City of God (45 page)

“Who? Who?” Mei-hua demanded. “Who bring this thing?”

“No one I know. Does not live here or next door. Brought this for the little bud.”

“How can he not live here? Where does he live? He was a civilized person from the Middle Kingdom, no?” Mei-hua was quite sure the words she had heard were civilized words. “That man from the street? The
yang gwei zih
who speaks like a civilized person, it was him?”

“No. No. A civilized man. But he says he lives on another street. And his accent was not like ours. Toishan maybe. Not sure. Not sure.”

“Never mind. Give me that.”

“Not meant for you,” Ah Chee said. “Meant for little bud.” She had no reason to be fearful of giving the package to Mei-hua, but she was. She clutched it to her chest and kept repeating, “Not for you. Not. Not.”

“Give,” Mei-hua said, in a tone that permitted no argument. She held out both hands.

Ah Chee put the package into them, then shuffled away to the kitchen, intent on lighting a joss stick in honor of the kitchen god. Perhaps it would ease her sense of impending doom. It was a feeling she had not had before they went out in the horse-pulled litter, which was when she should have had it, but one she could not shake now that they were home and everything seemed to be back to normal.

Mei-hua held the parcel on her lap and did not immediately open it. The name written on the front was Mei Lin, not Mei-hua or Supreme First Lady, but it was not that which slowed her eagerness to tear off the paper wrappings and see what the package contained. She was
tai-tai
and the mother, and anything that concerned her daughter concerned her. Or that was how it should be, but here in this place it was not always so. Language had become a kind of wall between her and her daughter, and sometimes she felt her precious Mei Lin was disappearing behind that barrier. As long as they spoke in civilized speech her authority could not be questioned. But if, as was sometimes the case, a transaction must occur in the
yang gwei zih
speaking words, then Mei-hua was helpless and must rely on Mei Lin in every way. “Not right,” she whispered. “Not right.”

But it was how things were and she knew no way to change them.

Now this.

Ah Chee returned to stand in the doorway between the kitchen and
the main room. Mei-hua could smell fresh incense. “What Zao Shen going to do?” she asked with some surliness. “All this time we ask and ask for a husband for the little bud and none comes. Now it will be different?” She did not say what both of them knew, that it was the Lord Samuel’s responsibility to provide a husband for his daughter, but he was too full of clouds to attend to that duty any more than he attended to most others. It was years since he had shared Mei-hua’s bed. Not even her tiny golden lilies could harden his jade stalk after so much
ya-p’ien.
“No different. No different.”

“Yes, maybe different,” Ah Chee said. “Maybe.”

Mei-hua did not need to ask what she meant. The man who came to their aid two days before looked like a
yang gwei zih
but he spoke like a civilized person. Not a
yang gwei zih
who had learned civilized words like the Lord Samuel. A real civilized person. Mei Lin was a real civilized person who looked—somewhat if not entirely—like a
yang gwei zih
. The possibilities were obvious to both women, though neither had yet mentioned them aloud.

“Unwrap,” Ah Chee said. “Unwrap.” She had decided it was better that they know what was inside before the little bud returned from the errands she’d gone to do. It would have been better still if the package had arrived when the girl was away with the ladies the little bud called nuns and Ah Chee thought of simply as black-white women.

When Mei Lin had first gone to the school on Mulberry Street, Ah Chee had spent many hours standing across from the building the little bud said was called a convent. She had spied out a fair amount simply by catching a glimpse or two of the inside each time the door was opened. Then, in the year of the Water Sheep, which the
yang gwei zih
said was 1846, the black-whites moved their convent to a place far away, to the country the little bud said. Too far. Too far. Way up to a section Ah Chee knew was called the Bronx, to a hill looking over a village Mei Lin said was called Manhattanville. Every Sunday evening Mei Lin took a train to get there—loud and noisy and puffing smoke, with the words Hudson River Railway painted on the side, which Ah Chee knew because once Mei Lin had read them to her—and every Friday afternoon the little bud
took another puffing-smoke-train to return to Cherry Street. Too far. Ah Chee could not go to Manhattanville to watch from outside and be sure the girl was in a good place. Even so. Better if she were in Manhattanville today rather than home for this
yang gwei zih
Christmas festival. Which had already nearly gotten them killed, and which like nearly every festival in this foreign devil place lacked even a few fireworks.

But any too soon time the little bud would be here. And if it turned out that whatever was in the package was something she should not see, it would be too late to put it on the kitchen fire and say nothing. “Unwrap,” Ah Chee repeated. “Unwrap.”

Mei-hua continued to stare at the parcel.

Too late. The door opened and Mei Lin came in. “What is that? What?”

She had never before seen on Cherry Street anything quite like what was on her mother’s lap. Carefully wrapped Christmas presents were part of her convent world, not this one. And she didn’t get them, the other girls did.

“What? What?” she repeated.

“Don’t know,” Mei-hua said truthfully, nodding to the package. “Just come.”

Mei Lin had by then gotten close enough to read the writing on the outside of the box. “It is for me. That’s my name.”

“Yes,” Mei-hua said, starting to carefully untie the green ribbon.

“I should open it. I should.”

“Bad writing,” Mei-hua said.

It was true that the calligraphy on the outside of the box was not particularly good; the characters of her name looked to Mei Lin as if they had been formed by an unpracticed hand. Perhaps Dr. Turner or even Dr. Klein had sent her a present, but she had no reason to think that either of them knew enough about Chinese calligraphy to write it at all, even badly. Who then? “Let me open it,” she repeated. But by then her mother had the paper off and was lifting the lid of the box and plunging her hands into a river of exquisite silk.

There were two pieces of clothing of shimmering silvery blue. One was a long, slim dress with a high neck and deeply slit sides, the other was a short jacket to be worn over the dress. The jacket was lined with
silver cloth and embroidered with blue flowers. “Civilized clothes,” Mei-hua said. “Made for you.” The outfit looked as if it would fit perfectly.

“Who sent it?” Mei Lin asked, as she bent to retrieve the card that had fallen to the floor when Mamee took the clothes out of the box. “Who?” The truth was that she had a very good idea. Even before she read the note, written not in Chinese but in English, which said:
I would very much like to see you wearing these things. Please have dinner with me at Delmonico’s this evening. It is not only for my pleasure, but in the best interest of your mother and yourself. I will send a carriage. Be downstairs at precisely seven o’clock.

“Who?” Mei-hua demanded in her turn. Though she, like her daughter, had a very good idea who had sent the clothes.

“Mr. Kurt Chambers,” Mei Lin said.

Ah Chee, who had said nothing, merely looked and listened, drew a short, sharp breath and hurried back to the kitchen to light another joss stick.

She expected that in a restaurant there would be a great many people; that was one reason Mei Lin had agreed to come. She did not know what to think when the man who greeted her at the door led her to a private stairway which entirely avoided the grand expanse of the dining room, and led to a small but elegant room with a table laid for two. Mr. Chambers was waiting for her.

“I thought you would be more comfortable here,” he said, taking her hand and bowing over it. “A strictly educated convent young woman like yourself I’m sure prefers such discretion.”

Mei Lin said nothing. Either Mr. Chambers thought she was as innocent as the other Sacred Heart girls—most of whom had no idea about sex—or he realized that having been raised on Cherry Street, where half-naked women frequently sat at a window displaying what they were offering to any passing male with a dollar or two, she would not be surprised by the presence of the red velvet chaise longue in the dining room for two. And either she was very foolish to have come here,
or she was wise to have changed her mind and decided to come. Even though she would never ever do what the chaise longue had been put there to allow her to do.

She had made the decision after her mother went weeping to the bedroom because at first Mei Lin would not even agree to try on the beautiful clothes, and after Ah Chee drew her into the kitchen and said in a low whisper, “You go. Get dressed up in new clothes and go.”

“I cannot, Ah Chee. You know what he expects. I cannot do that. Cannot.”

“You think this old woman so stupid she wants you to give away for some food what is only for husband who makes you
tai-tai
? Not stupid. But you need to hear what he tells you. Otherwise how we survive in this place?”

“What do you mean? How we have always survived. Why not?”

“How long you think your
baba
will keep on breathing now he has swallowed so many clouds?”

“Yes, but—”

“No but. Little bud listen to her Ah Chee. Already the men in these two houses know
tai-tai
not going to be
tai-tai
much longer. Already the money each week is less than the week before.”

“But Baba…he doesn’t know how much is there anymore? Ah Chee telling me he doesn’t know?”

Ah Chee nodded. “The old ones, Leper Face and Taste Bad and Fat Cheeks and the rest, they pay the same amount as always. The others pay only a little bit. Every week Ah Chee goes next door and the Lord Samuel says take the money on the table. Every week a little less money.”

Mei Lin took only a moment to understand. “The others are joining with the strangers.”

That was how they always referred to the new arrivals from the Middle Kingdom, a place Mei Lin had heard about for so many years she felt as if she had herself been there. The civilized men who came to New York when the clipper ships made their return journeys from California frequently stayed only until the next voyage back to the place they called
Jin Shan,
Gold Mountain, a name it had been given during
the first gold rush days. Having seen New York, they found themselves a job on one of the clippers going back to California, the land of perpetual sunshine and no snow.

Such exploratory visits were frequently made by men from the province of Toishan. The Toishanese were clever and organized. In each village they drew lots to see who should go and who should stay, and the ones who went accepted certain obligations, as did those who stayed. They system made no allowance for simply deciding to remain in New York, unless there was a compelling economic reason. But there were other visitors who were not part of the rigid Toishanese arrangement, and some of them did find New York exciting and decide to stay in the city of winter cold and summer heat and not so very much sunshine. Enough for there not to be sufficient room in numbers thirty-nine and thirty-seven Cherry Street to accommodate them.

These days there were a few other lodging houses in the area in which civilized people lived. They paid no money to Baba and owed him no allegiance. The men in the two houses Mei Lin thought of as hers, who thought of her mother as the supreme first lady
tai-tai
and showed the utmost respect to her and to Mei Lin and even to Ah Chee, called the others the strangers.

“You think it is because of the strangers?” Mei Lin asked Ah Chee. “You think some of our people have joined with the strangers and that’s why they give Baba less money every week?”

Ah Chee shrugged. “Not just that problem,” she said. “That not such a big problem. Ah Chee make money stretch like silk thread.” She did not explain that her secret treasure purse was available to supply any shortfall. Better the little bud not know everything all at once. “Other problem is what will happen to
tai-tai
when the Lord Samuel goes to his ancestors. She is still beautiful. Still the only civilized woman in this place.” Ah Chee held out one gnarled old hand and tapped the palm. “Her golden lilies fit right here. Even in the Middle Kingdom no one has better.”

“No,” Mei Lin insisted. “No. The civilized men in this house, they will not let anything happen to her.”

“More strangers than friends pretty soon,” Ah Chee predicted. “Plenty more. Plenty.”

“You think Mr. Chambers will protect Mamee when my father dies?”

“I think maybe. Little bud must go and talk, find out. Keep legs crossed and skirt down around ankles and find out.”

Mei Lin had every intention of keeping her skirt down around her ankles, but sitting at the table across from Mr. Kurt Chambers she had no need to cross her legs, which would anyway be a terrible breach of deportment of which Mother Stevenson would not approve. Mr. Chambers was a perfect gentleman. “Have your French nuns made you familiar with French food?” he asked when a waiter presented the
carte.