Part 20 (1/2)

Liu Song excused herself to the bathroom, unsure if she were going to throw up. Her stomach ached and her forehead was pale and damp. She splashed water on her face and breathed as slowly and deeply as she could until the pain subsided.

When she returned she asked her son to do his ch.o.r.es and went downstairs with Colin. They chatted about William until they reached the street. She had to see the neighborhood for what it was, poor, broken, and infested with hopelessness. Starving immigrants from barren farms who had arrived years earlier to work in the canneries now sat on the sidewalk banging their chopsticks on empty rice bowls. And there was heavy black smoke billowing into the sky in the distance, in the direction of Hooverville. Liu Song wondered if the army had gone in again and burned everything down. Despite all the hards.h.i.+ps, she was grateful to have been born here, but she still had to acknowledge the raw, unvarnished life she had and compare it to the one Colin was offering her. She'd waited five years for him, never truly expecting him to return-it had seemed better that way. To forever be longing was better than to forever be disappointed.

”Can I take you to dinner? You and ...”

”William.” Have you forgotten his name already?

”Actually, you and the president of Blanchard Lumber, and perhaps a few others.”

Liu Song paused. ”You want me to join you for a business meeting?”

”Oh, you make it sound like an execution at dawn. I promise it won't be that bad. And afterward we can sneak away and talk about our future.”

I want to be more than a sing-song girl. ”I ... don't think we have a future.” Liu Song couldn't believe what she was saying.

Colin seemed dumbfounded, as though rejection were a possibility he had never considered. He opened his mouth as if to speak, then closed it again.

Liu Song looked at Colin and for the first time in her life felt sorry for him. It didn't diminish what her heart felt, but her head was telling her something else. He'd been headstrong in his pursuit of acting, headstrong in his father's banking business, headstrong in everything he wanted. He was kind and from a family of means and still so handsome. But he was someone else's father, someone else's husband. Liu Song had sacrificed everything for William-everything. Colin had sacrificed nothing for her.

She watched as the severity of her words found purchase in his heart. He pointed to an old man with one arm, selling bruised apples on the street. ”Look around you. You have nothing. I can give you everything. You can pursue your dreams. Why deny yourself what you deserve?”

What do I deserve? Liu Song thought long and hard as she stared at the despair of the street, the depravity of the laundryman down the avenue. She looked up at Colin and for once wasn't acting-she was her true self. That person, her mother's daughter, had been absent a very long time. She welcomed her back.

”I just realized that I'm perfect for you,” she said as Colin turned to her and smiled with relief. ”It's just that you're not perfect for me.”

SHE DIDN'T EXPLAIN to William where Colin had gone and, fortunately, he didn't ask. He listened to Let's Pretend on the radio while she heated up a tin of tofu with pimiento and green onions. And while they ate she wondered how much money she had saved up and if it was enough to move to someplace far away from Uncle Leo.

”How would you like to go to California?” she asked William. ”To live.”

William spoke with his mouth full. ”Why? What's wrong with right here?”

”I'm serious. They say it's sunny all the time in California. And there are sandy beaches everywhere. There's a Chinatown in Los Angeles that's twice as large as our neighborhood. There's more acting jobs. More things to do.”

Liu Song watched her son as he kept eating, sucking on the ends of his chopsticks, unsure if he believed that she was serious. She wondered how hard it would be for him to leave his school, his friends, everything he'd known.

”Okay,” he said.

”Okay what?” she asked.

William shrugged and kept eating. ”I'm okay with moving ...”

”You wouldn't miss your friends, miss your home?”

William looked at her and smiled, somewhat confused, as if she'd just asked the most ridiculous question. ”Home isn't my school. Home is wherever you are.”

Liu Song smiled and gave William her bowl. She couldn't eat. Her stomach was still aching. But her heart felt full. She realized that she'd been waiting here for Colin, and with that tether gone she was adrift. She was saddened, free, and ready to risk the storm that might follow her if she fled Seattle.

But first she needed to get through the night, because the sewing needles in her stomach were unrelenting. She tucked William into bed and drew a hot bath. She touched her belly and wondered why this was happening now. Was it Colin? Or was her body merely deciding to leave Uncle Leo, rejecting all that remained of him, of her old, broken life, even before her heart and mind had decided?

She remembered her mother talking about losing a baby once. She tried to remain calm as she slowly undressed, tied her hair up high with a broken chopstick, and slipped into the tub, feeling the warmth envelop her, soothing the pain, which came in waves, like the backbeat rhythm of a heartbeat. She watched the water turn a ruddy pink and felt hot and light-headed one moment, then so chilly that her teeth were chattering the next. Her cheeks felt cold as warm tears cascaded to her chin and dropped into the bathwater.

She closed her eyes and saw her parents. She saw her future, far away from here, beneath spotlights with cameras and cheering fans. She heard music to songs that she'd never had the courage to sing. She tried to open her eyes, but she felt sleepy, and when she did raise her eyelids, her vision was blurry, shadowy, as though she were staring through a tunnel, a portal that was closing. She tried to call for help, to call for William, to call for anyone, but her eyelids refused to stay open. Finally the pain subsided as warmth surrounded her and she allowed the darkness to swallow her whole.

Sanitarium.

(1929).

Liu Song woke to the sound of stiff leather shoes upon a polished wooden floor. She opened her eyes, but all she saw was white: a white ceiling, white walls, white linens, and white skin. Her eyes ached and her lips felt dry; the tender skin was coa.r.s.e and chapped, peeling. She was burning up with fever.

With her eyes slowly adjusting to the light, she winced as a grim-faced nurse slipped something cold and metallic into her mouth. The nurse glanced up at the clock on the wall, but Liu Song's vision was still too blurry for her to read what time it was. Then the nurse s.n.a.t.c.hed the thermometer, read it quickly, shook it, and stepped to the next bed, where she slipped the thermometer in the mouth of another patient.

Liu Song slowly turned her head and tried to count the beds. It seemed as though she was sharing the room with six other women: one black, one Indian, the rest white, one feebleminded-all of them young, all of them looking better than she felt.

The black woman smiled and waved. Liu Song tried to wave back but found that her arms and legs had been bound to the bed by thick leather straps. Horrified, she strove not to panic. She felt suffocated, every part of her body aching, itching, her skin crawling. She tried to escape, the only way she could, by running to the darkest, safest corner of her mind. The place Uncle Leo could never find.

”Do you understand English?” the nurse asked.

Liu Song vaguely remembered where she was and nodded. ”Yes.”

”Then I can tell you it's for your own good, dearie,” the nurse said as she pointed to Liu Song's restraints from two beds away. The nurse kept wending her way around the room with the thermometer in hand. ”That way you don't get all restless and pull out the st.i.tches in your sleep.”

Liu Song tried to move but was too dizzy and weak; her body didn't respond as though it belonged to her. She looked down and discovered stains on her s.h.i.+rt from where she'd thrown up on herself. Someone had cleaned her up, but she still smelled of ripe stomach acid and a hint of onion. She looked toward her belly but couldn't see past the covers. And whenever she s.h.i.+fted her weight or moved her hips, she felt stabbing pains near her belly b.u.t.ton.

She heard the nurse again. ”Take it easy over there, you've had surgery.”

Liu Song blinked, confused. ”Surgery?” She looked around, slowly realizing that she was in a hospital of sorts, a recovery room.

”You've been sterilized.”

Liu Song didn't understand the word. ”Where's my son?”

”You lost the baby, hon,” the nurse said without looking up. Liu Song watched as the woman made notes on a clipboard before hanging the slab of wood on the wall. ”Maybe it's G.o.d's way of saying you're not cut out for motherhood,” she said without even a shrug of concern. ”Are you still in pain?”

Liu Song remembered William and shook her head, but hot tears began to run down her cheeks. She bit her tongue, trying to hold in her emotions.

The nurse disappeared from view for a minute, then came back with a sponge and a bottle of something that smelled like dreaming. Liu Song shook her head as the nurse sprinkled a few drops on the sponge and put it in a mask, then wrapped the mask around Liu Song's head. She didn't want to breathe. She was afraid they were trying to kill her, poisoning her, afraid she'd never wake up. In a fit of panic she looked around the room and saw that the black woman had pulled up her gown and was touching the scar above her belly b.u.t.ton.

Liu Song closed her eyes again. Her last conscious thoughts were of William.

WHEN LIU SONG woke it was morning. She could tell that her fever had pa.s.sed. The only warmth she felt now was from the sun s.h.i.+ning through the barred window. As her stomach reminded her that she hadn't eaten, she looked around, but all she saw was a bowl of broth next to her bed with a thin soup skin on the top. She couldn't help thinking that if her mother were here she would have made her gai jow with dried wood ears and tiger lily buds. Her mother had credited the chicken-wine soup with saving Liu Song from the flu. If only the concoction had saved the rest of her family.

Liu Song noticed that two of the other patients were up and a nurse was helping them out the door and down the hallway. That gave her hope that this ordeal would soon be over. But then a familiar woman walked in and stared at Liu Song with pinched lips and a wrinkled forehead, as though she were a riddle to be solved, a social equation with an empirical answer.

”Mrs. Peterson,” Liu Song said. The woman's presence was not a comfort.