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I wash is myself.”
    Perhaps he was thinking of her jibes, or maybe her ghost lovers—the irony was that because of her cleanliness, she had more custom than the typical tart, who might bathe but once a week—but that afternoon, when he was harassed by the local urchins, he lost his composure, lashed out. They’d been waiting for him earlier than usual, and when they’d pulled his hair he’d stumbled, gone down on one knee in a runnel of horse piss, still warm. He’d been even more enraged at the thought that the clean laundry might have been dragged through the mud, and when they’d come after him again, he’d swung his pole sharply. He’d only meant to bowl one of them over with the soft weight of a laundry sack, perhaps spill a cap into the dirt, but he misjudged and cracked a rawboned boy about the ear. The amusement of his fellows had faded quickly when the lad took his hand away to show them the blood. He wiped it off on his shirt, and Ling had wanted to tell him
Don’t!
They’d set on him in earnest then, the lot of them piling on so that Ling was knocked down, his face clawed and cut, his queue yanked and stamped into the mud, his packages strewn about. They looped his queue around his neck twice, like a noose, and pulled him to his feet, led him like a dog up and down the street. When he broke away they tripped him again, set about him with their boots this time, until he could only curl up, clutching the dirt as if to burrow into it. They drew a pair of drawers over his head like a bag, sat on him, stuffed the foul thing into his mouth—“Lick it clean!”—until he gagged. Finally, pulling him to his feet, they drew his queue up between his legs to hobble him, proclaiming to the laughter of the gathering crowd their intent to “send him home with his tail atween his legs.” They only lost their nerve at the edge of Chinatown, releasing him but flinging his pole and laundry after for good measure.
    He’d been spitting with rage, had run into the laundry for the cleaver when Little Sister put a hand on his arm. He made to pull away, inhaled a wince. “Ribs,” she pronounced, stilling him with a touch. He held his ragged breath while her fingers traced his sides. “Just cracked, I think.” She pulled him over to a stool and filled a basin and cleaned his face as best she could while he turned it from her (and yet followed her shivering reflection in the basin water). Only when she’d sewn up the gash over his eyebrow did he steal a direct look at her: the purse of her lips as she tugged the thread through his flesh the same as when she repaired any other ripped item, except this time when she bit the thread, she leaned in close to his brow and he felt the brush of her lips, or perhaps her teeth, before the thread snapped.
    She told him about the time that ghost women had burst into the laundry, complaining about the prices, that they were too low (“Too high?” Ling had corrected her automatically. “No, too low for them to compete!”), and put Ng’s queue in the mangle. “Made him kowtow! To women!” She shook her head, smiling. “He’d be there still, thinking about gnawing it off, if I hadn’t freed him. He’s lucky they didn’t throw him in the slough to drown. Those boys are the sons of those women, some of them.”
    She handled his queue gently as she told him the story, rinsing it with warm water—“A wash always helps,” she crooned—then unplaiting it so that the hair slipped through her fingers and covered her hands, and then replaiting it until it felt as strong and heavy as rope. And by then he was still.
    He turned slowly, feeling his queue run through her hands. She was still close, her head bent low, and he leaned in slowly to kiss her. But she drew back.
    He stared at her, and then very deliberately tipped over the basin, so that she cried