Thursday, January 9, 2025

Mr. Wong Rights a Wrong, scene 1

Welcome, I’m Mary Louisa Locke, the author of the USA Today best-selling Victorian San Francisco Mystery series and the Caelestis Science Fiction series. In this daily newsletter, I reflect on my life as an indie author trying to age gracefully. Occasionally, I will also publish some of my shorter fiction in this newsletter to read for free.

Daily Diary, Day 1590:

Today I am starting to put the short story Mr. Wong Rights a Wrong up for free, scene by scene. Below is the first scene of the story, but if you want to read my earlier post on why I wrote this story, go HERE.

But first, a brief check-in: Elbow still improving very, very slowly, but improvement never-the-less. Sticking to mild exercise, cleaning in short bits, one short walk because as often happens, the anti-biotic kicked up some chronic tendonitis in one foot. Got lab results, blood sugar under control and cholesterol had finally dropped down to the normal range! Today, I have appointment to refit the splint for the right hand that never worked as it should, and a birthday call scheduled in afternoon for my daughter.

Mr. Wong Rights a Wrong: A Victorian San Francisco Story
by M. Louisa Locke
Copyright 2014

Scene 1

San Francisco, March 1880

Annie Fuller watched as the horse car she just exited made its way up Stockton Street towards North Beach. Glad her new wool and velvet trimmed basque coat reached her knees, she thrust her gloved hands into its deep square pockets and shivered. March winds could be cruel in San Francisco, and at ten minutes before seven the sun hadn’t yet made it up past Telegraph Hill to warm the morning air. She thought of Nate Dawson who lived with his uncle in a boarding house on Vallejo Street, about six blocks northeast of where she stood. She wondered if he would still be asleep in his cold attic room after working late last night on some legal documents. Or would he be cramming down burnt toast and bitter coffee before going to his uncle’s law firm where he was junior partner. Annie smiled.

Nate often complained about how bad the food was at Mrs. McPherson’s. Last week she had teased him, saying he wanted to marry her just so he could move into the O’Farrell Street boarding house she owned. Beatrice, Annie’s cook and housekeeper, was already talking about how she would fatten up Nate’s tall frame when he married Annie and moved in. Annie smiled again.

When...not if...they married. One simple change of a word made all the difference.

After a fish-laden cart trundled past on its way towards Market Street, she crossed the intersection and began to walk up Washington Street. The address she had been given was 916 Washington, but the letter from Mrs. Greenstock directed Annie to go past the front entrance and around to the door off of Stone Street. Halfway up the block she slowed down, seeing her destination, the Methodist Episcopal Church’s Chinese Domestic Mission. The handsome square building spread between Trenton Street and a smaller side street, which must be Stone Street. The Mission was four stories high if you counted the basement rooms with an entrance on Trenton Street and the top attic floor created by a substantial mansard roof. Whoever had planned the Mission had ensured ample light for the inhabitants. Rows of arched bay windows jutted out from all the slightly convex walls of the attic floor, and there were numerous tall windows on the two main floors and the one wall of the basement that was above ground. While constructed in wood, the building’s corners were milled to look like bricks, as were the two vertical columns of slightly raised design that decorated the front of the building. All in all, the Chinese Mission looked stately and inviting, but very different from the crowded and narrow buildings of China Town, just a block to the east, with their jumble of awnings, balconies, and banners.

Not wanting to be late for her appointment, Annie stopped her survey and walked rapidly along the wooden sidewalk. When she came around the corner, she stood in front of a door that was flush with the street and rang the bell. While she waited for someone to answer, she took a deep breath to steady her nerves, reminding herself that the wife of Reverend Oliver Greenstock, the superintendent of the Chinese Mission, had requested her help. Mrs. Greenstock had contacted her last week on behalf of the Women’s Missionary Society of the Pacific Coast, asking if Annie would consult with them about their current investments. They hoped to improve their financial status so they could increase the income for the maintenance of the Female Refuge that was housed on the top floor of the Mission. What was so exciting––and terrifying––was that Mrs. Greenstock had asked for Mrs. Fuller’s help––not Madam Sibyl’s, and Annie sincerely hoped the Missionary Society women would never learn that Mrs. Annie Fuller and Madam Sibyl were one and the same.

When Annie opened the O’Farrell Street boarding house in the winter of 1878, she’d hoped that this would end the years of financial insecurity that had plagued her during her short marriage and subsequent widowhood. But the home she inherited from her aunt and uncle had room for only eight boarders, and, since she was unwilling to run a slovenly house like Nate’s boarding house keeper, Mrs. McPherson, she soon discovered that the income from the boarders wasn’t sufficient to cover all the expenses. As a result, Annie invented Madam Sibyl, a clairvoyant dispensing business advice to local San Franciscans, using the expertise she had learned from her father. Two years later, Madam Sibyl was a grand success, but Annie had grown uncomfortable with pretending her advice came from palmistry and astrology, even though this was the only way that men would take her seriously. She was now seeking a way to retire Madam Sibyl permanently, without losing the needed income. That was why this appointment was so important.

Annie thought of Nate again. She hadn’t told him about Mrs. Greenstock’s letter. In fact, she hadn’t confided in him at all about her plan to start building a clientele as herself, not as Madam Sibyl. Nate had already accepted, albeit reluctantly, that after marriage he would be living in his wife’s home––property that she would continue to own, thanks to the California state constitution. What he hadn’t accepted was that she would continue to work as Madam Sybil. What he said was, that they would have to wait until his uncle was willing to step back and let him take a bigger share of the firm’s business before they could afford to marry. Annie didn’t want to wait for years!

Especially when she knew that with the boarding house and Madam Sibyl’s income they should be financially secure enough to marry right away. But she also understood that it wouldn’t do Nate’s career as an attorney much good to be married to a practicing clairvoyant––pretend or not.

So, if she could find enough respectable organizations, like the Women’s Missionary Society, that were willing to take financial advice from a woman, maybe he would be willing to set a definite date to turn the promise of marriage into a reality.

…to be continued.

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