China Dolls (10 page)

People applauded, but I was nervous. I not only had to worry about the routines we’d practiced for weeks but also had to remember the last-minute changes Mr. Biggerstaff had made to the production to accommodate the Lim Sisters.

“We’re going to show them”—Charlie gestured toward the entrance and all the
lo fan
beyond the door—“that we can accomplish more than just wash dishes, do laundry, sweep floors, or work on the railroad.” The men, even the dishwashers, clapped for this. “We’re going to show them that you girls have arms and legs.” The ponies around me applauded. “Everyone has first-night jitters. Even I have them. Just remember that most of our customers have never seen a Chinese perform. We’re going to be great, and we’re going to open big.” He glanced at his watch. “Finish getting ready. And then have a fabulous night! Let’s show the world our stuff!”

“Break a leg, everyone,” Eddie called as we dispersed.

We returned to the dressing room to wait for our curtain call. I caught some of the ponies furtively spying on the Lim Sisters as they did their makeup. One of the cigarette girls came back to tell us that customers had started to arrive. The women, she reported, were dropping
their furs in the cloakroom to reveal glittering jewels and silk gowns that swept the floor, while the men were shrugging out of overcoats to display perfectly cut evening dress.

“I wish I could see them,” Ida said.

“You will,” Grace said. “We’ll be out there soon enough.”

Despite my friend’s calm words, anticipation—hers included—made the room feel as though we didn’t have enough air to breathe. It was hard to sit still. I tried to focus my mind on the basics of the evening.

At a staff meeting a week ago, Charlie had walked us through what the Forbidden City experience would be like for our customers. The maître d’ would escort glamorous couples through the moon gate to floor-side tables. The less well heeled would be seated on the second or third tier, which hugged the main level on three sides. Waiters and waitresses dressed in red silk uniforms would hand out menus—the right side listed Chinese dishes, the left American. Those who didn’t have reservations would pay a one-dollar cover charge and line up at the bar. Ruby, if she wasn’t there already, would arrive soon. Grace and I had staked her to the evening.

We could hear the Forbidden Knights’ tunes all the way in our dressing room. Grace told me the name of each song: “Begin the Beguine,” “Heart and Soul,” and “Cheek to Cheek.” The melodies were beautiful and romantic, and I could practically see couples dancing in my imagination.

“As soon as the set ends,” Grace reminded us, “we’ll be on.”

My stomach lurched. Nerves!

A couple of minutes later, someone rapped his knuckles on the door.
“Fiedee, fiedee, fiedee!”
It was Charlie. “Hurry, hurry, hurry! It’s showtime!” Grace grabbed my hand, and together we led the other ponies to the stage-right velvet curtain. Our faces were bone-tight with anxiety. We shifted our feet—some to shake off stage fright, others practicing the moves one last time. We fingered our parasols, praying they’d open on cue. A drum rolled. Charlie stepped through the curtain to greet his guests:

“Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the Forbidden City, where we’ll give you a new
slant
on entertainment.” The
lo fan
laughed at the insulting pun. Charlie knew what he had to say to make them happy. “You won’t see any yellow face here. No, siree. We’re already yellow! So off we go to yesteryear—when the music was light, times were easy, and the girls were beautiful.”

Van Meisner brought down his baton, and the Forbidden Knights began to play “Let Me Call You Sweetheart.” Grace went through the velvet curtain first, opened her parasol, glided across the stage, and sashayed down to the dance floor. I followed right behind her with the other ponies behind me. The room oozed rich elegance, reminding me of my favorite club in Shanghai. Everyone was drinking; everyone was happy. We twirled our parasols and tilted our heads just so. We looked exquisite. We looked delicate and breakable—like dolls, like little China dolls. Then we broke into a simple combination—leisurely and rhythmic, in time with the gentle tune. Together, working as a unit where every move and every note were in accord, we supported each other and lifted each other to create a glorious and colorful spectacle. The concentration made me forget the world, made me forget that my father cared so little for me that he let me dance here at all.

We swayed around Charlie, who stood in the middle of the floor, holding his microphone. The dance was slow enough and the lights were such that with each orbit around him I glimpsed people’s faces in the audience. They had come as they might go to a curio shop: to encounter the exotic, to glimpse the scandalous, to see a real “curiosity.” So far we weren’t delivering. But before the audience’s mood could coalesce into anything negative, the tempo abruptly changed. The band launched into a rousing “Ta-Ra-Ra Boom-De-Ay.” We shouted out the opening syllables, tore off our hats, and tossed them into the audience. We ripped away our gowns to reveal red satin corsets edged with the same fringe that hung from our parasols. Even Charlie got into the act, yanking off his plaid suit to reveal a tuxedo.

This was more like it! Charlie had promised the audience legs and arms, and here they were! Who would have guessed a Chinese girl
could move like that? Chinese were supposed to be bowlegged and clumsy. And weren’t the women supposed to be submissive? Everyone knew the type. They’d seen her on the street sometimes …

“Those women in Chinatown won’t even meet my eyes,” I heard a man seated next to the dance floor whisper to his friend. (Those would have to be women like my mother, sisters-in-law, or me, who would have preferred to die than look at an ugly
lo fan
like him.)

“I’ve seen plenty who
will
meet my eyes, if you catch my drift.” The other man winked conspiratorially.

The stereotypes about Chinese women were tiresome … and predictable. I swirled to the next table and overheard …

“They’ll give you a disease if you get too close. Have you gotten that close? I’ve heard that their privates are as different as their eyes.”

“You mean slanted, going from side to side instead of front to back?”

It made me sick the way they talked, but I was still glad to be here, happy to have made my choice to be in this world and not caged in the compound.

When the first number ended and we filed offstage, Charlie Low introduced Li Tei. Everyone could feel his pride. “She’s a torch singer and good at grand opera too,” he promised. I lingered by the curtain to watch as he put a hand to the side of his mouth to confide, “But she’ll also sing a Chinese number on request. Ladies and gentlemen, I present my wife, the beautiful and talented Li Tei Ming.”

Her
cheongsam
was made of yellow silk with large lipstick-red flowers like giant handprints touching every part of her body. Van Meisner nodded to the band, and the familiar notes of “Loch Lommond” floated through the club. Li Tei sang just one bar—combining a fake Scots accent with her way-down-south Cantonese accent—and once again a feeling of utter disbelief settled over the crowd. When she sang
“Sì, Mi Chiamano Mimi”
—Yes, They Call Me Mimi—from
La Bohème
, it was just too, too much. Unbelievable, really and truly unbelievable.

I hurried back to the dressing room. Irene had changed into her
costume for the next number, so she went out to catch Jack Mak’s act. After she left, Ida smirked knowingly. “She’s so gone on that guy.” Once the rest of the ponies were ready, we joined Irene stage left. I guess it hadn’t occurred to anyone in the audience that a Chinese man could be a magician either. I could see guests actually scratching their heads, as puzzled by Jack Mak as they were by his illusions.
Did he really just shoot into a box? Now he’s opening it! Hey! A dove flew out and over my head!

We ponies paraded out for a short interlude. This time I dared to look up to the windows into the bar, hoping to spot Ruby, but all I saw were well-dressed men leaning on the sills, watching the show. Charlie passed from table to table with his microphone, joking with customers, teasing them about how many drinks they’d had, asking if the women were wives, fiancées, girlfriends, or something else …

As we dipped back behind the curtain, the band broke into “Minnie the Moocher” for the Merry Mahjongs—an acrobatic troupe recently returned from a European tour. When the line “He took her down to Chinatown, he showed her how to kick the gong around” arrived, the acrobats mugged it up for all it was worth. From that night on, they’d be known for literally kicking a gong around, solidifying their reputations as the best Chinese acrobats in America.
Aiya!
As if
that
meant anything!

Another interlude. We wore miniature tuxedos—collars and ties, top hats, gloves, black opera hose, and little sequined corsets. Grace led us through a simple tap number. If a male customer wanted, he could touch a girl’s bottom as it twitched by. I managed to stay just out of reach. The spotlight moved to one of the velvet curtains. Expectations rose. Who
—what
—was coming next? The curtain swung open. Eddie stood there in top hat and tails. We kept dancing, hitting such a low and relentless rhythm that I finally understood why we were called ponies. Eddie was smooth and debonair. This wasn’t like seeing someone on the big screen. This was real, it was live, and it was happening just a few feet away.

We waited backstage since we didn’t have another change. Li Tei
Ming returned for a torch song. My nerves hadn’t ebbed much and neither had those of any of the other ponies, but it felt like everything was going well. Then it was time for the main attraction. Our crowd made way for the Lim Sisters, who wore white baptismal gowns and big bonnets. Maybe that had worked for them when they were little girls doing vaudeville, but to my eyes they looked ridiculous now that they were grown women.

“Straight from the Palace in London,” Charlie proclaimed, “I give you the Lim Sisters.”

The Lims tottered out. I thought their act was strange—who wants to see big babies singing?—but the audience loved them. People here in San Francisco had witnessed so much change the past few years. In the twenties: flappers, alcohol, and money flowing like water. And then the crash: families in breadlines, Okies arriving with all their possessions piled on top of their trucks, and people like those in the audience selling off jewels and property. But as customers watched the sisters perform, you could almost see their hope. It seemed we all wanted to forget.

The big finale: We formed a conga line—with Li Tei at the front—and wove through the club, picking up customers, who hung on to the waists in front of them.
Shake those hips from side to side, and kick! It’s the Chinaconga!

The first show was flawless—like a perfect piece of jade. The audience demonstrated their appreciation by ordering more drinks. Champagne corks popped. Women sipped frothy cocktails from high-stemmed glasses. Men waved to Flo, the cigarette girl, to come to their table to sell her wares. Dinners arrived on big silver trays, with each dish topped by its own silver dome. In the dressing room, the girls jumped up and down, hugged each other, and laughed. How many times had Grace and the others sat in a darkened movie theater and wished and hoped and pined to be up on the screen in that movie, in that scene, in that world? Now they’d brought the illusion off the screen and into this building. The air crackled with adrenaline, excitement, and happiness. Even I felt something …

As some of the ponies changed back into their costumes for the first number, I opened the bag I’d brought from home and pulled out my
cheongsam
. The silk was the color of a robin’s egg and was printed with white snow blossoms. “You’re an unmarried girl,” Mama had said when we ordered the dress. “This will make you look fresh and young, while still evoking the frostiness of winter.” The dress had marked the beginning of a new phase of my life. Now here I was, starting another chapter. I put it on and buttoned the highest frog to hold the mandarin collar in place. I closed the frogs across my breast, under my armpit, and down my side. It wasn’t my best
cheongsam—
not by a long shot—but the girls in the dressing room stared. Until this minute I was the one they distrusted because they could see I had more money than they did. They’d also made it pretty clear they thought that I had won out over dancers better than I was and that I considered myself special because I had Grace—the girl in charge of the line—as my best friend. Resentment threatened to dampen their exuberant moods, but Grace regarded me with eyes of love.

“Look how beautiful you are!”

I waved off the compliment. “I’m going to see if I can find Ruby. I’ll be right back.”

I left the dressing room before Grace could stop me, then slipped through the velvet curtain and into the club. I sensed Grace behind me, but she didn’t follow. As I picked my way through the tables, customers—particularly men—offered their congratulations. I found Ruby in the bar. She wore a bias-cut dress—inexpensive but clinging to every curve. The group of men who clustered around her parted when I approached.

“Wasn’t she great, boys?” Ruby asked.

The men all chatted at once, vying for
my
attention.

“Join us.”

“Sit with us.”

“Let me buy you a drink.”

The men tried to one-up each other. Did I want a champagne
cocktail, pink lady, gin fizz, or dry martini? After that, they got down to serious proposals.

“Let me buy you dinner.”

“Are you free later tonight?”

“Do you have other girlfriends who’d like to tag along?”

I did my best to be entertaining and polite, but inside I was swooning through the ether of happiness. Then Charlie announced that the second show would start momentarily. I wasn’t close to being ready!

I hurried back through the tables but was slowed again and again by admirers. Panic began to well in me. If I didn’t get back in time … Once backstage, I ran to the dressing room.
“Fiedee, fiedee, fiedee.”
Grace glared at me as a praying mantis would eye a cricket, but she didn’t have time to scold me, not when she had to worry about her own performance, her own position, her own life. As Grace and the others filed out of the dressing room, I peeled off my
cheongsam
and threw on my Gay Nineties costume. I went backstage, desperate to join the number. Suddenly, surprisingly, someone yanked my shoulder. It was Eddie—dressed in his tails and top hat. He was furious.