“You’re safe, you know,” she said quietly. “You’re a Baker. No one would question that.”
I decided not to let her know where I was going that night.
She directed me in filling out some paperwork for her for the Aid Society for Hunger Relief, and then around seven, the nurse we had hired, Pola, came in to clean up and to prepare Aunt Justine for bed. Aunt Justine allowed her work to be taken away with ill-grace, but we could all see that she was tiring.
“I cannot wait until I am recovered,” she grumbled, and none of us mentioned the truth of it.
Around nine, I went to dress. I had a pumpkin-orange dress embroidered in faux gold beads in a starburst pattern, and I thought it would do; not too flashy and not too dull. I didn’t think I could bear it if anyone in a place like Chinatown thought me dull.
The cab dropped me off in front of what looked like a restaurant that had closed up for the night, and I looked it over curiously. The menus taped to the plate glass were all written in characters I didn’t understand, and when I tugged experimentally on the door, nothing happened. I thought that there might have been some people moving inside, but the heavy blinds kept me from seeing clearly.
I ended up looping around behind the restaurant to find a solid steel door, which was more familiar. I rapped briskly on the steel, and when the peephole slid open, I gave them my best grin.
“Hello, I got a card from—”
To my surprise, the door swung open, revealing a squarish Chinese woman in slacks and a long maroon tunic. I blinked at her in surprise, and she nodded impatiently for me to come in.
Oh, it’s because I’m …
The thought was a foreign one, and bemused, I walked up the half-flight of steps to the restaurant level.
I suppose I was expecting something grand, with great gold idols and opium beds scattered throughout. I certainly didn’t expect a restaurant ringed with red vinyl booths, and a dozen people sitting around a table picking at plates of demolished leftovers. They were my age and maybe a little older, the women in slacks just as the men were, and they passed a bottle from hand to hand, pouring each other shots in small teacups before passing it on.
One girl in a man’s dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up noticed me first, and she elbowed the boy next to her, who was still wearing ferocious patrician eyebrows and a goaty beard over his undershirt and braces. Soon enough, they were all looking at me with various degrees of curiosity and hostility. I gave them back look for look, unsmiling, and I held up the card.
“Khai gave this to me,” I said. “He said I should come.”
I waited for whatever ax was going to fall onto my head, but then it was as if the table gave a collective shrug and people were squeaking their seats aside so I could drag over a chair from another table. I stared in fascination at the picked-over food in front of me, startlingly white buns, piles of stringy meat, and barely cooked vegetables gleaming with grease, thin white things that made me think of the tendons on the back of Aunt Justine’s hand. I averted my gaze quickly, but the girl sitting next to me caught me staring.
“You want me to put a plate together for you?” she asked. “Are you hungry?”
“No,” I said stiffly, but she was already moving, taking a plate and piling it up with something I couldn’t even identify. Now everyone was watching me as she handed me a pair of chopsticks to eat with. I took them, and then glanced at the bottle.
“I wouldn’t mind some of that,” I said hopefully, and there was a quick glance that went around the table before the girl took the bottle decisively and poured me a slug into a teacup.
I was smart enough to know that they didn’t think I was, and this was a game played all over the world. It was also a game I had played before, and I was willing to bet that I had done it with better alcohol than they ever had.