Captive Bride, page 8
“People ask how I ended up here, but I don’t have a good answer. I headed west and it was the last stop on the train.”
She murmured something and touched her finger to the map, tracing the western coastline before her finger headed out to sea as if it would cross to China. But the map ended as though the rest of the world had been cut off by its edge.
“We’re alike, you and me. Except I chose to leave my family and you were probably forced to leave yours behind. I could board a train any day and go back home while you’re stuck here. I’ll pay you though, Huiann, and someday you can afford a ticket home.”
He studied the map and his gaze was drawn inevitably to Georgia. Camp Sumter was only a labeled dot on a map, but reading the name made his stomach churn. Camp Sumter was the formal name for the Confederate prison dubbed Andersonville.
He pointed to the spot. “I was here during the war. I’m sure you don’t know about our civil war. Why would you? But it tore everyone’s lives apart. I didn’t do anything, just sat around waiting for the war to be over, first in a prison near Richmond and later in the stockade they called Andersonville. It wasn’t unlivable at first but by the end there were over twenty thousand men crowded in space meant for half that many. I read those numbers later in the newspaper. Don’t know if they’re accurate. All I know is we were packed together waiting for something to happen—release, death, it didn’t much matter which. There was little food and only a muddy stream running down the middle of the camp for water. We fought over scraps like dogs, but I also saw some heroic behavior there, men sacrificing for their friends.
“One morning we woke and the guards had gone. A little while later or maybe it was days—time had lost meaning by then—a platoon of Union soldiers set us free. The war was over and we could go home.”
Alan listened to his voice telling her all this as if he were an observer, a stranger listening to an interesting story from long ago. He hadn’t spoken to anyone about his experience in the war, not his family or friends, and he could only tell Huiann because she didn’t understand. He began to understand why the Catholics were so eager to unburden themselves in the privacy of a confessional booth.
“I should be past this by now. As my father pointed out, I didn’t suffer any real harm. I didn’t even have to kill anyone. I was barely in a battle before I was captured. A lot of veterans have amputated limbs or are deaf or blind. I should rejoice in being alive and whole. My father’s right, I know. But here it is five years later and I can’t stop having nightmares.”
Then Alan told Huiann his deepest secret, the one he tried not to admit to himself. “I know I should be grateful for my life, but sometime I feel like I already died and I’m just going through the motions. I’m pretending to be alive, running a business, running for government, talking to people, eating food, shitting it out again, going to bed at night then starting all over again the next day. But it all means nothing to me. I’m hollow.”
He glanced at her, and her soulful eyes were riveted on his face. A slight frown puckered her brows. She bit her lower lip. He wanted to reach out and hold her hand. Just that. To feel the warmth of human contact and know he wasn’t alone. But after what she’d been through, she’d think he wanted something else and he didn’t want to ruin her fragile trust in him.
There was a moment of silence so profound he could hear the scurrying feet of a mouse somewhere in the room and the voices of passing pedestrians, horses’ hooves, rattling wheels, even distant piano music from a saloon.
Huiann began to speak quietly. The cadence of her lilting voice had a tangible feeling, shapes floating in the air he could reach out and pluck like strange fruit. The gravity of her expression reached inside him and wrapped around his heart. She was confiding a secret or something important to her.
As her story ended and she fell silent, Alan dared to reach out and brush the back of his hand against hers. When she didn’t pull away, he slipped his fingers around her soft hand.
All other noises receded and they were alone in a hushed bubble of warm companionship. Alan never wanted to let go. He listened to her quiet breaths and his own chest rose and fell steadily. A peaceful calmness stole over him even though his heart was beating fast.
Finally, they both let go, their hands sliding apart with a whisper of skin against skin until they were separate once more.
Alan thought he would never see her busy hands cutting vegetables, wiping the table, holding a pencil or sewing cloth without remembering how her hand had felt resting like a nesting bird in his.
Chapter Seven
Huiann fled to her room to escape the spell that wove her and Alan together. She closed her door and leaned against it then rubbed her palm, trying to erase the warmth of his touch. It had felt so good and comforting but she mustn’t allow such closeness between them or he might expect more from her. There’d been such pain in Alan’s voice and eyes that she’d found herself returning the confidence he shared.
She closed her eyes, frowning as she recalled what she’d told him.
“I know we must revere our parents, but whenever I think of how mine sent me off with a stranger I’m full of rage. Of course, my father didn’t know what Xie Fuhua intended, but even so he let me go to a foreign land, never to see my family again. If he loved me, how could he send me away? I’m a bad daughter, not dutiful or respectful. I should be happy to have brought some security for my family. But I’m angry. I’m angry!”
The burning feeling in her chest had lifted a little as she admitted the truth at last. And when he reached over and held her hand, Huiann had gripped him like a shipwreck survivor clinging to flotsam. She could’ve held his hand all night.
With a curse, Huiann pushed off the door and crossed the room to the hook where her nightdress hung.
She was in the middle of changing when she heard Alan’s footsteps on the stairs. Her fingers froze on the buttons of her dress as she listened to the floorboards creak in the hallway. Her heart beat faster. Would those footsteps stop in front of her door? Would he knock or call her name? But Alan’s heavy tread continued on down the hall to his own room.
She exhaled and the heaviness of disappointment filled her. Shameful woman.
Huiann finished dressing for bed and lay down on her bed. She stared at the faint light and shadows on her ceiling for hours, thinking about secrets exchanged in the stillness of night and the potent force of attraction between phoenixes and dragons.
In the morning they behaved politely to one another over breakfast as if nothing had happened the night before, then Alan went into his store and Huiann began another day alone in the house.
Although she would’ve liked to launder the clothes and bedding, she didn’t dare go to the water pump for buckets to fill the washtub. She’d cleaned the rooms so well the previous day there was little that needed to be done so she started sewing muslin into curtains—a project that would fill many hours.
At noon, Alan came for his lunch and taught her more English words for objects around the room. There weren’t specific words and intonations for variations of a thing like in her native tongue. In English a word had only one pronunciation no matter what the context.
“Huiann eat appu…apple.” She repeated the simple sentence he taught her then pressed a hand to her chest. “I eat apple.”
“Yes!” He grinned. “Good.”
She would parrot phrases all day if it earned that bright smile.
Alan returned to work and left her to her sewing. Even with taking a break to cook dinner, she was able to show him a stack of curtains to be hung when he returned that evening. Her neck, shoulders and fingers were stiff from hours hunched over her work, but a glow of pride filled her at his pleasure in her accomplishment.
After supper, he went to the store and brought back lengths of wooden dowels and metal brackets. The rest of the evening was spent hanging curtains, a job that didn’t go smoothly. As Alan pounded a nail into the wall of the sitting room, the thin plaster layer crumbled away and bits fell into his face. He sneezed and muttered what Huiann could only surmise were curses.
She was embarrassed that her curtains had caused him extra work when he would normally be relaxing for the evening. But after he’d brushed the dust from his eyes, he smiled at her. And the curtains covered the damaged plaster.
When all the windows were finished—the bedroom and parlor casements and the small window above the kitchen sink—Alan stepped down off of the stool and smiled at her again. “Good. Good job.”
“Good” must mean bu lai. Huiann accepted his compliment with a bow.
Alan reached into his pocket, pulled out a flat pouch and took several American coins from it. She started shaking her head even before he tried to hand them to her. But he grasped her hand and pressed the coins into her palm, closing her fingers around the cool metal. He pointed at the bleached muslin curtains hanging above the sink and then at the stove, the table and the broom in the corner, indicating all the housework she’d done.
Huiann understood he was paying her for her service, but she couldn’t accept money when she owed him her very life.
Alan squeezed her hand lightly and looked into her eyes. She didn’t need more than his potent gaze to understand what the words thank you meant. She felt she was tumbling into the blue pools of his eyes. Her body yearned for him and the phoenix inside her rustled its feathers once more.
Huiann cast her gaze down and stepped away, pulling her hand away from his. She murmured her thanks for the payment. She would not hurt his pride by refusing, but it was time to put some distance between them before the phoenix and dragon bridged the gap between them. Such a union would not be good—not for her in her precarious situation and not with this foreign man.
Huiann hurried upstairs and felt his gaze burning into her back as she climbed them. In her room, she stacked the coins on the little table next to her ivory combs then removed her clothes and lay down in her drawers and chemise. It was her third night in Alan’s house and once more she lay in bed listening for him to come upstairs. He didn’t spend time in the parlor tonight, but went straight to his bedchamber and closed the creaking door behind him.
She knew his room intimately now that she’d cleaned it and pulled up the covers on the bed herself. Heart fluttering at the wrongness of it, she had pressed her nose into his pillow and breathed deeply, smelling his scent. Now she could picture him moving about the room, sitting on the bed to take off his boots and tossing them in the corner, unbuttoning his shirt and shrugging it off his shoulders. She imagined his hands unfastening the front of his trousers before she forced her mind to abandon such a shameful game.
Did he think of her in the same way as he lay in his bed at night? The look in his eyes tonight had been hungry. Did he think of her with desire and consider coming to her room? What would she do if he did? Protest and fight against him or yield and welcome him into her bed? She shivered, her body feeling hot and cold at the same time.
Pulling the blanket tighter around her, Huiann turned her mind to sending up her nightly prayers to her ancestors. She asked for Grandma Mei’s guidance, believing she of all people would understand the power of attraction and could give wise counsel about how to combat it.
Govern yourself and you can govern the world. The proverb floated into her mind like an answer, perhaps not an easy one, but a wise one nevertheless.
Slowly Huiann’s tension ebbed, and the thick, hot feeling between her legs lessened. Her nipples became soft again instead of sharp points. She drifted into a dream about a hungry tiger stalking a rabbit which suddenly turned and attacked the tiger.
Another night in a foreign land slipped away.
The following morning Huiann prepared breakfast and bid Alan goodbye when he left for work. Her mother had seen her father off to work like this every day of Huiann’s life. It was a warm and friendly ritual that made her feel like a wife, for a moment. But that was an illusion she mustn’t give in to.
After Alan left, she decided she could no longer put off washing clothes and bedding. No one had come looking for her since that first day so Alan had indicated it was safe for her to use the water pump and outhouse without fearing the neighbors would spread tales of her whereabouts all the way to Chinatown. But after one horrifying visit to the smelly outhouse, she preferred to use the indoor commode and only spend enough time in the privy to empty the basin.
Now Huiann took a large, cobwebbed washtub from a hook on the wall outside the back door and carried it inside. Laundering in the kitchen might leave dampness on the floor by the time she was finished, but at least she’d have privacy.
Filling the tub took many trips to the pump, carrying heavy buckets of water that strained her arms, and then heating the water in kettles and pots on top of the stove. At last she had enough water in the tub to submerge Alan’s sheets. The water sloshed over the edge and puddled on the floor. There was no washboard so she scrubbed the cloth as best she could with the lye soap from the sink. Soon her hands were red and raw from the hot water and harsh soap. Her knees hurt from kneeling on the hard floor and her back ached from bending over the tub, plunging and scrubbing. Washing was much harder than she’d anticipated. She understood now why her mother had sent theirs to a laundress. Huiann and her sisters had done light housework, cooking and sewing, but there’d been servants to perform the heavy, rough work.
It was hard to rinse the sheet clean of the slimy soap and as Huiann squeezed out water and coiled the sheet beside the tub, she suddenly realized there was no clothesline on which to hang it to dry. She lifted the heavy, wet bundle and carried it to the stairs to drape over the banister. When she was finished, she pushed a stray lock of hair from her sweaty cheek, blew a long breath and added another heated kettle of water to the tub before immersing one of Alan’s shirts.
Laundering took much longer than she’d anticipated. Her clothes were soaked and her body streaming with sweat by the time she’d made it through only a few of Alan’s clothes. She wouldn’t get to clean any of her own today.
As she leaned over the washtub scrubbing a pair of drawers, the kitchen door opened and Alan entered the room. He stared at the chaotic kitchen. Every chair, the table, the curtain rod and banister were festooned with dripping clothes. Puddles covered the floor, and there was no lunch ready.
Huiann scrambled to her feet, leaving his drawers floating on the scummy surface of the water. She bowed deeply in apology. “I’m so sorry. I lost track of time. I don’t have your meal ready. I’ll make something right now.”
The loud explosion of his laughter snapped her gaze up to his face. His eyes sparkled like the sun shining through raindrops and he laughed so hard his body shook.
Huiann’s mortification evaporated under licking flames of irritation. She was hot, exhausted, soaked and miserable, and her pride in her homemaking skills was terribly bruised. She didn’t appreciate being the source of his amusement. She pierced him with a dagger glare before squatting by the tub to wring water from his undergarment.
Alan crossed the room, talking. He took hold of her damp forearm and pulled her stiff body upright, pointed at the tub and shook his head. He was telling her that he took his laundry out. Suddenly Huiann realized everyone in the neighborhood must do the same, which explained why there was no clothesline rope hanging between the buildings.
She looked in dismay at the dripping clothes then back at Alan, who was still grinning. The humor of the moment hit her at last and a reluctant smile replaced her frown. Alan’s grin turned to laughter again and mirth bubbled up inside her like water in a dry well.
The sound of her own laughter almost startled her. It had been so long since she’d laughed about anything. The last time she could remember was with her sister Bao over Bao’s baby, Lin. The little girl was just beginning to totter on two legs and she’d kept the sisters giggling one morning with her lurching steps. Sweet little Lin, whom Huiann would never see grow into a young woman or a mother with children of her own. The flash of memory stopped Huiann’s laugher.
Sensing the change in her mood, Alan stopped laughing too. He released her arm, folded his hands together and bowed in apology for his laughter. “Sorry.”
A little thrill went through her at his charming contrition, as well as a stab of mortification that she’d shown anger toward her employer. She owed him everything. He owed her nothing, certainly not an apology for wrecking his kitchen and forgetting his lunch.
Alan picked up the tub and carried it outside, his arms straining and water spilling all the way. Huiann hurried to open the door for him and watched as he hurled the water across the dirt and sparse grass. Then he loaded the tub with the wet clothes and piled the dry ones on top. Wiping his hand across the air, he erased the incident.
Huiann was still humiliated by her failure, but as the saying went, Gold has its price; learning is beyond price. She started to get out the skillet, intending to fry up some vegetables, but Alan stopped her with a hand on her arm. Her sleeves were rolled up and her bare skin prickled at the heat of his hand.
He led her from the kitchen into the store where the young man named Jeremy was putting tinned goods on a shelf. He stared at her. Alan said something and the clerk went to lock the front door and flip the sign.
Alan escorted Huiann to a chair behind the counter then moved around the shop, collecting items from shelves and bins. He returned and introduced her to the other man.
“Huiann, Jeremy.”
The red-cheeked man started to extend his hand to shake hers then gave a little bow instead as he said, “Pleased to meet you.” His hair was an amazing shade of orange. Huiann had a hard time dragging her gaze from it long enough to return his bow.
When all three of them were seated, Alan passed out bits of dried meat, a leathery, salty chew he called “jerky” that Huiann politely nibbled. There were flat white crackers and pickled cucumbers he’d fished from a large barrel.
