Earthquake (2 page)

Even though the sun would not be up for half an hour, the alleyway was crowded. The night workers were on their way home to sleep. Day workers hurried to the laundries and cigar factories. Houseboys with smooth, well-fed cheeks were beginning their morning trek to the Nob Hill mansions where
they worked for
Fon Kwei
, white devil families.

Dai Yue watched a woman with lily feet hobbling with her walking sticks, her servants close behind. Deformed by years of tight bandages, the woman's toes were doubled back, her feet so stunted they fit into shoes small enough for a two-year-old baby. Dai Yue envied her. Her family would not marry her off to the first ugly old man who wanted her. She would be an honored bride.

As Dai Yue turned the corner onto Dupont Gai, the strong smell of roasting gingered pork irritated her nose. The street shops were opening up. She passed a wall covered with the usual sacred scarlet bulletins. She stepped around the men who had lined up to read them.

Through an open window she heard two men shouting, arguing over a
pai gow
debt. Dai Yue did not turn to look at them. Her uncle sometimes went to the Street of Gamblers to play fan-tan or mahjongg—but he paid his debts. She could smell rose incense from a doorway. Demons hated incense. She slowed her step to let the odor fill her lungs.

A wagon pulled by a slat-ribbed mule creaked under its load of vegetable crates. The bright green
of cress and bamboo contrasted with the rich colors of oranges and figs. Along the sidewalk, the butchers were hanging plucked chickens and ducks from sharpened hooks. Loops of sausages and gray-scaled fish lay displayed on tables where passersby could be tempted into buying them.

A breeze swept through the street, fluttering red banners announcing a wedding banquet and setting the wind bells into motion. Dai Yue looked up. Most of the balconies had chimes and flowered lanterns that swayed from silk cords.

Dai Yue slowed her steps to avoid brushing shoulders with a
boo how doy
, a fierce-eyed bodyguard who followed an old man dressed in heavy silk clothing. The old man looked neither left nor right, his long queue swinging with each step.

Dai Yue looked down the street. The balloon man wasn't on his corner yet. She loved the shiny balloons. They made her think of clouds and birds, made her dream of flying. If she were a balloon, she could drift with the wind out over the sea, maybe all the way back to Kwangtung Province. She had never seen her grandfather's house in the mountains, but her parents had told her about it many
times before they died. There were steep canyons, many places to hide. Then she would never have to marry Chou Yee.

Dai Yue shook her head to clear it of disobedient thoughts. She saw a man looking at her and quickly lowered her eyes. She tried to walk faster, but the sidewalk was more and more crowded. Three men just ahead of her were deep in conversation. Their thick dialect was harsh and unfamiliar to her, impossible to understand. Perhaps they were from the lowlands, some delta fishing village in Choy Hung.

A cigar vendor's handcart blocked the sidewalk and Dai Yue followed the crowd, stepping into the rough cobblestone street to get around it. The vendor had just sold a cigar and was lighting it for his customer. The acrid, foul smoke streamed into Dai Yue's face as she passed. She turned away from it. Chou Yee smoked and his breath stank. His teeth were yellow and he was old and often surly. And in three years, when she was not yet sixteen, she would become his wife.

Dai Yue turned off Dupont Gai and into a narrow street. Half a block later she turned again, this time
going down an alley that led through to the Avenue of Virtue and Harmony. She crossed it, then turned again, dodging a wagon full of tall bamboo baskets overflowing with bouquets of lilies. Their fragrance eased her heart a little as she opened the door to her uncle's pharmacy.

Inside, her uncle stood at his long narrow worktable. He looked up when she came in, then back down at his work. His two assistants were busy preparing prescriptions. One had toad ashes spread across a white tray. Working with a tiny tool, he mixed the ashes with white powder. There were hundreds of drawers, jars, and bowls in the shop. They held tigers' teeth, snakes preserved in whiskey, horned toads caught in the California deserts, then burned to ash for rheumatism sufferers. There were green herbs and black tree bark and dried worms and centipedes. Dai Yue knew many of the medicines. Her uncle knew them all.

Dai Yue's uncle was chopping a slender black root into tiny pieces, working precisely, his hands deft. Dai Yue went to the back of the shop and ducked behind the shelves. The big preparation
table was strewn with discarded stems and flecks of powdered leaves. The floor was filthy. She caught the sharp smell of ginseng root as she began to work.

Dai Yue first moved the
Mon War
collection box. She was careful not to touch the sacred paper, not to defile it. There was every kind of paper in the box—white and scarlet and gold. Lists, letters, and orders from clients. It held every scrap of paper that had been written on since the day before. She set the box down with reverence, turning quickly to startle any demon that lurked nearby. Then she opened the back door.

Dai Yue cleaned the tabletop, scrubbing it with a bundle of rice stalks. She wiped the white stone pestle and her uncle's delicate balance scales. There was something sticky on the edge of his mixing bowl. It smelled sour, like meat going bad. Dai Yue wrinkled her nose.

She heard the doorbell jingle, then the voice of a Church Court footbinder. The woman wanted something to ease the pain of her clients' daughter's feet. The bandages had to be tight enough to stop
the growth of the feet, to bend the bones under, and this caused great pain.

When the footbinder had gone, another customer came in. Dai Yue hoped this would be a very busy day. She did not want to talk to her uncle. The door jingled again and the
Mon War
collector came in. He emptied the box into his bag and left. Dai Yue watched him go.

She was sorry her uncle paid the twenty-five cents a month to have the sacred papers taken to the
Mon War Sher.
She wished she could have taken the box. She would have loved to have a chance to glimpse the joss, the dragons, the tigers of brass. The peanut oil lamps were said to burn day and night. Sometimes she saw the wagons filled with bags of sacred ashes as they left Chinatown. Someday she wanted to see the boats that carried the ashes out of the bay and gave them to the sea.

Dai Yue did her cleaning work as quickly as she could. She lit incense. Her uncle was very strict about keeping demons out of his shop and away from the medicines. As Dai Yue washed the floor, the door opened twice more and she heard her
uncle's clipped, somber voice as he served his customers.

“Dai Yue,” he called as the door closed behind a patron.

“Yes, Uncle?” She poked her head around the shelves.

He was walking toward her. “Is the table clean? Chin Loi will need to come back here soon.”

“Yes, Uncle.” She kept her eyes on the floor.

“Do not be sullen, Dai Yue. It is a pity you overheard the arrangements. I would have waited at least a year to tell you. But you will get used to the idea of marriage.”

Dai Yue dared to look directly into her uncle's eyes. “Chou Yee is old. And
mean.
”

Dai Yue's uncle stiffened his spine and glared at her. “The Chou family is making a fortune with its cigar factories. You will have a very good life.”

Dai Yue looked down again to hide her eyes from her uncle. “I will not have a good life with that man.” She clenched her fists.

“You are young and very foolish, niece. No girl knows what is best for her.”

Dai Yue fought to control the feelings that boiled like a rice pot inside her. Her uncle stepped
forward to grip her shoulder and she moved back, shrugging his hand away.

“I do not wish to marry Chou Yee,” Dai Yue whispered.

Her uncle reached for her hands. “Oh, but you will. And one day you will thank me for arranging so good a marriage.”

Dai Yue glanced out the back door. The sky was lightening. It would be a sunny day.

“There will be many customers today, Dai Yue. Finish your work.” Her uncle turned on his heel, the thick white soles of his black slippers making no sound as he walked away from her. Dai Yue stared after him, tears stinging her eyes. Her uncle glanced back at her and his frown deepened. “You have no time to waste with foolish tears. Now finish your work.”

Without knowing she was going to do it, Dai Yue found herself spinning around, reaching for the back door.

“Dai Yue!”

Her uncle's shout seemed to push her out the door. She stood blinking in the grayish light of dawn.

“Dai Yue!”

She began to run.

“Chin Loi!” her uncle screamed from behind her. She heard the door open, the footsteps, her uncle's muttered orders to his young assistant. Then she turned a corner and heard nothing at all.

Dai Yue ran without thinking, without looking back, dodging through the throngs of men. She pounded up an alley, then turned into a narrow street she knew led back to Dupont Gai.

“Li Dai Yue? Wait! Come back!” Chin Loi called from behind her.

Dai Yue ran faster, sliding around the corner and onto Dupont Gai. Here, even at this early hour, the crowds were so thick she had to slow her pace. Frantically, she worked her way sideways, crossing the street. She was careful, glancing back, keeping as many people between herself and Chin Loi as she could. She caught a glimpse of him as she jumped up on the sidewalk. He was looking left and right. He had lost her.

Dai Yue began to run again. She jostled a porcelain vendor setting up his wares. He shook his fist at her and she glanced back. Chin Loi had not given up. He had spotted her. Apologizing to the vendor, Dai Yue speeded up again, this time veering back
into the street, hoping she could get away, find a place to cry, to calm down.

“Dai Yue! You must slow down, your uncle—”

Chin Loi's words were cut off by the rumbling of a produce wagon on the uneven cobblestone. Dai Yue glanced over her shoulder. Chin Loi was closer. Much closer. His face was flushed and angry. The produce wagon blocked Dai Yue's way. Frantic, she pulled herself up onto the back edge of the wagon. She rolled against a crate of cabbages, hearing her tunic tear on the rough slats.

“Dai Yue!”

She turned away, her breathing ragged and painful, unable to hold back her tears any longer. There was a heavy canvas draped over the crate. Dai Yue pulled at it, covering herself like a little child, hiding her face and her tears. She expected any second to feel Chin Loi's hands on her shoulders, to hear his harsh voice. But she did not.

For a long time, Dai Yue wept. It was wrong that her uncle would give her to someone like Chou Yee. It was unfair that her father and mother had died. Her tears of anger cooled into tears of grief. Li Tan Sun, her beloved cousin, had been the only
one to stand up to his father. He had refused to bow his head before anyone.

Dai Yue wiped at her eyes. Tan Sun's pride had been the cause of his death. He had attended the Chinese Mission school, had learned the strange, ugly English words. He had taught her, too, making her repeat the phrases over and over. He had made friends among the Fon Kwei, or so he thought.

Then, one drunken night, Tan Sun's friends had turned on him like animals. They had cut his queue and beaten him senseless and left him bleeding in the street like some discarded piece of trash.

The wagon bed rose, then dropped, jarring her badly. Her cheek struck the wood and without meaning to, she started crying again. When Dai Yue finally looked out from beneath the canvas, she caught her breath.

On either side of the street, buildings rose into the sky, much higher than any building in the City of the Sons of Tang. How strange that all this existed so close to her home and she had never seen it. The buildings were so tall Dai Yue could scarcely understand why they did not fall over. Ornate decorations, carved from what looked like stone, covered
the fronts and corners of the buildings. Dai Yue pushed the canvas back a little farther. The streets were bustling, a cable car gong sounded somewhere ahead. Polished gas lamps graced the sidewalks.

Loud feminine laughter made Dai Yue sit up, astonished, smoothing her tunic. Four women in heavy, draped skirts and strange hats were walking, their arms linked. Their eyes were not lowered. One was gesturing, her right arm raised above her head, her parasol dangling from her wrist as she laughed again with her companions.

Dai Yue had heard of this. Every seven years, on the Festival of the Good Lady, the women of Chinatown were allowed to explore, strolling the streets as freely as men for a single day. Some even left Chinatown. Her upstairs neighbor had often told the stories of the bold Fon Kwei women and their careless public behavior.

“You! What are you doing there?”

Dai Yue jerked around to see the wagon driver glaring at her. He cursed and reined in. Dai Yue scooted to the edge of the wagon bed and jumped off. She ran, and heard the driver's angry shouts fade behind her.

Out of breath, Dai Yue slowed to an uneasy walk, trying to take in the vast wideness of the street. She wasn't sure how to get home. The sky was gray blue now, glowing with the coming of dawn. There were men in dark clothes, carrying polished walking sticks in their hands, their mustaches and beards as full and bristling as animal fur. She could hear the odd, soft-shaped words of the Fon Kwei. She could make sense out of some of the talk, but it frightened her to hear so much of it, to be surrounded by the strange, foreign voices.

“Hey! Girl!”

Dai Yue whirled to see a red-faced Fon Kwei coming toward her. He was tall, his florid face crowned by orange hair. There were tiny patches of brown scattered across his cheeks, speckling his skin.

Backing into the street, Dai Yue froze with fear. Hoofbeats and a shout made her turn. She had stepped in front of a wagon driven by a boy about her age. The boy stood up to haul backward on the reins, pulling his horse to a stop inches from her.