by Janet Fox
The hills that gathered and rolled between us and the ocean beyond were dotted with early wildflowers—purple lupines, pink and red poppies, nodding yarrows. Wildflowers in Yellowstone came so late, but these already were a carpet of color stretching as far as I could see, banks of yellow and blue shading into the dun of grasses.
At the top of the rail line, and just below the peak of Mount Tam, sat the tavern, a simple but pleasant place with a lunch service and even a dance hall and overnight accommodations.
I pressed through the light crowd milling about the tavern to the railing of the porch overlooking the bay. Will and David came alongside. Will placed his hand on the small of my back, and a tingle ran all the way up and down my spine.
And there was David, who moved away, down the railing. I wanted to reach out and pull him back.
I’d never thought to be in such a situation in all my days. Three months ago I would have been over the moon at having Will’s attention. I still would, if not for David. Such confusion filled my heart.
After lunch we took a walk. A trail led down the slope from the tavern toward the west. My fashionable new shoes were next to useless. I would have given my right arm for a pair of my stiff but sturdy old boots. Will walked close enough to me that he caught my elbow each time I faltered.
Will spoke to David, pestering him with questions about the import business, about particular Oriental pieces.
Small outcrops broke through the thickets of scrub oak, and the day warmed to uncomfortable as we trailed down the slope of Mount Tam. I took off my jacket and looped it by its sleeves around my waist.
At a lookout point was a broad rock that tilted back like a ramp and gave us a view up and down the coast. David and Will scrambled up; I gathered my skirts in one fist and gave my other hand to Will who offered his to help me to the far edge.
The view fell away at our feet. We looked west across the rolling foothills. The sun had arched over and now met our eyes direct. I was grateful for the wide brim of my hat; Will and David shaded their eyes. The warm wind that sprang out of the south drove up the slopes and rattled the oak leaves and fir branches.
“Where is that?” I asked. “That point on the ocean?”
“Point Diablo, I think it’s called,” David murmured.
“What does it mean, that word? Diablo?”
“Devil,” Will said cheerfully.
Devil. Diablo. The Chinese people called themselves “Celestials” and they called us non-Chinese “Demons.” Devil. Demon. The demon Wilkie. The faces of the girls came back to me, their innocence and fear. There were no clouds in the sky, but to my eye the sun seemed to dim.
The Crookedest Railroad in the World took us back down the mountain using the force of gravity. I wasn’t so keen on this contraption, but Will assured me it was as safe as houses. On the way back Will pressed David about a certain vase. David was tight-lipped but courteous, and they made some arrangement or other. David had said hardly a word to me. I couldn’t pay attention to their business, sitting as I was between them, their shoulders pressing into mine, my mind all distracted. We arrived in Sausalito just in time for the late afternoon ferry.
“And here’s where I leave you,” Will said. “I hope you don’t mind.” He lifted a strand of hair from my forehead.
I felt like two people. The one of me couldn’t stop feeling David’s presence, as he moved a little way off, away from me. The other of me was right here, ready to fall to pieces at Will’s feet, the feet of the man I’d always dreamed about.
Will raised my hands and kissed my palms, left, then right. “I must be off, Kula. I’ll call on you tomorrow.” As he walked away from the ferry landing, I stared after him until he disappeared.
“He seems to like you very much.” David’s voice, once so warm, was as cold and hard as ice.
I turned to David. I put my hand on his arm. He pulled away from my touch, and I didn’t try again.
The ferry ride back was a silent one.
At the landing, David turned to me, stiff and unsmiling. “This is impossible.”
“What is?” I pushed the words past the lump in my throat.
“I can’t love you.”
“What . . .” Love? Anguish filled me.
Kula Baker does not show emotion.
“You have feelings for him. Not for me.”
“No—David. That’s not . . .” Not what? Didn’t I love the idea of being a rich man’s wife? Didn’t I love the idea of being able to use Will’s power and money to raise myself up and save my father?
“Kula, I don’t know what game you’re playing. But you won’t play it with me.” His eyes were black pools, his lips an angry knot.
“I’m not playing a game. It was a misunderstanding. Please don’t be angry with me.”
He confronted me, face on. “Misunderstanding? Please. Do you love him, Kula?”
“I . . . I think . . . I mean . . .”
“You don’t even know.” He shook his head. “I’ll bet all you care about is his shiny automobile, his big house, and his bank account.”
I felt cold all over.
“Well, I don’t need this,” he said. “I certainly don’t want to be mixed up with a girl who cares only for money.”
“It’s not that, David. I’ve been serving people my whole life. The freedom—”
“Freedom? Freedom! You don’t think you’re already better off than so many others? You don’t think you’re free to make choices, to do the right thing? Please, Kula.” He waved his hand. “I thought you had a good soul. I don’t know anything about you, really. I thought you cared. I was wrong.”
He’d as good as stabbed me right through the heart. I was mute.
“You go on and marry a rich man who you think will treat you fine. You’re well rid of me.” He placed his hat firmly on his head. “Good-bye.”
I was rooted to the spot, fixed, frozen, broken into a million pieces.
Kula Baker does not fall in love.
Kula Baker does not let her heart betray her.
Jameson, ever there when least expected, materialized a few feet away from my left elbow. Of course. He was there to fetch me. To bring me back to that house. Miss Everts’s house.
David bowed. His next words were spoken so softly that only I could hear them, and then he turned away.
I could not see my feet as I made my way to the automobile and Jameson’s open door. I leaned into the automobile’s leather frame. My shoulder shook and my hands trembled as I covered my face. And my heart echoed with David’s last sentence.
“I won’t bother you again.”
Chapter TWENTY-FIVE
April 14, 1906
“. . . the only reason why the ‘Celestial slaves’ are
not now occupying dens in Chinatown is because
the arrangement of the smugglers miscarried.”
—“Chinese Slave Girl Plot Foiled,”
San Francisco Chronicle, November 27, 1912
THE DAY AFTER THAT PAINFUL TRIP TO MOUNT TAM, I felt ill. I couldn’t eat, my stomach was in such a twist, and yet I could not keep still. I was in the service of an employer who herself was in service to the man who had set out to ruin my family and me.
I was in a helpless state, unable to recover what Pa most required in his time of direst need.
And worst of all, I was not going to see David Wong again. A huge hole had been opened in my heart. Despite my best intentions, despite the fact that he was completely unable to fulfill my dreams, to give me what I needed most, I had come to the realization that I loved David. And I’d gone and ruined everything with him—I wasn’t even sure how it had happened, but he was gone from my life.
I marched into the drawing room only to find Miss Everts in her accustomed place by the fire. I turned to leave again.
“Kula, come here.”
Her tone rankled me. “Yes?” I stood still on the spot.
“Close the door.”
I complied, but remained at
the far end of the room, away from her. She rose and came to me.
“Events will unfold according to plan.” Her fingers worked the air, as if she was playing an invisible instrument. “I will tell you something I don’t know but I feel to be true. The contents of your father’s box.”
“What of it?”
“Don’t trust to wealth. There may be something in that box that is more important than money.”
“What could be more important—”
“My dear, I shall say it again. Look to your soul.”
“My soul is not in that box!”
“Is it not?”
I opened and closed my mouth, and let out an exasperated sigh. Why could she not just speak plainly? I was tired of talking around things, talking in riddles. I wanted to ask her to look to her own soul, especially where money was concerned, but I held my tongue.
“What is it, Jameson?”
I whirled to see him standing directly behind me. He was a quiet one.
“It’s the telephone, ma’am,” Jameson said, “It’s Mrs. Hannah Gale.”
“Well, then,” said Miss Everts. “Perhaps her apology has finally arrived.” Miss Everts pressed past me toward the door.
“She’s asked for Miss Baker, ma’am.”
“For me!”
Jameson stood aside to let me through the door, and then he led the way to the small parlor. I picked up the handset that was attached to the base by a long stiff cloth cord.
Though I’d seen a telephone at Mrs. Gale’s, this was my first conversation on one.
“You speak into that part,” Jameson said, pointing, “and listen there.”
I lifted the heavy black thing up toward my face, staring at it. “Hello?”
I heard the shouted “Hello,” which Mrs. Gale and I repeated back and forth several times before she shouted, “Your father has been convicted. He’ll be hanged in a fortnight, on April twenty-eighth. Kula—”
I dropped the handset onto the floor, where it landed with a thud.
I ran to my room, sat in my chair, and rocked, head in hands.
I woke still dressed, still in the chair, and well after midnight with a sore neck. I changed to my nightgown and moved to my bed. As I lay in the darkness awake, a sound drifted up from downstairs.
I slipped out of bed and threw a shawl around my shoulders and stood at my open door. Soft voices, footsteps, scraping. Years of sleeping in still forests and worrying over nasty possibilities had sharpened my senses.
The first thing to cross my mind was Jameson and his ghostly ways. I shivered, standing there in the dark doorway, leaning forward, trying to catch a sound.
Someone or something was making noise in the kitchen. And with no lights on. This was not normal, not as it should be. Robbers. I made my way down the stairs by sticking against the wall, my bare feet making no noise. As I passed through the hall I reached for one of the candlesticks I’d seen on the table there, to use as a weapon . . . only to find the candlestick missing.
That stopped me cold. Thieves were in the house for sure.
A noise came from the kitchen. I searched for another heavy object and found a nest of walking sticks; I chose the sturdiest one.
I went to the door of the kitchen. There it was again. Ghosts flickered fearsome through my imaginings.
Then came another noise, a soft thud. Ghosts didn’t make noises like that.
I reached for the doorknob as I heard more, and then something that had me holding my breath as I strained to listen.
It came like a murmur of water, a faint, soft, watery whisper. Women’s voices.
Whatever gave me courage after that, I don’t know. I turned the knob and opened the door, just as the moon slipped back out from behind the cloud and illumined the entire dark kitchen.
Two round faces stared up at me, two women crouching, two faces etched with terror. One was Mei Lien. The other, another Asian girl, younger.
“What are you doing?”
Mei Lien gestured frantically. Silence.
I knelt down, close. The younger girl scuttered backward on her knees, fearful. “It’s all right,” I whispered. I turned to Mei Lien. “Tell her. Tell her I’m not going to hurt her.”
The two girls exchanged a look; the younger nodded, her swollen eyes fixed on me. She looked pitiful. Skin and bones, and so young. Face so dirty I wanted to take spit and my nightgown to it. Her hair was matted and hung to her waist in dreadful knots. My heart broke for her.
After her betrayal of me, I knew Miss Everts was not to be trusted anymore, no matter what Mei Lien thought. Whatever needed to be done here, I would do it on my own.
I gestured. “Come.” I backed up, toward the door. “My room. It’s safe there. Come.”
Mei Lien hesitated, took the other girl’s hand, said something in Chinese.
“Come!” I repeated. I didn’t want Miss Everts waking up.
They followed me, silent now, and we slipped along the hallway, up the stairs, and to my room. As we passed the hall table I took note—both of those silver candlesticks were missing.
Once inside my room with the door firmly closed, the three of us sank to the carpeted floor. I pulled my warm blanket from my bed and wrapped it around the shivering girl. I turned again to Mei Lien. “What’s going on?”
“This Yue. She is run.”
“Run from what?”
“From the wicked man. The evil man.”
“What evil man?”
The two girls exchanged looks again. Mei Lien leaned toward me. “His name is Wilkie. He steal her, so she run. He bring girls here on ship. He steal girls from Middle Kingdom. He sell girls in Golden Mountain.”
I held myself still.
“He sell them to other bad men. Here, in Golden Mountain.”
“Golden Mountain,” the Chinese name for San Francisco.
I had lived with men in the wild; I knew the ways of men, though I’d been protected by my pa from the worst of their nasty doings. The image of the girls I’d seen in Chinatown flooded my mind. Wilkie “stole” girls in China and brought them here. Mei Lien’s situation, too, all of it . . it all funneled down to Wilkie and those he was mixed up with, including, I now believed, Mr. Henderson and Miss Everts. We non-Chinese were “Demons.” Yes, we surely were. I put my face in my hands. Then I bucked up; these girls needed me firm and strong.
Mei Lien’s eyes searched the floor.
“Listen. You let me handle this, yes, Mei Lien?”
She looked up at me, confused. “Miss Everts—”
“You let me handle her. I’ll deal with Miss Everts. We have to protect Yue. Right?”
Mei Lien’s brow furrowed.
I reached over and took her hands. I wanted her to understand; I knew that Miss Everts was not as Mei Lien thought. She paid Wilkie—the very devil who stole Yue. I could not let her know Yue was here; I could not let her tell Wilkie. “You must swear. You must promise that no one knows about Yue except me and you.”
Mei Lien nodded slowly.
I looked at Yue, sorrow expanding my heart. “You stay here, in my room. You’ll be safe here.” I moistened the end of the blanket with my tongue and wiped the dirt streaks from Yue’s gaunt cheeks.
Mei Lien looked at me as if she didn’t understand.
“No one will find her in my room. Only you and I come in here. She can hide here.”
“Ah.” Mei Lien understood at last. “Ah. Here, all right.”
I draped my arm around Yue’s thin shoulders. She couldn’t have been more than twelve. Her eyes were like dark wells, shutting out the hurt that may have already been done. It made my blood boil to think of someone hurting her.
Together, Mei Lien and I lifted her into my bed, where she closed her eyes and was asleep almost at once. I stroked the matted hair from her forehead, pulled the crisp sheet up to her chin. She could sleep there as long as she wished.
I had to deal with Wilkie. This girl, and how many more like her . . . I had to find the
will to face him. I had to confront that monster Wilkie so that he could never hurt anyone else again.
I’d rescue this girl and Min and any of the others I could find. I was done with his threats and his demon ways. And Miss Everts . . . I’d find out who was standing behind him—and if it was Miss Everts, I’d make her pay.
Chapter TWENTY-SIX
April 15, 1906
“Society was sore diseased.
Villainy wielded the balance of power,
and honesty was at a discount.”
—Metropolitan Life Unveiled,
J. W. Buel on the situation in San Francisco, 1856
I WAS UP WITH THE DAWN THE NEXT MORNING. IT was Easter Sunday, and so it was no surprise to me to find that Miss Everts had left the house. She worshipped alone. I made my own way to early services, expecting that she would be back when I returned, but when I arrived home, she had not. She was not back even after breakfast had been laid by Jameson and eaten by me and cleared by a sleepy Mei Lien.
Yue was still in my bed, sleeping the sleep of someone much deprived. I had to sort out how to help her. It all came down to money, no matter what Miss Everts said, and in her case actions spoke louder than words. There had to be a heap of gold in Pa’s box, and now I needed it for many reasons. And if there wasn’t, or if I couldn’t get it from Wilkie—well, I was ready to take my chances.
I went to the drawing room, one hand on my hip. It was then I noticed that the small silver boxes that had graced the table by the fireplace were missing. There had been five, all engraved and polished to a fare-thee-well. Now there were none.