The Girl with Ghost Eyes

by M. H. Boroson

  I endured Mrs. Wei’s glare and Dr. Wei’s exasperation as I made my way out of the infirmary and onto Dupont Street, where horse-drawn carriages clopped and clattered down the wide road. My next stop would be Bai Gui Jiang Lane. I needed to speak with Mr. Wong.

  13

  “Li-lin! Are you all right? How is your father?” The eyeball spirit came after me, running on his tiny milk-white legs.

  I didn’t want to see him. I didn’t want to hear his voice. He was sort of a friend of mine, but he was still a monstrous thing, and it was my duty to destroy him.

  “What’s wrong?” he called. “Can’t you hear me?”

  I turned to face him. “I hear you, monster,” I said. “And I will exorcise or destroy you. But not today.”

  He took a step back, looking shocked. “Very well,” he said. “I am to be destroyed. So where are we going now?”

  I just stared at him, baffled. “Don’t you want to live, Mr. Yanqiu?”

  “Well, yes,” he said, “of course. But fulfilling my duty is more important than living. I thought you would understand that.”

  “And what is your duty?”

  “To save you.”

  The words struck like rain, profound and unexpected. To save me. That had been Father’s command, the writing immutable on his talisman. He made this spirit from his eye, and he gave it one overwhelming drive. Save Xian Li-lin. Nothing else would ever be so important to the eyeball spirit as that simple command. So he saved me when I was trapped in the world of spirits, and as long as he existed he would go on trying to fulfill that duty, again and again.

  Saving me was the sole purpose of Mr. Yanqiu’s life.

  The notion made me dizzy. In my life, no one had wanted to protect me, except my husband. After he died, there was no one who would protect me anymore. He was a man who protected everyone. It became my duty to protect them in his stead.

  And here was this little monster, the spirit of my father’s eyeball. He was small and prissy and ridiculous. He had no power to speak of. But it didn’t matter. Because nothing mattered to him, except keeping me safe.

  “Come on,” I said, and held out my hand to lift Mr. Yanqiu to my shoulder.

  Mr. Wong had his headquarters in the back room of a restaurant on Bai Gui Jiang Lane. The alley got its name because there was a white grocer there who could speak Chinese. The name meant White Devil Speaks.

  I was walking to Bai Gui Jiang Lane when two constables approached me. The first was a young man with short hair the color of straw, and he carried himself with a pitying demeanor: he felt sorry for me. “You contract girl?” he asked in English.

  Anger washed over me, a feeling cold and sharp as a dagger in the gut. He thought I was a whore. I wanted to correct him, demand respect, and make sure he never assumed such a thing about a Chinese woman again. I felt my mouth begin to contort into a snarl, but there were more important matters than my loss of face. I stopped myself from lashing out. I had no time for this.

  “Velly solly,” I said. “No speakee Engrish.”

  He gave a grim smile. “Y’unnerstood me,” he said. “So? Areya or aintcha?”

  “Bobby,” said the other constable, in a serious tone. He was older, and he had a red-brown mustache that matched his red-brown mutton-chop sideburns. “Bobby, that’s Lily Chan.”

  I stiffened in surprise at the name the English-language papers gave me after my husband’s death. I looked at the older man, examining his features carefully. I didn’t know him.

  “Oh, g’day, Miss Chan,” the younger constable said, tipping his round cap. His face betrayed all the predictable feelings; he looked respectful, apologetic, and very uncomfortable. “I heard. About what happened. I, um, I’m sorry. Ya know, sorry, uh, for your loss.”

  “Thank you,” I said in English, “and good day to you, Officers.” I turned and walked away.

  A few minutes later I joined the line to wait outside Hung Sing Restaurant and Boarding House. Workers joined the boarders at Hung Sing to eat together at long tables. A poor substitute for having a family, but still far better than eating alone.

  Mr. Wong owned Hung Sing, of course. He owned my father’s temple and Dr. Wei’s infirmary. He owned apartment buildings that would accept tenants without family connections. He bankrolled his philanthropy by running gambling halls, opium dens, and brothels, but the tong’s good works more than made up for it. The unimportant people, the outsiders, looked to the Ansheng tong for protection, and for community. There were a lot of us, and the Ansheng’s community mattered more than its illicit activities.

  Father had told me that Mr. Wong spent his days in a room at the back of Hung Sing, meeting with his 438s. The 438s are the officials of the Ansheng, the men who run specialized branches of the larger organization. Father had been invited to the back room a number of times, and still boasted about it.

  Delicious smells came from the restaurant. Fish fried in sesame oil. Pork and onions grilled in a plum sauce. I could almost taste the anise and cloves in the five-spice powder. The aroma of steamed rice made me hungry. I had to abstain from rice and other grains if I wanted my magic to function at its best. But the smell still made my mouth water.

  “Will I be able to go in?” my father’s eye asked me.

  I shook my head. “Father has hung his talismans over the door of every Ansheng tong building, Mr. Yanqiu. That’s part of what Father does. He keeps people safe from spirits.”

  “He keeps the Ansheng tong safe from spirits, you mean,” the eye on my shoulder said.

  I shrugged, just to watch him wobble.

  A few minutes later I had advanced to the front of the line. Leaving Mr. Yanqiu behind, I entered Hung Sing.

  The men in the dining area seemed so happy, gathered in crowds. They were strangers who came here from all over China. They came without families; they came without influence. If they had hailed from a respectable region, they would be eating with the Six Companies, not the Ansheng, but that’s what a tong is for. It’s a community of people who have no one.

  I looked around the room for a moment, taking in the aromas of food. The men sat in simple wooden chairs, eating boiled alfalfa and duck soup with glassy noodles. They talked and laughed together. Hung Sing was bustling with the noise of happiness. I felt an old, sad longing. I wanted to be part of it, to participate in their family, but I couldn’t. Those who were superstitious would fear me. The others would see me as an available woman, and pursue me. No one would welcome me, a friend at their table.

  Even here, in Hung Sing, I was an outsider.

  I strode through the restaurant and went into the hallway in back.

  The hallway was not what I expected. It was dim in the hall, hot and damp. A stale smell of sweat and musk clung to the air. There were narrow doors on each side. Some of the doors were closed, and some were ajar. From the closed rooms I heard animal sounds, grunts and moans.

  I looked into an open door. Inside was a narrow room, with a bamboo chair, a washbowl, and a matted bed. A woman stood at the room’s wicket window, wearing a plain peasant blouse and skirt. I noticed that she was barefoot. There was an odor of staleness and salt in the air. She called out to the alley in a tired voice. “Two bits to look, four bits to feel, six bits to do,” she said.

  Twenty-five cents, fifty cents, or seventy-five cents toward paying off her contract with Mr. Wong.

  I shuddered. I would not be able to bear that woman’s life.

  I raced down the hall and burst through the door at the other end.

  Mr. Wong stood at the back of a large room, flanked by a pair of bodyguards. He was feeding a parrot in a cage, and the two bodyguards stepped in between him and me, drawing their weapons.

  Pistols.

  On the street, tong warriors carry nothing that constables could definitely identify as a weapon. A gangster caught with a hatchet will claim he cuts wood for a living, and a woodcutter will support his claim. A gangster caught with a knife will claim he’s a cook, and a re
staurant owner will vouch for him. None of the Chinese would carry guns in the street.

  But here, in the privacy of Mr. Wong’s chamber behind Hung Sing, two men pointed their guns at me.

  I hate guns. Seeing them pointed at me made me afraid, the way a small child might be afraid. I wanted to mewl and beg for protection. I wanted to cower and hide under a table until the guns were gone.

  Mr. Wong was wearing a bulky black shirt with a silver badge shining on the lapel. He had thin lips and a heavy face, but more than that, Mr. Wong had gravity, like a planet. Little people, people like me, like bodyguards, had a choice: we could enter Mr. Wong’s orbit, or we could crash against him.

  “Step aside, little brothers,” said Mr. Wong. “Let me get a look at her.”

  Still cautious, still aiming their pistols at me, Mr. Wong’s bodyguards stepped aside, and then he looked me up and down.

  Mr. Wong’s lips twitched when his eyes reached my feet. “Big,” he said simply, and somehow I felt repulsive.

  I started to speak, but the younger bodyguard caught my eye. Recognition dawned on me. I knew the bodyguard. Hong Xiaohao and I had learned English together, at the Mission. Later, after my husband died, Xiaohao wanted to court me, but I was determined to remain a chaste widow. It had cost me much to choose a life of loneliness. Xiaohao had been one of the few who looked past my odd eyebrows and big feet; when he looked at me, he saw more than the exorcist’s daughter, more than the young widow. And I had rejected him.

  Xiaohao’s eyes were always relentlessly bland, but his mouth revealed all those things other men express with their eyes. If he curled the edges of his lips one way, it meant he was feeling haughty; a slight difference in the lip-curl meant he was feeling shy. And right now, his lips were giving me a warning.

  “Have a contract drawn up,” Mr. Wong told his older bodyguard, and turned back to his parrot. Facing the bird, he said, “Three years. Thirty percent less than usual on account of the feet.”

  I stammered. This was going wrong, all wrong. “Mr. Wong, I—”

  “Be silent,” he said.

  Hong Xiaohao’s lips moved and he turned his shoulders so he faced the corner of the room. I followed his gaze.

  A woman was standing in the corner, behind a table and chairs. She’d been so quiet and motionless that I hadn’t even noticed her. Facing the wall, she wore a red qipao dress with long sleeves. Leaning against the wall near her was a bamboo cane. It looked sturdy, solid. It was about five feet long.

  It had been used to beat her.

  So that’s how it was. In this place, where women under contract spread their legs for six bits, a woman who spoke out of turn would be punished with a caning.

  Mr. Wong’s parrot cooed, and he murmured a gentle response.

  I found myself angered, though I knew it was not the time for anger. I had no wish to be punished, to be reduced before these men.

  I stared for a moment, uncertain. If I spoke at all, I would be violating a kind of unwritten rule here, and I might anger Mr. Wong. If I spoke I might be punished.

  “Daoshi Xian Zhengying has been injured,” I blurted out.

  Mr. Wong turned his face to me and I felt the weight of his gaze. Scrutinizing. Then he spoke. “You are the Daoshi’s daughter,” he said simply. I nodded.

  He turned his body toward me. “I thought you wanted to be a contract girl,” he said. He shrugged. “It is no loss of face for my friend the Daoshi. Will he be all right?”

  I relaxed a little, and bowed. “Yes, Mr. Wong. He is recuperating at Dr. Wei’s infirmary. Mr. Wong, Father wanted me to ask you about a man who recently came to Gold Mountain.” Father had asked no such thing of me, but the lie would hurt no one.

  He raised an eyebrow. “Hundreds of immigrants come here every year.”

  I bowed again. “Yes, Mr. Wong. This man has only one arm. His name is Liu Qiang.”

  An expression crossed Mr. Wong’s face, like a cloud blown in front of the moon. He gave a gesture to his bodyguards. Hong Xiaohao and the older man strode out of the room, probably to wait outside. I heard the door swing shut and relaxed a little, out of the presence of the pistols.

  Mr. Wong walked to the table in the far corner of the room, near where the contract girl was being disciplined. He sat down in a chair facing the wall and gestured for me to take the chair opposite. I sat, and he said, “Bring me a bottle of rice wine and a cup, whore.”

  Blood rushed into my head. I gaped at him. It felt like a slap across my face. I began to tremble from emotion. It was shame and fear but anger was bubbling too, and I found my hands hardening to iron, my fingers shaping Sword Trees. But then the woman at the wall shot into motion and I realized he hadn’t been talking to me. She sped across the floor surprisingly fast for a woman with bound feet. I began to calm down, but then the other implications of his words sank in.

  A bottle of rice wine and a cup. One cup. He would make the woman pour him a cup of rice wine, and he’d offer me none. Father had always been skilled at establishing his place in the social order. I was not.

  If Mr. Wong had asked for two cups, and served me first, it would mean he was showing respect to a superior. If he’d served me second, he would have been addressing me as an equal who was a guest in his home. If he’d had two cups brought out and then made me serve myself, it would demonstrate that he considered me an underling.

  A cup for himself and none for me meant one of two things. Either he saw me as a stranger who had come to his door begging for alms, or he saw me as an enemy. If he saw me as a beggar, he would drink the rice wine. If he saw me as an enemy, he would pour it out on the ground.

  I was completely unnerved. I needed to find out more about Liu Qiang, and I needed to understand what Mr. Wong was planning to do with the corpses in the gold mines. But before he would tell me anything, he was going to insult me, and make me accept it.

  I lowered my head. “Mr. Wong, sir, please will you tell me what you know about Liu Qiang?”

  Mr. Wong began to speak, his voice deep and rumbling. “I will tell you in good time, girl,” he said. “Do you see this badge?”

  I nodded, puzzled and frustrated. Here, in Mr. Wong’s place of business, the most powerful man in Chinatown was going to share information when he chose, if at all.

  “This badge was given to me by the Governor of the State of California.” He touched it with his fingers, and pride gleamed in his eyes. The badge was silver, and the word Sheriff was engraved in it. “I united Chinatown. I made order. Men came to Gold Mountain, and I provided them with shelter, found them work, and offered them protection. People called me the Mayor of Chinatown back then. Back when I could walk my streets without bodyguards, without chainmail under my shirt.”

  The woman in the red dress returned, carrying a tray with a bottle and a cup. I sat tense on the chair, waiting to learn whether he saw me as a stranger or an enemy. The woman filled his cup and placed it on the table, then stepped away, waiting for further instruction.

  She was good at this, I realized. She had a skill for disappearing from men’s eyes. Subservience had taught her a kind of invisibility. In a different context, such vanishings could be deadly. It was a skill worth learning, I decided.

  “Five years ago, a man came here. To this very room.” Mr. Wong sneered, recollecting. “He stood here in this room and asked for half.”

  He paused. Mr. Wong was telling a story, I realized. He was waiting for me to ask the obvious. “Half?” I obliged.

  “Half,” he repeated. “Half of Chinatown. And who was he? He was nobody. He was piss. I laughed in his face, and then some of my little brothers beat him.”

  He picked up his cup and lifted it toward his mouth. It looked like he was about to drink from it, but he hesitated. “That man,” he said, and placed the cup back on the table, while a look of total abhorrence crossed his face. “That filth. Prancing around in his American clothes. What kind of man names himself after a vegetable?”

  I tapped my
feet under the table anxiously.

  Mr. Wong held his cup in both hands, running a finger over the rim as he spoke. “Bok Choy,” he muttered darkly, and the name set Mr. Wong’s parrot into a commotion.

  “Bok Choy! Bok Choy!” the bird mimicked. “Fuck his ancestors to the eighteenth generation!”

  I gaped at the parrot. The bird had shown me the depth of Mr. Wong’s hatred, more than anything he could say. How many hours he must have spent in this room, discussing business with his 438s, cursing Bok Choy’s name so often that the parrot had learned his expressions. I turned back to face Mr. Wong.

  “Within a year, my profits were down. It had taken me so many years to build the Ansheng tong, and so quickly it began to fail. My fantan tables were empty. Bok Choy and the Xie Liang tong took over gambling first. And he wanted the rest, he wanted it all now. A ship from China was robbed before we could unload our goods. Bok Choy stole our cargo, girls and opium, and I still had to pay for it.”

  Hands shaking with rage, he put the cup back on the table. “He found a Christian minister—a minister!—and started him on a crusade against vice in Chinatown. Bok Choy tells him where to find my gambling halls and opium dens, and then the minister shows up with constables and they shut me down.”

  “Why don’t you have his businesses shut down too?”

  His gaze fell on me like a weight. “Because he only tells the minister about my smaller businesses. If I were to retaliate in any way, Bok Choy would have my bigger ones shut down.” He put his head in his hands, a helpless gesture. “And then one of his men and one of mine got into a fight, over something meaningless, like a woman. And the tongs went to war for five days.”

  “I remember,” I said. For five days, hatchetmen ran through the streets, livid with vengeance. The tong war left a dozen men dead.

  “Those were good men, my men. Do you know what I call the young men who work for me?”

  “Little brothers,” I said, allowing him to tell his story as he saw fit. I still couldn’t tell what this had to do with Liu Qiang, but I had spent the years of my life among older men. They like to talk in stories.