April 17, 1906
Eleven hours and forty-two minutes before the earthquake
She had finished repairing the dragon robe ahead of schedule, so Suling accompanied Old Kow on his rounds for the last time, gave him his wages for the last time. Walking beside him all day, listening to him talk about his family and his little village, it seemed impossible to Suling that so many revelations had come crashing into her life only yesterday. Impatient to get back to the mansion on Hyde Street and search through Thornton’s office, she was short with customers and with Old Kow and his rambling.
When she finally hauled the cart inside the laundry and pushed it under the staircase, Suling knew something was wrong. It was completely quiet. No grinding of machinery or loud conversation from workers shouting over the noise. Then from upstairs, the sound of a door opening, and Third Uncle’s head leaned over the railing.
“Get up here,” he shouted. Her luck had finally run out.
“Third Uncle,” she replied, ascending the steps. How bad would this be? “What can I do for you?”
“You can stop shaming me!” he roared. He grabbed her by the shoulders and slammed her against the wall. “You can stop lying to me!”
He gripped her elbow and dragged her into her bedroom where he threw her on the bed. He was panting, so angry that spittle ran down his chin.
“I had lunch with Dr. Ouyang,” he said. “He was concerned because his manservant saw you at the train station, dressed like a boy. I said his man was mistaken because you’ve been at Hing Chong Tailors all week sewing your wedding garments. We laughed about it.”
But after lunch, Third Uncle immediately went to Hing Chong’s to assure himself that Suling was indeed there. He found that the only women working there were the tailor’s own wife and daughters. Suling had not been there in weeks.
“But unlike you, I saved face for our family,” he said. “I didn’t act worried or angry, I pretended I was just passing by. Where have you been this past week? Should I have gone to the Palace of Endless Joy? And why are you wearing a boy’s jacket and trousers?”
She was not going to get Old Kow in trouble. She wouldn’t say anything to defend herself. She needed to finish this argument, get her uncle out of here. She had to get back to the octagon house by seven.
“I’m sorry you were worried,” Suling said, as calmly as she could.
“Worried?” he screamed. Saliva flew in her face. “Do you know why I invited Dr. Ouyang to lunch? To thank him, to show gratitude. Your cousins are getting out of Immigration today, and it’s because of his generosity they weren’t detained for months. But you, you’re just shitting on all he’s done for us.”
“I don’t want to marry him, Uncle,” she said, temper rising, “and my parents would never have forced me to marry anyone I didn’t want, especially a man whose wives hated my mother and who would hate me just as much. But you know that and you don’t care.”
“It’s not your decision. Did you think you could run away?” He held up a small rectangle of cardboard, a triumphant sneer on his face. Her train ticket to New York, which she had tucked in her pillowcase. She hoped in a surge of utter dread that he hadn’t found her money. “Break the contract and ruin our family’s reputation?”
“You mean, ruin your chances at paying off your gambling debts?” Suling couldn’t hold back anymore. Her fists clenched. “If anyone has ruined our family’s reputation, it’s you, Uncle. You’ve squandered our family business, lost all our good and loyal employees. Do you know what people say when your name is mentioned? A piece of rotten wood cannot be carved. What will you do once you’ve gambled away the money you get for selling your only niece?”
He slapped her across the face. “You’re marrying a man everyone respects, a man who will provide for you and your children. What more could any uncle do for a niece? I’m going to the Pacific Mail Steamship terminal now to bring your cousins home. And you will be here to welcome them.”
No, she would not. She would be at Thornton’s house.
“Get dressed properly to greet your cousins. When I come back, we’re going for dinner with Dr. Ouyang at the Shanghai Loh Restaurant and you will behave. Or I’ll beat you silly.”
He tore up the train ticket and slammed the bedroom door shut. The key turned in the lock from outside. The squeak of floorboards, heavy footsteps down the staircase, and another door slammed. The front door.
Knees trembling, Suling climbed up on the chair and reached for the top of the wardrobe. She didn’t think Third Uncle had found it, but still it was a relief when her fingers touched the brown paper envelope hidden behind the cheap crown molding.
Her money. Her savings. Safe. Her heartbeat slowed and she breathed more easily. The train ticket didn’t matter, not anymore. It had been foolish of her to leave the envelope in her pillowcase, it had given away her escape plans. It had been her fault for assuming her uncle would follow his usual routine of stumbling to the gambling parlor after breakfast and not coming home until supper—if at all.
Suling worked quickly. She put her cloth-soled shoes and some extra clothes in a laundry bag, tucked the envelope of money inside her shirt. She wrapped a few pieces of jewelry in a scrap of chamois cloth: a coral brooch, a hairpin set with a pink enameled butterfly, pearl earrings her father bought from a vendor going door to door. She paused for a moment, remembering the leathery brown skin of the pearl seller’s hands as he opened paper packets of jewelry, the longing in her mother’s eyes, the smile in her father’s as he opened the cash drawer.
Suling tied up the canvas bag, looping the thin rope so she could sling the bag over her shoulder, then rattled the doorknob just to be sure it really was locked. Taking a deep breath, Suling opened the window. Just looking down made her dizzy and she shrank back. But she had to get out before Third Uncle and her cousins came home. For Reggie’s sake she had to conquer her fear of heights. Madam Ning’s words flashed into her mind. Are you sure this girl is worth it?
Suling had brought Reggie to meet Madam Ning at the Palace of Endless Joy. Suling and Madam Ning had both enjoyed the astonishment on Reggie’s face when she realized the most infamous brothel owner in Chinatown was practically an aunt to Suling. A day later, Suling hurried over to see her auntie. Now she could talk to someone about Reggie. Madam Ning had frowned over the state of Suling’s hair and made her sit at the dressing table so she could brush and braid it properly.
“Isn’t she wonderful?” Suling asked. “Did you like her, Auntie?”
Madam Ning gently teased a snarl out of Suling’s hair. “Very much. She’s not like most white women. In more ways than one. Are you sure this girl is worth it?”
“She loves me, Auntie,” Suling said. She touched the front of her blouse, felt the ring she had strung on a silk cord. “I have not been happy since my parents died, but when I’m with Reggie, life feels new again.”
“You should enjoy it,” Madam Ning said. “First love only happens once, after all. But my precious, since your mother isn’t here I must say what I know she would say. Remember to hold back your emotions because there’s no future with her. You’re from two different worlds.”
“Well, what about you and Mr. Clarkson? What about your future together?”
“I don’t need to marry him or live with him,” Madam Ning said, looking through a drawer of hair ornaments before picking one out for Suling. “But think of what else you’d have to contend with out there. For us, at least before the missionaries came, love between men or between women was not a crime and some of us still feel this way.”
It wasn’t terrible for a man to have male lovers so long as he fathered a son to carry on his family lineage. If women had close friendships, what did it matter since there was no danger of pregnancy? If wives and concubines in a large household occasionally took comfort in each other when their husband was in some other bed, where was the harm?
“Americans are not so tolerant,” Madam Ning said. “You’ll be crossing so many lines, Suling.”
“Reggie doesn’t care about any of that,” Suling said. “She wants us to live together once her exhibit is over.” Once Reggie no longer lived at the octagon house. Once they’d left San Francisco and were free of Thornton.
“Do what you will with Reggie, but don’t give your heart away,” Madam Ning said. “Promise you’ll hold back something for yourself, just in case.”
“I promise,” Suling said. And meant it.
Madam Ning coiled Suling’s long plait into loops at the nape of her neck. “I like Reggie, it’s just that the world is bigger than the two of you.”
“Don’t think I haven’t considered that,” Suling said, with an almost inaudible sigh.
Suling had tried explaining to Reggie what a Chinese person lived with every day. The virulent hatred Americans had for the Chinese in their midst, blaming them for crime and disease, branding them as lazy and corrupt. Not all Americans, Suling conceded, thinking of the Mission Home and Alice Eastwood. But enough of them so that most Chinese felt safe only in Chinatown, lived there in crowded conditions out of need for mutual protection. Enough of them so that politicians seeking votes made laws that punished the Chinese. Immigration, taxes, schools, and more.
“There are women who live as couples, you know,” Reggie said, kissing her neck. Tempting, so tempting to let those lips rove farther, kiss lower. “Their friends don’t care and strangers just think they live together for companionship, or to share living expenses.”
“If I were white, perhaps your friends wouldn’t care,” Suling said, returning the kiss, “but I’m Chinese. Perhaps it would be easier if I posed as your maid.”
Reggie’s eyes blazed emerald. “If they don’t accept you as an equal, they’re not my friends.”
Are you sure this girl is worth it?
Suling leaned out the window again. It was at least a fifteen-foot drop to the alley below. Taking scissors from her sewing box, she cut the coverlet on her bed into strips. She tied together the long strips into a makeshift rope, which she hoped would reach the ground. After some thought, she tied a knot every few feet. Then she tied one end of the rope to a bed leg and flung the other out the window. It dangled a yard or so above the ground, but it would have to do.
The main thing, she decided, was to not look down. In fact, she would close her eyes.
Laundry bag over her shoulder, she sat on the window ledge facing the room, rope between her trousered legs. Not looking down. Fists gripping the rope, she backed off the windowsill slowly until she was hanging out, knees still resting on the windowsill. Then with eyes squeezed shut, she pulled one foot over the sill and felt for the rope, twisted her ankle through it. Then the other foot. A small yelp and she was hanging, swaying, but she pressed her knees together against the rope and felt its reassuring thickness. Only then did she open her eyes, but she only looked straight ahead. Not down or up, just straight ahead at the wall, at the peeling brown paint and the white splash of dried seagull shit.
Then gripping for dear life with hands, knees, and feet, Suling slid down the rope, the knots along its length slowing her descent as she braced momentarily against each one, but it was a terrifyingly fast journey that somehow also lasted forever. A scream of terror when her shoes kicked at nothing but air, and then the last knot slipped through her hands and she fell onto the ground.
And then she was running, not caring anymore who saw her, running for Hyde Street and the octagon house.
“The blue dragon robe is already in Miss Garland’s room,” Mrs. MacNeil said as Suling followed her up the servants’ stairs, “and Mr. Thornton will bring up that blue feather hat himself later.”
The Phoenix Crown, Suling wanted to say. It’s not a hat.
“You know where to go, your sewing room,” Mrs. MacNeil continued, “and you know where not to go. Stay in there till Miss Garland comes back. I’ve got enough to worry about tonight.”
Suling closed the door to the sewing room and changed into cloth-soled shoes. She peeked through the door and slipped out quietly, her shoes sliding across the marble floors. Linen-draped tables were already set out on the third-floor mezzanine but it was momentarily empty. She ran to the circular staircase, leaning on the handrail as a moment of vertigo swept over her. She gripped the handrail tightly and looked down. The second floor was equally empty. She breathed more easily knowing none of the servants would come up or down the winding staircase.
The potted palm to the right of the office door, Gemma had said. Suling hurried to the graceful rosewood stand and reached behind the arching fronds, feeling along the inside of the porcelain rim. She exhaled with relief when her trembling fingers touched cold metal.
And then she was inside Thornton’s office, locking the door behind her.
There were cabinets of files, shelves filled with ledgers. Each shelf was labeled with the name of a company. Thornton’s wealth was all documented here. Where should she even start? She opened the door to the adjacent study. There was a large desk and the room looked more personal. Perhaps she would start here. Her hand reached to turn on the desk lamp, then stopped. It wouldn’t do for someone to notice a light. She pulled the drapes closed and shut the study door before turning on the lamp.
There weren’t any checkbooks in any of the drawers. Suling looked around the room, frowning. At random she pulled down a document box from a bookcase marked “Cerro Gordo Silver Mine.” The box contained a checkbook, a bank book, a packet of receipts and invoices, and a ledger. She looked at the date column in the ledger, then looked through the checkbook. The only information written on the check stubs was amount and payee. The ledger entries, however, listed more details for each check and deposit. All very efficient.
And just how many bank accounts did Thornton have anyway? One or more for each of his companies, judging by the labels on the document boxes. But with the ledger books, she could scan the entries on a page rather than turn over every check stub. And, she realized, she only had to look for payments since February. That was when Reggie had disappeared.
But was it likely Thornton would pay through a company account? She scanned for boxes with labels that seemed more personal, more likely used for hiding secrets.
She looked carefully through the document box marked “Personal: Bank of California.” There were payments to his tailor, boot maker, and hatter. Payments to art galleries and antiques stores, membership dues to a number of athletic clubs, businessmen’s clubs. When the clock struck nine, she looked up, rubbing her eyes. The performance would be in full swing now at the opera house. Gemma would be singing and prancing about the stage as if there was nothing more important in her life than the performance.
Suling opened a document box marked “Philanthropy.” Thornton maintained a bank account just for donations. Including the Mayor’s Fund. He paid for political connections out of this account. She skimmed the pages. There were payments to a dozen cultural and arts associations, society fundraisers, various church groups and hospitals. Now, if only she could find a document box labeled “Nefarious Deeds.”
She put the Philanthropy ledger back in its box and was about to shelve it when she pulled the ledger out again. Something nagged at her. She opened the book to April. Her finger tapped on the most recent entry on the page: a donation of twenty-five dollars just a few days ago on the fifteenth of April to St. Christina’s Convent and Hospital. Suling knew it well, a long building of brick and stone on Filbert Street opposite the Sts. Peter and Paul Church. It was a Catholic convent unpopular with Chinatown laundries because the hospital ran a competing laundry business.
What made her look twice was that she knew enough from attending the Mission Home school to recognize the churches and foundations listed in the book. Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist—they were all Protestant. Only St. Christina’s was Catholic, an aberration. She turned to the page for March. There had been a donation in mid-March to St. Christina’s, also twenty-five dollars. Another one in February, the week Reggie vanished. And nothing before that to St. Christina’s or any other Catholic charity. No detailed description beside the ledger entries. Just “Donation.”
Suppressing panic as a horrible suspicion crossed her mind, Suling opened the checkbook and flipped through the check stubs to February. Twenty-five dollars to St. Christina’s. No more information than what was in the ledger. She turned it over and froze. On the back of the stub was a single line in pencil. Monthly. RR. The same on the other check stubs for St. Christina’s. No details in the ledger, only on the back of check stubs.
She had been looking for a single large payment but now another explanation stared at her. The hospital part of St. Christina’s Convent and Hospital was an insane asylum. What if these were not donations? What if Thornton was paying to keep Reggie in an inmate’s cell?
Suling stuffed a fist in her mouth to keep from crying out. She rocked back and forth on the chair. She wanted to throw the box of documents at the wall. Reggie, imprisoned. Reggie, unable to lift her face to the sun, to run up sand dunes and slide down to the beach. Reggie, so lively and in love with life, shut in a small room. Had Thornton pretended to be a guardian of some sort, her husband or a brother? He would’ve had to lie about her mental state to have her committed. But why? What had Reggie done to upset him so much? Why hadn’t Thornton just dismissed her?
Suling stifled the impulse to rush out of the house, run as fast as she could to the convent. But first, she had to let Gemma know what she’d discovered. There was stationery in Thornton’s top right-hand drawer. Heavy, expensive cream-colored paper, just like the typewritten note that had accompanied Reggie’s painting. She dashed off a few lines.
The clock chimed the half hour. Nine thirty. Suling left the office, locking the door and hiding the key again, then ran silently up the circular staircase and into Gemma’s room.
Where could she hide the note so that Gemma was sure to see it? She berated herself for not agreeing on a place to hide messages. She cast her eyes around the beautiful room. The walnut desk with its crystal and gold desk set, pale blue notepaper on the blotter. The little table with the marble top beside the bed. The chest of drawers. The dragon robe was on one side of the tall mirror, a pair of evening shoes arranged in front of it.
Suling slipped the note inside one of the shoes. Then after a moment’s reflection, moved the shoe so that it was at an angle, pigeon-toed, no longer perfectly placed.
Not too long after, a Chinese boy carrying a laundry bag walked away quickly from the octagon house on Hyde Street. When the boy reached the corner, he broke into a run.