Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [107]
“That night after supper the men gathered around as they did every night and took out the cards and the mahjongg. I took my place in the circle, sitting cross-legged on the floor, and I placed my bet along with the others. I was going to test the lessons I had learned on the ship watching the coolies gamble night after night. Within minutes I had lost all my wages.
“I tried again the following week and the next, and the next, until I learned. And then I began to win. I knew I was clever and could have won all the time but the men had been good to me and I could not take their money. So I quit gambling and saved my wages.
“When the work on the caves was finally over, I followed the other men, working with them in the fields and the orchards, until I finally made my way to San Francisco. They told me the Baptist Church held a Sunday School where they taught the heathen Celestials about their god, but they also taught them English, and so I learned. And I did whatever work I could get.” He stopped and looked gravely at them. “And that is how I spent my life until now,” he said finally.
“Now we know the true Lai Tsin,” Francie said compassionately. “I only hope my courage is as great as yours.”
“Have no fear, little one,” he said in his light, gentle, singsong. “Your courage is even greater than mine.”
The night suddenly seemed darker as Francie entered a world of pain. It attacked suddenly and she fought against it, trembling as it abated, knowing it was only lying in wait, like a wild animal, to attack again. The hours passed, and Annie bathed her head and massaged her icy feet. She stoked up the fire and wept in helpless sympathy when Francie screamed.
Dawn came and still no doctor. The day dragged into dusk and then quickly into night. Perspiration beaded her forehead as she fought the pain and Lai Tsin stood beside her and took her hand in his.
Francie looked into his face and saw his strength and felt it flowing into her. She felt a strange sense of exhilaration and suddenly she seemed to be outside her own body. Her mother was beside her, smiling at her with love in her eyes, and she called out to her. She looked down at herself lying in her mother’s bed with Lai Tsin holding her hand and Annie crying, and then she saw her own child, a boy, emerging into the world. And she was filled with happiness.
Then she was lying exhausted in her bed with her son at her breast. She smiled with tired contentment. Lai Tsin’s strength had saved her, she knew that. Just like it had after the earthquake when she had wanted to die. She was no longer a helpless girl—now she was a mother, she was a woman, and she was strong.
Annie forgot about her boardinghouse nearing completion in San Francisco. She put the past out of her mind and immersed herself in the joy of the new baby, who was named Oliver. He was so like Josh that it transported her back in time to when she was just thirteen and had looked after her own baby brother. And now she would share in raising his son.
She and Francie thought of nothing else but the baby. They marveled at his daily progress, admiring his smallest smile, his soft blond hair, and the beauty of his wide gray eyes. They bathed him, fed him, changed him, and Annie knitted endless little bonnets and jackets to keep out the winter cold. And when Christmas came they decorated a little fir tree with pine cones and scarlet ribbons and lit tiny candles. They invited Zocco and Esmerelda to drink cinnamon-flavored mulled wine and share their feast of roast goose, cooked by Annie to aromatic brown crispness outside and juicy pinkness inside. She made spiced apple dressing and rich brown gravy and a plum pudding stuffed to