First one leg clad in plain cotton sleeping pants appeared, than the other. The girl shimmied out on her belly, and Sun Ling maneuvered her shoulder just under her until, when the girl let go, her backside rested on Sun Ling’s back. Gently she lowered her to the ground, and Lian jumped off, then turned to her.
“I think I woke the other girl,” she said, her eyes round with fear.
Sun Ling paused, listening for movement within the room. While rescuing more than one victim would be noble, it would also jeopardize the safety of Lian. She put her finger to her lips and beckoned for her to follow.
Lian picked up her bag and moved behind Sun Ling.
A feminine shout rang out from the open window, but that didn’t make them stop. Together they made their way around the building, walking softly but quickly.
Sun Ling could smell the fear coming from Lian.
She turned, meaning to give her a word of comfort, and saw a hulking shadow making his way to them from behind them.
“Tìhng dài!” he called out for them to stop.
The girl froze in place, and Sun Ling grabbed her sleeve. “Come on, run!”
Her words spurred Lian into action, and together they raced across the lane and into the grove of trees, then shrank against the trunk of a large oak. They heard the guard coming near, hesitated, then ran in the opposite direction as they struggled to catch their breath.
“Come, we have to move now.” Sun Ling led the way to where Dulin waited patiently. She took the girl’s bag and set it behind the mane, then beckoned for Lian to climb up.
“I—I can’t,” Lian stuttered, fear evident in her eyes as she backed away from the horse.
Sun Ling heard the sound of the man’s boots hitting the pavement behind them. He was getting closer. “Yes, you can, Dulin is gentle-mannered, don’t worry about her.”
Lian looked at the horse again and shook her head.
Sun Ling knew they had a mere few seconds left. She could even smell the stench of garlic coming off the guard. “Lian, do you want go back in there? Dance for the men tomorrow night?” she whispered, then held her hands together for a step up.
The girl looked behind Sun Ling, saw how close the guard was, then hopped into her hands and threw a leg over the horse. She scooted forward, and Sun Ling hopped up behind her, grabbed the reins, and clicked her tongue.
She leaned down and whispered in Dulin’s twitching ear, “Okay, girl, this is one of those times I need you to live up to your name. Git!”
Dulin obeyed immediately, her cantor becoming a gallop as Sun Ling loosened her grip on the reins and let the horse follow her instincts through the other side of the grove and toward the safety of her father’s humble home.
3
“I knew the answer to every question, and the teacher wouldn’t call on me,” Luli said, her lips pursing in a familiar pout. “It’s because I’m a girl, Baba.”
Min Kao picked her up under her arms and set her on the counter, slipping off her good school shoes. At almost eight years old, Luli was tiny for her age, and he could still handle her easily. He was glad she was a bit late from school, as the health officials had only barely left. It had taken a few minutes for him to breathe deep as Tao Ren calmed him down, urging him to ignore the flood of insults the white men had heaped upon them as they fumigated the store for the second time that month.
They’d come just as Tao Ren was telling him the legend of Shen Nung, the Red Emperor who had compiled the first guides to herbal medicines. The story went that the man had taken a magic drug to make his stomach skin transparent so that he himself could see the actions of the hundreds of plants he digested, and evaluate their progress. Min Kao had been getting ready to debate the absurdity of the legend just as they’d arrived.
The disinfection committee was a farce. The Chinese as well as the whites knew that the latest smallpox bout did not originate from Chinatown. Yet, as with every calamity that touched the lives of the white citizens of California, the Chinese became the scapegoats.
“And what nonsense do we have here?” One of the foreign men had said, looking through the line of jars in the glass enclosure and pointing at one that held dried seahorses.
Min Kao had ignored him, knowing that a white man would never believe that ingesting the seahorses was a proven method of increasing a man’s yang, to improve his physical relations with his wife. He’d held his tongue, maintaining eye contact with Tao Ren to help him stay calm.
Now he breathed deeply as he looked into Luli’s dark eyes. With the officials gone, it was time to focus on her. For he was determined to shield her from the ugliness of prejudice and narrow-mindedness as much as was possible.
After pulling her socks away, he tickled her feet, and then traced the heart-shaped birthmark on her heel before slipping on the plastic slippers she wore at home. She had discovered the mark at the age of three or so. He’d told her it was left there by an angel’s kiss, turning her frown into a slow smile of wonder, and a blemish into a beauty mark with the words he chose. He wished his mother could see her now and feel satisfied that the infant she’d pleaded to save was now a healthy, fetching girl with an intelligence that was far beyond her years.
“Maybe it’s because your teacher’s eyesight is failing and she didn’t see your skinny little arm shoot up in the air,” Min Kao said, then playfully pinched the underside of her wrist. His banter worked, and she forgot the injustice from the teacher and slipped into regaling him with tales of the children in the neighborhood, how each one had pushed her every button that day and made her want to scream in frustration. He bit his lip to keep from laughing as he worked to tighten the laces on her slippers.
“And Xiao Mei, she even refused to help me with my pigtails,” she said, making him smile with her exasperation. “Then she said that her father’s employer calls us celestials. What is a Celestial, Baba?”
“But I did your pigtails just this morning,” he said, looking at her and raising his eyebrows, trying to divert her attention from her question.
“But Baba, you don’t do them right, and they fall out by noontime. Tomorrow Mama must fix them, and then they’ll stay,” she admonished him, her eyes serious. Even with her hair mussed and a dirty spot on her nose, she was endearing. And he had a feeling she knew it.
She knew she was the center of their universe.
“Hao le,” he agreed. “If she is here, she will do them. But sometimes Mama is busy helping other mothers bring their children into the world. If she is out late, or gone when you wake up, it is only for that reason. You know if given the choice, she would be here every minute with us.”
“I know. But you didn’t answer my question.”
He sighed. She was much too precocious for her age. “It just refers to us Chinese because many call China the Celestial Kingdom.”
She shook her head adamantly. “That’s not true. Xiao Mei said they call us Celestials because they think we aren’t completely human. What do you say about that, Baba?”
“I say I’ve heard enough nonsense. Who are you going to believe? The silly Xiao Mei or your noble baba?” he asked.
She pointed at his chest, ready to move on to the next big thing in her life.