Outrun the Moon(8)

I cringe a little at his disapproving tone. “Not yet. But I have an appointment with the school board president on Monday. Don’t worry, Ba. Getting a foot in the door was the hard part.” I project more confidence than I feel.

“Do not get your foot stuck. It is easier to catch a phoenix feather than to get into that school.” Ba’s eyes become smaller, and it’s hard to see the shape of his thoughts.

After my graduation from the Oriental Public School, he slipped me a red envelope with a quarter in it and said, “You may no longer be in school, but you must never stop learning. We need to be as smart as the white ghosts.”

I started work right after graduation—first sweeping graves, and then, when that ended, helping Ba at the laundry during the hours his assistant wasn’t there. While I worked, I schemed for ways to break Jack free from the cycles of rinse, wash, and repeat. Hard work wasn’t enough to get rich, or else we’d already be living in a mansion on Nob Hill with cut-glass windows like those of Leland Stanford or Mark Hopkins. No, the key to wealth was opportunity. And if opportunity didn’t come knocking, then Mrs. Lowry says you must build your own door.

“How will we get the money for this fancy school?”

“I am going to propose they offer me a scholarship.”

“I don’t want their money. I just want the white ghosts to stop taking our money. Every day they find something new to tax. Tax the clothespins, tax the socks, tax the holes in the socks.” Ba glares at his cracked red hands.

Jack sits very still, glancing between us. Ma stirs her bowl of fortune-telling beans with her finger, taking in everything with a look of serenity.

I stifle my annoyance, which jabs like a bone in my craw. “You told me to keep learning.”

“Yes, keep learning, but not at the white ghosts’ school.”

“There are no high schools in Chinatown.”

The two grooves between his nose and mouth flatten.

“Do you want us to be stuck here all our lives?” I press. “The brochure says St. Clare’s is on par with the Men’s Wilkes College. Think of the things I’ll learn—”

“If you get in.”

“When I graduate—”

“If you graduate . . .” His hand curls up on the table, like a crouching spider.

“I will graduate. And then I will start a fine company.”

Unlike some of my other ideas, Tom thinks my plan to bring Chinese herbs to the American market is sound. With his herbal expertise, I want to develop a line of American-friendly herbal teas with catchy names like “Strong as an Elephant Heart” and “Float Away like Dandelion Puff.” For all their disdain of Chinese people, Americans certainly like our goods—silks, teas, porcelain—and Ah-Suk gets a fair share of tourists poking around his store for alternatives to the laudanum that Western doctors prescribe for everything. “Once my business takes off, you and Ma can buy a house on Nob Hill.”

He laughs. “What makes you think they’d let us move to Nob Hill?”

“The shrimp peeler did it.” One of Ma’s old clients found a gold nugget the size of a baby’s foot after she told him to expect metal in his future. It was enough to pry a three-story house off a Dutchman.

Ba snorts. “The shrimp peeler died before he signed the papers and saved himself much heartache.” He looks pointedly at Ma, who hadn’t predicted that part of his fortune. She shrugs.

“Why?” squeaks Jack, wispy eyebrows shaped into question marks. “Why can’t we move to Nob Hill?”

Ma places our empty dishes into a wooden bucket. “To bed, dai-dai.”

Jack hesitates. But after one look at our parents, with their lips clamped tight as crab pincers, he scampers into the room where he sleeps with Ma. Because of his irregular schedule, Ba sleeps there only after Jack has awoken, while I always sleep on a bedroll by the stove.

After the door closes, Ba says, “Why can’t you start your fine company without that school?”

“If I graduate from one of the white ghosts’ best schools, doors will open. It will give me credibility. Also, I’d make connections, and Mrs. Lowry says connections are like roots that help a tree—”

“Mrs. Low-ree.” Ba says her name in English. “This does not sound Chinese.”

“She’s not Chinese.”

“Exactly.” Ba plucks up one of Ma’s red beans and spins it on the table. “You go to that school, you will start wanting what you cannot have. One day, you will marry the herbalist’s son. It is not prudent for wives to be better than their husbands. People will believe you are trying to outshine him, or worse, that he is not a good provider. Wives should be meek.”

My argument dies on my tongue. Was it possible Tom grew strange on me because he, in fact, does want a meek wife? Someone with tiny “lotus blossom” feet who will confine herself to the home, fold dumplings, and chop the knots out of his back?

Ma’s face has become as expressionless as cardboard.

“You don’t think she should go there, do you?” Ba asks. Chinese men don’t usually solicit the opinion of their wives, but Ba respects Ma’s wisdom, even if he doesn’t respect her fortune-telling.

She glances at my burning face. “I think jade needs polishing before it can become useful.”