The Girl with Ghost Eyes

by M. H. Boroson

  My father held his hands out in front of him. It was a defensive gesture, as though he was certain I was going to attack him at any moment. “What has happened to you, Li-lin? You are a Daoshi. You have no business among the dirty spirits of gulls, let alone tigers. You have performed forbidden magic. And you let Liu Qiang go free.”

  “I promised Shuai Hu that I would kill no one tonight,” I repeated. “And before I let Liu Qiang go, I told him if he ever causes trouble again, I would hunt him down. Wherever he hid I would find him and I would beat him down, break his thumb, and piss in his face.”

  I smiled. My father looked shocked, and then he looked bewildered. He stood staring at me, uncomprehending. And there were more questions I needed to ask.

  “What happened to the Plague Box, Father?”

  He stiffened. “What do you mean?”

  “Li Zhenren, the founder of our lineage, had a Plague Box full of evil spells. The box would have been passed down through the generations of the Maoshan lineage, from senior student to senior student. It would have been passed into Shifu Li’s hands. Shifu Li would have passed it to you, Father.”

  He glowered at me, saying nothing.

  “The spell to create the Quanshen, the spell to create the Kulou-Yuanling … They would have been quarantined in the Plague Box. What happened to it, Father?”

  He lifted his face to me. His eye burned with anger. “Enough,” he said. “You ask too much. You have chosen a left-hand path so many times tonight, Li-lin. You tell me you are a protector of monsters, that you made a promise to a monster, that you performed dian-si-shuei and let Liu Qiang leave with his life. I do not know you anymore. You are erguizi.”

  I looked down. Erguizi. A child with two ghosts. A Chinese ghost and an American ghost.

  He continued looking at me with a harshness only my father could manage. “Is there more?”

  I swallowed and made myself face him. “Yes, Father,” I said. “Tomorrow I go to work for Bok Choy and the Xie Liang tong. And I’ve decided that I’m not going to destroy the spirit of your eye.”

  He paled. I saw a look on his face I had not seen since I was a small child. On that day long ago, we walked in silence. We went from house to house, looking for survivors. There were none. I had never forgotten his expression. He looked like a man who had lost everything, who had lost any reason to live, a man whose every hope had been ruined.

  My heart broke for him in that moment.

  He cleared his throat. “I have failed you too,” he said. “From this moment forward, I have no daughter.” He turned and walked away.

  It had only been a matter of days, but it felt like years had gone by. Just days ago Mao’er had shown me a niche between two walls off of Fat Boy Alley. I made my way back there, in the human world this time. It was a cold night to sleep outside. I curled up and slept.

  I woke in the morning, sore and tired, feeling chilled to the bone. I sat up, rubbing my head where I’d been kicked. The events of last night played out in my mind. I had defeated Tom Wong in a fight, bested Liu Qiang’s magic, killed his evil arm, and demolished the Kulou-Yuanling. It had been a victory, of the sort that legends tell of. I grinned a bitter grin, knowing that life goes on when the legends end. The hero triumphs, but then his story continues. He grows old, suffers, and dies.

  After the heroine triumphs, her father disowns her, her social order rejects her, and she must spend years sweating in a dim, dank room, a plaything for men.

  The injustice of it all made me want to howl, to weep, to tear at my hair and face. I had saved Chinatown, using my wits, my courage, and my power, and now I was going to become a whore.

  It was for the best that my father had disowned me. If he no longer had a daughter, then my whoring would cause him no loss of face.

  I stood to stretch my sore muscles. Every movement reminded me that I had taken a beating. It hurt to stand. It hurt to move. The sky above was cloudless for once, an unending expanse of blue that ranged from a crystalline, frost-blue to an inky cobalt I just wanted to dissolve into.

  Moments earlier, I had felt like weeping for sorrow, but I did not shed a tear. Now, looking into the gorgeous depths of California sky, the beauty humbled me. I would not weep for Xian Li-lin, but I wept for beauty.

  I came out to walk around Chinatown. There were hardly any men out this morning. No fish sellers, no vendors. Most were afraid, I guessed. It would take a day or two before people calmed down after last night’s events.

  I began walking. Everywhere there was rubble. Red brick dust and wood chips mingled with the yellow-white ashes of the Kulou-Yuanling.

  Two buildings had been demolished. Two of the Xie Liang’s gambling halls. Bok Choy would probably tell the constables there had been a fire. If I knew how the tongs worked, Bok Choy and Mr. Wong would send letters back and forth until an agreement was reached. Tom Wong would be blamed for the fire. The constables would take him to prison.

  I wanted to remember Tom as he’d been before hatred twisted him. The pretty young man who had been my husband’s friend. Rocket’s death had struck us all, a devastating blow, but Tom had allowed resentment and bitterness to rule his days and actions. He sought a kind of power no one should pursue. Now he was going to go to prison. He was never going to be able to walk unassisted again.

  My future looked bleak. No one would choose to become a fatherless widow working as a whore. But I knew I had what it would take to survive. I knew how to roll with the punches.

  I should know. I’ve been punched a lot.

  I walked to Xie Liang headquarters and knocked on the door. A young man answered. His hair was cut American-style. He gave me a quizzical look. “I’m here about a job,” I told him.

  The youth nodded, looking cross. “Does that upset you?” I asked.

  He gave a huff. “I bet ten cents that you’d run away,” he said. He opened the door for me. Shaking my head, I entered.

  There was no gambling going on in the room. Instead, a few dozen men gathered in groups, speaking in quiet voices. Each man in his own way appeared cowed, intimidated. Those who had seen the Kulou-Yuanling had told those who had not. An undercurrent of fear and tension flowed among the men.

  Whispers have their own kind of motion. From mouth to ear, they spread through men like a ripple through a pond. A hush spread now, overtaking the tense room. I heard an insistent whisper. “It’s her,” the whispers said. “It’s her.”

  In moments, every face in the room was turned in my direction. The silence in the room was absolute. I stood in the entryway facing the men. The men sat facing me.

  Then there was a sound from somewhere in the room. It was the sound of flesh slapping flesh. I turned my eyes toward the source of the sound. It was a man in his fifties, balding at the top of his head. The edges of his mouth turned down in what I was guessing was a perpetual grimace.

  We locked eyes and he clapped his hands again. And again.

  At the fourth clap other men joined in. By two or three at first, the clapping spread, and then it caught the whole room in a single surge. There were thirty or forty men in the room. All of them were applauding.

  They were applauding for me.

  I felt tears begin, but I fought them back. My feet wobbled a bit. I didn’t know what to do with my hands. Nothing in my life had prepared me to be applauded. I placed one hand on my hair and the other on my hip, awkwardly, as the applause continued. The posture made me feel foolish so I raised my hands and started clapping too.

  Then the cheering began. Now I was truly embarrassed. I looked down. I wanted to run away, to avoid the embarrassment of this attention, and yet I could not help myself. I smiled. I smiled so wide my cheeks hurt. Clapping for myself felt dumb, so I placed my hands on my hips.

  A skinny man came out from the back room, dressed as a woman. He wore heavy American makeup. He reeked of perfume. The whore of the day, I realized. The man who had lost the most bets yesterday walked toward me. He smirked. I saw a flash of gold am
ong his teeth.

  I blinked. It was Bok Choy.

  The leader of the Xie Liang tong, one of the most powerful men in Chinatown, was dressed up as a whore. I couldn’t comprehend a man so powerful being willing to lose so much face. It boggled the mind.

  At least I knew what to do with my hands now. I brought them together and bowed.

  “Come with me,” Bok Choy said with his habitual smirk. He turned and led me down a hall.

  The applause continued until after I left the room. I was glad to be free of such embarrassment, but also delighted. Never before had I experienced such a feeling. I would treasure the memory through the years of my contract. There was a day when men had cheered for me.

  I followed Bok Choy in silence. He led me up a flight of wooden stairs, to a small, dark room where two men were waiting.

  With a giggle, he swept his arm around the room in an expansive gesture. “How do you like it?”

  Looking around the dark, bare room, I felt tension return to my body. Despair took me in a wave. It was a soggy, nauseating feeling, facing my future. This was to be my place, my new home.

  “There’s no bed,” I told him.

  “You need a bed?” He seemed surprised. “I’ll get you one.”

  I looked at him with such disgust. Pretending it had been an act of generosity to bring a bed so his customers could make use of me.

  “What else do you need?” he asked me. “Candles? An altar?”

  I couldn’t handle this. It was bad enough that I had lost, lost so much, but now he was mocking the Dao, my path and the source of my power. I thought about attacking him. His men would probably kill me if I tried.

  But so what if they did? It wasn’t like I had anything left to

  live for.

  With a spinning kick I pinned Bok Choy against the wall of the dim room. “Enough,” I told him, “I lost, and I’ll work for you, but do not mock those things that are sacred to me.”

  The gangster held back a snarl. I saw it, saw the muscles twitch around his mouth, saw him force a different reaction. Self-control. His erratic behavior kept everyone off-balance, but he never lost self-control. No wonder he’d grown so powerful.

  Bok Choy giggled, loud and hard. I felt the muzzle of his gun press up against my chin. The cold metal sent chills through me.

  “Why shouldn’t I mock you, Li-lin? Looks to me like you deserve some mockery.” He pressed his gun up higher. I rose on tiptoes. “You signed a goddamn contract without reading it.” He shoved me back by the barrel of his gun, then pulled out a second one and aimed it at me.

  “Put your palms on the floor,” he said. “Now.”

  The guns kept me cowed and compliant. I squatted and put my hands down, feeling the dust on the floorboards. He took a step toward me, pointing the guns at my forehead.

  “Bang,” he said. He dropped his arms to his sides. In a casual tone, he said, “I have work to do. Look around the room for a while, then come downstairs and tell me what you need.”

  “What I need?”

  “I figure you’ll need some things,” he said. “A bed. Equipment. Books. A chuqitong.”

  “A punching bag?” I looked up at Bok Choy, the gangster dressed as a whore, the pistols in each of his hands. “Why would I need a punching bag?”

  Bok Choy giggled, waving a pistol in the air, and then, by accident, he fired it. Up so close, the sound was a shock. I felt it in my chest as much as I heard it like thunder in my ears. His men jumped at the sound, too. They looked terrified. Something inside me wanted to curl up into a ball for safety.

  “You really should let us handle the guns, Boss,” one of his

  men said.

  “Piffle,” he replied, shrugging. The gun smoked in his hand.

  The bullet had punched a hole the size of a fist through the corner where the wall met the roof. That gun had been pointed at my head, moments earlier. His accidental shot could have splattered my brains along the floorboards. Squatting, my palms on the floor, I began to shake.

  Bok Choy turned back toward me. The smell of his perfume blended with gunsmoke and dust, to make the walls feel close, the room narrow. “You’ll need a punching bag,” he said, “because if you don’t practice your kung fu, you’ll be useless to me as a bodyguard.”

  “As a whatdidyousay?”

  Bok Choy smirked. Gold glinted through his lipsticked mouth. “Really should have read the contract, dunce. You’ll be working for the Xie Liang tong for the next three years. You’ll put that bagua stepping of yours to good use as my bodyguard.”

  “As what?”

  “Bodyguard, moron. Keep me safe. You’ll have other duties, too. You’ll teach my daughter English. If she learns her lessons well, you’ll reward her by giving her a kung fu lesson.”

  The words bent in my mind, melting into strange, waxen shapes. It couldn’t be true.

  “Uh?” I said, cleverly.

  “If paying members of Xie Liang tong need an exorcism, you’ll do it free. You work for the Xie Liang tong, so you don’t collect red envelopes. You’ll be paid fifteen dollars a week.”

  My eyes bulged. Fifteen dollars a week was a lot of money. It was almost double what most workers earned. Mr. Wong paid my father twenty. My sewing never brought in more than three or four.

  “Can I …” I asked. “Can I stand?”

  With a gun in one hand, he gestured that I should stand. His men watched the gun, exchanging nervous glances. “No more attacking me, hear?”

  “I hear,” I said. I stood up, feeling dizzy. So much was changing. Fifteen dollars a week. Teaching English. Being a bodyguard. Teaching kung fu.

  It sounded too good. I couldn’t help myself. “Why?”

  “What do you mean, Li-lin?”

  “Why do you want me as your bodyguard? You have dozens of men. There are men in Chinatown with far more training than I have.”

  “You’re forgetting something, Li-lin.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’ve seen you in action.”

  I gave a short laugh and rolled my eyes. “You saw me lose my temper and hurt people I didn’t mean to.”

  “Yes. That’s it exactly. I saw you fight from anger. You know what else I saw?”

  I waited.

  “You were raging, Li-lin. Out of control. You fought for pride. You fought for a fool’s reason,” he said, “but you didn’t fight like a fool.”

  “I don’t see how my foolishness would be an advantage to you.”

  He shook his head, managing to fill the gesture with mockery. “Fools are the only people I trust. Someone who values loyalty over money is a fool. And fools make the best bodyguards. Only fools are willing to sacrifice their lives to protect someone.”

  “I wouldn’t give my life to protect you,” I said.

  He threw back his head and laughed. His laughter came out in quick, nasal sounds. It went on long enough that it made me nervous. When his laughter died down, he looked at me, his eyes gleaming to match his golden tooth. “Would you risk your life to protect my daughter?”

  I said nothing. I thought of Hua, so cheerful and innocent. If that girl was in danger, I’d protect her. To keep the child safe, I’d fight recklessly, against absurd odds, or jump in the path of a bullet. He was right.

  Bok Choy understood me well enough to manipulate me. I didn’t like that at all.

  But the life he was offering me … The job, the place to live, the pay. It was very appealing. I loved the idea of teaching English to a child. I didn’t mind the idea of working as a bodyguard, even though I wasn’t sure how I felt about being a gangster’s bodyguard.

  There was something else, though.

  “You want me to perform exorcisms,” I said. “But you don’t believe in magic.”

  “Did I say that?” he said. His grin was wider and less sane than ever. “Maybe I was lying.”

  “So what do you believe?”

  “I believe that the gods I worship and the books I read are no concer
n of yours,” he said. “I also believe that you now have a better job than most women in Chinatown.”

  I met his gaze. He was daring me to contradict him. After a few moments, I said, “Better than most men, too.”

  His laughter had a triumphant spark to it. One of his men shook his head and handed him a dollar.

  “Say it,” he said. “You work for Bok Choy now.”

  I looked at him, the unpredictable, violent, dangerous gangster—who had just given me a decent job. Looking him in the eyes, I said, “I work for Bok Choy now.”

  32

  Later that day I walked to the Flower Lane. I found the front door

  of the Buddhist monastery open and climbed the steps up to the second floor.

  There were eight men in robes, performing prostrations in front of a statue of Guanyin, the Buddhist goddess of compassion. Shuai Hu was one of them. He looked up and saw me standing at the door. He continued to prostrate himself before the goddess. I sighed. Holy men would be the death of me. I waited for what felt like hours while he completed his ritual.

  Eventually he stood, bowed, and came over to talk to me. “Daonu Xian,” he said, with his silly smile. “I am pleased you are not among the dead.”

  “As am I,” I said. “I kept my promise, Shuai Hu.”

  He smiled. His big cheeks looked cheerful and accepting. “What will you do now?” he asked.

  “I signed a contract with Bok Choy,” I said. “Three years. I will be his bodyguard, and I’ll teach his daughter English and kung fu.”

  “Your kung fu is excellent,” the monk said.

  “Great men trained me. My kung fu is no more than should be expected,” I acknowledged, “but it could be better. Shuai Hu, would you like to spar with me? Sometime?”

  I was surprised at how awkward it felt to ask him that. My voice came out in a nervous squeak.

  “No,” he said.

  “No?”

  “No, Daonu Xian. I would not like to spar with you.”

  I stared, surprised and feeling rejected somehow. Unworthy.

  “I would prefer it if you do not come here again,” he said.

  “But why?” I asked.