River of Dust A Novel

Twenty-two

T he steady bang of a hammer, the wail of a saw on wood, and the intermittent whispers that drifted up from down below: Grace had listened all day, and although no one had told her what was taking place around her in the Martins' household, she sensed it. Earlier in the afternoon, she had left her bed briefly to glance over the banister. She had seen planks of wood being carried in by Chinese carpenters. And now Mai Lin was here and brushing her hair as the last streaks of day crossed the pink desert and sliced her in two. Grace's image in the mirror showed her half in deathly shadow, half in radiant light. She knew that both sides were accurate reflections.

Mai Lin had not returned from the Watson home across the courtyard with the black dress that Grace had requested. Instead, in the Chinese custom, she had brought Grace's white wedding dress and now had put her into it and tied the bow at the back. The simple lace dress that fell to her ankles belonged on a girl, Grace could see now, a carefree ingenue. But within it now stooped the body of a woman, her chest ravaged by consumption— another thing she had had to figure out for herself— and a belly that would never again carry a child. Her body had made that latter point clear, although Doc Hemingway was too much of a coward to share with her the diagnosis.

Mai Lin would have kept fighting on her behalf forever, keeping her alive and as strong as she could, but Grace hated to think how the effort had aged her dear amah. When Grace had first married and moved into the finest house in the compound, Mai Lin had stood by the front door to welcome her, her chin high, her arms crossed over her chest, her sturdy back divided in two by thick braids over each shoulder. Now she was shriveled to an impossibly small size. Her face had lost its broad strength and was hatched by a thousand lines. Grace worried that she alone had inflicted great trials upon her maid. In the mirror, she looked into her own gray eyes and then at Mai Lin's ancient face and felt ashamed of the false optimism the old one attempted on her behalf.

"Mistress is ready?" Mai Lin asked.

Grace rose from the dressing table and went to the door of the room without help, although Mai Lin hobbled along beside her, nervously touching her elbow. "I believe I am stronger today," Grace said. "Please don't worry about me so."

Mai Lin bowed a little and stepped aside. As Grace proceeded cautiously down the stairs, she was aware of the ladies gathered below: Mrs. Jenkins, Mrs. Parker, Mrs. Carson, and even some of the unmarried women— Lucy, Gertrude, and Priscilla— with whom Grace had enjoyed sweet and simple good times. They were all in black, of course. Grace should have worn her black dress as well, but she hadn't wished to offend Mai Lin, who believed white was the proper color of mourning. In any case, Grace knew that the precious child wouldn't mind either way. What was in one's heart was all that mattered.

She dared not look at the ladies too closely, for she needed to concentrate on each careful step until she reached the first floor. And then, when she could have gone to them, she did not. She had nothing to say, and they must have sensed it, for they didn't step forward to greet her, either. It had been a long time, she realized, since she had enjoyed convivial company. Her Wesley boy had been stolen almost a full year before, and ever since, she had been on such a strange journey. In the past many months, she had become lost in a netherworld as she sought her children. She now fully inhabited a place of waiting, a purgatory, a desert all her own that suited her more than the society of these good people. She knew that they meant her well, but she suspected that the sight of her ghostly pallor frightened them and made them wary.

She allowed Mai Lin to steady her as she stepped into the parlor. There before the empty hearth stood the men. Reverend Charles Martin's fine bald head was bowed, and the others, in respect, stood in a circle with him, their faces long and expressionless. Their black suits created severe silhouettes, and Grace admired their stern, handsome profiles. She remembered when the Reverend had looked as upright and sure as these gentlemen.

She leaned toward Mai Lin and whispered, "Has anyone informed the Reverend?"

Mai Lin shook her head and made that sorry tsking sound. The poor woman was worn out. She took Mai Lin's hand in her own and held on tight.

"Not to worry," Grace said. "We will manage without him."

She went toward the one person in the place who mattered at this time: the child's mother. Mildred sat by herself beside the small coffin, her hand up to her mouth, a handkerchief gripped in white knuckles. The coffin had been made here in the parlor, and fresh sawdust dotted her black lace-up shoes.

Grace did not pause but knelt down before her friend, although it made her dizzy to do so. "Dear one," Grace began, and she studied Mildred's sorrowful countenance and saw that it was a mirror of her own after losing her son, "the untimely departure of a child is the greatest trial God sets before us. We are so sorry for your loss."

Mildred's gaze drifted away from the coffin and landed on Grace's face. Her brow tightened and became furrowed, and a look of confused amazement passed over her, as if perhaps she didn't recognize her friend. In her own grief, Grace remembered, she had mistaken people for apparitions. It was understandable that Mildred might do so now.

But Mildred didn't speak with a dazed or confused voice. Instead, she asked quite firmly, "Whom do you mean by 'we'?"

Grace squeezed Mai Lin's hand. "Why, Mai Lin and I."

Mildred looked at Grace with a cold stare and asked, "Where is your husband, Mrs. Watson?"

Grace stood unsteadily, and heat rose up from her collar. She looked about the room and noticed the others watching and waiting for a reply. And yet she had none. "I'm afraid," she said after a long moment, "I don't know."

"Of course you don't know," Mildred said with no kindness in her voice. "For many months now, you haven't known a thing, have you? You have no idea what we have gone through without anyone steering us or leading us forward. Those of us who have survived have done so with no help from your errant husband."

Grace could feel herself beginning to sway and was grateful when Mai Lin steadied her. She wished to be back in bed. Mai Lin's potion had worn off, and the swishing of her blood in her ears was like a rising tide that might soon drown her.

Mildred continued, "But that is behind us now. We are leaving, my husband and I. The other families are departing as well. As soon as we bury our daughter in this wretched soil, we shall abandon this land, and, God willing, we'll never see it again."

Grace did not appreciate her friend's harsh tone one bit. It made her feel feverish and more alone than ever. But when she looked down into Mildred's distraught eyes, Grace understood her hardened heart. Her friend was doing all that she could to remain strong precisely because she was not. Grace wanted to pat her friend's hand, which was damp with tears, and tell her to let the sorrow take her. There was no point in railing against it. Her grief, the grief of any mother whose child has been stolen away, was far too much to bear.

Strangely, Grace wanted to welcome Mildred into the painful society she had come to know and now champion. Mildred didn't yet understand that the ghosts win out in the end. It would be so much easier if she simply let them do so. It didn't matter if Mildred left this land on the next boat out of Shanghai, or if she stayed here for the rest of her days. She, like Grace, would never leave behind the plains of North China. There was no escaping this vast and desolate land. Grace understood that now. Once entered into, this desert of loss surrounded even the sturdiest of souls forever.

Then, as if to prove Grace's assumptions correct, a miserable wail escaped from the lips of her friend. In an instant, her husband was beside her. The other gentlemen stepped nearer, too. They bent forward and offered concerned faces. Grace looked around and saw that the ladies had slipped in closer as well and glared not at Mildred but at Grace. She wondered if they thought she had done something to produce her friend's outcry. Yet how could they imagine such a thing when the true culprit was death itself?

"I am deeply sorry, Mildred," Grace said. "I loved dear Daisy. You know that I did. I love all the children."

Reverend Martin held his sobbing wife against his side and said, "Yes, of course you do. We all know that about you." He tried to smile, but his eyes were clouded with tears as well.

Grace looked more closely now at the stony faces around her. She suddenly recognized what she had not noticed in the year since Wesley's kidnapping. Her fellow missionaries were no longer the largehearted and determined people they had been when they had first arrived in Fenchow-fu. Grief lined their brows, and constant worry made their lips pinched and stern. She could sense the heartache that filled their breasts. They had seen too much, experienced too much, and it had left them in a state of constant grief.

There was Mrs. Jenkins whose oldest daughter, Miranda, had died suddenly earlier that spring. The lady's body appeared hollow now, her once proud chest caved in and her shoulders curved as if she were a coolie bearing a heavy load across her back. And Reverend Powers, once a robust and striking gentleman, had lost so much weight that his clothing hung on him like a scarecrow. And yet it was his eyes that bothered Grace even more: they had grown dull, the sparkle of light that had once shone in them with curiosity and even delight all but extinguished.

These people, her good and noble American compatriots, ap peared to her not only worn down but lost. Grace recalled how their mission had once required that they stand tall and sure. They were to be models to the godless here. They were to rise to their better selves and overcome any personal faults in an effort to bring unadulterated good to a poor, deprived race. Now their fervent purpose had grown as faint and forgotten as the soil that blew away on the wind across the plains outside the compound.

Grace looked back at Mildred, whose tears rolled down her husband's dark lapel. Reverend Martin held his wife tightly. Grace tried to ignore the frantic pumping of her heart that caused her vision to blur. She kept her eyes focused on the spot where Mildred's cheek met her husband's chest. The question that buzzed in Grace's mind was as loud as the sound of her feeble, determined blood doing its work. Where was her husband? Grace wondered with surprising ferocity.

She made herself look away and out the window of the Martins' parlor to the view of the dirt yard at the rear of the compound. In the tradition of Chinese walls, a large and handsome moon gate had been strategically placed so that the Martins might look beyond their property and onto the windswept plains. Out there, the dead grasses of the previous season swayed and yellow dust stirred. Grace could sense the spring sun starting to warm the land. A mild though persistent heat had begun to burn the dry, useless weeds. Her husband was out there in that rising fire.

He continued on and on in his endless search, though Grace feared he had forgotten what exactly it was that he looked for. Of course each day he hoped to stumble upon evidence of their son. And yet she had come to realize that the Reverend was now upon a quest for something else as well. He had not found it, and yet he continued, not nearly as defeated as the lesser ministers here with her now. No, her Reverend carried on in spite of it all. He was an extraordinary man. She wished he would be satisfied with only her company and love, but he wouldn't be the man he was if he would. He was out in that wilderness looking for something. Something large and significant. Grace feared he was on a mission to discover nothing less than the Lord Himself.

She shook her head ever so slightly and let out a little puff of air. It was dawning on her that by conducting his fruitless odyssey, the Reverend had been steadily losing not only his faith but his dear extended family here in the compound as well. These people, his people, had had no choice but to turn their backs on him. Her husband had lost not only the Lord but these decent souls. He, of all people, was utterly alone.

She understood with sudden and striking clarity that she was the last one on earth still able to reach him. Wherever he had gotten himself to, she must go there now. It fell to Grace alone to fetch him back, even if it killed her to do so. Death was not nearly as troubling as she had once assumed, except for the thought of her baby. There was Rose to consider. And yet her husband was somehow calling out to her, too.

Mildred drew her head away from Reverend Martin's shoulder and spoke more calmly. "Grace, you can't care for your baby here," she said. "She won't survive it. You'd be killing her. Don't you see that?"

And, in an instant, Grace understood her situation and grasped what was required of her.

"Yes, Mildred," she said, "I do."

"Then say you'll leave China with us?"

"I will come along soon thereafter."

Mildred shook her head and looked toward the other ladies for



confirmation of Grace's foolishness. But Grace stepped nearer and spoke with as much conviction as she could muster.

"Dearest Mildred and Reverend Martin, I don't know of two more generous and worthy people than you. You are upright and pure of heart. You are good, good Christians. You have saved me these past months by sharing your home and your care. And yet, now, I find that I must ask you for even more."

Through their swollen and exhausted eyes, the Martins looked at Grace most willingly, for they recognized their better selves in the description she had painted of them, and like all true Christians, they wished it to be true.

"Will you take my precious Rose with you when you leave this place?" Grace asked.

For some time, no one spoke, and so Grace continued, "The Reverend and I will follow as soon as our business here is finished. I cannot leave him now. You are loving parents, and I wouldn't dare to presume that my Rose could ever replace your dear Daisy in your hearts. But if you should take her with you and allow her even a fraction of your love, I would be most grateful. And soon, I will join you. Surely, I will, by and by."

The Reverend Martin looked ready to speak but then seemed to think better of it. Grace thought she recognized a brief glint of light in his eyes behind the veil of sorrow. Mildred's expression was simpler. She nodded slowly and seemed to grasp the request as only a mother could: above all else, she would see to the child.

"Good, then," Grace said. "It's settled. I can never thank you enough. May God bless you both."

She turned and let Mai Lin steady her as she walked out of the parlor without glancing at the others. In the hallway, although it was past the time for her to return to bed, Grace chose instead to step out through the screen door and onto the veranda. She couldn't bear to hold her baby one more time, knowing she might never see her again. So she let Rose sleep on upstairs under the care of Mildred's amah and her new family. Grace told herself not to remember the warmth of Rose's tiny body pressed against her side, her hands clenched over Grace's heart. Just the image of the precious child in her mind's eye was enough to start the unpleasant whirring sensation in her feeble body again. Her blood beat wildly as she looked out at the deserted courtyard. Her arms felt heavy at her sides, as if weary from carrying the weight of her daughter. And yet they were painfully empty.

As she stepped down from the porch, Grace told herself not to notice how her body ached with loss in every possible way. All around her appeared abandoned. The yellow-brick school building stood shuttered. The chapel at the far end was also closed. Several of the houses, too, were already boarded up. Crates of packed possessions stood stacked on carts, waiting for donkeys to pull them away. And yet none of it seemed nearly as desolate to Grace as the single glance backward that she allowed herself. She looked one more time at the Martins' house, still full of people, including her Rose.

Then she turned again and crossed the cracked earth toward the Watson home. As Mai Lin walked beside her, Grace shaded her eyes and squinted up at the front porch. She was surprised and most glad to see Ahcho standing just inside the open door, a broom in his hand. The dear fellow had been keeping after the infernal dust even though no one lived there anymore.