The Many Daughters of Afong Moy(69)

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Lai King tried to stay awake, leaning against a windowsill. But she woke beneath her blankets and realized her mother must have carried her to bed. All was quiet except for swallows and killdeer chirping outside on a telegraph wire. She enjoyed their birdsongs because they were affirmations of spring. Like a poem she’d learned in school about the scent of vanilla across a frozen valley. Beneath the birdsongs lay a comforting silence, a welcome absence compared to the sounds of her father in pain.

In the quiet of the morning, Lai King rose, walked to her parents’ bed, and pulled back the curtain. They were both asleep. Though her father’s skin looked pale, mottled with purple bruises the color of a ripe eggplant, and Lai King hated eggplant. She looked at her mother, whose eyes were puffy from crying. She searched for telltale signs, the swollen neck, the dark splotches. But as she looked at her mother’s skin all she saw were a few fleabites, nothing out of the ordinary.

Lai King heard bells in the distance, the sound of weeping through the walls, the rumble of a wagon outside. She wanted to climb into bed with her parents, to curl up between them. Instead she restarted the cooking fire, opening the stove door as quietly as possible, loading the firebox with kindling. She filled a kettle with water for tea. Then she sat by the window again. She longed for the bustle of sailors and merchants. The noisy chaos of saloons and gambling parlors. She even missed school. Instead there were men pushing a cart filled with dead animals, cats, dogs, and rats. A few Chinese men and women moved about the quarantined neighborhood, but they walked far apart from each other, their faces covered. When she looked up she saw an elderly woman hanging laundry from her window. The white cloth looked like a flag of surrender.

Lai King turned as she heard her father talking in his delirium. He spoke in single words, unfinished sentences, truncated messages. Start. Stop. Like a telegram. Stop. She listened as he drifted in and out of Chinese and English.

“Ah-ma, where have you been? You frightened me. Geng sei luh,” her father said. “Ngo gin dou nei. Yes. I see you. Will give her seon sik.” Then he bolted upright, wide-eyed, struggling to catch his breath, as though waking from a nightmare.

Lai King’s mother startled and sat up partway, her eyes scanning the apartment. She saw Lai King, then looked to her husband, slowly realizing this was not a dream, that he was sick, that they were still in quarantine. She struggled to swallow.

“He was talking,” Lai King said.

“And I was dreaming,” her mother said. “About your ancestors.”

Her father moaned and Lai King watched as her mother tended to her father’s sores and bruises with a tincture made from marigolds. For a moment it looked as though his spirit had returned, intact. He looked lucid. He looked at Lai King and then at his wife. He smiled and reached up, and Lai King watched as her parents embraced. She watched as he pulled her mother close and whispered in her ear.

“I will,” her mother spoke softly.

Then what wakefulness he had fled his body and his eyes closed. He lay back down, shivering, and her mother found another blanket and piled it on top of him.

She turned to Lai King and said, “It’s time for us to leave.”



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Lai King sat across the room from where her father slept, the curtain closed. “I’m going to find someone to help us,” her mother said as she wrapped a scarf around her nose and mouth. “Stay in this room. Understand?”

“But what about Ah-ba?”

“This is what he asked me to do,” her mother said. “This is what he wants.”

That was four hours ago.

Lai King stared at her father’s small suitcase, packed with all her clothing, a few books from school, her old pair of shoes that didn’t even fit anymore. Her mother’s suitcase remained unpacked. Though there was a canvas bag filled with pruned fruit, nuts, and chewy strands of dried cuttlefish—the last of their food. She stood at the window, her only access to the outside world. More windows had laundry draped beneath. She counted fifteen, twenty, maybe more. As she counted, Lai King realized these people weren’t hanging their laundry. They were hanging a sign, letting the neighborhood know when someone was infected. She looked down and realized her mother had hung a similar piece of cloth.

Lai King wanted desperately to ask her father about all of this. He always seemed to have a hopeful answer, or at least an interesting story, the kind that would puzzle her, charm her, keep her up late at night contemplating the possibilities, what was real and what was a tall tale, especially during the Lunar New Year.

“What’s that one?” she’d asked as they walked down the crowded street to get sweet dumplings, months ago, eyeing slips of paper that dangled from colorful lanterns hung by shopkeepers to celebrate the holiday season.

Her father stopped to read the attached riddle out loud. “Hmmm… this is a good one. What belongs to you but others use it more than you do?” He looked at her with a smile and raised eyebrows. “I think I know…”

“Don’t tell me!” Lai King struggled for an answer. Then she began to guess. “My hands? No, that’s not it. Our house? Is it our house!?”

“Oh… so close.” He smiled. “The answer, Lai King Moy, is your name.”

Now he was silent.

She wished he would say her name again. She wished he would say anything, make any sound. She couldn’t even hear his ragged breathing anymore. She crept to the sheet that separated them.