The Gilded Age, a Time Travel (43 page)

“’Lo,
Jade Eyes.” No longer the compliant parlor girl in her mask of makeup, she’s
got a sharp edge to her now, a hard glint in her young eyes.

“Say,
you know this chit?” Jessie takes the girl’s face in her hand like she took
Li’l Lucy’s, turns it this way and that. Pries open her mouth, peers into her
eyes. Pokes a finger in her ribs, pinches her breasts, her thighs.

Panic
rises in Zhu’s throat. “Wing Sing, you’re supposed to be staying at the home.”

A
tough young sailor with white blond hair lounges over by the crib’s window. He
turns, looks Zhu up and down. He’s a handsome boy with bright green eyes and a
deep sunburn. Wing Sing says to Zhu, “This my boyfriend, Rusty, from Selena’s.”
To him, “This my friend Jade Eyes. See why I love your eyes, honey?”

“You.
Scram,” Jessie says to the sailor. He shrugs, blows Wing Sing a kiss, and
slouches out.

“Bye
bye, Rusty honey,” Wing Sing calls to him.

“Fed
you pretty good at the home, did they, them Bible thumpers?” Jessie knows
exactly what Zhu is talking about, apparently, and she’s smiling. Calculating,
calculating. Zhu can practically see the numbers dancing through her head.
Fifty cents a john? Maybe seventy-five?

“Damn
it, Wing Sing,” Zhu says, a sick feeling in her gut.
This is not supposed to
be happening, not supposed to happen.
“You better tell me why you’re not
staying at Miss Cameron’s.”

“She
make me wash, she make me sew, she make me scrub floor,” Wing Sing says with
supreme contempt. “She make me serve her tea at her fine table.”

“Where
were you workin’ before them Bible thumpers rescued you, kid?” Jessie asks, her
eyes sparkling with avarice.

“At
Selena’s on Terrific Street,” Wing Sing says. “I not go back there. Chee Song
Tong kill me for sure.” She glares at Zhu, accusation burning in her eyes. Then
she leans close and whispers, “I carry Rusty’s child.”

“You’re
pregnant?
” Zhu whispers back, horrified all over again. What about her
prenatal care? What about her diet? What about a hundred johns a day? Then she
realizes—of course, Wing Sing is pregnant. She’s
supposed
to be
pregnant. Green-eyed father, green-eyed daughter. The elderly green-eyed Chinese
woman pushing Donaldina Cameron’s wheelchair in Golden Gate Park, circa 1967.
Wing Sing’s daughter? Is it her?

Well,
it sure can’t be me,
Zhu reassures herself, also for the
thousandth time. Trying to deny the dread beating in her heart ever since she
viewed that holoid.

Jessie
glances back and forth between them, a knowing look rising in her eyes. “Sure
and I’ll take you in, kid. The rent is five bucks a day, your draw is ten
percent, and tips are all yours.” To Zhu, “Told ya I was fair.”

“I
want new dress,” Wing Sing says imperiously. “New undergarments, new stockings,
new jewelry.”

Jessie
picks at the frayed embroidery on her tunic. “Sure and them Bible thumpers
ruined your duds, all right. I’ll have Miss Wong draw you up a contract today.
And Miss Wong?” Rubbing it in. “Maybe you could lend the kid one of your
dresses till she can buy her own. You look like you’re the same size. Give her
that old gray rag of yours, you’ve worn it too much, anyhow.”

Zhu
could strangle Jessie. “Wing Sing, I’m begging you, don’t stay here. She can’t
make you stay until you’re under contract.”
Not supposed to happen, not
supposed to happen like this.
“You’ve got to go back to Miss Cameron’s
home. You’ve got to. Think of the child.”

“I
not go back there, Jade Eyes. I not wash, I not sew, I not scrub floor
.
”
She spits on the floor of the crib. Her face is so cold, Zhu wants to weep.
Where is the scruffy waif she found in the Japanese Tea Garden? “I not serve
fahn
quai.
”

The
crowd begins to twitter down the hall.

“Where
is she?” calls out an aristocratic female voice. “I just know my girl is here,
Mr. Andrews, and I shall find her, if we have to tear this abomination down, board
by board.” Crash of glass, the clatter of a washbasin and a maid’s tray.
Screams, laughter, a roar of manly curses. “Out of my way, you filthy sinner.”

Donaldina
Cameron stands at the door to the crib, all crisp gray cotton and scowling
rage, the policeman Andrews behind her, his ax in hand. She raises her eyebrows
at Zhu. “So, Miss Wong? A distant cousin, is she?” She circles around Wing
Sing, who glares back at Cameron. Zhu cringes. Cameron doesn’t need to
articulate her accusation of treachery and deceit. Zhu knows exactly what she
must think.

Jessie
is mightily amused. “You wanna go back with the Bible thumper, kid?” she says
with heavy sarcasm.

“I
not go,” declares Wing Sing.

“Sure
and I guess that’s that, Bible thumper. She ain’t your girl no more, she’s
mine.”

Cameron
turns her full fury on Zhu. “And I thought you were just the bookkeeper. I
thought you were a decent, educated young woman. How can you let her take this
girl to work in this den of sin?”

Zhu
sputters, humiliated. “It’s not my fault,” is all she can whisper lamely.

Jessie
chimes in, “I hear you got
your
girls workin’, too, Bible thumper.”

“Yes,
working,” Cameron says, bristling. “Work, real work. We teach our girls to love
God and to work. To work hard at fruitful tasks, clean tasks. Idle hands and
idle heads lead to the path of wickedness. Good work is the way these young
souls can be saved from the heathen deviltry that enslaves them.”

“Oh,
I see.” Jessie takes another shot of gin from the tray a trembling maid has brought
in and knocks it back. “I hear your holy home looks like one o’ them—what do
they call it, Miss Wong?—a sweatshop. All them little orphan girls a-scrubbin’
and a-polishin’ and a-sewin’ and a-washin’. Why, I hear them Snob Hill mansions
send down their dirty silver and clothes to you. Ain’t that so, missy?” She
claps Wing Sing on the shoulder. “Just like a sweatshop in Tangrenbu.”

“I
not polish silver,” Wing Sing says.

“This
is outrageous,” Cameron says, flushing deeply. “We depend on charity, you
hussy. Charity often promised, seldom delivered, and stingily paid. So, yes, we
must generate revenue to pay for the home. We manage the girls’ earnings for
their education and upkeep.”

“For
your upkeep, too, eh?” Jessie says, plucking at Cameron’s pristine leg o’
mutton sleeve.

Cameron
pulls away. “I am paid twenty-five dollars a month, plus room and board, madam.
Truly, I do not know how much longer I can continue.” She aims a significant
glance at Zhu. “Yet continue I do. I devote myself to this thankless task for
the sake of our Lord, Jesus Christ, who died for us so that we may be blessed
with life everlasting.”

“You
believe in Jesus, kid?” Jessie asks Wing Sing.

“Jesus
nice man,” the girl answers. “I like Jesus. But I honor the Lady of my people.”

“And
who is that?’

“Kuan
Yin.”

Zhu
gasps. “You honor Kuan Yin?”

“Oh,
yes! She see all, hear all. You honor the Lady, too, Jade Eyes?”

“Of
course. She is the Goddess of Compassion. I am a Daughter of Compassion.”

Wing
Sing claps her hands, delighted. “Compassion.” She tries out the word. “Maybe
Kuan Yin bless me one day. I pray some more.”

“You
be strong, Wing Sing, and Kuan Yin will surely bless you.”

Zhu
catches Cameron listening, openmouthed, but Jessie is grinning, triumphant.
“There, you see, Bible thumper?” she says. “They got their own religion, their
own culture. What makes you think yours is better?”

“‘Tis
a religion and a culture that allows a little girl to be bought and sold, Miss
Malone,” Cameron says. “’Tis a religion and a culture that allows a girl’s
master to burn her with candle wax, beat her, starve her, and force her into
drudgery. And then, when she comes of age, ‘tis a religion and a culture that
allows her to be sold again to a crib in Tangrenbu or to this accursed place where
she will prostitute herself till she’s dead at seventeen from disease, opium addiction,
or sheer despair. So, yes, I say Christianity is the true Way and this Kuan Yin
of theirs is heathen deviltry.”

“Oh
no, Kuan Yin doesn’t condone the exploitation of women, Miss Cameron,” Zhu
says. “Kuan Yin is a protector of women. She offers sanctuary. . . .”

“This
is all swell,” Jessie butts in. “One day we can all sit down to high tea and
chat about whose god is better than whose. But, really, Miss Cameron, do you
really think this fine society of ours is any better when it comes to treatin’
women? Stick your fine face out that door and tell me it is.”

The
color drains from Cameron’s face and she presses her lips together. She doesn’t
need to stick her face out the door. The clamor of drunken men outside
assessing the maidens in their cribs, bargaining with the bouncer, bragging of
their exploits is only too clear.

“You
got yourself a family, don’t you, Miss Cameron?” Jessie’s eyes sparkle with a
fury Zhu has witnessed only once or twice. “And a fiancé, ain’t that right? But
think about this. What if your folks died when you was a kid, and you got
nothin’? What are you gonna do, huh? Go work in a sweatshop for a dollar a day
and the rent on a crummy room is seven a week? Work in a factory and lose your hand
to some machine? Take in piecework? Beg on the street? You know what them fancy
jewelry shops downtown pay their shopgirls? Do you know how many girls come to
me because they can’t make enough dough to live on working in a factory or in a
fancy jewelry shop? You think this fine society of ours don’t wink at the
buying and selling of female flesh?”

“The
likes of you exist despite our best efforts to stamp you out like the vermin
you are,” Cameron declares.

“Yeah?”
Jessie squares off with Cameron, and the two women look as if they’re about to
come to blows. Zhu steps between them, her pulse pounding in her throat. “The
likes of me, Bible thumper, gives them poor girls a chance. If they groom
themselves up like I teach ‘em and stay shrewd and keep clean, they earn better
pay than in a goddamn sweatshop, a nicer life than in a factory. My parlor
gives ‘em a taste of a fine life they’d never know otherwise.”

“This
is hardly a parlor,” Cameron snaps.

“Ah,
hell, Bible thumper,” Jessie spits back. “Wing Sing, here, can earn more in one
day even in this lousy crib than she could earn in a fancy jewelry store. She
can eat. She’s not walking the streets. Who knows? She might even marry some
fine young sailor who adores her and gives her a life when he comes a-sailin’
home.”

“You
are a scourge upon our society,” Cameron shoots back.

“I’m
the Queen of the Underworld, and don’t you forget it.”

“You
will perish. The drink or the drugs or the sickness or some hooligan will do
you in.”

Jessie
seizes Cameron’s collar at the throat, tearing at Cameron’s Art Nouveau gold brooch.
“What in hell do you know about hooligans?”

“Jessie!”
Zhu grabs her, pulls her away. Jessie is practically throttling Miss Cameron.

“What
do you know?” Jessie sobs. “My Rachael knew, but you? Miss Holier-Than-Thou,
you don’t know a stinkin’ thing about hooligans.”

“Come
on, Jessie,” Zhu pleads, prying her away from Cameron. She’s heard Jessie
mention Rachael many times. There’s a story in there, a story Zhu has yet to
hear. But now is not the time. Zhu pulls Jessie into the hallway, summons a
maid, and hands her another shot of gin. “Calm down,” she whispers while the
Queen of the Underworld pulls out a hankie and dries her eyes.

Then
Zhu goes back inside Wing Sing’s crib.

Donaldina
Cameron and the cop stand over the girl, who stares back at them defiantly.

“Very
well,” Cameron is saying. “America is a free country and I will not force you
to go with me if you will not go.”

“Please
go with her, Wing Sing,” Zhu says, but she knows in her heart the girl won’t.
Never
supposed to happen this way.
What now? Will Zhu become unborn and
disappear? If the past changes, the future changes, too, in unknowable,
unthinkable ways. Zhu waits to disappear—snuff, she’s gone, never born—but
nothing happens.

Nothing
she can see, anyway.

Cameron
looks at her, those large expressive eyes avid with curiosity. “So. You did not
persuade her to leave us?”

“Certainly
not.”

“It
is inevitable that we shall lose some,” Cameron says to Andrews, who stands
impassively with his ax. To Wing Sing, “I must warn you, my girl, you will burn
in hell.”

“So
I burn,” Wing Sing says, shrugging. “I have silk
sahm
; you ruin silk
sahm
.
I have jade and gold; you take jade and gold. Maybe you burn in hell, too,
fahn
quai.
”

Zhu
expects Cameron to gasp in outrage at the girl’s blasphemy, but she only nods.
Is it true? Did Cameron take Wing Sing’s little dowry box that was supposed to
have contained the aurelia? The box that keeps surfacing like a marked card?