Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [224]
“The next day she found herself a new job as a coolie carrying vegetables and live chickens to market in two straw baskets slung over her shoulders on a bamboo pole. And at night she worked in another gambling hall, a smaller, seedier place run by the tongs, with opium divans in the back and men with hatchets tucked into their belts at the tables. She did not care, she scarcely even noticed them. All she wanted was the dollars. And then a few months later she found she was pregnant.
“She was ignorant in such matters and by the time she realized that the hated Harmon Harrison’s child was in her womb it was too late to do anything about it, even if she dared. She worked until it was no longer possible to hide her condition and then she found herself a different room. She became Mayling again, in her silken smock and long, smooth-coiled hair.
“An old Chinese woman, experienced in birthing, came to help her, though Mayling had to pay her too much because the woman despised her for having no husband. She did not know what to expect and thought the pain of birth would destroy her mind, but in the end the child was born. A small, pale-faced, wailing boy.
“After a while the old woman completed her tasks and left Mayling alone. She looked at her baby, wrapped in a shawl beside her on the bedmat. He was tiny, with dark hair and dark eyes, and he did not look in the least bit like the foreign-devil landlord. He looked Chinese, like her. And he looked as helpless and frightened by his new world as she was. Her heart went out to him and at last she picked him up and began to feed him.
“When the boy was two months old Mayling knew she would have to return to work. She thought and thought about what to do and knew there was only one answer. It had always been the custom in China for families with too many mouths to feed to give away one or two of their children to less fortunate, childless couples, and now Mayling found a family for her son. They were middle-aged and had given up hope of ever having the pleasure of their own baby and their eyes lit with happiness when Mayling handed them her boy. She promised she would send them money every month for his welfare and then she turned quickly away, her eyes burning with unshed tears.
“Mayling went back to being Lai Tsin. She returned to her work in the fields and to the gambling. Her life was solitary, for she dared call no person her friend. She stayed alone and every month she sent money for her child, though she never tried to see him in all the long, slow years.
“Time passed and one day the couple sent a message that the son was now eighteen years old and had become betrothed. Mayling immediately sent all the money she had to help pay for his wedding, but she was not invited as a guest. The next year she was told that a son had been born and she rejoiced in their happiness. She realized that she was now a grandmother, though she guessed she was only about thirty-four years old. She went back to her work, drifting between the fields and the gambling, a solitary figure on the Chinese landscape.
“On the day of the great earthquake Mayling was on her way back to her little cubicle on Kearny Street. She had gambled until dawn and when the paved street suddenly rose under her feet and hurled her to the ground, her first thought was that the gods were angry with her for all her sins and at last had come to seek their revenge. She crawled into a doorway as the world collapsed around her, and when the earth stopped shaking and the buildings stopped trembling she opened her eyes onto a scene of devastation. She immediately thought of her son and her grandchild and her