Not with every girl in the house petrified of this woman. There was only one option she could think of. “We can offer you protection if you’re willing to go to the city prison until we can come up with a place for you to stay.” She didn’t know if Ah-Peen Oie would balk or not.
The woman raised her tear-stained face. “Will I be safe?” she asked in a trembling voice.
“You will be safe there.” Dolly scanned her silk clothing, now damp with tears and wrinkled from the floor. “You’ll want to change your clothing, though.”
Ah-Peen Oie nodded, then wiped at the ruined makeup on her face. With shaky legs, she rose to her feet. “I’ll go and change.”
“Only last week Chow Ha was rescued and she is a truly pathetic object-lesson in what this appalling system of Oriental slavery can bring a young girl to in one or two years. Sorrow and physical suffering combined with the use of opium have made of Chow Ha a pitiful object. Such a sad, hopeless face I have seldom seen. But when she said to me with a glimmer of a smile lighting up her poor pale face, ‘This is the best day I have had for years [referring to the day she entered the mission] and soon I will grow strong and well,’ I knew there was hope for Chow Ha, and when the good Physician lays His healing hand upon her she will be healed of soul and body.”
—Donaldina Cameron, mission home record
1905
Mei Lien spent the first waking moments each morning watching her little boy sleep. Most days, she convinced herself that he looked like Huan Sun. On her worst days, she thought she saw a flash of Zhang Wei in the boy. Today was a good day. Mei Lien was sure the tilt of her boy’s lips was identical to Huan Sun’s.
Where he was, she could only guess. Over the past year, with so many things changing at the mission home—Miss Cameron’s absence, new girls coming in, many girls leaving to continue their lives in education, marriages, and even some returning to their homelands—had left Mei Lien with a sense of displacement.
She would never see her mother again, that she knew. Even with the skills she was learning at the mission home, it would take years to save up enough for a ship’s passage. And she didn’t even know if her mother was still alive.
Oh, how her mother would love to know her grandchild. And in another world or existence, there would be no disappointment in how the child was conceived. Now, in the gray light of the morning, just a short time before the birds would begin their song, Mei Lien took out the paper that Miss Cameron allowed her to keep in her bedroom.
With a thick pencil, Mei Lien sketched out the characters she had learned over the past year at the mission home and wrote a note to Huan Sun. She told him about his son. She told him about how each day when the sun rose, she hoped that today was the day he would return. She wrote how she would be forever grateful for his kindness. The risk he took to save her. His sacrifice now. She told him that she missed him, that she prayed he was well and had found happiness in life.
Then she folded the note and moved to the side of her bed. Kneeling, she withdrew a small paper-covered box and lifted the lid. Inside were at least a hundred other notes, all written to Huan Sun. In the early notes, her words were much simpler, her characters roughly sketched. Placing the newest note on top of the others, Mei Lien felt a deep sense of satisfaction.
Writing gave her a way to move time forward, to propel her life into action, to begin each day with renewed hope. Soon, she would be writing her notes in English. She was determined to learn all she could while at the mission home, since she didn’t know what life would bring her next. And she wanted to be prepared. Her son would eventually be too old to live in the mission home for girls, and she would need to find a place to live and a way to support him.
The soft knock at her door startled her because she hadn’t heard footsteps in the corridor.
“Mei Lien,” came the whispered call.
She scrambled to her feet and unlocked the door. Then she cracked it open,