Victorian San Francisco Stories

by M. Louisa Locke

  “I see that these can be opened up into one room, as well,” said Annie, nodding towards the single set of folding doors that were only partially closed and thinking how cleverly this building had been planned. The room they were standing in had regular desks, with books and simple block toys sitting on the shelves built under each window. Scarlet banners with Chinese characters embroidered in gold thread hung on the walls. She glimpsed what looked like a standing globe, more desks, and bookshelves in the adjoining room. Light streamed in from the sun that had now breached Telegraph Hill, bathing the rooms in a soft glow.

  “Yes, my parents worked closely with the architect that was hired to ensure that everything was as functional as possible. We tend to keep the folding door closed during the day to divide the youngest girls from the older women.”

  Thinking she’d heard a change in Miss Greenstock’s tone when she spoke of dividing the girls, Annie said, “What is the average age of the females you take in? I had thought that this was primarily a refuge for older girls, women even, who had been rescued from….” She stopped, not sure what term the daughter of a minister would find acceptable.

  “From their life of sin, as some of the good women of the Women’s Missionary Society put it. As if the girls who are imprisoned in the brothels and cribs that line the alleys of China Town are any more responsible for the immorality of their lives than the slaves in the South were for theirs.” Evelyn Greenstock closed her lips tightly and frowned.

  “I understand that many of the women who come to California from China are trapped into virtual slavery,” Annie said quietly, hoping to encourage the young woman to continue.

  “Yes, yes. The Page Act makes it practically impossible for respectable relatives of the Chinese workers to emigrate here, and yet men of all races seem very happy to make enormous profits exploiting the few women who are smuggled into the country.” Miss Greenstock pursed her lips again, her gray eyes darkening. “These girls come from the poorest families in southern China, hoping to escape starvation, find a husband. When they get here, if they aren’t sold into brothels or turned into concubines for wealthy merchants, they become ‘mui tsai,’ indentured servants working without wages for the merchants who imported them.”

  Annie shook her head sympathetically and asked, “How many women or girls are currently in the Refuge?”

  “We have fifteen staying with us full time, for now. Seven of them are between the ages of fifteen and twenty and one is in her early twenties, but she looks much older than that. She is a ‘mui tai’ who was brutally beaten by her master and rescued by one of the police who are sympathetic to our cause. We have two women in their thirties who are so broken down that the the men who owned them threw them out onto the street rather than continue to provide them with even the basic necessities. Chinese prostitutes don’t live long.”

  Annie watched as Evelyn wandered over to one of the desks and picked up an embroidery frame that held a cloth filled with exquisite stitching. Her expression had now shifted from anger to sorrow.

  “I find the youngest girls—eleven or twelve—the most heart-breaking.” She then sighed. “Even if they have only been ‘miu tai’…well, the horrors they have seen in just a few short years. They are this awful combination of childish ignorance and shrewd cynicism.”

  Annie couldn’t help but be reminded of Evie May, a young girl with a troubled past who could be a child one minute and a wise young woman the next.

  Evelyn Greenstock put down the embroidery frame and said more matter-of-factly, “A number of the younger girls are brought to us by men who helped them escape either from a brothel or an abusive master, or they have purchased them at auction, which often occurs when a girl has been brought over by a ship captain. They want our help in keeping the girls safe while they establish the legal authority to marry them. Meanwhile we teach them to read and write English, write Chinese, do basic math, introduce them to housekeeping and cooking skills and sewing.”

  “My goodness,” Annie blurted out. “You make it sound like the Refuge is some sort of finishing school for marriageable young women. You said these were the younger girls?”

  “Between twelve and fifteen. Girls who haven’t yet lost their beauty or health,” the younger woman replied. “I know, I was appalled when we first started getting these requests. But my parents explained that in China the traditional method of counting a child’s age is to say they are one year old the day they are born and that they turn two during the Chinese New Year festival. As a result, a girl of twelve or fourteen might be considered fourteen or sixteen to the Chinese men who want to marry them, which is seen by them as a perfectly respectable age for marriage.”

  Annie was speechless. She hadn’t been mature enough for marriage at eighteen—no doubt one of the reasons her marriage to John had been so disastrous a failure—so she couldn’t conceive of marriage at age twelve.

  Evelyn Greenstock shrugged. “We do try to delay the marriages by making the men promise to let the girls stay in the Refuge at least a year, and we force them to pay up the sixty dollars for their upkeep for that year up front. The Mission’s lawyer has written an affidavit that they sign when the girls leave that swears they will not turn around and sell the girls or put them in houses of prostitution. You can be sure we try to keep track of them after they leave us. We also encourage the men to keep the girls with us longer than a year if they are very young, but the girls themselves are often anxious to get married. Since California law puts the ‘age of consent’ at ten, there isn’t much we can do legally if the couple is determined. That is one of the reasons we have such difficulty fighting the brothel owners in court. We can’t prove they have done something illegal—unless the girl is willing to testify—which few will do. Needless to say we are trying to get the law changed, but that takes money….”

  “Which is where my services come in,” stated Annie.

  “Yes, if you can find a way to improve our balance sheet, that would be a help. But…”

  A series of piercing screams from above their heads silenced Evelyn Greenstock, and she distractedly said, “Oh dear, I… let me just see…” before rushing out of the room.

  Annie followed her out the door and down the corridor to where Miss Greenstock was hurriedly unlocking the door to the stairs that led to the upper attic. Annie ran to catch the door before it closed and went quickly up behind the young woman. The screams got louder as they rose. Annie halted when she got to the top of the stairs, waiting for Miss Greenstock to unlock and thrust open another door.

  When Annie went through that door, she had the oddest impression she had stumbled on a small garden of peonies, all fluttering in the wind. What she was seeing was uncounted number of Chinese women of all ages, their round pale faces punctuated with dark worried eyebrows and small oval mouths opened in silent alarm, their hands peeking out of the bell-shaped sleeves of their black tunics and waving in distress. In their center stood two western-clothed women hovering around a tiny girl dressed in brilliant red, green, and gold, whose face was little more than scrunched closed eyes and the round opening from which those blood-curdling screams emanated.

  *****

  “You see, Mr. Wong, she was this tiny little girl that they had rescued the day before—and she was shrieking like a locomotive. Miss Greenstock explained later to me that someone from the Mission tries to meet all the ships from China that come into port, to see if there are any women on board who are being illegally imported and destined to either prostitution or indentured servitude. Yesterday morning, they got word that there was a young girl of about six or seven who was on board the SS Acapulco who didn’t seem to be with anyone and wasn’t met by a relative when the steamer docked.”

  Annie looked at the older Chinese man sitting quietly across from her, and when he simply nodded, she continued. “Reverend Greenstock, the Mission Superintendent, is out of town, so his assistant Reverend Jensen went on board with a police officer from China Town. The ship’s ca
ptain told them that the girl had been traveling with an elderly relative who had died on route. Neither he nor the customs official who was there objected when Reverend Jenson offered to take the girl into the Female Refuge, at least until her status could be determined.”

  Annie again paused, trying to find the right way to explain to Mr. Wong why she had telegraphed him on her way home from the Mission to visit her at her boarding house as soon as possible. She’d met Mr. Wong the previous summer when she was investigating a murder in the Voss household where he worked as a manservant and cook. At the time, she’d been pretending to be a parlormaid named Lizzie—a disguise this wise and discerning man quickly penetrated. But he’d kept her secret and treated her with genuine kindness in the few weeks they had worked together. When the investigation ended, she’d asked Nate, who was the Voss lawyer, to explain to Wong who she really was and convey her sincere thanks for all he had done for her.

  But she hadn’t spoken to Wong since then, and she was inordinately pleased that he responded—and so quickly—to her request. His mistress must have given him permission to leave right after lunch ended, and Annie knew he would need to get back soon to start preparing for dinner. He’d shown up at the boarding house kitchen door, but she’d instructed her maid, Kathleen, to show him up to the small formal parlor. He might have felt more comfortable in the kitchen, but she wanted to show her respect for him. Besides, much as she loved her friend and cook, Beatrice O’Rourke, Annie knew she, like most of the San Francisco Irish, held Chinese people in contempt.

  Looking across at Wong, dressed as usual in his immaculately pressed, black, quilted tunic over black wide-legged pants, Annie felt a wave of affection. She welcomed this chance to see him again but wanted to make it clear that she had a good reason to be taking up his valuable time. “You see, Mr. Wong, I remembered that last summer the Voss lawyer, Mr. Dawson, mentioned that you had good connections in China Town, and I thought that maybe you could be of help to the little girl. The people at the Female Refuge haven’t been able to get her to eat or sleep since she arrived at the Mission. And this morning, when they tried to remove her clothes so they could bathe her, she became hysterical. Miss Walker, the Refuge Matron, told me that they were at their wits’ end. To complicate matters further, the girl seems to speak some sort of dialect that none of the Mission staff or the women in the Refuge understand. They don’t even know her name.”

  A subtle shift in Wong’s narrow shoulders and the appearance of two lines between his eyebrows showed Annie that something she’d said piqued his interest.

  He leaned forward and said in his precise but accented English, “Mrs. Fuller, can you remember any of the words the small child said?”

  Annie frowned. “I am afraid that when they got her to stop screaming she then became mute. Mrs. Greenstock told me that one of the girls in the Refuge thought they’d heard her say her name was ‘Bao,’ but when they called her by that name, she became agitated again.”

  There was another pause, and Annie remembered that it had taken a few days for her to learn that Wong’s silence was a form of expression itself. The first day she spent as the servant Lizzie, she’d thought he didn’t understand English because he’d never said a single word in her presence.

  Wong cocked his head slightly and spoke. “And her clothing? Would you please describe?”

  “She wore a sort of embroidered red cap on her head that was stitched all over in small pearls and had bright red ribbons that hung down on each side of her face, past her waist. Her outfit was a loosely fitting top with very wide sleeves that went down to the knees of her matching pants, and both top and pants were made of a very heavy green silk, embroidered in red and gold thread.”

  Wong sat back. “And her feet?”

  Annie closed her eyes briefly, trying to remember. She then looked down at Wong’s own feet, shod in the typical black Chinese slippers, with their thick white felt soles and said, “I can’t remember anything extraordinary, accept that the shoes were red with golden embroidery. Everything looked quite expensive. Otherwise, in shape and style they were similar to the shoes you are wearing, which, I must say, I have often envied.”

  A smile flickered across Wong’s face, but then he said, “No pointed toe? Not the lotus flower?”

  She tried to remember if there was a flower on the shoes, when his meaning became clear. Evelyn Greenstock had mentioned that “lotus flower” was the term given to the shape of a Chinese woman’s foot when it had been bound, the toes bent back to make a woman’s foot unnaturally small. She’d told Annie that none of the women currently in the Refuge had bound feet because none of them had come from the wealthier classes of Chinese society. Annie’d agreed with her that the practice was barbaric.

  Realizing that the clothing she had just described meant that the girl probably came from one of those wealthier families, she said, “Oh, Mr. Wong. Surely a young girl like that wouldn’t have her feet bound?”

  Wong clasped his hands together and said, softly, “Most girls start to have their feet bound by age six. But not the Hakka. They don’t bind feet..they….”

  Annie interrupted, saying, “Hakka…I think that is the word that Mrs Greenstock used. One of the women in the refuge said something about the little girl speaking or being Hakka. Does this mean something to you?”

  Mr. Wong nodded. “I was born in Miezhou, northeastern Guandong. Father was Hakka. Mother not. When Father died, I moved with my mother to Canton to be among her family, the Wongs, who adopted me. When I came to San Francisco, I chose to venerate the ancestors of both my mother and father, but I belong to the Yan Wo society. Hakka society.”

  “This is wonderful. Would you be willing to go to the Mission and try to speak with her?”

  Wong did not answer but instead asked another question. “The embroidery you spoke of, Mrs. Fuller. Please, were there any animals on her clothing?”

  “Oh, I’m not sure. I think there might have been a bird on the coat. I remember feathers. But the design was very intricate, everything entwined within a circle, right in the middle of the girl’s chest. Does that mean anything?”

  Wong stood up quickly and said, “Please, Mrs. Fuller. Can you take me to see the little girl? Now. I think that we should not waste any more time. I fear that the good women of the Mission may have made a grave mistake.”

  *****

  “Mr. Wong,” Annie turned on the wooden bench so she could see her companion’s face. “I hope you aren’t offended by Miss Greenstock’s request that we wait here in the chapel while she consulted her mother. They seem to be very conscious of protecting their charges’ safety. And, when you think about it, they really don’t know me all that well.”

  Wong nodded slightly, then looked down at his hands, which lay folded in his lap.

  Annie rushed on. “As I explained earlier, one of my clients, one of the few who knows me as myself—I mean not as Madam Sibyl—recommended me to them. Ruthann…Mrs. Hazelton serves on the Ladies Protection and Relief Society with Mrs. Greenstock and suggested they consult with me on some financial matters. I don’t really know that much about the Refuge personally, and I can imagine that you might feel their mission work is, at the very best, misguided. I am sorry….”

  Annie heard how defensive she sounded and stopped speaking. Until today she hadn’t thought about how someone like Mr. Wong would feel about outsiders like the Greenstocks determining what was best for young Chinese women. How he might feel about their efforts to convert them.

  He hadn’t said a word more about the mistake he believed the women running the Refuge had made since they left the boarding house, although the pace he set to catch a horse car demonstrated how urgent he felt their errand to be. She’d thought his silence was based on a prudent desire to avoid any unwanted attention while they were together in public. The agitation against the Chinese might not be at the fever pitch it was three years ago, but a Chinese man seen speaking to a woman such as herself could be attacked withou
t cause. But what if he was simply too polite to say what he thought of the good women of the Chinese Mission?

  Annie sighed. She’d spent a good portion of the past seven or so years railing, at least in private, against the treatment she encountered as a woman—dismissed and devalued by her husband, dependent on her in-laws, forced to pretend she got her business expertise through clairvoyance. Yet, compared to Mr. Wong—or those poor women upstairs—her life had been one of privilege.

  “Please, Mrs. Fuller. There is no reason for you to apologize,” Wong said quietly and then turned to look out one of the windows as he continued. “What I feel is sadness and shame. Sadness that my nation is so poor that families must sell their precious daughters in order that their remaining children will survive. Shame that these young women cannot get the protection they deserve from their own kind here in America. Who among us can judge what poverty will do to honor? Who among us must not judge when greed is the cause of other’s dishonor?”

  The uncharacteristic anger in Wong’s last statement startled Annie and made her wonder if it came from personal experience. She really knew very little about him besides the fact he had worked as a servant for the same family since the early fifties. She didn’t know how young he had been when he came over or what his life had been like in China. His movements and his stamina at work suggested a man in his middle years, but the white threaded liberally through his long braided queue and the delicate frailty and network of creases on the backs of his hands proclaimed his greater age.

  “Miss Greenstock mentioned that many of the young women in the Refuge had been rescued by young men from China who wished eventually to marry them,” she said. “It must be hard for a young man, so far away from home, with so few marriage possibilities. May I ask, were you ever married, Mr. Wong?”

  Wong turned and looked steadily at her, causing her a momentary qualm. I shouldn’t have asked him so personal a question.

  Then he gave her one of his rare smiles and said, “Ah, Mrs. Fuller, might the question of marriage be of particular interest to you right now since I believe that I overheard Mr. Hobbes tell my mistress that you had recently become engaged to his nephew, Mr. Dawson.”