“It’s very difficult for Chinese women to immigrate to America. How did you manage it?” Ling asked.
“Uncle arranged everything through matchmakers, O’Bannion and Lee. Mr. O’Bannion will greet me in immigration in San Francisco. Then he will take me to my husband in New York City. My future husband is very respected and successful there. I hear you must be careful on the streets, though,” Wai-Mae continued, barely stopping to take a breath. “There is all manner of vice and corruption and murder—opium dens and houses of ill repute!—and a lady has to keep her wits sharp, or terrible misfortune could befall her in the Den of Thieves or Murderer’s Alley and along Bandit’s Roost on Mulberry Bend and—”
“Mulberry Street,” Ling corrected.
“Mulberry Bend,” Wai-Mae said again, knowingly. “I have heard the stories, Ling.”
And I’ve only lived there my entire life, Ling thought.
“Of course, I will have a husband to protect me, but…”
Wai-Mae’s mouth never stopped. Through her prattling monologue, Ling kept moving, thinking only one thought: Kill Henry.
“… it’s the love stories I like best, the ones with the happy endings? I would live inside the opera if I could.…”
No. Ling would need Henry alive for the tongue-lashing she intended to dole out. Then the murder.
“… I know that women can’t perform, but if they could, I would play all the best, most romantic roles, royal consorts, and my gestures would be precise and elegant. And you would be the brave Dan. I can already tell you’ve got a warrior’s spirit—”
“Could you be quiet, please? I’m trying to think,” Ling snapped.
“I’m sorry.” Wai-Mae bowed, embarrassed, and Ling felt like she’d kicked a kitten. “It’s only that I’ve been on the ship for such a long time, and the other women are older and not from my village. They want nothing to do with me. It’s nice to talk to someone else. Someone young. With all her teeth.”
“How old are you?” Ling asked.
“Seventeen. You?”
“The same.”
“You see? We are like sisters already!” Wai-Mae bit her lip hopefully. “And do you like opera?”
“Opera is for old men,” Ling said definitively.
Wai-Mae’s mouth opened in shocked surprise. “Oh, Ling. How can you say that? The opera is wonderful! They are our stories we carry with us, just like dreams.”
“I don’t like fairy tales. I like facts. Science.”
Wai-Mae made a face. “Sounds very dull.”
“Well, if you’re so keen on the opera, you’re in luck. My uncle runs the opera house,” Ling confessed. “In New York. That’s where I live.”
Wai-Mae made a high-pitched sound, and it took Ling a second to recognize it as excitement, not distress. “You are the luckiest girl in the world to have such an uncle! Do you go all the time? Do you sit in the balcony and eat pumpkin seeds and imagine yourself living out those scenes? When I come to New York, you and I will go to the opera, and you’ll see how wonderful it is! Clearly, fate has brought us together. We shall become the best of friends. And in the meantime, while I am on the ship, we can meet up each night, here in this beautiful dream world.”
They’d come to the end of the trees. Ahead, it was only blocks of gray and brown, like a vague sketch waiting for detail. “This seems to be as far as we can go,” Ling said.
“Would you like to go farther?”
“But we can’t go farther,” Ling said, irritated. She really was starting to wonder if Wai-Mae might be a bit simple.
“Then we will change it, make it into whatever we like. Go where we wish.”
“You can’t change a dream.”
“Yes you can.”
Ling spoke as if she were a peeved schoolmarm explaining a subject to a confused child. “I’ve dream walked plenty. It doesn’t work that way. You can walk inside an office building. You can take the stairs, which already exist. But you, yourself, cannot turn that building into, say, a schoolhouse or an automobile.”