The Many Daughters of Afong Moy, page 25
Annabel sang, “Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily. Life is but a dream…”
Dorothy’s vertigo turned to nausea as the rocking motion of the ferry grew in intensity. She hung her head, felt her stomach churn, then put her finger down her throat and vomited into the sink, painfully aware that the other women in the ladies’ room were staring at her in concern, recoiling in disgust, or had left altogether.
I have to get back.
She spat into the basin, wiped her eyes, her hands shaking as she washed them, but the world had stopped spinning. She took one last look in the mirror, then went out to check on Annabel. When she walked out of the restroom, she smelled seafood and ginger and cigar smoke. She stepped back to make way for tuxedoed waiters who carried away enormous trays on their shoulders, piled with empty dishes and platters of discarded crab and oyster shells. She gazed around the elegant shipboard drawing room and saw Chinese men and women in evening finery—all speaking Cantonese—milling about, laughing and ordering rounds of cocktails and bottles of wine and liqueur. She smelled perfume as a slender woman in a yellow cheongsam dress glided by offering cigarettes and mints on a silver tray. Dorothy turned and squeezed her eyes shut, confused, worried that she was having a new kind of breakdown. A lucid, spectral, dissociative episode, but one more severe than anything she’d ever experienced or at least remembered. When she opened her eyes the rain was gone, and in its place she saw the sunset—a palette of crimson and burgundy—through ornate, leaded-glass windows. But she couldn’t find land. Not Bainbridge Island in the vessel’s wake or Seattle to the west or Kingston to the north. Just an endless horizon.
She heard a band playing swing jazz, something by Glenn Miller.
“Excuse me, miss,” a familiar voice asked. “Are you okay?”
She turned, surprised that the man in front of her was Caucasian. He wore a dark suit with finely pressed creases and a tie of emerald green. He had thick, dark hair that curled in the front and he sported a look of wide-eyed innocence, as though he’d stepped off his mother’s porch after helping her do the dishes on some dairy farm in Iowa or Kansas or Ohio, a contrast to the tall glass of champagne in his hand.
Dorothy looked about the strange room, took the glass, and drank half, hoping the crisp, sparkling liquid might clear her head or at least freshen her breath. She regarded the half-full glass as the fragrant carbonation tickled her nose.
She drained the rest.
The man’s eyes widened. “Remind me not to get into a drinking contest with any women while I’m over here. I’d be punching above my weight.”
She stared back, confused.
He furrowed his brow. “Nei mou si maa?” He pronounced the words slowly, carefully, as though he were walking out onto a frozen lake, unsteady steps on thin ice.
He sighed and gently took the empty glass from her hand and placed it on the tray of a passing waiter. “I’m sorry, my Cantonese is as graceful as a dog on a unicycle.” He shrugged. “All I can do is keep trying, right?”
Dorothy realized he wasn’t sure if she spoke English. He was talking to himself as much as to her. She touched his arm and asked, “Do I know you?”
He smiled and cocked his head. “I don’t know. Do you? There are thirty of us on board. Now that I think about it, we probably all look alike, huh?”
“Us?” Dorothy asked. She scanned the room and spotted a handful of Caucasian faces in the crowd, a few gathered at the bar, a few more dancing, all of them men about her age, in suits, clean-shaven with slicked-back hair.
“Gwai lo,” the man said, pointing to himself. Then he whispered, “Americans.”
All of this felt familiar as Dorothy tried to remember.
“Would you care to dance?” He offered his arm with a curious look, as though he were unsure if he was in breach of some cultural norm. He pointed to the dance floor. “I can do the Jive, the Lindy Hop, and the Big Apple. I can kind of do the Samba and a slow Bolero, but I’m afraid if we do either of those I’ll have to follow you. My big sister taught me those dances and she always insisted on leading. Gave me a new appreciation for that quote about Fred Astaire: Sure, he was great, but Ginger Rogers did everything he did, backwards and in high heels.”
She hesitated, then took his arm, still trying to comprehend what was happening, as he led her to the middle of the room. The band began to play “Moonlight Serenade” and he turned, took her hand, and placed his other on the small of her back, holding her close in a gentleman’s embrace. He was warm, like an afternoon lying in the sun, eyes closed, mesmerized by the summery heat.
“Is this okay?” he asked.
She nodded.
“It’s a slow song.” He leaned in so close she felt as though their eyelashes might touch. “Foxtrot?” She nodded again and he gently pressed his body to hers and smiled. “Here we go.” He stepped forward, leading her back, then to the side, then twirling counterclockwise as the other couples did the same. Everyone swirling around the smoky room in the same direction, paired off like peach-faced lovebirds.
“Going home to Rangoon?” he asked as they stepped to the music.
She glanced up at him, slowly shaking her head as though she couldn’t quite remember where home was. She held on and followed his movements, listening to the music, trying to recall why she was here. “I needed a change, I guess.”
He nodded to the silver pin on her lapel. “A change from nursing?”
She glanced down, surprised to see a silver caduceus, two snakes around a staff with wings, the type of pin worn by doctors or nurses.
“You’re quite brave to wear that in public, especially while we’re on board. The Japs have a standing order to arrest all medical personnel fleeing China. If we were stopped by a Japanese warship…” He raised his eyebrows.
Dorothy didn’t feel brave as she studied his handsome, familiar face, filled with curiosity and kindness. She felt delirious with happiness, but also deeply afraid.
“It’s okay, we’re almost there. Your secret is safe with me.” He beamed, showing his dimples. “Your English is beautiful, by the way. Where did you go to school? My old teacher back home, Mrs. Hanson, she’d give you an A.” Then he whispered conspiratorially, “She gave me a C-plus and she was my aunt.”
Dorothy looked out the window, as though the answer to his question were hidden in the sunset. “I think it was my mother who taught me.”
As they circled the dance floor he followed her gaze through the leaded glass, now lit up as though by fire. “Hung with the sunset’s fringe of gold; now strangely clear thine image grows, and olden memories are startled from their long repose.”
Memories.
Dorothy stared at him, searching, longing, hoping. “Like shadows on the silent snows, when suddenly the night wind blows.”
Startled from their long repose.
“That’s Poe,” she said. “You surprise me.”
He touched his cheek to hers, their feet moving together as they glided around the dance floor. “Not nearly as much as you astound me.”
When the song ended, people clapped and she realized why she was afraid. It was the fear of losing someone you love. She held his hand as he led her from the dance floor.
“You know,” he said, “I should introduce you to one of my companions. He’s a surgeon. He’s supposed to take care of us flyboys and grease monkeys, but I swear, from the looks of it, his team consists entirely of a medic and a bottle of iodine. He would fall all over himself if he found out there were a Chinese nurse on board who speaks English better than yours truly. That is, if you don’t already have plans? Maybe wooing the baron of some teak plantation or going diving with the sea gypsies?”
“I didn’t really make plans.” Dorothy imagined the trade winds in Burma, filled with the fragrance of sweet plumeria and the intoxicating, buttery scent of almond blossoms. The warm tropical rain on her skin. The seductive prelude to typhoon season.
She wanted to spend every moment with him.
“If you wanted, you could come with us,” he said. “We won’t be based too close to the ground fighting, at least not at the moment. But we’re going to see a lot of action in the air, and having you there could literally save our lives. And it sure would be nice to share a moment like this with you again. Might even be worth it to get shot down.” He winked. “You’d be surprised at what these poor, lonely fools would do to get a girl’s attention out here.”
This time she was the one smiling, her head spinning.
“My name is John, by the way. Nice to meet you. And you are?”
He looked into her eyes, then past her shoulder, and she heard glass breaking, as though a waiter or a busboy had dropped something.
People were shouting, screaming.
An older woman yelled in English, “Someone grab that little girl!”
Dorothy turned and was on the ferry, her head reeling from the champagne and swirling about the dance floor. She stood frozen for a heartbeat, still confused, then instantly sobered as she saw Annabel on the other side of the glass doors, in the rain and howling wind, climbing up the metal railing. Passengers dropped their phones and coffees, others leapt to their feet. Dorothy shoved past them frantically, pushed through the heavy doors, felt the chill in the air as she ran, reaching Annabel just as she’d thrown a leg over the top rail. Dorothy pulled her down, wrapped her arms around her, the embrace of a terrified mother. Annabel was cold, soaking wet, confused.
“What are you doing out here, Baby-bel?” Dorothy tried to remain calm, but she was scared, shaking Annabel and shedding tears of relief. She tried not to think of her daughter plummeting into the dark, roiling waters below. Annabel didn’t know how to swim and the water was frigid, deep, the storm currents deadly.
The ship’s horn sounded, and the bow rose and fell as it eased through the waves. When the blaring faded Dorothy heard the thrum of electric vehicles on the car deck below. Other passengers queued up behind the glass doors to disembark as the ferry slowed. The downtown terminal flashed its lights in the distance. Dorothy saw the Smith Tower. Saw the lights at the top where their apartment was. She felt as though she’d been awakened from a dream and shoved face-first into a cold, cruel reality.
“I told you to stay put,” Dorothy said, rocking Annabel, squeezing her, trying not to break down sobbing. “What if something happened? What if I lost you?”
“I’m sorry.” Annabel looked crestfallen. “I saw the boy. The same one you saw. He was waiting for me to come play, but when I got out here he was gone.”
Dorothy looked around. There was no boy. Just more rain.
She picked Annabel up and walked inside as the other passengers stepped back, regarding her with a mix of shock, relief, and disdain for the type of mother who would let a five-year-old wander out there all alone in this weather. They shook their heads at Dorothy as she passed. She recognized the angry expressions, the whispering. She’d experienced the same reaction more than a decade earlier when friends, strangers, and social workers had disapproved of her own mother’s neglect and incapacitation. As an adult, it took Dorothy years to stop blaming herself for her mother’s pain, her trauma, her death. Now, as a parent, Dorothy realized that during all those years it had been the other way around, and despite her best efforts, the cycle was repeating.
* * *
When Dorothy and Annabel got home, Louis and his mother were sitting on the couch in the living room. They whispered, then stopped speaking and instead exchanged knowing looks and put on welcoming smiles. They looked like fraternal twins, one with more mileage than the other, but the same make and model.
“Um. Hello,” Dorothy said as she helped Annabel out of her boots and new raincoat. “I thought you’d gone back to Spokane already. Did they close Snoqualmie Pass again? I heard there was another mudslide warning because of all the rain.”
“You know me. I couldn’t leave without giving my sweet girl another hug,” Louise said to Annabel, arms outstretched.
The happy five-year-old walked into her grandmother’s open arms, though when the older woman squeezed, Annabel said, “You’re. Squishing. Me.”
Dorothy didn’t want to see Louise, not again, not tonight. She didn’t appreciate how the older woman could make her feel like an unwanted guest in her own home. Or worse—a servant, someone whose presence was functional, nothing more.
“What’s going on?” Dorothy asked as she removed her coat.
“Louis called me as I was leaving. He thought we should talk.” Louise spoke in a manner that reminded Dorothy of an old boss, the department head at Seattle Central Community College who had fired her for too many absences. Louis wanted to sue the school for wrongful termination, but Dorothy talked him out of it. The thought of being stuck in a windowless conference room for days, having to give a deposition to strange men who could subpoena her therapist’s notes and ask her humiliating questions, was worse than being temporarily unemployed.
Louise kissed Annabel on the cheek. “Why don’t we let this wonderful girl of ours go to her room so we can let you in on our discussion.”
“Well, that sounds ominous,” Dorothy said, envisioning Louis spinning a wheel of misfortune and watching it land on Mother Moves In or Let Me List Your Flaws, or the dreaded Spokane Getaway, where Louise would insist on taking Annabel home with her until typhoon season had passed. It wasn’t a terrible idea, on paper. It was eminently safer on the other side of the state, despite the rise of nationalist separatists the closer one got to the Rocky Mountains. Dorothy patted Annabel on the shoulder. “Baby-bel, why don’t you go work on your drawings. I’ll come read you a story later, okay?”
Annabel sighed and then trundled off to her room. “Grown-ups talk about the weirdest things.”
Dorothy sat down across from Louis and his mother.
This is my home, not hers. But her mind became a zoetrope of emotion, with flickering images, lingering memories of a boy on the bow of the ferry, sitting on the grass of some lakeside park with someone named Sam, the hauntingly familiar smile of the man who had asked her to dance. Dorothy stared across at Louis, who for once wasn’t staring at his phone. She remembered his eyes rolling back, his body going limp, him waking up on the floor confused and disoriented. Is that what this is about? she thought. Great. This is going to be like one of those Hollywood tabloid cover stories, where the girlfriend is accused of physically abusing her loudmouthed boyfriend.
“Is everything okay?” Dorothy asked, wishing she were somewhere else. Perhaps back on a ship somewhere in the Andaman or South China Seas.
Louise spoke first. “My son has been telling me about these special treatments you’ve been undergoing. Experimental treatments. Frankly, he’s worried…”
“He shouldn’t be,” Dorothy said. “Believe it or not, they’re helping.”
“Obviously.” Louise rolled her eyes.
“If this is about the cost,” Dorothy countered, “I’m sure I can work out some sort of payment plan with the clinic. My doctor even joked that I’m such a good patient, she should be paying me. Besides, it’s my health and my body and I’m working on it my way. I’m sure, I mean I hope, neither of you has a problem with that.”
Neither Louis nor his mother smiled anymore.
“Look, dear,” Louise continued. “I know things haven’t been great between you two for some time. Sometimes that’s normal. Other times there are—shall we say—unforeseen circumstances. But I can assure you, his concern for your well-being is…”
“Louise…”
“He said you’ve been acting erratically. I know some people have postpartem depression, but Annie is five years old now, so we’re left to surmise that these treatments of yours are only making your already tenuous relationship with reality all that more difficult and, well, what I’d like to discuss is…”
“Louise—” Dorothy insisted.
“He said you’re having certain mood swings. Anger issues and—”
“Louise, if you’re not going to fucking let me speak, then let him.”
Both of them looked shocked and offended. Victimized. Dorothy hated losing her temper, but she was tired and emotionally drained from her day. Almost as much as she hated the wordless exchange she observed between mother and son. The nervous glances and the subtle, disapproving shakes of their heads to each other. Dorothy felt cornered, outgunned. She’d first felt that way in the second grade when two kids on the playground took her lunchbox and tossed it back and forth, playing keep-away until Dorothy punched one of them in the stomach. Then she immediately began crying. The vice principal called Dorothy’s mother, who never picked up her phone or even bothered to show up. The vice principal handed Dorothy a note to be signed by her mother, but she threw it out the bus window on the way home and no one ever mentioned it again.
Louis cleared his throat. He held up his hand just as his mother was about to speak, again. “You’re absolutely right. I should be the one leading this conversation. This affects me far more than—” He glanced sheepishly at his mother, who looked at him as if to say, Fine, get on with it. “Dorothy, I’ve tried to be patient with your…” He searched for a polite word for what he really wanted to say. “Your artistic eccentricities. But I’m legitimately concerned that your attention has been occupied elsewhere. You don’t have to explain yourself. I’m not accusing you of anything, though I suppose I could. Look—I’ll be the first one to admit that I haven’t been the most supportive partner…”
