by Janet Fox
I stopped and looked back. The slap of Min’s feet echoed as she tripped and stumbled on the cobbles, as Wilkie pulled her away. It made me want to retch. I vowed, there and then, that I would save Min from Snake-eyes Wilkie. I wouldn’t care at what cost.
Chapter FIFTEEN
April 3, 1906
“Of course I was in love with little Em’ly.
I am sure I loved that baby quite as truly,
quite as tenderly . . . that can enter into the best
love of a later time of life . . .”
—David Copperfield, Charles Dickens, 1850
BUT FOR THE MOMENT, HELPLESS AS I WAS, I HAD TO MAKE my way out of this alley. I forced my shaky legs to carry me toward the avenue, and I lurched in that direction, when, like drawing magic out of a hat, I ran smack into David Wong.
“Miss Baker?”
I was flooded with relief, so much so that I had to hold my knees rigid to keep from collapsing into a heap right there. I looked back down the alley to see Wilkie and Min disappearing into a dark doorway, her skirt a flag of defeat.
“Miss Baker?” David repeated. “Are you all right?”
I turned back to David. “Mr. Wong. You have no idea . . .”
“What were you doing down there?” David’s arm pointed down the alley.
“I . . . I ran into this, this man. Josiah Wilkie—”
“What were you doing with him? How do you know Wilkie?” David asked, anger storming his face.
“I wasn’t doing anything with him! I wish I’d never met him!” Just what was David accusing me of? I’d never felt such hurt. “I hate that man!”
“Then you do know him.” David lowered his arm, loosened his fingers.
“Yes, I do. He’s making my life miserable.” I caught myself. I braced my shoulders. “But wait. How do you know him?”
David’s eyes went dark. “He traffics in evil.”
I thought about Min. “Yes. Indeed he does.” I still breathed hard.
“I don’t think you can imagine. He—or those he works with—they . . .” He couldn’t finish and looked away, hiding his face, before turning back to me.
We regarded one another in silence. My heart eased, just seeing him there. And then something passed between us. I reached my right hand out to touch his left, a brief touch of my fingers on the back of his hand. And still we stood there.
I spoke softly. “This is the second time you’ve come upon me in distress, Mr. Wong.”
“I wish you’d call me David.” Warmth flooded my skin, a swift and bracing change of mood from fear to longing. David Wong reached right into my heart.
“David. Do you make a habit of showing up when I need you most?”
“I wish even more you’d tell me your given name.”
“Such presumption!” But I was smiling now. “It’s Kula.”
“That’s a beautiful name.”
My cheeks burned. “It comes down from my father’s side. I don’t know the whole story of it.”
“Why not?”
“I . . .” Why not. I examined the ground, mining the road for pebbles with my toe. I fidgeted with my jacket. I was ashamed, I could have said. My grandmother was native, an Indian. But to say this to a Chinese man, to admit my fear of the stigma attached to someone who looked like me, whose blood clearly ran with the taint of native blood, to admit to David that I was ashamed, why, he might not forgive me. And I’d discovered how much I wanted him to like me. “I never pursued it.”
“Miss Kula, it suits you.”
That blush crept right down my neck, and all my skin tingled so, and I met David’s smile. “Thank you.” I cocked my head. “And just how did you happen to be here?”
“I was meeting someone. And you?”
I adjusted Miss Everts’s hat, fiddled with the ribbon under my chin. “I was shopping.”
“Did you recover your other things?”
“No.”
“That’s a shame.” His gaze strayed from me to the alley behind me, to where Wilkie had disappeared. “Stay away from him if you can.”
David’s words reminded me of Pa’s words. “I didn’t come looking for him. He came looking for me.”
His eyes shot back to meet mine. “Why?”
“He . . . knows my pa.” I didn’t know what else to say.
“He’s dangerous.”
“I know that already. What exactly do you know?”
David’s voice came out low and deep, thick with emotion. “There’s another side to San Francisco. Other than the stores on Market Street and all the wealth of Nob Hill. San Francisco is an old seaport. Lots of sailors come and go. And with the gold rush came other types. And those types brought their new wealth and a desire for pleasures of all kinds.” He dipped his head. “I shouldn’t speak of these things to you. They’re ugly.”
“And Wilkie is mixed up in them.”
“Yes. I hate what he’s done. Everything.”
“Well.” I reached my hand to him again, this time letting my gloved fingers rest on his arm. “That makes two of us.”
A silence settled over us. Then David shifted, his hand covering mine. “May I escort you back to a safer place?”
“Please.”
We walked back toward Market Street. When we reached the intersection, we stopped again. “Which way are you headed?” he asked.
Back on Market we were again in crowds of people. Right away scathing looks met us as David and I stood together, arms linked, on the sidewalk. I glared back at them, but I didn’t want David to bear insult for my sake. “I have to walk in this direction. There’s an automobile waiting for me,” I said. “I’ll be safe now.”
He squeezed my hand. “I hope the next time we run into each other we’ll be somewhere we can talk without feeling that the eyes of the world are watching.” He smiled, a shy smile.
I returned it, shy myself. Then, seeing a scowl on a passing gentleman, I lifted my hand to David in a quick good-bye, slipped my arm from his, and turned away.
And I promptly stopped. I turned around; David was still watching me. “I’d welcome a visit. Should you wish to pay that call you mentioned last time we met.”
“Can I call on you the day after tomorrow?”
I nodded, my tongue having become tied up in unaccustomed fashion. I did so much like that David Wong. He was not the right man for me; he wasn’t what I was looking for. Still and all, I liked him. I turned away again and left him watching me, feeling his eyes on my back. Liking that feeling.
Now I had to face Miss Everts. Had she played me for a fool to recover my pa’s box for herself?
Chapter SIXTEEN
April 3–4, 1906
“Angry words, much strife, and perhaps
some bloodshed, were generated . . . and the
hapless Chinese were driven backwards
and forwards and their lives made miserable.”
—The Annals of San Francisco, 1854
THE AUTOMOBILE SAT IN THE SAME SPOT AS WHEN I’d left it. Jameson stood stiff as a rail by the passenger’s-side door, scanning the street. When he saw me coming, something passed over his stiff features before he was once again a closed book. Was that relief? Why should he care even one whit about me? He leaned over the door and spoke to Miss Everts, who sat waiting in the back of the conveyance.
Jameson opened the door. I stood on the paving, shifting from one foot to the other, trying to form whatever words I could pull together to express my jumbled thoughts.
Miss Everts leaned forward. “Well? Does it please you to so upset an old lady with your whimsies?”
“Whimsies?” I stopped shifting. “Upset you?”
“Jameson tells me that you ran off down the street without a thought to your own safety or the worries you’d impose on me.”
Now I was mad, and my tongue flew off by itself. “Oh, that’s rich. You leave me out of knowing what you’re up to . . . I think you’ve been using me.” I planted my hands on my hips and glare
d.
She leaned close to me, gazing at me with wide-open eyes. “Kula. Get in.” Concern and sadness all rolled together in her. I hesitated; but at last I slipped into the seat next to her as she made room. “Jameson, if you could give us a few minutes to converse, we’ll sit right here.”
Jameson moved down the paving and out of earshot.
“Kula. Now, listen. I went to discover what I could. There are parts of San Francisco that you know nothing about. People in San Francisco who would be a danger to you. I did not wish to risk—” She stopped and pursed her lips. “I knew even when you arrived about Ty Wong, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell you.” She paused again, and her eyes grew bright. “He’s dead.”
I groaned. She raised her hand, flat, for my silence. “He was murdered a few weeks ago.”
“You knew Ty Wong was dead even when I arrived?”
“Yes.” I realized then that her eyes held tears. As if to keep me from seeing them, she adjusted her broad hat so that her face was thrown into shadow. “We were old friends. He was very dear to me.”
Her emotion shattered my defense. I placed my gloved hand over hers and tried to make sense of what I heard her say. “Miss Everts. What are you trying to tell me?”
She dropped her head. “It isn’t easy, loving someone when it’s forbidden.” Her fingers moved under mine like a fledgling bird. Her voice was hushed and faraway. “You must understand. You would have suffered this kind of discrimination all your life, I expect.” She lifted her chin until I could just see light reflected in the two pinpoints of her eyes again. “Parts of San Francisco are lawless. There are gangs about, mostly young men distinguished by poverty and ignorance. They hate the Chinese.”
I couldn’t say anything. I understood the looks David and I had received.
She removed her restless fingers from under mine. “But it was not an accident. I believe someone has planned all this.”
“Josiah Wilkie.”
She turned to me, surprised but not shocked. “So you know him?”
I nodded. Before I could tell her I’d just seen him, she went on.
“I’m afraid he’s only a henchman. Someone else is guiding his hand. And for much larger purposes.”
My only purpose here in San Francisco was my pa. And my pa had been framed for murder. As far as I was concerned, Wilkie’s connection to anything else was of no matter to me.
Ty Wong was dead. The box was in someone else’s hands, if I was to believe Wilkie. All my reasons for being in San Francisco were gone. “What will I do now?” My voice was soft. Then, louder, “I should go back. Be with Pa before . . .”
“No!” Miss Everts turned sharp. “No, absolutely not!”
I squared my shoulders. First Wilkie had wanted me gone; now she wanted me here. I hated this, being ordered about, back and forth. My stubborn nature reared up. “I think that’s my decision, Miss Everts.”
“Kula, you must not leave San Francisco.”
“Why not?”
“There is a reason. You’ll have to take my word for it. With Ty’s murder, Kula, things have become even more complicated. I’ve just uncovered some new information. I believe this information will eventually help your father.”
Maybe this was why Wilkie wanted me to leave. I was tired of all the secrets, tired of playing guessing games. I leaned toward her. “And what is this new information?”
Her lips pressed together. “I can’t tell you just yet.”
“Whyever not?”
“If I told you now, you might find yourself in a situation not unlike your father’s. There’s real danger here.”
“Danger, here! There’s danger everywhere. I can’t abandon my pa.”
She turned to me pointedly. “You aren’t. You will have to learn to trust your friends, Kula.”
I drew back against the leather seat, confused and weary and frustrated. I didn’t ask her if she was my friend.
She lifted her voice. “Jameson, time to go home.”
He came at once, cranked the engine, and drove us back to Miss Everts’s. I glanced sideways at her. She was the most cantankerous and complicated person I’d ever met.
But I also couldn’t help the sorrow that filled my heart, the sadness that she must have known. There was that David Wong who took away my breath, yet we couldn’t even stand next to each other on the street without drawing ugly looks. I couldn’t imagine how she’d befriended Ty Wong without incurring public wrath.
The number of mysteries in San Francisco was growing. Miss Everts was connected with Ty Wong, something I hadn’t imagined possible. Ty Wong was dead, and Wilkie said he had found my pa’s box. Pa was in dire need. All my aces were gone, and time was my enemy.
I woke in the night to hear the wind howling like a thousand coyotes, and my shutters slamming against the wall outside my window. It took every ounce of my strength just to open the window and pull the shutters closed so that I could lock them, and my nightgown was soaked through with rain by the time I shut the window again.
And then I was unable to return to sleep. Wilkie’s face leered, and I heard his guttural voice in my head. I tried to still my beating heart by thinking about David, but my heart yet thumped, just in a different way.
The storm raged, the wind shrieked, and the rain pounded like nails into the roof. It was hours before I fell asleep again. When I woke at last, it didn’t feel like morning, the sky was so dark even through the other unshuttered window.
At breakfast I found Jameson and Miss Everts had gone out yet again. I paced like a caged lion. Every time I thought back to Wilkie and Min, I wanted to scream. I could not sit still and let this evil man do his work.
Perhaps Min knew something. If I could find her, free her even from the clutches of Wilkie, I might also be able to learn from her what he was about, and where my pa’s box had gone, and how to snare Wilkie in his murderous guilt. For if Miss Everts’s suspicions were right, Wilkie had murdered not just Black, but also Ty Wong, all to keep that box from my pa.
I touched the key hanging round my neck. Free Min, and discover answers, all at the same time. Then I’d finally be free myself, to get on with my life. But how could I accomplish that?
I went to attend to my chores in Miss Everts’s rooms, more and more frustrated at my helpless state.
Her jacket lay draped across her bed; I picked it up and hung it in the wardrobe. I tidied her shoes. I straightened the things on her dressing table, letting my hand rest for a moment on her silver-backed hairbrush.
Mei Lien did her hair, helped her with dressing. I must not be good enough for these truly personal attentions.
The hairbrush was a beauty, decorated with a raised floral pattern. I looked up at my reflection, then pulled my braid over my shoulder and untied the ribbon and let out the woven strands. I picked up that hairbrush and ran it over my hair in long strokes from top to bottom, brushed my hair smooth and shiny, letting my hair float over my shoulder until it was a river of dark silk.
There were strands of my black hair in the hairbrush now, and I laid it back on the dressing table without plucking them out.
I finished her room with the hair on my head all scattered and loose. At the door I paused.
The hairbrush was boar bristle and the black strands were hard to pull out, but I managed and held those hairs tight in my fist as I replaced the brush just as I’d found it, and shut the door soft and gentle, like a servant should.
I tossed my loosed strands into the fire in the drawing room and watched them fizzle and crack, and I set my teeth, like a servant should not.
I was coming to a decision that Miss Everts and David Wong most assuredly would not like. I found my worn plaid jacket and my old boots and a cloak of Miss Everts’s, and set out on my own.
I went to find Min.
Chapter SEVENTEEN
April 4, 1906
“The refuse, consisting of ‘boat-girls’
and those who come from the seaboard towns
. . . is sold to the proprietor of the select brothels . . .”
—San Francisco Chronicle, December 5, 1869
WHERETO FIND HER?
As if Chinatown was an ancient puzzle box, I felt pulled to start there. Min was Chinese, but that wasn’t why I thought I might find her in those narrow streets. It was where I’d first met David; it was where I thought Ty would have been. An aura, a magical hue, hung over Chinatown the way rainbow hues hung over the geysers of Yellowstone. Chinatown drew me, inexplicably and irrevocably.
I huddled against the driving rain and wind as I marched down Clay, scarce able to see my way down the hills. I’d been to the edges of Chinatown twice and before too long found myself once again in those narrow streets packed, despite the rain and chill, with vendors and black-suited men wearing waist-length queues.
The stalls were covered with tarpaulins that shed the rain in sheets. I leaned over their wares, gazing from side to side in a furtive attempt to see inside. I came to a stall selling shoes and bent to examine the small black slippers, reminded of the tiny slipper I’d found in Miss Everts’s auto.
Blackened gold thread on a delicate slipper. A slipper that had vanished before I could discover the mystery behind it.
Next to the shoes was a tray of embroidered envelopes, made for holding small things, fastened with loop knots. The silk was embellished with flowers, scrollwork, and dragons, dragons with tongues coiled and wings unfurled.
Embroidery I knew well. It was an art that required patience and careful fingers. Threads weave in and out and reappear, and while they are being worked, the meaning of the whole is unclear; it’s only when the design is complete, all the threads drawn and tightly knotted, that the pattern is obvious. I loved the feeling of the needle as it slipped in and out of fabric. I loved creating designs from seemingly meaningless single stitches. Finding patterns in the noise.