God of Luck (19 page)
THE FAMILY’S PROFIT from the extra generation of worms exceeded our expectations. But the long-awaited letter from the merchant guild turned our joy to ash: My husband was sold to a master who flaunts his cruelty and any attempt to redeem Ah Lung would add to his troubles.
Yet the letter was not without hope. A merchant in the guild has a Peruvian wife with a nephew in the area, a boatman who’d almost certainly agree to rescue Ah Lung were it not for the lack of a common language between the two. “This merchant will send his son to talk to the nephew. Together they may find a way to surmount the language problem.”
Anything is possible with help from Heaven. I learned that when I fooled the fortunetelling bird and its master yet failed to make good my plan to outwit my father’s greed, and the God of Luck intervened. He brought me to my husband then. Surely he’ll intervene again and restore my husband to me.
BIRDSONG AND THE trumpeting of sea lions herald daybreak. Cold to the marrow, my eyes and nose stream; my joints ache; I’m too stiff to rise.
But I have to believe Dios will come, and I will not delay him as I did Roberto and Alfonso. So I force back my shoulders, stretch my spine, my neck, my arms, cracking my joints one by one. Then, grabbing knobs of wall, I heave myself to my knees, my feet, stamp the numbness from my legs.
I CANNOT COUNT the times I’ve dropped to the ledge in a painful graze-grasp, graze-grasp of knobs and bumps so I’d be ready to board a boat I’d seen on the crest of an incoming comber—only to discover it had been imagined. This time, however, my name bounces off the rocky walls as I pitch onto my knees.
Ah Lung! Ah Lung! Ah Lung!
Eagerly I peer over the ledge, search the convulsion of water below. And when I see a scow, the bent head and powerful shoulders of a boatman expertly nosing it under the ledge, relief bursts from me in a shout.
“
Gracias
, Dios!”
Gracias
Dios!
Gracias
Dios!
Gracias
Dios!
As my thanks echoes, the boatman looks up, grinning.
“Shouldn’t you be thanking me?”
The moon face seems like Roberto’s, but how could he be speaking in the city dialect?
Questions crowd my lips. Determined not to delay us, I swallow them and turn, then lower myself into the scow as fast as my stiff limbs and raw fingers allow.
“I’m Roberto’s cousin, come to take you home.”
My heart rocks like the scow under my feet. But Roberto’s cousin keeps the boat from upsetting. Indeed, he’s already catching a wave, and we’re racing into the light, to Bo See.
T
HE EMOTIONAL SEED for this novel came from my parents, Rita and Robert Drysdale.
For hard facts about the pig trade and Peru’s Chincha (Guano) Islands, I consulted depositions from captives, their kidnappers, the captains of devil-ships, and members of their crews; the memorials and correspondence of Chinese, British, and American officials; and articles and books by nineteenth-century abolitionists, journalists, naturalists, and travelers. The footnotes in Arnold J. Meagher’s 1975 doctoral dissertation
The Introduction of Chinese
Laborers to Latin America: The “Coolie Trade,” 1847–1874
directed me to many of these sources. Evelyn Hu-DeHart, a scholar currently working in the field, brought Meagher’s dissertation to my attention. She and two other scholars, Lisa Yun and Ricardo René Laremont, kindly sent me copies of their articles, which provided additional information and direction. Philip Choy trusted me with rare books from his personal library. Him Mark Lai, in answering my endless questions, offered necessary context. Discussions with Yvette Huginnie and Jack Kuo-Wei Tchen helped me formulate my ideas.
For my understanding of nineteenth-century life and independent spinsters in Sun Duk, I drew on the work— some unpublished—of Andrea Sankar, Alvin Y. So, Janice E. Stockard, and Marjorie Topley; diverse articles in Chinese from the archives of Him Mark Lai and Judy Yung, translated by Ellen Lai-shan Yeung; Cheung Ching Ping’s collection of weeping songs,
Hok Goh Gee Tse
, located by Tsoi Nu Liang and Tsoi Hoi Yat, translated by Ellen Lai-shan Yeung; and interviews with spinsters—Lee Moon, Leung Chat Mui, Tam Ngan Bing, and Yiu Lau Fong— made possible by Tsoi Nu Liang and Hu Jie. Bo See’s skills in raising silkworms came from a compilation of seventeenth-and eighteenth-century Chinese treatises on the subject.
I obtained this obscure text and most of my other source material through the efforts of the resourceful and dedicated staff in the San Francisco Public Library’s interlibrary loan department, in particular Ron Romano. Lourdes Fortunado, Roberta Greifer, and Carol Small at the Noe Valley branch, Wei Chi Poon in the Asian American Library at the University of California, Berkeley, and Judy Yung also aided my search.
Former POW Eddie Fung shared valuable insights from his years as a slave laborer in Burma during World War II. He—together with Dorothy Bryant, Deng Ming-Dao, Peter Ginsberg, Robin Grossman, Nan Hohenstein, Marlon Hom, Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Caroline Kraus, Hoi Lee, Miriam Locke, Don McCunn, June McLaughlin, Valerie Matsumoto, Peggy Pascoe, Peter Rothblatt, Tsoi Nuliang, Jan Venolia, Ellen Lai-shan Yeung, and Judy Yung—offered helpful criticism of the manuscript at different stages, sometimes more than once.
Kathy Daneman has long supported my work, and she introduced me to Laura Hruska, whose thoughtful, skillful editing gave the novel its final shape.
Laura Blake Peterson, Peter Ginsberg, and Dave Barbor, my agents at Curtis Brown, Ltd., have provided astute and welcome counsel for much more than this book.
I continue to rely on my husband’s analytical eye, passion, and faith.
To all, I extend my heartfelt thanks. You’re my luck.