by Stacey Lee
“We’re not going to use those,” I tell her. “Hot water shrinks wool.”
Minnie Mae’s mouth drops. “You mean those other girls are going to ruin their dresses?”
I give her a reassuring smile. “We’ll tell them to lay off the custards.”
No one speaks for a moment, but then we’re all giggling. Elodie and her cronies deserve a little soak in hot water for their nastiness.
I pick up one of my dresses and give it a shake. “I have seen my maids do the laundry. They use an assembly-line method to maximize efficiency.” I throw the dresses into one of the large aluminum tubs, then add water using the pump placed conveniently at the lip. “Katie, fill that one for the rinsing.” I nod toward the adjacent tub.
She hops to the task.
Francesca sprinkles a box of flaked soap into my tub, then fetches two dollies for agitating the water. Together, we work the dollies, causing froth to appear. The others watch with more interest than laundry warrants, and I try to put on a good show, churning with vigor. After that’s done, we squeeze out the dresses and dump them into the rinse water.
I take a wooden stick and plunge the soap out of the dresses.
“May I do that?” Harry reaches for the plunger. For the first time, I notice she has dimples when she smiles, just like Katie. The realization rubs some of the damp from my bones.
“Thank you, Harry. Katie, after she finishes, you can put the dresses through the wringer.” I nod toward a contraption with a crank handle attached to the rinse tub. “Just watch your fingers. Minnie Mae and Ruby, you can hang them when they’re done. After two shifts, we’ll switch places to keep things interesting.”
We go about our tasks. Katie enjoys cranking the wringer so much that we let her continue. “I used to play baseball with the boys.” She flexes a muscle. “I’ve still got it.”
By the time the night air loses its heaviness, probably sometime after four, Francesca and I are hanging the last of the dresses while Harry and Ruby drain the tubs. Minnie Mae has collapsed on the ground, her face glowing with sweat, and Katie stretches out beside her.
“We did it. I even have time to press my hair,” Minnie Mae says. She holds up her hands, which are red and wrinkled from the water. “Mama would bust a valve if she saw this. Hope it’s not permanent.”
Katie scoffs. “A’course not. But if you’re worried, you can use lard to soften your hands. That’s what Gran does.”
Minnie Mae fans her legs with her skirts. “You always talk about your gran. Don’t you have a mama?”
“My parents died in an accident when I was a baby. It’s been Gran and me ever since I can remember.”
Francesca pulls a clothespin from her mouth and pins up the last dress. “What’s it like in Texas?” It’s the first time I’ve seen her speak to Katie.
Katie taps the toes of her boots together. “There’s a ton of scenery, long as you don’t mind heaps of dirt. And in summer, it gets so muggy you could drown yourself just by breathing. Gran got so sick of the heat, she cut her hair short as Mercy’s, and sold it for five dollars. She spent it on a cowboy hat with a turkey feather.”
Ruby wipes her hands on a rag and sits down next to her sister. “I’d like to know what it’s like in China.”
For a moment, I forget that I’m the one from China. I shake free from my stupor. “Well, there are many rivers and mountains.”
Ruby frowns. I’ll have to do better than that. “There’s a mountain range called the Precipitous Pillars. The pillars stick up like fingers, seven hundred feet, and they grow trees with blossoms like perfumed handkerchiefs. You can hardly take a step without bumping into a giant salamander or a rhesus monkey.” Whenever Ba talked about the country of his youth, his voice would grow animated and the invisible yoke around his neck seemed to lift. I once asked him if he would rather live in China, and he tapped a square finger at my forehead. “A man may not return to his mother when he takes a new wife, but it does not mean he forgets about her.”
The girls are looking at me as if I just slipped them the key to infinite wisdom.
“That sounds amazing,” breathes Minnie Mae.
Ruby nods. “I’d like to visit China one day. Maybe you can be my guide.”
The fact that she would want to travel with me catches me off guard. “Certainly,” I murmur, though of course, I would be just as lost as she.
Harry shakes the water off a plunger, splattering Katie, who grabs it and puts on a look of disdain. “Infractions will be dealt with harshly and quickly!” she delivers in perfect mimicry of Headmistress Crouch.
We all laugh.
“That old shoe,” says Minnie Mae, looking at her swollen hands again. “I wish she’d go find some other girls to step on.”
Francesca pats her forehead with the back of her hand. “Headmistress Crouch isn’t so bad. She wasn’t always an old shoe. She even had a suitor once.”
“Our Headmistress Crouch? How do you know?” exclaims Minnie Mae.
Francesca straightens out a wrinkle in one of the wet dresses. “I saw a picture of a young man in the drawer in her office once. It said, ‘To my beloved Annabel.’”
It’s odd to think of Headmistress Crouch as having a first name, almost as odd as imagining her as a young woman. Maybe there was warmth in her blue eyes once.
The sky spreads her peacock fan, though the sunlight hasn’t broken yet. A dog begins to bark, scaring up a chorus of answering barks.
The door to the laundry building bursts open, and Elodie and her cronies march out holding dripping baskets of laundry. Elodie takes in the courtyard and our finished laundry. The other girls gasp and blink in the increasing sunlight.
“Oh, bonjour,” I gush. “On as très beau temps, n’est pas?” What nice weather we’re having. My French lessons have paid in spades.
Elodie looks like a dragon about to breathe fire.
19
‘‘WHY, YOU LITTLE SNEAK!’’ ELODIE SHRIEKS. “You knew this was here all along.”
I place a finger on my chin. “If I had more time, I would show you how to work the wringer. But I was hoping for a nap before breakfast. Au revoir.”
The six of us who finished our laundry parade back to the house. I swear I smell sulfur steaming off Elodie as I pass her. “Don’t worry, we’ll save you a few Wilksies.”
Before I can take another step, I feel a sharp tug on my hair, and one astonished moment later, my back is on the hard concrete. I look up into Elodie’s face above. She grabs ahold of my neck. “You are nothing but a filthy rat who crawled up from the sewer!”
I bring my knee up and try to push her off, but she has attached herself like a giant clam, a heavy man-eating clam. Rolling to one side, I manage to loosen her hold for a second, enough to push her face away. Her hands are still around my throat, but I don’t let up, imagining I’m squashing her too-perky nose like a bug. The girls are screaming above us, a halo of navy blue.
“Get her, Mercy!” cries Katie.
“Good Lord, she’s gone rabid!”
“Someone get Headmistress Crouch!”
“But she’ll punish us all!”
Elodie and I are pried apart and hauled to our feet, and strangely, I feel myself resisting. It’s as if fighting has awakened another, more bestial side to me, a side that wants her to suffer for her meanness.
Hands pull at me from all sides, restraining. “Let me go!” I choke out, lunging for her. My voice is drowned in all the yelling.
“Mongol!” Elodie snarls. Hands also restrain her, but to my gratification, not as many.
“Pigeon egg!”
“Gutter monkey!”
Gutter monkey? That one bends my nose out of shape.
“Well,” I say imperiously, “I’m not the one whose father leaves her standing on her birthday.”
Elodie stops resisting,
and instantly I know I’ve gone too far. She shakes off Francesca and points at me. “She has fooled you all. She is no heiress from China, but a slum rat from Pigtail Alley.”
A hush descends upon the crowd, heavy enough to stop my heart from beating.
Her mouth is as relentless as a train. “She bribed my father to let her in by promising him business in Chinatown. Why do you think she knows how to do laundry?” Her eyes look half-wild, and blood from her nose drips into her gasping mouth. “Her father washes clothes for a living.”
Elodie’s words blow wind on my firebox, lighting up my face. I’m not ashamed of Ba, yet I can barely meet Francesca’s worried eyes. Katie and Harry look away, while Minnie Mae and Ruby search each other for the appropriate reaction.
“You mean, you’re not from China?” asks Ruby in a quiet voice.
I sag into my heels. “I never bribed anybody.”
Someone clears their throat, and all heads turn to the doorway.
Headmistress Crouch steps into the courtyard. She takes in Elodie’s bleeding nose with only mild interest. “Miss Foster, escort Miss Du Lac to the nurse. The rest of you will return to your rooms, except for Miss Wong.”
The girls flutter away. Francesca stops at the doorway to take one last look at me before ducking toward the exit.
I wilt under Headmistress Crouch’s stony gaze. She didn’t even need to wait for the correspondence to arrive. I hanged myself by being the rabble-rouser she expected me to be. There will be no taking the moral high ground out of here now that my dignity hangs in tatters.
I was supposed to be unsinkable. A businesswoman cannot wave her emotions around like dirty underthings.
“Who are you?” She looms close enough to stomp my toe with her cane.
I drop my Chinese accent. “Mercy Wong, as I told you. But, er, I am from Chinatown.”
“What exactly were you hoping to achieve by coming here, Miss Wong? It cannot be prospects, for someone like you would stand no chance of making a match here. There are laws against that kind of thing.” Her tone is unnervingly frank.
I nod, though the law prohibiting marriage between whites and “Mongolians” brings a fresh flood of humiliation. “I just want an education, ma’am. Monsieur Du Lac and I had an arrangement . . . he was giving me a chance.”
“You have made a mockery of our school, and of me. If it were my choice, I would eject you this instant. But Monsieur Du Lac is listed as your guardian, and despite his questionable judgment, it is for him to decide how best to dispatch you. I would not expect clemency from him, mind you. You did give his only daughter a thrashing.” I swear a smile plays around her mouth. As if sensing it, too, she stamps her cane and calcifies again. “You will not attend classes and shall take your meals in the scullery, where you shall be put to work until he returns. Go report to Mrs. Tingle.”
Headmistress Crouch’s gaze feels like a cattle prod as she watches me shuffle back to the main building. My shame licks flames around my collar, and the thought of facing my classmates makes me want to hightail it home. If it weren’t for the double shame of facing my family, I might do it.
I stop before the entryway, reluctant to accept my demotion just yet. Headmistress Crouch has disappeared, and the girls are back in their rooms.
In the morning’s first light, the garden feels tomb-like and cold, even more so than the cemetery. The blond bricks of St. Clare’s look like a fortress; everything drawn in severe lines, from the unadorned columns to the razor-straight eaves, the pieces perfectly locked like a jigsaw puzzle.
Guess I was wrong, Tom. I couldn’t do it after all.
A jangle of sharp cries directs my attention overhead. Blackbirds fly in crazed circles, fracturing the sunlight. Ba says birds congregate before storms, but the sky looks perfectly blue.
Another sound catches my attention, a blip, blip, shrr that raises all the hairs on my arms. Slowly, I pivot toward the fountain, dreading what I will see, but compelled just the same.
The goldfish are jumping, like flames from a roasting pit. Some have landed on the ledge, and others have jumped clear over to the cement, where they lie, spastic bits of orange aspic.
My soles begin to tremble.
Dear God, what is happening?
20
A LOUD BOOM CRACKS IN MY EAR, SO palpable it seems as if the air is ripping apart. For a moment, I wonder if I’m being struck down for my blasphemous thoughts, or lies, or deceit. But if that’s true, why take it out on the goldfish?
The trembling under my feet becomes a shudder, and then the entire ground shifts and slips, like a giant wave is passing under me. I land hard against the pavestones, and my breath whooshes out. The sound of glass breaking mingles with a chorus of screams.
I fear the end of the world is drawing near.
Are we are under attack? Has a meteorite fallen from the sky?
A madrone tree crashes down not two paces from me, throwing dirt in my face. I scream and claw the particles from my eyes. Before another tree falls, I try to get up, but it’s like standing on the back of a galloping horse. Bricks rain down in thunks. It seems the very ground is breathing.
Earthquake!
I do the only thing I can, which is cover my head and hope nothing lands on me. The smell of wet dirt mingles with the scent of my own fear. I cower, trying to make myself very small.
We’ve felt tremblers in Chinatown before, but never like this. The worst that ever happened was the incense falling off the altar. It may have caused an affront to the ancestors, but it was nothing an extra offering of millet wine couldn’t fix.
Ma believes earthquakes happen when the yam tiger, guardian of the people, challenges the yeung dragon, guardian of emperors who are thought to be descended from heaven. The tiger and the dragon keep each other in check, and if one grows too powerful, a fight will ensue until order is restored. Something terrible must have happened in heaven for a fight of this size.
After a count of sixty seconds—which feels more like sixty years—the trembling stops, at least from the earth. The shock rattles me deep in my bones. It feels as if my spleen is in my throat, and my teeth in my stomach.
Panting, I unfold myself, and pray to the Christian God that Jack, Ma, and Ba are okay. I never knew an earthquake to extend farther than a few blocks, and with Chinatown over three miles away, hopefully the dishes didn’t even rattle.
Through the broken windows, the excited, panicked chattering of girls punctuates the eerie silence that follows.
I struggle to get to my feet, but the earth lurches again, bringing with it the sound of splintering wood and more breaking glass. Moments later, Katie, Harry, and Francesca emerge from the courtyard door. They spot me, and run over.
“The front door collapsed!” yells Katie, helping me up.
Harry spots the dead fish lying around the fountain and goes as white as the pillow she’s carrying. Most of the water from the fountain has sloshed out or seeped through the cracked bricks. Only a few blackbirds twist around in the placid, impassive sky now. More bricks drop off the building, pushing us farther into the garden.
Francesca gasps. “Look!” The herb garden, with its meticulously weeded rows, looks like a massive rodent tunneled through it, turning everything under. The orange tree that protected the herbs with its canopy shudders as if uttering its last breath, and collapses.
“We need to get out of here. The hedge! There.” I point to where a tree has sliced the boxwood in two. I hold back a branch, and the others climb through the split, one by one. The boxwood grabs at my quilted jacket as I pass through to the sidewalk.
Before I have squeezed my body out completely, Francesca clutches at me. Her startled cry is a distant sound in my ear as I emerge onto the street.
Sweet Angels of Mercy, the world has broken apart.
21
THE FRONT DOORWAY OF ST. CLARE’S HAS
buckled in on itself. There will be no returning through that portal. My nugget of gold has slipped away, and no amount of shaking will bring it back.
An ugly fissure begins from the stoop and jags into the street. Slash-like cracks rip the school’s facade, and all the windows have been punched through. I gape at the houses along the street, some sunk into the ground, some missing their chimneys.
The claws and barbed tails of the tiger and dragon have laid this street to waste.
Ma’s prediction about her own death winds through me, as slippery and venomous as a water eel. I shudder, pushing that thought away. I didn’t believe in Chinese superstitions before, and now would be a terrible time to start. I picture Ma in bed, slumbering with her toes stuck out of the quilt. Any minute now, she’ll wake and start heating the juk for Jack.
My fingers find the penny. Jack is as safe as the coin in my pocket, I tell myself.
Girls stand in the street in various states of undress—some still in their nightgowns; others wrapped in shawls or blankets. Neighbors mill around as well, clinging to others, chasing children. Some stare in shocked silence at the ruin of their houses, while others talk in agitated voices.
A keening rises higher than the chatter, loud and shrill enough to make my teeth ache. I look for the source and spot Minnie Mae, struggling toward the school while several hands restrain her.
“Ruby!” she screams.
I hurry toward them. “What happened? Where’s Ruby?”
“The wall collapsed on her bed,” gasps one girl, wringing her hands. She glances at Minnie Mae and whispers, “Neck snapped. I . . . I think it was quick.” Her blue eyes fill with tears.
My insides roil and cramp, as if I just drank a bucket of icy water. I cover my mouth, still scarcely believing Ruby’s gone. Only an hour ago, she was laughing alongside us. I remember her shortened jade column, her fate line. If I were an actual fortune-teller, perhaps I could have foreseen her untimely death. But not even Ma could’ve stopped the earth from shaking.
