The Many Daughters of Afong Moy(43)

He said good night with a shrug.

As they closed their doors, Afong glanced over her shoulder, and for a moment she thought she saw him smiling.



* * *



That night Afong dreamt she was onstage in some nameless theater in a nameless city performing before nameless people. She stood beneath the spotlight in a smoke-filled auditorium and tried to sing but could not make a sound, could barely move. She was frozen in place, staring out at a packed audience, all of them faceless, except for a small Chinese woman in the middle. She had gray hair and wore a white funeral gown. Afong recognized her yin yin. She stared at her long-dead grandmother.

The old woman stood up slowly. She opened her mouth to speak, her lips moved, trembling, but Afong could not hear a sound as water exploded from the exits and came roaring down the aisles and the voms, torrents submerging the audience, swamping the stage, filling up the theater. As the cold water rose, roiling toward the ceiling, it snuffed out gas lamps and chandeliers that sizzled and popped in bursts of fire and showers of sparks. Afong’s heart raced as she kicked and flailed beneath the surface. She felt the suffocating heaviness of her waterlogged clothing. She opened her eyes in a panic and saw a blur of people, audience members, men and women, bodies, floating, tumbling, sinking. She felt the current as though a watery hand grabbed her, pulling her deeper into the darkness.

She tried to scream.

Afong bolted upright in bed.

She heard polite knocking and looked around the moonlit room, confused. She heard knocking a second time. Then a third.

She suspected who it was and said, “Jap loi.”

Nanchoy gently opened the door. He peeked inside and then stepped in. He walked lightly, as though she were still asleep. “Are you okay? I heard you cry out. You were calling for help.”

He closed the door behind him.

Afong slowly remembered where she was. Who she was.

She looked around the dimly lit room and remembered the home she lost, the family she would never see again, her mother, her grandmother, her sisters, Yao Han. She touched her blanket, her clothing, her hair, expecting everything to be sopping, but the only wetness she felt were tears running down her cheeks. She looked away, pulled her robe from the bedpost, and wrapped it around her as she tried not to cry, but she might as well have tried not to breathe. Light-headed, she flinched as she felt Nanchoy’s hand on her shoulder. Then she surrendered to her grief and turned, gripping the front of his nightshirt with both fists, pulling him toward her, burying her face in his chest, anguished, openmouthed, crying until she was out of breath, voiceless, gulping the air between sobs. She felt his arms around her, holding her tight. He rocked her and was speaking, but she did not know what he was saying. All she could hear were her ears ringing, her heart pounding, her blood thick with anger and rejection and loss.

She looked up at him, tears still running down both cheeks.

He smiled in the dimly lit room.

And kissed her.

For a moment Afong splashed back beneath the surface of the water.

Sinking.

His lips felt warm, but his teeth smashed into hers and his breath reeked of tobacco. She felt his hand on the back of her head, pulling her hair as he kissed her again.

“Ng Hou,” she said as she struggled to turn away.

He put his weight against her and pressed her down, her shoulders to the mattress, the back of her head into the pillow. He was on top of her, taller, older, twice her weight.

She felt his leg, his knee, slip between hers.

“It’s okay,” he said.

“No.”

“Shhh…”

She opened her mouth to yell for help but could not make a sound. She was frozen, submerged, drowning. She wanted to shout, wanted to plead, wanted to run, but she did nothing as she felt his hand over her mouth and another on the brass buttons of her nightgown.

I am not here.

“I came all this way to be with you, Afong. I’ve waited as long as I could.”

She turned her head, aching to be home again.

I am sorry, Ah-ma.

“I won’t let anything bad happen to you,” Nanchoy whispered.

Afong stared out the window as the moon disappeared and the stars went out.

She was her yin yin, lifeless, vacant, eyelids half-open.

She could smell his sweat, hear his labored breathing.

She closed her eyes.

When Afong opened them again, she was alone in the dark, gasping for air. The sheets wet against her back from perspiration. She sat up, moving without thought, a puppet on a string. She touched her feet to the cool floor. Looked down at her nightgown. Felt the spot where a button was missing. She found it on the floor and held it in her hand, staring at it like a lost penny in the dimly lit room. She heard thunder and noticed the rain. She saw flashes of lightning on the horizon as she lay down, staring into nothing for hours, gripping the button, squeezing it until its edges cut crescents into her palm.



* * *



Afong slept in the next day.

Followed by the rest of the week and the week after that.

She slept in every day, sometimes late into the afternoon, right up until she had to get dressed to go to Carroll Hall. Though the word sleep was an exaggeration, as she often just closed her eyes, curled up in her blanket. Other times she would sit at the window. Instead of working on her embroidery—which the Hanningtons regularly took from her and sold as souvenirs—she listened to the lonely chorus of the city, the policemen’s whistles, the sound of carriages and coaches. Barking strays and braying pack animals. Afong envisioned standing in the middle of the avenue and being kicked in the head by a draft horse or trampled by a team, waking up back in her village—all of this a bad dream—or not waking up at all. Both outcomes seemed equally satisfying in her mind, because every night she remembered feelings of terror, helplessness, nothingness, then waking up alone, hoping it was only a nightmare. Then she would smell him on her, on her clothing, the sheets. Even on the nights when he did not appear in the dark at her bedside, hands on his belt buckle, she could no longer rest. She would hide beneath her blankets, fearful of sounds from the hallway, a creaking staircase, a door, footsteps, a man’s cough. Or conversely, hiding from the many hobgoblins of her imagination. The dread that circled overhead like a black-eyed raven.