the elbow and they all walked to the desk. The men sat and began thumbing through a thin sheaf of papers. They conversed over the tiny figures printed there, stopping now and again to argue some point.
Ya Zhen didn’t need to understand their clipped and throaty speech to know she was the merchandise in question. She felt nothing. There was nothing to be done, nowhere to run, so she stood still, waiting for the next thing to happen.
She could hardly have been more surprised when Mrs. Carruthers turned her beaky profile around and began to speak Mandarin. The words barely resembled anything Ya Zhen had ever heard, the speech flat and toneless, but she comprehended something that sounded like “papers by your hand.” The men looked on, the fancy man smiling amiably, while Mrs. Carruthers placed the smooth barrel of a pen into Ya Zhen’s right hand.
Ya Zhen looked at the three of them. She could neither read nor write, so she stood very still, holding the pen loosely at arm’s length.
“You,” Mrs. Carruthers said. She tapped the bottom of the paper where Salyer had just signed. When Ya Zhen made no move, she grasped the girl’s hand and guided her into scrawling a large X on the page. Then they pressed her thumb onto a black pad covered in ink and pantomimed that she should press her mark. This done, Salyer pulled an envelope from his coat.
“Five hundred,” he said. Things have gotten damn steep, Bishop.”
The finely-dressed man riffled through the envelope, then put it into a locked drawer in the desk.
“Worth every penny, Clarence. Best wishes in your collaboration.” He shook Salyer’s hand, then turned and lifted Ya Zhen’s hand to his lips. He touched his warm mouth to her dirty fingers and let them linger there, then strolled back to the business at hand.
Ya Zhen looked over her shoulder at the other girls as Clarence Salyer shepherded her to the door. They all stood in line, mute as penned rabbits as the men walked up and down.
She had hardly gotten her feet on dry land when Salyer had her aboard another steamship. When they left the place where he had purchased her, he walked just slightly behind, pointing the way and jerking the shoulder of her shirt if she didn’t maneuver quite as he intended.
Her hair still hung loose, whipping around her in the damp onshore wind, and she longed to tie it out of her way. The cold bit through her thin clothes and she hugged the bundle of her belongings between her breasts. Salyer walked her roughly parallel to the harbor where dozens of ships sat at anchor, their masts and smokestacks like a forest filled with bare tree trunks. Seagulls circled everywhere, calling or jostling for purchase on pier posts streaked white with guano. They passed a short row of food vendors and the smells of hot bread and boiled meat made Ya Zhen dangerously lightheaded. Saliva poured into her mouth and she wiped her sleeve over her lips repeatedly to keep from drooling. Salyer was in a hurry and rushed headlong without giving the vendors so much as a glance.
At last he moved them onto a crowded pier. Here he indicated that she should follow him, giving her an ugly threat that needed no interpretation. As they passed into the crowd, people parted around her like fat melting away from a hot knife. They turned their heads away or stared with disgust. Ya Zhen thought they must smell her. She let her hair fall on both sides of her face, a dark, unwashed shield.<
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Once aboard, a man in dark pants and a rough jacket hailed Salyer. His beard was so heavy and his brows so thick, it seemed to Ya Zhen that he peered at the world through of a mask of hair. They approached a hatch, the squat door forcing them to stoop as they passed. A narrow set of metal stairs led into a deep cargo area crammed with luggage and crates. In one corner, a spot had been kept clear. Salyer pointed.
“You’ll sleep here,” he said. He looked around briefly and yanked loose a length of padded material tucked around an upholstered footstool. “This should be warm enough. It’s not long.” He stood close, his eyes roaming over Ya Zhen’s face. “Hell, you don’t understand a thing I’m saying, do you?”
She stared at the floor in front of her, willing herself not to tremble. This is where he will hurt me, she thought. Right here.
He didn’t, though. Not then. He pushed the makeshift blanket into her hands and motioned that she should sit on the floor. “Much as I’d like to try you right here on the floor, that woman who said you’re clean was quite a storyteller. Stay put.” He made for the stairs.
“Salyer,” Ya Zhen blurted. His name did not sound the same when she said it, but it got his attention. He smiled, showing a neat row of pretty little teeth, one of which was covered in gold and glinted in the light falling from above.
“Got my name already. Aren’t you quick.”
“Sà dǐ qīa de ba,” she said, hating the pleading sound in her voice. But she hadn’t eaten for two days and rations had been slim at best on the ship from Guangdong. Her midsection hurt as though her stomach had collapsed against her spine. The hunger she sometimes faced at home was nothing compared to the desperation she now felt to fill her mouth, to chew. She pantomimed eating and put a hand on her empty belly.