City of God (49 page)

“In a sense,” Carolina said very quietly, “all women are that.”

“Not I,” Bella said firmly. “And I think not you either.”

“Exactly,” Carolina said. “Now tell me what I can do to help.”

“W
HY YOU NOT
go back to Manhattanville place?” Ah Chee demanded. “Why? Always after Christmas festival you go back. Why not this time?”

“Too much education,” Mei Lin said. “Head is not big enough to stuff more in.”

Ah Chee made a disbelieving noise and turned back to the soup she was making, meanwhile watching the girl tie on her bonnet. “Where you go in black-white women clothes?”

Her school clothes were all Mei Lin had that looked appropriate on the streets of New York. She had carefully unpicked the emblems that marked her as a student at the Convent of the Sacred Heart. “I’m going to church,” she said. “It’s Sunday and it is a sin not to attend Holy Mass on a Sunday. I will return in one this-place hour. Do not unlock the door, Ah Chee. Do not allow any person to come in.”

“How you think this old woman let bad peoples in this house? How? All this time I keep them out, how you think I let them in now?”

“Do not open the door.” Mei Lin leaned forward to kiss Ah Chee’s wrinkled cheek, but Ah Chee pulled herself away.

“They light joss sticks in this church place,” Ah Chee said. “From outside I smell them.”

“No joss sticks. None. Not true. Not.”

“Yes true. Stand outside when you are little girl. Smell joss sticks.”

Ah Chee had smelled the incense, Mei Lin realized.
It is a symbol,
mes enfants,
the rising smoke is a sign of our prayers rising to God
. Just like a joss stick. The thought had never before occurred to her, but Mei Lin turned and left the kitchen without telling Ah Chee she was right.

There was no incense at the early Mass at St. Mary’s on Grand Street. A good thing. Services that involved such things as censers and choirs, which were anyway reserved for major holy days, might take as much as two hours, and she had no time to attend a High Mass.

When your father dies, the richer among the civilized men intend to play Ya Pei for the tai-tai. The winner of the game will take her as his concubine.
It was her job to protect her mother night and day. But neither could she miss going to church on Sunday.

There was a tall clock in the window of one of the shops on Market Street. Mei Lin had looked as it when she left and did so again on her way home. She had been gone an hour and fifteen minutes. Too long. She would check on Baba before she went upstairs. He had been breathing with great difficulty the night before and wasn’t even aware enough to insist she not come into his room. Taste Bad said it wouldn’t be long now. He said she shouldn’t worry, however, that her
baba
was not in pain.

She came round the corner to Cherry Street and saw too many men. Never mind that they were all civilized. Normally the area would be deserted at this hour on a Sunday morning, but there were at least a dozen men standing in front of numbers thirty-seven and thirty-nine. Mei Lin scanned their faces urgently, looking for Lee Big Belly. Mr. Chambers said it was probably Big Belly who would organize the game of
Ya Pei
that would determine Mamee’s fate, but he wasn’t there.
Hail Mary, full of grace
…She broke into a run.

“In here,
mei-mei
.” It was Taste Bad, calling her little sister and motioning her to the door of number thirty-nine. “In here.”

He was summoning her inside her
baba
’s tiny room, where normally she was not permitted to go.

Mei Lin’s first thought was that her father was dead. His face looked like bones without flesh, only a taut covering of the thinnest possible skin. She wanted to cry but instead she remembered her duty and began to pray. “I confess to Almighty God, and to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and to all the angels and saints that I have sinned—”

Samuel opened his eyes. “Good. Good. I told Taste Bad to bring you.”

“Baba, you must pray for the salvation of your—”

He waved away her words. “Hush. Give me…under the bed.”

“I don’t understand, Baba. What do you want me to get you from under the bed?” As she spoke Mei Lin was reaching below the low-slung bedstead; she half expected to discover the opium pipe. It would not surprise her if in these final moments he still craved the poison that had killed him. Instead she felt something large, and of considerable weight. She drew out a canvas satchel. “Is this what you want, Baba? It’s heavy. Where shall I…”

“For you,” Samuel said. “Your legacy. Some day it will be worth…”

Samuel stopped speaking.

“Baba…” And again, with greater urgency, “Baba!”

Taste Bad had been hovering in the doorway, now he came near and put his hand on her shoulder. “All finished,
mei-mei
. Come away.”

Mei Lin resisted long enough to recite the Confiteor again, right through to the end, begging the holy virgin and all the angels and saints to pray for his soul, then when it seemed she could do no more she whispered “Amen” and stood up. Taste Bad was already gone, so she reached down and hefted the heavy satchel Baba had called her legacy, and let herself out of the wretched little room.

Upstairs two strange men stood either side of Mei Lin’s front door.
“Guen, ni guen,”
she told them. Go away. She tried to use the tone that said I expect to be obeyed, but she wasn’t sure she succeeded.
“Guen.”
The words came between hard, hot breaths because she was trying not to cry. If Big Belly had already come for her mother, and posted this guard, she would need to be very strong to resist him. She must not waste her energy on tears.
“Guen.”

The men took no offense. They bowed and one said, “Permit me to open the door, honored lady.” When he did so she saw that her mother was quite safe and already wearing white, the color of mourning.

“How did you know?” Mei Lin asked.

In reply Mei-hua wailed. She would wail loudly and often until her lord was in the ground. That was her duty as his supreme first lady. Big noises kept the soul of the deceased from becoming confused and wandering off. It would not lose itself and become a ghost as long as it could be kept hovering nearby until the body was buried.

Ah Chee also wailed.

It fell to Kurt Chambers, standing a respectful distance from her mother, to answer Mei Lin. “The
yi,
Hor Taste Bad, came and told her. She was not, of course, surprised.”

He had spoken in English. Mei Lin answered him in the same language. “But how did you know? How did you get here?”

“Because Taste-Bad notified me when he was sure that death would come in a matter of minutes. As he was instructed to do. And since I had already been told the end would be soon, I was nearby.”

“How dare Taste Bad tell you before he told my mother.”

“Be grateful,” Chambers said sharply. “I came at once and brought what was needed.”

He nodded to the door and Mei Lin knew he meant the guard on the landing and the men on the street. Without Mr. Chambers her mother might already have been spirited away by Lee Big Belly.

“I apologize,” she said, finally catching her breath and feeling the panic recede. “I am grateful. Truly. You are very kind.”

The English words came too fast for Ah Chee to understand them,
but she needed no explanation of the meaning. The lord was dead. The strange
yang gwei zih
was now the lord. The little bud would belong to him. Already she belonged to him, though Ah Chee knew her privates were still closed-up-little-girl-tender. Very strange lord. Looked like a
yang gwei zih
, with yellow hair and square face and square body, square hands even, but acted like a civilized person. Soon as he came into the house, immediately went and bowed to Fu Xing and lit a joss stick; then bowed to tai-tai. Very all-time strange for a foreign devil, but never mind. She interrupted her ritual wailing just long enough to instruct the little bud, who had less understanding of these things than the strange
yang gwei zih
. “Go. Change. Put on proper clothes to honor father.”

“I have nothing white. I never—”

“Yes have. Yes have,” Ah Chee said. “Lord Kurt bring. Go change.”

Lord Kurt, Mei Lin noted. Baba had always been Lord Samuel. But Baba was dead and Mamee must be protected. There was nothing she could do alone, not against a crowd of men such as those on the street who were all loyal to Mr. Chambers. Those she thought would be her allies, Taste Bad and Fat Cheeks and Leper Face and the rest, had already given their allegiance to Mr. Chambers. Apparently even Ah Chee had done so.

Mei Lin walked toward her bedroom conscious that she was still carrying the canvas satchel Baba had given her, and that no one had asked her about it. Mamee and Ah Chee were too busy with their obligatory wailing. And Mr. Chambers chose not to say anything, though she was quite sure he noticed. She went into the bedroom and ignored the white
cheongsam
and matching
lung pao
that had been laid out on the bed. At least long enough to put Baba’s mysterious legacy at the very back of the cupboard that contained her ordinary clothes. Only then did she untie her bonnet and prepare to transform herself into a dutiful Chinese daughter.

The death rites pleased Mei-hua. That is what they were meant to do. When Mei Lin objected that her father had not been Chinese, Chambers
reminded her that neither was he in any formal sense a Christian. “I do not believe he has had any affiliation with a church here in New York.”

That was true, he had not. And surely her mother, who Mei Lin realized was now alone in a way more profound than ever before, deserved as much comfort as could be offered. So Mei Lin wailed with the others and at the appropriate times did the deep bows called kowtows, kneeling and touching her forehead to the ground. She had learned the rite as a small child; it was appropriate when one or other of the gods was being honored at a major festival. But she had refused to perform it after she was sent to the Convent of the Sacred Heart.

Now she must do so for Mamee’s sake. When Baba’s funeral was over, Mei Lin decided, she would go to confession. Right now the matter of the actual burial was her major concern. Baba lay in their parlor in a sealed coffin covered with a white cloth and many, many white flowers, and a constant stream of Chinese men came to pay their respects—almost none known to them and many, Mei Lin believed, coming repeatedly to make it seem as if the number of visitors was greater than it actually was, thus giving great satisfaction to Mei-hua. After a day of this Mei Lin broached the question. “Please, Mr. Chambers, can you inquire as to where we will be allowed to lay my father to rest? I do not wish him to be in the potter’s field, and he was certainly not a Catholic, but even the Protestant churches will not allow us to—”

“Do not trouble yourself. It is all arranged.”

“But where—”

“It is arranged. The procession will be tomorrow. I am glad to tell you that the signs are auspicious for a speedy burial.”

What signs? She did not ask the question aloud because she knew the answer.
Feng shui
probably, and the
I-ching
, and all the pagan magic done by men like Taste Bad. Not so terrible for them, she had long ago convinced herself. They knew no better, but she did. Mei Lin turned away and made the sign of the cross, then resumed her wailing.

The next morning four strong men carried the coffin downstairs and put it in a hearse covered in white flowers. It had as well streamers and banners on which were written the Chinese symbols for peace and
happiness and eternal rest. Even the horses pulling the hearse were white. “Your mother will ride behind in that small carriage,” Mr. Chambers said, as the men secured the coffin in place for the journey. “It is traditional to walk, but she cannot do that considering the distance. Ah Chee can ride with her. You will walk behind the hearse. That is appropriate and you are young and strong.”

Mei Lin wanted to ask him again where they were going, but the mourners were taking their places. There were at least thirty men, which in a community so small was a huge number and showed enormous respect. They fell into place behind the hearse and behind Mei-hua’s buggy. Four of them carried brass gongs and began at once to beat them, this being the most precarious time for the soul of the deceased and therefore requiring the most noise. Those without gongs wailed. Mei Lin spotted some men she knew among the many she did not, and realized that the strangers joining them, like those who called all day yesterday and last night, had to have been summoned by Mr. Chambers. He had made other provisions as well. Lined up either side of the cortege were six policemen, a dozen in all. They wore their blue uniforms, and their copper badges gleamed in the low-slanting January sun. Even their lead-tipped billies were in full view. There would be no trouble, however strange and foreign the procession might appear.

“Keep one hand on the hearse at all times,” Mr. Chambers said. “That is expected of a child of the deceased.”

Mei Lin put aside any thought of questioning him about where they were going or how far. It was simply easier to do as she was told. She started to take her place, shivering a bit because of the cold and because she wore only a quilted white satin
lung p’ao
over a long white silk skirt.