She’d had admirers over the years, though none she encouraged. Thus far she hadn’t met a man who she thought would ever be generous enough not to question why she slept little and crept through the night like a silent apparition.
With another surge in the crowd, the door opened and she, along with six others, was beckoned inside. Sun Ling took a deep breath to still her nerves, and followed the man in front of her.
The small ramshackle house was only two rooms, and they were ushered into the front one. The room was nothing new or inventive, sparse with a wooden partition that had a long rectangular opening cut out at eye level to the average man, so that he could peer into it and get his few minutes of paid entertainment at the expense of the fairer sex.
Swallowing past her revulsion, Sun Ling followed suit and stepped up to the peeking hole along with the others. Through it she saw just what she expected, a petite young woman dressed seductively in a Chinese gown, the vibrant gold silk glittering against the candlelight at every move the girl made.
What she didn’t expect was the wave of revulsion she felt when she saw that the rumors were right and the girl could be no older than twelve or thirteen years of age.
* * *
Slowly and gracefully she danced, twisting and turning, her moves exotic and precise, all expression hidden in her properly demure and kohl-rimmed eyes.
Around Sun Ling the men whistled, panting like animals, begging for more. With each turn, her gestures showing a flash of skin here and a flash there, the fever of the crowd escalated.
For one moment, Sun Ling almost believed the girl to be enjoying herself, but then she turned again, her eyes lifting for a brief second, just long enough for the pain and humiliation to flash before disappearing again under the fine fringe of lashes.
It was with that one look—only a fleeting fraction of a second—that Sun Ling knew her mission would continue. That she would be back when the crowds dispersed and the girl was allowed off the stage, sent to a back room to recover with a few hours of rest before the entire charade was repeated the next night.
And if Sun Ling didn’t intervene? Well, then the show would go on until the newness wore off the Orchid Princess and a fresher, possibly younger face replaced her. And then the girl before her would no longer hold court to the observers. Instead she would be sold to the highest bidder either as a concubine to a rich businessman, or as a prostitute to be hired out ruthlessly by one of the famous tongs that held Chinatown in the grips of their unsavory paws. One more piece of human flesh for them to claim as their property.
But not this one, Sun Ling thought, gritting her teeth against the shouts around her, men’s voices coming through the shoddy wood, demanding their turn for a gander. No, this was a girl who could and would be redeemed, and if the stars fell into place just right, she would be allowed to return to the childhood yanked from her in a moment of greed.
Sun Ling couldn’t do a lot, and she knew the small accomplishments she did to try to tip the scales of injustice wasn’t enough to move the world, but she always hoped it was enough to save just one more person.
She steadied herself against a sudden surge from the men behind her, but before she was shuffled out of the room, she whispered through the hole, “Be at your window tomorrow at midnight, and I’ll help you,” she said, hoping her promise traveled across the room and tickled the ears of the girl with the desperate eyes.
She took the back lanes home, sticking to the darkest streets she could find to maintain her anonymity as Dulin struggled up hilly terrain. Over the years, she’d learned that if one wasn’t careful, bravery could at times be confused with foolishness. Each time she traveled the streets, her mind filled with stories of Chinese who’d been massacred at the hands of those who felt them inferior.
The first one that she’d heard of had happened in Los Angeles, but was close enough to send waves of fear throughout the residents of the Chinese quarter in San Francisco. For months, only the bravest Chinese left their homes for work. Her father had begged her not to venture outside—to stay with him at the store, to allow him to protect her.
The reports said that the incident began when two Chinese companies took to the streets to battle over a prostitute that each felt belonged to them. Fighting over prostitutes was nothing new, and a gunfight broke out. Once again men’s and urge to own women as though they were property resulted in many innocent deaths. The whites took the gunfight as a sign that all Chinese were revolting, giving them the excuse they wanted to retaliate. In all, seventeen Chinese were lynched and two others stabbed to death, the battered and mangled bodies found hanging from various places like the porch rafters of a repair shop, a nearby gutter spout, and even tied to a gate at the entrance of the town lumberyard. Many more would’ve been killed, but they fled, hiding out in orchards or crossing the Los Angeles River to put distance between them and the mob that had gathered, their hearts set on murder.
Dulin snorted and Sun Ling pulled on the rein, pausing in the street. She listened, and after she heard no one, they continued onwards. Her imagination continued to taunt her with scenes of death and destruction.
Perhaps one massacre could be forgotten, but there had been many more that involved the whites rampaging against her people. Not even a week after the incident in Los Angeles, another squabble between Chinese street gang leaders erupted, and a pack of white men were deputized and told to round up those involved and take them to jail. Others in the community took that gesture to mean their help was also needed, and with pent-up frustration at the Chinese, many Irish and Mexicans joined the mob snaking through town, inciting a riot in their search for victims of Asian descent or, as the New York Times reported, ‘the mob’s determination to clean them out of the city’.
Sun Ling felt sick when she thought of the enraged citizens going after the Chinese, climbing houses to cut holes in roofs and pouring gunfire into them, the innocent young Chinese doctor dragged from his home and hung, and the barbaric abuse of the corpses that had lain in the streets. Almost two dozen more Chinese were killed. Many had their queues cut from their heads as trophies. Even fingers were hacked off, a prize she couldn’t imagine anyone wanting.
In addition to the senseless deaths, Chinese homes were ransacked. Life savings and treasures families had worked all their lives for were stolen and distributed through the crowds. Stores were broken into, and shopkeepers like her father were completely wiped out, with every last item in stock was either destroyed or stolen off the shelves. Many returned to China, penniless and out of resolve to stay and fight for their rights.
When the dust had settled and the blood had washed away, out of a mob of over one hundred men, only eleven were convicted of manslaughter and sent to San Quentin. If the Chinese had massacred those in the mob, they would’ve been hung immediately. Justice wasn’t on their side, and even with the grand jury declaring the acts an unfathomable human tragedy, a technicality overturned the conviction, and within weeks the eleven were released back to their families.
She sighed at the unfairness of it all. It had to change, for weren’t the townspeople the ones always touting the words freedom and fairness?
Dulin turned the corner and picked up the pace when she saw the Lane estate. Sun Ling was glad to be back, safe from her reconnaissance. It was time to put her thoughts to rest, to focus on something other than injustice and death.