April 5, 1906
Twelve days, twenty-three hours, thirty-six minutes before the earthquake
Suling couldn’t be seen entering the Palace of Endless Joy. If anyone told her uncle she’d been anywhere near the brothel, he’d lock her up until the day he married her off. It was a good thing she had ways of thwarting Third Uncle’s wishes. She pulled on a plain unobtrusive tunic, dark green without a trace of embroidery, then loose-fitting black trousers. Pausing at the mirror on her bedroom door, she twisted her plaits into a loop at the nape of her neck. Just an ordinary Chinese girl, going out on errands. She wondered if the blond woman from yesterday would’ve recognized her as the laundryboy who had agreed to tote her luggage up the hill. Suling gave the woman a second thought only because she had been friendlier than most and the tip had been so generous. And because the Taylor Street address was familiar to her, a boardinghouse that used her family’s laundry services.
Taking a deep breath, Suling opened the door and moved quietly across the floorboards toward the stairwell. The sickly sweet odor drifting out from Third Uncle’s half-open door told her she needn’t have bothered with discretion. Sunk in an opium-laced sleep, he was resting on the rattan daybed and wouldn’t notice. He noticed very little these days, and the laundry business her parents had worked so hard to establish in San Francisco’s Chinatown was slipping through his heedless hands. But she no longer cared. Now his lack of attention was to her advantage. When she was absent from the laundry, he assumed she was at one of her part-time sewing jobs. Like every other able-bodied adult in Chinatown, Suling worked an erratic hodgepodge of jobs to earn extra money. She did piecework above the Fung Tai Dry Goods store or sewed for Hing Chong Tailors; sometimes she taught embroidery at the Mission Home. It was all respectable work for a young woman, all close to home and inside Chinatown, which allowed her to come and go without arousing Third Uncle’s curiosity.
It was still early as she set off along Washington Street to Hing Chong Tailors. At this hour shopkeepers were still busy setting up for the day. Produce vendors were arranging vegetables harvested from market gardens outside the city, and their sidewalk displays showed off boxes of spring vegetables: bright green bunches of scallions and asparagus, onions and peas, spinach and red radishes. At the butcher’s, racks of pork ribs hung from hooks, along with whole chickens and ducks, freshly killed and plucked. Even before she neared the dry goods store, Suling could smell the pungent ingredients inside, familiar odors of dried shrimp and preserved turnips, fermented black beans and hard sausages.
Men jostled and joked with one another as they went to their jobs, some heading out of Chinatown to work at hotels and restaurants, others to the wharves for a day on the shrimp boats. They crowded in factories to roll cigars, sew garments, or stitch shoes and boots. The buildings where they worked might’ve been graced with grand names such as Everlasting Quality Broom Factory, but Chinatown’s factories were not large businesses by any stretch of the imagination. They were no more than small sweatshops.
Gambling parlors on upper floors had flung open their windows to let in the cool April air, tempting passersby with the beguiling sounds of clacking mah-jongg tiles and shouts of triumph from customers who had been playing all night.
The only businesses still tightly shut at this time of day were the brothels. There were dozens in Chinatown—more white brothels than Chinese ones, but when newspapers went on a rampage against sin and corruption, they only denounced the Chinese whorehouses. Suling glanced up at the shuttered windows above a glossy sign, Palace of Endless Joy. It was the most expensive Chinese brothel in San Francisco and a woman owned it.
Suling rounded the corner to Hing Chong Tailors, where the owner was busy draping fabric over a dressmaker’s form. She tilted her head questioningly toward the door at the back of the shop and he nodded imperceptibly.
The door opened to a narrow stairwell that accessed the upper floors of the building behind the tailor’s shop. It was a discreet entrance to the Palace of Endless Joy, known only to a few of Madam Ning’s most valued customers—and to her friends. Suling sewed for Hing Chong Tailors so she’d have a way to enter the brothel without raising any eyebrows. When Suling’s mother was still alive, there had been no need for deception; her father didn’t mind his beloved wife visiting a dear friend. But Third Uncle was not so understanding.
The stairwell was dim, sunshine fighting its way through a dirty skylight. She climbed past the second-floor landing and its shiny red-painted door. The beautifully furnished rooms on this floor were for entertaining clients. The next floor up was where the women lived, rested, and ate their meals. The third floor was strictly forbidden to customers. Suling pulled the chain on the plain brown door and heard a bell inside tinkle. Then heavy footfalls shook the floorboards, and the door opened. A corpulent female shape, a pudgy face, mouth still yawning.
“So early in the day, Young Miss,” said Amah Chung. “The mistress only just woke up. Well, you know where to find her. I should get her breakfast ready.” She padded down the hall on cloth-soled shoes and Suling heard another loud yawn.
The hallway was quiet and smelled of sandalwood and roses from the special incense Madam Ning used, the only kind she bought. Nothing but the best for Bai Meishen, the patron deity of prostitutes. The god’s altar stood at the end of the hall. Offerings of coins and small pieces of jewelry littered the yellow silk brocade in front of the porcelain statue. Only eight women worked at the Palace of Endless Joy but they commanded high prices.
Suling knocked on the door across from the stairwell. “Auntie? It’s me.”
A husky voice bid her enter. The walls were austere, painted a soft sage green, with only a few watercolors decorating the room, all landscapes. A large rosewood pigeonhole desk dominated the space, a tall floor lamp beside it. The desk’s drawers, Suling knew, were always locked, the key always on Madam Ning’s person. Madam Ning was at her dressing table, wiping a thick layer of white cream from her face. “You’re here rather early,” she said, without turning around.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Suling said, sitting on the floor beside the woman she called Auntie, even though they were not related by blood. She put her head on the woman’s lap.
“Those bad dreams again?” Madam Ning said.
Suling nodded. She didn’t have to say more. Her auntie knew about the dreams, the ones where Suling stood at the edge of a cliff high above the beach over Mile Rocks, mute and unable to run or shout for help. An endless repetition of an awful moment of that awful day when she had been paralyzed by the steep path down the cliff, the long drop to rocks and beach if she should slip. Unable to run, powerless to do anything but watch as the current swept her parents out into the Pacific. It had been eight months since her mother fell off the rocks while foraging for seaweed and her father waded out to rescue her. Caught by the riptide, both were pulled out to the open sea. Madam Ning had been her mother’s closest friend and since then always made time for Suling—outside of business hours.
Suling looked up at the older woman’s reflection in the dressing table mirror. The brothel owner was a woman of around forty with beautifully arched eyebrows and flawless skin. Her full lips gave her oval face a perpetual pout that was girlishly charming, but only the most unobservant would think her easy to deceive. The formidable ambition that had taken her from prostitute to owner of the most exclusive brothel in Chinatown was there to see in the intelligent gleam of her dark eyes and the determined set of her chin.
“Do you want to take some of this face cream home with you, Suling?” the older woman said. “It’s something new I’m trying out. Powdered pearls mixed with ginseng and camellia seed oil. You’re still young, but it’s a good thing to take steps before it’s necessary.” Madam Ning liked to chat about inconsequential things before discussing serious matters. Her voice, lilting and hypnotic, told Suling bits of news and gossip, worries about “her girls,” none of which were serious because there had never been a problem in her establishment the shrewd woman couldn’t resolve quickly and discreetly.
The door opened and Amah Chung shouldered her way in, carrying a large tray.
“Two bowls of hot soybean milk,” she announced, “one sweetened with sugar for you, Young Miss, and the other salted for Madam. One steamed bun filled with sweet red bean paste, the other with salted duck egg yolk. You can argue over who gets which bun. I’ve got work in the kitchen.” Amah Chung shuffled out and shut the bedroom door.
“She’s my most valuable employee,” Madam Ning remarked. “Whores come and go, but Amah Chung’s cooking is always reliably excellent.” She picked up the salted duck egg bun and bit into it with relish. “Drink your soy milk, my darling. Amah Chung pretends not to care but she will be very hurt if you don’t eat something. Now, what is it that brings you here so early in the day?”
Her affectionate smile warmed Suling more than the sweet soy milk. She felt the tightness around her chest ease slightly. At least she could tell Auntie everything. Well, almost everything.
“My cousins have arrived,” Suling said, ignoring the breakfast tray. “Their ship docked yesterday and now they’re just waiting to get through Immigration. And when they do, I’ll have to marry Dr. Ouyang.” She sat on the bed and flopped backward with a groan.
American customs officials didn’t make it easy for Chinese. They had been known to detain immigrants at the Pacific Mail Steamship terminals for several weeks, sometimes months. But the point was, her cousins would replace her at the laundry. And when that happened, Third Uncle wouldn’t need her anymore, and he would marry her off to Dr. Ouyang. Who already had two wives.
“You’re nineteen, it’s time you married.” Madam Ning lifted the bowl of soy milk to her lips and drank deeply. “Dr. Ouyang is one of the most respected men in Chinatown. He’s a good man, a kind man. And it’s not as though he’s old and feeble. His hair is only just turning gray and for fifty, he’s as trim and fit as a man of thirty.”
Suling rolled her eyes. “But his wives! They were so rude to my mother. What will it be like living with them as his third wife, lowest in the hierarchy?”
“You’ll be his favorite,” Madam Ning asserted. “I know it. When we were all much younger, Ouyang Lin was infatuated with your mother. He wasn’t rich back then, but whenever he came to the brothel, it was always ‘Is Ming Lee available?’ even though your mother was one of the most expensive women there.”
There were no secrets in Chinatown. Ming Lee and Madam Ning had been sold off by their families to men who shipped them to San Francisco, then resold them to brothels. In an industry where most girls died from abuse, illness, or suicide, the two became best friends and survived, Ming Lee by running away and Madam Ning by working her way up and taking over a brothel.
“Then why didn’t Dr. Ouyang buy my mother from the brothel?” Suling said. “Or marry her after she escaped to the Mission Home, like my father did?”
“He would’ve bought out her contract if he’d had enough money,” her aunt said, “but sometimes in life, timing is what matters.”
Dr. Ouyang returned to China to raise money for an herbalist store of his own just as the US government passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, making it nearly impossible to immigrate. Ouyang endured months of questions and obstacles to prove he was a merchant—one of the few professions allowed to enter the country.
“And you know the rest,” Madam Ning said. “During this time, your mother ran away to the Mission Home, your father, Feng, saw her there while delivering laundry, and after a few weeks, offered to marry her.”
Feng didn’t mind that Ming Lee had been a prostitute. There were so few Chinese women available that men were willing to buy out a prostitute or bond servant’s contract and no one thought the less of them. If a man wanted a wife and family, Chinatown offered few other options.
“So you believe Dr. Ouyang will be kind to me for my mother’s sake?” Suling said.
Her aunt shook her head. “No, my precious. Because you resemble your lovely mother.”
“That’s rather unnerving,” Suling said with a shudder.
“Ouyang’s wives know he was in love with your mother. That’s why they were rude to her,” Madam Ning said, “but you don’t love Ouyang so your mind will be clear. With patience and cleverness, you’ll find ways to carve out your own domain within Ouyang’s household. Romance encumbers thought.”
Suling straightened up. “I could be a terrible wife. I could be rude and uncooperative to the other wives, ignore his children, resist him in bed. Then he might divorce me.”
“Or he might sell you to a brothel. Or to someone who supplies brothels.” The words came out like a whip. “It wouldn’t be the first time a husband got rid of a difficult wife by selling her.”
“I’m an American citizen, born and raised here. I could run away, go to the Mission Home. Report my situation to the authorities.”
“You wouldn’t get the chance to run,” Madam Ning snorted. “You’d be locked up until money exchanged hands, and afterward, too. It’s what I would do.”
“I could run away before the wedding,” she said. “Miss Cameron would take me in, like she did Tye Leung. And now Tye helps Miss Cameron rescue girls from brothels and cruel employers.”
“And Tye must live in the Mission Home,” Madam Ning said, “where a policeman stands guard outside because they receive death threats from people for stealing their property.”
Prostitutes and bond servants. Property. But still, wasn’t Tye proof that a Chinese woman could earn her way? That times were changing, especially for Chinese born in America, educated and fluent in English?
“You can’t hide inside the Mission Home for the rest of your life, Suling,” Madam Ning continued. “Tye’s parents eventually agreed not to force her into an arranged marriage, and that’s why she’s free to come and go.”
Suling knew this. Just as she knew that most young women who left the Mission Home did so after Miss Cameron arranged marriages for them with Chinese Christian men. These men traveled to San Francisco from other states to meet prospective brides at the Mission Home. The legal protection of marriage was one of the surest ways to deter former employers and owners from chasing after the rescued women.
But marriage to a stranger wasn’t what Suling wanted, any more than marriage to Dr. Ouyang.
“Your chin is jutting out, Suling, you have your stubborn look.” Madam Ning sighed. “It’s that Reggie person, isn’t it? You haven’t seen your Reggie in weeks. How often have I told you those white devils just think of Chinese girls as novelties, something exotic to try out?”
Just as Reggie had been an exotic novelty to her. Short black curls, emerald-green eyes, and a generous mouth that smiled so lazily, so invitingly. Suling pushed away the memory.
“What about you and Clarkson? You’ve been lovers for ten years now,” Suling said. “Is he a white devil?”
“He is a business arrangement, and fortunately he’s grown fond of me,” Madam Ning said, rather primly.
Fortunate also that Sergeant Michael Clarkson happened to lead the police unit tasked with investigating vice in Chinatown. The Palace of Endless Joy was seldom raided, and if it was, nothing much ever came of it.
“Listen, my dearest,” Madam Ning said, “the world doesn’t give women many paths to choose from. Worse yet, we are Chinese women in a country that hates Chinese.” She turned to face Suling. “Whatever you do, keep in mind that you can’t depend on others. Only yourself.”
“I understand,” Suling said, thinking of Reggie. Whose disappearance confirmed what Madam Ning often said, what her own mother believed: that the ones you love are the ones with the power to hurt you. Their own parents had sold them into prostitution. While Feng had been besotted with Ming Lee, Ming Lee had treated him with fondness and courtesy rather than love.
And she had not given in totally to Reggie, Suling reminded herself. And she’d been right not to give in totally to Reggie and romantic love.
It was just that Reggie was proving rather hard to forget.
It was half past noon by the time Suling finished her class at the Mission Home. The girls were a pleasure to teach, motivated by her promise that if their embroidery work improved, she would try and sell their pieces. For the first time in their lives, they would keep the money they earned. Unfortunately for the girls, Suling reflected as she walked home, such meager earnings weren’t enough if they hoped to support themselves. She knew this all too well from selling embroidered collars and cuffs to housewives along her laundry route.
She climbed up the stairs from the laundry to the living quarters above. The door to her uncle’s room was wide open now and at the first squeak of floorboards he called her to enter.
“Niece, there’s good news,” he said, his thin, pockmarked face almost glowing with pleasure. “Dr. Ouyang has done us a tremendous favor. You just missed him.”
“What kind of favor?” she said, not at all unhappy to have avoided the herbalist.
“He went down to Immigration at the Pacific Mail Steamship terminals,” her uncle said. “He vouched for your cousins and made a few . . . ah, gifts of money here and there. They’ll be processed quickly, out in two weeks. Guaranteed.”
“Two weeks?” She bit her lip. So soon. Too soon.
“Ah, one more thing,” her uncle said. “Dr. Ouyang tells me the fortune teller has picked the most favorable date for your wedding—April the nineteenth. So now you must work quickly on your wedding garments.”
Suling shut the door to her room. She moved the wooden chair from her bedside to the wardrobe, felt for the small cloth bag hidden on top. It contained money she’d been putting aside, something she’d been doing even before meeting Reggie. She shook her head, pushing aside memories of Reggie, eyes shining as they pored over railway timetables.
But in the short time left before her supposed wedding day, she needed to earn as much money as she could. Because she was going to follow through with those plans to leave San Francisco.
With or without Reggie, she was going to escape from her marriage, from Chinatown. From this life.