Jewel of the East (13 page)

But Maisie was already getting agitated.

“I’ve gone over it a million times,” she said. “At Clara’s, we were outside talking and then without any warning we were back home. And we were in the cemetery with Alexander and—same thing. All of a sudden we’re back.”

“We’re missing something,” Felix said.

He had thought about it, too, and he remembered it exactly as Maisie did.

“
They
had the objects,” Maisie said.

“Definitely.”

“I remember Clara telling us about her aunt, the nurse, right before.”

Felix nodded. “That’s right.”

“And we were standing in the cemetery with Alexander and he was talking about having been orphaned so young and working for Beekman and Cruger.”

“Okay,” Felix said, wishing he had a pen to make notes. “They had the objects. We both were with them.” He thought hard. “Time of day maybe?”

“No,” Maisie said, disappointed. “Clara was in the afternoon, and Alexander was superearly in the morning. Remember, I followed him out there at dawn when he used to go and study?” The memory made her feel sad. Maisie missed listening to Alexander, and she knew that Felix missed Clara, too.

Felix sighed. “So Clara was talking about her aunt, and Alexander was talking about his parents…”

They looked at each other hopelessly.

“Maybe it’s out of our control?” Felix offered.
“Maybe we go back when we’re done.”

“Done with what?” Maisie said, frustrated.

“I don’t know. Maybe we help them somehow? In some other way?”

Now Maisie sighed. “That’s not it. If anything, they help us. They take us in and feed us. They give us clothes.”

“And tortoise rides,” Felix said, smiling.

But Maisie didn’t smile back at him. “Joke all you want, but we’ll never get home if we don’t figure this out.” Her face changed, and then she added softly, “I want to count down the twelve days, too.”

As soon as she said the words out loud, Maisie got hit with the strongest feeling of missing her father that she had ever felt. All these months since the divorce, she had thought about him and missed him like crazy. She’d spent so much time homesick for their old life in New York that she hadn’t even made one friend in Newport. But ever since Felix had explained why he thought they should go back, Maisie had started to realize that her father was becoming a fuzzy memory. Sometimes she couldn’t remember what his voice sounded like. Sometimes it took her several minutes before his face changed from blurry to sharp in her mind. Every time these things
happened, she panicked. Her heart beat too fast, and she couldn’t catch her breath until she could bring him back to her.

Seeing the look on his sister’s face, Felix said, “Don’t worry. We’ll figure it out.”

She looked at him doubtfully.

“We figured out how to time travel in the first place, right?” he reminded her. “I’m sure we can figure out how to get back.”

Sometimes it felt like all there was to do in Shanghai was take cold baths to cool off, go to the parks and public gardens, and window-shop. As the days passed, even Wang Amah’s relenting to unbandage her feet and show them to Pearl, Maisie, and Felix had lost some of its thrill. It was hot. Blistering, relentlessly hot. And the heat made everyone cranky. Pearl began most of her sentences with “In
real
China…” To Pearl, Shanghai was not China at all.

One day, as they walked through one of the parks, Pearl stopped suddenly.

“What’s wrong?” Felix asked her.

Angrily, she marched over to a sign posted on the grass.

“No dogs or Chinamen,” Pearl read. “No dogs or Chinamen,” she repeated loudly. “Like the
Chinese people are no better than dogs? Like the British aren’t here because the Chinese said they could be here?”

Her voice grew louder and louder, and her face grew red.

“I hate it here!” Pearl shouted. “I hate Shanghai, and I want to go home!”

Before Felix could put his arm around her shoulders and calm her down, Maisie cried, “Me too! I want to go home.”

In an instant, the two girls fell into each other’s arms, sobbing.

“Oh no,” Felix said helplessly.

For some reason, that made them cry even harder.

He glanced around as if he might find help somewhere. But the businessmen walking briskly through the park didn’t even seem to notice them. A round nanny in a white uniform pushing a fancy carriage frowned at them but didn’t pause.

Then something in the distance caught Pearl’s eye.

“Look!” she said, sniffling and pulling away from Maisie.

“What?” Maisie asked.

Pearl pointed to a statue at the end of the path.

“It’s Kwan Yin,” she explained. “She’s the Goddess of Mercy.”

Maisie did not look impressed.

“She hears the cries of the world,” Pearl said hopefully. “Surely she’ll hear ours and help us all get back home.”

Pearl took off running toward the statue.

“Well,” Felix said, “it wouldn’t hurt.”

Reluctantly, Maisie walked with Felix down the path.

When Pearl saw them, she grinned.

“I should have been asking her all along,” she said.

From her pocket, she pulled out the small jade box that Felix had given her.

“I carry it everywhere,” she added. “Remember, Felix? You said that no matter where I went, I could take this little box filled with the earth from home with me?”

“May I see that?” Maisie asked Pearl.

Pearl handed the box to her, and Maisie held it tightly in her hand, closing her eyes and concentrating hard.

When she opened her eyes again, she looked around, clearly disappointed.

“I thought…,” she began.

“Did you think you could pray to her and open
your eyes and be home?” Pearl teased.

But Maisie looked at Felix and said, “Yes. Well, I hoped.”

“It doesn’t work that fast!” Pearl laughed. “You’re getting as bad as Amah. Next thing I know, you’ll believe a magic rabbit lives on the moon.”

Maisie’s eyes took in the statue in front of her: the flowing, green robe, the willow twig in one hand, and the vase dripping dew in the other. Even though she didn’t believe in all this Chinese superstition, maybe praying to Kwan Yin would help. It wouldn’t hurt, she decided.

She took a deep breath and thought as hard as she could, “Kwan Yin, do you hear me crying to go home?”

The stone face stared back at her.

When they got back to the boardinghouse on Bubbling Well Road, Mrs. Sydenstricker was waiting anxiously outside for them. As soon as she saw them turn the corner, she smiled and ran to meet them.

“Pearl! Wonderful news from your father!”

Pearl’s eyes glistened with joy. “We’re going home!” she said. “Finally!”

Felix saw Mrs. Sydenstricker’s face fall. She
reminded him of his own mother when she was about to disappoint him.

“Pearl,” Mrs. Sydenstricker said, putting her hand on Pearl’s arm. “I’m sorry. It’s time for us to go to our real home.”

“Real home?” Pearl said.

“He’s booked us passage on a steamship to San Francisco,” Mrs. Sydenstricker said.

“San Francisco?” Pearl said, her eyes darkening.

“Yes!” her mother said. “And from there on to West Virginia.”

“America isn’t home,” Pearl said angrily.

“It is,” her mother said. “It will be, Pearl. I promise.”

Maisie felt like she was listening to her own mother right before the Christmas party when she’d been complaining about not having any friends in Newport.
You will soon, sweetie,
she’d said.
I promise.
Her words hadn’t made Maisie feel better. Not really. How could a mother promise something that seemed impossible to get?

Still, Maisie said to Pearl, “I never thought I would feel at home anywhere except New York City. When we moved to Newport, I was totally miserable. I hated it. New York was my home, not that awful place.”

“And now you’re happy there?” Pearl said, knowing the answer.

Maisie hesitated.

But Felix jumped right in. “I love Newport now, Pearl,” he said. “At first, I was unhappy there. But before I knew it, I had friends and I fell in love with the harbor and all the sailboats there.”

Mrs. Sydenstricker smiled at him gratefully.

“It’s taken me longer,” Maisie said. “But slowly I’m getting used to it. Maybe I’ll always miss our old apartment and the streets around that neighborhood. Maybe I’ll always want the sounds of the city outside all around me. But that doesn’t mean I’m not warming up to Newport.”

“See, Pearl?” her mother said. “They know exactly how you feel.”

At that, Pearl’s eyes flared with anger.

“I want to go to Zhenjiang. That’s my home!”

She didn’t wait for her mother or Maisie or Felix to answer. Instead, Pearl ran off, away from the boardinghouse.

Maisie turned to Felix.

“I think our wishes got mixed up,” she said. “Now what are we going to do?”

That night in bed, Felix heard Pearl crying softly.

“Don’t cry,” he told her. “Maybe you’ll come back when it’s safe.”

“Mother hates it here,” Pearl said sadly. “She won’t come back unless Father makes her.”

“Why does she hate it so much?” Maisie asked.

Pearl sighed. “Because of my sisters and brothers.”

“The ones who…” Felix hesitated.

“Yes,” Pearl said. “The ones in heaven.”

“Did you know them, Pearl?” Maisie asked. “Or did they… was it… before you were born?”

They were all sitting up now, their thin, cotton blankets around their shoulders. The moon lit the little room and shone full and white in the window.

“First Maude went to heaven. Then Arthur. He got malaria while Father was up north, and they took him by boat to bury beside Maudie. But Mother got cholera, too, and the doctor thought she would die. Father took over the care of Edith—Mother was too sick. And poor Edith contracted cholera and died, just two weeks after Arthur.”

Both Felix and Maisie were speechless at this story of loss, their eyes filled with tears.

“Mother blamed the heat of summer. The mosquitoes. The flies. The dirty water. After Maudie died, she used to beg Father to spend
summers near the sea. Or to return back to America for good. But he refused. When Arthur and Edith died that summer—this was before I was born—Mother threatened to leave Father. She couldn’t bear to lose anything more.”

“But here you are, still,” Felix said. “He wouldn’t leave.”

“They went back to America. And I was born while they were there. But Father only agreed to go there because the doctor told him that Mother was losing her mind from grief. You know, it is possible to die from a broken heart,” Pearl said.

“Your poor, poor mother,” Maisie said.

“Our sorrow wasn’t over, though,” Pearl continued. Her voice had an edge of pain to it as she spoke now. “My little brother, Clyde, died several months before you arrived. He got this awful cough, and his coloring was like ashes. I had it, too, and was in my bed burning with fever when I heard a woman screaming. At first I thought it was coming from our neighbor’s. But then I recognized the voice. It was Wang Amah. That’s when I knew.”

At the same time, Maisie and Felix reached for Pearl’s hand, each of them holding one of hers in their own.