Jewel of the East

by Ann Hood

  “Poor angels,” Pearl said.

  Later that afternoon, when Pearl took her daily turn of rocking Grace on the veranda and Mrs. Sydenstricker joined them there, Felix understood the sadness that marked her face.

  Still, as she sewed a ruffle on the bottom of new curtains, when Pearl begged her, Mrs. Sydenstricker readily agreed to tell them her story about how she saved her home and children from a gang of men who believed Westerners’ presence in the valley had brought on the drought.

  “This was in August,” Mrs. Sydenstricker began, “ten years ago. We went so long without rain that the rice withered in the fields. Absalom—Mr. Sydenstricker—was away from home as usual, when the men appeared beneath our window with knives and clubs. I heard them discussing how to break in and kill every last one of us.”

  Felix gasped. His eyes drifted to the fields beyond the house as if he might be able to see bandits waiting there, too.

  “The night was so hot,” Mrs. Sydenstricker continued, “that perspiration dripped down my forehead into my eyes and the children’s nightclothes grew wet.”

  She paused for a moment, and her eyes got a faraway look. Felix wondered if she was remembering those four children she’d lost.

  But then Mrs. Sydenstricker grew animated again. “The air was still and thick. The closest Americans who could help were almost a hundred miles away, and the mob was ready to enter.”

  “Tell us what you did, Mother,” Pearl said excitedly, even though she knew the story well.

  “I picked up my broom and swept the floor clean.”

  “You cleaned the house while right outside the door men were planning to murder your family?” Maisie asked.

  “That’s right. And then I mixed the batter for my best vanilla cake, and I put it in the oven to bake. I set the table with our best teacups and plates and lit the lamps and waited for my guests to arrive,” Mrs. Sydenstricker said.

  “Guests!” Felix said, staring at Mrs. Sydenstricker as if he had never seen her before. Right before his eyes she was transforming from a sad and anxious mother into a superhero.

  “Weren’t you terrified?” Maisie asked.

  “Yes,” she admitted.

  Pearl was beaming up at her mother proudly. “So when the men broke down the door—”

  “When the men finally broke down our front door, they found me playing with my children and ready for a tea party.” Mrs. Sydenstricker laughed. “Well, they didn’t know what to make of this scene. The meanest one of all, the leader, accepted the cup of tea I offered him and then motioned for the others to do the same. We all had tea and my delicious cake, and then they left.”

  “They left?” Maisie said. She, too, was seeing Pearl’s mother as someone completely different.

  “You are so brave!” Felix blurted.

  “I was trembling, Felix. Trembling the entire time,” Mrs. Sydenstricker said. “I think I trembled for a week afterward.”

  “And then what?” Pearl asked.

  “And then, like magic, the rain came that very night.”

  Maisie and Felix fell into the rhythms of these days easily. Slowly, Maisie’s anger at her brother began to melt away. For the first time in their travels, neither of them felt the urge, or the panic, to get back home. There were days when Maisie thought she could live here forever, listening to Wang Amah and Mrs. Sydenstricker and the cook telling stories, sitting on the veranda watching the boats on the Yangtze River.

  When homesickness struck Felix, he calmed himself by remembering that no matter how long they stayed, when they returned home they would still be at the VIP Christmas party and Lily Goldberg would be standing right there in The Treasure Chest where they’d left her. Felix had that small, jade box in his pocket. Sometimes at night, he opened its lid and touched the dark dirt inside, wondering why regular dirt would ever matter to Pearl. He knew that someday he would know when to give it to Pearl. And that was when it would be time to go home. But for now, except for occasional pangs of missing his own mother and their apartment in Elm Medona, he, too, was happy. He liked to play with the paper lanterns shaped like animals that they bought on Horse Street and to sit in the warm kitchen with everyone, and of course, hear their stories.

  Days passed in this way. And then weeks.

  Walking together down Horse Street one afternoon, Maisie said, “Felix, do you think that no matter how long we stay here, when we go back no time will have passed?”

  “Ye-es,” Felix said thoughtfully. What is my sister trying to do now? he wondered miserably.

  “Then why go back?” Maisie asked. “I mean, we could stay here until we get older and still be able to pick up right where we left off at the Christmas party, right?”

  “I don’t know,” Felix said. “And I don’t care because we aren’t going to stay here for years and years.”

  The noise and action and smells on Horse Street—the vendors and the letter writers and the men cooking in the woks—all felt familiar to Maisie and Felix now. And this familiarity combined with what Maisie was saying made Felix’s chest tighten. He didn’t want to grow up here. He wanted to be back in Anne Hutchinson Elementary School with Jim Duncan and Lily Goldberg and Miss Landers.

  “But why not?” Maisie said.

  They had reached the man who sold the candy in paper cones, and Maisie rooted around in her pockets for a coin to buy some.

  “Don’t, Maisie,” Felix said.

  She looked at him, surprised.

  “Maybe Mrs. Sydenstricker is right and we shouldn’t eat it. Maybe it’s full of… I don’t know… cholera or something.”

  Maisie found a coin and dropped it in the candy man’s hand. “Don’t be silly,” she said, taking a bite of candy. “Nothing bad is going to happen to us.”

  “You don’t know that!” Felix said. “What if you got one of those diseases that killed Pearl’s sisters and brothers?”

  Maisie chewed her candy, considering. “I guess you’re right,” she said finally.

  Felix sighed. “Maisie, as much as you don’t like it, we have a life back in Newport.”

  “And we have one here now, too,” she said.

  They continued down Horse Street in silence. Maybe it was time to give Pearl the jade box, Felix thought. Maybe it was time to go home.

  “Rat years,” Mr. Kung, their tutor, said solemnly, “are associated with wealth.” The tutor came to visit Pearl, Felix, and Maisie a few times a week.

  He paused and let his watery eyes alight on first Pearl’s face, then Maisie’s, and then Felix’s.

  “But,” he continued, “it is also associated with death.”

  Felix shivered in his dark-blue cotton tunic. They all stood on top of a green hill that ran behind Pearl’s house. Mr. Kung held a giant, red kite shaped like a fish with golden scales. The wind rippled the fish’s head slightly, making it look as if it were shaking its head at them.

  “The rat,” Mr. Kung added in his serious, deep voice, “is the first animal in the twelve-year cycle because it sneakily rode on the back of the ox and jumped off near the finishing line. This story shows us its attributes.” As he said each one, he held up a finger, counting them. “Cunning. Aggression. Leadership. Hard work. Strong will.”

  All five fingers of one hand stood up.

  “But what will this year bring? Year 4598?”

  Maisie didn’t mind the idea that the Year of the Rat brought wealth. But death? She didn’t like that at all. Luckily, she decided, she didn’t believe in Chinese astrology or myths or anything. Mr. Kung was just creepy.

  He had arrived this morning with nian gao, rice cakes made from sticky rice, sugar, chestnuts, dates, and lotus leaves. “In Chinese,” Mr. Kung had explained, “nian gao sounds the same as the saying for getting higher year by year. In Chinese people’s minds, the higher you are, the more prosperous your business is. Very fortuitous to eat nian gao on New Year’s.”

  That morning, as Chushi and Wang Amah worked on all the specialties they would have for di
nner tonight, Mr. Kung explained the significance of each one.

  “Ah, very good,” he said, pointing to the fish the cook was filleting. “In Chinese, fish sounds like ‘save more.’ Chinese people always like to save more money at the end of the year because they think if they save more, they can make more in the next year. So we eat fish to remind us to save more.”

  Then he peered closely at Wang Amah’s dumplings, which were all stuffed and crimped, waiting on a bamboo platter to be fried.

  “Dumplings have a long history in China,” he said, nodding his approval at Wang Amah’s perfect crescent shapes. “More than eighteen hundred years. To me, they symbolize Chinese food. The more dumplings you eat during the New Year celebration, the more money you can make in the New Year.”

  Wang Amah had started to fill spring roll wrappers with a vegetable mixture, then roll them into tight, cigar-shaped cylinders.

  Mr. Kung nodded approvingly. “When she fries these, they will turn a beautiful gold. The gold of money. The gold of spring.” He grinned at them, revealing a set of long, yellow teeth.

  “Gold like his teeth,” Maisie whispered to Felix.

  Since she had just stopped ignoring him, Felix smiled, even though he kind of liked Mr. Kung. All the information he gave them was interesting, Felix thought. Plus, when they got home, he would dazzle Lily Goldberg with everything he knew about China.

  Now, out on the hill with the kite, Mr. Kung turned his solemn eyes on the three of them.

  “This kite will predict what will happen in this Year of the Rat,” he told them.

  “How can a kite do that?” Maisie said in her demanding voice.

  Felix cringed. But Mr. Kung remained unfazed.

  “We let the wind tell us,” Mr. Kung answered mysteriously.

  Maisie rolled her eyes.

  “Do you know how to fly a kite, Zhenzhu?” he asked Pearl. Even though he spoke English, Mr. Kung always used Pearl’s Chinese name.

  She shook her head.

  “Very simple,” Mr. Kung said.

  Carefully, he placed the kite in both of Pearl’s hands.

  “Hold it like so,” he instructed.

  Mr. Kung stared off beyond the hills. He licked one finger and held it up into the air, nodding.

  “There is a good amount of wind to fly a kite today,” he said, pleased. “All you must do is toss the kite lightly up into the wind, and the wind will do the rest.”

  “Just throw it?” Pearl said hesitantly.

  Mr. Kung considered this. “No,” he said. “Toss. Lightly.”

  Pearl nodded.

  Mr. Kung placed a hand on her arm. “Zhenzhu,” he said, “when the wind lifts the kite, you must let it go so that it can fly toward heaven and forecast the future.”

  “What?” Maisie said. “The kite is going to forecast the future?” She shook her head. Mr. Kung might be a good teacher, but his beliefs in superstitions were silly.

  “On the New Year, this is what we do,” he said, looking directly at Maisie. “It is the Chinese way.”

  Maisie and Felix watched as Pearl took a few running steps across the grass, then lifted the kite upward and let it go.

  The kite seemed to hang there for an instant as if it were deciding what to do. Then it dipped dangerously low to the ground.

  Pearl ran to retrieve it, but Mr. Kung held her back.

  A gust of wind came from nowhere, and it lifted the kite high, then higher still.

  They all gazed upward at the bright-red kite against the light-blue sky. The sun made the gold scales shimmer, and briefly the kite actually looked like a fish swimming. Felix wondered what it meant for the future that the kite was going so high. Nothing bad, he decided. It must be a good sign.

  But just as suddenly as it lifted, the kite took a nosedive and came crashing toward the ground. Oh no, Felix thought as he watched it. The word death echoed in his mind.

  Right before it hit, the kite hovered, then slowly lifted upward once again.

  They watched as it drifted skyward.

  “What does it mean?” Pearl asked, still watching the kite float.

  “This year,” Mr. Kung said, “will be a year of ups and downs.”

  He glanced toward the sky and the distant speck of kite disappearing.

  “But all will be well,” he said unconvincingly.

  Still gazing upward, Mr. Kung nodded to himself.

  “Yes,” he said. “All will be well in the end.”

  Felix wished he believed him.

  On a beautiful, sunny spring morning, Mr. Kung sat with Maisie, Felix, and Pearl on a grassy hill overlooking the river. They were practicing their calligraphy, writing the beautiful and complicated Chinese characters in thick, dark ink.

  Whenever one of them made a sloppy or imprecise character, Mr. Kung made them do it all over again.

  “When letters were invented,” he reminded them each time, “heaven rejoiced. They must be written with reverence.”

  Felix carefully practiced the characters for family and friend so that he could teach Lily how to make them when he got back home. Home. As time passed, Felix was getting more homesick. When he counted up the days and then weeks and months since they’d been here and realized it had been six months since they landed in the market, he grew worried that they weren’t going to be able to get back. The Christmas party and Lily Goldberg seemed almost blurry to him now. Still, Maisie reminded him often—too often—that they had stayed away a long time last time, too, and they’d gotten back easily.

  Maisie’s letters were always sloppier than Felix’s, and she and Mr. Kung argued over his insistence that she practice until she get them just right.

  “Maisie,” Mr. Kung said, exasperated, “he who does not show reverence to lettered paper is no better than a blind buffalo.”

  “Says who?” Maisie demanded, putting her pen down.

  “Says Confucius,” Mr. Kung told her.

  Even Maisie didn’t argue with Confucius. She dipped her pen in ink again and tried to make the strokes as neatly as she could.

  On their way back home, Maisie stopped and pointed to a tree with small boxes hanging from its limbs.

  “What are those?” she asked Mr. Kung.

  “Ah!” he said. “Inside those boxes are papers, letters, anything with writing on it. You see, Maisie, writing is so powerful that the only way to dispose of it properly is to burn it in those boxes, then hang it on a tree so that the smoke takes it back to heaven where it belongs.”

  Maisie studied the tree, thinking hard.

  “I like it, Mr. Kung,” she said finally. “I’ll try harder tomorrow.”

  “You are a smart girl,” Mr. Kung said, patting her back.

  They arrived back home in good moods.

  “I’m sure Wang Amah saved you some crunchy rice, Felix,” Pearl said.

  But her mother met them at the door, frowning.

  “Your father is home,” she said. She glanced at Mr. Kung, whose smile had turned to a worried expression.

  Absalom Sydenstricker, Pearl’s father, had only come home one other time since Maisie and Felix had been with the family. His fierce expression and the large stick he carried everywhere with him made Maisie and Felix afraid to be around him. Even worse, he spoke in a loud, booming voice about how the Chinese were heathens and he meant to convert every last one of them. Pearl told them that so far he’d only managed to convert about a dozen. But he refused to give up.

  After he left and went back up north, the whole house seemed to sigh with relief. Pearl told Maisie and Felix that he did not even mourn all the children he and her mother had lost. “He believes it’s selfish to cry for yourself when there’s an entire nation of heathens to cry for.”

  Now he was back.

  “Is he all right?” Mr. Kung asked.

  Mrs. Sydenstricker glanced at Pearl, then shook her head.

  “He had to close down chapels,” she added. “The landlords refused to rent to him because he’s a foreigner.�
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  “What’s going on?” Maisie asked.

  “The Boxers,” Mrs. Sydenstricker said.

  “Mother, you know that’s not what they call themselves. They’re the Righteous Fists of Harmony,” Pearl said. “Only foreigners call them the Boxers.”

  Pearl’s mother looked at her. “Darling, we are foreigners. And your father reports that they are even more committed to ridding China of us.” She hesitated and then said, “They gave him a pretty bad beating. He has bruises everywhere.”

  “This is very worrisome,” Mr. Kung said quietly.

  Wang Amah came into the living room, wringing her hands. She said something in Chinese, and Pearl translated.

  “Amah says that they believe Westerners are responsible for the famine and floods that have struck parts of China. They blame Westerners for all of China’s problems.”

  Pearl’s mother said sadly, “Precious Cloud has gone to stay with a Chinese family. She doesn’t think it’s safe to stay with us anymore.”

  “No!” Pearl cried.

  Heavy footsteps pounded down the stairs, and Mr. Sydenstricker appeared in the doorway. His very presence silenced Pearl and all of them.

  “It’s official,” he announced. “The empress has officially asked the Boxers to rid China of all foreigners.”

  “She always gets what she wants,” Mrs. Sydenstricker said. She looked at her husband. “We must leave. We must take the children to safety at once.”

  “Nonsense!” Mr. Sydenstricker said in his booming preacher voice. “We must face the heathens head-on!”

  Mrs. Sydenstricker’s jaw muscles tightened and released as she stared at her husband in disbelief. Then, without a word, she turned and ran out of the room and up the stairs. The sound of her sobbing filled the house for the rest of the day and long into the night.

  “Maybe we should give her the box and go home,” Felix whispered to Maisie in the dark.

  “We survived a fire at sea with Alexander Hamilton,” Maisie reminded him. “Nothing bad will happen to us if we stay.”

  “I like it here, too,” Felix said softly. “But it sounds like it’s getting dangerous for foreigners.”