Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [222]
“She peered at her reflection in the dirty windowpane and saw a miracle. She was no longer the peasant Lai Tsin, she was sixteen-year-old Mayling again. She practiced walking around the room in her strange wobbly shoes, wincing at the pain because she had become used to her big flat boots. Then plucking up her courage, she ventured outside onto the street, hardly daring to look at anyone in case they were staring and laughing at her. She walked slowly to the little shop in the alley nearby where the photographer took pictures of the Chinese to send home to their relatives. He barely looked at her, just gave her a scalloped paper fan to hold and told her to sit very still. There was a blinding flash and it was all over.
“Mayling went back to her room. She took off the clothes, folded them, and put them carefully away, because she was so used to being Lai Tsin she no longer knew how to behave as a girl and she was afraid.
“Back in her man’s disguise, she found a job working in a gambling hall, serving drinks, cleaning tables, washing floors. Any menial job was hers. And at the end of each week when she received her few dollars’ wages she would spend the night at the tables, and sometimes she would win and sometimes not, because these gamblers were cleverer than the peasants she had learned from. And every Sunday without fail, she attended the English classes at the Baptist Sunday School. She had a roof over her head, food in her belly, and she looked for no more.
“Wu Feng, the Chinese who ran the gambling hall, paid rent to a gwailo landlord and each week the man would call to collect his money. He was a young man, tall, with pale-blue eyes, thick curly hair, and a beard, and Mayling’s eyes were often drawn to him as she served him rice wine. By now she spoke enough English to understand when he asked her for wine, or how old she was and where she was from. The man’s voice was soft and his eyes often lingered on her but she did not feel afraid because to him she was Lai Tsin. She was a ‘man,’ like he was.
“Then one week he did not come to collect his rent but sent a message asking Wu Feng to have the money delivered to him. ‘Lai Tsing can bring it,’ he told Wu Feng, giving him the address.
“Mayling was very frightened at leaving Chinatown and she hurried along Market Street, her head down, afraid to look at the faces of the foreign devils. The landlord’s house was a grand one. It had five white steps leading up to its shiny black-enameled door and she hoped her boots were not soiling the pristine marble as she nervously rang the bell.
“A Chinese houseboy in a white jacket and white cotton gloves opened the door. He grinned slyly at Lai Tsin. ‘Master waits for you upstairs,’ he said, giving her a little shove toward the red-carpeted staircase.
“Mayling walked hesitantly to the stairs and then turned to look for him, but he had disappeared. With a nervous sigh she walked to the top of the stairs and called out the landlord’s name. It was a famous name in San Francisco and she could see the man was rich, richer than she had ever dreamed of anyone being. She stared at his gwailo treasures, the silk carpets, the huge, dark paintings, the silver urns and crystal vases as she waited, uncertain, what to do.
“She heard him call, ‘Come in here,’ and walked down the corridor toward his voice. He was sitting behind a big desk. She bowed and he stood up and walked to the door and locked it. Mayling blinked in surprise, but then she remembered this was a transaction of money; obviously he would