Sister Noon

by Karen Joy Fowler

  Miss Stevens had responded to Lizzie by telling the table how, in August of 1872, the Indians in Lake County had begun to perform the Misha Dance, prompted by the appearance of a monstrous fish in Blue Lakes. They’d feared the end of the world was at hand, Miss Stevens said. Her tone of voice was amused, as if these fears had, in fact, been demonstrably mistaken.

  The real subject of this conversation was Mrs. Maria B. Woodworth. Mrs. Woodworth was an evangelist, called on by God in spite of her sex. She’d arrived in Oakland after a triumphant tour of the Midwest, set up a tent, and begun a series of revivals. Here are just a few of the things people said about her:

  “Genuine, old-fashioned Methodist religion” (Dr. Lewis Kern).

  “I like it the best of anything I ever saw in the way of a religious meeting” (I. H. Ellis).

  “The same low order which characterized the African Voodoo, and the Indian Medicine Man” (Charles Wendt, Unitarian pastor).

  “Mental debauchery” (Tribune editorial).

  Mrs. Woodworth’s technique was charismatic to the point of mesmerism. Her followers fell often into ecstatic trances, during which they lay as if dead. These trances could last for hours or days, until those who experienced them came to at last, weeping and seeing angels.

  Oakland doctors wrote letters to the papers, expressing concern about the effects of undiluted religion upon the weak-minded. Lizzie had read an article about one Albertson Smith, who, after attending one evening, was convinced he could fly. He leapt from the upper deck of the Oakland ferry, crashed onto the dock, and was taken into police custody.

  But Mrs. Lake had actually gone to one of the winter meetings, and brought back a cautiously neutral report. The audience had by then swelled from an initial twenty-three Doom Sealers, as her followers were known, to several thousand. “It was all brimstone and the fiery pit,” she’d told Miss Stevens, Lizzie, and Nell. “Babies were crying. Women were screaming. Half the crowd was singing one hymn, the other half another. People of every color there, and all treated exactly alike. Outside, the wind, howling and snapping at the tent. I couldn’t hear Mrs. Woodworth at all, I could only just see her, standing at the altar with her arms raised in the air and bodies all around her feet. There must have been twenty of them or more, stiff and lifeless as logs.

  “Then, just when I was wishing I hadn’t come, just when I was thinking something cynical and worldly, I noticed my hands beginning to shake. They were all atingle, dancing around at the end of my arms, and I couldn’t control them. And then it was my legs and I slid to the floor as gently as if I were swimming through water. One of the men cupped his hands through the air above me, as if he saw the water, too, and I were being baptized. ‘Now you’ll see something beautiful,’ he said. Then everything went black except for one light I thought was a star, but it turned out to be the top of the tent.” She offered to take Lizzie along next time. “You’ll see that she has a power not easily explained,” Mrs. Lake said.

  But Lizzie thought it didn’t sound quite the place for Episcopalians. She was joined in this sentiment by the bishop, who, in November, had issued a general instruction to stay away from women who preached. “Much good can be done by women in a quiet way,” he’d said. “There is no need to make a public parade out of praying for the sick.”

  Privately Nell and Lizzie agreed that Mrs. Lake was among the more susceptible of God’s creations and had never had a cynical or worldly thought in her life. “I’d like to see anyone try to make me see angels,” said Nell, and Lizzie would have liked to see this, too.

  Then Christmas had come and gone, and it was late January when Mrs. Woodworth had her vision. She’d seen a mountain of water rise out of the Pacific and fall on the three cities of Alameda, Oakland, and San Francisco. She’d pleaded with God, asking Him to spare the cities if ten righteous men could be found within them. His answer was that all the righteous should move immediately inland. His judgment on the unrighteous would take the form of a tidal wave.

  This vision was shared by several of Mrs. Woodworth’s followers, who added their own details. The wave would hit on April 14, 1890, just after Easter. Chicago would be simultaneously destroyed, and also Milwaukee. Europe would be plunged into war. The Doom Sealers petitioned the governor, asking him to read the Book of Jonah, set aside a day for prayer, and remove all prisoners, monies, and securities in the San Francisco area to high ground. They published pamphlets. They quit their jobs, sold their homes and belongings, and left the city.

  This was the context in which Mrs. Lake had her pupils praying at all hours, searching their souls for hidden sins as if it were an Easter egg hunt. They were studying the Dark Ages, and she played a dreadful game of tag for which she’d enlisted Ti Wong. She told him to walk up and down the aisles of the room, touching the students—boys and girls both!—at random on the shoulder. Everyone he touched was to go stand at the back of the room. When the game was over, a quarter of the class remained in their seats. The others were dead. It was an aid to understanding the great plagues of Europe. Mrs. Lake claimed she’d asked Ti Wong to participate because the plague came first from China.

  Such a cruel lesson, so poorly timed, so unlike gentle Mrs. Lake. The game had given Minna Graham nightmares; she’d been one of the last children touched. In her dreams, a great black bird circled her head and landed on her shoulder. She heard the rustle of its feathers in her ear and awoke crying, saying that it was pecking at her eyes. All the girls in the room with her were in a state. Mrs. Lake was sent off to the spa in Pope Valley to take the waters until she was herself again.

  EIGHT

  nell felt strongly that among the many ill-advised features of this game must be counted the encouragement Ti Wong had been given to touch the girls. She marched him up to the cupola, where Lizzie was sorting through recent donations, so that Lizzie could talk to him about this. Someone had actually donated a used pessary. Lizzie swept it quickly underneath a cotton skirt.

  She had no intention of discussing the matter of touching white girls with Ti Wong, but since he was standing before her, waiting, she tried to think of something else to discuss.

  “I go somewhere for you?” he asked. “Fetch something?”

  “No,” Lizzie answered. “I don’t need a thing,” and then she reconsidered. Somewhere here, on one of the tabletops, she had left the address Mrs. Pleasant had given her for headache medicine. She had tried to go once, but had not been able to communicate with the druggist, was not even sure she’d found the right place. She’d come away with candied ginger, pretending that was what she’d wanted all along, although she had no idea what to do with it, and eventually threw it away even though she could see it would never, ever spoil and maybe she would need it one day. It had represented a failure.

  Now she rose and moved the stacks of books, the almost empty bottles of ink, the letter openers, the agate paperweight, the watch face with no innards, and a faded pincushion, filled with sawdust and shaped like a strawberry. Instead of seeds it was studded with glass-topped pins, and underneath was Mrs. Pleasant’s scrap of paper. Lizzie read the address aloud. “Could you find this place?” she asked Ti Wong.

  “I know this place,” he said. “Hall of Joyful Relief.”

  Myrtle Rolphe had been very clear and quite insistent. Ti Wong would run any errand, she had said, except those that took him into Chinatown. His uncle and aunt were apparently resigned to his Christianity now, and to his new home at the Brown Ark, but they could always change their minds. Any new boat could bring additional relatives, or people who claimed to be additional relatives. Then poor Ti Wong would be taken away and forced to worship idols.

  But surely he would be safe enough if he and Lizzie went to Chinatown together. They would take the mule and then walk. Fresh air was always good for growing boys.

  For many years a rumor had persisted that Chinatown existed as a false façade over a large underground city. Beneath the streets, the Chinese residents had dug a maze eight stories
deep, where opium was smoked, slave girls hidden, gambling and tong wars pursued with Oriental implacability. In these tunnels a new race was feared to be evolving. These new, underground Chinese were said to be even more able to withstand hardship and deprivation than the originals. Someday they would come boiling out of their holes like ants.

  There was another persistent rumor—that white women were kidnapped on the streets of Chinatown and kept as slaves in the dark below. Tell the proprietor I sent you, Mrs. Pleasant had said, Mrs. Pleasant about whom it was sometimes whispered that she sold white babies to Chinamen. From Lizzie’s point of view there was just enough danger in a trip to Chinatown to make it a pleasure and not so much as to make it an adventure.

  The Hall of Joyful Relief was located on Washington Place. The streets were crowded and noisy, dark and narrow. It had rained in the night, the water rushing down California Street to puddle in the alleys and reflect the red and gilt of the balconies above. There was the smell of fish and incense. Ti Wong led Lizzie past a barbershop, where a man bent over a customer, reaching into his ear with a little black pick, then past a grocery, where sugar cane stalks leaned like fishing poles against the walls. Racks of plucked chickens hung by their necks in the windows. On the sidewalk were buckets of live crabs and turtles.

  A white man emerged from an alleyway, winked at Lizzie rudely, and walked by. Nothing about him suggested that he was a gentleman. They passed a restaurant whose odors she had never encountered before and could not identify, but made her mouth water anyway. On Dupont, thin, reedy music floated down from an upper story. One huge golden tooth swung from the balcony railing of a building where, presumably, a dentist worked. On the next balcony over, Lizzie saw an old man smoking a pipe and staring back at her. They passed a house flying the dragon flag of China and a large sign in English that read: “Chow Loon, 4 family Parental Tablet Society.”

  A woman with wooden soles and ankle bracelets walked by, her bracelets ringing, her shoes clapping. She wore rouge in a large red oval that covered her face, and her hair was oiled a shiny black. All San Francisco knew of the sad lives of Chinese slave women. The sight made Lizzie take hold of Ti Wong’s sleeve. He turned to look at her. She thought he might imagine she was trying to keep him, instead of her intention, which was to keep him safe. She let go.

  In the window of the Hall of Joyful Relief, a row of green bottles caught the sun. Each bottle held a horned toad, pickled and standing on its head. The druggist sat at a table, writing something for another man who stood and dictated in rapid Chinese. When Lizzie and Ti Wong entered, the druggist held up one hand to silence them before they spoke. Lizzie watched him write. He held the brush upright with his thumb and index finger, but moved it down the page with the little finger. After he finished, the two men talked together briefly.

  Then the druggist turned to Lizzie. “Tell him,” Lizzie said to Ti Wong, “that I want a tea for headache. Tell him Mrs. Pleasant, the colored woman from Octavia Street, said he would know what to give me.”

  She was embarrassed to have come. The bottles of toads did not look scientific to her. She had no faith in the enigmatic learning of the Orient. If their religion was primitive, wouldn’t their medicine be the same? She could just hear the bells of St. Mary’s tolling the hour, a reproachful, Christian sound. And yet, as administered by Mrs. Pleasant, the tea had seemed to help. To ignore actual experience was also a form of superstition.

  The druggist reached over and took hold of Ti Wong’s clipped hair. He rubbed it with his fingers. Lizzie felt his disapproval. He touched the scars on Ti Wong’s throat. Next he reached past Ti Wong to Lizzie, grasping her wrist, pressing for her pulse. He spoke extensively in Chinese, then disappeared into the back of the shop, and returned with a paper envelope filled with dried leaves and flowers. He held up four fingers. Four cups of tea? Four cents? Lizzie turned to Ti Wong, who managed the purchase for her.

  “What did he say to you?” she asked Ti Wong when they were on the street again.

  “That Mrs. Pleasant very smart,” said Ti Wong. “That you have many headaches.”

  It had been a much longer conversation than that, but Lizzie didn’t question him further. On the corner of Dupont and Washington, a bearded man sat at a table covered with red cloth on which were placed several painted boxes. He called to Ti Wong, reached into one box, pulled out a paper, and read from it. He laughed, and all trace of expression left Ti Wong’s face. They walked on.

  “Do you know that man?” Lizzie asked.

  “Fortune-teller. Friend of uncle.”

  “What did he say to you?”

  Ti Wong fluttered his fingers along the scars on his neck as if he were playing a flute. Lizzie didn’t think he knew he was doing so. She wished it to be a cheerful mannerism, but feared it was a nervous one.

  “My fortune,” he said. He wouldn’t look at her. “That Jesus boys be swimming soon, but Chinese boys stay happy and dry.”

  NINE

  after living at the Ark in quarantine for so many weeks, Lizzie had been surprised by how hard it was to return to her solitary house. She’d thought she couldn’t wait for her quiet breakfasts again, with only the newspaper for company, for her own bedroom and her own bed, but sleep eluded her. Or so it seemed, though she must have dozed sometimes, because one morning she remembered a dream. She was in a boat with a blue-eyed man who turned out to be Mr. Finney. He stood. “Save me,” he said. He stepped onto the water and sank slowly, as if into mud—up to his knees, up to his waist, up to his shoulders, out of sight.

  Lizzie had forgotten about Mr. Finney, and also about Jenny’s mother and her own plans regarding them. Currently she had no appetite for schemes of any kind. God would do as God would do. Why meddle? Besides, she’d no way to contact Mr. Finney.

  In fact, she could think of nothing worth getting out of bed for. Donations had more than doubled during the epidemics, while the number of wards had significantly dropped. Many of the survivors had been removed at the first chance by relatives. They would not be back until the specter of death faded from everyone’s mind. As a consequence there were beds and shoes enough for everyone. The larder was stocked. Lizzie didn’t suppose the budget had ever been so healthy.

  Take a rest, everyone told Lizzie, take a trip. Just when she hadn’t heart enough for either.

  She lay one morning, hardly moving, under her mother’s quilt, a pattern like a shackle of rings in blue and white. The white was turning to yellow and the fabric was beginning to fray. A large spider web filled the corner of the bedroom window. Lizzie couldn’t see the spider, but on the sill beneath the web lay the dry, hollow corpses of two flies. The window and the curtains needed washing. Nothing was as it should be. What kind of world was it that required the deaths of children? What kind of magical juncture was that?

  Are you happy with your life? Mrs. Pleasant had asked her on that first afternoon in the House of Mystery, and ever since the question, and only since the question, the answer had become no. How did she used to do it, take such pleasure in small things? How would she ever be able to do so again?

  If there had been someone to bring her breakfast, Lizzie wouldn’t have gotten up at all. She would have asked for tea, blankets, a fire, a story with dragons in it—a story out of someone else’s childhood—or a lullaby from the same. But there was only the constant weight of Baby Edward, watching her lie there as if dead, when anyone could see she was anything but.

  Finally she was too hungry. She went to the kitchen without combing her hair and made herself a poached egg on toast. Nothing spoiled food the way eating alone did. Flavors flattened, textures coarsened. Chocolate turned to copper. Chewing became audible and then thunderous. Lizzie looked back on her childhood in this very house, and it seemed to be all solitary meals, brought to her room on trays. She could not recall that she had eaten anything hot more than once or twice in her life before adulthood.

  She decided to call on Mrs. Wright, who liked to tell stories and had few ch
ances to do so. Lizzie had grown quite fond of her during their incarceration together. A visit would be an act of charity and, like all the best acts of charity, good for them both.

  She found Mrs. Wright sitting in her chair in her bedroom at the Ark, facing the window, the curtains tightly pulled. There was little light in the room, and a cloying, medicinal smell, like fermented cloves. Mrs. Wright spoke before Lizzie had a chance to announce herself. “Did you have a nice time in the country, dear?”

  Lizzie had talked of going to the country. “I haven’t left yet,” she said. She had no energy for holidays.

  “You should. Birds and trees. God’s poetry. Nature triumphant. Of course, at my age the words bring that bit of a chill. Nature is as nature does.”

  “Nonsense,” said Lizzie. “You’re in bloom.” After all, Mrs. Wright couldn’t see herself. Perhaps she would believe this.

  “Nonsense back to you.” Mrs. Wright’s voice was made of salt.

  Lizzie went to open the curtains. The clouds hung low and unbroken. The light was sullen and turned everything it touched green.

  She pulled a chair into place beside Mrs. Wright and described the light to her. “I feel that way myself today,” Lizzie finished. “Colorless, sunless.” It was an intimate revelation. There was no reason for her to trouble Mrs. Wright with it.