The Many Daughters of Afong Moy(75)

Alby frowned. “That’s a terrible story.”

“But later”—Lai King smiled—“when fishermen saw a beautiful dolphin, leaping, they knew the girl had come back. She’d been reborn.”

As they watched the joyful leaping, twirling, splashing, Alby leaned close, their arms touching, and she put her head on his shoulder.

“Is that her?” Alby asked.

“No.” Lai King drew a deep breath, then whispered, “That’s us.”



* * *



That night Lai King dreaded going to sleep. Not the actual sleeping part, that was fine, in fact the rocking of the ship had become a comfort instead of a perpetual cause of nausea. What she dreaded about going to sleep was waking up. Because so many times she’d stir in the morning, expecting to see her ah-ba whistling his way out the door. She’d rub her eyes and stretch, looking around her berth, confused that she wasn’t back in her apartment, that her mother wasn’t in the kitchen making congee. Then the smells of the ship, the privy, the sounds of her fellow passengers would remind her of where she was.

Even her dreams offered little comfort, because the closer they got to China, the more she had nightmares that her feet had been bound, her toes and arches hideously broken. Other nights she was a bride given to an old man. Forced to kneel at a family altar, next to a husband she couldn’t see. When she turned to the man she was forced to marry, he was always gone, and a rooster would be in his place.

“Rise and shine,” Auntie Anna crowed.

Lai King looked around, wishing there really was a gamecock on board. Because her ah-ma always said that evil spirits are scared of a rooster’s crow.



* * *



In the dining parlor, Lai King heard Auntie call her name. “Looks like someone has a special visitor.” She looked up and saw Alby slowly coming down the ladder, taking his time, careful not to slip. A pail hung from the crook of his arm.

When he reached the bottom, he strained to see in the gloaming as his eyes slowly adjusted to the dimly lit room. He looked around the warren, appraising the tight quarters, then spotted Lai King. “Fancy place you have,” he said. “I brought you breakfast.”

She smiled and Auntie Anna winked as she left the room.

“I hope you don’t mind?” He took fabric that was draped around his neck and spread it on the floor of the pantry like a small picnic blanket. “One hour of sky liberty is hardly enough for anyone, so I thought I’d come visit.” He pulled bread and apples out of the bucket, plus dried cherries and a small piece of cheese with holes in it. Lai King couldn’t stand the smell or taste of the fermented—whatever it was—but she thanked him and politely took the tiniest of nibbles.

“You didn’t have to come all the way down here,” she said.

“Well, you’re not allowed up in my quarters. But there’s no rule forbidding me from coming down here. Besides, Mr. Cappis said we’re nearly to Hawaii.”

Lai King didn’t want to think about what would happen when they arrived in Canton. She would go her own way, to her mother’s village. Alby would go where—to an orphanage? Perhaps a work farm? Or he might become an indentured servant. Wherever he ended up, she doubted they would see each other again.

“I’m in no hurry,” Lai King said as she took a bite of apple to hide her sadness.

Alby coughed, or choked on a bit of bread, as he nodded. “Me neither.”

They ate and spoke and laughed, and at times almost cried, as they talked about their families, and of their homesickness for places that no longer existed except somewhere on the faded maps of memory. With each bite, they seemed to be savoring the seconds, counting the days and their rationed hours of fresh air and sunshine.

After they ate they talked late into the afternoon. The other ladies in steerage passed through the pantry, first on their way to breakfast, and then later to lunch, and if anyone begrudged Lai King’s visitor they kept that opinion to themselves. But most just smiled. That was the difference between first class and steerage, Lai King realized. Down here, no one cared about decorum or pretention. There was no need for fancy dresses, the putting on of airs, the ever-changing kaleidoscope of domestic rituals she never really understood and couldn’t keep up with anyway. That’s the one good thing about being poor, having nothing, Lai King thought. Happiness is free.



* * *



Lai King waited with Alby until it was time to go topside for sky liberty, which, for once, lived up to its name and more as they emerged from the darkened hold to an azure firmament devoid of even a single cloud. Not even a mist or a puff or a haze.

They found their favorite spot on the starboard quarter near the aft, watching the waves crest, their whitecaps looking as though they were pushing the vessel forward.

“My father used to say there’s nothing like a clear blue sky out on the ocean,” Lai King said. “He claimed that old sailors told him that on rare days like this, if you watch the sunset and don’t blink, just before the sun disappears below the horizon, you’ll see a green flash. He said masts and rigging will sometimes glow.”

Alby looked at the horizon and furrowed his brow. “Do you believe him?”

“I used to,” Lai King said. “I’m not sure what to believe anymore. He also told me that once before an earthquake in San Francisco, he saw glimmering lights in the sky and that the wings of birds and butterflies were covered in blue flame.”