“Then this sounds like the girl I am looking for. Could I possibly see her?”
“May I ask why?” Her face took on a guarded look again.
“I’ve been asked to find her by her family.”
“Her family?” The expression changed to one of incredulity. “Her family is looking for her? We had no idea she had a family. They usually don’t. Well, that can only be good, can’t it? We were wondering what would become of her. She’s not at all well, you see. I should warn you that we think it’s possible she has tuberculosis—consumption, you know. So she could be infectious, but I’ll bring you to her if you want to take that risk.”
“Yes, I do.” My heart was thumping with excitement. She wasn’t well. Was that the reason she ran away?
Hermione led me up well-worn linoleum stairs, one flight and then two. The third flight was plain wood, narrow, and steep. “It’s quite a climb,” she said, “but awfully good for the figure, all this running up and down.”
As we came onto the landing a door opened and another young woman came out, this one wearing a large white apron and a white cap over her hair.
“How is the patient, Marigold?”
“A little better. She’s eating well, but she still has that terrible cough.”
“She has a visitor, and maybe some good news,” Hermione said, and ushered me into the room.
The frail Chinese girl lay propped on her pillows looking like a porcelain doll. The girl in my photograph had looked healthy and robust. This one looked as if she was wasting away, but she sat up as we came into the room.
“Hello,” I said, smiling at her. “Do you speak English?”
“Little bit,” she said. She was eyeing me warily.
“Are you Bo Kei?” I asked.
She frowned as if she didn’t understand.
“Bo Kei? You came from China as a bride?”
She nodded, her eyes still darting as if she might be considering flight.
“Bride of Mr. Lee Sing Tai?”
Her expression changed. “Lee Sing Tai?” She spat out the words in staccato fashion; then she actually raised herself up and spat onto the floor.
“Annie, that’s not nice,” Hermione said. “No spitting. Not hygienic.”
The girl lay back again as if exhausted.
From her outburst it was clear that she wouldn’t be too keen on going back.
“He is looking for you,” I said.
“No! Why he look for me? Not want me no more,” she said, turning her gaze away. “Send me away. No son.”
“Send you away? He sent you away?”
She nodded. “No give him son. No use, he say.”
“I don’t understand. You came from China a month ago, is that correct?” I asked her. “One month?”
Hermione touched my arm. “What’s this about coming from China as a bride? We took Annie in when she was thrown out of a local brothel. Usually they turn them out with a very different sort of disease, but in this case they were worried she had consumption and would pass it to clients.”
“A brothel?” I asked, completely confused now. “Then she’s not the girl I’m looking for. And why do you call her Annie?”
“That’s the name she gave us.”
I sat on the bed beside her. “Annie? How long have you been in America?”
She wouldn’t meet my gaze. “Five year,” she said.
Something that had been said passed through my mind—something about Lee Sing Tai bringing in another bride before this, and then sending her back to China because she didn’t produce a son.
“Did you come here as the bride of Lee Sing Tai?” I asked. “Did he have you brought here?”
She nodded, her face expressionless as if she was made of stone.
“And you didn’t give him the son he wanted, so he sent you to a brothel?”
She nodded again. I looked up and met Hermione’s concerned eyes.
“Annie, listen,” I went on. “He’s brought in another girl from China, but she has run away.”
“She smart girl,” Annie said. “He bad man. Bad man.”
“I’m trying to find her,” I said. “Do you have any idea where she might have gone?”
“Maybe she come place like this.”
I looked up at Hermione again. “Are there other settlement houses around here? Other places where a girl might seek refuge?”
“There’s the Henry Street Settlement and the University Settlement on Eldridge, but they are farther away from Chinatown and I don’t know how she would have come across them,” Hermione said. “There are a couple of Christian women’s hostels, but I don’t know if they’d take in a destitute Chinese girl.”
“You’re right,” I said. “I stayed in one near the Battery myself when I first arrived in New York. They were extremely strict—and devout.”
Hermione smiled. “That’s why we make a point of being completely open and impartial. No hint of religion here, only humanitarianism.”
Annie touched my hand. “This girl—she come from same nuns like me?”
Nuns! Why hadn’t I considered that the missionaries might be nuns?