Chasing Down the Moon

by Carla Baku

  He lifted her chin and kissed her on the corner of her mouth, her eyelids, the tip of her nose. “I will get your tea.”

  Rose took her hair down. It was knotted and tangled, and when the last of the many hairpins was piled on the brass table, she worked the tortoiseshell comb through the snarls. When he brought the tea, he looked stunned by the wild, coppery abundance of her hair. She stood very still, feeling the cool length of the comb in her hand, waiting for whatever came next.

  He put the teacup on the table. Moving behind her, he lifted her hair in his two hands and let it cascade through his fingers. A line of buttons closed the bodice of her dress, neck to waist. He reached around from behind for the button at her throat, slipped it loose, unbuttoned the next, and the next. When the bodice was open, he ran his fingertips down the length of her neck and across her collarbones, just as he’d traced her cheekbones earlier. He slid the top of her dress off the points of her shoulders, and her heart beat so hard she could see the lace at the top of her chemise shaking. She pulled her arms out of her sleeves. He unwound the bandage from her injured wrist. Naked, it was swollen and dark where Garland Tupper had squeezed, and a shadow passed over his face. She touched one fingertip, ever so slightly, to the corner of his wounded eye.

  “We’re all right. Just…colorful.” She smiled. “Will you give me a little time alone?”

  He kissed her once more, a brief brush of his lips across her shoulder, and went out from behind the screen. Through the scant space between its panels, she could see him move through the bedroom, from the chest of drawers to the trunk and back again.

  She undid the hooks that held her dress closed at the waist and stepped out of the skirt. The front of the skirt, her petticoat, and even the knees of her underdrawers had streaks of mud from her fall in the street. Her right knee was scraped and beginning to scab over. She slid out of her underthings, acutely aware of the air on her skin and of Bai Lum on the other side of the screen. When she put her foot into the warm water, it was wonderful. She sat, leaned back slowly, and sighed. Like being born, she thought, but in reverse.

  “There is oil in the bottle, on the table.”

  She startled at the sound of his voice and sloshed a little water onto the floorboards. “Oil?”

  “Smell it.” His shadow shifted on the ceiling, a faded blur that grew and receded as he moved through the room. She picked up the little bottle and pulled the cork. Roses. Attar of roses. She breathed deeply and tipped the bottle. The oil broke into small puddles, floated together, broke apart again. She moved her hands through the water in figure-eights, swirling the oil around her. She bent one knee, and a chrysanthemum clung to the inside of her thigh. She took it between her fingers and held it to the light of the candle. She could see the flame through its petals, but there was a milky opaqueness at the center that turned yellow in front of the flame.

  “I can smell the roses,” Bai Lum said. His voice was soft, near.

  “How do you say my name,” she said, “where you grew up?” She stroked the flower over her belly and across her thighs until it came apart, the petals floating across the water like small exclamations. She drank some tea, and laid her neck on the curved edge of the tub, her hair hanging to the floor behind her.

  “Qiáng.”

  “Qiáng,” she whispered to herself.

  “That is the wild rose.”

  She closed her eyes. Perhaps she slept; when he spoke the water was cooling.

  “Qiánglì, I am bringing you a gown.” Bai Lum stepped behind the screen.

  Rose’s understanding of the sexual act was mostly theoretical, but she wanted him, and thought that would be enough for this night. She stood, and her hair clung to the skin of her shoulders and back. The cool air of the room made her nipples hard as two cherry pips. He stepped to the tub and helped her out, wrapping the robe around her. It was too large, one of his own, and the sleeves fell far past her fingertips. She lifted the sleeve above her elbow, reached in and pulled the stopper in the tub. The water was loud as it drained out through the pipes in the floor and down to the street below. He was smiling again. “A practical wife.”

  She took his hand. In the room, he had pulled the coverlet back to show the pale bedding beneath. On the table next to the bed, a small white bowl with four cobalt blue flowers painted inside. The lamplight was reflected in a few inches of water.

  “You saved it,” she laughed.

  “To capture the moon.”

  Rose lay back. He took off his clothes, draped them on the footboard. His skin was smooth and the muscles of his chest and shoulders prominent from years of lifting barrels and crates and sacks of grain. On the bed, he leaned over her and his hair fell in dark curtains on either side of the pillow. The smell of roses was everywhere between them. He kissed her neck, the space between her breasts, ran his hands along her sides until they fitted into the curve of her waist. All her life, her body had been an expected and functional thing. Under his hands, she knew herself to be something else altogether. He stroked the insides of her thighs, rested between her legs, watched her face. He touched her, touched her, all the while watching, until all the boundaries of her body seemed to be dissolving like melting wax. Then there was a moment, a small tearing sting, yes, but that moment she would remember the rest of her life, when she understood there had been a place for him, empty, and then filled.

  Deep in the farthest selvage of the night, she woke to hear a sea lion barking and barking out in the bay. Rose turned onto her side, feeling quiet and heavy. When the sheets moved she could smell their sex. He turned in his sleep, too, and she lifted his arm over her, cupping his palm to her breast. He stirred, pulled her close so that his chin rested lightly at the crown of her head. They made love again this way, and this time there was an almost unbearable, coiling pleasure that made her cry out. The cry turned into quiet weeping. Bai Lum pulled her tight to him, still inside her, the curve of her spine against his chest, and she felt herself falling back into sleep, even with the tears still on her face. The sea lion barked again and paused, as if waiting for some like voice to answer.

  Part IV

  CHASING DOWN THE MOON

  We intend to try and vote the Chinaman out, to frighten him out, and if this won’t do, to kill him out….The heathen slaves must leave this coast.

  —Denis Kearney, Labor Activist

  Workingmen’s Party Speech

  San Francisco, December 28, 1877

  In the secret chamber of the public heart they were virtually all of one mind, and to be rid of the Chinese by any and all means….As against this sentiment there was no restraint in existence that had any more power than that of an ostrich feather to change the course of the wind.

  —Reverend Charles A. Huntington

  Personal Autobiography, 1899

  Chapter 10

  Dawn brought ranks of low clouds, herded from west to east by a mild onshore breeze. Sunrise lit the ragged bottom of the sky until it was massed with gold and coral and pale lavender, color that reflected off the calm surface of the marshy sloughs that made ingress from Humboldt Bay. The tide was in. It covered the barnacles and mussels that sheathed the pilings at the wharf and deposited whip-like snarls of bull kelp at the high tide line. When the sun cleared Berry Summit, the usual pall of wood smoke that issued continuously from the sawmills along the coast was conspicuously absent, as if it was a holiday. Steller’s jays began squabbling inSix Years after the Expulsion the surrounding trees, and a turkey vulture sat atop a telegraph pole, fanning its massive wings in order to warm and dry its plumage.

  In the streets of Eureka, even before the gaslights were extinguished, every wagon and dray in the city limits was pressed into service for haulage.

  At six o’clock, someone pounded on the back doors of the mercantile. Rose jerked awake, disoriented. She sat up, heart racing, and looked around the dark room. Bai Lum was already dressed; he hurried to the window and lifted the sash.

  “I’m coming,” he
called into the alley. Someone shouted a response and he closed the window.

  “Who is it?” She climbed out of bed and pulled Bai Lum’s robe around herself.

  “Huntington and some others. They have wagons.”

  “Go,” she said. “I’ll be right there.”

  He pulled her close and looked down into her face. His own was tight and set. She wished she could think of some right thing to say, but she felt so husked out by dread she could only stare at him, mute. The banging at the rear entrance came again.

  Watching him leave caused a wave of nausea. She went to the bathtub and worked the pump handle, washed in a few inches of cold water. The smell of the attar of roses still clung to the porcelain. Her dirty clothes were there in a pile; she dressed hurriedly and yanked her hair into a braid, not bothering to pin it up. She re-wrapped her swollen left wrist, now a bilious shade of green-purple. When her boots were laced, she folded the gilt screen and laid it against the wall. In the weak morning twilight, the bed stood askew. She pulled off the sheets and coverlet and stuffed them into the open trunk.

  Looking around, her eyes landed on the bowl. Four flowers. Her fingertip made tiny ripples in the surface of the water. She picked it up and drank, then wrapped it in his robe and buried it in the center of the trunk. She lowered the lid, secured the leather buckles, and pulled the trunk out into the hallway. A last glance at the bedroom showed the bare mattress and the empty tub, squatting side-by-side.

  The stairwell was dim, but at the landing she could see the sky brightening with intense color. In the storeroom, the large freight door was rolled back. Two men she didn’t know hauled what was left of Bai Lum’s stock into the alley. They avoided looking at her as they carried barrels and boxes. Outside, Reverend Huntington and Bai Lum shifted the cargo around into two wagons.

  “Morning, Rose,” Reverend Huntington said. “We’ve not unblocked the front door yet. Might be best to wait. We’re going to hustle as much of this to the church as we’re able, then I’ll get back here with Mrs. Huntington and the girls. Gentlemen,” he called to the two others, “this is my dear friend, Rose Allen.”

  One man stopped and took off his hat. “Pleased,” he said. “Name’s Patrick.” Blond hair corkscrewed around his face and caught the glow of sunrise colors now radiating into the alley. He set his cap and climbed onto the lead wagon. The other man gave Rose a brief nod as he went by carrying a fifty-pound bag of rice.

  “Thank you for your help,” she said, but he busied himself at the wagon and did not reply.

  Patrick flicked the reigns and got the first wagon rolling.

  “We’ll be back soon,” said Reverend Huntington. “Lock it up. Come on, Buster.”

  Rose and Bai Lum rolled the big door closed on its track and Bai Lum slammed the bolt in place.

  He looked around the empty storeroom. “Nothing left to steal,” he said. The end of a broken box lay in one corner and he picked it up. He hurled the splintered chunk. The wood slammed into the wall and shattered. She flinched and threw up an arm to shield her face. He turned his back to her, breathing hard. She wrapped her arms around him from behind and put her face between his shoulder blades. The muscles of his back felt stiff as plaster.

  He took one of her hands and rested his cheek in her palm. When his breathing finally slowed, they climbed the stairs. Together they brought down the trunks and boxes for his journey. The sound of their feet on the steps, the garish color of the sky outside, and the intermittent pictures in her mind from their night together, all seemed weirdly insubstantial, as if she only needed to take a long nap on her bed at Hazel’s to put things back in order. But no, this was real: here was her husband, whose hands had been so sweet and clever last night, piling his possessions, preparing to leave her.

  By the time everything was in the storefront, they could hear a commotion of traffic and voices on the street.

  He went to the barricade and started to pull it aside.

  “No, please don’t open it.” She took hold of his sleeve.

  He gently pulled her hand away. “This won’t stop them.”

  “But it’s still early.”

  He opened the door and stepped out. When she looked into the street she couldn’t breathe.

  The sidewalks were nearly invisible under piles of goods: boxes, trunks, sacks, bundles of bedding, handcarts filled with vegetables, crated poultry. People were dragging out more even now and wagons filled the street. They seemed to be coming into Chinatown from every direction. Both of the laundries had been ransacked, their windows broken in; articles of clothing and linens lay in filthy disarray on the street. In front of a chow shop, a small dog with swollen teats chewed at a gristled knob of bone. A man came out of the shop with a lumpy burlap bag over his shoulder and kicked at the dog. It yelped and jumped out of the way, but when the man passed, it darted over and dragged the raw joint into the road.

  At the top of the street a group of men gathered, most of them well-dressed, all of them white. It appeared that a very few of them were at the center, issuing instructions with a great deal of emphatic gesticulation. Rose and Bai Lum, standing apart by several feet, watched the men break off in small groups and start down the street, moving in the general direction of the mercantile. As they came, they stopped at every door, surrounded people who were still sorting and packing, entered buildings without knocking. They gestured, shouted, hailed empty wagons. They started throwing the piled possessions onto whichever wagon was nearest. A few Chinese men began to protest, trying to assert some authority over their belongings. But the posture of the deposers left no question; they were prepared to meet resistance with force. What was, just now, vigilance, teetered on the razor’s edge of violence. They moved toward the mercantile, inexorable.

  “We should go inside,” she said. Dread filled her belly.

  He turned to her. The deep sorrow and love and anger there hit her like a blow. “It won’t help now, Qiánglì.”

  Before she could reply, a pair of mules entered the street from the opposite direction, pulling a log sledge. The driver stood on the low platform that skidded along the road behind the team. He brought the animals to a stop directly in front of the store as two men approached from up street.

  “Where’s your things, boy?” Rose recognized Charlie Dampler, his thin chest puffed out like a cockerel. “We’re here to haul your lot to the docks. Time to go, savvy?”

  “We are waiting for Huntington,” Bai Lum told him. “He’ll be here soon.”

  “Shut up,” said the second man. “You’re going to the docks, right now. The law is behind this, and we’re hauling every one of your yellow asses to the boats.” The driver of the sledge climbed down. As they approached Bai Lum, none of them seemed to notice Rose.

  “I understand,” said Bai Lum. His voice was quiet, reasonable. “We have already prepared. Everything is ready for Huntington.”

  “That’s Reverend Huntington,” said the second man, “and you better clean your ears out. Get your stuff out here now, or we’ll give you a ride without it.”

  “No, he’s telling you the truth,” said Rose, still keeping a careful distance from Bai Lum. “Reverend Huntington brought me here to help. We have everything packed. He’ll be back any moment.”

  Charlie Dampler looked at Rose, let his eyes linger on her bosom then run down the front of her. “Looks like you got your dress dirty. That was last night, wasn’t it? When you saved your sweetheart here from the noose?” He smirked at her. “I guess you haven’t had a chance to freshen up.”

  The sledge driver grimaced. “You saying this is a Chinaman’s whore?”

  “Not for long,” said Charlie. “You’re coming in this wagon now, boy, with or without your goods. Move.”

  Rose laughed. “Oh, Charlie.”

  He looked at her, his smug expression faltering.

  “Don’t you usually take the orders?” She stared at him, cocking a half grin. An interior voice warned her off tweaking him this way, bu
t her tongue apparently had its own ideas. “Did Elsie give you permission to be down here so early, all by yourself?” Rose expected him to get angry, but the mention of his wife actually seemed to deflate him further. He stood looking at her, his mouth opening and closing like a fish. The sledge driver, though, was not put off in the least. He moved in on Rose until her back pressed against the wall of the store.

  “You have some respect,” he said, his face inches from hers, flecking her with spittle. He leaned forward, put his mouth next to her ear and whispered. “That’s a white man you’re talking to.” Rose turned her head, but the driver dragged her chin back around. She tried to pull away, but he had one solid forearm against her shoulder, pinning her with the weight of his body. There was the sound of a struggle, a thudding effort Rose could feel in the boards under her feet, but she could see only the driver’s face, his features so close they blurred. One of the mules began to bray. When she tried to cry out, he clamped his hand over her open mouth. She gagged, tried to bite down, but he gripped her jaw, pressing her lips against her teeth.

  Then he was gone, yanked away so suddenly she fell forward on hands and knees. When she looked around, Daniel Briggs stood over the driver, leveling a pistol at his face. Rose stood and scrubbed at her mouth with the back of her hand, tasting blood.

  “Are you all right?” Daniel asked her, keeping his eyes on the driver.

  “Fine,” she managed.

  Daniel motioned with the gun. “Get up, Creigh,” he told the sledge driver. The driver crab-scuttled and gained his feet.

  “When I sent you over here with the sledge I told you to carry goods. What the hell goes on here?”

  Charlie and the other man had Bai Lum bent double over the rail of the sledge. Charlie had his hand on the back of Bai Lum’s head, pressing it down at a hard angle.

  “Get off him,” Rose cried.