Love and Other Consolation Prizes(7)

Ernest finished his tea. He could hear passenger trains coming and going, as well as the wind through cracks in the panes of glass that had been covered with masking tape to hold the pieces together and ward off the chill. King Street Station was one block away, and he imagined nattily dressed people streaming from the velvet-curtained Pullman cars, to be embraced by loved ones—the warmth, the smell of familiar cologne or perfume, the rush and excitement that came with a long-awaited reunion. But he also recalled the haunting emptiness of waving goodbye. The sunrise colored by thick, ashy smoke from torched fields and burning buildings. And the depth of sadness plumbed by the remembrance of falling asleep among dozens of seasick children in the belly of a ship that smelled like fear and despair.

Ernest could almost feel the rain and the mist in the evening sky, as much as the melancholy. He stretched his back as he noticed an illuminated spire in the distance that could only be the top of the Space Needle.

He thought about his long-lost mother as he regarded the hairpin she’d given him so many decades before. That tarnished bit of copper—the jade phoenix he now knew as Fenghuang—made him feel guilty for not missing her more, as though sixty years later he had somehow failed her as a son. At least he’d survived. And the sad truth was, he just couldn’t remember what she looked like. He didn’t possess a single photograph. He could always remember how she smelled, though—sweet, like fresh watermelon, mangoes, and bayberries. While reading a science book years later, he learned that’s what a body smells like when it’s starving.

Over the years Ernest had always thought more about the many girls on that ship and what might have happened to them—especially whenever he saw an elderly woman in a market in Chinatown, the story of her life written in the lines on her face.

He imagined that if they’d been fortunate, the ones who could walk probably ended up as servants in fancy, ivy-covered manors in Broadmoor or Laurelhurst. Or perhaps they’d found work in a laundry or a sewing factory. The choice few might have been able to earn or marry their way out of their contracts, to eventually have a home on Beacon Hill, and children who would have attended school at Franklin or Garfield High. They would have enjoyed all the trappings of a relatively normal life.

The merchants’ daughters, in all likelihood, had ended up as picture brides, married to strangers they’d never seen except in black-and-white photographs.

Unlike the least fortunate of all—the sorrowful girls who had been so kind to him. Like him, they’d been sold by their parents because their families couldn’t feed them or didn’t want them, or they were mere runaways tricked into thinking they’d get rich in America by working as maids. Many of those girls who came to Seattle ended up at the Aloha, the Tokyo, or the Diamond House, or perhaps the old Eastern Hotel—low-rent brothels. The girls were indentured servants with unfair contracts, who might run away to the police only to be returned, like stray animals, to their owners.

All of these women, Ernest thought—the poor, the merchants’ daughters, and the handful of working girls who survived—they’d all be grandmothers by now. With secrets kept, stories hidden, and respectful children who would never dare to ask about their youth.

Ernest’s reverie was interrupted by footsteps in the hallway.

He listened as the radiator pinged and hot water pipes rattled within the walls. As he waited, he drew a deep breath, and then relaxed when he heard the tromping of work boots in the groaning, creaking mahogany stairwell of the old Chinatown hotel.

Perhaps it was his old friend, Pascual Santos, a longtime resident of the Publix who’d helped Ernest move in when he lost his home.

Maybe he’s hoping I’ll join him for a night out on the town, Ernest thought. He knew he should answer the door, but he didn’t feel much like socializing.

In fact, he’d considered moving someplace nicer, but whenever he was woken by chatter in the hallway—greetings in Chinese, Japanese, and Tagalog, some polite, some stern, a few happy, rambling voices that slurred from too much drugstore screw-top wine—Ernest realized that he felt strangely comfortable here. At this pay-by-the-week purgatory, the rooms were tiny, the floors were warped, the bathrooms shared, and the old floral wallpaper was perpetually peeling, but the bar for achievement was remarkably nonexistent, and he was fine with that. Because the Publix was an old workingmen’s home, a tobacco-stained hideaway where lost individuals found solace. Where the elderly tended to their gardens on the roof, and the children of the few families who lived here played basketball in the basement. And for Ernest the hotel was also mere miles from all the people he’d grown up with and cared about.

Ernest was about to make a fresh pot of tea when he heard footsteps again, this time the unmistakable rap-tap of a woman’s heels on the wooden floor outside his door, and a knock.

“Dad, it’s me. Open up.” The voice in the hallway belonged to his daughter Juju. Ernest had been so busy driving people to and from the fair that he’d ignored the small stack of pink While You Were Out messages that had piled up in his mailbox downstairs, courtesy of the hotel’s front desk manager. Now he guessed they were from her.

Juju switched to an innocent singsong. “Da-aaaad, I know you’re in there.”

His daughters always worried about him, especially in the years since Gracie had fallen ill. Even Hanny, who lived in Las Vegas, which seemed like a world away, called at least once a week, long-distance charges and all. Ernest rubbed his eyes as he looked in the chipped mirror on the wall. He finger-combed his thinning, salt-and-pepper hair and straightened his well-worn sweater, which had only one button left.