The Many Daughters of Afong Moy(111)
His mouth moved, silently.
She turned an ear to him as he whispered.
“Tomorrow, Dorothy.”
He closed his eyes and didn’t cough anymore. He didn’t struggle. He slept, his breathing ragged, more uneven. She lost all sense of time as she held him for what must have been hours, singing, whispering to him in the darkness, until he was gone.
* * *
Dorothy stood near the taffrail while the other passengers slept, dreaming. She watched as Chief Officer Cappis nodded solemnly to a pair of sailors, who lowered Alby’s body, shrouded in sackcloth, until he became one with the sea. Dorothy didn’t hear the finality of a splash, just the wind and the constant churn of the ocean.
While most of the crew went belowdecks or retired to the afterhouse to keep warm, Dorothy found a seat in a gamming chair. She settled in with a heavy blanket around her shoulders. The wicker basket swayed as she listened to the snapping of sails and the rhythmic creaking of timbers that resembled the slow ticktock of a metronome.
She stayed on deck watching stars sink into the ocean, keeping vigil for her friend until the first orange blooms of morning began to unfold, and within minutes it looked as though someone had lit the sky on fire. She heard crewmen shouting from high above and herring gulls crooning as they swooped across the bow. The horizon turned into a purple silhouette of land, smokestacks revealing the jagged serration of a city. Dorothy grew more excited with each mile as sailors barked commands and confirmations to one another with a jovial, eager lilt in their voices. An officer declared that the tide was perfect, and she watched as the sails were finally taken down in sight of the harbor and the rigging was secured. Without the billowing of the mainsail all was quiet, and as the ship began to slow Dorothy heard the gleeful chatter of passengers hugging one another as much in relief as celebration. Together they watched as hawsers were cast to smaller boats that used the great hemp ropes to tow them closer to their destination. Once in range, crewmen heaved lines to the dockworkers, who tied them around stout bollards the size of tree stumps. On board, a half-dozen seamen wound their ends of the lines around an enormous capstan. Then they shoved bars into the barrel like spokes on a bicycle wheel and sang as they pushed, turning the great iron gear, slowly pulling the vessel alongside the dock, beneath a blue sky smudged with coal smoke.
Dorothy waited as wealthy passengers who had gathered near the bow disembarked down a private gangway festooned with laurels of black-eyed Susans. The rest of the passengers gathered toward the aft. Most ignored her, though some stared at her, pointed, and whispered among themselves. Others regarded her with a scorn and hostility she didn’t understand. She stepped back as they walked down a creaky wooden plank with ropes for railings, their arms loaded with their belongings. Finally, a seaman nodded to Dorothy, and she took her turn down the plank. She was the last to disembark, but joyfully received the gift of steady land beneath her feet.
She followed the crowds of people down the dock and stepped off at Fells Point, where a malmsey-nosed handler noticed her, eyeing her appraisingly, and she remembered she was different—Chinese—an oddity in this country.
“Oy!” he called out, spitting on the ground.
She ducked her head and kept walking.
“Someone grab that yellow wagtail.”
Dorothy disappeared into the crowd of departing passengers and servants, eager to be as far away from the ship as possible, and porters, workingmen, day laborers coming and going from nearby warehouses, canneries, and gristmills, reeking of tobacco and sweat. Two of the men bumped into each other and began shouting, arguing. One man with a thick, Irish brogue yelled, while the other spoke in Italian and cursed in broken English. As the first punches were thrown and a scrum broke out, onlookers cheered, while some fled. Others, drunk and hoary-eyed, staggered by without noticing. In the mayhem, Dorothy snuck in with a group of young girls in tatters who were being led away by a pair of gib-faced nuns. One said, “Come along now, dears, the streets are no place for a lady.” The sister had a sign that read: Magdalene Society.
Dorothy trailed behind, staring ahead, keeping to herself as two of the girls took notice, crossed themselves, and kept walking.
When her group reached the corner of Eastern Avenue, the crowds began to thin and Dorothy slipped away, crossing to the other side of the street where she felt heat radiating through the red brick walls of the Baltimore Union Stoneware Manufactory. She covered her nose and mouth as she smelled soot, tasted ash, and kept walking as bottle ovens and lime kilns spewed black smoke that bled into the sky like ink on paper.
She made her way down Broadway. Startled at the snap of a buggy whip, she skipped to the flagstone sidewalk, stumbling as a horse clip-clopped by pulling a phaeton carriage down the wood-block pavement. The bearded man at the reins tipped his coachman’s hat as he passed, saying, “Mind your step.” She looked down at a rivulet of fetid water streaming down the gutter, rank enough to attract mayflies, but not flowing heavily enough to carry the bloated body of a dead cat and the contents of last night’s chamber pots down to the harbor.
Dorothy held her breath and kept walking until the foul odors abated and were replaced with the warm, sweet smell of wheat paste. She glanced about for the source of the aroma—a pastry shop or a confectionery—and bumped into a wooden ladder.
“Careful,” a young voice said from above.
She looked up and saw a teenager with a long-handled brush, a pastepot dangling from the ladder, and a satchel slung across his back with wide sheets of rolled-up paper. He was busy spreading a new poster for the American Temperance Union atop a faded, peeling broadsheet that read: COME SEE THE CHINESE LADY.