by Stacey Lee
Maybe if I keep up the chatter, it will prevent us from imagining the worst.
“I liked working there. It was peaceful, and green. I never saw any ghosts, but I saw a lot of other things. Like a little girl named Mary Ellen, whose favorite doll was buried in a plot beside hers. And a cad named Cay Pepper, whose headstone reads, ‘I always thought I’d die at the hands of a jealous husband.’”
Behind me, Francesca doesn’t say anything, probably scandalized, but Katie guffaws so loud, her crate nearly falls. “You are not serious?”
“Oh, yes. The cemetery is a funny place. You think it’s all tears and mourning, but people laugh there all the time. Sometimes, it’s the only way they can handle pain.”
I feel their gazes traveling to me.
On I slog, not turning around. To do so would acknowledge that I am talking about my own pain that I have buried deep down in my molten core.
26
WE ARRANGE OUR BRICKS IN A CIRCLE three layers deep and find we have enough left to make a second small fireplace. To the relief of my poor shoulders, Georgina and the Bostons have gathered enough firewood to last the night through. They’ve also filled our two pots with fresh water from a nearby pump, whose line stretches twenty or thirty people long.
May we not pump the earth dry before we are rescued.
Withered leaves serve as kindling, and soon two fires smoke and cough to life.
Minnie Mae has not budged from her spot several paces behind the southern tent, though at least now she’s standing. Georgina sits by her side once again.
I approach them. “Where is Elodie?”
Georgina says in a low voice, “A woman came around to have us log our missing or deceased. Elodie found out her mother did not survive. She went into her tent and doesn’t want to be disturbed.”
With Georgina watching, I creep toward Elodie’s tent and listen. If she were sleeping, she would be snoring, but there is only silence. The fasteners have been tied shut. I imagine her sitting in the darkness. “Elodie?”
“Go away.”
Her voice is tight, and I don’t leave right away. I know she can still see the dark outline of my form through the canvas. Of all the people here, I am probably the best qualified to understand her grief and, ironically, the last person she wants to talk to about it.
I return to the others. While we wait for the water to boil, Harry, Katie, Francesca, and I take soap and rags down to the lake. The population of the park’s makeshift village seems to have doubled since we left. At least two hundred people gather at the lake alone, their noise amplified by the water. A middle-aged Chinese man stands knee-deep with his pants rolled up, beating the water with a stick. People watch him with puzzled—and in some cases, disdainful—expressions.
Katie scratches her elbow. “What’s he doing?”
“Caning for fish,” I say with some embarrassment. No wonder they think we’re odd. At the same time, though, I want to tell those onlookers to mind their own baloney. I’d like to see them try to catch a fish without a pole. “It requires much skill.”
“He’s trying to feed his family,” says Francesca. “It shouldn’t be a spectacle.”
We find a tiny alcove that is heavily screened with shrubbery. Harry looks cautiously around before pulling her skirts to midleg and stepping into the lake. My distaste at being grimy trumps my modesty. I strip down to my most honest layer and plow right in. After an afternoon of porting bricks, I’m as ready for the cold water as I am for a hot meal.
“Come on, Harry,” teases Katie. “If we’re sharing a tent, you must do your part. You stink as much as the rest of us.”
“But it’s indecent.” Harry looks behind her for the dozenth time. “Someone might see.”
Katie jerks her head toward Francesca, who’s holding a rag to her top as she scrubs her lower regions. “She’s got more than all three of us put together. It ain’t you people will be looking at.”
“I can hear you, you know,” Francesca says hotly.
After we line up and shield Harry from prying eyes, she quickly scrubs down.
Finally, the four of us emerge, dripping and half naked, like mermaids who grew legs.
Katie picks something off her arm. “It’s a good thing we got out when we did. Look, I got leeched.” She peels a fat blob off her arm and chucks it into a bush.
Harry lets out a bloodcurdling scream. Who knew her tired lungs were up to the task?
“Shh!” Francesca hisses. “People will see.”
Harry dances around, doing her best to stifle her screams but failing woefully. It is then that I realize Harry got leeched, too. I can see several on her exposed arms and legs. “Get them off! Get them off!” she squeals.
I reach to pick one off, but quickly realize I have problems of my own. I yelp, but not as loud as Harry, and engage in my own frantic dance of leech removal.
In all my days, I have twisted the heads off chickens, sucked on fish eyes, and even stuck my arm in that vat of slithering eels. But of any encounter with the gross and repulsive, none makes me want to crawl out of my skin faster than the sight of those slimy blobs stuck to me like overgrown moles. I pry and chuck faster than Tom can clean a tree of pecans, leaving behind red welts and bloody pinpricks on my skin.
Francesca picks them off her own body with more poise than any of us, face frozen in a grimace. Katie frees Harry of the last of her suckers—she got the most—and then we run barefoot back to our tent as if the leeches are in hot pursuit. Francesca grabs at a leafy bush, taking half the plant with her, and I catch a whiff of mint.
We pass Headmistress Crouch making her way down to the lake. She is no longer wearing her hat, and there are water stains under her arms. Her hair hangs in a loose braid down her back.
As Katie streaks by, she cries, “Be careful of the leeches!”
Headmistress Crouch recoils. “Leeches? Good Lord, what’s next? Locusts?”
Minnie Mae and Georgina watch us fly by, bloodied and heaving, probably looking like escapees from the local asylum. Harry dives into our tent first, followed by the rest of us. The leech bites are more disgusting than harmful, but we cower in that tent as if a four-hundred-pound gorilla waited outside, beating his chest.
Francesca recovers her wits first. “I’ll be right back.”
From the tent opening, I watch her dip the mint plant into one of the now-boiling pots of water. She shakes it out before bringing it back.
One by one, she tears the leaves off. “Swipe these over your bite marks. It’ll clean them and keep down the swelling.”
We do as she says. Harry looks like she’s on the verge of passing out, lying with her hair in a tangled mess and taking up half the floor space. Katie gives Harry her pillow, then places mint leaves all over her friend’s red welts. The petite Texan is the best kind of friend, attending to her friend’s injuries before her own. “We get leeched all the time in Texas, Harry. They’re like chuck-line riders, always looking for a free meal.”
Harry stares at the tent ceiling, silently hugging her pillow.
“They use leeches in Chinese medicine,” I tell them. “They’re supposed to be good for you, unlike, say, mosquitos, which are good for nothing.”
Harry’s eyelashes flicker, but that’s all the moving she does. The tent is beginning to steam up.
After making ourselves decent again, Francesca and I duck out. We pull one pot of water off the flame, replacing it with a third, into which Francesca drops the bacon. It sizzles, releasing a scent that makes my mouth water. I stir it with a stick, while she carefully drops dried noodles into the pot still bubbling. “Too bad we don’t have meat or eggs. Wonder if I can find any parsley growing near the stream,” she says, more to herself. “Mercy, would you mind watching the pots? I’ll be right back.”
She flits back toward the water, and I alternate between the two fires, stirring the pasta,
then mixing the bacon, then back to the pasta again.
From the direction of Haight Street, I’m surprised to see a black man in overalls and pressed shirt leading a cow toward our encampment. With deliberate steps, he approaches Minnie Mae, who sits by her tent several yards from me. Georgina is nowhere to be seen.
In his hands, the man holds a coil of rope. He makes guttural noises and gestures with his rope toward the cow, which has wandered off toward a patch of dandelions. I think he might be deaf.
Minnie Mae picks herself up, staring at the man with something like . . . fear? “Leave me alone! Don’t come any closer.”
The man pats his belly and sweeps his coil of rope to the cow.
Minnie Mae shakes her head vehemently. “Leave me alone! Go on now, you heard me.”
The man doesn’t mean any harm, I’m certain of it. But before I can intervene, I’m distracted by my pot, which has come to a hard boil. If I don’t get it off the heat soon, we’ll be scraping our precious pasta out of the fire. Also, the bacon is starting to burn. “Katie?” I call toward our tent. “Katie? I need you!”
Katie pokes her head out, freezing when she sees the cow in our midst. “Whoa, Nellie. That poor thing’s going to explode soon.”
Rising steam blows into my face. “Quickly, move the bacon off the fire.”
Minnie Mae shrieks. The black man is trying to pull her toward the cow. Blasted spaghetti! I leave my pot and run toward them, but a straw-haired fellow beats me to it.
“This man hurting you?” he asks Minnie Mae.
“Yes, get him off me!” Minnie Mae yells, though the black man has already let her go. The straw-haired man seizes the black man, pinning his arms behind his back. Then another burly man with an open shirt punches the black man square in the face.
“Stop!” I shriek. “Don’t hit him! He’s deaf, can’t you see? He just—” I think about what Katie said, and realize what the man wanted. “He wanted to give us some milk.”
I let the black man read my lips and gesture toward the cow’s dripping udders. “Milk?”
“Muk,” the man tries to repeat, still struggling. Blood oozes from both nostrils.
The burly man doesn’t seem to hear me, and winds up for another punch.
“Let him go. You have no right to hit him!” My outrage makes me see double. Minnie Mae has finally stopped shrieking, and her close-set eyes dart every which way.
The straw-haired man finally releases the black man, stumbling, into the grass. He gets to his feet, eyes wild with terror, and instead of fetching his cow, he runs off.
The straw-haired man slaps his hands together. “Well, took care of that, I reckon. Girls got yourselves a new cow. Bill and I could slaughter it for you if you want.”
“No,” I say between my clenched teeth. “The cow is not ours to slaughter. We will take care of it until the owner returns, God willing.”
Katie is now beside me, and Francesca is back at the pot.
The burly man spits, and his flying sword lands at my feet. “Please yourself.” They saunter away.
My blood pumps so loud, it sounds like a waterfall. People have gathered around us, no doubt talking about what they think they saw. I grab our last pot and silently march over to the cow.
Minnie Mae, however, cannot get enough words out. “Mercy! I didn’t . . . I thought . . . oh my God. I thought he was trying to . . . I don’t know!” She runs back to her tent, sobbing.
I bite back a response and try to remember that she just lost a sister. The poor man, whose intentions were so quickly imagined for him because of the way the light hits his skin.
My heart bleeds for that man. Isn’t that why I had to con my way into St. Clare’s? Even if I did climb to the top of that mountain one day, people will never stop seeing my color first, before me. But who cares now? Half my family’s gone, and another one is missing.
The cow lifts its head when it hears me approach with Katie by my side.
Katie gently pulls the pot from me. “Let me do it. I’ve been milking cows since I was knee-high to a mosquito.”
I pat the cow’s hide, turning my back to veil the water filling my eyes. The cow’s ears flick. Then, deciding I’m of no import, she sticks her nose back into the dandelions. Katie places the pot under her leaking udders and begins releasing the milk in short spurts. “Do you think he’ll come back?” she asks.
“I hope so,” I say. For all of us.
27
SOON, NINE REFUGEES FROM ST. CLARE’S are taking turns drinking milk from the pot using our only fruit jar. The cow has been leashed to a cypress tree so she doesn’t wander off. Elodie has not emerged from her tent since earlier this afternoon, more than five hours ago.
After only one sip, Headmistress Crouch hands the jar to me. Her skin looks too bright and flushed, and I fear she suffers more than she lets on. She pushes herself up from her crate with her cane, panting from the effort. “I shall retire for the evening. I have no appetite, and if the earth is going to swallow us, I would like to be well-rested when it happens.” She shuffles to her tent. Katie brings her our sole pillow and one of our two blankets.
I drink my allotment. Though the milk is sweet, it leaves a sour print in my mouth as I think of our ill-gotten gain and the poor man who gave up a cherished possession.
Next to me, Harry scratches at her leech bites, not seeming to care or notice when her skin starts to bleed. She watches Francesca mix noodles with two sticks, but there’s an emptiness to her expression that worries me. Maybe it’s the loss of Ruby, or the trauma of seeing our city in ruins. Or maybe the leech attack went deeper than the surface. Maybe it’s none of the above. Harry’s deep-set eyes have always been difficult to read.
Minnie Mae helps Georgina bring over armfuls of cleaned-off sticks that we can use as forks. Georgina’s resourcefulness reminds me of Tom. People like that don’t wait to be asked to get things done, they just do it.
Minnie Mae looks apprehensively toward the cow, with bruise-like half-moons under her eyes and shoulders drooped in defeat. “I wish we had a barn,” she says sadly. “What if someone takes her while we’re sleeping? If the man returns, he’ll think I didn’t take care of her. To rub salt in the wound.”
“It’ll be fine, Minnie Mae,” Georgina assures her. “Cows can take care of themselves.”
“Maybe I will write him a note or something.” Minnie Mae casts her long lashes in my direction, and I study the mud caking my boots. I know it’s unfair to be so irritated with a girl who just lost her sister, and besides, I don’t dislike Minnie Mae, I only envy her freedom. I would like nothing more than to lash out at the world the way she can, but doing so would only feed into the notions that Chinese people are barbarians. Plus, isn’t there already enough ugliness and sorrow here to fill an ocean?
Francesca pronounces the three sweetest words in any language: “Dinner is ready.”
Harry hands out sturdy magnolia leaves, still wet from being washed. The girls line up and hold their leaves for Francesca to fill, thanking her in turn. She has gained a new estimation in their eyes. Whether because of her cooking, or because the earthquake has not just leveled our school but also our petty grievances, I am not certain. Maybe both.
I take a leaf of pasta to Ah-Suk, who has pulled his tent closer to a Chinese family. Earlier, I asked him to join our group, but he did not think it appropriate.
At his camp, a bitter and fishy smell rises off a frying pan. A man shakes it over their stove made from a converted five-gallon oilcan. I marvel at the simplicity of the invention—all it took was an oilcan and a knife to cut out a ventilation hole. The cook glances up, and I recognize the man we saw caning for fish.
I offer Ah-Suk the leaf, and he takes it with a bow. “Thank you.” To the family, he says, “This is Mercy Wong. Her ba is Wong Wai Kwok and her ma is Lei Ha. And these are Mr. and Mrs. Pang, and their f
ather, Mr. Pang, elder.”
“I hope you are well.” I bow my head respectfully.
“We knew your ma,” says Mrs. Pang, whose face reminds me of the moon with its dark spots. “She told us we would have sons, and we did. We are sorry for your loss.”
I nod, finding it suddenly hard to speak. A flake of ash hovers in the air before me, and I blow it away.
The cheerful-looking Mr. Pang lifts his pan to show me the contents. “May we offer you some dandelion with perch? I call this dish Earthquake Harvest.”
“Thank you, but I have too much already.” It is impolite to refuse food, but they have so little, and my own leaf of spaghetti will have to be enough. My stomach cramps at the thought of it. The milk has thrown a bone at my hunger but won’t keep it at bay for long. With a promise to visit again, I trot back to the girls.
I arrive as Francesca is beginning grace. Slipping in beside her, I fold my hands. Though remembering my grudge against God, I refuse to close my eyes.
“Father, we thank You for this meal, and pray that You guard Your flock in this time of upheaval. Comfort those who have lost their loved ones, and let us be content with the knowledge that through hardship, You prepare us to do extraordinary things.”
My mind wanders to my earthly father. I visualize where he could be, and what he could be doing right now. His ferry might’ve returned to Oakland instead of continuing to San Francisco. I imagine him pacing the pier with his red-painted cart, looking for a ride back.
Francesca crosses herself. “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.”
I hold the noodles on my tongue, guiltily savoring the taste of food for as long as I can. It tastes better than I ever thought spaghetti could, salty and oily with tiny bits of bacon to suck on, all seasoned liberally with hunger. The girls gobble their dinners, moaning with the joy of it, and licking their leaves.
A girl of eight or nine nears our camp, probably summoned by the scent of food. She stares longingly at our group, then begins to cry. Her mother pulls her away.
