Clasping Ah Lam close to her, she whispered, “I pray, my Ah Lam, my precious orchid, that day is long in the future.”
***
When her mother told her the Big Man wanted to meet her, she was excited. She thought the maids might prepare her the way they did her mother, but when she asked, her mother’s face turned a ghastly white. “Ah Lam, you must never say that, must never think that. You are a child. You must pray to the gods to protect you.”
The first time she saw the Big Man, Ah Lam thought that it was a joke, that something bad had happened to him. Perhaps he was in an accident and his legs had been cut off. The man who sat in the chair was not much taller than Ah Lam. She thought he would be handsome like the knights and princes in her story books. But he was ugly. Old, wrinkled. And he had strange eyes. Worst of all, he smelled. Not heavenly, the way her mother smelled. He smelled sour—like rotten food or animals that had been injured.
When he saw her in the doorway, peeking from behind her mother, he scowled. “Bring her here.”
His voice was cold. His eyes scared Ah Lam. They smoldered with demonic intensity. She didn’t know what she had done to make him angry, and tried not to look at him. Maybe he didn’t like girls who stared. She dug her fingers in her mother’s skirt and held on tight.
“How old is she?” he barked at her mother.
Her mother lowered her eyes, gazing at the floor. Her voice was soft, hard to hear. “She just turned eleven, Massimo.”
“Does she bleed yet?”
Her mother started. “No, no! She is a child, Massimo.”
The Big Man jerked his head at Ah Lam. “You. You, girl. Come here.”
Ah Lam was frightened. She clung to her mother’s gown, but her mother pushed her toward the Big Man and whispered, “Don’t be afraid. Go to him. He won’t hurt you.”
She crept up in front of him. She stopped several feet away, glancing back at her mother for support.
The Big man glared at her. His voice was harsh. He waved his hand in a circle. “Turn around, girl. Slow.”
He nodded to the other men in the room. They were standing at a distance, as if they were in a court and he was on a throne. He grunted, “She’s not as yellow as the bitch, but no question she’s a Chink.”
The men around him murmured in agreement.
Ah Lam stepped back. She wanted to run to her mother, but the Big Man grabbed her wrist and yanked her to him. She was so close she could see the yellowed, broken stubs of teeth in his mouth, and could smell his vinegary breath. She knew that smell. It smelled like the flasks the maids tucked in their apron pockets.
The Big Man jerked her chin and stared at her eyes. A strange look crossed his face. Then he smiled. Ah Lam was relieved. He didn’t look angry anymore. He looked pleased. He chucked her chin and his eyes sparkled.
“Are you going to be a good little whore like your mother?”
Ah Lam didn’t know what the word meant.
The Big Man and all the men around him grinned at her.
She risked a tentative smile and said in as brave a voice as she could, “I … I hope I will be, sir.”
She thought she had said the right thing when all the men laughed. The Big Man’s eyes narrowed. His grin spread across his face like ink spilled across a desktop. “I hope so too, Ah Lam. Your mother is worn out. I like fresh Chinks, tight ones.”
Ah Lam peeked at her mother, was surprised to see tears on her face. She knew then she had said the wrong thing.
Her mother was pale, shaking. Ah Lam was afraid she might fall. She tried to free herself and go to her. But the Big Man twisted her arm tight behind her back.
Ah Lam struggled to hear her mother’s soft whisper. “Massimo, you mustn’t. It would be so wrong.”
The Big Man shoved Ah Lam aside and leaped toward her mother. A sharp slap reverberated across the room. To Ah Lam’s horror, her mother dropped to her knees, a bright red welt staining her soft cheek. The Big Man stood in front of her, his legs spread wide, his fists clenched at his sides. Her mother cowered on the floor at his feet. When he spoke Ah Lam shivered at the sound. His voice was harsh, snarling, his words shards of ice piercing her heart. “Bring her back after she bleeds. Maybe she’ll have tits on her by then. No matter what she looks like, bring her back before she turns twelve. I don’t want to see your used-up body again. I’m done with you. Do you hear me, bitch?”
Ah Lam scooted between her mother and the Big Man, dragging her to her feet. Together they stumbled to the door. Over her shoulder, Ah Lam saw the Big Man and his men grinning at her. She reeled at the ugly smirk on his face. She shut her eyes to block out the gruesome reality. Closing the door behind her, she bid her childhood good-by.
***
After that, everything changed. Ah Lam and her mother were relegated to a tiny room behind the maids’ quarters. There was no longer room for her dolls or her books. The windowless room was close to the chickens and pigs. Ah Lam was rarely allowed outside of the castle, and hadn’t known there were animals in the yard. They smelled. Like dirt, feces, and rotten flesh.
The maid’s faces shrouded with pity when they saw her. They shook their heads and pursed their lips. But their gossip was resigned, not hateful.
“What did she expect? Holy Mother, she’s older by ten years than any of the others.”
“Yes, but Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the girl? That child? Mother of God, help us all.”
The next six months wrought a hideous change in her mother. It was hard to believe she was no more than twenty-two. Hard lines and sharp bones replaced soft, firm curves. Her breasts were shrunken walnuts. Her treasure trove was matted, unkempt. In lieu of food, her mother existed on the amber liquid in the little brown bottles she hid everywhere. The maids tsked, “Laudanum. It gets ‘em every time.”
The morning the maids told her the Big Man wanted to see her, Ah Lam knew better than to seek help from her mother. As the maids washed Ah Lam’s pre-pubescent body and smeared fragrant oils on her soft young skin, her mother crouched in the corner, a twisted smile on her face. Her eyes were glazed, blank. Threads of spittle hovered in the corners of her mouth. The stout grey-haired woman who came to take Ah Lam to the Big Man shook her head, pity lining her weary face when she saw Ah Lam’s mother. Stroking her mother’s sallow cheek, the woman said in a resigned voice, “Ming Lu, he wants you to come too, honey.”
Blessedly, the next several hours blurred in Ah Lam’s mind—that day and forever after. She learned later they called the room the “laboratory.” Racks along the walls held tools of various shapes, most of which were clotted with remnants of blood and tissue. Against one wall was an apparatus reminiscent of pictures in Ah Lam’s history books documenting the Middle Ages. She should have known that the Big Man’s cruelty was so profound he would insist her mother be present. She was surprised it took chaining Ming Lu to the rack to prevent her frantic attempts from interrupting her daughter’s defilement. Her mother’s bloodcurdling screams were silenced only after Massimo finished with Ah Lam, took the knife one of his lackeys handed him, and slit her mother’s throat. Then and only then did Ah Lam cry out.
As the years passed, her trips to the laboratory became less frequent. Over time Massimo seemed to acknowledge that nothing he did to her would elicit a response. It was as though her body was made of stone, an impenetrable shell. Even forcing her to witness the hideous attacks on younger and younger girls failed to get a response. His rage ultimately turned to infuriated resignation. While no one said it aloud, the whispers and smirks behind his back told the ugly truth. The Big Man’s diminutive penis rose only to the screams and terror of his victims. Ah Lam’s rigid, frozen silence confirmed his impotence.
* * *
Ah Lam drifted off to sleep, oddly comforted by the sounds of the train chugging across the countryside, to the San Francisco brothels. Her dreams were shattered by shrieking wheels scraping the track, the shouts of the engineers slamming on the brakes. The train veered ominously from side to side, smashing the girls against the walls. Their terrified screams rattled the car. After what seemed like a lifetime of hideous jolts, the train shuddered to a screeching halt. Their car pitched at a precarious angle, crushing the girls in untidy stacks of human flesh. Clawing and climbing over the others, Ah Lam banged her fists against the door. She screamed with all her strength for someone to let them out.
Harsh slams of iron and steel met splintering wood. The door crashed open with a rush of air. Preparing to fight off the intruders, Ah Lam yelled to the girls to stand back. To her shock, the voices she heard were Chinese. Compounding her surprise, two distinctly Chinese men appeared in the splintered doorway. The men backed away and a tall man leaned in. Surveying the human misery littering the car, his jaw tightened dangerously. He met her fierce glare with a knowing nod. His voice was soft, commanding, blurred with a foreign sounding accent. In a rapid burst of Chinese and English he confirmed she spoke both. His sentences were short, authoritative. He told her they came to help, then ordered her to instruct the girls to follow him. One by one the terrified children were passed from man to man and placed in carts alongside the train. The sounds of their sobs followed by comforting replies from the men gave her hope. When the last girl was hefted through the ragged opening, Ah Lam clambered out.
Astonished, she saw dozens of Chinese men striding up and down the track, herding frightened passengers off to the side—away from the girls. The men were big, strong. They radiated danger. Any one who put up a fight regretted it. The tall Chinese man, clearly the leader, stood to the side. He was smoking a cigarette. His handsome face was grim, his jaw tight. But it was his eyes that choked her breath. They were gleaming yellow, the predator eyes of a wolf in the wild. She learned later he was the scourge of the mobs. There wasn’t a mob boss in the country that trafficked in young Chinese girls who didn’t know Bai Chang, the leader of the largest and most violent Tong this side of China. His enemies called him The Frenchman. In her mind, Ah Lam named him the Avenger.
The rescuers showed no mercy to the engineers or mobsters accompanying the train. They treated the men who had loaded the cars, bolted the doors, and starved the girls as the cowardly accomplices they were. Once the girls were huddled in the horse-drawn carts, the Chinese men spread out tossing large cans of gasoline through the windows of the train and along the tracks.
The Avenger’s voice was calm, clipped. “All the girls out? The passengers? The doors locked?” When his men shouted confirmations, he nodded to his lieutenant. “Light it.”
Billows of smoke from the molten metal wafted above the trees, adding an eerie layer of man-made clouds to the dark sky. The smell of burning flesh and the screams of the men locked inside the train drifted through the peaceful starlit night. Ah Lam noted how similar to young girls’ the men’s screams were. Not as different as she thought they would be. They were shrill, pleading. Like so many of the young girls she comforted, the words they wailed were the same:
“Mama, help me!”
“Please, God, help me!”
Just as with the little girls, it appeared neither God nor their mothers were available.
* * *
The sprawling compound nestled in the high desert was extraordinary, more like a small town than a home. Ah Lam had never seen anything like it. In addition to the magnificent three-tiered adobe house where The Frenchman and his extended family lived, two dozen casitas and four large dormitories housed a hundred Tong members. The compound was surrounded by scrub-covered mesas, rocky canyons, and the distant snow capped Sierra Nevada Mountains. Most shocking to Ah Lam was the abundance of trees and flowers. The unfamiliar mix of heady odors and riotous colors assaulted her senses.
The young girls stayed in the infirmary until they were well enough to travel. Those, like Ah Lam, who had no homes or family to return to were offered residence. Over time they became an accepted part of the enormous complex. Mornings were free, but every afternoon tutors worked with the girls. Unlike Ah Lam, few of them could read or write. Many had never seen a book.
When Ah Lam first arrived, like all the young girls, she hovered in the shadows. Having been locked in a tiny room most of her life, the brilliant blue skies and wide open spaces frightened her. She sought instead the encompassing walls of her room, rarely venturing out.
But her inherent curiosity and the magnificent complex beckoned her. After tentative explorations, she was drawn to a large building pulsating with the contradictory sounds of combat mixed with shouts of laughter. Never having seen a dojo or been exposed to Kung fu except in books, Ah Lam was astonished at the ferocious activity inside. Throughout the day and night, dozens of men and boys dressed in white gi’s practiced the ancient fighting skills. Fists and feet slammed against heavy bags. Battle cries rang out underscoring the fierceness of the warrior art. Each morning after Ah Lam completed her assigned chores, she sneaked off to the dojo and hid in the corners, captured by the powerful grace and fierce practice of the aspiring warriors.
Many of the boys were her age or younger. She watched them fight with growing envy. Seeing their strong, indomitable bodies, she was ashamed. For years she had protected what was left of her spirit, refusing to concede even a piece of it to the Big Man. But she had stood by helplessly in the face of unspeakable evil. Saving her soul the best she could, she had done nothing to prevent the horror visited on other little girls. From her perch, she watched the Avenger train the boys, test their strength, and encourage their resolve in a whirl of graceful, violent moves. She knew these boys would be warriors, not victims. She vowed to be one of them, a warrior, a destroyer—never again a victim.
Early one morning, a young man she had heard the others call Gabriel came over to her. He crouched down in front of her. His golden skin underscored the incongruous dark blue of his twinkling eyes. Startled by the surprising color in a Chinese face, she understood why so many people seemed taken back by her emerald green eyes.