Love and Other Consolation Prizes(33)







DRAGON’S BLOOD


(1909)



After Ernest finished delivering the invitations, he returned to the Tenderloin and found Fahn waiting for him on the front step. She was peeling green apples, cutting them, and dropping the slices into a copper pot filled with water. She wiped her hands on a kitchen towel and shook her head.

“When Miss Amber saw that the Mayflower had sailed back without its crewman, she chewed her out something fierce and then sent me off looking for you. I circled around for a few blocks, but I knew you’d figure it out.” Fahn smiled and cocked her head. “I hoped anyway. Grab the pot and follow me.”

As Ernest trailed behind, he tried not to drip on the carpets or the wooden floor and tried even harder not to think about Maisie, and her stubborn acceptance of her circumstances. He remembered the last time he saw his own mother back in China. Her life—her death—had become more myth than memory. He knew he’d been born near the Pearl River Delta, but now he couldn’t even find that place on a map. And he remembered his mother telling him how she could never be a good Chinese wife, could never abide by the three obediences—whatever those were.

He put the pot down on the kitchen counter where a dozen ceramic dishes sat at the ready, lined with fresh piecrusts. He felt heat radiating from the large gas oven.

“Are we baking pies?” Ernest asked. “I don’t know a thing about—”

“Mrs. Blackwell must be taking a break,” Fahn cut him off. “She makes the pies. I do all the grunt work. I don’t mind, though, because I was able to save you the best apple in all of Washington—maybe the whole wide world.”

Ernest watched as she hung up her apron, polished a perfectly round apple, chopped it in half, and delicately sliced out the core with a paring knife. Then she took a wooden dipper and drizzled honey over the bare fruit. She handed him one half and then bit into the other, wiping her chin with the back of her hand.

“Miss Amber told me to pick up tins of snuff for the upstairs girls. They use chewing tobacco to lose weight and stay fit. Then I have to go pick up Madam Flora’s new medicine,” Fahn said with an excited smile. “Amber thought that you should come with me so you know where to get it next time.”

Ernest’s legs felt tired from trying to keep up with Maisie, and his feet were swollen in his ill-fitting leather shoes, but the apple tasted sweet.

“I’d love to go,” he told her.



ERNEST FOLLOWED FAHN, who mercifully walked at a much slower pace than Maisie’s battle march. As they turned left at King Street Station and headed east up South Jackson, she pointed out places of interest, like the Maple Leaf Saloon, the Triangle Bar, and the People’s Theatre in the basement on Second Avenue.

“Don’t be fooled by the name,” Fahn confided. “It’s not a penny crush. It’s a low-rent crib joint with watered-down drinks. If a rich customer happens to wander into a place like that, he’s bound to take a sap to the back of the head, wake up down on the mudflats, without his wallet. Madam Flora hates those kinds of places. She says they treat the girls awful and give the Garment District a bad name.”

Ernest was still gawking at the buildings when they passed a newspaper boy who stood on a fruit crate, shouting headlines.

“Ty Cobb wins home run title with ninth home run!” he barked to no one in particular as he held up the paper. “Only a nickel! Read all about it!”

Fahn smiled at the newsboy. “Maybe on the way back, hon.”

As they continued east, Ernest noticed the signage above the stores had changed from English to Chinese. But there was also Oriental lettering that he didn’t recognize—Japanese, he assumed. He remembered how Mrs. Irvine had once taken all the kids from the children’s home to the Majestic Theatre for a production of Jappyland. But all of the performers, singers, dancers, the emperor, the queen, even the geishas and cuddle-up girls were all just white people in heavy robes and thick Pan-Cake makeup—a contrast to the people he was now passing on the street. Men in woolen suits grew scarce, replaced by Orientals in white collars, black hats, and silken robes with fine Chinese embroidery. Ernest couldn’t read the symbols on their clothing but vaguely remembered that the robes and the beads represented rank in the community.

“Where are we going?” he asked as he overheard a group of men arguing in a dialect that reminded him of the village where he’d been born.

Fahn took his hand. “We’re going to the Jue Young Wo herb shop for dried dracaena flowers.” She laced her fingers between his and held on tight. She arched an eyebrow mischievously. “They use it to make dragon’s blood.”

Some sort of illicit drug, Ernest thought as he furrowed his brow and remembered old men on a Chinese waterfront sleeping beneath the thick, meaty, sickly-sweet smell of opium smoke. Or like the herbs some men in China used to boost their virility.

Ernest’s heart raced as he glanced surreptitiously at his fingers, interlaced with Fahn’s. The simple magic of her touch reminded him of how comfortable he felt at the Tenderloin, how excited, and joyful, a sense of belonging he had only dreamed of all those years at the boarding school. Somehow, he finally fit in. That’s when he noticed his and Fahn’s reflection in the window of the Gom Hong Grocery, their hands swinging freely between them, connecting them. This stroll into Chinatown was also a homecoming. The people, the faces, the smells and aromas of roasting duck, dove, and waxy sausages preserved with cinnamon wafted over him like remembrance of a lovely dream he’d long forgotten. But the faces of the few Chinese women he saw reminded him of his mother, and the Japanese men reminded him of her warnings.

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