The Girl Who Wrote in Silk (17 page)

Mei Lien felt anger burn through her so hot that it was all she could do to remain where she was, several steps away from the horrid people. Oh, she could show him filthy ways, all right. Starting with a clump of dirt between his beady little eyes!

“You should be ashamed of your ignorance and prejudice.” Joseph turned his back on the two couples and returned to her with a look of concern that helped straighten her spine again. With his back to the others, he said, “When you are ready to apologize, we’ll be at the farm.”

He took Mei Lien’s arm and led her off the path and around a tree to get past the people who wouldn’t lower themselves to move out of the way for one such as her.

Mei Lien and Joseph had taken no more than three steps down the path when Mr. Honeycutt’s voice cut through the silence. “I’ll be petitioning the postmaster general to relieve you of your duties. I, for one, don’t want my mail coming through your possession before reaching me.”

The other three murmured agreement.

Joseph’s footsteps faltered and his hand twitched in hers, but he didn’t say anything. Neither of them spoke the whole way down the mountain.

As they reached the farm and entered the cool sanctuary of their new home, Mei Lien worried what Joseph must be thinking and feeling. This wasn’t like him to be so stoic. From the moment she’d first woken in his cabin, he’d been a talker. She hadn’t known he was capable of this deep silence.

“Joseph,” she started as he sat at the kitchen table with a glass of water in his hand. “For your sake, I’m sorry I look so different from the other women on the island. I am proud to be Chinese, but I wish I could change myself for you. You don’t deserve the things they said.” She stopped pacing beside him. “Please, say something.”

He set his glass on the table and turned to take each of her hands in his, drawing her to him until she was sitting on his lap. “Ah, May,” he said, using the nickname he’d taken to calling her. “I don’t care one whit what those idiots say or do to me. I care that they hurt you and judge you without getting to know you. It is I who must apologize to you. Don’t ever change for them or for me or for anyone. Do you promise?”

Ducking her head, she curled into his chest. The sound of his heartbeat soothed her.

“Promise?” Joseph repeated.

She looked up to reply but was suddenly overcome with fear. By loving Joseph she’d opened herself up to pain again. And there was nothing she could do now to protect herself.

“I promise I won’t change, Joseph,” she finally answered him. “But it is I who am sorry. If I wasn’t here, those people wouldn’t treat you so cruelly.” She pushed to her feet and started putting away their picnic supplies, intent on keeping busy in hopes her frantic mind would quiet.

“Maybe we should move. Go someplace where people are more tolerant of differences.”

Mei Lien’s hands stilled as she looked at her husband to see if he was joking. He wasn’t smiling. “Joseph, you can’t be serious. You love this farm. We just moved into the house you spent all year building.”

“None of it matters if you aren’t happy.”

“But where would we go?”

He shook his head and looked past her to the east window and the view of the apple orchard outside. “I don’t know. How about Tacoma? My sister and her family live there.”

“The same Tacoma that drove three hundred and fifty Chinese from town last November and burned their stores and homes to the ground?”

“Well then, how about Victoria?”

She shook her head. Chinese were driven out of there too.

“South to San Francisco?”

She pulled out the chair next to him and sat down, wringing one of the picnic napkins in her hands. “Would we really be treated any better in those places? Americans and Canadians alike are afraid of the Chinese. We look different, sound different. We even think differently. It won’t matter where we go because no one in America will want me as a neighbor.”

He rubbed both hands over his face. “You’re right, of course. And I’m damned ashamed to be American right now.” His hands dropped with a slap onto his lap. “So what do we do?”

Mei Lien got to her feet again and grabbed her largest bowl from the shelf. “We do what my father taught me to do. We work hard and we stay out of everyone’s way.” She headed for the back door. “For now, I’m going to pick more blackberries and make you a cobbler for supper.”

She left Joseph sitting at the kitchen table worrying, as she headed to the wild vines along the back of their property. She and her husband were very different in one important way. He liked to think and talk about everything that could go wrong and every option he had to solve problems. She had learned young that worry and thought didn’t accomplish much when there was work to be done.

And so she worked, picking blackberries in the hot sun until her fingers were stained purple, and her hands and arms were covered with bloody scratches from the thorns. When thoughts of the people they’d met on the mountain intruded, she pushed them away and thought about the cobbler she would make or the jam she’d make tomorrow or the child she and Joseph would create together.

She had become very good at avoiding the thoughts she didn’t want to face.

• • •

Three days later, Joseph was gone delivering the weekly mail—no one had shown up to tell him he couldn’t—and Mei Lien was spending the afternoon working in her kitchen garden. She’d picked the ripened tomatoes from the vines and harvested the lettuce and peas. They all lay jumbled in the basket next to her as she knelt to tend the beans. If Joseph returned home in time for dinner tonight, she’d make him a fresh salad to go with the steamed fish with preserved olives she planned to make.

She was so lost in her work she didn’t hear the birds stop chirping. Only when she heard the unmistakable sound of a boot scraping over rocks did she realize she was no longer alone.

She jumped to her feet and twisted around in one motion, her gardening trowel still in her hand. When she saw the man walking through the potato patch toward her, her only thought was to run inside and lock the door. With her free hand she lifted her skirt and took off.

“Och, there’s no need ta be afraid!” called Campbell. “I mean ye no harm. Jes’ bein’ neighborly and stopping to say hello.”

Upon hearing his words, Mei Lien realized two things that made her stop running. One, Campbell had no idea she knew him. And two, this was her chance to make sure he never came around here again.

She breathed deeply, silently praying to her ancestors for courage, and turned around with as genuine a smile as she could muster. “Forgive me. You startled me is all. You say you’re our neighbor?”

He stepped over rows of vegetables to reach her. “The name’s Duncan Campbell. I live down that way with me wife and son and me aging pa.” Upon reaching her side he tipped his hat and flashed his teeth, though she noticed the smile didn’t reach his eyes. She yearned to shrink away from his intense gaze, but she held her ground.

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Campbell.” The name felt wrong in her mouth, like spoiled milk she wanted to spit out. “What can I do for you?”

He slid his wide-brimmed black hat from atop his head and squinted past her to the house, then across the meadow toward the barn. “Is Joseph around? I’d like ta pay him my respects since I’m here.”

A buzzing started in her head but she ignored it. “No, my husband is delivering the mail. I’ll tell him you called.”

Campbell put his hat back on and propped both hands on his hips, pushing his jacket back in the process. Hanging at his waist was a deadly looking pistol. “Ye do that, ma’am.” He started to turn away, then stopped. “Oh, and give him a message for me. My wife has a hankerin’ to plant an apricot orchard, and wouldn’t you know, our land is hemmed in by rocky buttes. Tell Joseph I’d like ta do us both a favor and buy his farm, seeing as how the talk in town is none too friendly toward ye, iffin ye know what I mean. Joseph will be relieved ta know he has a willing buyer living right next door who’ll make him an honest offer.”

“We aren’t going anywhere, Mr. Campbell.”

He did not move, but something about him changed so that he appeared larger and more ominous. “If ye know what’s good for ye, Chink, ye will go.” He spoke so low she wondered if she’d heard him correctly. “And if that husband o’ yours has any brains, which evidence before me tells me he doesna, he’ll take my offer and leave before the choice is taken from ye.”

She raised her chin to look him in the eye, despite everything in her telling her to back down, look at the ground, and run away. “No one can force us off our property. As for you, Mr. Campbell, it’s time you left.”

His eyes narrowed and moisture flew from his nostrils as he stared her down. She did her best not to blink.

“Watch your back, Chink.” Then, with a haughty sniff, he turned and marched back the way he’d come, this time trampling her vegetables without care.

He hadn’t recognized her. He had no idea she’d been on his steamship that night. Joseph’s plan had worked.

But he hated her all the same. All the islanders hated her, but Campbell wanted to hurt her. She saw it in his eyes.

Mei Lien watched him until he disappeared into the trees. Then, shaking, she dropped the trowel she only then realized she still held and ran inside the house where she locked the doors for the first time ever and dropped to her knees in the corner where no one would see her through the windows.

Sweat ran down her back and her hands shook.
Campbell
can’t hurt me here
, she told herself. Then, because that wasn’t working, she said it aloud to the empty room: “Campbell can’t hurt me. Campbell can’t hurt me. Campbell can’t hurt me…”

Over and over again she repeated it. With her arms wrapped around her knees, she rocked back and forth to the mantra her words had become. Rocking, rocking, hiding in the corner as shadows lengthened across the room, listening for footsteps outside, imagining she heard Father’s voice telling her to be brave.

She wasn’t brave. She wasn’t strong. She couldn’t stand up to Campbell or force him to leave her alone. If he wanted to evict her from the island, he could do it. She knew very well how capable he was of making her disappear.

The thought sent a fresh wave of terror through her body. She curled tighter into herself and laid her head on the cool floor.

Later, after what could have been hours or minutes, she saw herself as if from above, standing over her pitiful, weeping form. The image filled her with shame.

Enough! She sat up, forcing her spine to straighten and her chin to lift, even though it physically hurt her chest to do so. Nothing would be accomplished by lying here, a victim.

Besides, the sun was setting. With Joseph gone, she could spend more time than usual tonight with Father’s and Grandmother’s spirits at the water.

Her decision made and her legs only wobbling a little, Mei Lien made her way to the kitchen, where she went about gathering supplies to take with her to the water. Two apples. Cold rice she’d wrap in alder leaves as Grandmother had taught her—since the bamboo that tradition called for did not grow here—and tied with five strings, one each of red, blue, white, yellow, and black to represent the five elements. Water dragons would be afraid of this amulet and leave the packets alone for Father’s and Grandmother’s spirits. Then she took two candle stubs and matches and loaded everything into a basket. On her way to the shore, she pried off two large pieces of Douglas fir bark that were rounded and long like canoes and added these to the basket as well.

At the water’s edge she stood silent and still, listening to the sounds of the air and water. Sometimes when she was there, a steamer on the way to Eastsound Village would pass by, or a settler on his way to the town would pass in a rowboat. At these times she would hide behind the ferns and salal and Oregon grape bushes and wait until she was alone with the water once more.

Alone with the spirits who reminded her who she was and where she’d come from.

Tonight the water was empty. Colors were already fading into blue with the setting sun, and the water had blackened except for the silvery surface, which was flat as glass. In the air she smelled damp moss, even now in midsummer, and the woodsy scent blowing from trees that had baked all day in the sun and now soughed with relief. It was the kind of night Father had loved in Seattle, when he and Mei Lien would walk to one of the nearby lakes where they would fish and discuss the day’s business before walking back home in the dark, taking the long route to avoid the white parts of town.

Mei Lien let herself become immersed in the memory as she lit the candles and placed them carefully in the center of each bark boat. To each she added an apple and a rice packet and wished she had incense to complete the offering. As she set the boats afloat, she gently pushed them away from shore, where the currents would take them. They would light the way for the spirits of her family and all others who had perished with them.

And then she did what she did every night. She looked for signs of their spirits around her. She’d seen them in the loons, crows, and sea otters, and once in the water itself. Tonight she was rewarded by the flight of a blue heron that swooped low over the bay and then came to perch on a boulder jutting out of the water just offshore. It looked at her with wise, dark eyes before opening its beak and letting out a lonely cry as it took flight again, heading in the direction of the setting sun.

“Mei Lien!”

Father? I hear you, Father
, she answered in her mind, knowing his spirit didn’t need her voice.

“Mei Lien! Catch the rope!”

She jerked and snapped to attention. It wasn’t Father’s spirit calling to her but Joseph in his rowboat, ready to throw her a coiled rope so she could pull him ashore.

She reached out and caught the rope for him while keeping her face averted. She was horrified she’d been so wrapped up in watching the heron that she’d missed seeing Joseph round the bluff and enter the bay. It could have been anyone and she hadn’t been paying attention.

But that was not why she wouldn’t look at her husband. What made her turn away was the realization that he’d witnessed her in her most private moment. He often offered to accompany her to the shore in the evening, but she’d always turned him down, preferring those moments of solitude and private communion with her family. Joseph might have been her only family, but he wasn’t a part of that.