Leaving New York City
Joseph bent his long frame to situate his shoulder under Rebekah’s arm. “Here, lean on me.”
Rebekah did as she was told. “My bag, Joseph, my wedding dress is there.”
“I have your bag, my love.” Rebekah was taken aback by his words. He never spoke romantically to her, using such terms of endearment. “That’s how I found you.”
Rebekah stammered over her own words. “I have to go back and say goodbye to Mrs. Cheng. She asked specifically that I come back.”
“We.”
“Do what?”
“From now on, you and I. We are we.” She was acutely aware of his arm, warm, around her, holding her close to his side. As though they were divinely crafted for one another. Or from one another.
Woman was made from man’s rib.
“Here we are, just a few steps more.”
Everything in Rebekah’s body ached. Her ankle throbbed something terrible and her head pounded. “Maybe Mrs. Cheng will have something to make me feel a bit better for the trip home.”
Mrs. Cheng was waiting outside when Joseph and Rebekah hobbled up to her shop. “Again?” She gave Joseph a long hard stare. “You must keep your woman safe. Or what good is having husband?” She caught her mistake. “Or husband to be?”
Peter and Katie, not walking together but at least walking on the same road at the same time, followed them into the shop.
“Mrs. Cheng,” Rebekah managed, “you know Joseph, my fiancé. And this is…”
Suddenly, Rebekah felt faint. She sank into the chair she didn’t realize Mrs. Cheng had pulled up for her. Her head sank into her hands. “Joseph, you tell her, please,” she whispered. “Introduce them properly.”
Joseph did as he was instructed. “Mrs. Cheng,” Joseph extended his arm. “This is Peter, Rebekah’s brother and my future brother-in-law. And, the woman of the hour, Katie Knepp.”
“Ah, yes. The woman Peter loves.” Mrs. Cheng nodded.
Katie and Peter both flushed a fierce shade of crimson. “Hello, Mrs. Cheng.” Peter extended his hand. She looked at it, and shook it carefully.
“You.” She pointed to Katie. “Come.”
Katie balked. “Me, Mrs. Cheng?”
“Yes. Come now.” She turned and hobbled off toward the back of her shop.
Katie dared a glance at Rebekah, who shrugged. Slowly she followed Mrs. Cheng, and disappeared behind a partition.
A moment later, Mrs. Cheng returned and stood at Rebekah’s side. From her apron pouch, she produced the little tin of salve and a cup.
“Thank you, Mrs. Cheng,” Rebekah whispered. “I hoped you’d have some of that salve. Seems I can’t seem to take a correct step in the English world.”
“I saw. Whole thing.” Mrs. Cheng’s frown was severe as she hobbled over and sat the steaming cup in Rebekah’s hand. “You drink tea. Will make you rest well.”
Rebekah grasped the steaming cup in her hands as Mrs. Cheng dabbed and rubbed the salve on Rebekah’s cuts and scrapes, both old and new. “Mrs. Cheng not fast enough to help you. Old, little feet.” She paused a moment. “But Joseph was.”
Rebekah was quiet and reverent in her blessings, despite the hard times she’d found herself thrust in the midst of. She took a long sip of the Chinese tea and closed her eyes.
Thank you, God. For this trip. For who it’s molding me into.
The words “forged by fire” popped into her mind. She wasn’t certain where she’d heard the phrase, but for some reason, they made sense. The fires of tribulation certainly were forming her into a person she never imagined she would be.
“It fits, Mrs. Cheng.” Katie’s voice came from the back of the shop. “Thank you. Thank you.”
Peter gasped. “Katie, it looks like it was made just for you.”
In the back of the shop, Katie stood in the dress Mrs. Cheng crafted for her. “Newehockers,” Mrs. Cheng said, still frowning at Rebekah’s injuries.
“Mrs. Cheng!” Rebekah was powerless to keep the shock from her voice. “You didn’t!”
The old woman shrugged. “Knew they’d find you, Katie Knepp. And that you’d go back to be newehockers to Rebekah and Joseph.”
“How?” Katie’s voice was incredulous. “I didn’t even know myself.”
“You young and foolish. Mrs. Cheng old and wise. Only get wise by becoming old. And Mrs. Cheng just know.”
Katie stood shyly in the back of the room. “Thank you again. It fits perfectly.”
“Mrs. Cheng good at what she does.”
Rebekah dared a peek and was quickly admonished by the wrinkled shopkeeper. “Drink tea!”
A smile teased at the corners of Rebekah’s lips. She was becoming rather accustomed to being admonished by the woman. “The material, I’ve never seen its equal.”
“Silk. Black silk. Plain, like you say.”
“It’s beauty is striking,” Katie said. “And feels so, well, perfect.”
“Not all beautiful things are good.” Mrs. Cheng dabbed salve on Rebekah’s knees. “And beauty is fleeting. You know this.”
“Is that why you chose the material?” Joseph, who always liked a puzzle and hidden meanings, was enthralled.
“No.” Mrs. Cheng shuffled down to Rebekah’s ankle. “Katie Knepp, bring me long piece of black silk on chair there. Hurry.”
“Ankle needs to be wrapped,” she explained. “Find ice, Peter. Put ice on ankle over wrap. You do this for Mrs. Cheng, yes?”
Peter nodded. “Shall I go now?”
“No. Find on train when you leave.” Mrs. Cheng’s face pulled up into a bright, weathered smile. “Because I know you leave soon.”
Rebekah drained the last of the minty, lemony tea and whispered to Mrs. Cheng as she bent down. “Is the silk expensive, Mrs. Cheng, it looks expensive...”
“I pay for it with my life.”
The room fell silent.
Confident she had everyone’s attention, Mrs. Cheng lifted the bottom of her skirt. What she revealed there brought a gasp to everyone there. “Tradition,” she said, pointing to her inhumanly tiny feet. They were bound with the same black cloth as Katie’s dress and Rebekah’s ankle wrap.
“Beauty in China is women have small feet.” She turned back to tend to Rebekah’s ankle, letting the skirt fall back and conceal her secret that to her, meant pain and suffering with each step. “But you and I know, beauty fleeting. Pain lasts much, much longer.”
Everyone in the shop was silent. Only Mrs. Cheng’s birdlike movements made sound.
“They take the feet of the baby girls and soak them, then fold them. In half. While bones still soft with youth. Then bind. Tightly. With cloth. Every day.”
Everyone stood, mouths open. “Soon, toes fall off. And we are left with small feet. Tiny shoes.” Mrs. Cheng shifted her slight weight. Rebekah had noticed how the old woman shuffled here and there, but she moved so quickly she had no idea she was moving basically without feet. “So I make you dresses of the same material that I must use to cover my feet. So you remember Mrs. Cheng. Remember, beauty. So fleeting, so...”
She let the sentence hang there. With a knowing smile, she pressed the tin of salve into Rebekah’s hand. “You will need this. If not for you, then for all the children you will bring forth with Joseph.”
Heat flamed in her cheeks, making Mrs. Cheng chuckle. “Goodbye, young ones. Come back and see Mrs. Cheng. If you ever come back.”
“I’ll change and be ready in a moment,” Katie whispered.
Mrs. Cheng hurried back to give her instructions, no doubt. When Katie emerged a moment later, she was dressed back in her brown frock from Father Plant. In her arms, she clutched a large parcel, wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. “From Mrs. Cheng,” she explained as she passed Rebekah.
Joseph helped her up and to the door.
“I don’t know how to thank you,” Rebekah began.
Mrs. Cheng waved at her with both hands, as if shooing her out the door. “No thank yous. Just go.” Rebekah caught the old woman smiling as she shooed them from her shop.
“God bless you, Mrs. Cheng, and the work you do here.”
Mrs. Cheng didn’t answer, but followed them onto the porch. From the corner of her eye, Rebekah saw her hide a glinting silver object in her flower pot.
A dime for the newspaper boy tomorrow. She smiled to herself. Thank you, God, for letting us meet such a woman with a servant’s heart.
“Ah-mitch,” she called to their retreating backs. “And Chinese. Not so different.”
When Rebekah looked back, Mrs. Cheng was waving with both hands. They waved too. For a moment, she thought she caught sight of something glistening on Mrs. Cheng’s face.
Are those tears? Rebekah squinted.
Perhaps.
Or just glinting rays from the sun on the ocean.
***
The lot of them arrived at the train station much too soon. Something about leaving New York City in the state it was in, so much complacency and so much sin, it just seemed...wrong. Rebekah hobbled along next to Joseph, her bound ankle already feeling better beneath the black silk binding.
“Do you think we did any good here?” Rebekah kept her voice low, so only Joseph could hear. “I mean, did we leave it better than we found it? As we are supposed to?”
Joseph shrugged as he helped her through the throng of people and toward the platform to board the train.
From behind them, Katie spoke. “Did you see that? That poor woman and little boy, eating out of a rubbish can!” Rebekah heard her tsk and sigh. “What was I thinking?” she asked nobody in particular, especially not Peter since she still hadn’t spoken to him that Rebekah had seen. “How did I think I could live among these people?”
Joseph spoke up with a bite in his tone. “By these people, you mean people who are forced to eat out of trash heaps?” Rebekah knew he’d taken to little Noah, but didn’t count on the flare in his words, at least not for it to be so noticeable. Almost tangible.
“No.” Katie’s answer was meek. “Of course not. I meant among the people who let people live like that. People who do nothing to help them.”
Rebekah’s heart warmed and the world swirled around her. Something in the tea made her sleepy, apparently. This must be what Mrs. Cheng meant when she said it would help me rest.
The trip was worth it, she said. Or maybe she only thought the words. To hear Katie’s heart change so, I would make this trip again and again.
Her eyelids fluttered as Joseph installed her into a seat. This train ride promised to be much more crowded, with lots of seats taken. Once they were all situated, the train whistle blew.
Divine timing, Rebekah thought, her eyes shut against the world.
“We have some money left.” Peter’s voice spoke from somewhere. “I’m going to go see if I can upgrade our tickets so we can have a place to lie down. Maybe a sleeper bunk.”
Her brother’s calloused hand brushed her cheek. “I’m going to find some ice for Rebekah too, like I promised I would.”
Joseph’s words came quickly and were punctuated by laughter. “You were not really given the option but to promise.”
Peter laughed too, but his heart wasn’t in it.
Probably heartbroken over Katie and the way she’s acting. Give her time, brother. I can see her heart changing. Give her time.
If she wasn’t so tired and her eyelids and lips weren’t heavy as stone, Rebekah would have said these things.
“I’ll be back in a bit,” Peter said.
“I’ll try not to let it leave without you,” Joseph jested.
Katie, it seemed, wasn’t going to say anything.
Joseph tucked Rebekah’s quilting bag in between them and sat down beside her. Rebekah cozied down under his arm, sleep only a breath away. “Wish there was more we could have done for Patty and little Noah,” he muttered to himself as he adjusted to find the most comfortable spot in the hard seat. “That little boy was something else.”
Finally, he was still. It was no matter to Rebekah, who was overtaken with fatigue. She slumped over her quilting bag and leaned against him. Joseph slid his arm over her shoulder as she snuggled into his side.
“I’ll do my best,” he promised quietly into her hair, “never to let you get hurt again. I promise, Rebekah. And I promise you all of my tomorrows, and the very best of me.”
And I you. The best of me. Forever.
The train whistle blew again, shrill and sharp.
Peter? Did Peter make it back?
Exhaustion refused to let the words pass her lips. She had no other choice but to simply let go.
Let go, and trust.