House of Many Gods Read Online Free Page B

and move around, gave her a sense of mission: pay rent, find food. Hunger became her escort, walking her through the antique pungency of Chinatown, through viruses germinating in puddles under streetlights. Through a succession of jobs in little holes-in-the-wall, until she began to lose track of what it was she wanted, of what might be worth having.
    And she began to recognize certain women like her who had run away. Women of every color and hue who had tried to reinvent themselves, shedding their names, their languages, their backgrounds, everything but their skins. Women worn down, their edges blurred, on the verge of sinking out of sight. Ana began to find these women essential, their tragic incoherence proof that there were others worse off than she. She began to see how life could be brought to a standstill.
    She pored over discarded newspapers looking for odd jobs, even blood banks. And one day she saw the picture of a man she recognized. She stared at his face, etched with lines like an outdoorsman, a rugged,rather handsome face. An older man, a strong, straight nose giving him an unperturbed and rather noble profile. He had sailed on the
Lurline
out of Honolulu, bound for San Francisco.
    She sat back remembering how she had hastened to the ship, remembered it as huge and regal, yet something feminine and graceful in its lines. She remembered how, as she drew near, the ship seemed to look at her, to focus on her. Seeing the full size of it up close, she had felt everything around her drop away.
    Her first night on board, in the ship’s boutique she had bought one good dress and a pair of leather shoes. Later she stood on deck with her tattered suitcase full of island clothes, then stepped back and heaved it overboard. She had forty-eight dollars to her name.
    In the morning she had strolled the decks, studying passengers in third class and second class. Then she had ventured to the top deck, observing those in first class, how they dressed, how they talked. The way they seemed to move in slow motion. That was when she first saw him, a solitary stroller, a tall man lost in thought. He moved with the natural grace of someone privileged, and as he passed she felt the clean male scent of lime cologne settle over her. For a moment their eyes had met, he slowed his pace, but then she looked away. He appeared to be somewhere in his midforties. She was twenty-three.
    Day after day she had watched him stroll the decks, perhaps because she had sensed he was watching her. Yet, as if by tacit agreement, they never introduced themselves.
    What would we have said? What would we have had in common?
    At night as couples floated past her dying upward into fog, she had stared at the sea, wondering where she would go when they reached San Francisco. What she would do. The morning they docked, she had glimpsed him at Immigrations, then lost him.
    That night at Tung Lok Hotel she scanned the newspaper article under his picture. “…  Recent relaxation of immigrant restrictions in Chinatown … 50,000 people congesting the area … alarming rise of syphilis, tuberculosis …” She studied his photograph, his features, hoping he would be kind. In the morning she bathed, and washed her hair, then oiled it into a smooth French twist and slipped on her one good dress, now frayed and rusty at the seams. Then she made her way to a local clinic.
    The line was long, the sun intense. The old man ahead of her removed his shirt, his back so thin he seemed to be wearing a larger man’s skin. She wiped her face, then stood counting the long jade vertebrae ofhis backbone. Inside there was such a mob, the nurses looked in need of nursing.
    One of them regarded Ana disdainfully. “We don’t buy blood. Unless you’re here for TB examination.”
    Ana shook her head, then pointed to the newspaper she was carrying. “I’m here to see him, Dr. McCormick.”
    The woman frowned. “For what? He’s very busy. Look how long these lines. You