“I don’t know if we should allow Ling to go to the pictures with Gracie and Lee Fan, what with things being the way they are,” Mrs. Chan fretted as she parted the lace curtains of their second-floor window and peered out at the police burning the contents of yet another store where two victims of the sleeping sickness had worked.
“Let her go with her friends,” Mr. Chan said. “We’ll manage for a few hours. It’s good for her to be away from all this.”
“But you be careful, Ling,” Mrs. Chan said. “I heard from Louella that they’ve begun stopping Chinese on the streets and checking them for the sleeping sickness. And there’s been worse. Charlie Lao and his son, John, were harassed outside their shop on Thirty-fifth Street. John has a black eye to show for it. I’ll be glad when this is over.”
“It will never be over,” Uncle Eddie said, and Ling knew he didn’t mean the sleeping sickness.
The moment they reached Times Square, Lee Fan and Gracie went shopping, while Ling went to the pictures, as they’d discussed beforehand, agreeing to meet up later. Now a giddy excitement took hold of Ling as the words Pathé News flickered across the slowly opening curtains. Two distinguished-looking men strolled along a snowy path, hands behind their backs. And then there were white words on black screens:
Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein,
two giants of science,
explore the tiny universe of the atom.
The atom. Smaller than the human eye can see.
Yet with the power to transform our world!
Just as the farmer harvests wheat from the land,
we may harvest energy from the atom.
The image shifted, and a dark-haired man, handsome as a matinee idol, waved to crowds from his open-air touring car. Ling smiled, her face bathed in the movie’s glow.
Jake Marlowe announces
Future of America Exhibition
in New York City.
On-screen, the great Jake Marlowe’s lips moved silently as he spoke into a microphone before a large crowd gathered downtown. The scene shifted to black again:
“Once, great men sailed uncertain seas
in search of what was possible.
We know what is possible.
We have built what many said was impossible.
It is called America.
And we are the stewards of her brave future—
a future of vision, of democracy, and of
the exceptional.”
For a moment, Ling allowed herself to imagine another newsreel that might play someday, in which she was one of those giants of science shaking hands with great men like Jake Marlowe while her parents looked on, proud. And she was starting to think that her dream walking just might hold the key to the scientific discovery that would make her imaginings reality. For if she and Henry could travel to another dimension of dreams and create within that nebulous world, perhaps time and space and, yes, even matter itself were nothing more than constructs of the human mind. Perhaps there was no limit to what they could do or where they could go once they’d learned to see differently.
The organist launched into a zippy tune, signaling the start of The Kid Brother. Ling placed her gray hat securely over her ears, grabbed her coat and crutches, and sidled up the aisle past the surprised usher.
“But, Miss, the picture’s just starting,” he said.
“I know,” Ling said. “I only wanted to see the newsreel.”
Out on Forty-second Street, the air had grown colder. Tiny flecks of snow danced in the wind. Ling’s breath came out in a puff, and even this was thrilling. Energy. Atoms. Qi. A newsie hawked the day’s headlines—“Chinese Sleeping Sickness Spreads! Mayor Vows: Not Another Spanish Influenza Epidemic in Our Lifetime! Threatens Full Quarantine in Chinatown!”—and just like ice crystals, dreams, and movie images of Jake Marlowe, Ling’s happiness vanished. She looked down at the sidewalk, keeping her face hidden, and walked on. A crush of people blocked the city sidewalk and overflowed into the street, upsetting the taxi drivers, who honked their displeasure. Ling couldn’t go through and she couldn’t get around. She wanted to ask someone what was happening but she didn’t want to call attention to herself. A heavy, military-style drumroll echoed in the streets. It sounded like a parade, and Ling pushed deeper into the crowd, searching for a better vantage point.
And then she saw: The drum-and-fife company preceded orderly rows of men in white hoods and robes marching in lockstep down Broadway waving American flags and hoisting banners proudly proclaiming KEEP AMERICA WHITE AND YOU KEEP AMERICA SAFE and THE WATCHER NEVER WEARIES. Around Ling, many in the crowd applauded and whistled, cheering on the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.