“The Path to Grim Road” by Diana Kurniawan
Editor’s Note: This story is inspired by true events. The Anti-Chinese riot of October 31, 1880 is one of the lowest points of Denver’s history, although it is not widely known today. More information about this event can be found in the partial bibliography at the bottom of the page.
The following piece contains strong racial language in the context of the story. In order to honor the author’s intent and to shine a light on this despicable event, the story has been published here without censorship. Twenty Bellows stands in firm opposition to racism and bigotry in every form, and in solidarity with the AAPI community.
Before I was conceived, Yin-Yin knew me as a timeless truth.
I was the opposite of Grim. I was the hope, the wings of the dove, and the tall in the short lives of Denver. I was theirs in faith and I knew they needed me — the lost, the homeless, the sinners. One day soon, I would be born into reality here, forged here by Mallory, the priest of metallurgy and infused with the spirit of a child. Thus my name, as entitled by the maker and the daughter of a good soul. Yet, Grim was the darkness even in the darkest corner of the hellish plight. He was a skewed compass, a death mark.
On this Halloween, my cold black steel was wet with pearl drops of rain rolling down my back. Grim soared about the sky as a ghostly mist on the barren city streets.
“Have ye another one? Another soul, vulnerable as cotton on water?” Grim asked, his spirit roaming, two black arrows in perpendicular, broken halfway and skewed, “I’m thirsty. Give me the blood, ye have.”
“You hath not saved a soul, Grim. Only bothered and suffused them with congestion,” I said, grimacing, my steel back stoic in the air about me.
Formidable figure I was, and no fright could impeach me from saving another.
“Be gone!” I shouted.
“You impish metal,” Grim said, “The least could be done was share a broken soul for me to burn, to sate my wrath. But, you’re nothing but an effeminate coward, a scared little girl!”
Grim, my mystic opponent, always roamed about Denver, soaking in the bloody brawls, the domestic strife, jealous victims, or fornication illegal to the law upon the brazen nights. Grim impaled the righteousness of man and imbued the vile within. His desires were pure evil and he could devour in an instant, convincing good to bad in a short time.
“Let’s get into Yin-Yin’s room, where loyalty is futile,” said Grim.
I followed, because Grim knew no mercy and I wouldn’t let Yin-Yin be his casualty.
The little beauty was there, playing with a miniature version of me made of two twigs lashed perpendicular to one another. She tied a dried rose upon its barks and I wondered if Yin-Yin would allow my presence to seep into her heart. Mallory was my name, but my loving spirit was a gentle soul, a love throughout time and space and a kindred heart for Yin-Yin.
I roamed about her shoulders. My once-black steel was a golden aura of youth, freed into her life. She spoke my name.
“I feel you, Mallory. You, are my friend,” Yin-Yin said, as she looked around her Mama’s room.
“Yin-Yin, break those dried twigs,” Grim whispered in her ear. “Play with the blood money in your mother’s treasure chest. Take it! Rip it apart!”
Yin-Yin ignored Grim and scrammed to the edge of Hop Alley. Yin-Yin shared this room with her mother, tucked away aboard the Halifax Motel in Hop Alley, inside the makeshift brothel. Grim soared above the ceiling, screaming in frustration from the silent treatment.
“Where is Mama?” I asked Yin-Yin.
“Mallory, Mama drunk too much. I stay here and play with your voice.”
Yin-Yin smiled and looked to the ceiling and around the room. A painted mask hung on a nail on the back of the wooden door. Next to it, a long, braided blonde wig was draped. A soft bed with netting over it anchored the room, joined by an ornate vanity set to the side next to the closet with wooden doors. Yin-Yin smiled, ignoring the rancid bubbles of Grim.
“Mama play dress up?” I asked, flying about her.
“Mallory, hush… she is coming,” Yin-Yin took the twigs and placed them inside the jewelry box on Mama’s cosmetic counter, next to the perfumed talc and oil paints for rouge, “Mama is very talented, Mallory. She has three customers a night. Sometimes I stay up all night, inside the closet. Sometimes I sleep in there.”
My broken heart felt feeble, as if a dagger struck me in between my steel arms.
“Today, Yin-Yin, perfect time to visit me,” I told her.
I promised her needful soul that I would come, one day, but I needed her to follow the journey to the outcome, to give birth to my physical form.
“I will show you a vision of a building to come, a decade hence, to be built on Eighteenth and Broadway. You must go there.”
“Mallory, hush… we stay here. Nothing is wrong,” Yin-Yin said.
“Yin-Yin, the President, he is not a good man. Bring Mama and flee to another place, underground in South Dakota where railroads are built,” I whispered. Outside this room, hatred had whirled about Hop Alley with inebriated white men at the local pool bars eyeing the Chinese into a racial fight.
In a few years, Yin-Yin knew not that the land would bloody itself from a law by the government made to exclude the Chinese.
“I stay in Hop Alley, Mama’s home is this room, Mallory,” said Yin-Yin, as she stood up and placed her toy into the jewelry box, “Hush…Mama is coming.”
Yin-Yin ran swiftly to the closet and hid behind a thin door of corrugated wood, eaten in holes and streaks by termites. I knew no sleep, for the city neither slept nor rested with time. Perhaps it was too bold of me to watch over her, the minuscule seven-year old creature with short black hair between Market and Wazee, by the Hop Alley.
“You are a blossoming flower, Zan,” said a husky voice coming up the stairs.
The room door opened slowly, and it was him again — Mr. Hoist. Oily faced and stuffed with filet mignon. Thick, curly hair and a walking cane. He owned a rich mine in Golden and lived four miles from here in a prominent Victorian mansion closer to Larimer, inherited through his gentry lineage. In the words of some, Mr. Wolfgang Hoist was the new future of the West, heavy with gold and rubies.
“I kiss you, and tickle you, and we lie to each other of wives’ tales,” giggled Zan to his ears.
As the brightest star on Hop Alley’s exotic row, Halifax Motel was full of encounters of the night. Zan was one of many, known as the “Golden Rose,” in the bars and clubs because her golden skin stood out of the crowd.
“Your wife must be a flower too, Wolfgang,” said Zan.
“Not as pretty as you,” said Mr. Hoist, “but she’s good for politics.”
Yin-Yin hid behind the closet peeking out from a termite hole, breathing softly in case Mama heard. She whispered to me.
“Mallory, I should have taken your doll.”
Yin-Yin closed her eyes as I spotted Grim fly from atop the flat roof and inject himself inside Wolfgang, filling him with gluttony for the flesh, devouring Zan’s sweet lips.
“Mallory, help Mama,” whispered Yin-Yin.
My hands were made only of spirits, the girth of my steel on Broadway atop the Trinity church. I was frozen in time and not yet made, as Yin-Yin palmed her eyes and cried.
“Exotic Chink, you are so soft. Your body, my pork dinner, oh, blissful delight you are, Zan,” said Mr. Hoist. He pressed his body down on Zan as he slid her slinky bodice off her shoulders, and it fell down to the floor. His calloused hands with fat fingers and wrinkled skin ripped her skirt from her body.
“Gentle, Wolfgang, please. Gentle,” said Zan.
Yin-Yin pressed her mouth closed. She must have witnessed too many of Zan’s encounters each night, often fueled by alcohol and violence. Yin-Yin cupped her ears in her hands and I could hear her exasperated tears inside my skull, my brain, my spirit.
“Mallory, please help,” Yin-Yin whispered.
I felt this angel’s tears inside the hollow of my steel chest.
Wolfgang covered Zan’s mouth with his left palm as he pushed her down and entered her. He pumped his chest against hers, Zan gasped for air, and I felt her spirit about to scream with each of his forceful pushes as Wolfgang’s right hand covered her throat. Zan soaked in his sweat, and I felt Grim twisting in the air of the room and laughing.
Wolfgang relieved himself and Zan slid from underneath him and into her robe. She opened the closet and picked up Yin-Yin by her arms, whispering in Yin-Yin’s ears, “He is Mama’s last. Tomorrow, we run away from here.”
Yin-Yin nodded, yet I saw the grief inside Zan’s heart. I knew what the girl did not; that Zan was not about to flee Denver, but to relent her daughter to the orphanage in Wyoming instead. If only I had hands, I would hold them both and lead them to me, to my friends at Trinity on 14th and Lawrence, and toward Providence.
A tumult interrupted Zan’s pain and my regret. Zan and Yin-Yin looked outside, spotting the disturbance as a fight broke through a bar nearby, spilling into the streets. Suddenly, a glass bottle full of alcohol broke the window to the room, and torches lit up the streets. I felt the heat of anger light the room as Zan’s curtains flared in flames.
Outside, the rain was no more but white men milled in the streets, angry from the fight at the bar on 16th and Wazee street in Hop Alley. Racists slurs fused into the language of white men surrounding the streets with torches on fire, carrying knives and guns to slaughter Chinese men and women.
I spotted Grim in their midst, the evil spirit lusty with chaos. He swirled around them, gleefully creating havoc and pouring his slander and prejudice into the hearts of the white citizens in Denver. Racist vitriol filled the streets of Denver, as I heard men brawling and breaking bones. A Chinese man screamed as a knife slid into him. Grim shook out the peace of Denver and ravaged the sanity of man into a bloody massacre.
The bar downstairs burned, covering the ceiling of Zan’s room with black smoke. She panicked, grabbing Yin-Yin and clutching her to her chest. But the girl pushed back, sliding down to the floor to grab the twigs inside the jewelry box.
“Mama, let’s go find Mallory!” Yin-Yin cried.
The curtains began to flare more intensely as Zan quickly scooped up her coat and Yin-Yin’s robe and left Wolfgang snoring on her bed.
“Who is Mallory?” asked Zan, grabbing her leather boots and Yin-Yin’s red shoes before putting on her coat and tying up her hair.
“Mallory is my friend, Mama,” said Yin-Yin. “He is good company.” Yin-Yin swiftly took the Mallory doll from the jewelry box before she forgot her best friend.
“Yin-Yin, we have to go!” shouted Zan.
She took her daughter and broke another window to the side of the room as they walked on the roof over the Halifax Motel and into a free world above Hop Alley. I blew the smokes aside, covering them with grace and mercy as rooftops disintegrated to the dirt on the ground. Zan and Yin-Yin fell off the roof but without scratches nor broken bones. I, Mallory, needed them and loved them as my own children.
“Yin-Yin, lead Mama there and say no more,” I spoke inside her ears, inside her heart, and inside her mind. The heart of a child surely attendeth to heaven and I assured her a proper entry. Yin-Yin wouldn’t be harmed, and neither would Zan. But, Grim, what evil had he plotted against me? What horror and death had he concocted from the bile of racist anger?
Hop Alley was burning orange and blue as bars, hotels, brothels, and homes were torched to the ground. Opium bottles shattered on the streets as men and women fled from apothecaries. Brooms were thrown outside to beat down the flames, and full buckets of water from the restaurants poured into the night. None of it made any relief. Hop Alley would burn this Halloween Night, 1880 – the casualty of the white men’s hatred for the Chinese. I wept, never knowing Grim was capable of planting this much atrocity in men. But Grim was Grim, and men were fools.
Yin-Yin and Zan ran into the night, becoming refugees on the streets of Denver. Together, they walked toward Broadway, as Zan tried to comfort the innocent child who led the way.
“Yin-Yin, is Mallory a friend? Where does Mallory live?” asked Zan.
The child spoke not. She had no idea that I was of the spirit, and they were on my path to the future. T’was to be a gloomy journey if they were not freed, a path from Grim Road often was full of sin and heart break. Yin-Yin needed me, and I her, if we were to triumph from this hellish fire!
“He said he was on Broadway and Eighteenth?” Yin-Yin’s eyes were wet, and I felt the confusion in her tears.
“Yin-Yin, Wise Bear!” I whispered into her ears.
“Mama, we need a Wise Bear,” Yin-Yin said to her Mama, who only cried yet more from anxiety and fear.
They ran to the end of K Street with no Eighteenth Street in sight, only rubble and dirt. They found a deep doorway facing the street – a perfect hideaway from the riots, far from Hop Alley. Zan caught her breath and pulled Yin-Yin close to her chest inside her coat. They crouched down to the ground.
“We hide here, and pretend we are homeless,” said Zan, her weepy, fearful face still managing a smile for Yin-Yin, “At least we have each other.”
“Mama… where is the Wise Bear?” asked Yin-Yin.
A staggering drunkard pulled Zan away from the doorway.
“Wench, that’s my home!” said the man, slobbering.
A homeless man with one leg, livid at Zan, pulled at her as her palms scraped against the dirt, “Chink, you leave!”
“Please, sir. I am with my daughter. We did nothing wrong!” said Zan, begging for his mercy.
The wrinkled man squinted. A long, black braid trailed down his back, but he was not Chinese. His anger made him unfamiliar, but I could see the good Apache inside his Bear heart.
“Give him your twig, Yin-Yin,” I whispered to my daughter, knowing also that my son, Benjamin Willoughby, would come in a few moments to share his dinner with Wise Bear. He was a testament to kindness, and I knew all the paths he would walk, from birth to death.
Yin-Yin slipped out of Zan’s coat and ran to the man. She offered him the toy cross.
“It has a flower in the middle,” said Yin-Yin. “It’s Mallory, that’s its name.”
The homeless man slowly took the cross and looked to Yin-Yin.
“I knew Mallory,” he said, “Wait here with your Mama.”
He waddled with his crutch towards the alley. Zan waited for a moment and then ran after him with the girl, the two of them helping the man move faster and into the darkness of the alleyway. Nearby, the men were screaming, “Chinks be gone,” as the riots spread out through the surrounding Denver streets.
“Wise Bear, hurry!” said Zan, pulling at his crutch until they reached another hiding place inside the darkness.
Yin-Yin softly whimpered as Zan struggled to slow her breath. Wise Bear took some mud from the ground and smeared it on Yin-Yin’s and Zan’s faces.
“I am Wise Bear,” he said, “and you are Apache. You are my wife and daughter. If they ask, show them my leg. Willoughby will come, wait here with me,” said Wise Bear.
Together, they waited until a masked man in a brown robe with a torch in his hands, waving it inside the dark alley came hurried towards Wise Bear. He pulled Wise Bear by his tattered robe, as Zan and Yin-Yin hid behind the corner of the wall in the dark.
“Injun, who are here with you? You hiding?!” he demanded, waving his fire torch above Wise Bear.
Wise Bear shook his head and denied the man’s accusations.
The masked man’s anger seethed. He reached into his robe and retrieved a long, black braid like Wise Bear’s own. It was tattered, with a bloody, skinned scalp dangling at the end.
“This is China man’s head in my hands. You try to hide Chinks, I scalp you myself,” he said menacingly.
Wise Bear breathed in and pulled up his robe from his pelvis and showed him an empty leg socket with folded skin. The white man took off his mask and caught in his breath then let him go.
“Your friend, said my leg was his souvenir,” said Wise Bear, insisting to show his empty leg socket. “My wife and daughter live here in peace. You got scraps?”
“Dirty trash!” screamed the white man in revulsion as he ran out of the alley. “If you see chinks, yell out. They should be killed!”
“God damn those chinks!” shouted Wise Bear, after the man.
Zan sobbed and the dirt on her face ran with the tears from her eyes, revealing a soft, golden tone. I, Mallory, compensate sins with grace out of what free will left with hatred and anger. I knew the path onward, but Grim could harm at any moment, and Grim was vicious as Yin-Yin, Zan and Wise Bear were left in the dark out of sheer luck from flagrant disgust of the white man. If luck was truth, it would be miracles.
“Wait here, Willoughby will come with dinner. I will share with you,” said Wise Bear.
“Who are you?” Zan asked him.
“I was an Indian. I am not sure what I am now.”
“A friend,” said Zan. “Compassion comes in every color.” Zan kissed the good Apache on his cheeks as he smiled at her.
If tears were made in me, to compliment this black steel on cold weather, Zan would quench the river of my soul. Yin-Yin came out of Zan’s coat and touched Wise Bear’s hand.
“My friend,” said Yin-Yin.
Wise Bear looked to the sky, and back to the ground, and said, “It’s Hallows Evening and the streets are full of blood. We ask Willoughby for shelter tonight.”
At these words, the grey clouds moved across the red moon and a man in a black cowboy hat came on his horse and carriage to heed near the alley.
“Why are you not at the doorway? I told you I have to be swift tonight?” asked the man, as he took off his hat, revealing his dark hair and blue eyes. “The white men are out for yellow blood.”
“Willoughby, meet Mallory,” said Wise Bear, offering the cross made of twigs to the man.
I waited for a response, for I, Mallory, was no fiction nor fantasy. I was truth and I needed Benjamin Willoughby’s heart.
“How?” said Willoughby in awe. He took the cross toy, and placed it inside his coat pocket, “Who from?”
Wise Bear waddled out of the darkness into the moonlight and pulled Yin-Yin next to him. Zan stood behind them and crouched down next to Wise Bear.
“We need shelter tonight,” said Zan, “Please, mister. We are struggling!”
Zan’s tears gushed out and her sobs caused Willoughby to panic.
“Stop crying. They can hear us…” said Willoughby.
“They will kill us if you can’t help us,” said Wise Bear.
Willoughby closed his eyes for a moment, and breathed in.
“Humanity is dangerous in a cruel world,” said Willoughby, “I will shelter you. Get under the tarped blankets.”
He picked up Yin-Yin and put her in the back of the carriage and covered her.
“Lay down, and your friends with you.”
Zan climbed over the carriage and laid down next to Yin-Yin, and Willoughby picked up Wise Bear and laid him down next to Zan.
“Be quiet, and breathe softly,” said Willoughby. His deep voice, gentle in whispers.
I, Mallory, followed Willoughby as he rode his carriage down Colfax. Rioters ran against him, but he fast-whipped his horses, keeping pace and finally out running them as they left downtown. He stopped the carriage at a large Victorian home with triangular roofs, near to a dirt path with prairie fields far down towards the rest of the street.
“This is my home,” said Willoughby. “Rest here but stay awake.”
Willoughby took Yin-Yin and opened the keys to his back door. Zan helped Wise Bear up as they entered the dwelling. It was not clean, with sparse furniture and dusty wooden floors, a tidy kitchen and an upstairs. Like the other large houses next to his, Willoughby’s home showed no signs of the riots happening only a few miles away.
“We turn off the lights, and sleep in this room, downstairs. If anyone comes to the door, we all hide and don’t answer,” said Willoughby.
Wise Bear closed his eyes and spoke.
“Willoughby shares his food with me, every night.”
“Who is Mallory?” asked Zan. “My daughter plays with the cross toy and named it Mallory.”
There was a quiet pause.
“Mallory was my daughter,” said Willoughby. “She loved making crosses and playing with them.”
“Mallory will come,” said Yin-Yin.
I, Mallory, was merely a spirit or a kindred soul to some, but if I could attest to time, I was more than that. I was a life, inside all of lives, not judgement nor condemnation, and a gentleness amongst the hatred of man and the anguish of woman. I was the heart of a child.
The riots lasted until dawn, and it was with kindness in a moment’s time that Yin-Yin and Zan were saved. I kept Yin-Yin steady as she grew up and witnessed the church on Fourteenth and Lawrence rebuilt onto Eighteenth and Broadway almost a decade later.
“Mallory died,” said Willoughby, on a day of sun and fresh air, “She had cancer. My wife took her own life not long after. She thought it was her fault.”
“Mallory lives, up there, and Mama and I lived,” Yin-Yin told Willoughby, pointing to me, the steeple ornament, stalwart and stealthy.
And there I would remain, until years later, long after Zan and Willoughby wed, when I would come to Yin-Yin once again, this time as an adult and a companion. Her twigs were kept safe inside her father Willoughby’s desk drawer. Wise Bear kept her and the family company daily and on Wednesdays, he accompanied Yin-Yin to share dinners with the destitute. Yin-Yin looked above to the black steel under the sun swelting in heat, but comforting her soul and mind.
“Mallory, I knew you’d come,” said Yin-Yin.
For more information on the Hop Alley Riot, the Chinese Exclusion Act, and Trinity United Methodist Church, please refer to the following sources:
Denver's Hop Alley and Chinatown
About Diana Kurniawan
She/Her/Hers
Diana Kurniawan is a graduate of Loma Linda School of Public Health and University of Colorado, Denver, School of Public Affairs. Earning both Master in Public Health and Master in Public Administration, Diana gained valuable experiences in Journalism and Literature while studying at both universities. She was published with by lines from Denver Life Magazine, Longmont Times Call, and the Denver Voice. She was a former Epidemiologist and caters her writing niche towards humanitarian efforts. She believes in the power of literature to transform minds and renews the human spirit. She is a survivor and manages to write and work her days, despite Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder and Depression. Currently she is working on a novel and designs her arts and crafts while steadfast and hopeful.