The Many Daughters of Afong Moy, page 13
When the song ended, she breathed in the applause, but it was not enough. She opened her eyes and nodded to the crowd. Then she glanced to the wings of the stage and saw Nanchoy in his golden waistcoat, his hair slicked back, clapping.
* * *
After weeks of sold-out shows, Afong began to weary of the perpetual spotlight. The endless routine. The thousands of faces who gawked at her, smiled at her, laughed at her, praised her, but none of them knew her, which only magnified her loneliness. To be so well known and yet so unknown at the same time, the madness of—as Yao Han might say it—being praised for having wings but kept in a cage.
In her mind, home was close enough to see, to smell, to hear, but she could not touch it. Those feelings, that longing, only made her want to retreat, to find a respite from the stage, to remember who she really was. Instead Mr. Hannington paraded her around the city in an open carriage as a form of advertising.
He would stand, waving his top hat, bellowing to the people on the avenues. He pointed with his cane and shouted, “Hear ye! Hear ye! This is your one free look at the Chinese Woman! Goddess of the Celestial Kingdom!” He put his hand on the back of her neck and whispered, “Siu.”
He knew a handful of words in Chinese, all of them commands.
Afong smiled as instructed.
When he let go, she would look back helplessly at Nanchoy, who always walked behind them, passing out leaflets to people on the sidewalks.
During these journeys, Afong paid special attention to landmarks. Not only did it make her feel less like a lost traveler in a strange city, but her observations allowed her to imagine possible escape routes. Where she would escape to was an unanswered question. Nevertheless, when they traveled the streets of Baltimore, she made note of the Peale Museum, the cemetery, parks, the great churches and rectories, the enormous roundhouse that Nanchoy said was where horsecars were made. She remembered the location of the towering Washington Monument, with a man on top made of stone. The column itself was impossible to miss and near the harbor, directly south of where she would be staying. But she also noticed something not seen in previous cities. Breadlines and soup kitchens, and police, breaking up protests and riots.
“It’s the Hessian fly,” Mr. Hannington said when he saw her puzzled look. He swatted at gnats and the occasional buzzing bluebottle. “It’s not just Baltimore. It’s killed wheat crops all over the damn country.” He looked down at a newspaper through the quizzing glass he wore around his neck. Then up at the lines of men, hats in hand, waiting for food. “The price of King Cotton is plummeting as well.”
Afong looked at Mr. Hannington. Despite his fancy, Beau Brummell frock, his elegant haberdashery, his exuberance, this was the first time she had seen him worried, chewing on an unlit cigar, rubbing his beard, grumbling to himself.
Nanchoy followed behind them, wary of the unhappy people.
Despite his concerns, Mr. Hannington said, “We need to hunker down and weather the storm,” so he extended their run in Baltimore, adding more weeks, which became months. He referred to it as “Afong’s going-away party.”
During this time, she had been learning to read English and was increasingly grateful for Nanchoy, his English lessons, his friendship, his companionship, the times they shared meals together. She listened to the stories of his travels, which made her feel closer to home and yet more homesick than ever. Which is why her heart nearly burst the first time she arrived at the concert hall and saw a painted banner that read, THE CHINESE LADY’S FINAL PERFORMANCE.
But when the curtains were drawn and the lights dimmed, when she asked Mr. Hannington if this meant she could finally go back home, he laughed while counting the night’s receipts. “Girl, you’re as innocent as a lamb and twice as dumb.”
Afong understood what he meant by her sixth final performance, though perhaps Mr. Hannington’s ruse was wearing thin as crowds were getting smaller each night.
Onstage, Afong listened to the chatter of tonight’s audience as they waited restlessly in their seats; she noticed Mrs. Hannington standing in the wings. She peeked through the side curtain, then sauntered to center stage with another woman at her side.
“Afong,” Mrs. Hannington said as she took Afong’s elbow. “This is my sister, Trudy, she lives in Mount Vernon and I wanted her to be able to see you up close and maybe even talk to you. We have plenty of time. Mr. Hannington is out front hawking tickets as we speak. You wouldn’t mind, now would you?” Afong barely understood. She smiled and nodded as though she had a choice.
“Look at you! Strange, yet so lovely. Such peculiar fashion—more elegant than the Esquimaux family that Captain Hadlock brought to the city last year—but still, so… primal,” Trudy gushed, touching Afong’s sleeve and her hair, petting her like an animal. “This all must be so thrilling for you! How do you like it here in America? How do you like your new home?”
Nanchoy translated her words.
Afong hesitated as she remembered a reporter asking the same question last year while she was in Buffalo for a performance. She tried her best to respond in English, but her answer came out awkwardly. “It is cold here. I am very sad to be so lonely.”
When Mr. Hannington read her quote in the newspaper, he stormed into her room. Afong was half-dressed, wearing only a chemise and a stay. He grabbed a fistful of hair, jerked her out of her chair, and berated her, beating the back of her legs with a cane.
Afong blinked and saw Mrs. Hannington and her sister smiling, waiting.
“I like it here very much,” Afong said in Cantonese. Since Buffalo, she learned to always say praiseworthy things about the Hanningtons. In the morning after that beating, the bruises were so purple and swollen she struggled to get out of bed and could barely stand, which confused Mrs. Hannington, who grumbled, “Chinese are so lazy.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Hannington have been so good to me, so kind and generous.”
Nanchoy translated and Mrs. Hannington excitedly clapped her hands.
The last month had been exciting, since every week Nanchoy wrote a letter on Afong’s behalf and delivered it to a packet ship bound for China. The return address was the post office in Baltimore, where they expected to spend the winter.
Afong anxiously awaited any correspondence.
Now, while smiling at Mrs. Hannington, Afong said in Cantonese, “Has a letter arrived yet? Has there been any news of home, of my family?”
Nanchoy translated as the two women listened, then he spoke a bit more in his native tongue. “It’s better that we discuss these things later.” He patted his coat pocket.
Trudy seemed to swell with pride and excitement as though she were in the company of royalty instead of the sideshow attraction Afong knew she had become. “Tell me,” Trudy asked, “what has been your favorite part of America? You’ve seen so much of it. I’m most curious what this great land of ours must be like to a girl like you.”
Nanchoy repeated the questions in Cantonese.
Afong turned to Trudy but spoke to Nanchoy. “You can answer her any way you like. But if a letter has arrived, I must insist. I might not see you after the show and I cannot bear to wait.” Afong knew that sometimes he was sent on errands for a day or two, or he would have to leave and accompany Mr. Hannington as a personal valet.
The first time she dictated a letter to send to her mother, Nanchoy took it to a ship and returned that afternoon. The second time, when she asked him to write a letter to Yao Han—expressing how much she missed him, how she wished he might become a merchant and come to America—Nanchoy disappeared for a week. She worried that he might never be coming back. That she upset him somehow. But he said he was sent to help secure another concert hall with Mr. Hannington.
Nanchoy nodded, then turned to Trudy. “Afong says her favorite part of America has been the music. Especially songs played on the piano, which seems like a magical invention.” He then glanced at Afong. “There is good news, but there is also news that will upset you. Let’s not talk about this now.”
Afong’s heart soared. Then she breathed in through her nose and held it for a moment as she braced herself for bad tidings. She worried for the safety of her older sisters. That one of them might have died in childbirth. She worried that her mother might have been cast aside in favor of a second wife.
She glanced at Nanchoy, who glanced at his pocket watch.
“Please,” Afong said. “I am begging.”
“Ooooh,” Trudy squealed. “Ask her—if I may be so bold—what she thinks of American men. Not the Irish, but the natives, the white men who were born here.”
Nanchoy nodded to Trudy as though they were sharing a secret, an inside joke. “A very good question.” He turned to Afong and sighed wearily. “The letter is from your mother. She is well and misses you dearly. She shared that your oldest sister has a child, a son. Both are in good health. She’s been able to visit them. Your father’s business is doing well, but I’m afraid he has no desire to seek your return.”
Afong knew her father had no use for her, this was no surprise. If Nanchoy had bad news, she hoped that was all of it. Telling her something she already suspected was a confirmation, not a condemnation. But as she watched him loosen his cravat, she could tell that was not the bad news.
“Your mother found someone to help her write this, which she hoped you would understand.” Nanchoy hesitated, then he produced a slip of paper from his pocket. “Please, I think it would be much better to have this conversation in private.”
“Tell me!” Afong snapped, then glanced at Mrs. Hannington and smiled again, though it now hurt her cheeks to do so. “Just read it.”
Nanchoy unfolded the slip of paper as he cleared his throat, then looked at her as he spoke. “The thread in the hands of a fond-hearted mother makes clothing for the body of her wayward girl; Carefully she sews and thoroughly she mends, dreading the delays that will keep her far from home…”
As Afong recognized the words, a version of Ming Jao’s classic poem about a mother’s undying love, it seemed as though time stopped. All was silent, except for her breathing, her beating heart. Mrs. Hannington and her sister became statuary, mouths open, mid-conversation. The swirling dust particles illuminated by the gaslights seemed frozen in amber. The only thing that moved was Nanchoy as he spoke.
“I’m sorry, Afong. Your mother is deeply sorry as well, for not being able to help you, for not being able to bring you home, and for not being able to tell you in person that on the one-year anniversary of your departure…”
Afong stared at Nanchoy in fearful anticipation.
“Your friend, Yao Han, took his own life.”
For a moment, she was transported to a grassy meadow back home. Afong was a little girl again, sitting beneath the willow with Yao Han as he recited the Bearer’s Song. Now here, on this stage, she felt the lines of that tragic poem: Even the Maker of All could not bring the life back to my limbs.
“It rained for weeks and the Chu Kiang overflowed near your village. Witnesses saw him walk directly into the rushing river. Watched him get swept away.” Nanchoy put the note away. “His body was never found.”
Mrs. Hannington tapped Nanchoy on the shoulder, clearing her throat.
He turned to the ladies and smiled.
“She says that she finds American men to be quite handsome. So much taller and…” He struggled to find the words. “She finds them strong and fearless. Able to conquer this great land. Though she hopes to someday find a suitable Chinese husband.”
Nanchoy looked back at Afong as he switched to Cantonese. “I am sorry.”
“Oh, you poor thing,” Trudy said. “A heart is a flower that needs to bloom. Someday, perhaps, when you find your way home.” She winked at Nanchoy. “Who knows? You might find what you’re looking for right here in America.”
Afong bit her lip and tried not to cry. She tried to think of something other than the flooded banks of the Pearl River. But when she thought of horses, she saw them pulling a hearse. When she thought of a rabbit, she remembered how they shrieked and screamed when her mother butchered them. When she thought about a ship, all she saw were sails and steam paddles leaving without her.
“Well, I suppose we should slip offstage,” Mrs. Hannington said. “Come along, Trudy, I have a bottle of sherry waiting for us.”
Trudy waved goodbye as they walked back into the wings.
Afong stood alone in the darkness as the backstage lights began to fade. She thought about Yao Han, imagining him entering the cold water and disappearing. She dabbed at the corners of her eyes with her sleeve. Then she heard the audience fall silent, the footsteps of Mr. Hannington as he took his place on the other side of the curtain, center stage, in the spotlight that would soon be shining on her. Afong knew his words, his showman’s routine, she could quote him in English if she tried, but now she heard nothing, just garbled sounds where a voice should be. A voice that spoke as though underwater. She heard muffled clapping from beneath the waves. The curtains were drawn and she moved to her mark in the spotlight, staring up from the cold, dark bottom of the ocean.
* * *
During the carriage ride back to the City Hotel on Fulton Street, Afong ignored Mrs. Hannington, who sat across from her. The elegantly dressed woman’s cheeks were rosy, and she removed her shoes and stockings while happily humming a minstrel song.
This evening’s performance at Carroll Hall ended with a standing ovation despite a smaller crowd than usual (because Mr. Hannington hired shills to cheer and lead the audience to their feet). But as people applauded, Afong could not smile. She did not bow. All she saw as she looked out at the audience were the bars of her cage.
She thought about Yao Han and wondered if she would have felt this distraught in the Yu home. Would the constriction of her bound feet have spread to all her extremities, all her senses? Until she moved like the other married women she had known—her ah-ma included—as if they were ghosts in their own homes, ever present but unable to leave. Would she choose the path of a barren wife or dejected concubine and eat poison—British opium—dulling her pain until she felt nothing at all? Or would she decide all was lost, no matter where she was or who she was with, and choose the path taken by Yao Han, following his muddy footsteps into a river?
She stared out the open carriage window, her nostrils filled with the wet, grassy smell of horse manure as Mrs. Hannington put her shoes back on and began her usual retinue of warnings and admonitions. “Remember, you never, ever, want to be seen loitering alone on the street,” she slurred. “If the police see a single woman idling near some alley, they assume you’re a woman of ill repute and we don’t want that.”
Afong had heard Mrs. Hannington’s many cautionary tales, the things that might happen to her if she were to leave their custody.
But tonight, she did not care.
When she arrived at the boardinghouse, Nanchoy was there to escort her inside. With his hand on her arm, she understood now why Chinese folk tales about love always ended in tragedy. Maybe that is why she still cared about Yao Han. His stories were the hopeful opposite of poems like “Song of Everlasting Sorrow,” where the highest-ranking concubine in the land is forced to hang herself while her beloved, the emperor, is made to watch. The gods must be lonely in their heavens, Afong thought.
“Would you like me to find you something to eat?” Nanchoy asked, walking slowly so she didn’t have to hurry on her sore feet. “I’m sure I could find something…”
“Thank you. I am not hungry.”
They walked in awkward silence.
“I’m sorry, Afong. I should not have told you.”
She shook her head. “I insisted.”
Afong had been in dozens of newspapers, in more cities than she could remember. She had met the president of the United States in the White House. She performed beneath a spotlight, and people applauded her, but tonight she felt little more than a prop, a clotheshorse. She was whatever she was onstage, and that person diminished with the size of the audience. Offstage she was empty, hollow, unloved.
“Is there anything else I can do for you?” Nanchoy asked.
Afong did not answer.
She took his arm and let him help her up the servants’ stairs and down the hallway to her room, which was across from his.
He said good night with a shrug.
As they closed their doors, Afong glanced over her shoulder, and for a moment she thought she saw him smiling.
* * *
That night Afong dreamt she was onstage in some nameless theater in a nameless city performing before nameless people. She stood beneath the spotlight in a smoke-filled auditorium and tried to sing but could not make a sound, could barely move. She was frozen in place, staring out at a packed audience, all of them faceless, except for a small Chinese woman in the middle. She had gray hair and wore a white funeral gown. Afong recognized her yin yin. She stared at her long-dead grandmother.
The old woman stood up slowly. She opened her mouth to speak, her lips moved, trembling, but Afong could not hear a sound as water exploded from the exits and came roaring down the aisles and the voms, torrents submerging the audience, swamping the stage, filling up the theater. As the cold water rose, roiling toward the ceiling, it snuffed out gas lamps and chandeliers that sizzled and popped in bursts of fire and showers of sparks. Afong’s heart raced as she kicked and flailed beneath the surface. She felt the suffocating heaviness of her waterlogged clothing. She opened her eyes in a panic and saw a blur of people, audience members, men and women, bodies, floating, tumbling, sinking. She felt the current as though a watery hand grabbed her, pulling her deeper into the darkness.
She tried to scream.
Afong bolted upright in bed.
She heard polite knocking and looked around the moonlit room, confused. She heard knocking a second time. Then a third.
She suspected who it was and said, “Jap loi.”
Nanchoy gently opened the door. He peeked inside and then stepped in. He walked lightly, as though she were still asleep. “Are you okay? I heard you cry out. You were calling for help.”
