“So where are all the kids?” Jonah was asking Governor Bradford. “Why aren’t there any kids around?”
“Why, the lambing season does not come until spring!” said Governor Bradford. “You will not find any kids before April.”
“Children,” Jonah said. “You know what I mean. There aren’t any children here. Because they’re all at school.”
“Nay, we have neither school nor schoolmaster here, but we hope for a schoolmaster soon to come from England.”
“Their real school,” Jonah said. “They can’t skip it. That’s why they aren’t here.”
“Have you not seen our children?” Governor Bradford asked. “Mine own son was here not a moment ago. He went to fetch wood for the fire. And Winslow’s two girls wished me a good afternoon, but a minute afore you spake to me. They were on their way to gather crab apples, it being the season to harvest them.”
“Very convenient,” said Jonah.
“If you do not see our youngfolk, it is because they must work. No one rests here,” said Governor Bradford, with finality.
How magnificent! Ms. Hempel rejoiced. How unperturbed he was, how convinced. Governor Bradford was unmistakably himself. Ms. Hempel aspired to such a performance. If only she, too, were a colonist. But why not? She could learn to do these things: to sew a jerkin, render fat into soap, and muck out a barn. She could say aye, and betwixt, and if the Lord wills it so. As she herded the seventh grade back onto the bus, and frowned at the little wooden muskets they had purchased at the gift shop, and reminded them to put their notes in a very safe place, she entertained the possibility. When she returned home, she would write a letter to the Plantation. Of course, she could not ask a colonist how she might join them; they would rebuff her, good-naturedly, just as Governor Bradford had done with Jonah. She must address her letter to the administration, who were probably tucked away somewhere behind the bluffs. Perhaps a whole network of cubicles and fluorescent lights stretched out beneath the settlement, hidden and labyrinthine. Her letter would be opened by one of these underground workers; a response would be posted; by next fall, she could be bending over, stoking a fire, and when the seventh grade came tumbling through, she would glance up; she would say, “My name is Alice Bradford, and aye, the voyage over was a dreadful one.”
THE CHILDREN RUSTLED AND murmured in their seats; Ms. Hempel and Ms. Burnes had repossessed all of the muskets, which, as it turned out, fired rubber bands; the bus hummed along the highway. Ms. Hempel dozed against the window, and thought of Plimoth. But the more clearly she imagined herself there, the more she longed to be somewhere else. Somewhere the flies didn’t cluster above the food, somewhere the dresses didn’t itch. Somewhere she didn’t have to spend all Sunday upon an uncomfortable bench, listening to sermons. She wanted to be somewhere clean, and civilized, and sweet-smelling, where everything she touched pleased her fingertips. She wanted to be … in China!
If, in Plimoth, she rises before the dawn, and lugs water from the icy stream, the bucket bumping against her, then, in China, she wakes to the sound of bells tinkling in a breeze, and the patter of tiny footsteps racing across the courtyard, the plash of a fountain, and a merry child laughing. The floor is cool beneath her feet; the robe slides over her, like liquid. She has slept for many hours, and dreamt of landscapes, of journeys, of an old man living on the very top of a mountain. She will go out into the garden and her father will interpret her dreams.
If, in Plimoth, her garden is wild with tansy and mugwort and raggedy spearmint, then, in China, her garden is one of peonies, and tea roses, and lychee trees, and chrysanthemums. It is a garden of craggy rock and still water; in the pool grows a forest of lotus blossoms. Her father sits beneath the pavilion, his eyes closed lightly in thought. Sunlight stipples his lap; a butterfly alights there; a cicada chirrs by the still waters of the pool. “Father,” she calls to him, “tell me the meaning of my dream.”
“You must write a poem,” he says, and he summons the ink boy. A rosy child appears, round and soft as a peach, bearing the bamboo brushes, and the inkstone, and a scroll of strong, translucent paper. He lays the inkstone upon the ground; it is smooth and dark, coolness rising from its surface like a mist, and with quick, sure strokes, the ink boy grinds the cake. Upon the inkstone there appears another pool, black and still, a perfect miniature of the pool beside which the ink boy sits and grinds. He will continue grinding as she writes, so that the pool will never shrink, so that the flow will not be interrupted once inspiration takes hold of her.
Her father is pleased with the poem. “You found the meaning of your dream,” he tells her, and he reaches inside his robe. When his hand reappears, it is holding a peach. She takes it from him, and sees that it is not a peach, that though it is round and pleasing as the boy, it is smooth and hard as an inkstone. It is ivory, carved in the likeness of a peach. Upon looking very closely, she sees that tiny ivory monkeys are clambering up its cheek. One balances precariously atop the stem, its monkey arm outstretched in invitation. Upon looking even more closely, she sees that the top of the peach can be removed, like the lid of a teapot, and that the monkey is inviting her to open
