River of Dust (7 page)

    In a surprising magazine that had fallen into her hands during her brief stay in New York prior to her departure for Cathay, Grace had read the rather forward advice that a modern woman must take the reins in matters of the heart. Th
e Lady's Realm
printed articles not only about how women now had the right to vote in four Western states, whereas it was unheard-of in the rest of the country, but also on how a lady could manage her own honeymoon. The modern woman understood that when she married a gentleman greatly distracted by ambition, she must nonetheless persevere with her own hopes and dreams. Grace was not sure what her own hopes and dreams might be, but she recognized that the Reverend was a man much distracted by ambition.

    Indeed, the man before her today bore none of the human frailty and lack of surety of the young man she had first met but instead, was a substantial figure who had achieved a great deal. She rather liked that he appeared now as the Chinese had come to see him— as a bear, a giant, an oversized miracle of a man. Ghost Man, they called him, and she could see why.

    Grace reminded herself that as a girl of twenty, she could instead have become a schoolteacher in a one-room schoolhouse on the Midwestern plains, a librarian in the college town, or most certainly a secretary to one of her father's fellow academics on campus. Instead, four years before, she had followed a man in whom she sensed greatness into the desert halfway around the world, and it was here that she now watched him spin his words into blazing gold.

    "I, too, am a sinner," the Reverend called out in a fiery voice. "I am one of the fallen."

    Grace glanced about and saw that the Chinese sat on the edges of the pews, their whole bodies tilting toward him, their hands clasped and their eyes rapt in attention. The other ministers and their wives shifted uneasily in their seats. The Reverend's sudden urge for selfrevelation was not at all the usual approach to their mission. Grace dared to look again at Mildred Martin and swallowed hard as she saw the older woman's jaw go slack and hang partially open. Her husband, Charles Martin, the Reverend's most loyal friend, looked on with an expression that could only be described as horror.

    Grace turned back to her husband and widened her beaming expression up at him. Unlike her compatriots, she was proud that on his journeys he seemed to have come to the same stark conclusion that she had in the several months since their disaster: she and the Revered were indeed sinners, and not just in any usual sense. The Martins might still believe themselves to be otherwise, but Grace, and apparently the Reverend as well, knew the truth. The Lord had chosen to reveal their sins by punishing them most thoroughly. They were, without a doubt, as fallen as Adam and Eve on the wretched morning when the Lord had raised His arm and pointed them out of Eden.

    "I am lower than the lowliest of beggars on the streets," the Reverend shouted. "I am as blind as the men whose eyes are crusted over with scabs. I am as infirm as those who lie in the streets with limbs hanging torn and useless. I am no better than the poorest of the poor, for my heart is black with sin."

    Grace felt a shiver rise up her spine. She feared she might faint, and yet she knew her face glowed with recognition. She understood as never before that she had been guilty of the sin of pride when, as a blithe and naive girl, she had been overly pleased with herself for having married such a man. Several of the other ladies at the mission had been partial to the Reverend as well, but Grace had won out. She had always considered herself blessed. The Lord would spare her any true pain. And yet, decidedly, He had not.

    The echoing hum had begun in the back of her mind again, and she felt herself starting to move away from herself, rising up from her seat and looking down over them all. She welcomed these strange sensations that usually accompanied her nightly bedtime odysseys. It was the familiar feeling of being washed over with shame.

    The new Chinese Christians all around her rubbed their hands together in delight. No doubt they must have wondered how it had come to pass that a white man who had once stood so tall and upright and clean now hung his head and debased himself before them. If this great man who had built roads and hospitals and schools professed such weaknesses, what did that mean for those who struggled simply to plow their dry fields and place meager food upon their tables?

    Grace looked upon their faces and saw a strange sight: she saw hope. She felt she had no business recognizing it in her own current miserable state of loss, but there it was, quite undeniably. Hope lit up their faces, as it did her own.

    The Reverend raised his fists at the timbers. He shook his head of shaggy hair. His shirttails came loose as he lifted his enormous arms. The greatcoat wafted, and the talismans and bells tinkled on their ropes. He described the torture he had endured at the hands of the world, and the Chinese let out cries of agreement and shouts of joy. They knew of what he spoke before he even said the words. It reminded Grace of the sounds she had heard coming from the Negro church at the edge of her Ohio town when her family rode past on a Sunday afternoon. The native faces around her now were alive with both anguish and bliss.

    Someone called out from the back of the little chapel, "Speak loudly to the heavens, Ghost Man!"

    Reverend Martin in the front row turned instantly and put a finger to his lips to shush them.

    "Call out to the Jesus for more miracles," another voice called.

    Reverend Martin stood and said, "Quiet now, gentle people."

    The Reverend looked over his friend's neatly combed head and shouted to the increasingly restless crowd, "Yes, my friends, we understand one another, do we not? But now, let us pray."

    The crowd, which he had worked into a frenzy, would not be calmed with the notion of prayer. They stood and suddenly surged forward and up the aisles. They reached out their hands toward him.

    Reverend Martin shouted and waved frantically for them to stop. "That is all for today. Help yourselves to water in the courtyard, and please return for Bible study at four this afternoon."

    But the people did not seem to hear. They continued to surge toward the Reverend with outstretched arms. Grace was not surprised to see them clamoring for his attention. She herself had done as much in recent weeks, but with little success.

    Now the dizziness and humming in her head became quite forceful. Perhaps Mai Lin's medicines had worn off altogether, Grace thought, and she looked around for her servant with a growing sense of panic. The trick with her potions was to maintain the correct balance, and clearly Grace had gone too long without being administered to. She knew Mai Lin did not care for Sunday services, always a sticking point between her and the Reverend, but Grace was certain she would at least stay nearby when her mistress was in such a weakened state.

    The vibrations inside her skull were decidedly pronounced, and Grace shut her eyes. She longed for bed. Then, just when she thought she might faint, the Reverend's voice boomed over the chapel again, and the entire congregation snapped to attention, including his wife.

    "Silence!" he bellowed. He pointed at the crowd, his long arms sweeping over them. They stopped where they stood. "The Lord, the greatest Ghost Man of all, wishes you to file out peacefully, get into your carts, and go home to rest on the Sabbath. Tomorrow you will rise, and the crops will have grown."

    The crowd let out a hopeful gasp.

    "Go now in peace." The Reverend swept his hands through the air, his fingers spread wide like great nets to catch them and pull them into his embrace. "I bless thee, my children. I bless thee."

    Grace shut her eyes and tried to feel his blessings rain down upon her. All around, she felt the crowd ebbing back out the door. She kept her eyes pinched shut and waited for her husband's absolving hand upon her arm.

G
race had come to think of the iron gates of the mission compound as the gates of heaven and herself as one of the Lord's many helpers. It was her job to welcome each new arrival, to set them at ease and oversee their transition into this new world. At night in restless sleep, she watched out her window as figures came toward her. Then, in the morning, she had to shake such visions from her head and try to understand them as but overwrought dreams, although they had appeared so real. But now, in the late-afternoon light of early autumn, she watched as actual people of all ages came plodding into the mission. Every one of them Chinese, yet nonetheless she searched amongst the multitudes of black heads for her towheaded children. They lived for now amongst the masses, but soon Grace would spot them and fly down into the courtyard and bring them home.

    Long shadows preceded each person who entered the courtyard as the sun cut across the plains. They walked with heads bent, these tired people, the young as well as the old and infirm. Even the strongest and healthiest amongst them walked with sloped shoulders, hardly lifting their feet from the dusty ground. In their weariness, they all looked alike to Grace, and she thought that was how it was meant to be: all of God's children were identical in the end. She could see that now.

    It was a lesson she would never have believed while in America, but now it seemed so obvious. Here in China, the vast numbers of people staggered along day after day, struggling to feed and clothe themselves and their families. Their skinny bodies all appeared to share the same misery. There was no color to them, no liveliness any longer even amongst the young ladies. A girl in America could be quite vivid: Grace and her friends dressed in Easter pastels in springtime, rich reds at Christmas, with ribbons to match in their hair. She searched now for any sign of brightness but saw only the shadows of strangers. All of them were daguerreotypes, tinted brown by the sun, the desert soil, and whatever other dusty matter made up their souls.

    The crowd that poured in through the open gate appeared more sizable than usual, and Grace squinted hard to keep track of each new arrival. Their carts and donkeys waited outside the compound, and she rose from her bed to spy over the high wall to search for anyone who might have been left behind on a buckboard or under a bale of hay. It was difficult, but she needed to keep track of them all.

    In a flash, and out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw a pale face down near the ground. Grace swore she spotted small hands holding fast to a woman's filthy black skirt. Could it be a blond child, her child?

    Grace called sharply to Mai Lin. The old woman sat, as she always did, on a spindly chair in the corner of Grace's bedchamber. Her hair looked wilder than ever, and her little clublike feet— squeezed into brocaded shoes no bigger than Grace's small clenched fist— were hitched up on the rungs as if she were some sort of monkey. Despite Mai Lin's unfortunate appearance, Grace felt such warmth toward her. She wasn't sure why, but she did.

    "Dear Mai Lin," Grace said breathlessly, "the day has come! Dress me quickly, please. I have seen my son."

    Mai Lin rose, and as she came forward, Grace noticed something she had not before.

    "I have been remiss," she said as she lifted a brush from her dressing table and combed her hair for the first time in weeks. "I have never asked you, Mai Lin: are you in great pain? You hobble from the feetbinding of your childhood. I wonder if every step hurts. Is that how it feels?"

    Mai Lin waved a hand as if brushing away a fly. "It is no matter about me. Mistress is feeling better today. She sees her baby coming back to her."

    "Yes, yes, that's right," Grace said and let Mai Lin take the brush from her hand to continue the job. "Let's hurry now, so he doesn't leave again like that other time."

    Mai Lin dressed her in a simple frock because the autumn afternoon was still warm and Grace could not be bothered with all the layers of petticoats. Her enlarged belly was visible, and she felt certain the others would understand that in her condition, she couldn't possibly be encumbered by all the usual undergarments.

    She allowed Mai Lin to tie her sash, but not too tightly. Then she dashed out of the room.

    "Careful on the steps, Mistress," Mai Lin called after her. "You are more light-headed than you realize."

    Grace could not be bothered with such concerns, although she did find that her vision was playing tricks on her. When she went to hold the balustrade at the top of the stairs, there were two finials, not the usual one. She must remember to speak to Mai Lin about her dosage. The medicines were crucial to controlling her nervous condition, but much of the time, they left her feeling as drunk as a sailor, which was not proper of course but did add to her mood of levity. The reunion she had dreamed of was about to transpire.

    She traipsed lightly down the wooden steps, flew across the wide front hallway, and opened the screen door. Grace stepped out onto the grand porch and abruptly came to a halt. Before her were swarms of people. Chinese people. She had known they had entered, but from upstairs she had not seen their distinct features, their slick black hair, their dusty lined faces, the stained or missing teeth. And the stench emanating from them almost made her gag. What on earth were they all doing here? she wondered.

    Then she remembered what had taken place on this same soil about a decade before. She had learned about it on the day she had first met the Reverend in Ohio. The story of the Boxer Rebellion had been seared into her mind, and it had never been far from her thoughts since her arrival in Shansi Province.

    The dear missionary families of the past had been swarmed by angry Chinese. The crazed peasants came down from the villages in the mountains. They swooped in from every desert hamlet. They bore sticks and rocks and even guns. With war cries, they rallied their own into a frenzy of violence. Grace had heard stories of it any number of times over the past four years since her arrival here.