Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [78]
Time was passing, and Annie needed something to do. She was used to keeping busy, she had the money her father had given her, and she said to Francie, “All I know is how to cook and look after folk. I’m going to open a little rooming house. There’s lots of people still homeless that’ll be glad of a good, clean place to stay and a decent supper of an evening. I’ve got the money and I’m going to ask Lai Tsin to find me a place.”
Lai Tsin came back to her a few days later and told her that the word was there was a nice piece of land near Union Square with the remains of a building still on it. The foundations were good and he could organize credit and also the necessary labor and supplies.
Francie watched their busy lives listlessly. It seemed good fortune was smiling on everyone but her, and her awful secret.
CHAPTER 18
Josh. The name sent vibrations through her entire body and she pressed her hands against her growing belly. She went to look in the long mirror Annie had installed in their shared bedroom, turning anxiously from side to side. There was no doubt her waist was thickening, but the bulge was still small enough to hide under her long Chinese smock. Her secret was safe.
She looked dispiritedly at her reflection. Her blond hair was dragged back into a knot, her small heart-shaped face looked gray and pinched, and there were lines of tension around her mouth and eyes. She thought of the girl of a few months ago in her white lace ball dress and sparkling tiara, and she looked again at the same eighteen-year-old girl, who was now a gray waif in her high-necked Chinese smock and black trousers. She belonged to a different world.
She walked tiredly back to the window, gazing out on the endless activity. The old Chinatown had been a dark, secretive ghetto, a hellhole of rat-infested tenements filled with crime of every sort: singsong girls, slave-girls, gambling halls and sweatshops, opium dens and the bloody violence of the rival tongs who ran it all. The city fathers wanted to build a new Chinatown out at Hunters Point, but the Chinese ignored them and were busily rebuilding it exactly where it had always stood. Only this time the new buildings were in the old Chinese style with carved rafters and pierced screens at the windows, painted scarlet, green, and gold. They had green-tiled roofs with curved eaves and guardian lions at the red-lacquered doors. The streets smelled of incense and spices and rang with the sound of sawing and hammering. New buildings were rising up almost overnight as men worked round-the-clock shifts to restore their shattered homes and businesses.
Francie thought of Annie over at Union Square, supervising the rebuilding of her new boardinghouse and, no doubt, driving the workmen crazy. Annie had lived with the family building trade all her life, she knew what was what and she let the builders know it. Francie had been with her once when she had found the men shirking, drinking beer and standing around smoking. They stared sheepishly at the little battle-ax of a woman giving them a piece of her mind, reminding them it was her money and her time they were wasting, telling them they had better get on with it or they’d know about it. There had been black looks and grumbles as they’d straggled slowly back to work, but they knew Annie was fair as well as feisty, and that a hard worker always found a good bonus in his wage packet at the end of the week.
Just the other day, when the roof was finished, Annie had declared a party. Long trestle tables had been set up and covered with starched white cloths, because even amongst the dust and cement, Annie liked everything nice. She invited their families and there was as much beer and food as anyone wanted and they raised their glasses in a toast to her, laughing as they admitted she was a good employer even if she was a woman.
And Lai Tsin worked at his business more hours than Francie thought existed, yet he still