The Paper Daughters of Chinatown - Heather B. Moore Page 0,124

used. She’ll be kept under lock and key until we decide what to do with her.”

Mei Lien’s mind churned. This seemed beyond any compassion that Ah-Peen Oie deserved. “She owned other slave girls in this house. She abused them and forced them into prostitution.”

“I know,” Miss Cameron said, her tone soft, remorseful. “That is why she will not be brought here. We will keep her completely separate.”

Mei Lien shook her head, unbelieving. Her gaze connected with Tien’s, and in the translator’s eyes, Mei Lien saw that she didn’t agree with Miss Cameron’s actions either.

“So, she’ll live behind a locked door now,” Mei Lien said with bitterness churning her stomach. “How fitting. I lived behind Ah-Peen Oie’s locked door for months.”

“Mei Lien,” Miss Cameron said softly, urgently. “The girls in this home will always be my priority. You are my priority.”

Mei Lien looked away, her eyes burning with emotion. Miss Cameron had changed her life. If it weren’t for her, Mei Lien doubted she would be alive today. But if Miss Cameron believed in rescuing enslaved women, then how could she help their perpetrators?

“I do not know all the events that led Ah-Peen Oie to her actions of depravity,” Miss Cameron continued. “But I have been reading from the Bible this past hour about how the Lord taught the sinners and the shunned. How he extended a merciful hand to them and gave them a chance to change. When the Lord visited the woman at the well in Samaria, she was living in sin, yet the Lord offered her the living waters. Will Ah-Peen Oie truly change? I don’t know.” She broke off, and silence surrounded them.

The first bird began to sing outside the office window, a faint, mournful tune.

Mei Lien sniffled as tears coursed down her cheeks. If Ah-Peen Oie had been a slave early in her life, then turned that around to become the mistress of her own fate, weren’t they all in the same wretched cycle not of their own making? A cycle of greed, immoral appetites, and desperation?

Mei Lien had learned many of the Bible stories over her time at the mission home, and she was familiar with the story of the woman of Samaria. The staff had taught that they were all beggars beholden to a higher being.

Miss Cameron handed over her monogrammed handkerchief to Mei Lien, and she wiped her tears. Then she met the director’s gaze. In Miss Cameron’s green eyes, Mei Lien saw light and love, a sharp contrast to the harsh darkness of Ah-Peen Oie’s. Miss Cameron had battled with this decision deeply. That much was clear.

If her faith had guided Miss Cameron through her rescues over the past decade in Chinatown, then perhaps this most recent rescue had a purpose as well.

“All right,” Mei Lien said at last. “Thank you for telling me. Although I do not know if I will ever be able to look upon the woman again.”

“I would never force you to do something you didn’t want to,” Miss Cameron said.

Mei Lien nodded and closed her eyes. “I know.” She dropped her head into her hands, and her shoulders shook as she silently cried. She had been hoping to get news about Huan Sun. But perhaps the fall of Ah-Peen Oie was the first step in giving Huan Sun the chance to return to San Francisco. Fear and worry clashed in her chest. Worry for Huan Sun. Fear for the darkness that crept into the edges of her mind with the news about Ah-Peen Oie.

Miss Cameron wrapped an arm about Mei Lien’s shoulders. “All will be well, dear Mei Lien,” Miss Cameron said. “We must trust in that.”

And Mei Lien tried.

Over the next few days, she carried the knowledge in her heart that her former slave owner was being kept under lock and key a few streets away. Tien and other staff helpers took food to the woman three times a day. They had informed the other residents at the mission home, but Mei Lien refused to talk to anyone about the woman who had mistreated her so badly.

When Miss Cameron told Mei Lien that Ah-Peen Oie was gravely ill and had been taken to Lane Hospital for an operation, Mei Lien didn’t know how to react, what to feel. The thought of Ah-Peen Oie dying did odd things to Mei Lien’s mind. It would be a relief, to be sure, but it would also be an added weight. Had Mei Lien willed the woman’s fate toward such