"Hey, Mrs. Ching-Chang, have you ever taken an American man's cock before?"
The ruddy white face leered over Ling Tao, making its lewd query in rough, flat English. Tao pursed her lips and did not answer the question. Instead, she went to the corner of the storefront, found the bag of laundry with the name "Jackson" on it, and handed it to him. "Fifty cents," she said tersely.
Jackson looked unfazed, as he always did when she brushed him off. He blew her a kiss and made a crude gesture with his hand. Then he handed her the fifty cent piece, heaved the bag over his shoulder, and left the shop, whistling as he went.
"Asshole," muttered Tao under her breath in Cantonese. She sat down behind the desk and took out the notepad she used to keep track of payments. She wrote "50 cent" in neat handwriting in today's column, then flipped to the back of the notebook, where she began sketching a very rude drawing of Jackson hanging upside down from the ceiling by his feet. His face contorted with pain and his flabby body was exposed in a way that was most undignified.
It was a coping mechanism. Her notepad was filled with drawings like these: men who had been rude to her, on whom Tao exacted her own private, imaginary revenge. San Francisco was filled with such men. Even nowadays, as more American families were beginning to move west, there were far too many men and far too few women to go around. These were thirsty men, desperate men, and Tao had learned quickly that a woman must harden herself against them if she were to survive.
She flipped through her book. There was Artie Smith from the cannery, who gave her his sickly smile and gifted her copious cans of herring. She had drawn him with his hands tied to a ceiling beam, his skin pinched by clothes pins all up and down his chest. Then there was Xiao Peng from the railroad crew, who never tired of asking her when Mr. Ling was coming home, even though he knew the answer. She had drawn him bent over her desk with his trousers down, exposed and powerless. And, of course, she'd drawn Mr. Ling himself, her good-for-nothing husband who'd left her ten years ago after they'd first made the journey across the Pacific. She had been especially savage with this drawing, depicting him tied to her bed frame with slash marks from a whip across his chest and legs.
It was a long day at the laundry shop, as days so often were. Customers came in and out, some polite, others not. Tao made her rounds from the storefront to the laundry room and back again, collecting the clean clothes the laborers had laundered and offering dirty ones. When the mailman stopped by, she eagerly looked through the envelopes he had given her in hopes that a letter from the state board of supervisors would be there. A new law had just been passed requiring all laundromat owners to register with the city for licenses; it had been three weeks since Tao had applied, and she still had not received her license.
At three o'clock, a stranger strode into the laundromat. With supreme confidence, he took a seat on top of the front desk, and rang the bell, looking down at Tao expectantly. Tao narrowed her eyes, unsure what to make of the stranger. He looked Chinese, but he was smartly dressed in western clothing, wearing a three-piece suit and a stiff bowler hat. He was pretty, Tao noticed reluctantly. He had a smooth, symmetrical face and long eyelashes-a far cry from most men she saw around town, whose faces and bodies seemed hardened by life in the west.
"I keep a pistol underneath my dress," she told him.
He smiled and replied, "Well, I was going to say, 'Is that a pistol in your dress or are you just happy to see me?' But you've cleared that up for me."
Against her better judgment, Tao was charmed by the crassness of the joke and the self-deprecating good humor with which he said it. "What do you want?" She asked.
"My name is James Yi," he told her. "I assume I'm speaking to Mrs. Ling?"
"Yes"
"I'm here on behalf of the Chinese Workers' Association. I want to talk to you about a discriminatory ordinance that the city of San Francisco has just passed, and about what you can do to stop it." He spoke as if he'd rehearsed the words a hundred times.
Tao had never heard of the Chinese Workers' Association, and she did not trust it. "Is this a new organization?" She asked with trepidation.
"Yes. And we already have over two hundred members signed on. How would you like to be a part of an organization that speaks out for your rights?" Something about the rehearsed quality of his words unsettled Tao. He sounded like a walking advertisement. Did he want money from her?
"Why should I trust you?"
The stranger laughed. "You don't have to. Take this pamphlet. If you decide you'd like to join, you can find me at this address." He set a paper pamphlet on her desk, then he took a pen and wrote the words, "Yi Wen's Laundry Services, by the pier," on the back of it. With a genial wink and a theatrical tip of his hat, James Yi stood up and left the store, whistling as he went.
Tao examined the pamphlet. The words, "DENIED YOUR LAUNDRY PERMIT?" were written in sprawling characters across the top. Below them, the words, "YOU ARE NOT ALONE" stood out in even thicker font. Tao read further down the pamphlet. What she learned unsettled her. Since the passing of the new city ordinance requiring licenses for hand laundry facilities, there had apparently not been a single Chinese person who had received a license. Tao thought of the weeks she had spent waiting for her license in the mail: was it never coming? She felt a rush of anxiety stir her insides. "The white man is trying to drive us out," the pamphlet decreed. "What will you do to stop him?"
Tao shook herself off, folded the pamphlet in half, and tucked it inside her ledger book, out of sight. She tried to continue with her day as if nothing had happened. When at last the last bags of laundry had been exchanged, Tao locked up the till, locked the shop door, and went upstairs to her room. She lived in the small room above her laundromat; the men she hired to wash the clothes lived in the large room behind her. She locked the door to her room as well, for good measure, then let out a sigh and began to cook herself a simple dinner of bean curd and rice. Her license was coming in the mail. It must be. She was sure of it.
***
The next day, Tao's license was denied. The mailman delivered a curt note from the city informing her in very polite terms that they were sorry to say that she had not met the city's standards of cleanliness. Tao held back her tears until the mailman left, then she tore the paper in half, buried her face in her hands, and allowed herself two deep, heartfelt sobs. Then she sniffed, swallowed her tears, and dried her eyes. Two sobs was more than enough emotion for one day.
She took up her notebook and examined the pamphlet she had tucked away inside of it. The words "YOU ARE NOT ALONE" stared up at her. She flipped to the backside of the pamphlet, where James Yi had written his address, and examined his handwriting, written in neat script across the bottom of the page. She remembered his hands-those nimble, beautiful fingers that were just beginning to show the wear and tear of hand laundry work around the edges. And his demeanor had been so pleasant, so refreshingly different from the other men who frequented the shop. Tao decided to put her trust in him.
She folded the pamphlet, tucked it inside the book once more, and put it inside her purse. Then she took her keys, locked the till, put a sign on the door to say that she had gone out, and locked the door of the shop. She kept her head down as she made her way through the labyrinth of the muddy San Francisco streets toward the pier, trying to gain as little attention as possible from the unfamiliar men around her. When she reached the pier, she found a small wooden doorway over which a sign with the words, "Yi Wen's Laundry Services," had been hand-painted in flaking red paint. Drawing up her courage, she knocked.
