Chasing Secrets (13 page)

“Course not.” Gus smiles a sly smile. “I'm going to sign my name.”

“Gus! He was named after Papa,” she tells me. “Still”—she
raises her eyebrows at him—“he won't like you using his stationery.”

They stare at each other, considering this.

“It's pretty good, though. Official, like the way he writes,” Gemma says.

Gus's eyes are on me. Is it my opinion that matters to him?

“Sounds like a lawyer to me,” I say.

“And it's for a good cause. You know how Papa always talks about making moral decisions,” Gemma says, nodding now.

Gus bends his head over the page, his pen nib scratching against the paper as he finishes his letter.

There's a hop to my step as I climb up into the Trotters' carriage.

We don't want to risk running into the same policemen I talked to earlier. So we take a long route around to the other side of Chinatown.

Beyond the ropes and sawhorses of the quarantine line, red lanterns hang, carved wooden dragons wind around a pole, and red silk shirts flutter in the breeze. I search the faces as I always do, but no Jing.

Gus presents the envelope to a mounted policeman, who reads the letter, rubs his eyes under his spectacles, and reads it again. The policeman refolds the letter and slips it back into the envelope. “Sorry, son.” He returns the letter to Gus. “I'm afraid I can't do that.”

“But we need our cook,” I say.

The policeman shrugs. “You, me, and my aunt Theresa. We let them all out, won't be much of a quarantine, now, will it?”

“But that's a letter from a lawyer,” Gemma points out.

“I see that, miss, but it isn't a court order. I'm sorry. I can't let you through. Go on now.” He flaps his hand. “We need to keep this area free of traffic.”

The Trotters' driver turns the carriage around. I look back at the paper parasols and cone-shaped bamboo hats hanging on hooks. On this side, the signs are all in English.

Gemma takes my hand and squeezes it. “Sorry, Lizzie.”

No one says anything else the rest of the way home. I begin to wonder if I'm ever going to get Jing out.

A
fter school the next day, the cord is down. I take the stairs two at a time. But then I remember that Noah will need supplies, and I run back to the kitchen to fill my basket.

When Noah opens the door, I fill him in on everything in a big rush. I explain what Peter said and how I tried to pretend to be a nurse to get into Chinatown. I tell him how Gus Trotter wrote a letter on his father's letterhead, but that didn't work, either.

His upper lip trembles. “You're going to give up, aren't you?” he whispers.

“Of course not,” I say.

He flashes his crazy grin. “I wish I could go with you.”

I think about how nice it would be for Noah and me to walk down the street, or ride in the carriage, or bicycle in
Golden Gate Park like other friends do. “I wish you could, too.”

“Hey.” He smiles. “I made something for you.” He pulls a small brown paper-wrapped package out of his pants pocket and hands it to me.

I unfold the paper and pull out a piece of fabric. A buttonhole strip. Except mine has a button in the buttonhole. The button is the head of an animal, the body is sewn in gold thread. It has four big paws and a tail with a yellow puff at the bottom. Around the button a thick yellow mane has been fluffed out from the strip. Noah has made me a button-head lion.

“So you'll remember to be brave,” he says.

“With the girls at Miss Barstow's?” I ask.

“With everyone. Be your best true self. That's what Baba says.”

I sigh. “That's hard.”

“It takes a lot of courage,” he agrees. “That's what I think about when I do the lion dance.”

“Thank you for this,” I whisper, holding the button against my chest.

He nods, pleased that I'm pleased.

“Lizzie!” I hear Billy tromping below.

Noah's face falls.

“Oh no,” I whisper.

“LIZZIEEEE! Where the heck are you?”

I take off out of Jing's room and down the stairs. On the second floor, Billy sees me come out of the servants' stairwell.

“What were you doing up there?”

“Looking for the kittens.”

“Kittens, huh?” He watches me closely. “What's the matter with you, anyway? This morning you were moping around like your horse died.”

“I tried to get Jing out again. Didn't work.”

Billy scratches his eyebrow and frowns. “I thought he'd have found a way home by now. Maybe he needs our help.”

“Of course he does. What do you think I've been telling you!”

He shrugs, stares out the hall window. “There's this woman, Donaldina Cameron, who lives in Chinatown with a bunch of girls. If there's a girl in trouble, she rescues them. People call her the Angry Angel, because she gets people out of dangerous places. Anyway, I heard that her front door isn't quarantined. Her back door is.”

“That doesn't make sense.”

“What about this quarantine makes sense?”

“Nothing,” I admit, sitting on the hall chair and unlacing my boots.

“I helped her get a girl out once. Climbed a tree, jumped in the window, and carried the girl down. She owes me.”

“Out of where?”

“A bad situation.” He picks a flower out of the hall vase and rips it apart petal by petal. “She was working for people in Presidio Heights. They were beating her.”

“Why?”

He shrugs. “Bad people do bad things.”

“She's okay now, right?”

He nods, wadding up the petals in his hand.

“You should tell Papa when you do things like that. It would make him proud.”

“Which is exactly why I don't.”

I frown at him. “Why wouldn't you tell him something that would make him happy?”

He sighs. “Because I don't want to do things
for him.
I want to do them
for me.
” He opens his hand.

“But you did it for you. What's the matter with just telling him?”

He snorts. “Put your shoes back on. You want to try this or not?”

I shove my toes back into my boots. “Of course I do. But what will we tell Aunt Hortense?”

He smiles in his sly Billy way. “Leave that to me.”

“I understand you and William would like to go to the opera tonight,” Aunt Hortense announces when I come down the stairs.

“Oh, yes,” I say.
Opera?
I mouth the word to Billy behind Aunt Hortense's back.

He nods. Later, in the wagon, he explains. “We need time. The opera gets out late.”

“She believed you.”

“Of course. She believes everything I say.”

“Must be nice.”

“It is.”

“But what happens when she comes home and we're not there?”

“She's going to a masquerade ball with Uncle Karl. We'll be home before she is,” Billy says, and picks up the lines.

“Shouldn't we be wearing opera clothes?”

“She's upstairs. She can't see us.”

“Won't Ho tell her?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“He owes me.”

“Does everybody owe you?”

“Yes.” He smiles. “As a matter of fact, they do.”

We take the fast route to Chinatown and then go around to the back side. Through the quarantine wire, I see a vegetable stand, a few weird-looking bumpy green vegetables. Bins of brown roots. Not much there. Are they running out of food?

At the far corner, outside the wire, we stop at a plain three-story brick building. I can't see the back door from here, but there's the quarantine rope down the street.

“Why would they quarantine her back door but not her front door?” I ask.

“People think God will protect her because she's doing his work. Look, you stay here with John Henry.” He climbs down. “I'll go in and talk to her.”

The sun is setting, leaving an orange glow on the street. A group of Chinese girls in shirtwaists and skirts hurries up the front steps. A horse trots down the hill behind us. I'm getting a little more used to Chinatown, but still it is strange and I don't like sitting out here by myself. Although, technically I'm not in the quarantine, so this isn't Chinatown.

The darker it gets, the more anxious I become. I sit up tall, try to look fierce. But my feet are cold and my bottom is tired of sitting. Every time I see someone walk by, I jump. I think about Noah's lion. Being brave is a lot easier in daylight. Finally Billy comes out. “They're going to send someone in for him.”

“What time is it?”

“Seven-thirty.”

“What time is Aunt Hortense getting back?”

“Late. Those masquerade balls start late and last a long time.”

“What if she calls the police?”

“What if she does? Do you want to get Jing out or not?” The lights are on in Miss Cameron's house. A girl carrying a lantern walks by the window. Upstairs we hear girls singing.

“Billy?”

“Yes.”

I pull my knees up. “Are you going to become a doctor?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Remember when Mama died? Remember how sure Papa was that he could save her?”

“That wasn't his fault. He tried his best.” I pull my coat tighter around myself.

“I know he did. That's why it's a stupid profession. Nothing he did worked.”

“You can't prevent people from dying.”

John Henry shuffles his legs. He bites at his shoulder, leaving a wet spit mark.

“But you shouldn't tell people you can help them when you can't,” Billy says.

“It makes them feel better.”

“It's a lie.”

“But, Billy, sometimes you can help them.”

“Yeah…I guess.”

We listen to the distant foghorn and watch the fog roll in. Under a dim gaslight in Chinatown, a group of men in black are serving food to a long line of people. The smell of soy sauce wafts toward us.

A crucifix hangs in the window of Miss Cameron's house, backlit and eerie in the night. The singing has stopped. A girl giggles. Voices rise and fall, some in Chinese, some in English.

“So, what are you going to do?”

“Haven't decided. Might want to be a fighter,” Billy says finally.

“Why?”

An owl hoots in the distance. A family of raccoons scurries down the street, making their strange clicking sounds. “It's fun.”

“It's fun to get a black eye?”

He shrugs. “I don't mind. Besides, there's a lot more to it than that.”

I rearrange myself. Try to get comfortable. Use my purse as a pillow. I'm almost asleep when the wagon jiggles. I grab Billy's arm. “Billy!”

“Shush, Lizzie. It's okay,” Billy whispers.

I turn back. A Chinese woman in a large silk tunic and silk pants and a red silken hat climbs into our wagon.

I tighten my hold on Billy's sleeve. “Billy!”

And then I see her face.

“Jing!” I dive over the seat to give him a hug. His face looks thinner. More drawn. And silly with that hat. “I can't believe it's you! Are you okay? What happened?”

“You two got me out.” His voice has a tremble in it, but his lips are smiling. “Good trick.”

“How did you get stuck in there? Do you know how worried we've been?”

“Shush, Lizzie!” Billy's eyes are on two policemen walking our way. Jing slinks down, crawls under an old saddle blanket.

On the way home, I keep glancing back at the blanket-covered lump. I don't want to let Jing out of my sight. I want to tell him everything that happened. How hard I tried to get him out. How strange it was to realize he had a son. I want to tell him about Gemma and Gus and how Miss Barstow's isn't so bad anymore. I want to ask him what he knows about Uncle Karl, and whether Jing is his last name or his first name. And why he gets mad at Noah but he never gets mad at me. There are a million things to ask, but mostly I want to tell him how much he means to me. How I didn't realize that, until now.

“Jing,” I whisper to the saddle blanket, “when is your birthday?”

“Shush, Lizzie,” Billy whispers.

“August 16,” Jing whispers back.

As soon as we cross under the Sweetings' archway, we see that the light is on in our kitchen.

“Aunt Hortense?” I say to Billy.

“What time is it, anyway? I thought she'd still be out.”

“What are we going to tell her?” I ask as she bursts out the door, still wearing her green masquerade dress, her Bible in her hand.

“I'll think of something,” Billy mutters.

Jing peeks out from under the blanket.

“Thank God,” she whispers as she reaches us.

“We're sorry to have worried you, Aunt Hortense.” Billy's voice sounds sincere. He could actually be sorry he worried her. “But we got Jing.”

“I see that. Good to see you, Jing.”

Her hands are trembling. “Go inside. Both of you. We'll talk about this tomorrow.” Her voice is hoarse. “But you should know that Mr. Sweeting has heard from your father. He'll be home late tonight. And of course you know that the quarantine is over.”

Billy and I look at each other.

“You didn't know,” she says. “So how did you get Jing…Oh, don't even tell me.” She sighs. “I don't want to know.”