Free The Fortunes by Peter Ho Davies Page B

hidden.
    â€œIf you don’t have enough,” she said now, “get your friend Crocker to extend you some of that famous credit. Or better yet, buy me himself.”
    â€œNever!”
    â€œNot like that,” she whispered. “But couldn’t he give me a job, like you? I can clean, sew. Don’t they need a maid?”
    â€œYou’d do laundry again? Ironing?” He was trying to jolly her along; he couldn’t imagine taking her to the Crockers. He already saw to their needs. But mostly he couldn’t imagine presenting her to Crocker.
    â€œYou could say I’m your wife,” she implored him, but she saw in his face that he couldn’t. “Ah, at last,” she said, lying back as if satisfied. “You’re ashamed of me.”
    He started to deny it, but she shrugged sulkily. “I’m happy for you. You’ve done well. Risen so high, you’ve left me behind. From women’s work to
man
servant. Good for you. Or does he call you his China
boy
?”
    She hadn’t bothered to cover herself, and in the dim light her areolas seemed to lie on her chest like dull copper coins.
    â€œBut why now?” he asked. “Why do you want to leave now?”
    She squinted, sighting along her body; tapped the thimble against her belly.
    â€œIf it’s a boy, he’ll be all right, I suppose, but if it’s a girl? What life for her?” She closed her eyes. “Listen to me, even I don’t want to bring a girl into this world.”
    He fastened his collar, picturing her for a moment in her bath, scrubbing herself raw until the water turned pink.
    â€œIsn’t there any . . . remedy?”
    â€œWhat? Cathartic pills, or preventive powders? Perhaps you were thinking of a button hook, a chopstick.”
    He winced.
    â€œYou’re lying. Aren’t you lying?”
    â€œIt could be yours,” she’d said then from the bed, the thimble pointing at him like a gun barrel, but it didn’t sound as if even she believed it. “Would you deny it a father?”
    He paused at the door, confounded. It was so peculiar to wonder if he was a father, after wondering for so long who his own was.
    â€œBetter that than a father who doesn’t want it,” he offered at last.
    â€œThere are worse things.”
    â€œHow can
you
say that?”
    She stared into the candle, her eyes shining with flame. “Oh, that. That
was
a lie,” she whispered. “My father didn’t sell me to Ng.”
    Ling shook his head wearily. “So?”
    â€œWhen we left, we left together, he and I. He had come back for me, you see, my father, from Gold Mountain. He had made money, and now he wanted me to help him make more.”
    â€œWhat are you saying?”
    She looked at Ling like he was a fool.
    And he was, he thought, slumping against the wall. It was why she couldn’t run off, why the old man never lay with her, why he absented himself every night.
    â€œHow could he?” Ling began, but she spoke across him. “It was easy. As soon as he had someone else to do my work around the laundry.”
    â€œI didn’t know,” he breathed. As if it were an excuse.
    She shook her head. “It’s nothing. Filial duty. The money helps feed my mother and sisters at home. That’s the truth.” She smiled tightly. “I remember this one girl, on the voyage out. She thought she was getting married. She was a vain, stupid, happy little thing. She told me all about her wedding plans and her fiancé who was bringing her back to Gold Mountain. Someone must have gotten sick of her bragging. They told her she was going to be a whore, and when she asked the fiancé, he just laughed. “When I said I’d make you a wife, I meant a hundred men’s wife!” She jumped overboard the next day. I remember seeing her in the water. She was Tanka, you know. She could swim. I thought we’d go back for her,