The Paper Daughters of Chinatown - Heather B. Moore Page 0,102

Wu said quietly, her voice sounding hollow in the narrow space.

“How far down do we go?” Mei Lien asked.

“We’re halfway there,” Tien Fu Wu’s voice returned. “Keep moving.”

Mei Lien tried not to let the darkness steal her breath. When her feet reached the bottom, she still couldn’t see anything. She felt along the wall and stepped carefully to one side to give Tien Fu Wu room to step down.

“Now we have to crawl.” The woman’s warm breath rushed over Mei Lien’s face as she spoke. “Hold onto me and let me guide you.”

Mei Lien grasped the woman’s clothing, then knelt. The tunnel was not much larger than what anyone could crawl through. There was no way to stand, and Mei Lien tried not to think about how she was beneath a street. Her damp palms slipped against the ground more than once as she crawled. The air was cool and damp, and frequent chills raced through her.

Tien Fu Wu didn’t speak, but Mei Lien could hear her breathing, and it gave her courage to keep moving even though the very air around her seemed to be pressing her into the ground. The darkness of the tunnel reminded her of the feeling of helplessness she had when Ah-Peen Oie had locked her in. Then the tunnel curved upward, and bits of dirt and rock slid past her as Tien Fu Wu led the way.

“We’re here,” Tien Fu Wu said.

Mei Lien wiped at the tears on her cheeks as Tien Fu Wu rose to her feet. Then she grasped Mei Lien’s hand and helped her rise. The area was still underground, and the darkness still surrounded them, but at least Mei Lien could stand.

“Come.” Tien Fu Wu clasped Mei Lien’s arm. “Miss Cameron will be waiting for us.”

Mei Lien walked on shaky legs through the underground room; then they headed up narrow stairs made of creaking wood. Tien Fu Wu opened a door, and there it was.

Light.

Miss Cameron stood with a burning candle in hand, waiting for them in a narrow corridor. “You are safe now, Mei Lien.”

“We planned our raid carefully in advance. ‘But how can we get in without chopping down the doors?’ Miss Cameron asked me. An eighteen-year-old slave girl named Yum Gue was held prisoner, Miss Cameron had heard from a very much frightened Chinese girl, and she was afraid they would escape by means of some secret exit.

“I recalled that there was a skylight in the roof of the house that was left open during the day. I believed that it only dropped closed and was not locked during night time, so we planned to try to get through that.”

—Sergeant John Manion, Women and Missions magazine, 1932

1904

Mei Lien gazed out the narrow window of her bedroom in the mission home. Outside, the sun shone, the people walked along the street, the trees swayed in the wind, and the clouds raced across the sky. But it was not her life. The outside belonged to others.

She did not leave her room. She did not speak to the other girls. When Tien Fu Wu came to visit, Mei Lien listened to the young woman’s advice, but she could not bring herself to go to the dining room. Or to enter the kitchen. When Miss Cameron invited her to church services for her Christian God, Mei Lien could not betray her mother and ancestors.

Mei Lien’s soul was black. The stain of her sins could never be washed away, no matter what Miss Cameron told her.

Mei Lien might have survived, but she was not alive.

Beyond the window, she watched a woman holding the hand of a young girl as they walked along the street at a brisk pace. They were not Chinese, and Mei Lien had never seen them before, but she could almost feel the connection between the mother and daughter.

Mei Lien did not expect to see her mother ever again. Perhaps she had believed at one time that it might be a possibility. Her husband would send money and bring her mother to San Francisco. Or she and her husband, along with their two small sons, would visit Hong Kong.

But there was no husband. No future.

And she didn’t know if the child growing in her belly would be a boy, but he would be born to a mother who had nothing. Who was nothing.

Hot tears pricked her eyes, and Mei Lien was surprised yet again that she could cry anymore. She turned from the window. Today it was hard to