The Many Daughters of Afong Moy(101)
As the sirens faded and the congested streets slowly began to move, she saw an old military vehicle slosh by. Not a typical Humvee used by riot police or the National Guard, but an old, noisy, open-top jeep, the type urban hipsters restored, like vintage Volkswagen Beetles or old Ford Broncos. Dorothy thought the jeep looked like a set piece from an old war movie, an olive drab relic of another time, another place, another generation. In the rear of the jeep, a Chinese woman in a nurse’s uniform stared back as though she recognized Dorothy. The woman brushed her rain-soaked hair aside and smiled gently, waving as the jeep disappeared.
* * *
On board the last subway train, Dorothy stood elbow to elbow in a packed car that smelled of brake dust and wet denim. Everyone smiling in quiet relief with each mile.
“Zhe shi jinji qingkuang,” a woman’s recorded voice chimed through the speakers. Her tone was calm, pleasant, as though she were saying, This is an emergency, the way someone might say, Thank you and have a nice day.
The voice switched from Mandarin to English and the woman said, “The storm is expected to make landfall in twenty-four hours. If you are not already leaving the flood zone, please be advised that the following bridges are closed…” Dorothy’s thoughts turned back to her daughter. Annabel was safe. She was with people she trusted. She’d be okay. As the subway rattled its way around a corner, Dorothy remembered the woman she’d seen earlier, who implored her to protect Annabel. The only way I can do that, Dorothy reasoned, is to finish this. To clear the slate once and for all. That’s when Dorothy felt something else in her pocket. She let go of the meds and touched something smooth and metallic. She pulled out the wafer-thin, gold-colored medallion with the likeness of the Buddha. The figure smiled serenely in a commercial, mass-produced way. She’d been given the trinket weeks ago by panhandlers in saffron robes. She should have tossed it, but as the train pulled into King Street Station, she was now grateful for the gift.
As passengers disembarked, Dorothy zipped up her coat and followed them off the train, through the crowded subway terminal that was teeming with Red Cross volunteers helping people evacuate. Dorothy walked outside into the heart of the International District, where despite the torrent of rain, she felt at ease. Not just because she was Chinese, but because the district had been perpetually left behind in the wake of Seattle’s economic booms, and facial-recognition cameras were scarce. The few that had been installed years ago were often damaged or vandalized and rarely repaired. This was the one part of the city where Dorothy felt unjudged, free to be herself. Though the lack of street cameras also meant that whenever there was a rally downtown, the city would use barricades to funnel angry protesters away from banking centers, elegant restaurants, and retail finery, unleashing them in a neighborhood mainly populated with migrants and the elderly who subsisted on fixed incomes.
Dorothy wiped the rain from her eyes and looked to the west, where she saw rows of illuminated roadblocks that kept stubborn or foolhardy people from traveling back into dangerous areas near the waterfront. But to the east, directly uphill, there were flashing lights, red and blue, as police were helping load homeless people onto the city’s light rail system, presumably bound for destinations away from the flood zones. Dorothy hastened in that direction, five, six, seven blocks, past the departing railcars and an officer who called out to her. She couldn’t make out what he was saying above the thrum of the rain, the howling wind. She pretended not to hear and kept going, her heart racing, afraid Louise had already put out an Amber Alert for her and Annabel, though with fading cell service that possibility was diminishing by the minute.
Dorothy kept going, to the one place she suspected would be relatively unaffected if the power went out. A place of refuge that she had visited a few times as a homeless teen. Someplace she’d turned to when she needed to get warm, to sober up or come down. She felt a comforting familiarity as she reached the ornate wooden doors of the Gotami Buddhist Temple. She glanced up at the sky that had turned black, then she tossed the medallion into a garbage bin and walked inside.
* * *
Dorothy stood in the foyer and inhaled the familiar, woody aroma of incense powder along with the pleasant fragrance of fresh gardenias and drying citrus. The sweet scents tried in vain to mask the musty odors of soiled clothing, well-worn shoes, and unwashed hair. To Dorothy, the pleasant scents mixed with the aromas of poverty, addiction, loneliness, and desperation were like an olfactory déjà vu as she remembered coming here in her youth, often after having lived outdoors for days—sometimes weeks—at a time. She quietly cringed as she recalled the polite, sympathetic smiles of other temple-goers, grown-ups and monks, who noticed her dull affect, the sadness in her eyes. They always offered kindness and generosity of spirit as they pretended not to notice her obvious lack of supervision and hygiene.
Now as an adult, Dorothy couldn’t help but feel compassion and kinship for the handful of people bedding down in corners and along one side of a grand hallway, stretching out on cushioned mats with their meager belongings as a young female monastic in an amber robe passed out woolen blankets.
An old woman, a bhikkhuni, with an identical sash, her head shaved to gray stubble, carrying an armload of white candles, noticed Dorothy. “Please, come in,” she said. “I’m afraid the last bus of evacuees from the tent city in Wisteria Park just left, but you’re welcome to spend the night here. We’re above the flood zone and should be able to ride out the worst of the storm.” As if to reinforce her point, thunder boomed overhead and the ceiling joists of the old brick building creaked and groaned defiantly in the wind.