God of Luck (11 page)

T
WO BOWLS OF tea a day could not slake anyone’s thirst, and on those occasions the sky ripped open while I was fetching our rations or swilling teapot and bowls, I did not run for shelter as I would have in Strongworm. Like the other stewards, I threw back my head and opened my mouth so the rain could drench my aching throat as if it were a parched field. I’d savor the rain’s sweetness—even as growls, vicious pokes and prods from our guards were driving us below.

Some of these same devils were smuggling water into the between-decks for sale to those who somehow still had cash. Not surprisingly, thieves became as commonplace as the bugs sucking our blood. Bickering exploded into fierce quarrels, brutal fights.

Yes, thieves and fighters risked the lash. But devil-guards accepted bribes as readily as piggy-corporals, and those punished could count on their floggings to stop after twelve strokes, their lacerated backs to eventually heal. Thirst was a torture without end.

During storms, the crew dropped down buckets of hard biscuits without a drop of water and fit raincloths over the hatches, sealing us into suffocating darkness. Rain pelting the deck and the sea lashing over the ship’s sides gushed through seams in the planks, soaking us to the bone. Despite the steady wheeze and clank of the ship’s pump, bilge welled up from below.

There was water enough that men thrown into the walkways sometimes drowned, and many argued that the puddles in our berths, although brackish, were safe for drinking. But few managed more than a few licks: The ship was sheering in mountainous seas, threatening to capsize, and we were clinging to the platforms and each other, howling like the wind shrieking through the rigging.

Then, too, we all had raw patches from the constant grinding of skin against wood, and it wasn’t unusual for the punching and pounding to tear off long strips of soggy skin and mangle limbs beyond repair. Many a belly, heaving with the swells, actively rebelled, adding to our torments.

After the seas calmed and the crew peeled back the raincloths, waterlogged timbers steamed foul vapors for days. Since sunlight only reached wood directly under the hatches, most berths remained moist. So did men who never went above as stewards or for opium.

This damp gave rise to burning fevers, hacking coughs. Everybody suffered from loose bowels. With maggots infesting our blood-streaked rice, meat that was either souring or already putrid, some men started passing blood.

The doctor reserved the four beds in the sickroom for those with diseases that might spread to others. Compelled to stay in the airless swamp of the between-decks, few men recovered. Those who became too enfeebled to leave their berths or use a spittoon soiled themselves, the platforms, their neighbors.

While above, I frequently heard scraping and hammering. I spotted sailors mucking out the animals’ pens, toiling with brushes, stitching torn canvas, sewing new sails, taking apart ropes, or replacing worn rigging. I breathed air redolent with varnish, paint, hot tar. Yet the captain repeatedly refused our petitions for buckets, water, and brushes with which to clean below.

Washing up from meals, I’d slip into the water the scraps of cloth that Ah Ming had ripped from his pants after my ribs mended. On my return, I’d wipe the faces and the wood beneath the nearest invalids until the cloths, stiff with all manner of waste, did more harm than good.

Throughout the between-decks, other stewards were doing likewise. Nevertheless, filth crusted flesh and wood. Boils erupted. Sores festered, some oozed pus. Frightful odors of decay poisoned every breath.

Then cholera swooped down on us, and the doctor ordered buckets of purifying lime sloshed over the platforms, the slippery sludge of rotting straw, shit, and piss in the walkways. Ai, that lime bit into our skin, our nostrils! But it did little to loosen cholera’s grip: Even doubling men up, the doctor ran out of beds in the sickroom.

When attacked, men complained of burning heat although their skin felt clammy cold. Plagued by agonizing cramps that preceded violent bouts of vomiting and spurting bowels, their color turned from lead to a liverish red, then a dark, deep blue.

None of those felled survived. Death, though, came swiftly. In truth, were it not for my family, I would have welcomed it.

F
OURTH BROTHER-IN-LAW confessed it wasn’t thoughts of worms but our being shorthanded that enabled him to remain calm in our wormhouse. “Going from one task to another has me completely absorbed!”

Pouncing on this insight, I brought enough workers back to the wormhouse to provide our worms with the best of care but not so many that anyone ever had an idle moment for disturbing thoughts or feelings to surface.

“Good,” Eldest Sister-in-law praised. “Now you can stop making do with the odd mouthful of rice and return to eating properly with us twice a day.”

Eldest Brother-in-law encouraged me to take longer, more frequent breaks, too. Outside our wormhouse, however, my mind hopped like a restless monkey, my heart pounded like a galloping horse: Were the captives on the devil-ship in rebellion? Had Ah Lung been injured or escaped unscathed? Had he reached Moongirl in Canton? Was he on his way home?

EVEN IF MY wife’s calm in the wormhouse prevailed, as I hoped and prayed it would, Bo See had no control over outside forces, and during the long silk season, heavy rains brought by big winds could last for days, days in which our worms would go hungry if the family failed to pick sufficient leaves or the fussy creatures refused to eat the stored mulberry because they preferred fresh. Often dikes collapsed, flooding fields. Then the standing water could rot the very roots of the mulberry on which our worms depended. And landlords calculated rents on the percentage of an anticipated harvest. They collected every copper owed regardless of the actual result. In truth, they were constantly pressing their feet against our necks, sometimes lightly, sometimes grinding our faces into the mud. If I could survive the horrors of this devil-ship, though, Ba would have my earnings to pay off our debts
and
buy fields, throwing the landlords from our necks forever.

Already I could hear Ba, on receiving my first remittance, shout, “Come! Come quick!” to Ma, my brothers and their wives, my own wife, our nephews and nieces. “Ah Lung’s alive!”

Then, while Bo See and Ma lit incense to Heaven for keeping me safe, the rest of the family would gaze at the silver in wide-eyed wonder, exclaiming:

“Wah!”

“Ah Lung really took Moongirl’s lament to heart.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t you remember? Moongirl added the lines ‘Only by clever planning can the situation be turned around.’”

“She meant for Ah Lung to find a way home.”

“And he says in his letter that he
will
—but only after he’s made enough to turn
our
situation around.”

AGAIN AND AGAIN my eyes scoured the river, and at the shape of my husband’s head, the curve of his shoulders silhouetted on the deck of a sampan, my heart would fly out to meet him—only to stop dead when Ah Lung himself did not appear.

Fighting a burgeoning panic, I reasoned: Even free of his devil-captors, Ah Lung would be beggared, friendless, lost among foreigners. How could he make his way home as swiftly as we expected? He might not be back until our eggs hatched for the seventh and final generation of the season.

Or the worms entered their first sleep.

Their second.

Their third.

Their fourth.

Or they formed cocoons.

Or the moths burrowed out and mated.

I’D BEEN CAPTURED while our family was raising our fifth generation of worms. By my reckoning, the silk season had ended. Ba would be talking to my brothers about draining our fish ponds, harvesting the fish, and dredging up the mud at the bottom.

This mud—rich from the nightsoil and worm waste that we fed the fish as well as their own droppings—was perfect for fertilizing our fields. Digging up the muck was smelly, filthy, backbreaking work, however, and my brothers hated the chore. Until my marriage, I had too.

In the years since, I’d looked forward to it. Bo See and I had no chance to see each other unclothed in the full light of day. Before shoveling mud from our ponds, though, I’d shed my jacket, roll my pants up to my thighs, and Bo See, bringing water out to me, would caress my legs with her gaze. Despite the rank smells steaming from the muck, she’d linger to watch my muscles swell, ripple up my arms, and across my back. If no one else was near, she’d even unbutton the stiff collar that hugged her neck, revealing the delicate hollow where throat meets chest, and hike her long, loose pants above her shapely ankles and calves, exposing pale, smooth skin.

Lest we draw the attention of someone passing, we never spoke. Nor did we dare touch. But our eyes, meeting, would burn with remembered pleasure, impatience for the joyful play night would bring.

EVERY AUTUMN, AH Lung would pick bak yuk lan blossoms for me on his way home from the family’s ponds. I’d tuck them into my bun, and their heady scent would tease deliciously as we ate our evening meal, perfume our bed when at last we unpinned my hair for play.

In anticipation of my husband’s return, I laid fresh bak yuk lan on his pillow. Each time their fragrance faded and the soft white petals curled brittle brown, I plucked more.