City of God

by Swerling, Beverly

  Ah Chee and Mei Lin followed behind her, Mei Lin praying that they would get back inside the carriage with no incident and that she had not made some terrible error that would cause her mother and Ah Chee to be less likely than ever to recognize the one true Church.

  “Well, I never!”

  The loud exclamation came from somewhere to Mei Lin’s right. Mamee and Ah Chee stopped walking, though the carriage was just a few feet away. Mei Lin stepped between her mother and Ah Chee and urged them forward to the safety it promised, even as she turned her head to see who had spoken.

  Mei Lin and Ah Chee were looking as well.

  So was Lilac Langton.

  Mei-hua was the first to break the stunned silence. She screamed and threw her arms around Mei Lin, terrified that now the same terrible person who had stolen her unborn son and made her almost bleed to death was after her daughter.

  Ah Chee recognized the devil woman who had taken her money, then did the stinking dog turd abortion anyway. She shook her fist in the woman’s face and berated her in a stream of gutter Hakka Chinese, words she thought she had forgotten in the nearly twenty years since she left the sampans of the stinking dog turd pirate who sold her plum blossom to the yang gwei zih. Which transaction she also cursed, since now the Lord Samuel had swallowed so many clouds he didn’t know better than to leave them on the street with no protection.

  A low rumbling of discontent began among the onlookers. The strange and obviously foreign women had provided an unexpected distraction on an evening when most folks were out seeking only a good time, but now they appeared to be threatening one of their own.

  A man stepped between the strange woman and Mamee and Ah Chee. “Qi rang wo bang mang, tai-tai.” Please allow me to help the supreme first lady tai-tai. He removed his topper and bowed repeatedly in Mei-hua’s direction. “Bu yiao ma fan zhiji.” Do not trouble yourself. “Qi bu yiao ma fan zhiji.” Please do not trouble yourself.

  Mei Lin was astonished. A word like “please” had no place in ordinary Chinese, where only the tone of speech conveyed politeness. “Please” as part of the spoken language was reserved for those to whom one wished to pay the highest honor. The speaker must have the language as deep as the marrow of his bones to understand such a subtle difference. Moreover, the polite words made it entirely acceptable that he took Mei-hua’s arm and practically carried her to the waiting carriage.

  Mei Lin opened her mouth, but words in either English or Chinese refused to come. The man who was now lifting her mother into the carriage was Mr. Kurt Chambers.

  Ah Chee hurried along behind her plum blossom while urging the little bud to join them. “No stay here,” she admonished. “Bad. Bad. Come. Come.”

  “It is good advice, Miss Di.” Mr. Chambers spoke quietly without turning around, seeming to keep his total attention on Mei-hua. “Please come and join your mother and your servant. It would be the best thing.”

  It was the first time she’d heard him speak English. He had a British accent. Mei Lin moved forward. Mr. Chambers helped her into the carriage in the deferential manner he had used when he assisted her mother.

  Chambers turned to face the restive crowd, calling over their heads to the pair of coppers who were uncertain as to whether they should remain beside Mr. Tiffany’s window or were required to break a few heads and thus avert a riot. “Do your job, the pair of you. What do you think your billies are for?”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Chambers, sir.” They spoke virtually in unison. Lead-tipped weapons in hand, they made a move in the direction of the two toughs who looked most likely to start trouble if there was to be any, but this time no trouble ensued.

  The police returned their attention to protecting Mr. Tiffany’s window, and the crowd turned theirs to the bejeweled crown of Mr. Belmont’s wife.

  Chambers surveyed the calming of the waters with satisfaction and turned to Lilac Langton, who was still standing in the spot she’d arrived at when she first caught sight of the ghosts from her past. Though they were not at all the ghosts she had expected. “Countess Romanov, I presume,” Chambers said. He had put his topper on again and he merely touched the brim.

  “That’s me. And you’re Mr. Chambers.”

  “That I am.”

  “I didn’t know you spoke that Chinese.”

  “And I didn’t know you would recognize it when you heard it, much less that I would have the opportunity to speak it when I arrived at our rendezvous. Now, madam, I think we have attracted enough attention. Shall we take ourselves off to somewhere we can talk in private?”

  He offered his arm and Lilac took it.

  On the Monday following the nearly disastrous outing, precisely at midday, there was a knock on the door of the fourth-floor rooms at number thirty-nine Cherry Street. Ah Chee hobbled over to answer it.

  Mei-hua heard a few words of Chinese and craned her neck to see which of the men had come bearing what message. But before she could do so, the man left and the door closed and Ah Chee turned around. She was holding a package: a square about as long on each side as the distance from Mei-hua’s tiny wrist to her dimpled elbow, a hand-spread deep, and wrapped in shiny red paper tied with a big green ribbon.

  “Who? Who?” Mei-hua demanded. “Who bring this thing?”

  “No one I know. Does not live here or next door. Brought this for the little bud.”

  “How can he not live here? Where does he live? He was a civilized person from the Middle Kingdom, no?” Mei-hua was quite sure the words she had heard were civilized words. “That man from the street? The yang gwei zih who speaks like a civilized person, it was him?”

  “No. No. A civilized man. But he says he lives on another street. And his accent was not like ours. Toishan maybe. Not sure. Not sure.”

  “Never mind. Give me that.”

  “Not meant for you,” Ah Chee said. “Meant for little bud.” She had no reason to be fearful of giving the package to Mei-hua, but she was. She clutched it to her chest and kept repeating, “Not for you. Not. Not.”

  “Give,” Mei-hua said, in a tone that permitted no argument. She held out both hands.

  Ah Chee put the package into them, then shuffled away to the kitchen, intent on lighting a joss stick in honor of the kitchen god. Perhaps it would ease her sense of impending doom. It was a feeling she had not had before they went out in the horse-pulled litter, which was when she should have had it, but one she could not shake now that they were home and everything seemed to be back to normal.

  Mei-hua held the parcel on her lap and did not immediately open it. The name written on the front was Mei Lin, not Mei-hua or Supreme First Lady, but it was not that which slowed her eagerness to tear off the paper wrappings and see what the package contained. She was tai-tai and the mother, and anything that concerned her daughter concerned her. Or that was how it should be, but here in this place it was not always so. Language had become a kind of wall between her and her daughter, and sometimes she felt her precious Mei Lin was disappearing behind that barrier. As long as they spoke in civilized speech her authority could not be questioned. But if, as was sometimes the case, a transaction must occur in the yang gwei zih speaking words, then Mei-hua was helpless and must rely on Mei Lin in every way. “Not right,” she whispered. “Not right.”

  But it was how things were and she knew no way to change them.

  Now this.

  Ah Chee returned to stand in the doorway between the kitchen and the main room. Mei-hua could smell fresh incense. “What Zao Shen going to do?” she asked with some surliness. “All this time we ask and ask for a husband for the little bud and none comes. Now it will be different?” She did not say what both of them knew, that it was the Lord Samuel’s responsibility to provide a husband for his daughter, but he was too full of clouds to attend to that duty any more than he attended to most others. It was years since he had shared Mei-hua’s bed. Not even her tiny golden lilies could harden his jade stalk after so much ya-p’ien. “No different. No different.”


  “Yes, maybe different,” Ah Chee said. “Maybe.”

  Mei-hua did not need to ask what she meant. The man who came to their aid two days before looked like a yang gwei zih but he spoke like a civilized person. Not a yang gwei zih who had learned civilized words like the Lord Samuel. A real civilized person. Mei Lin was a real civilized person who looked—somewhat if not entirely—like a yang gwei zih. The possibilities were obvious to both women, though neither had yet mentioned them aloud.

  “Unwrap,” Ah Chee said. “Unwrap.” She had decided it was better that they know what was inside before the little bud returned from the errands she’d gone to do. It would have been better still if the package had arrived when the girl was away with the ladies the little bud called nuns and Ah Chee thought of simply as black-white women.

  When Mei Lin had first gone to the school on Mulberry Street, Ah Chee had spent many hours standing across from the building the little bud said was called a convent. She had spied out a fair amount simply by catching a glimpse or two of the inside each time the door was opened. Then, in the year of the Water Sheep, which the yang gwei zih said was 1846, the black-whites moved their convent to a place far away, to the country the little bud said. Too far. Too far. Way up to a section Ah Chee knew was called the Bronx, to a hill looking over a village Mei Lin said was called Manhattanville. Every Sunday evening Mei Lin took a train to get there—loud and noisy and puffing smoke, with the words Hudson River Railway painted on the side, which Ah Chee knew because once Mei Lin had read them to her—and every Friday afternoon the little bud took another puffing-smoke-train to return to Cherry Street. Too far. Ah Chee could not go to Manhattanville to watch from outside and be sure the girl was in a good place. Even so. Better if she were in Manhattanville today rather than home for this yang gwei zih Christmas festival. Which had already nearly gotten them killed, and which like nearly every festival in this foreign devil place lacked even a few fireworks.

  But any too soon time the little bud would be here. And if it turned out that whatever was in the package was something she should not see, it would be too late to put it on the kitchen fire and say nothing. “Unwrap,” Ah Chee repeated. “Unwrap.”

  Mei-hua continued to stare at the parcel.

  Too late. The door opened and Mei Lin came in. “What is that? What?”

  She had never before seen on Cherry Street anything quite like what was on her mother’s lap. Carefully wrapped Christmas presents were part of her convent world, not this one. And she didn’t get them, the other girls did.

  “What? What?” she repeated.

  “Don’t know,” Mei-hua said truthfully, nodding to the package. “Just come.”

  Mei Lin had by then gotten close enough to read the writing on the outside of the box. “It is for me. That’s my name.”

  “Yes,” Mei-hua said, starting to carefully untie the green ribbon.

  “I should open it. I should.”

  “Bad writing,” Mei-hua said.

  It was true that the calligraphy on the outside of the box was not particularly good; the characters of her name looked to Mei Lin as if they had been formed by an unpracticed hand. Perhaps Dr. Turner or even Dr. Klein had sent her a present, but she had no reason to think that either of them knew enough about Chinese calligraphy to write it at all, even badly. Who then? “Let me open it,” she repeated. But by then her mother had the paper off and was lifting the lid of the box and plunging her hands into a river of exquisite silk.

  There were two pieces of clothing of shimmering silvery blue. One was a long, slim dress with a high neck and deeply slit sides, the other was a short jacket to be worn over the dress. The jacket was lined with silver cloth and embroidered with blue flowers. “Civilized clothes,” Mei-hua said. “Made for you.” The outfit looked as if it would fit perfectly.

  “Who sent it?” Mei Lin asked, as she bent to retrieve the card that had fallen to the floor when Mamee took the clothes out of the box. “Who?” The truth was that she had a very good idea. Even before she read the note, written not in Chinese but in English, which said: I would very much like to see you wearing these things. Please have dinner with me at Delmonico’s this evening. It is not only for my pleasure, but in the best interest of your mother and yourself. I will send a carriage. Be downstairs at precisely seven o’clock.

  “Who?” Mei-hua demanded in her turn. Though she, like her daughter, had a very good idea who had sent the clothes.

  “Mr. Kurt Chambers,” Mei Lin said.

  Ah Chee, who had said nothing, merely looked and listened, drew a short, sharp breath and hurried back to the kitchen to light another joss stick.

  She expected that in a restaurant there would be a great many people; that was one reason Mei Lin had agreed to come. She did not know what to think when the man who greeted her at the door led her to a private stairway which entirely avoided the grand expanse of the dining room, and led to a small but elegant room with a table laid for two. Mr. Chambers was waiting for her.

  “I thought you would be more comfortable here,” he said, taking her hand and bowing over it. “A strictly educated convent young woman like yourself I’m sure prefers such discretion.”

  Mei Lin said nothing. Either Mr. Chambers thought she was as innocent as the other Sacred Heart girls—most of whom had no idea about sex—or he realized that having been raised on Cherry Street, where half-naked women frequently sat at a window displaying what they were offering to any passing male with a dollar or two, she would not be surprised by the presence of the red velvet chaise longue in the dining room for two. And either she was very foolish to have come here, or she was wise to have changed her mind and decided to come. Even though she would never ever do what the chaise longue had been put there to allow her to do.

  She had made the decision after her mother went weeping to the bedroom because at first Mei Lin would not even agree to try on the beautiful clothes, and after Ah Chee drew her into the kitchen and said in a low whisper, “You go. Get dressed up in new clothes and go.”

  “I cannot, Ah Chee. You know what he expects. I cannot do that. Cannot.”

  “You think this old woman so stupid she wants you to give away for some food what is only for husband who makes you tai-tai? Not stupid. But you need to hear what he tells you. Otherwise how we survive in this place?”

  “What do you mean? How we have always survived. Why not?”

  “How long you think your baba will keep on breathing now he has swallowed so many clouds?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “No but. Little bud listen to her Ah Chee. Already the men in these two houses know tai-tai not going to be tai-tai much longer. Already the money each week is less than the week before.”

  “But Baba…he doesn’t know how much is there anymore? Ah Chee telling me he doesn’t know?”

  Ah Chee nodded. “The old ones, Leper Face and Taste Bad and Fat Cheeks and the rest, they pay the same amount as always. The others pay only a little bit. Every week Ah Chee goes next door and the Lord Samuel says take the money on the table. Every week a little less money.”

  Mei Lin took only a moment to understand. “The others are joining with the strangers.”

  That was how they always referred to the new arrivals from the Middle Kingdom, a place Mei Lin had heard about for so many years she felt as if she had herself been there. The civilized men who came to New York when the clipper ships made their return journeys from California frequently stayed only until the next voyage back to the place they called Jin Shan, Gold Mountain, a name it had been given during the first gold rush days. Having seen New York, they found themselves a job on one of the clippers going back to California, the land of perpetual sunshine and no snow.

  Such exploratory visits were frequently made by men from the province of Toishan. The Toishanese were clever and organized. In each village they drew lots to see who should go and who should stay, and the ones who went accepted certain obligations, as did those who stayed. They system m
ade no allowance for simply deciding to remain in New York, unless there was a compelling economic reason. But there were other visitors who were not part of the rigid Toishanese arrangement, and some of them did find New York exciting and decide to stay in the city of winter cold and summer heat and not so very much sunshine. Enough for there not to be sufficient room in numbers thirty-nine and thirty-seven Cherry Street to accommodate them.

  These days there were a few other lodging houses in the area in which civilized people lived. They paid no money to Baba and owed him no allegiance. The men in the two houses Mei Lin thought of as hers, who thought of her mother as the supreme first lady tai-tai and showed the utmost respect to her and to Mei Lin and even to Ah Chee, called the others the strangers.

  “You think it is because of the strangers?” Mei Lin asked Ah Chee. “You think some of our people have joined with the strangers and that’s why they give Baba less money every week?”

  Ah Chee shrugged. “Not just that problem,” she said. “That not such a big problem. Ah Chee make money stretch like silk thread.” She did not explain that her secret treasure purse was available to supply any shortfall. Better the little bud not know everything all at once. “Other problem is what will happen to tai-tai when the Lord Samuel goes to his ancestors. She is still beautiful. Still the only civilized woman in this place.” Ah Chee held out one gnarled old hand and tapped the palm. “Her golden lilies fit right here. Even in the Middle Kingdom no one has better.”

  “No,” Mei Lin insisted. “No. The civilized men in this house, they will not let anything happen to her.”

  “More strangers than friends pretty soon,” Ah Chee predicted. “Plenty more. Plenty.”

  “You think Mr. Chambers will protect Mamee when my father dies?”