The dull gray morning parceled out a meager portion of winter sun to the immigrant neighborhoods of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Merchants rolled up window shades for another day of business. Tailors who’d escaped pogroms in the Pale readied their sewing machines on Ludlow and Hester Streets while steam rose from the basement grates of the Chinese-run laundries lining Pell and Bayard. The Italian bakeries on Mulberry Street stocked their front windows with golden loaves of bread; the yeast scented the winter air, mixing with the savory tang of chow fan, the tart brine from the pickle barrels, and the cinnamon sweetness of rugelach, a true melting pot of smells. Wind whipped over synagogues, churches, and temples and clanged through the zigzag of metal fire escapes, but it was no competition for the rumble and squeal of the Third Avenue El on the Bowery, the towering dividing line between the Lower East Side and the rest of New York City.
From her bed, Ling peered out at the gray-wool clouds threatening to muzzle the paltry sun above Chinatown and made a growl of contempt low in her throat, as if the winter sky were out to get her personally. Fiery spasms rippled across the nerve endings of her legs, and Ling bit down against the pain just as her mother’s voice sounded on the other side of the door: “Rise and shine, Ling!”
Her mother poked her freckled face in, frowning. “You’re not even dressed, my girl. What’s the matter? Are you feeling all right?”
“I’m fine, Mama,” Ling managed to say.
“Here. Let me help you.”
“I can do it,” Ling said, trying to conceal both her pain and her irritation.
Her mother hovered in the doorway. “I laid out your slip and dress for you last night. And the wool stockings—it’s terrible cold out.”
Ling flicked her eyes toward the end of the bed. Her mother had chosen the peach dress Ling hated, the one that made her look like a sad fruit salad. “Thank you, Mama.”
“Well,” her mother said at last, “don’t dally. Breakfast will get cold, and I won’t be hearing a word about that.”
Only when the door had closed did Ling let out the grunt she’d held back as the tightness loosened its grip on her legs. She lay in bed a moment longer, mulling over last night’s strange dream walk. She’d never met anyone else who could do what she could, which was how she liked it. Her nighttime wanderings were private. Sacred. But that spark…
Ling sat up. With a sigh, she reached for the metal braces propped against her nightstand and slid them on over the useless muscles of her calves, cinching the buckles of the leather straps just below and above her knees. Using both hands, she swung her caged legs over the side of the bed, grabbed her crutches, and shuffled stiffly to her cupboard, tugging on a dark blue dress that didn’t make her feel as if she were an item on a summer picnic table. She tied the laces on her black orthopedic shoes. In the mirror, Ling took a last look at herself. What she saw was metal, buckles, and ugly black shoes.
“Ling!” Her mother’s voice again.
“Coming, Mama!”
She squinted at her reflection until she was nothing but a blue blur.
In the dining room, the radio played a Sunday-morning program of hymns while her mother poured tea into delicate china cups. Ling took her silent place at the table beside her father and examined the spread before her: fried eggs, bacon, noodles with pork fat, shrimp dumplings, porridge, and toast. The eggs, she knew, would be slightly slimy—her father was the real cook, not her mother—and the porridge was out of the question, so she settled for the toast.
“That isn’t all you mean to eat,” her mother said with a tsk.
Her father maneuvered a dumpling onto Ling’s plate. Ling scowled at it.
“You’ve got to keep your strength up, my girl,” her mother said.
“Your mother is right,” her father agreed automatically.