The Paper Daughters of Chinatown - Heather B. Moore Page 0,3

motherless girls? Her gaze shifted to the soft gray outside the train window as they pulled into the station. Dolly’s mother had died before she had turned six, and her childhood memories had long since faded. Raised by her older sisters—Annie, Jessie, Katherine, and Helen—Dolly hadn’t lacked love and affection in her life. Yet . . . she missed her mother—not with tangible memories, but with something deeper, as if her mother’s death had left a hollow spot in her heart.

The passengers already outside the train collected their luggage and greeted family members. Dolly felt removed from the warm welcomes. Her welcome would be of a different sort. Once she stepped off this train, her life would never be the same.

The voices and commotion in the train corridor faded, and Dolly released a shaky breath. She could do this; she would do this. She had committed to one year. It wasn’t so long in the scheme of things—and besides, she would enjoy exploring San Francisco, seeing new sights, and meeting new people.

Dolly rose from the bench, picked up her carpetbag, and took a final look about the tidy compartment. Then she eased into the corridor and joined the last few passengers leaving the train.

The porter was waiting with her trunk by the time she stepped off the train into the late-morning fog. She didn’t need to look at the written address in her notebook to remember the location of 920 Sacramento Street. The address had been etched in her mind for weeks. The porter, a burly man with a curling mustache, cheerfully pointed her in the direction of where she could hail a buggy.

Once the buggy driver had loaded her trunk, Dolly sank onto the thin seat cushion. She peered out the side as the buggy rattled along the cobblestones behind the draft horse. The streets were laced with fog, and Dolly’s heart mirrored the grayness of the day. She pushed back the homesickness that threatened, and instead gazed at the sights as they left the warehouse district and its burly dock workers with arms the size of their necks, their wagons and carts pulled by the largest draft horses she’d ever seen.

As the buggy turned away from the train station, the landscape changed once again, and they drove through downtown. Dolly peered up at the tall buildings, counting multiple stories rising from the sidewalks. The Baldwin Hotel, with its five towering floors, was topped by domes and spires. It looked like an opulent castle, something out of a storybook. In front of the tall buildings, trees had been planted in a neat line, joined by hitching posts, not only to hitch horses or wagons but to prevent passing carriages from bumping into buildings.

She counted up to twelve levels on one building. Storefronts were lit with electric lights on Grant Street, glowing in the lifting fog, making the place look ethereal. Such beauty made it hard to reconcile that San Francisco was also such an underbelly of human slavery. Dolly’s attention was caught by a woman exiting a shop on the arm of a gentleman. Her full skirt and frilly blouse were made complete with a short jacket and a hat trimmed in ribbons. The man at her side wore gloves and an elegant black suit coat with pinstripe trousers, his cane clicking along the cobblestones as he strolled.

The sights of the sophisticated shops and stylish men and women faded as they crossed Bush Street. It was as if they had driven straight into another country on Dupont Street. The elegant buildings were replaced with tall pagodas and narrow shops. Shop signs scaled the buildings, covered in red and yellow Chinese characters. A woman dressed all in black, her hair pulled into a severe bun, swept furiously at the boardwalk in front of her shop. She looked up at the passing buggy, and her mouth formed a grim line, her face mapped with deep lines.

Two Chinese men stood on the corner, sharing a long pipe, the trail of smoke dissipating into the fog. They both wore loose, black clothing and single long pigtails down their backs. The woodsy scent of their pipe reached Dolly, mingling with other sweeter scents of baking. The two men followed the passing cab with their gazes, and Dolly wondered if they saw her as an anomaly in this part of the city.

Then the cab turned off Dupont, and the driver urged the horse as they moved up a steep hill. They passed square, brick homes,