The Girl Who Wrote in Silk (7 page)

Even though those arms were so suddenly taken from her.

She left the window open to the night breeze and readied for bed. Tom would be here early tomorrow morning to get started. She couldn’t wait.

As she drifted to sleep listening to the night sounds, she found herself thinking about the professor and wondering when he’d call.

Purely for his information on the sleeve, of course.

Tuesday, February 9, 1886

Orcas Island, Washington Territory

Something was wrong.

Perhaps it was the smell of wet wool and chimney smoke that first alerted Mei Lien to the fact that she wasn’t in her own bed lying next to Grandmother. Or perhaps it was nothing more than the hollow, cold ache in her chest that erupted into a fit of coughing and yanked her from the warm comfort of sleep. Whatever it was, even before she opened her eyes, she knew she didn’t want to face what awaited her.

When her coughing eased, she kept her eyes squeezed tightly shut, holding on to the dream she’d been having of swimming with Father in Lake Union. How happy they’d been that day!

A shuffle. A cleared throat.

A male-sounding throat.

Father’s image disappeared and her eyes flew open.

She lay on a straw tick mattress that was pushed into the corner of a dim log cabin. Standing over her like a monster about to devour her was a huge white man with matted brown hair covering his face.

Her memory flooded back. The last thing she’d seen was the sea monster grabbing for her. How had she come to be here? She yelped as she pushed up and scurried backward until her back hit the rough log wall. When she couldn’t go any farther, she grabbed the pillow to use as a shield in front of her, ready to swing it at him, if necessary, and get away. The door. Where was the door?

“I’m glad to see you’re awake. I was worried you wouldn’t make it.”

Instead of clawing at her, the monster-man remained unmoving beside the bed. His gentle, caring words were so at odds with his appearance that it took a long moment for her to understand their meaning. Not a monster. Only a man.

A white man.

She studied him, the pillow still clutched in her arms.

He had dark hair that fell unbound to his chin, where more hair hid his mouth. He wore brown pants and a blue-checkered shirt that buttoned up the front. One hand hung by his side; the other held a tin drinking mug with steam curling from it. He cleared his throat again, bringing her eyes back to his face. He stared at her just as she was staring at him. He had eyes that normally she would have thought kind. Now she knew not to trust them.

The man’s gaze slid away from her as though he was uncomfortable looking at her. Because she was Chinese, she thought, knowing Father would admonish her for meeting the man’s gaze in the first place.

“I don’t know if you can understand me or not, but here’s some coffee.” He shoved the mug toward her. “It’ll warm you up.”

Mei Lien had never tasted coffee, but the cold ache in her chest craved warmth. She took the mug, being careful not to touch his fingers, and sniffed the liquid as the man walked away. It didn’t smell earthy, like the tea she always drank. This was stronger, pungent. Warm. Taking the tiniest of sips, she sampled the liquid and then cringed. It tasted of burnt ashes. But as the coffee slid down her throat, it soothed the raw aching there. She took another sip. It would do.

She drank all of the foul-tasting liquid, letting the warmth fill her as she watched the man move around what she could see of the adjoining room. The cabin was no more than a box divided in the middle by a stone fireplace open to both sides. From where she sat on the bed, Mei Lien could see straight into the main room to the worktable shoved into the opposite corner. Hanging above the worktable were three shelves overloaded with various cookery tools and tins.

She leaned forward onto her knees, straining to see more of the room, looking for the man’s wife or other family members.

Just then the man appeared again from around the fireplace, carrying a plate heaped with food. She hurriedly returned to her place against the wall, still holding the coffee cup. The smell of warm food made her stomach growl. She grabbed the pillow again with her free hand and pressed it to her stomach, hoping it would block the noise, unwilling to let this stranger hear her weakness. She hid her face behind the mug as she drained the contents in one last gulp.

“This is for you.” The man unceremoniously set the plate on the bed in front of her drawn-up legs and shuffled back as if he wanted distance between them too. “I don’t know if you like fried ham and potatoes with dried apples, but it’s hot and it’ll fill your belly, which I’m sure needs fillin’ after these two days you’ve been asleep.”

Two days? But that meant by now Father and Grandmother were…

She couldn’t finish the thought. Surely Father had found a way to escape his fate. Surely she had been mistaken in the first place and they were safely on their way to their home country.

Father must be so worried about her! She would need to find a way to get word to him in China that she’d survived the water and was now… Where was she?

“I see by your reaction that you understand me some,” the man said as he pulled a low stool over to the bedside and sat down a moment later with his own plate of food. He dug into it without waiting for her to eat. “The name’s Joseph McElroy. I saw you fall from the steamer as I was making my way back from Victoria. You’re lucky we was running late, or else no one would have been there to save you. What’s your name?”

The question caught her off guard. No white man had ever asked her name, and all Chinese men she’d met had simply called her
nánhái
, meaning
boy
, since she’d always dressed like one outside her home. She was comfortable in men’s trousers and jackets and, in fact, didn’t own anything else. “Liu Mei Lien.”

“Good to meet you, Liu. You can call me Joseph.”

She was used to white men making this mistake. “Liu is my family name. Mei Lien is my given name.”

He looked confused, but instead of saying anything, he only nodded and kept eating.

She looked down at her own plate of food and, in doing so, saw she was wearing only a long cotton shirt that she’d never seen before. Even the cloth wrap she always wore tight around her chest was missing.

She set the empty mug beside her plate on the bed and used both hands to feel along her body anyway, just to be sure. Sure enough, her own clothes were gone. As was Father’s coin purse!

“My…my clothes?” She hated asking him, hated having to trust this man who might decide to throw her into the ocean or beat her for no other reason than because she was Chinese.

Her next thought chilled her worse than the water had. This man had undressed her. He knew she was not a boy. Grandmother had warned her plenty of times what men did to unguarded women.

The man had smiled at her question, but as he watched her, that smile dropped and he moved quickly, setting his plate on the bed next to hers as he got to his feet. “Don’t be scared. I won’t hurt you.” He reached for something on a chest of drawers she had not noticed at the end of the bed. “I had to remove your wet things and get you warm or you would have died. But they are all here. See?”

He held up a pile of her clothing. Lying on top was Father’s embroidered purse. Seeing it brought to mind the image of Father stuffing the purse with all of their money and shoving it at her. She wished Father was with her now. He would know what to do. He would protect her from this strange white man.

Through tears, she lurched toward him and grabbed the bundle. She let the clothes drop to the bed as she clutched the purse and brought it up to her face. With eyes closed she inhaled deeply, trying to smell Father, to feel him close to her.

But all she smelled was the salty tang of the sea. Father’s scent had been washed away as surely as he had been.

She pressed the purse against her eyes and dropped to her side, her face buried in the bedding, no longer caring what the man might do to her.

Why had this happened to her family? Why couldn’t they have been left alone to tend Father’s store and live in peace? They’d done nothing wrong. Nothing. And now Father was gone. Grandmother was gone.

She should be gone too. Her body on the bottom of the sea. Her spirit with the ancestors.

She must have fallen asleep again, because the next time she opened her eyes, the cabin was brighter. Pale light filtered through the paper-covered window over the bed. Her plate and mug were gone, and the clothing had been moved to the end of the bed. The man must have tucked her back under the covers because she lay on the pillow, warm. She still clung to Father’s purse.

What was the man’s name? He’d told her but she hadn’t cared at the time. James? John? It was one of those white man’s names she’d heard often. Joe? Joseph. That was it. Joseph.

“Mister Joseph?” she called, not really wanting him to come to her but wanting to see where he was before she got up. When there was no reply, she threw back the blankets and sat up. A fit of coughing erupted, forcing her to stop. The burning in her chest and throat ignited into fire with every cough, the flames licking upward to her head, making it ache. Is this how Father had felt after being beaten?

Once the coughing subsided enough, she pushed through her pain to her feet and had to steady herself with one hand on the wall next to her. When her legs finally cooperated, she shuffled to the other room to see for herself if she was alone in the cabin.

The room was dominated by a scarred square table with four chairs. In front of this side of the fireplace was a long wooden bench, on which lay a canvas bag bulging with whatever it contained.

No Joseph. She had the cabin to herself.

She returned to the bedroom and, as quickly as her weak muscles allowed, dragged off the borrowed shirt and slipped into her own clothes. The effort exhausted her so that she had to sit on the bed and draw careful breaths to keep from setting off another fit of coughing. She hated feeling this helpless, hated knowing she needed help from the strange white devil whose cabin she slept in.

Eventually she managed to dress fully with the exception of her shoes, which she could not find.

Just as she returned to the main room in search of food, the outside door opened and Joseph walked in, carrying an armful of firewood. Mei Lien froze.

He stood in the open doorway staring back at her. “You’re up,” he said finally, as he closed the door and kneeled to stack the wood on the hearth, his eyes avoiding hers. “Ready for that food now?”

She nodded and looked around, wondering what had happened to the plate he’d offered earlier.

“Sit down. I’ll get it for you.”

She eased into the chair he indicated at the table and watched as he wrapped a cloth around the long handle of a pot nestled in the ashes at the corner of the fireplace. He left the pot sitting on the stone hearth as he got to his feet and took a tin plate from the shelves along the wall.

“I’m happy to see you up and about,” he told her as he scooped food from the pot and slid the plate of ham and potatoes in front of her. “I need to get the mail delivered to the islanders but I’ve been afraid to leave you for that long.”

She waited to see if he would fill a plate for himself. When he didn’t, she gave in to her hunger and grabbed a piece of ham with her fingers, shoving it into her mouth. The salty meat melted on her tongue, making the back of her mouth ache with a sudden flood of saliva. It was wonderful.

A fork clattered onto the table next to her plate. “Here,” he grunted as he passed her on his way back to the hearth, where he squatted and started scraping at the bottom of the pot with a metal spatula. “You see,” he continued as though his story had been uninterrupted, “I got awarded the mail contract this year, and until today, meaning you no disrespect, I’ve never been late in delivering to the good people of Orcas Island. They count on me and it’s a good way for me to know folks. One day I’ll be a council member, maybe even mayor.”

She didn’t understand all the words he used, but one word stood out. The strange-sounding word seemed to be important. She swallowed the bite of dry potatoes she’d been chewing before asking, “What is Orcas? That is the name of this place?”

A smile broke through the thick hair on his face and his eyes widened, revealing their green color, like the trees that lined the ridge above Seattle. “I knew I hadn’t imagined your voice earlier.” He scraped the last of the burned bits of food into the fire and set the pot on the hearth before looking back at her. “That’s right. Orcas Island. We’re in the San Juan Island archipelago, part of Washington Territory but close to British Columbia. I’ve lived here six years, by way of Indiana. I’ll bring my bride here someday. As soon as I meet her.”

He was not married! That made everything so much worse. She was an unchaperoned Chinese female with a single white man. Sure, he said he wouldn’t hurt her, but she’d heard how white men lusted after foreign-looking girls like her. She’d have to be very careful until she got away.

Joseph must have also been thinking of her leaving because he tilted his head to the side as he looked at her. “Where were you headed on that steamer before you fell off?”

When she didn’t immediately answer, he sat on the bench next to the canvas bag she’d noticed earlier and leaned his elbows on his knees. “’Cause I’ll do my best to help you get to where you’re goin’, but I gotta know where that is.”

As Mei Lien stared back at him, her fork—such a strange tool that they stocked in Father’s store but never used at home—lying limp in her hand, she realized two things. One, this man had no idea what had happened in Seattle. And two, she wasn’t going to be the one to tell him.

“I was bound for China,” she told him since he wouldn’t stop staring at her.

“Is that where you’re from? China?”

She shook her head and stared down at her plate. “I have only known Seattle. I don’t want to go to China.” It was the closest she’d get to telling him the truth.

“Do you have family?”

Her last image of Father standing at the ship’s rail came to mind, and she had to squeeze her eyes closed to keep the tears inside. She didn’t trust her voice so she just shook her head in answer.

He seemed to think this over. After a long moment he asked, “So where do you want to go? You can’t stay here.”

She kept her eyes down. “I know. Thank you for saving me and for…” She hesitated, wondering what words to use. “For this,” she finally said, nodding to the food in front of her.