by Aimee E. Liu
“Che chih shih yi tienerh hsin yi. Chu nimen yung yüan hsing fu.” Mr. Fu wheezed slightly and fluttered his hand, nodding vigorously as he pushed the bottle at Donald’s chest. Donald responded by pressing it back on their host, who bowed, shaking his head and insisting. Paul and Ong nodded their approval from the sidelines.
Mr. Fu stretched his neck and issued another string of syllables. Donald protested one last time, and the manager thrust the bottle at one of the waiters, with a circular motion commanding that drink be poured all around. However, at no time did the night manager indicate that the women were present or visible to him.
The instant the glasses had all been filled their host’s face split in a jack-o’-lantern smile. He bowed to Donald and raised a toast. “Pan nimen taso sheng kuei tsi”
Sarah started to lift her glass. Donald glared at her, stood and beamed at Mr. Fu. He emptied his glass, then returned the toast. Only when this double-sided ritual had been repeated by Paul and Ong, and the host had bowed his way out of the room, did the women move. Sarah didn’t say a word but drank three glasses of the liquor in a row, gagging a little on each one but refilling the glass herself. When she looked up her eyes seemed to be filled with the same pale liquid, and Hope expected these tears to release a new wave of hostility in Donald. She didn’t know what form it would take—quiet, crippling words, perhaps, or another look like the one that had crossed his face just before he lied to the minister—but she was unprepared for the sight of him now leaning toward his wife in an attitude not of anger but concern. He reminded Hope of a father, the way he was speaking now softly, cautiously pushing the table setting out of the way as if they needed more room. And finally, she understood. “She’s carrying his child,” she whispered to Paul. “Isn’t she?”
He shrugged. “Donald say nothing. I believe you are right.”
“What was the toast Mr. Fu made to him?”
Paul grinned. “‘Hope you blessed with precious children very soon.’”
“I see.” She felt herself blushing as she struggled with competing reactions of amusement and mortification. To Paul’s right, Kathe was mechanically devouring Sarah’s rejected portion of cake.
There was nothing Hope could do to help these women, to change the course of the lives they, for whatever reasons, had set in motion. Nor had they asked her to try. But the loneliness she had felt at being different was nothing compared to her sadness now at the realization that she and Paul alone of the couples had chosen each other out of love.
Darkness and a fine rain had fallen by the time they left the hotel, and the air was dense with the smells of burning pinon and freshly churned mud. In the near distance savage, drunken shouts and hard shapes of light sprang from the doors of saloons, while farther off a single melancholy gong sounded from the direction of Chinatown. Mrs. Lopez’s rooming house was lit as brightly as any saloon, but here the clamoring voices, piano playing, and the stomp of dancing feet from the parlor served as a shield past which the newlyweds slipped unnoticed. The gabled room where the men had dressed earlier was now divided into two by a blue muslin curtain strung from the ceiling. This was to be the wedding chamber Paul and Hope would share with the Ongs, their serenade the din downstairs.
Unfortunately, neither this reverberating noise nor the thin curtain could block out the sounds that soon erupted on the other side of the room. For a moment after the couples said good night, Ong’s silhouette loomed, a gigantic projection against the wavering wall. Then the light flicked off. The room swelled with the rustle of fabric leaving skin, the unceremonious slap of muscle against softer flesh, a strange curdled grunt, then breathing, harsh and rapid as batwings, escalating within seconds to the graveled moan of sexual release. And, almost as quickly, snoring.
Through all of this Hope stood motionless by the open window, and Paul sat fingering the moth-eaten blanket on the single, dipping cot. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he studied the muted shapes of debris where the floorboards met the sloping roof. He felt the soft collision between the wood’s hoarded warmth and the night’s cool, invading air, and as shadows rippled across the blue curtain and the noise from the other side waned, his thoughts turned relentlessly to another wedding night. Red silk then, cascading from ceiling to floor around a square bed and the figure of a woman draped in more red, head to foot. Draw one curtain, tear away the other. Lift the veil. Lift the veil. Voices pry and whisper in the room outside. Fingers poke through oil-paper windows. Beneath the silk and dangling jewels, beneath rigid face paint waits a girl with skin like ice and eyes that burn. In the morning his mother will inspect the sheets for crimson stains.
Paul looked up. Hope was kneeling in the corner. Slowly, consciously, she unfolded herself, and he saw that she had changed from her wedding clothes into a silken shift that floated with the breeze. Paled and grayed by the absence of light, she seemed to be watching him, but he couldn’t be sure.
Then moonlight, freed from a passing cloud, splashed in through the window and ignited the garment’s brilliant color. For him, this color. For him alone.
“When babies born,” he whispered, “old man in moon take his magic thread, tie girl child to one boy. Later those babies must marry.”
He reached across the short distance separating them and drew her to the narrow mattress, then guided her hands to remove his jacket, his tie, unbutton his shirt. She pulled her knees up under the flaming cloth, curling against him as she explored his skin. “That explains arranged marriage,” she said softly. “But what about us?”
His fingers traveled slowly the smoothness of her arm, and he felt the answering tremor run through her entire body. “Destiny is arranged.”
“Destiny.” She tilted her head back. Paul kissed her throat.
He smoothed the wisps of hair from her forehead, then lifted the scarlet veil.
4
Later they could not remember whose idea it had been, for it seemed they both woke with the same thought. Honeyed light streamed through the window. The blue drape shivered against their bed. Stomps of early risers issued from other rooms, though there was no sound from Kathe and Ben Joe. Paul cupped his mouth against Hope’s ear and breathed the obvious question. “How?”
She turned in his arms, her mouth twitching. “Ever been camping?”
“Camping.”
“We sleep outside. Away from town. Under the stars.”
“Like cowboys?”
“Yes.” She laughed, and kissed his disbelieving mouth. “And Indians.”
They kept their plan secret through a breakfast in Mrs. Lopez’s kitchen of bacon, biscuits, refried beans, and chicory coffee. This was no difficult task since they shared the table with three bloodshot sheepherders who stared at the newlyweds as if they were part of some dark and unforgiving hangover. The brides all had buttoned and belted and laced themselves as strenuously as nuns, but the rings on their fingers, the tinged paleness of their cheeks (bordering on a bleached green, in Sarah’s case), the shy wonder in their eyes as they watched their husbands’ hands touching, lips tasting the food before them—all of these betrayed the knowledge freshly steeped within their flesh. Carnal truth hung over this table like a fierce and inescapable perfume.
The first business of marriage is procreation, thought Hope, and everyone in this room knows that as well as they know that white women do not marry Chinese men. As well as they know that we three women have violated one order that we may fulfill the other. But this recognition came to her in a dreamy, slipshod fashion, stripped of fear or anger. The long awaited sin of her union with Paul had bestowed on her a feeling of transparency, as if in this one forbidden embrace she had entered a spiritual truth so powerful that it would protect her from all the meanness and ignorance the world could dole out. To all but Paul she would, in effect, become invisible. To her beloved alone she would reveal her true self. And because others saw only the shell of the woman she had become, nothing they could do or say or think would any longer affect her.
“They’ve seen it all now,” Hope whispered to Paul.
“And nothing,” he answered, holding her gaze.
Ong stood, waving his pocket watch, and announced that their train was due in thirty minutes. He was interrupted by a scratching at the kitchen door, which stood open to help clear the cook smoke.
“Folks?” A wiry figure wearing a dilapidated hat pressed his face to the mesh. “I g-g-got your pictures.”
Paul opened the screen. The photographer extended a small black paper portfolio.
They closed in around him. “It’s all r-r-right.” Jed Israel pressed a cardboard-mounted copy of the photograph into each couple’s hands. Hope smiled as she peered over Paul’s shoulder, then laughed aloud. “We look positively stunned!”
It was most definitely not your typical wedding portrait. They had their hands on each other’s shoulders and waists so that it was impossible to distinguish one couple from another. Their clothes were trim and appropriately formal, jackets and ties and lace-encrusted dresses. Most of them looked as though they would expire from boredom. But then, inexplicably, there were those silly hats, the men all feathered and fruited and ribboned, the women stern beneath manly brims. The flash of magnesium reflected off Paul’s spectacles, so that he seemed to be peering through two puddles of milk. The church behind them was obscured. The portrait might have been taken in the dark of night on an empty sand lot.
“No,” said Sarah smirking. “We look … shipwrecked.”
Jed Israel, taken aback, started to mumble an apology, but Hope touched his elbow. “Don’t mind us. It really is a lovely picture, only it’s different than looking in a mirror, you know. We don’t see ourselves this way.”
The young photographer twisted his lips together, rocked back on his heels. Hope was afraid she’d only made him feel worse and patted his elbow ineffectually. Suddenly Paul let out a belly laugh and turned to Donald, waving the print. “You can see Minister Tuan present this at court. ‘See how these young rebels disgrace us!’ Very good. I think this very good!” He grinned at the startled photographer. “Thank you, Mr. Israel. Thank you very much.”
They left the awkward boy standing in the kitchen still clutching the fifty-cent piece that Paul insisted on paying him, and ten minutes later they joined the throng at the station watching for the westbound train. While Paul explained his and Hope’s change of plans to the others, Hope approached the bench where Sarah was sitting alone, hollow-cheeked now and lost in thought.
“Were not coming with you,” she said. “But I promise to call after we get back to Frisco.”
“Will you.” Sarah’s tone was biting, but Hope refused to let it invade her. She pitied Sarah. Sarah intrigued her. But she was nothing like her.
“I will.” She hesitated. “That is, if you’d like.”
Sarah squared her eyes on her. “You think you know why I married Donald, don’t you? Because I’m with child. Yes, but whose child?” She paused to let her implication sink in. “You understand now? Donald’s my savior, isn’t he? And I must forgive him his faults as he forgives mine. It’s not about love. It’s an arrangement. A negotiation.”
“Business,” murmured Hope, horrified.
“So,” said Sarah, her voice flattening, “you and Paul are staying. Here.” Hope didn’t answer. “I’ve never held much faith in love,” Sarah went on. “Surely would never believe a white woman could marry a Chinaman for love. That’s why I called you a fool, you know. But I suppose I should tell you, I was wrong. I saw, this morning. You and Paul, you’re different. You’re one of the lucky ones, Hope. Or perhaps you’re even more doomed than I, I don’t know. But I envy you.”
Sarah’s ugly revelation, followed by this confession, the unexpected tumble into softness and raw truth made Hope feel as though she’d been turned inside out. The train was pulling in. Paul beckoned.
“I’m sorry,” she said, wrapping her arms around Sarah. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be,” said Sarah. “Just take care of yourself.”
After the train had gone, Hope and Paul followed the railroad tracks along the river to the beginning of the shanties that made up Chinatown. They stopped outside a ramshackle building with shredded tarpaper for roofing, a sagging half porch, broken windows patched with newsprint, and a sign of flaking green and white paint that bore a series of Chinese characters and, in crude lettering, JOE GON GENERAL STORE. Paul said, “Mr. Fu tell me this store owner from Hupei. His cousin friend of Sun Yat-sen. He will help us.”
A quick glance around the dingy interior told Hope that Joe Gon could outfit them with whatever they needed—and more. The plank tables and shelves were laden with food and dry goods, many of which bore Chinese labels. A rack of sausages and jerky hung behind the counter—along with the shrunken, eyeless head of a boar, painted red as a Paiute—and the far corner was piled with miners’ gear: kerosene lamps, tin pans and utensils, oilcloth tarpaulins, mosquito webbing, axe flints, shovels, drill bits, canvas tenting, flints, stick matches, black tar soap.
But the merchant was understandably cautious. A Chinese man leaving town alone with a white woman was bound to be noticed, and on the outside it was even more difficult to predict the actions of men than in town. Some of the local homesteaders were friends of the Chinese, but then again Joe Gon, a stocky, wizened man in his fifties, had lived through Rock Springs. His nightmares still rang with the white miners’ rallying cry, “The Chinese must go!”
“Sometimes,” he told Paul, “this American wilderness is not as wide or empty as one would wish.”
Hope stepped closer. They were speaking in dialect, but the merchant’s attitude was plain enough. “We will pay.”
“This is not—” Paul started, but Hope cut him off.
“You take pawn? Paul, show him Collis’s ring.”
“Hope, money is not the problem.”
But she could see by the knit of Joe Gon’s heavy eyebrows that this was not strictly true. “Some Indian pawn,” he said, too casually.
Paul reluctantly handed her the jeweled band. She started to set it on the counter, but Paul immediately snatched it back and drew her out of the man’s earshot. “No good. He will gamble this.”
“If that thing brings old Joe Gon bad luck, I’d rather it be him than me. He knows this area. He must know a place we can go where no one will bother us. And he obviously has all the provisions we’ll need. Let him keep the ring as security.”
Still Paul hesitated. “You have no feelings for these jewels?”
“No more than I have for the man who threw them at your feet.”
When the merchant understood that he was truly to be granted the use of the ring, he flashed four wooden teeth and ducked down behind the counter. He came back up with an armload of dusty black clothing and two floppy felt hats. He thrust one bundle at Hope, the other at Paul.
“More safe.” Joe Gon pointed to Hope’s dark hair, shaped the smallness of her figure with his hands. “Like Chinese boy.” He motioned her through a curtained doorway into a sliver of space outfitted with a cot and Coleman and a crude plank washstand, where she was to change.
She wrinkled her nose as she shook out the garments. They smelled of grass and sand and onions and smoke—and human sweat. But her inspection revealed no evidence of vermin, no stench of disease. The smell, she instructed herself, was not
bad, only strange. Still, she pulled a vial of rose water from her bag and splashed it across the cloth, then under her arms, her throat, behind her knees. She was still wearing her corset, camisole, drawers, and stockings when she climbed into the rough coverings. The pants could be tightened about the waist with a rope, and the length would serve to conceal her boots. The jacket fastened to her chin and coughed dust when she raised her arms. Heavy dust, it seemed, powdery white like the limestone they mined in these hills. It occurred to her to wonder how the merchant came by these clothes, but she firmly put the thought out of her mind and yanked the pins from her hair. She combed out the tangles with her fingers and braided it the way she used to as a girl, into a long, dangling pigtail. Then she pulled the hat brim down to her eyes and marched back into the store.
Paul whistled softly at the length of her braid, and when he lifted the brim of her hat she grinned to find him identically dressed—except that any passersby would have to believe his queue was coiled up under his hat. After they had selected their provisions, the merchant loaded them into two wicker baskets, which he strung to a bamboo pole. Paul balanced this contraption over his shoulder with the aplomb of a born journeyman.
Hope had to laugh as they set off. All the prideful energy she had poured into mentally segregating her husband from the peasants—what perfect irony that they should both now, by choice, outfit themselves as Chinaboys!
But the irony shriveled when they passed a couple of deerstalkers at the edge of town. From deep beneath her down-turned hat Hope watched the hunters elbow each other at a distance of about twenty yards. The men changed direction to avoid coming close, but at the same time lifted their rifles so Hope could see the black nostrils of the gun barrels.
“Keep walking,” Paul breathed when she stumbled over a rut. The men had dropped behind them.
Then she heard them groan with laughter. “Goddamn Chinks. Even deer got ‘nough guts to look y’in the eye fore ya shoot ’em.”
