The Gilded Age, a Time Travel (18 page)

Yu-lai
and Li Wong were prosecuted for abandonment, child endangerment, embezzlement,
theft, and skipchild abuse. Due to her youth, Zhu was not included in the
proceedings. She never saw her skipparents again, but she sure saw their images
splattered all over the media:

SKIPCHILD ABANDONED
BY SKIPPARENTS

WHILE
LOTTERY COUPLES CRY FOR THEIR OWN

It
was when the Parents tried to make an example out of Zhu that she was first
approached by the Daughters of Compassion. Orphaned once by the law, orphaned
twice by her skipparents, harassed and alone at a vulnerable age when everyone
needs a friend, Zhu gladly fled to the Cause, to the rigors of comradeship. To
the contemplation of Kuan Yin.

A
woman came calling as Zhu studied in the library for winter examinations. The
village administrators had placed her in the custody of the local cooperative.
Another shameful thing. She had to face her neighbors and peers as a ward of
the state. No longer was she a skipchild with a family, an inheritance, and the
likelihood of going off to the university. She was so depressed at the time she
had actually considered taking her own life. A bona fide option, according to the
fashionable international death cults.

The
sharp-eyed, wiry woman sat down next to her. Zhu glanced up from the rented workstation,
the lesson hovering before her--an English translation of a spectacular holoid
by Magda Mira, an American filmmaker praised for her celebration of death. Gory
gross-out stuff, but Mira’s work was as popular as potato chips.

“You
the skipkid?” the woman said.

Zhu
gathered up her jacket and backpack, preparing to flee, though she’d waited
sixteen days to get access to the workstation.

“Don’t
waste your time with that crap,” the woman said, pointing to the holoid.
“There’s work to be done, here, in our mother China. The Cause is much more
important than vulgar American entertainments that have no meaning in your life.”

“Mira
celebrates death,” Zhu said automatically. Then, “The Cause has more meaning?”
She hesitated, panic skidding through her.

“Hell,
yes!” the woman said. “All the sacrifice and pain you’ve gone through as a
skipkid means nothing if lottery couples are going to go off and have kids
illegally. Let alone if parents with one kid—skip or natch—go off and have
another. Talk about challenging the odds. Talk about
greed
. And they say
Changchi will have another drought this summer, and they don’t know if they’ll
be able to herd rain from Siberia. It’s a damn shame.”

Zhu
remembered listening to all this with her mouth hanging open. “You’re talking
about negative population growth.”

“I’m
talking about the Cause,” the woman said. “I’m talking about enforcement of the
Generation-Skipping Law, the finest gesture of international cooperation ever
witnessed in our sad and sorry history of the world. And the only hope for our
mother China.” She stuck out her hand. “I’m Sally Chou. Born and raised in
Chicago, but I came to the motherland with a bunch of Americans during the
pilgrimage of ’73. I’ll not go back to America. I’m a Daughter of Compassion.”

Zhu
remembers that first meeting still.

“What
are you doing after graduation?” Sally Chou lit a cigarette, and Zhu smelled a
tart scent of herbs, not tobacco.

When
Zhu shrugged, Sally Chou laughed and said, “You’re coming with me, skipkid. The
Daughters of Compassion need you.”

Zhu
moved to the compound the Daughters of Compassion owned south of Changchi. A
wealthy Californian friend had repossessed the place after the local real
estate developers had defaulted on one of countless refinancings. Nothing in
Changchi was particularly elegant, but at least the compound was cleaner than
most, with excellent air conditioners and the best water recycler and generator
that could be had in a provincial burg like Changchi.

“We
must fight the Society for the Rights of Parents,” Sally Chou declared in the
village square during the first rally Zhu attended. “We must stand guard at
WBCO clinics. We must chaperone clinic staff. We must trace illegal fund
withdrawals. We must restore order in the databases. There is no turning back
for mother China. We must break the back of exponential growth.”

“So
what if another hundred thousand illegal babies are born?” someone heckled from
the back. “Why do you care?”

“Because
with exponential growth,” Sally Chou said, “another hundred thousand illegal
babies means another million six people before we’ve reached our own middle
age. Can our fields feed another million six people when we don’t have enough
to eat right now? Can our factories employ another million six people when
we’ve got thirty percent unemployment?”

“Can
our future sustain another three million people in the next generation after
that?” Zhu called out.

Sally
Chou was sweating and exhausted by the end of this rally. Zhu didn’t remember
what happened to the heckler in the back.

New
campaigns were announced each spring over bowls of millet gruel at the long plywood
tables.

“Women
must be the first to understand that having children—skip or natch—is a
privilege, not a right,” Sally Chou said. “Women must sacrifice that privilege
for the children. Everyone’s children. For the future! As the cosmicists say,
‘To give is best.’”

“Are
you a cosmicist, Sally?” Zhu asked.

“We
can learn from the cosmicists,” Sally said, a little evasively. “We must all
learn that a sustainable future depends on the sacrifices we make now. Let us
make those sacrifices gladly! Make them out of compassion! We must win the
hearts and minds of our women. All the world watches mother China. Our China
must not fail!”

Our
mother China. We, the women. Zhu eagerly embraced these words and ideas. If all
the world watched mother China, then all the world watched her, too. Zhu, the
abandoned skipchild, now a Daughter of Compassion.

The
compound was comprised of a scrawny vegetable garden, a fishpond, a small ugly
office high-rise, a mediocre medical clinic, a depressing dining hall, an uninspiring
recreation room, and a dormitory and communal baths. Zhu thought the compound
was the most wonderful thing she’d ever seen. Especially the shrine to Kuan
Yin.

Kuan
Yin was the patroness of the Daughters of Compassion. A five-thousand-year-old
goddess, a mystic presence, an intellectual principle, a metaphor, a heroine of
fables, a source of aphorisms, a philosophical statement.

“Who
is Kuan Yin?” Zhu asked as she sat cross-legged on the bare concrete floor. She
gazed at three statuettes on the altar—a seated woman of celadon, a standing
woman with a baby on her hip, and a crouching woman in golden armor, her arms
raised for battle. She wasn’t sure which aspect of Kuan Yin she preferred—the
priestess, the mother, or the warrior.

“She
is the bodhisattva of compassion,” Sally Chou said. “She who hears all pleas.”

In
one fable, Kuan Yin was a hunter, like the Greek goddess Artemis, who offered
women the spiritual life as an alternative to marriage. In another fable, she
was an innocent girl whose parents abused her, then sentenced her to death.
Each time the executioner took pity on her, and she survived. Then, when the
parents fell ill, Kuan Yin carved strips of flesh from her arms and made them
meat soup, which nourished the parents and saved their lives.

Zhu
was enraged by this story, but Sally Chou whispered, “The Daughters of
Compassion are strips of flesh. We are the sacrifice.”

Zhu
nodded and embraced the Cause. She threw herself into the life of abstinence
and discipline. And she never ate meat after that. Meat of any sort—red flesh,
fish, or fowl—tasted too much like a sacrifice.

*  
*   *

Zhu
gains the crest of Montgomery Street, troubled by Muse and perplexed by the
cigar wagon. She gasps for breath. The Archivists insisted she wear a corset
for authenticity. A corset gives the female figure a distinctive curvy look,
even a woman as thin as Zhu. At her most anorexic, her waist measured
twenty-one inches. Wearing the corset, she’s managed to squeeze her waist down
to eighteen inches. Hah. Maybe she hasn’t pulled the laces tight enough. The
advertisements promise a reduction of five inches.

She
runs her hand down her side. She remembers Daniel circling his hands around her
corseted waist, delighting in the bound portion of her body.

A
very troubled young man. And very much a man of his times.

Should
she begrudge him that? Or try to save him from his ignorance?

Oh,
man. There she goes again, trying to save the world and everyone in it.

Not
only does a corset restrict a woman’s breathing, but the undergarment
compromises her digestive tract, her bowels, her uterus, her liver, her
kidneys, her bladder. The exoskeletal construction weakens a woman’s midriff
muscles to the point that some long-term corset wearers can’t sit up or stand
without the support of their whalebone stays.

“Braced
for the day,” Jessie cheerfully says.

Zhu
sneezes at the corner of Montgomery and Broadway where street sweepers bend to
their task. A man in a sombrero leads the way, driving a one-horse Studebaker
wagon. Bolted to the wagon bed is a huge oak cask from which black cast-iron
Niagara sprinkling heads protrude. The driver sprinkles water onto the dusty
street, but without rain for three months, his efforts don’t help much. Another
Studebaker wagon follows, a huge cylindrical brush sweeping the dampened grime into
the gutter. Still another wagon follows that, accompanied by a hunchback on
foot. The hunchback shovels horse manure, dust, and refuse, and deposits his
burden into the back of the wagon. The wagon buzzes with flies. Dust not
captured by the sprinkling water rises over the street in a filthy brown haze.

Zhu
sneezes again, pulling an antihistamine out of her feedbag purse, as well as a
freshly laundered handkerchief. Tears spurt from her eyes and nose. Muse has
managed to identify the source of her allergenic reaction—powdered horse manure
mingled with fly refuse. The fine particulate matter hovers in the city’s air everywhere.
Sometimes luckless horses drop dead on the street and are abandoned. Along with
the feral dogs, the flies quickly descend there, too. It’s the fly refuse that
really gets to Zhu.

She
smelled plenty of compost in Changchi. She breathed carbon monoxide, carbon
dioxide, and methane. But fly shit? Not till 1895.

Now
the blare of a brass band fills her ears as a Columbus Day parade wends its way
up Columbus Avenue. Leading the way on a prancing black stallion rides the
grand marshal, resplendent in a scarlet top hat and cutaway coat, a scarlet
sash and a blooming rosette, white breeches, and high black boots. Zhu claps
her hands and shouts, enchanted by the sight. Fancy carriages follow with black
leather hides and silver chasing, their convertible roofs folded down. Wealthy
Italian families ride inside, decked out in bright silks and black gabardine,
red, white and green sashes slung over the ladies’ ample breasts. They wave to
the crowd, as regal as royalty, and Zhu waves back, happy as a child. Now nuns
in crow-black robes trudge solemnly past, called out into the festivities on
this honored day to look after their obedient charges who march along
next—little girls in white veils, each with prayer books embossed with purple
crosses, and little boys in black suits and green and red ties. The children
sing, their birdlike voices lost in the air. Orphans, Zhu thinks with a sudden
pang. Then jugglers follow, flinging silver balls, painted wood pins, flaming
torches. Lovely! Zhu has only seen live jugglers on holoids. Juggling is a lost
art in her Day. Now clowns costumed like the great Joey Grimaldi caper and prance,
and the goggle-eyed children lining the street curbs scream with laughter. An
emaciated brown bear with a muzzled snout snuffles and sways miserably. The
clubs and special interest groups from the Italian community bring up the rear,
each with its own spangled banner, caps and jackets, and high-stepping drummers
beating time to a measured strut.

Zhu
follows the parade up Columbus to Union Street and turns the corner there,
leaving the parade to promenade north to the waterfront. She sneezes once,
twice, three times. Her feedbag purse slides off her shoulder, and her button
boot slips on something slick.

Not
spillage from the street cleaner’s drudge, thankfully. No, the macadam is slick
with squashed grapes, grape pulp, and dark mottled juice. Could this be the
wine merchant’s address? Well, yeah. Zhu steps inside.

The
place is in a frenzy. The front countertops have been rolled back, revealing a
warehouse of surprising size. Huge wooden presses are busily employed by
boisterous young men. Young women, their hair caught back in red and black
bandanas, fill and cork green bottles as fast as the raw wine can run out of
the spigots. Racks of new wine bottled at the start of the season are stacked
on the rolled-back counters, ready for a fast sale. Other women fill great
wooden casks with the rest of the runoff for proper aging. Bins bulge with
purple grapes the wine merchant had carted down from Napa vineyards.

“
Ciao,
bella,
” says the jovial wine merchant, doused with grape juice and sweat. “You
take a taste?”