City of God (38 page)

Ah Chee ignored the steady stream of words coming from the throne chair behind her. Ah Chee did not believe big ugly yellow hair had come to show the plum blossom long overdue deference. She had come to do them harm. Ah Chee was not only sure of it, she knew why. Yesterday, when she was frying wonton, some drops of water got into the fat and it spattered all over. Couple of drops landed on the hem of the garment of Zao Shen, the kitchen god. She had known right away that something bad would happen as a result. She’d offered him three of the wonton by way of apology, not just the customary two, and burned five sticks of incense to prove how sorry she was. Much sorry. Much sorry. Didn’t matter. Bad stuff happen anyway.

“What you want?” she asked, as she had been asking over and over since she opened the door. “What you want? What? What?” All the while trying to close the door.

Carolina could not understand one word the strange little creature spoke. “My husband,” she repeated for the fourth or fifth time, enunciating the words as slowly and clearly as possible. “I have come to see my husband.”

“What? What?” This time Ah Chee leaned her whole body against the door and closed it to within only the space of one of her gnarled old hands. “What? Go. Go.”

Carolina put both her palms flat on the door and pushed back against the slight weight of the old servant. “Don’t you dare close the door on me. I am your new landlady.” It was not strictly true; she merely represented their new, underage landlord. But that was too complicated to explain. Besides, she had managed to force the door further open and she could now see inside the room. There was the whore with the ribbons in her hair, and over by the window Samuel’s bastard daughter. She was sitting with her head bent, pretending, Carolina realized at once, to neither see nor hear a word of what was happening. Ceci would act the same way if she were frightened. “I wish to inspect the property,” Carolina said. “And to see my husband, Mr. Samuel Devrey.”

At the sound of the name mother, daughter, and servant seemed to startle, as if the barrier of language that separated them had suddenly
been pierced. “My husband,” Carolina repeated still more loudly and forcefully, “Mr. Samuel Devrey.”

This time Mei-hua stood up.
“Guen, ni guen.”
Get out, roll away. It was the command made to an unwelcome dog.
“Guen. Guen.”

Ah Chee was annoyed with the plum blossom for losing her dignity and addressing the big ugly directly. “Be quiet. Be quiet. I will tell.” But it was a big mistake to take attention from the door and put it on the plum blossom. Big ugly push harder. She was in the room now.

“Guen, ni guen,”
Mei-hua repeated. “Right now. Go. Go.” Her heart was beating very fast. Why had yellow hair come after so much time? After Mei-hua made herself not think about the concubine, after she made herself believe what both her lord and Ah Chee told her, that things were different in this place. Not good. Not good. She turned away from the big ugly and looked at her daughter.

Mei Lin sat by the window where the light was better for the embroidery her mother was making her practice.
You eight-year-old girl, almost nine. Almost time be tai-tai. Who will want you when you make big clumsy stitches? Make big clumsy dragon breathe fire down instead of up. Who? Who?
Who would want her anyway? The Lord Samuel would not permit his beautiful daughter to have beautiful golden lilies, so whose
tai-tai
could she be? Another sadness for another time. Right now only getting rid of the big ugly mattered, and for that her daughter was required.
“Ni lai,”
Mei-hua said, summoning the child to her. “Mei Lin,
ni lai.”

The girl put down the embroidery and came to stand beside her mother. Mei-hua put an arm around her shoulders but addressed herself to the yellow hair concubine.
“Ta bu zai,
Lord Samuel.” He is not here.

“She does not understand, Mamee,” Mei Lin said. “Does not understand Ah Chee either.” A year and a half at the Convent of the Sacred Heart had made Mei Lin not only more fluent in multiple languages—under the tutelage of the Madams she was adding French to Mandarin and English—but given her some inkling of the mysteries of accent. “I will tell her what you are saying. Can?”

“Yes, tell her right now. Right now. Tell her go. Tell her supreme lady says go. Supreme lady will tell Lord Samuel to beat her very hard otherwise.”

Sometimes when Mother Duquesne who had charge of the youngest girls turned her back for a moment and one of her classmates pinched Mei Lin really hard and Mei Lin squealed because she couldn’t help herself and Mother Duquesne whirled around and demanded to know who had made that awful screeching sound, Mei Lin was tempted to open her mouth and say it was her and say why. But of course she did not. She was being educated to the highest standards. That meant learning when to tell the truth and when to fib. Not lie of course. A lie was a bad sin and must be confessed to Father; otherwise you would burn for all eternity in the fires of hell. A fib was what you said instead. It was a forgivable sin. Mei Lin dropped a quick and exceptionally graceful curtsy, the only kind Mother Stevenson permitted in deportment class. “It is kind of you to call, madam. But my mother says to tell you that Mr. Devrey isn’t here.”

Carolina caught her breath. The child’s voice, clear and without the edge of anger and hostility she had heard in the voices of the two older women—of herself, come to that—was like a shower of fresh, cool water. And not only did she have excellent manners, she spoke perfect English. Why would she not? She had been born here, just as Ceci had, and not, as Nick repeatedly pointed out, through any choice of her own, also like Ceci, whom she had never blamed for the terrible circumstances of her conception.

“Do you know,” Carolina asked, “where he can be found? It is very important that I see him. I shall have to wait here otherwise,” she added in a burst of inspiration.

Mei Lin turned to her mother. “Take her next door? Can? Take her to see Baba? If I take her she will go. Otherwise stay here and wait.”

Mei-hua looked to the statue of Fu Xing, the golden god of happiness who presided over this room. He was smiling. But Fu Xing always smiled. When she nearly bled to death after they stole the son from her womb and the red-hair
yi
came and saved her, Fu
Xing smiled. When that same red-hair
yi
pulled a live baby out of her and transformed it from a son to a daughter, Fu Xing smiled. When her lord took their daughter away to a school where they caused her precious Mei Lin to think it a bad thing to show respect to the gods—the child had absolutely refused to give moon cakes to the kitchen god at the new year festival, and she wouldn’t burn even one joss stick—Fu Xing continued to smile. Now, Mei-hua realized, if yellow hair big ugly stayed in this place, all the bad things she could feel hovering around them would happen, and Fu Xing would still smile. I am supreme first lady
tai-tai
. She is concubine. My lord said so. “Take her next door,” she said. “Go quickly,
mei-mei
,” calling the child little sister as a mark of affection and putting her hand lightly and quickly on Mei Lin’s cheek, ignoring the soft growl of disapproval she heard from Ah Chee. “Do not be afraid,
mei-mei
. Take her to Baba. Now. Now.”

“Can you hear me, Samuel?”

“Carolina?” Sam raised his head and tried to focus. “It’s you, isn’t it?” “Yes, it’s me.” He was lying on a wooden bed, the mattress ripped in places so she could see the straw stuffing beginning to poke out. There were no sheets and only one pillow. In the old days, when he had slept beside her most nights, Sam had insisted he must have at least two pillows to be comfortable.

The room was so small there was barely room for the bed, a tiny table beside it, and a large tank of some sort. The place smelled as well. Not just from dirt and unwashed flesh, but something sickly sweet. “Are you sure you can hear me, Samuel? It is very important I speak with you.”

“How did you get here? How did you know where…Oh. Turner. It has to have been.”

“Cousin Nicholas has nothing to do with my being here. I have come to discuss business. Can you please get up? It’s very difficult speaking to you when you are sprawled in that fashion.”

Sam struggled to a sitting position. His ornate long-stemmed pipe was within reach, and he desperately wanted to smoke another blob of opium—he’d been doing little else since that poxed day of the reading of Wilbur Randolf’s will—but he resisted. Whatever brought Carolina here, he had to deal with it. At least well enough to make her go away and leave him in peace. Time enough to smoke then. “What do you want?”

“Your signature,” she said, reaching into the drawstring bag hanging from her wrist. “On this piece of paper.”

“What is it?” He squinted to see, but it wasn’t possible in the dim light. “Divorce papers? That’s what you want, isn’t it? So you and—”

“These are not divorce papers, Samuel. It is rather too late for that.” Papa’s words came back to her as clearly as the day nine years past when he first spoke them.
Think of Zachary’s future, Carolina. What will society make of him as the son of divorced parents?
“Have you a quill?”

Sam stood up. He felt terribly dizzy for a moment, but he knew from experience it would get better if he could manage to stay on his feet. He reached out a hand and touched the wall for support. That helped. “I can find a quill if I need one. But not unless you tell me what you want me to sign.”

I cannot think, Mrs. Devrey, that your husband will actually sign a document such as this
. So said Mr. Gordon James. Maybe she should have gone to a different lawyer and not given yet another of the family’s sordid secrets into the hands of the man who already knew so many, but that would have meant many more explanations.
I promise you he will sign, Mr. James. I am certain of it
.

“It is a bill of sale for the ship being built in Danny Parker’s yard on Thirty-fourth Street. You are selling it to me for the sum of ten dollars.”

Sam stared at her and wiped a hand over his eyes, but Carolina had not disappeared. She was not a dream, a cloud-induced mirage. “You’re
mad. You must be. How did you find out…No, never mind about that. How can you think I would—”

“Sell me the ship? Because it is in your best interest to do so.”

The dizziness was increasing, and he felt sick, as if he might vomit. Perhaps all over Carolina’s black mourning frock. He tried taking his hand from the wall and standing up to his full height so he could look down on her, but he staggered and had to put the hand back for support. “You’re mad,” he said again. “How is signing away my ship for ten dollars in my best interest?”

“Because I am offering you another consideration as well. You pay ten dollars and sell me the ship Danny Parker is building, and you secure the right to stay where you are. You and your mistress and her child and her servant—all of you may remain right here. You may even continue to collect the rents from your Chinese lodgers. At least for the time being,” she added, wanting him to know that withholding those rents was yet within her power. “Otherwise I shall evict the lot of you.”

“You can’t. You don’t have possession…” Then, as some bits of clarity pierced the opium fog, “The Jew, August Belmont. He’s behind this, isn’t he?”

“In a manner of speaking. He sold me these two houses, Samuel, which I have purchased on Zachary’s behalf. They are part of his trust, and as you know, I am the sole trustee. So I have the power to put you all on the street, and I shall do it unless you sign this bill of sale for the new ship.”

Samuel shook his head. “I won’t. I’m your legal husband, and that means that whatever is yours is mine.”

“You’re not listening, Samuel. I don’t own the houses, Zachary does, but it is I who control their disposition. I am also in possession of the note you signed with August Belmont.”

He sagged as if the weight of something entirely too heavy to be borne had settled on his shoulders, and leaned against the wall to prevent himself from falling. “You’re a witch from hell, Carolina Randolf. I should have known it years ago.”

“Carolina Randolf Devrey,” she corrected. “You gave me your name in St. Paul’s Church, Samuel Devrey, and for the moment it suits me to keep it. As for being a witch, perhaps I am and what of it? You are in my debt, Samuel. More precisely, in debt to the trust I manage. However, I am prepared to forgive all in return for your signature on this bill of sale. If, on the other hand, you do not sign, I will put your Chinese whore and her bastard child and her servant on the street. Where will they go, Samuel? Who will take them in? Where will you go? I’m told Astor has already replaced you at Devrey’s.” She toyed with telling him of the note she’d sent to Astor, anonymously of course, about the menage on Cherry Street but decided against it. “If you try to return to Fourteenth Street I will set the coppers on you and make such a public stench as New York has never before had the opportunity to smell.”

“You wouldn’t. What about the children?”

“They are young. They would grow past it. You aren’t young, Samuel.”

Sam stared at her a moment more. “Hell witch,” he said, then staggered a step closer to the tank and fell to his knees. Was he going to beg, she wondered? And why did she not feel more elation at the prospect?