Chasing Secrets (5 page)

“There is. There always is.”

“Well, maybe,” I admit.

“Next time you go to school, look around. You'll see which one she is. Start with her.”

I nod. “Okay. Now you.”

“In Chinatown there are six companies that run the place. And there are six of us boys who lead the kids. If you ever need anything from a kid in Chinatown, say you're a friend of Six of Six.”

“Fine, but not that kind of secret. Something personal.”

“Oh, you mean a girl secret. I don't have girl secrets.”

“I told
you
a girl secret.”

“Of course you did. You're a girl. Mine was better. Mine was useful.”

I laugh. “Come on. You have one. I know you do.”

“Okay.” He leans in and whispers, “I don't know how to throw up.”

“What? Everyone knows how to throw up.”

He shakes he head. “Nope. Never done it. Don't know how.”

“You want me to give you lessons?” I ask.

We laugh. Pretty soon I'm demonstrating and we're
giggling so hard, we've got our hands over each other's mouths to keep quiet.

I stand up. I've been on the third floor a long time. I don't want anyone coming to look for me.

“Tell me the second you hear from Uncle Karl, okay?” Noah whispers as I tiptoe into the hall. “And, Lizzie…come back as soon as you can.”

A
fter church, I hover outside Billy's door. Why is he still asleep? He'll be crabby if I wake him, but I need his help.

When I knock, he barks, “What?”

“Can I come in?”

“I'm sleeping.”

I crack open the door. He grabs his extra pillow and pulls it over his head.

“Billy, I need you.”

“For what?” His voice is muffled.

“To take me to Chinatown. We have to find Jing.”

“Why?”

“He's caught in the quarantine. If we tell them he's our cook and he doesn't live in Chinatown, maybe they'll let him come home.”

“You're making this up.”

I pluck the pillow off his head. A purplish-red half-moon rings his left eye. His lower lid is red and swollen. The white of his eye is pink.

“What happened to your eye?”

His hand covers his face. “Ran into a doorframe,” he mumbles.

I pull his hand away and gently inspect his face.

“Where?”

“Where what?”

“Was the door?”

“Don't ask so many questions.”

“It's only one. This doesn't look like it needs sutures. Put some ice on it,” I advise.

“I'm not going to take you.”

“But what about Jing?”

He pulls the pillow back over his face. “What about him? Look, I've got things to do. Now get out of here.”

Outside his room, I cross my arms and stare down the door. Jing taught Billy how to juggle, ride a bike, and make coins appear out of thin air. Jing played hide-and-seek with us in the barn every night before bed. Jing saved us the butter-frosting bowl even when Papa said it wasn't good for our teeth. Doesn't Billy care about Jing at all?

I'm going to find Jing. Mama would want me to. I know she would.

The wagon is hard to hook up. Should I ride? I'm a good rider, but I don't like sidesaddles, and there's no telling
what Aunt Hortense will do if she catches me riding bareback again.

It takes me the better part of an hour to get the harness on John Henry and the wagon attached the right way. It's a foggy, gray day, but my hair is pasted down with sweat and my jacket is glued to my back when I'm finished. Still, I'm proud of myself. No other girl at Miss Barstow's would be able to lift the collar or attach the traces, much less drive a wagon or go to Chinatown. This feeling lasts for a minute and a half, before I realize that John Henry has to pull the wagon right by Aunt Hortense's house. What if she hears me? What if I run into someone who will tell her? What if a policeman sees me? It's not against the law for a girl to drive a wagon by herself, but it is unusual.

And how will I get Jing out? I should wait for Papa to come home or for Uncle Karl to help. But who knows when Papa will be back, and how much does Jing matter to Uncle Karl?

I take a deep breath. If I can give a little girl chloroform and set her broken arm, surely I can drive a wagon in broad daylight on a Sunday. I'll stay on the back streets. No one will see me.

Then, too, I've never actually driven before, but I've sat next to Billy and Papa a million times. I know how it's done.

I climb up onto the wagon and give the whip a tentative snap. I don't want to hurt John Henry. He doesn't move. I pop it harder….Nothing. I brandish it in the air and snap it back down with a fierce crack, and the big pinto
plods forward, pulling the wagon onto the cobblestones. I keep the whip cracking as we approach the Sweetings' mansion, glancing back at our house. Can Noah see me? I hope so.

It's unusually quiet at the Sweetings'. I'm pretty sure Nettie, Aunt Hortense's head maid, has a staff meeting in the second kitchen right now. That must be where everyone is.

What perfect timing!

I have a big grin on my face when the huge front door opens and Aunt Hortense hurries down the marble steps. “Elizabeth! What in the name of…”

Oh no! Gallop, John Henry! I lean forward, ready to take off. But Aunt Hortense will send a servant after me. They'll catch us, and I'll be in even more trouble.

I pull up at the gate.

“What in the world do you think you're doing?” Aunt Hortense is standing on the garden path in her stockinged feet, no hat on her head.

The butler appears behind her carrying her jeweled handbag, boots, and gloves.

There isn't a lie big enough to cover this.

“
You
harnessed John Henry?”

I can't keep the smile off my face.

“Pleased with yourself, are you?”

I try hard not to nod.

“Lizzie!” Billy hurries across the driveway, one boot on, one boot off. “You were supposed to wait in the barn.”

My mouth pops open.

“William!” Aunt Hortense stares him down. “She's going with you?”

Billy nods, then cocks his head as if he and Aunt Hortense are in cahoots. “Of course. You know how impatient she is.”

Aunt Hortense fans her face with her hand. “I most certainly do.”

“I told her I'd take her to the Emporium,” Billy rattles on. “Can't you ever follow directions?” he says to me.

“William.” Aunt Hortense walks closer. “What happened to your eye?”

“Ran into a doorframe.”

“Taller than you thought you were, are you?” Aunt Hortense asks.

“I guess so.” Billy smiles his charming smile, but it doesn't do the trick. Not with the one red-rimmed misshapen eye.

“Uncle Karl knows about your eye?” she asks him.

“Yes, ma'am,” he says as I scoot over so he can hop in.

“Elizabeth, I won't put up with these kinds of shenanigans. You aren't a little girl anymore. You're to behave like a young woman. When William says to wait in the barn, you are to do as you're told. Should this happen again, I will insist that you board at Miss Barstow's or somewhere else that you will like
even less.
Is that clear?” She glowers at me.

What's worse than boarding at Miss Barstow's? Prison? Billy nudges me with his elbow, and I hold my tongue.

“She's sorry, Aunt Hortense,” Billy says.

“Yes, I'm sorry,” I say, as stiff as party petticoats.

“You'd better be.” Aunt Hortense heads back to her house on tender feet, the butler trailing behind her. Billy slaps John Henry with the lines, and the big horse leaps forward. Billy doesn't need the whip.

“Changed your mind?” I whisper.

Billy sighs. “I miss Jing's banana pancakes.”

“That all?”

“Of course not. How do you know Jing's in Chinatown, anyway?”

A bareback rider gallops past us. Stones and dust rise in his wake. “Where else would he be?”

“W
e would have heard if something happened to him,” Billy says. “And the police aren't going to let anyone out of the quarantine lines.”

“The
police
?”

“Who do you think is enforcing the quarantine?”

I say nothing as we
clip-clop
by the weird pharmacy where a coiled rattler sleeps in the window. They sell glass eyes and hook hands, besides all the medicines, which claim to remedy every problem you've ever had. Papa says most of them are nothing more than sugar water.

“So, what exactly is your plan?” Billy steers the wagon around a horseless carriage stuck in the road.

“I'm going to tell them he doesn't live in Chinatown, he lives with us. He doesn't belong in the quarantined area. Papa's a doctor. He needs Jing's help.”

“We should mention Uncle Karl,” Billy says.

“I wish Papa were here. He'd know what to do.”

Billy snorts. “I don't.”

Papa wants Billy to go to medical school, and he won't take no for an answer. Every time Billy says he might want to do something else, Papa looks like he's getting surgery without anesthesia.

Papa doesn't expect much of me, so he's often pleasantly surprised. That's one good thing about being a girl.

“Why are you so mad at Papa all the time?” I ask.

“I'm not mad at him; he's mad at me. Everything I do disappoints him.”

“You used to be nicer.”

“You didn't used to be such a Goody Two-shoes.”

“I'm not!”

“Oh, Papa, can you show me how to clean a bedsore?”
He makes his voice gooey and high-pitched.

“I don't sound like that.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Well, I'd rather go with him than go to school.”

“Still having trouble with those girls?”

I don't answer. We pass two men in matching outfits riding a bicycle built for two.

“You try too hard. That's your problem. They can smell it on you.”

How do you try not to try? Or try in a way so that people don't think you're trying? Why can't people just say what they want and be who they are?

“Hey, Billy!” A boy, maybe seventeen, with a plaid cap
and red cheeks waves to him from the back of a wagon. “You sure got a thumping last night.”

Billy shrugs as a distant boat toots its horn. “Going to make my two bits back tonight, Oofty. You watch,” Billy tells him.

“You're
fighting
? Does Papa know?” I ask.

“Not unless you tell him, you little squealer.”

“I'm not a squealer. You know I'm not,” I say as a wagon loaded with wood turns down a side street. A few blocks later we pass Dr. Jenkins's Museum, where the head of the world's greatest bandit can be seen in a bottle.

Soon the air begins to smell like burning rubbish. Black pots placed every few yards spew stinking smoke. Wooden sawhorses and ropes circle the haphazard crowded-together buildings of Chinatown. Chinese signs, Chinese characters, Chinese lanterns, and foreign scrollwork—Chinatown is its own city in the middle of our city.

The police in their navy coats and hard bell-shaped helmets are out. I count five on horseback, seven on foot.

Inside the ropes of Chinatown, crowds of Chinese wait for…what? Most men have long braids and wear baggy silk clothes. Some are in black with black derbies, some have on bright colors. The few women wear fine embroidered robes and trousers. Some men smoke. Some pace the ropes that cordon off Chinatown.

I scan the crowd. Only a few men are in regular clothes, and none are Jing. I notice the donkey-pulled hearse. When rich men die in San Francisco, they get a carriage drawn by six white horses. When poor men die, they get
a wheelbarrow ride or the donkey-pulled hearse. When it passes us, I see that it's empty.

A few minutes later a wagon full of barrels roll by. Strangely, the police let that one out of the quarantine area.

“How did they decide where to rope off?”

“Everything that's Chinese, they quarantined.”

“They think white people can't get sick?”

Billy shrugs.

“Papa would be mad if he saw how they're locked in,” I say.

“Papa doesn't know half of what happens in this city.”

“Let's get closer. Then we can ask about Jing. What's his last name, anyway?”

Billy shakes his head. “Maybe Jing is his last name.”

“We don't even know,” I whisper. Noah's words flash in my mind.
You don't know anything.

Billy maneuvers the wagon closer to the quarantine line, away from the cluster of police. “Hey!” I call to a little boy in a red silk jacket. “Do you know if Jing is in there?”

The little boy hops on one foot, then the other. “Jing?” he asks.

“He's our cook.”

The boy hops closer. A man in a black derby scolds him, and the little boy scurries away. The other men inside the rope stay away from the boundary. They ignore our calls.

A policeman on foot half-runs toward me. “Move it on!”

“Mr. Policeman, sir.” My heart pounds in my chest. “Our cook lives with us. He got caught in the quarantine by accident. Could we get him out?”

“No one's to go in. No one's to go out.”

“Yes, but this was a mistake, sir. Our uncle Karl Sweeting is going to be talking to you about it.”

The policeman stops. “Mr. Sweeting? He's your uncle?” He peers at us. “I don't know nothing about that. My orders is to keep folks out of here.”

“Yes, sir.” Billy turns John Henry around.

We walk around the quarantine—far enough away that the police don't bother us. Down a side street we pass officers drinking coffee. I listen in as we roll by.

“You know anything?” a policeman with a red beard asks.

“When it's going to end, you mean?” the officer with his helmet off replies.

“Waiting on the monkey,” the third officer replies.

The second officer laughs. “The monkey, is it? City of fools, if you ask me.”

“What monkey? What are they talking about?” I whisper to Billy.

“Who knows? It could be a code, or a nickname. There's a man named Monkey Warren.”

“But why would this monkey man have anything to do with Chinatown?”

“It's just talk.” Billy peers down the block to the barricade. “We're not going to get any closer than this.”

In the distance I see a painted dragon and large blue-and-white porcelain vases outside a shop on a deserted street. A man with a pole over his shoulders carries loaded baskets on each end.

Billy circles John Henry back. “We tried, Lizzie.”

“We can't leave. Jing's in there.”

“Maybe Jing has a lady friend. Maybe he's in Berkeley visiting his cousin. Maybe he told Papa he'd be gone and didn't tell us. Why are you so sure he's in the quarantine?”

John Henry is moving faster. He knows we're headed home. I guess that's one good thing about a motorcar. They don't get barn sour.

“It just makes sense,” I say.

“If you're going to be a scientist, you're going to need to prove what you think.”

“I know!”

“Look.” Billy's eyes are kind now. “Stop worrying about Jing, okay? He'll be back.”

I've lost the battle. Billy's going home. If only I knew these policemen the way Uncle Karl does. Wait. Do I know any policemen? That girl Caroline, whose arm I set. Wasn't her father a policeman?

“Billy, wait here for me.” I dive from the wagon seat.

“Lizzie! No! LIZZIE!” Billy shouts. I'm holding my skirts up, running fast, jigging and jagging around a spittoon, a tethered horse, a watering trough, and a mounting block.

But when I turn the corner, where the policemen were drinking coffee, they're gone. I keep running toward Chinatown.

The first policeman I see is on horseback, walking the roped-off line.

“Excuse me, sir. Sir!” I wave to him.

“What are you doing out here, young lady?”

“Do you know where Officer Jessen might be?”

The policeman's horse is fidgety. He roots his head. “Jessen? He family of yours?”

“No, sir. He's a friend of my papa's. But it's important. I need to see him.”

The policeman nods. “Stay put. I'll get him.” His skittery horse leaps forward. I glance back, wondering if Billy will wait, go home, or come find me.

Inside the barricade, I see a policeman start a bonfire in the street; trash and bedding explode in flames.

Thick orange clouds of stinking chemicals rise. People cough, cover their faces with their shirts. Scatter in all directions. A ring of policemen surrounds the fire. Buckets of water appear. Sparks die down with a hiss, then turn to smoke.

Outside the barricade, a big policeman lumbers toward me. Caroline's father.

“Officer Jessen!” I say.

He looks me up and down. “You're Dr. Kennedy's daughter. Aren't you the one who helped my little girl with her arm?”

“Yes, sir. I'm Lizzie.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Billy driving John Henry down the street toward us. He's driving standing up and motioning for me to come.

“What's the problem, Lizzie?” Officer Jessen asks. “What can I do to help?”

“Our cook, Jing, is in the quarantine. We need to get him out.”

Officer Jessen shakes his big head. “If he's in there, I can't get him out.”

“But he doesn't belong in Chinatown. He lives with us.”

“That isn't the point. If he's in the quarantine area, he's been exposed. If we bring him out here, he could get you sick. Do you understand?”

“Papa says the plague isn't here. He says this is all just—”

“That's not for us to decide, Lizzie. You and I don't make the rules, but we surely must live by them. Now, how'd you get here? Do you need a ride home?”

I point to the wagon. “My brother.”

He nods. “You climb up onto that wagon with your brother and you go on home. If this weren't my job, I'd be nowhere near this place, believe me.”

“But—”

“I can't help you with this. Now I need you to go on home, you hear?”

I look back at the barricade. On the Chinatown side, a man is running back and forth along the ropes like a caged animal. One policeman shouts at him to stop. Another walks the barrier with a billy club.

A quarantine is to keep infectious diseases from spreading. But there are no doctors or nurses here. No one wears masks or gloves. There is no soap or water. Whatever this is, it's not quarantine for disease at all.