Jewel of the East (9 page)

“And we have one here now, too,” she said.

They continued down Horse Street in silence. Maybe it was time to give Pearl the jade box, Felix thought. Maybe it was time to go home.

“Rat years,” Mr. Kung, their tutor, said solemnly, “are associated with wealth.” The tutor came to visit Pearl, Felix, and Maisie a few times a week.

He paused and let his watery eyes alight on first Pearl’s face, then Maisie’s, and then Felix’s.

“But,” he continued, “it is also associated with death.”

Felix shivered in his dark-blue cotton tunic. They all stood on top of a green hill that ran behind Pearl’s house. Mr. Kung held a giant, red kite shaped like a fish with golden scales. The wind rippled the fish’s head slightly, making it look as if it were shaking its head at them.

“The rat,” Mr. Kung added in his serious, deep voice, “is the first animal in the twelve-year cycle because it sneakily rode on the back of the ox and jumped off near the finishing line. This story shows us its attributes.” As he said each one, he held up a finger, counting them. “Cunning. Aggression. Leadership. Hard work. Strong will.”

All five fingers of one hand stood up.

“But what will this year bring? Year 4598?”

Maisie didn’t mind the idea that the Year of the Rat brought wealth. But death? She didn’t like that at all. Luckily, she decided, she didn’t believe in Chinese astrology or myths or anything. Mr. Kung was just creepy.

He had arrived this morning with
nian gao
, rice cakes made from sticky rice, sugar, chestnuts, dates, and lotus leaves. “In Chinese,” Mr. Kung had explained, “
nian gao
sounds the same as the saying for getting higher year by year. In Chinese people’s minds, the higher you are, the more prosperous your business is. Very fortuitous to eat
nian gao
on New Year’s.”

That morning, as Chushi and Wang Amah worked on all the specialties they would have for dinner tonight, Mr. Kung explained the significance of each one.

“Ah, very good,” he said, pointing to the fish the cook was filleting. “In Chinese, fish sounds like ‘save more.’ Chinese people always like to save more money at the end of the year because they think if they save more, they can make more in the next year. So we eat fish to remind us to save more.”

Then he peered closely at Wang Amah’s dumplings, which were all stuffed and crimped,
waiting on a bamboo platter to be fried.

“Dumplings have a long history in China,” he said, nodding his approval at Wang Amah’s perfect crescent shapes. “More than eighteen hundred years. To me, they symbolize Chinese food. The more dumplings you eat during the New Year celebration, the more money you can make in the New Year.”

Wang Amah had started to fill spring roll wrappers with a vegetable mixture, then roll them into tight, cigar-shaped cylinders.

Mr. Kung nodded approvingly. “When she fries these, they will turn a beautiful gold. The gold of money. The gold of spring.” He grinned at them, revealing a set of long, yellow teeth.

“Gold like his teeth,” Maisie whispered to Felix.

Since she had just stopped ignoring him, Felix smiled, even though he kind of liked Mr. Kung. All the information he gave them was interesting, Felix thought. Plus, when they got home, he would dazzle Lily Goldberg with everything he knew about China.

Now, out on the hill with the kite, Mr. Kung turned his solemn eyes on the three of them.

“This kite will predict what will happen in this Year of the Rat,” he told them.

“How can a kite do that?” Maisie said in her demanding voice.

Felix cringed. But Mr. Kung remained unfazed.

“We let the wind tell us,” Mr. Kung answered mysteriously.

Maisie rolled her eyes.

“Do you know how to fly a kite, Zhenzhu?” he asked Pearl. Even though he spoke English, Mr. Kung always used Pearl’s Chinese name.

She shook her head.

“Very simple,” Mr. Kung said.

Carefully, he placed the kite in both of Pearl’s hands.

“Hold it like so,” he instructed.

Mr. Kung stared off beyond the hills. He licked one finger and held it up into the air, nodding.

“There is a good amount of wind to fly a kite today,” he said, pleased. “All you must do is toss the kite lightly up into the wind, and the wind will do the rest.”

“Just throw it?” Pearl said hesitantly.

Mr. Kung considered this. “No,” he said. “Toss. Lightly.”

Pearl nodded.

Mr. Kung placed a hand on her arm.
“Zhenzhu,” he said, “when the wind lifts the kite, you must let it go so that it can fly toward heaven and forecast the future.”

“What?” Maisie said. “The kite is going to forecast the future?” She shook her head. Mr. Kung might be a good teacher, but his beliefs in superstitions were silly.

“On the New Year, this is what we do,” he said, looking directly at Maisie. “It is the Chinese way.”

Maisie and Felix watched as Pearl took a few running steps across the grass, then lifted the kite upward and let it go.

The kite seemed to hang there for an instant as if it were deciding what to do. Then it dipped dangerously low to the ground.

Pearl ran to retrieve it, but Mr. Kung held her back.

A gust of wind came from nowhere, and it lifted the kite high, then higher still.

They all gazed upward at the bright-red kite against the light-blue sky. The sun made the gold scales shimmer, and briefly the kite actually looked like a fish swimming. Felix wondered what it meant for the future that the kite was going so high. Nothing bad, he decided. It must be a good sign.

But just as suddenly as it lifted, the kite took a
nosedive and came crashing toward the ground.
Oh no
, Felix thought as he watched it. The word
death
echoed in his mind.

Right before it hit, the kite hovered, then slowly lifted upward once again.

They watched as it drifted skyward.

“What does it mean?” Pearl asked, still watching the kite float.

“This year,” Mr. Kung said, “will be a year of ups and downs.”

He glanced toward the sky and the distant speck of kite disappearing.

“But all will be well,” he said unconvincingly.

Still gazing upward, Mr. Kung nodded to himself.

“Yes,” he said. “All will be well in the end.”

Felix wished he believed him.

On a beautiful, sunny spring morning, Mr. Kung sat with Maisie, Felix, and Pearl on a grassy hill overlooking the river. They were practicing their calligraphy, writing the beautiful and complicated Chinese characters in thick, dark ink.

Whenever one of them made a sloppy or imprecise character, Mr. Kung made them do it all over again.

“When letters were invented,” he reminded them each time, “heaven rejoiced. They must be written with reverence.”

Felix carefully practiced the characters for
family
and
friend
so that he could teach Lily how to make them when he got back home.
Home.
As time
passed, Felix was getting more homesick. When he counted up the days and then weeks and months since they’d been here and realized it had been six months since they landed in the market, he grew worried that they weren’t going to be able to get back. The Christmas party and Lily Goldberg seemed almost blurry to him now. Still, Maisie reminded him often—too often—that they had stayed away a long time last time, too, and they’d gotten back easily.

Maisie’s letters were always sloppier than Felix’s, and she and Mr. Kung argued over his insistence that she practice until she get them just right.

“Maisie,” Mr. Kung said, exasperated, “he who does not show reverence to lettered paper is no better than a blind buffalo.”

“Says who?” Maisie demanded, putting her pen down.

“Says Confucius,” Mr. Kung told her.

Even Maisie didn’t argue with Confucius. She dipped her pen in ink again and tried to make the strokes as neatly as she could.

On their way back home, Maisie stopped and pointed to a tree with small boxes hanging from its limbs.

“What are those?” she asked Mr. Kung.

“Ah!” he said. “Inside those boxes are papers,
letters, anything with writing on it. You see, Maisie, writing is so powerful that the only way to dispose of it properly is to burn it in those boxes, then hang it on a tree so that the smoke takes it back to heaven where it belongs.”

Maisie studied the tree, thinking hard.

“I like it, Mr. Kung,” she said finally. “I’ll try harder tomorrow.”

“You are a smart girl,” Mr. Kung said, patting her back.

They arrived back home in good moods.

“I’m sure Wang Amah saved you some crunchy rice, Felix,” Pearl said.

But her mother met them at the door, frowning.

“Your father is home,” she said. She glanced at Mr. Kung, whose smile had turned to a worried expression.

Absalom Sydenstricker, Pearl’s father, had only come home one other time since Maisie and Felix had been with the family. His fierce expression and the large stick he carried everywhere with him made Maisie and Felix afraid to be around him. Even worse, he spoke in a loud, booming voice about how the Chinese were heathens and he meant to convert every last one of them. Pearl told them that so far he’d only
managed to convert about a dozen. But he refused to give up.

After he left and went back up north, the whole house seemed to sigh with relief. Pearl told Maisie and Felix that he did not even mourn all the children he and her mother had lost. “He believes it’s selfish to cry for yourself when there’s an entire nation of heathens to cry for.”

Now he was back.

“Is he all right?” Mr. Kung asked.

Mrs. Sydenstricker glanced at Pearl, then shook her head.

“He had to close down chapels,” she added. “The landlords refused to rent to him because he’s a foreigner.”

“What’s going on?” Maisie asked.

“The Boxers,” Mrs. Sydenstricker said.

“Mother, you know that’s not what they call themselves. They’re the Righteous Fists of Harmony,” Pearl said. “Only foreigners call them the Boxers.”

Pearl’s mother looked at her. “Darling, we
are
foreigners. And your father reports that they are even more committed to ridding China of us.” She hesitated and then said, “They gave him a pretty bad beating. He has bruises everywhere.”

“This is very worrisome,” Mr. Kung said quietly.

Wang Amah came into the living room, wringing her hands. She said something in Chinese, and Pearl translated.

“Amah says that they believe Westerners are responsible for the famine and floods that have struck parts of China. They blame Westerners for all of China’s problems.”

Pearl’s mother said sadly, “Precious Cloud has gone to stay with a Chinese family. She doesn’t think it’s safe to stay with us anymore.”

“No!” Pearl cried.

Heavy footsteps pounded down the stairs, and Mr. Sydenstricker appeared in the doorway. His very presence silenced Pearl and all of them.

“It’s official,” he announced. “The empress has officially asked the Boxers to rid China of all foreigners.”

“She always gets what she wants,” Mrs. Sydenstricker said. She looked at her husband. “We must leave. We must take the children to safety at once.”

“Nonsense!” Mr. Sydenstricker said in his booming preacher voice. “We must face the heathens head-on!”

Mrs. Sydenstricker’s jaw muscles tightened and released as she stared at her husband in disbelief. Then, without a word, she turned and ran out
of the room and up the stairs. The sound of her sobbing filled the house for the rest of the day and long into the night.

“Maybe we should give her the box and go home,” Felix whispered to Maisie in the dark.

“We survived a fire at sea with Alexander Hamilton,” Maisie reminded him. “Nothing bad will happen to us if we stay.”

“I like it here, too,” Felix said softly. “But it sounds like it’s getting dangerous for foreigners.”

Maisie didn’t answer. Felix sighed. He knew that the time would come for them to leave China and Pearl behind, and he knew that Maisie would resist.

“Remember,” Maisie said, “Pearl Sydenstricker is probably going to grow up and do something wonderful. She isn’t going to get killed by these Boxers.”