The Many Daughters of Afong Moy(68)

Lai King frowned. Then she heard a commotion outside; it was her father, not shouting, but certainly speaking in Chinese above his normal calm demeanor.

Her mother drifted to the window and parted the curtain. Lai King followed, peering outside. She saw the carriage from the Health Department, the men in white, with a pair of police officers. Her father said they were here to help during the quarantine, but whenever she saw them she felt more dread than relief, more fear than comfort.

Today the ghost men set up a table, and on it was a collection of bottles and brass instruments. Lai King spotted her father in front of a row of Chinese laborers. He was translating for the men in white, who instructed all the laborers to remove their shirts, which they did, albeit reluctantly and only with encouragement from her father. Lai King stared down at the men, their shoulders and arms tan and sinewy, their queues hung between their shoulder blades. One old man’s braid was so long it hung down to the back of his knees. The men shifted nervously, shuddering in the cool morning breeze. Lai King watched as the ghost men began an inspection of the workers, poking and prodding their necks, their backs, their underarms, taking measurements with brass calipers.

“What are they doing?” Lai King asked.

Her mother didn’t answer. She didn’t blink. She seemed frozen, a matronly statue, a mother and wife in repose. She held on to the curtain, her knuckles turning white.

Lai King stared back out the window. She winced as one of the men in white picked up a brass instrument with a long, sharp needle.

She listened as her father translated the words of the ghost men.

“This is medicine,” her father translated to Chinese. “A great man, named Sir Waldemar Haffkine, found a cure for cholera, and when he did, the queen of England knighted him for this miracle. Now he has discovered a cure for this great pestilence, the blue sickness that has taken so many of our friends and neighbors.”

The Chinese men muttered to each other as they stepped back.

Her mother let out a soft cry, and Lai King glanced over and wrapped her arms around her slender waist. Lai King felt her mother’s heart beating.

When she looked again, Lai King saw that her father had removed his shirt as well. He spoke to the gathering of workers and then held out his arm. One of the ghost men approached, held up a long needle, and tapped it.

Lai King winced as one of the men in white held her father’s arm and poked the sharp metal through his skin. Her father glanced up at their apartment. Then he turned his attention to a man in white, who wrapped his arm in a bandage. He put his shirt back on and motioned for the men to follow his lead, which they did, albeit slowly, hesitantly, until one by one they each received the injection.

Lai King watched as her father disappeared beneath an awning, then she heard him coming up the stairs. She hid behind her mother, worried that he was coming to bring them down to be stabbed by that long and frightful needle.

“Gam sam mou!” her mother exclaimed as her father walked in. Lai King was taken aback. She rarely heard her mother raise her voice to her father. She paced about their apartment, pointing to the window. “Why did you do that!? You’re an interpreter, not a doctor. Let those white men test their cure on themselves if they think it works.”

Lai King’s father gently took her mother’s hands. “I’m sorry.” He spoke in Cantonese, softly, calmly, as though trying to tame a skittish, cornered animal. “I had to. They’re not letting anyone leave.” He looked into her eyes. His words were measured. “They paid me generously for my help. Enough so that if things get worse…”

Lai King’s father glanced at her, then back to her mother, who seemed to understand. She nodded, then collapsed into her husband’s arms.



* * *



Lai King didn’t sleep at all that night.

Hours after her father received the cure, his arm swelled up to twice its normal size and he lay in bed, so fevered that his body soaked the sheets. She stoked the fire in their cooking stove, heating tea and soup made from honey dates and goji berries, as her mother sat in the auburn glow of an oil lamp, wiping his forehead with a damp cloth.

Lai King listened as her mother prayed. Watched as she lit sticks of incense, washing herself in sandalwood smoke. Then she placed small mirrors around her father to confuse and scare away demons who might come to try and lead his spirit away.

“Is Ah-ba going to die?” Lai King asked, her voice quavering.

She waited in the silence, unsure if she wanted an answer.

Her mother finally said, “He’s been given a small amount of death—smaller than a single grain of rice. But it’s powerful, this magic. He takes this grain of death inside. It sickens him. Causes him to cry out and wear this fever like a mask, so when death comes, it passes by thinking your father is already on his way to the spirit world.”

Lai King crinkled her nose. This was the type of fable her father might tell her. Not an answer, but a story with a riddle inside.

“Why doesn’t he turn into a sparrow and fly away from this place, far from the sickness,” Lai King asked. “Like his ah-ma did when he was a baby?”

Her mother looked at her and drew a deep breath. She set aside the wet cloth, wiped her hands on her dress, and then parted Lai King’s hair from her eyes. She gently kissed her forehead. Her ah-ma smiled ever so slightly, as though doing so took all the strength she had. “Your father doesn’t have any magic of his own anymore. Neither do I.” She got down on one knee and held Lai King’s hands. “We used up all of our magic when we created you. Look how wise and beautiful you turned out.”