The Many Daughters of Afong Moy(71)

Ah-ma…

She read the name on the side of the ship, SS City of Rio, as she climbed a rope ladder and was helped aboard. On deck, she was given her belongings by a steward and directed to the forecastle where new passengers gathered, mostly Chinese, who were weeping, or staring numbly, feeling the reprieve, the safety of the water amid such loss. A doctor looked in everyone’s mouths, examined their eyes, touching their necks and underarms.

The ship’s other passengers—those already on board and elegantly dressed, excited to travel to the Orient—stood back and watched, unsure what to make of this incursion of beleaguered refugees and the burning neighborhood they’d left behind.

Lai King ignored them and turned back toward the city, searching in vain for any sign of her ah-ma, but the place where her mother once stood was now a smoky ruin. Lai King bit her lip, trying not to cry as she thought about her father.

He’s become a ghost hero.

In that moment, she hoped for the best, that her father stopped breathing before the fire arrived. She closed her eyes and tried to sear her parents’ faces, their voices, their touch, into memory. She felt even more alone when she realized she had no photos of her parents, no keepsakes, nothing to place in an altar. She remembered her father’s tale about her yin yin, how her grandmother had come to this country alone as a girl, not much older than Lai King. How her yin yin never saw her family again.

Then Lai King remembered her mother had stuffed something into her pocket. She reached in and pulled out a crumpled envelope. Inside was a letter, some money, and a small hand-drawn map to a village. The letter read:

My Lai King,

If you are reading this my spirit can rest, knowing you are safe. Keep this money safe as well. Hide it. I am sorry there is not more. I used everything we had to get you aboard that ship which is bound for China. This is what your ah-ba wanted. This is what we wanted for you. It’s going to be hard. But be brave.

When you dock in Canton, show this map to a steward. Ask them to help you with directions to Ai Gong in the Hoisan District. It’s not far. When you arrive at my old village, go through the gates and shout our family name as loud as you can. People you are related to will come out to see you. Tell them who you are. You are family, they will help you. I promise you they will.

I am also including the words of a Chinese poem:

Sailing Homeward

Without a pause,

Trees that for twenty thousand years

Your vows have kept,

You have suddenly healed the pain of a traveler’s heart,

And moved a brush to write a new song.



You are our new song,

Lai King.



She touched the Chinese characters on the note as though her ah-ma were right there, alive on the page, ink for blood. She wiped a tear and pondered the prospect of sailing home to a place she’d never been. Then she carefully folded the note as though it were a sacred text and slipped it into a rip on the inside of her coat. She worried that someone had seen her hide the envelope, but those around her stared at the horizon of fire and smoke, the burning buildings, the families and businesses they’d left behind, everyone in shock and mourning.

Lai King felt as though this were all a dream and if she closed her eyes she might wake up in bed, between her parents. But as she looked around the deck, saw the enormous masts and booms, the steam funnel, the faces of well-heeled strangers, their looks of contempt became knife edges, dismembering the life she’d known, gutting her faint hopes. She heard a whistle, and they were told to line up with their belongings in front of them. She looked at her small suitcase and wished she had packed some of her mother’s clothing, that she might cover herself in the fabric, feel something familiar, smell her ah-ma’s perfume.

A man in a black uniform with polished boots approached the gathering, heels clicking on the deck with each step. He wore a black cap with a gold ribbon that matched the piping on his sleeves. His chest was broad, and Lai King thought the two rows of shiny buttons running down the front of his jacket might give up trying and burst at any moment. He stroked his wide mustache, appraising her and the gathering of Chinese passengers—most of whom were rich merchants. Amid the white passengers staring back at them was a boy, about her age, with a brace on one leg.

He offered a polite wave but looked the way Lai King felt.

“Good afternoon and welcome aboard. I am Chief Officer Mark Cappis,” the man bellowed. “You may call me Mr. Cappis. It is by the grace of God and the forbearance I have reached with you and your families that you are here.”

Lai King listened as Mr. Cappis spoke like her teacher, elegantly, but with icicles dripping from his words. She caught the eye of the boy. When Lai King waved back, he looked down at the deck, teetering on his bad leg.

Mr. Cappis continued. Something about all the hardworking Chinese who had been transported to the United States aboard this vessel. How the merchants would be shown to their cabins in second class. The rest—meaning Lai King—would be escorted to steerage. She didn’t know where that was, but the way Mr. Cappis spoke, it sounded like a place to be endured but not enjoyed. While the other passengers were told that they were allowed on deck anytime during daylight hours, those in steerage were allowed topside only for what Mr. Cappis called sky liberty. One hour each day, weather permitting.

“That is to mitigate any potential spread of the Great Mortality,” Mr. Cappis said. “Anyone showing signs of illness will be thoroughly examined. But if our ship’s doctor determines that they are fully in the grip of this particular disease of reckoning, those passengers will be quarantined belowdecks, in a small berth, for the entire duration of the voyage. If someone should succumb to this disease, they will be hastily buried at sea, without ceremony. In my career, I have served aboard ships stricken with cholera, typhus, and yellow fever. Hence my profound unwillingness to let the City of Rio become a floating coffin. These rules apply to anyone on this ship. As Walt Whitman might say: married men and single men, old men and pretty girls; milliners and masons; cobblers, colonels and counter-jumpers; tailors and teachers; lieutenants, loafers, ladies, lackbrains, and lawyers; printers and parsons; black spirits and white, blue spirits and gay, passenger or crew—myself included—all must be quarantined. Am I perfectly clear?”