by Stacey Lee
Despite Ma’s reputation, the odds of her fortune-telling being accurate were even worse than winning at the fan-tan, a popular game of chance, but her pronouncement gathered the scattered ends in my still-developing brain into one tight fist. I would never let anything happen to Jack. And as he grew older and his lungs failed to develop, I grew even more determined that he should not inherit the launderer’s life, whose hard labor was surely a shortcut to an early grave.
But what could a mere girl, a Chinese girl no less, do?
Mrs. Lowry’s book gave me the answer. It wasn’t just a book on how to run a business; it was a philosophy. She said that your circumstances don’t determine where you can go, only your starting point. Despite being mostly blind, she managed to get her family’s sharecropping debt paid off by the time she was sixteen. If a blind woman could become the wealthiest female landowner in Texas, surely I could make enough money for Ba to retire and my family to live in comfort.
By the time we reach Montgomery Street, I no longer feel my toes. Fog has rolled in, blotting out the last dregs of sunlight. The Ferry Building’s spire at the Embarcadero points a challenging finger at a low-lying cloud. It must be near six o’clock. Ba will already be eating dinner. I limp down Stockton, hoping Ma hasn’t started worrying. She always says all the rodents come out of their holes at night.
The front door to our flat looks east toward the Ferry Building a mile away and is unpainted so as not to hide the elemental wood. An eight-sided mirror is placed above the door to ward off evildoers.
Jack raps on the door. “A-Ma!”
We hear Ma fumble with the rope that ties our door to the wall. The old cigar man squints down from three stories above, sucking on a pipe that hasn’t been lit since 1904. Ma insisted we live in this particular flat because of the good feng shui, not to mention we don’t have to haul water upstairs. But our Catholic Ba couldn’t care less about feng shui. He thought our ground-floor location made it easier for burglars to access. We’ve never had a burglar in the years we’ve lived here, but we’ve had worse—tourists who barge in for a peep of how the barbarians live. Once, they caught Ma cutting her toenails, and she chased them out with a cleaver, which I’m sure only confirmed their suspicions about us.
The door pushes open, and Ma greets us with her usual cluck of the tongue. Like most fortune-tellers, her round face never betrays much emotion, but her clucks are a gauge of her mood. Today they say she’s glad to see us.
“So late,” she says in Cantonese, patting the sweat off my brow with her dish towel. She speaks some English but never with us, since she doesn’t want us to forget our village dialect.
Behind her, Ba methodically shovels in his dinner at our only table, a simple teakwood square where Ma reads fortunes. Jack and I call greetings to him, and he grunts in response. Every day, he works from one to five, comes home for dinner, then returns to the laundry for a twelve-hour shift, six to six, before sleeping from six to one. It’s illegal to operate a laundry after six p.m.—just another of the absurd laws enacted to make life as difficult as possible for Chinese. But there’s no other way to make ends meet.
“How was the chocolate?” Ma casts me a sideways glance.
“Bittersweet,” I say in English.
“Close the door.” A door open too long depletes a room of its energy.
After retying the door closed, I collapse onto a thin bench while Ma works off my boots. The citrusy scent of our pomelo, a cabbage-sized grapefruit, floats from its seat on the offering mantel.
Ma frowns when she sees the state of my feet. “You should not have worn these. You need cold water.” I let her fetch it, not sure my feet can be pushed any further now that they’ve had a taste of the cool cement floors.
“I’m hungry.” Jack stares longingly at the bowls of juk.
Ma inspects Jack’s hands front and back. They’re still damp from where we washed them at the community pump. “Hungry enough to eat a cow or a bear?”
“Hungry enough to eat a cow and a bear.”
“Too bad, dai-dai,” says Ma, using the word for “little brother.” She shakes out his jacket with a snap of her wrist. “We have only rice.”
Minutes later, I’m sitting at the table with Ma, Jack, and Ba, feet planted in a bowl of cold water and shoveling in my own dinner. Jack stirs his juk, looking for any surprise bits of meat. His brow crimps when he finds only vegetables, but he dives in nonetheless. We used to eat more meat before I lost my job at the cemetery. Cups of ox bone broth, always simmering on our community stoves, help to fill any remaining spaces in our stomachs.
“What’s that mean, bittersweet?” asks Ba in Cantonese, his voice soft but gravelly. “You get into that school or not?”
I cringe a little at his disapproving tone. “Not yet. But I have an appointment with the school board president on Monday. Don’t worry, Ba. Getting a foot in the door was the hard part.” I project more confidence than I feel.
“Do not get your foot stuck. It is easier to catch a phoenix feather than to get into that school.” Ba’s eyes become smaller, and it’s hard to see the shape of his thoughts.
After my graduation from the Oriental Public School, he slipped me a red envelope with a quarter in it and said, “You may no longer be in school, but you must never stop learning. We need to be as smart as the white ghosts.”
I started work right after graduation—first sweeping graves, and then, when that ended, helping Ba at the laundry during the hours his assistant wasn’t there. While I worked, I schemed for ways to break Jack free from the cycles of rinse, wash, and repeat. Hard work wasn’t enough to get rich, or else we’d already be living in a mansion on Nob Hill with cut-glass windows like those of Leland Stanford or Mark Hopkins. No, the key to wealth was opportunity. And if opportunity didn’t come knocking, then Mrs. Lowry says you must build your own door.
“How will we get the money for this fancy school?”
“I am going to propose they offer me a scholarship.”
“I don’t want their money. I just want the white ghosts to stop taking our money. Every day they find something new to tax. Tax the clothespins, tax the socks, tax the holes in the socks.” Ba glares at his cracked red hands.
Jack sits very still, glancing between us. Ma stirs her bowl of fortune-telling beans with her finger, taking in everything with a look of serenity.
I stifle my annoyance, which jabs like a bone in my craw. “You told me to keep learning.”
“Yes, keep learning, but not at the white ghosts’ school.”
“There are no high schools in Chinatown.”
The two grooves between his nose and mouth flatten.
“Do you want us to be stuck here all our lives?” I press. “The brochure says St. Clare’s is on par with the Men’s Wilkes College. Think of the things I’ll learn—”
“If you get in.”
“When I graduate—”
“If you graduate . . .” His hand curls up on the table, like a crouching spider.
“I will graduate. And then I will start a fine company.”
Unlike some of my other ideas, Tom thinks my plan to bring Chinese herbs to the American market is sound. With his herbal expertise, I want to develop a line of American-friendly herbal teas with catchy names like “Strong as an Elephant Heart” and “Float Away like Dandelion Puff.” For all their disdain of Chinese people, Americans certainly like our goods—silks, teas, porcelain—and Ah-Suk gets a fair share of tourists poking around his store for alternatives to the laudanum that Western doctors prescribe for everything. “Once my business takes off, you and Ma can buy a house on Nob Hill.”
He laughs. “What makes you think they’d let us move to Nob Hill?”
“The shrimp peeler did it.” One of Ma’s old clients found a gold nugget the size of a baby’s foot after she told him to expect metal in his future. It was enoug
h to pry a three-story house off a Dutchman.
Ba snorts. “The shrimp peeler died before he signed the papers and saved himself much heartache.” He looks pointedly at Ma, who hadn’t predicted that part of his fortune. She shrugs.
“Why?” squeaks Jack, wispy eyebrows shaped into question marks. “Why can’t we move to Nob Hill?”
Ma places our empty dishes into a wooden bucket. “To bed, dai-dai.”
Jack hesitates. But after one look at our parents, with their lips clamped tight as crab pincers, he scampers into the room where he sleeps with Ma. Because of his irregular schedule, Ba sleeps there only after Jack has awoken, while I always sleep on a bedroll by the stove.
After the door closes, Ba says, “Why can’t you start your fine company without that school?”
“If I graduate from one of the white ghosts’ best schools, doors will open. It will give me credibility. Also, I’d make connections, and Mrs. Lowry says connections are like roots that help a tree—”
“Mrs. Low-ree.” Ba says her name in English. “This does not sound Chinese.”
“She’s not Chinese.”
“Exactly.” Ba plucks up one of Ma’s red beans and spins it on the table. “You go to that school, you will start wanting what you cannot have. One day, you will marry the herbalist’s son. It is not prudent for wives to be better than their husbands. People will believe you are trying to outshine him, or worse, that he is not a good provider. Wives should be meek.”
My argument dies on my tongue. Was it possible Tom grew strange on me because he, in fact, does want a meek wife? Someone with tiny “lotus blossom” feet who will confine herself to the home, fold dumplings, and chop the knots out of his back?
Ma’s face has become as expressionless as cardboard.
“You don’t think she should go there, do you?” Ba asks. Chinese men don’t usually solicit the opinion of their wives, but Ba respects Ma’s wisdom, even if he doesn’t respect her fortune-telling.
She glances at my burning face. “I think jade needs polishing before it can become useful.”
His eyes flit around while he thinks, and then he shakes his head. “Too much polishing risks cracking, and then it becomes useless.”
I sit very still in my chair, though anger seeps through my every pore. “This is important. Jack deserves to be more than a launderer.” I know my words will wound, but it is the only way I can make him hear me.
Ba winces. The few remaining hairs on his head quiver, and his face starts to match his hands. “This is not the way to do it!” He pounds his fist down, and his cup of broth falls to the floor with a sickening crack. He pushes away from the table and strides out the door.
“Ay, his hat!” Ma grabs his wool knit cap from the table and rushes out after him.
A bitter taste spreads over my mouth, and my own warm broth does little to soothe my irritation. With a sigh, I grab a rag and clean up the broken glass.
It can’t be easy for Ba to have a headstrong daughter like me. And in some ways, I am lucky. Of the five girls who stayed in school until the eighth grade, three already have auspicious dates chosen for their weddings. But Ba never pushes me to settle down, perhaps because he’s happy to have my help, or because Ma has convinced him there will be time for marriage later. Wives are highly sought after in Chinatown, even one with cheeks like mine. But though he might be unconventional, that does not mean Ba wants me associating with whites. After all, they are the reason we are packed tight as cigars in Chinatown. They are the reason Jack’s lungs didn’t develop.
Ma returns, the cap still in her hands. She hangs it on a hook, then pulls another rag from a drawer to give the floor a second wiping.
“I’m sorry, Ma. I will cancel the meeting.”
She sits heavily on her chair, tsking her tongue. With the blunt end of a chopstick, she pushes at trigger points in her palm. “Your father wants you to go to school. He is just afraid for you.”
“He doesn’t have to be. I can handle myself.” Just this morning, I dangled a hundred feet up in the air and somehow landed on my feet.
I think she’s about to chastise me, but to my surprise, her gaze turns thoughtful. “Yes, I believe you can. I have foreseen that something propitious will happen for you this year. Maybe you will accomplish something great and bring prestige to your ancestors.” Chinese believe that our actions in this life affect the quality of our ancestors’ afterlives. “Maybe it is the school. I will speak to your father.”
“Thank you, Ma,” I murmur gratefully, even though neither Ba nor I take Ma’s fortunes seriously. When I was seven, I dropped my chopsticks on the floor, and Ma told me that doing so disturbed the ancestors buried in the earth. I wasted a whole year walking in zigzag lines to trick them into not following me.
Ma brightens. “Or maybe you will get a job at the Chinese Telephone Exchange.” To her, our lives would be set if I nabbed one of the highly coveted positions. To me, pulling switches sounded as exciting as pulling weeds. “Whatever happens, remember to be strong for your father. He will need the iron in your eyes.” She searches my metal-gray irises for the inner strength she has assured me lies in them.
“Why? Is something going to happen to him?”
I don’t like the slow beat of her clucks, or the uneven way she stirs her beans.
“Not him. Me. I have foreseen my death.” She tosses out those words as if commenting on the price of paddy straw mushrooms.
“Don’t say that!” I may not be superstitious, but if there were ghosts listening, surely they would overhear. “Death is unpredictable. You tell clients that all the time.”
“That is so they don’t do something foolish like Mr. Yip.” Mr. Yip ran through Union Square wrapped in an American flag after Ma told him to prepare for his final rest. He was almost put in the stocks for that, until the Chinese Benevolent Association paid a hefty fee for officials to look the other way. “Anyway, I turned forty-four this year, an inauspicious number.”
“Ma,” I groan. As if I didn’t already view four with suspicion, forty-four in Chinese sounds like the words “I want to die.” “But four plus four equals eight, and eight is the luckiest number,” I attempt to argue.
She shakes her head. “No, Mercy. My vision has told me so.” This time, she speaks with the solemnity of striking a gong with a mallet. Of all the tools a fortune-teller uses to read a person’s fate—the almanac, the beans, and the “Four Pillars” of birth year, month, day, and hour—Ma believes her vision to be the most reliable. Others apparently agree, as she is Chinatown’s most sought-after fortune-teller.
Noticing my grimace, she adds, “It is not something to be feared, death.”
“I don’t fear it. I worked in a graveyard, remember?”
She clucks her tongue in disapproval. Ma had not approved of my job at the cemetery, believing hungry ghosts would follow me home and wreak destruction. Though she stopped complaining after seeing the money I brought in—the fortune-telling business had slowed in recent years.
A bit of the nausea I felt aboard Tom’s Floating Island returns, and I grip the sides of my chair, trying to keep my voice light. “Dr. Gunn says your pulse is sturdy and your energy flows like a river. Besides, you always tell clients they can change their destiny.”
“No, I tell them we can change our perspective on it.”
Jack calls for her. Ma squints toward the bedroom door, then looks back at me. She presses her small but solid finger against the bridge of my nose, smoothing out the wrinkle lodged there. “It is like the moon. We can see it differently by climbing a mountain, but we cannot outrun it. As it should be.”
I bring our bucket of dishes to the community pump behind our building, still put out by Ma’s proclamation, even if I don’t believe it. Her work, her life is ruled by things that cannot be seen or felt, only suspected and feared. Yet, I cannot blame her. The Chinese
have spent thousands of years honing their beliefs, and it isn’t as if the Catholic’s system of saints and demons is any less peculiar. It just comes with a lot less predictions.
Women have gathered around the community pot, their loose pants rolled to the knees and their jackets to the elbows. A few of them perch on wooden stools, gossiping.
“Evening, Wong Mei-Si,” they greet me by my Chinese name, which means “beautiful thought.”
“Evening, aunties.” Their hair is dappled gray, and their faces are creased. Like Ma, many of them came here before 1882, when President Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred Chinese from immigrating.
They toss questions at me like bread crumbs, hoping I will bite. “When will your parents give you away? There are rumors you will marry Tom Gunn.”
The women pass around a smile, and when I do not answer, the questions continue.
“How is your ma? We do not see her enough anymore.”
“Is she getting on with your ba? It must be difficult never to see him.”
“They are well,” I say simply, retreating to a spot by a bushy fern.
When it is apparent I will say no more, they return to their chatter, which now probably concerns me. Their tongues may be long, but I envy their friendship. The few girls I do know are expected to stay home. Not everyone has an independent mother who lets her go where she wants.
Squatting, I scrub the dishes as quickly and noiselessly as I can. I don’t see Ma’s bowl with the faded blue designs. She skipped a meal again.
A feeling of dread coils through me, too slippery to catch. I breathe deeply to start my energy flowing again. It will take me at least three years to graduate from St. Clare’s. Then when I’ve earned enough money from my herbal tea business, I will deliver us from this pernicious drudgery, and Jack will thrive.
I empty the bucket, using my arm to keep the dishes from falling out, and watch the gray water slip over my toes. Maybe once Ma’s business returns, her grim outlook will improve. I don’t believe in fate or destiny, but somehow I will change ours for the better. Even my inauspicious Ma’s.
