Forgiven (12 page)

Jameson moved down the paving and out of earshot.

“Kula. Now, listen. I went to discover what I could. There are parts of San Francisco that you know nothing about. People in San Francisco who would be a danger to you. I did not wish to risk—” She stopped and pursed her lips. “I knew even when you arrived about Ty Wong, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell you.” She paused again, and her eyes grew bright. “He’s dead.”

I groaned. She raised her hand, flat, for my silence. “He was murdered a few weeks ago.”

“You knew Ty Wong was dead even when I arrived?”

“Yes.” I realized then that her eyes held tears. As if to keep me from seeing them, she adjusted her broad hat so that her face was thrown into shadow. “We were old friends. He was very dear to me.”

Her emotion shattered my defense. I placed my gloved hand over hers and tried to make sense of what I heard her say. “Miss Everts. What are you trying to tell me?”

She dropped her head. “It isn’t easy, loving someone when it’s forbidden.” Her fingers moved under mine like a fledgling bird. Her voice was hushed and faraway. “You must understand. You would have suffered this kind of discrimination all your life, I expect.” She lifted her chin until I could just see light reflected in the two pinpoints of her eyes again. “Parts of San Francisco are lawless. There are gangs about, mostly young men distinguished by poverty and ignorance. They hate the Chinese.”

I couldn’t say anything. I understood the looks David and I had received.

She removed her restless fingers from under mine. “But it was not an accident. I believe someone has planned all this.”

“Josiah Wilkie.”

She turned to me, surprised but not shocked. “So you know him?”

I nodded. Before I could tell her I’d just seen him, she went on.

“I’m afraid he’s only a henchman. Someone else is guiding his hand. And for much larger purposes.”

My only purpose here in San Francisco was my pa. And my pa had been framed for murder. As far as I was concerned, Wilkie’s connection to anything else was of no matter to me.

Ty Wong was dead. The box was in someone else’s hands, if I was to believe Wilkie. All my reasons for being in San Francisco were gone. “What will I do now?” My voice was soft. Then, louder, “I should go back. Be with Pa before . . .”

“No!” Miss Everts turned sharp. “No, absolutely not!”

I squared my shoulders. First Wilkie had wanted me gone; now she wanted me here. I hated this, being ordered about, back and forth. My stubborn nature reared up. “I think that’s my decision, Miss Everts.”

“Kula, you must not leave San Francisco.”

“Why not?”

“There is a reason. You’ll have to take my word for it. With Ty’s murder, Kula, things have become even more complicated. I’ve just uncovered some new information. I believe this information will eventually help your father.”

Maybe this was why Wilkie wanted me to leave. I was tired of all the secrets, tired of playing guessing games. I leaned toward her. “And what is this new information?”

Her lips pressed together. “I can’t tell you just yet.”

“Whyever not?”

“If I told you now, you might find yourself in a situation not unlike your father’s. There’s real danger here.”

“Danger, here! There’s danger everywhere. I can’t abandon my pa.”

She turned to me pointedly. “You aren’t. You will have to learn to trust your friends, Kula.”

I drew back against the leather seat, confused and weary and frustrated. I didn’t ask her if she was my friend.

She lifted her voice. “Jameson, time to go home.”

He came at once, cranked the engine, and drove us back to Miss Everts’s. I glanced sideways at her. She was the most cantankerous and complicated person I’d ever met.

But I also couldn’t help the sorrow that filled my heart, the sadness that she must have known. There was that David Wong who took away my breath, yet we couldn’t even stand next to each other on the street without drawing ugly looks. I couldn’t imagine how she’d befriended Ty Wong without incurring public wrath.

The number of mysteries in San Francisco was growing. Miss Everts was connected with Ty Wong, something I hadn’t imagined possible. Ty Wong was dead, and Wilkie said he had found my pa’s box. Pa was in dire need. All my aces were gone, and time was my enemy.

I woke in the night to hear the wind howling like a thousand coyotes, and my shutters slamming against the wall outside my window. It took every ounce of my strength just to open the window and pull the shutters closed so that I could lock them, and my nightgown was soaked through with rain by the time I shut the window again.

And then I was unable to return to sleep. Wilkie’s face leered, and I heard his guttural voice in my head. I tried to still my beating heart by thinking about David, but my heart yet thumped, just in a different way.

The storm raged, the wind shrieked, and the rain pounded like nails into the roof. It was hours before I fell asleep again. When I woke at last, it didn’t feel like morning, the sky was so dark even through the other unshuttered window.

At breakfast I found Jameson and Miss Everts had gone out yet again. I paced like a caged lion. Every time I thought back to Wilkie and Min, I wanted to scream. I could not sit still and let this evil man do his work.

Perhaps Min knew something. If I could find her, free her even from the clutches of Wilkie, I might also be able to learn from her what he was about, and where my pa’s box had gone, and how to snare Wilkie in his murderous guilt. For if Miss Everts’s suspicions were right, Wilkie had murdered not just Black, but also Ty Wong, all to keep that box from my pa.

I touched the key hanging round my neck. Free Min, and discover answers, all at the same time. Then I’d finally be free myself, to get on with my life. But how could I accomplish that?

I went to attend to my chores in Miss Everts’s rooms, more and more frustrated at my helpless state.

Her jacket lay draped across her bed; I picked it up and hung it in the wardrobe. I tidied her shoes. I straightened the things on her dressing table, letting my hand rest for a moment on her silver-backed hairbrush.

Mei Lien did her hair, helped her with dressing. I must not be good enough for these truly personal attentions.

The hairbrush was a beauty, decorated with a raised floral pattern. I looked up at my reflection, then pulled my braid over my shoulder and untied the ribbon and let out the woven strands. I picked up that hairbrush and ran it over my hair in long strokes from top to bottom, brushed my hair smooth and shiny, letting my hair float over my shoulder until it was a river of dark silk.

There were strands of my black hair in the hairbrush now, and I laid it back on the dressing table without plucking them out.

I finished her room with the hair on my head all scattered and loose. At the door I paused.

The hairbrush was boar bristle and the black strands were hard to pull out, but I managed and held those hairs tight in my fist as I replaced the brush just as I’d found it, and shut the door soft and gentle, like a servant should.

I tossed my loosed strands into the fire in the drawing room and watched them fizzle and crack, and I set my teeth, like a servant should not.

I was coming to a decision that Miss Everts and David Wong most assuredly would not like. I found my worn plaid jacket and my old boots and a cloak of Miss Everts’s, and set out on my own.

I went to find Min.

Chapter
SEVENTEEN

April 4, 1906

 

 

 

 

WHERETO FIND HER?

As if Chinatown was an ancient puzzle box, I felt pulled to start there. Min was Chinese, but that wasn’t why I thought I might find her in those narrow streets. It was where I’d first met David; it was where I thought Ty would have been. An aura, a magical hue, hung over Chinatown the way rainbow hues hung over the geysers of Yellowstone. Chinatown drew me, inexplicably and irrevocably.

I huddled against the driving rain and wind as I marched down Clay, scarce able to see my way down the hills. I’d been to the edges of Chinatown twice and before too long found myself once again in those narrow streets packed, despite the rain and chill, with vendors and black-suited men wearing waist-length queues.

The stalls were covered with tarpaulins that shed the rain in sheets. I leaned over their wares, gazing from side to side in a furtive attempt to see inside. I came to a stall selling shoes and bent to examine the small black slippers, reminded of the tiny slipper I’d found in Miss Everts’s auto.

Blackened gold thread on a delicate slipper. A slipper that had vanished before I could discover the mystery behind it.

Next to the shoes was a tray of embroidered envelopes, made for holding small things, fastened with loop knots. The silk was embellished with flowers, scrollwork, and dragons, dragons with tongues coiled and wings unfurled.

Embroidery I knew well. It was an art that required patience and careful fingers. Threads weave in and out and reappear, and while they are being worked, the meaning of the whole is unclear; it’s only when the design is complete, all the threads drawn and tightly knotted, that the pattern is obvious. I loved the feeling of the needle as it slipped in and out of fabric. I loved creating designs from seemingly meaningless single stitches. Finding patterns in the noise.

The fruit seller, rain dripping onto his apples, called out only paces away from me. And there, again, like I’d called to her through some magic, like I’d drawn her to me, I saw Min. She hovered over the fruits, her head covered in a shawl to ward off the rain, but I knew it was her. She lifted her head; her face sported a black eye. I grew hot with anger.

And there was Wilkie, stepping right behind her. I drew the hood of my cloak over my cheek.

Min discussed the fruits with the seller, pointing and questioning, arguing in rapid Chinese. Wilkie moved on, away from the stall. This was my chance.

I slid along the stalls to the end of the tray of embroideries. I did not know what I’d do when I reached her; I imagined some kind of slip, and off we’d go. I hadn’t planned. It hadn’t seemed important to plan.

“Min!” My voice was low, a hoarse whisper. “Min!”

The rain battered the tarpaulins and splashed noisily on the cobbles.

“Woman!” Wilkie’s voice, harsh and loud, unlike mine, overcame all the noise. He marched right up behind her, and I bent almost double over the embroidery, huddling beneath my cloak. “Let’s go.” He took her arm; I could see his thick fingers out of the corner of my eye, wrapping those fat knuckles around her thin arm, tugging her away.

I stared hard at the embroidered dragons, their flames and tongues darting. I examined the silks as if I was picking out individual stitches. I didn’t reach out and grab Min and run. I didn’t dare stop Wilkie, whose hand gripped her like a manacle. I let her go. I let her go with that devil.

My fists curled into balls and my lips made flat planes, and the anger that I felt against myself burned in my throat. I’d failed, yet again. I’d been lucky enough to find her, and still I let her slip through my fingers. It was my fault, and I had no business feeling sorry for myself. I bit down hard as I could on my lip, closing my eyes.

I knew I couldn’t face Wilkie. He was far too strong for me, a killer even. He was the wolf; I was the crippled doe.

Wilkie and Min pushed away from me through the driving rain, disappearing into the crowd. I pushed away, too, in the opposite direction, the tears flooding my eyes as the rain flooded the streets. My feet and the hem of my skirt were soaked, but I didn’t care. I didn’t watch where I walked. I didn’t watch where I was going.

I walked down one street and then down another, twisting and turning, twisting in a rage against myself. The rain dripped off my hood and blinded me. I reached a narrow alleyway and realized I was deep in the heart of Chinatown, in a place I hadn’t seen before. I stopped, trying to get my bearings.

Through the pattering of the rain I heard whimpering, as of a wounded animal. Instinct told me to flee; instinct told me to help. The two sides of me were at war.

The sound came from one of the darkest of the little passageways, off to my left. A stench emerged from the passageway, and other sounds that gave me chills, and a sense that if I went in there I might never come out. I took one step closer and sucked in my breath.

Small windows with iron bars sat right at ground level, and at each of these windows faces pressed against the bars, the faces of Chinese girls so young they looked like tiny children, all dirty, all wide-eyed, all blank-eyed, as if feeling had been stripped from them, as if they were draped in a self-protective blankness of mind. Some of them wore so little clothing they might as well have been naked.

I gripped my hands tight to my chest. The rain ran down my face as I tried to grasp the horror.

I knew what I was seeing. I hadn’t lived a completely sheltered life. Pa had protected me, but I had eyes and ears. This was slavery in its worst form, humiliating and degrading, painful and frightening. And they were children, these slaves, all girls. They were all so small. Tiny fingers, gripping bars, slender fingers made for playing childish games. Oh, my heart. I thought I would die from the ache. I slumped against the far wall, staggered and sick.

Kula Baker . . . Kula Baker . . . doesn’t know what to do.

From the shadows at the end of the alley came a woman. She carried an umbrella; she was dressed in Chinese fashion. Her face was painted, her lips garish red against all the gray misery. She beckoned to me to come, come.