“Let her go!” sputters Francesca. “Have you lost your mind? Marcus, get him off her this instant!”
Private Smalls pulls me off-balance again, and stars float before my eyes. Francesca tries to reach me, but Marcus pulls her away.
Suddenly, Private Smalls’s grip loosens. “Ohh! Ahh!” he cries in pain.
“For shame, Mr. Smalls. What are you doing? That is a St. Clare’s girl you are manhandling, you currish fool.”
Headmistress Crouch pokes Mr. Smalls with her cane again, and he screams once more before letting me go. I recall with satisfaction the business end of Headmistress Crouch’s walking stick and hope she makes a kabob of him.
“And you, Mr. McGovern. You are a disgrace to Wilkes College.”
The pair seem to shrink into their uniforms, now looking more like boys caught pinching cigarettes than soldiers. Francesca crosses to my side.
Headmistress Crouch stabs her cane into the ground and regally places both hands atop the brass knob. “Wouldn’t Headmaster Donahugh love to hear about how you were bullying Miss Bellini—your intended? The headmaster might be a bit of a soft shoe, but if there’s one thing he doesn’t abide, it is unchivalrous conduct. When I tell him how you were badgering my girls, I expect he will not only expel you, he will cause all other institutes of higher learning to shut their doors in your toad-spotted faces.”
That does it for Mr. Smalls, who cries out, “No, Miss! Please don’t tell him. We didn’t know she was from St. Clare’s!” He casts his suddenly terrified eyes at me. “I swear it.”
Lieutenant McGovern spits, eliciting a disgusted snort from Headmistress Crouch.
“Now, you will leave this campsite, and stop marauding defenseless women, and I might be inclined to look the other way. But if I see so much as a hint of your shadow, or smell so much as a whiff of the cologne in which you have gone swimming”—she casts a scathing eye in Marcus’s direction—“I will be visiting Headmaster Donahugh as soon as I am able.”
Mr. Smalls stumbles away, and after a last glance at us, the young lieutenant follows.
After the soldiers become toy-sized, Headmistress Crouch turns to Francesca. “Miss Bellini, stop kneading at your hands. You’re not making pizza.” She refocuses her ill humor on me. “Miss Wong, Miss Beauregard has returned from her . . . cow hunting, and is quite beside herself. She is in her tent asking for you.”
38
FRANCESCA AND I THREAD THROUGH THE crowd, which has grown to at least a hundred people. I hardly know what to make of Headmistress Crouch’s staunch defense of me. Maybe she does not despise me as much as I thought. Francesca’s words from the day I was whipped float through my mind. She is well-intentioned, even with all her prickles.
Harry sings “Give My Regards to Broadway,” and someone has added a saxophone to the medley. A man in suspenders shuffles about, offering crab apples from a crate, while another passes out peanuts from a sack. Somehow the bounty has multiplied.
Inside the tent, Katie is helping Minnie Mae into an army shirt. With her hair scattered like loose wheat about her shoulders, and smelling a little of sour milk, Minnie Mae looks nothing like the buttoned-up debutante I first met. Her eyes are wild, and there’s a breathlessness about her, as if she might fly away like a bird.
Katie tucks a blanket around the girl’s knobby shoulders. “She’s as cold as a witch’s nose.”
“What happened, Minnie Mae?”
The girl begins to rock. “I followed the droppings up to Stow Lake. Forgivus was standing on the bridge, and he was at the end of the bridge, on Strawberry Hill.”
Katie settles back onto her haunches. “Who?”
“The deaf man.” Minnie Mae stops rocking and fixes her watery eyes on me.
The tent flap opens, and Elodie peers in, chewing on a crab apple. “Being popular is exhausting.” She scoots in and lies down, propping herself up on one elbow, not minding that she’s taking up more than her share of real estate. “Minnie Mae, you don’t look too good.”
Minnie Mae ignores her. “I saw the deaf man standing at the end of the bridge, with his rope held out.” She demonstrates. “He was telling Forgivus to come. Forgivus crossed the bridge, going until . . .”—her eyes grow large and hold the firelight—“until they just disappeared.” She wipes her nose on the blanket.
“Disappeared, or it was too dark to see them anymore?” Francesca gently asks.
“It was still light out. It’s like they disappeared into thin air.”
“Did you follow them?” I ask.
“No! It’s haunted up there. I waited until the sun went down. They never came out.”
“Maybe they crossed the water on the other side,” Katie suggests.
Minnie Mae shakes her head slowly. She seems to have aged a year in the span of two days. “Why would they do that? Cows don’t like to swim.”
Elodie scrunches her nose. “Why would they go up Strawberry Hill? There’s nothing up there; not to mention it’s a steep climb for a cow.”
“I hear it’s got a good view,” I say. Of course, I don’t know that firsthand.
Minnie Mae rubs her eyes. “I think Forgivus had a little bit of Ruby inside her. I could feel her good spirit. The man was an angel who brought her to me. I think God told them to go up that mountain to make it easier for Him to take them home.”
The shadows from the single lamp in the tent hide our expressions. No one points out that angels don’t usually get beat up by humans.
“I don’t think he was an angel, Minnie Mae, but he did us a good turn, and he should be thanked for that.”
“Will you go look for them, Mercy? I really want to tell him I’m sorry.” Her shoulders quake as she begins to cry. “I wish it had been me. Oh, Ruby, I wish it had been me.”
Her sobs dig a hole in me, reaching through to the place where I hold my own grief.
Francesca pats her blanketed leg. Elodie gets up, and Katie helps Minnie Mae lie down. The tent suddenly feels suffocating, like a coffin. I duck out, and suck in the sweet night air. Harry is no longer singing, but a guitar has started up.
Elodie comes out behind me, followed by Francesca and Katie. Georgina spots us from where she’s talking to a knot of young people and hurries over.
“Minnie Mae—?”
“She’s resting,” says Katie. “But she might need watching over.”
Georgina nods.
I work my way back through the crowd to our own tent. There will be no sleeping tonight until the guests leave. And part of me thinks that if I can resolve some of Minnie Mae’s pain, some of mine might heal, too. Grief can make people irrational, seeing angels in men and sisters in cows, but maybe it takes an irrational mind to bring us back to reason.
I’ll need a lantern. I rummage through the crate of supplies beside our tent.
“You’re not actually going to Strawberry Hill at this hour, are you?” Elodie asks.
Katie squats down next to me. “I’m coming with you. As long as we’re not going to any cemeteries.”
Francesca pulls the extra lantern out of our tent. “Is this what you’re looking for? I’m coming, too.”
Harry appears out of the darkness, her face more animated than I’ve ever seen. “What’s happening? You all disappeared.”
“We’re going to find Forgivus and the deaf man up Strawberry Hill,” says Katie.
Harry blinks. “Strawberry Hill?”
“You don’t all have to come. What about the party?” I say.
Francesca glances around at all the people, whose voices have melded into one loud roar of conversation. “They won’t even notice we’re gone.”
“You’re all touched.” Elodie plunks down beside the crate and gathers her knees to her. There are grass stains on her trousers. “That place is haunted. The Lady of Stow Lake lost her baby in the water fifty years ago. I h
eard if you say ‘White Lady’ three times, she’ll appear. She’ll ask if you’ve seen her baby, and if you say yes, she’ll haunt you for the rest of your life.”
“What if you say no?” asks Katie.
“She’ll kill you.”
I laugh. “Well, then I guess we won’t be calling her name three times.” I can’t help being amused at this new side of Elodie, the side that doesn’t walk as heavy as I thought.
Francesca lights the lantern, and Katie stuffs an extra candle and some matches in her pocket.
Elodie’s mouth falls open. “You’re still going?”
I tighten the laces of my boots. “You don’t have to wait up.”
The trembler moved us in mysterious ways, shifting underlying assumptions about social rank and order. At school, the girls always treated Elodie with the deference that a minnow would give a shark swimming in the same tank. Now, without her cronies, it’s unclear if the shark still has its teeth, and the girls mostly ignore her.
Elodie scowls, and a hint of her old fire flickers across her face. She unfolds herself. “Well, I’m not afraid of a spooker. And it isn’t as if I have anything better to do.” The lantern squeaks as she takes it from Francesca, then Fancy Boots marches into the night.
Elodie leads us west across the park. In the dark, we can no longer see the smoke burning along the skyline, but the unnatural warmth of the air remains, sure as the sweat beaded on our skin. I guess it will continue to warm as the fires gorge themselves on our city. I hope they leave our park oasis alone. We trek past hundreds of refugees in tent cities, doing their best to build castles from sand. Most are wearing a mix of odds and ends like us, but some are suited up in their Sunday best, with ties, and frock coats, and crinolines, and gloves. I can’t help wondering if they were expecting the world to end and wanted to look their best to meet their Maker.
The wheezy notes of a harmonica play from somewhere high, and I look up to see a man sitting in a tree, playing taps. Even the harmonicas have lost their joy. I’ve always considered them to be happy instruments, but tonight it sounds like the notes are crying.
Ba always said that if he died, he wanted someone to play taps at his funeral the way it’s supposed to be played—on the bugle. It would be the least America could do after making all those laws against us.
A few paces in front of Francesca and me, Katie and Harry chatter about tonight’s feast. There’s an easiness to Harry’s steps, a bigness to her movements as if she has started taking up more room on this planet. Maybe singing has released some of her demons, and whatever troubled her before no longer has a hold. Maybe the best kind of healing comes from within, nurtured by time. Her transformation gives me hope.
Francesca leans close to me. “Mr. Chance needed to leave early to check on his grandfather. But he asked me to bid you good night on his behalf.”
“You don’t say.” I give her a sideways glance.
“He is from a good family.”
“Someone like him would not be interested in someone like me.”
“For every rule, there is a rule breaker.” Her gaze flits to me. “And a ruler breaker.”
I smile at her well-aimed shot, though I doubt she understands the magnitude of what she’s suggesting. As a general rule, white people do not associate with Chinese people, much less marry them, unless of course they enjoy public ridicule. It just isn’t done. Even so, for a moment I imagine myself on the arm of Mr. Oliver Chance, a bonnet of silk cabbage roses on my head, a pair of fancy patent leather boots on my feet. But when I try to imagine his smooth face, with its shy smile and adoring eyes, all I can see is Tom.
The memory of our last meeting stings me anew, but I force myself to shoulder the hurt. Just keep yourself safe, Tom. That is all I want from you.
Katie hops over a tree root. “Headmistress Crouch said the Southern Pacific Railroad is offering free transportation out of the city, but there’s a waiting list. Tomorrow, she’s going to see about getting us tickets to Texas. If you need a place to stay, Mercy, you know, in case . . . well, in case you do, you can come home with me and Harry. We have heaps of space, and Gran loves people.”
“Thank you. I appreciate the offer, but I’ll stay here and wait for my father.” I never thought about going to Texas before. Were there even any Chinese people in Texas? It seems wrong to leave the city so soon after Ma and Jack’s deaths, as if I were somehow abandoning them. Ma believed the dead haunted places that were familiar to them. I couldn’t bear the thought of Jack looking for me and not finding me.
“You could stay with my family in San Jose, as long as you can put up with my father’s smoke, and my brother’s insufferable manners.” Francesca smiles at me. Her unspoken concern hangs in the air. What if your father doesn’t come?
Elodie glances back at me. “No one wants to live in San Jose. After we rebuild, you may live with Papa and me. You wouldn’t have to leave San Francisco.” Her offer touches me more than the others because I remember her deep scorn. But the thought of living on Nob Hill without Jack or Ma has lost its appeal. Plus, who knows how Elodie will feel once we get our lives back on track. She will still be rich, and I will still be poor. She will be French, and I, Chinese.
Well, that is a problem for another day. “I thank you for all of your offers, especially yours, Elodie, since I know how much it annoys you to leave the window cracked.”
She snorts. “I never said I’d share my room with you.”
We pick our way across sleeping bodies—at least I hope they’re only sleeping—then across a field of giant pine trees.
Francesca nudges my arm, directing my attention to a woman frying eggs on a potbellied stove. “A little stove like that would be perfect for the Kitchen. Burns the firewood more efficiently. I once made enough pies to feed an entire boatload of officers with a stove like that.” When it comes to food, she has a one-track mind.
I walk up to the woman. “Excuse me, ma’am, but have you seen a cow pass by?” The paved path to Stow Lake lies just a few paces from where she’s standing. Forgivus and the deaf man would have had to exit this way.
Her oblong face pulls even longer. “A cow? No, I would’ve noticed that for sure.”
“Thank you.”
We forge on, and the woman calls after us. “Mind yourself by the lake at this time of night. The White Lady might be about.”
Elodie stifles a gasp, and the lantern squeaks in her hand. But when we all look at her, she throws back her shoulders and marches up the steep paved pathway.
It looks almost as I remember but not quite, with rattling trees that don’t tower as high as they used to and a stately carriage house that has seen better days. The rowboats I once longed to ride clack haphazardly against one another, like mah-jongg tiles.
Harry moves as quiet as a shadow, navigating across stones and pinecones, her skirts held to her sides. “Sure is dark here.”
The breeze has blown away much of the smoke, and stars salt the stew of a sky. Elodie raises her lantern higher, and the light gleams off her pearly skin.
We reach the two-arch bridge that ends at Strawberry Hill in the center of the lake. The hill rises steeply, with steps cut into its side. If the man was able to move Forgivus up there, there’s only one place they could be: at the top.
The chill from the water raises the hairs on my arms as we trek across the bridge in silence. I keep my ears open for Forgivus’s gentle moos. The boats’ clacking, the scuff of our shoes, and the rattling of leaves cast a symphony of spooky sounds around us, but no mooing. I wonder how a place so idyllic by day could, by night, look like the kind of place werewolves might do their changing.
My nose tingles with the smell of strawberries, and the tingle flushes all the way to my soles. Didn’t someone once tell me that ghosts smell of strawberries? Or did I make that up? It is called Strawberry Hill; of course this place would smell like
its namesake.
A bit of cobweb moss drips into my eyes, and I claw it off with more force than required. I’m not usually skittish—haven’t I walked in the dark cemetery at least a hundred times?—but somehow the collective apprehension around me toys with my otherwise level head.
“What does this White Lady look like?” I ask to break the eerie silence, but also because the best way to banish fear is to spit at it in the eye.
“Don’t say her name!” Elodie squeals, giving me a hard look. She lowers her voice to a whisper. “She wears a dirty white dress, and her hair is long and wet, like she just came out of the lake. Sometimes she sings to her baby.”
“Who?” asks Katie, coming up behind us.
“The White Lady,” says Elodie. She clamps a hand over her mouth. “The Saints! I said her name again. That’s twice. Someone talk about something else!”
Harry and Katie fall behind, and in the dark, I can’t see them, but I can hear their footsteps. Francesca lags behind, too. The hill rises sharply, and even I am getting winded. I stop to let the others catch up, and suddenly, Francesca is beside me. She bends and grabs at her boot. “Oh! I’ve caught a stone. Elodie, bring the light closer.”
The light returns as Elodie re-treads her steps. She brings the lantern down, and I hold Francesca’s arm while she shakes her boot.
“Aha, I got it.” Francesca takes the lantern from Elodie. “Let me carry it. I’m not afraid of the White Lady.”
Elodie goes ashen at the third mention of her name. The air grows so thick with tension, you could pop it with a pin. My pulse beats to quarters in my ears as Francesca leads us up the stairs.
A soft singing begins from somewhere ahead, so soft I think I imagine it at first. Then the voice sharply rises to a shrill high note, stopping all of us in our tracks.
A figure stands at the top of the stairs, but only her face is visible, illuminated by candlelight. The face hangs to one side, eyes rolled back and tongue lolled out in a gruesome expression of death.
“Have you seen my baby?” shrieks the Lady of Stow Lake.