“Well. It’s good, then, that you can help her to become familiar. When I first came to this country, I knew nothing. And I didn’t speak a word of English.”
He opened his wallet and retrieved a worn photograph of himself as a young man of eighteen, his expression very serious, his long hair braided in the traditional queue.
“Have I ever shown you this picture?” he asked.
Out of respect, Ling shook her head, though her uncle had shown her his picture more than once.
“Well,” Uncle Eddie continued, “that’s me when I was just about your age. I only planned to be here for two years to make money for my family in China. But then they passed more and more laws. If I left the country, I couldn’t come back again. So I stayed. With so few Chinese coming over, it was very hard to run the opera. I worked for my cousin at his restaurant for many years.” Her uncle put the picture back in his wallet. “I never saw my mother and father again.”
Ling’s stomach tightened at the thought of losing her parents. Her mother and father might be overly protective, but they were hers, and she couldn’t imagine being without them. Beside her uncle’s picture was his resident permit, which all Chinese were required to carry. To be caught without it could mean prison time or deportation. Ling had been born right there in Chinatown. She was considered a citizen. But under the Chinese Exclusion Act, her father never would be. As for her Irish mother, the moment she married an “Asian alien,” she’d given up her chance to become an American citizen. Ling lived with the worry that some small mistake could cost them everything, that she could be torn from them as her uncle had been from his own parents.
“She’ll be interrogated when she arrives,” her uncle said, reaching for another dumpling. “At Angel Island, I was asked nearly six hundred questions.”
“Six… hundred?”
“Oh, yes. Day in, day out, they tried to break me: Who lives in the fourth house on your street in your village? Do you know how to work a clothing press? Are you a laborer? Do you smoke opium? And the medical examinations.” He wiped his fingers and shook his head in disgust.
“Why all those questions, Uncle?”
“They hoped to prove that I was only a paper son, who bought his way in with false papers. They wanted to find a reason to keep me out. But…” Her uncle’s smile was triumphant and a little rebellious. “Here I am.”
Ling fished another dumpling from the basket and breathed in the musty, cozy smell of the old opera house. Most theater was performed at the Bowery Theatre these days, but for the New Year, they were using the old opera house on Doyers Street. Her uncle had been cleaning and pulling things up from the basement for weeks now. Flats of scenery from shadow-puppet shows were leaned up against racks of costumes and rows of masks. “What opera will you do for the New Year?”
“The Royal Consort of the Emperor Finds Eternal Happiness in Paradise.”
“I don’t know that one.”
“It hasn’t been performed here in, oh, fifty years or so. It’s a love story. And a ghost story, too.”
“All your favorites,” Ling said, smiling. In his day, Uncle Eddie had been one of the most celebrated Dan of his generation, nearly as good at playing the female roles as the world-famous Mei Lanfang.
“Yes, all my favorites. With luck, we’ll see it performed. Luck and an end to this sickness. How is your friend George?”
“The same,” Ling said, pushing away the dumplings. Earlier, she’d lit a candle for George at the Church of the Transfiguration, and offered prayers at the temple, too, covering all the bases.
“He’s young,” her uncle said. “The doctors will find what’s causing this sickness very soon. And then they’ll find a cure. I’m sure of it.”
Ling nodded, grateful for her uncle’s reassurance. “Uncle,” Ling said, “could the sleeping sickness make it hard for my friend—my pen pal—to come to New York?”
“It could, indeed. I hope that she has friends or relatives in high places to help ease her way. Matchmakers, you say?”