I walked on the ground where the Red Lantern House once stood. Another two-story building had been constructed across the ally way, connecting to its predecessor by the thin ropes where pink and white paper lotuses hung. They called it the Lotus Town.
Some young women leaned against the painted red wood banisters on the second-floor balcony, talking and laughing. They looked no older than when I wandered down the same halls. They spotted me. Quickly looking away, they covered their mouths to hide their chatter. I was recognized. It was no surprise. My face must've been plastered on the walls in the dressing rooms, and the girls and women of this place were told and taught to resent me, the treacherous, devilish whore who married a white man. Though I pondered how many of them looked up to me, admired me, and hoped they'd be fortunate and unfortunate enough to walk down a similar path. I thought of Sue, her soft voice, long hair, and doe eyes.
Then I saw her smoking a long pipe just outside the front door. Nothing much of her long hair and doe eyes had changed except that her youthful, innocent beauty had faded into an untailored ripeness. She was pale and a little frail, yet she wasn't to be blamed. The sun hadn't set, the make-up wasn't on, and her time on the playground had yet to come. Measuring me up and down, she examined the tiniest detail of my hair, face, and clothes, searching for any reason to believe that I was living a horrid life. Poor thing, I thought, only if she knew.
"Good day," I said rather nervously. "It's been so long. How have you been?"
"What do you think?" Her voice sounded coarse. She turned her head away to make it clear that I was annoying her.
"Well," I was timid, "I hope you're doing fine."
"Not as fine as you are," she scoffed. Her tone was hostile. This wasn't the Sue I used to know. The Sue I remembered used to be kind and sympathetic, while the Sue who stood before me was bitter and vengeful. She glared at me. "I never understood why you've got such good luck. You aren't good-looking, too boney and too tall. On top of that, you have a ridiculous temperament, and you're foreign."
I wanted to say I wasn't foreign. But I didn't. I'd always be foreign to her, to them, and to the rest. I didn't want to be seen as a perpetual foreigner; I wanted to be accepted and seen as equal. Yet, it wasn't something that I could have a say in.
I stayed quiet. Sue kept on talking as she tightly held onto her only chance to say what she longed to say to my face: "All the girls were swooning over Mr. Lee, and you were the one who got his attention. And now you've made yourself important in the Murphy family. How are you so fucking lucky?"
She harbored an unfair resentment towards me. It stemmed from envy. No explanation from me would change what she thought of me. And that was all right, for, in a sense, I was lucky; it just wasn't the same as what the others presumed.
"I'm sorry you feel this way," I said as politely as possible. "I want to thank you for your friendship, and from the bottom of my heart, I wish you the best."
"Look at you being all formal and phony," Sue rolled her eyes. "What friendship? I was blind and stupid for even considering you as a friend. You snitched on me in front of everyone. So righteously too, as if you were better than the rest of us."
"I'm sorry," I could only apologize. "That was reckless of me."
"I've hated you ever since," she got close to me, her pipe almost touching my face. "Do you remember how miserable my life was after that?"
-----
The girls in the Red Lantern House wouldn't talk to me after that day. Everyone in that place shunned me. I was the last to be told when meals were ready, and barely anything was left when I got to the kitchen. Mr. Wang would ask me to clean the same area over and over. When it finally became spotless, and he could no longer nitpick, he'd splash ink on the ground, claiming it was an accident, and demanded me to clean it up.
Sue was shunned as well. The girls were calling her a whore and a liar. She desperately wanted to prove that she was neither of those things. At first, her pleas fell on deaf ears, and the girls saw her just as horrid as they saw me. However, it wasn't until she found a way to be popular again by bullying me with the others. The bullying didn't take any physical form since they knew Wesley would not be too pleased if I were hurt. Instead, they began isolating me. I was the only one in that place who couldn't speak proper Mandarin or understand everything. They'd talk to each other, glancing at me and giggling. And when I asked them what was going on, they'd roll their eyes and walk away without a word. Or if there was a change in the rules, I was the last to know. In this way, they hoped to get me into trouble.
I was foreign. They didn't think I belonged there, with them, who weren't foreign among themselves.
It was the foreignness that connected Wesley and me. On the quiet nights, I'd sneak out to the garden, sit on the wooden bench in the Chinese pavilion, and stare at the moon. More likely than not, I'd be alone. And at times, Wesley would find me there.
"I tried to apologize to Sue, but she wouldn't forgive me," I was upset, "she said that Mr. Wang would punish her if she had any association with me."
"That's horrible," Wesley said, "although you should leave it as it is. I don't foresee it getting any better if you keep trying to get along with Sue."
I didn't like how fair and indifferent he sounded, even though he was his usual, rational self. I stared at him out of blame. He became slightly flustered and awkward.
"Do you want to hear a tale about the moon?" He asked carefully.
"Sure," I threw my hands, unsure where he was going.
He then told me the ancient myth of Chang'e, the moon goddess. She was the wife of Hou Yi, the archer who prevented scorched earth and saved humanity by shooting down nine suns. The gods gifted him an immortal elixir for his bravery. One of Hou Yi's students broke into his home and demanded Chang'e to hand it over. Chang'e refused. She drank the potion before it could be snatched from her and floated to the moon.
"See there, the dark spot on the moon," he pointed, "that's the moon palace where Chang'e lives with her white rabbit."
I should be looking at the moon, but I was looking at him instead. He had put a smile on my face, and I realized that he wasn't as bad as I thought at consoling others.