China Dolls (11 page)

“You stupid bitch!” he hissed. “Are you trying to jam this up for all of us?”

He went on to curse me with words I’d never before heard. When the ponies whisked through the curtain, they ducked their heads and edged around Eddie and me, up the stairs, and into the dressing room. They had to change and be ready for the next routine no matter what happened to me. Only Grace stayed by my side.

“I’m sorry, Eddie.” My voice trembled. “This is my first show. I didn’t pay attention—”

“Jesus Christ.” He drawled out the syllables to emphasize his disgust.

Tears rolled down my cheeks, prompting Eddie to throw up his hands in frustration. Then he gestured to Grace. “Clean her up, for God’s sake. We’re on in a couple of minutes.”

Grace pulled me into the dressing room, where it felt like we were
in the middle of a tornado. Girls pitched aside their skimpy undercostumes from the Gay Nineties number and pulled on their black-sequined tuxedo corsets for the routine with Eddie as fast as possible.

“Zip me up, will ya?”

“Is my top hat cocked at a good angle?”

“Do I look fat in this?”

“I’ve got a run!”

“A seam just split. What am I going to do now?”

Small dramas happened all around us, but not a single pony wasn’t aware of my lapse—my irresponsibility—when this job was so precious. But if I got fired, they’d follow the old saying:
Step on her bones to climb the ladder
. And I would just be a lonely girl ignored by the wives and mothers at the Chinese Telephone Exchange.

Grace hastily slipped out of her costume and into her tuxedo outfit. I sat on a bench, weeping. Once Grace was ready, she shooed Ida and the other girls out of the room and kneeled before me.

“You’ve got to pull yourself together.”

That Grace was upset with me was almost more than I could bear. I fought my tears, sucking in my upper lip and biting down hard enough that I tasted blood. Grace grabbed a tissue, and I watched in the mirror as she wiped away the worst of the streaks down my cheeks.

“You need to have a sense of humor about these things,” Grace counseled, even as she tried to erase the irritation that chewed at the edges of her voice. “If you don’t, you’ll never survive in show business. If you miss a step, fall down, or get yelled at, you’ve got to”—here she began to sing—“pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again.”

I didn’t know what in the world she was singing, and it must have showed on my face.

“It’s from
Swing Time
,” Grace explained. “The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movie?”

I stared at her blankly.

Grace attempted a new approach, reminding me that she was the
head of the line and needed to get me out on the floor or
her
job was in jeopardy.

“Stop crying right now,” she ordered. Then she pinched my thigh as hard as she could.

“Oow!”
I rubbed my leg. Grace blotted my cheeks with foundation and then used the powder puff so enthusiastically that little clouds of white dust swirled around us. Once my face looked passable, she brought me to my feet to undress and then dress me like I was a small child. Her eyes briefly rested on my scar. Daring for a Chinese girl to stare at another girl’s naked breast that way; immodest for a Chinese girl to let another girl so closely examine something so private.

“This isn’t just a scar, is it? A whole piece was gouged out.” Her eyes met mine. “I feel so bad for you. It must have been a rough time.”

“It was, but I don’t like to talk about it.” I hoped that would put an end to any other questions.

The call came for Eddie’s number. I quickly wiggled into my sequined corset, tipped my top hat at a jaunty angle, and started for the door. “You coming?”

This time all eight girls were at one or the other velvet curtain. I spread my mouth into what I’d created to serve as my performance smile and tapped my way through the curtain.

The rest of the second show ran perfectly, as did the third. At close to four in the morning, the last customer disappeared into the night. Charlie met us on the landing between the dressing rooms, where an air of jubilation filled the cramped space.

“Good job, everyone,” he said. “But we learned some things tonight. You girls are going to need long gowns or
cheongsams
like the one Helen wore tonight. I want to see all my glamour girls on the floor between shows. Let the customers buy you drinks. Have dinner with them. Dance with them. Make them happy.”

The other ponies and I heard this with mixed emotions: I wouldn’t be fired (a disappointment to some, a
huge
relief to me); a lot of us,
including Grace and me, were not old enough to drink (Charlie told us not to worry about that); and we were all going to join the party that happened in the club every night. I had forgotten myself for a minute, true. But my few moments of enjoyment—for which I could have paid a terrible price—clarified that it wasn’t right for me to put happiness first. What had I gotten myself into?

Later, when Grace and I exited onto Sutter, we discovered that the evening wasn’t quite over. Ruby waited for us, but there were also men—stage-door Johnnies—making their first appearances to invite ponies out for coffee, breakfast, a hotel room. We weren’t about to take them up on any of those propositions.

It was either too late or too early for sleep, so we found a place to get bowls of
jook
and wait for the sun to come up. Ruby bubbled, but I couldn’t tell if she was truly excited for us or just wanted to show she hadn’t fallen behind. Grace wasn’t nearly as thrilled as I’d expected her to be. She’d dreamed of having an opening night …

“I need to spend some of my salary to buy a gown,” she confessed when prodded.

“Don’t worry about that,” I said. “I have a closet full of them. I’ll give you one of mine.”

Grace’s shoulders tightened, and she looked away. My offer had made her lose face.
Better to die a beggar than to live as a beggar
. But weren’t we supposed to be friends? Didn’t friends help each other? Beyond that, we were in the chorus line together. She’d saved me tonight. Lending her a dress was the least I could do.

“Will you give me one too?” Ruby piped up eagerly.

Ruby’s reminder that she was in worse shape—without a permanent job—snapped Grace out of her gloom.

RUBY

A Lone Wolf

Two weeks after the Forbidden City’s bang-up opening, the three of us were in the apartment, spending Monday, the only day Grace and Helen had off, painting each other’s toenails, pinning new hairstyles, and trying on each other’s clothes, while I entertained them with my oh-so-humorous Adventures in Unemployment. I was good at getting jobs but not at keeping them.

“So he tells me, ‘You move like an angel, but I need an angel who can shine a floor. I said to use elbow grease, not grease!’ You can guess the end. Fired!”

I could amuse Grace and Helen for hours with my stories. I was placed as a maid in a tony home in Pacific Heights, only I hadn’t been taught that using Ajax wasn’t the best way to polish silver. A family on Russian Hill engaged me as a mother’s helper, but the children didn’t particularly ken to me, and I sure as hell didn’t care for them. The father liked me, though, and we had fun until his wife found out. But honestly, why did she have to make such a big stink about a hug and a bump in a laundry room? I signed on as an elevator operator at a department store on Union Square—a highlight in what had been a sorry string of jobs—where I used different accents to entertain the shoppers. “Second floor, gentlemen’s suits and other bespoke wear,” growled like a Japanese samurai. “Fifth floor, ladies’ lingerie,” sung as a girl from the islands. “Mezzanine, notions, books, and candy,” recited as one of the Mexican girls from my elementary school in Los
Angeles. Customers said I was a hoot; management gave me the bounce. On to cafés in North Beach, Cow Hollow, and the Tenderloin. I knew less about being a waitress than about cleaning a house, unpacking boxes in storage rooms, or selling flowers. It took me a while to catch the brain waves and understand that when someone asked for a bride and groom on a life raft he wanted two eggs and toast, or that a bride and groom on the rocks meant scrambled eggs. Once someone asked for a “rare” waffle. I brought him a plate of batter with a pat of butter on top. Quick as a wink, I was out on my can. “Sorry, slim, but you just aren’t working out.” Rain off a duck’s back, I always say.

“Remember when that customer asked for fried watermelon?” Grace cued me. “He was teasing you, but you went to the kitchen and asked the short-order cook to make it!”

Grace and Helen loved that story for some reason. Fried watermelon. Ha! Ha! Yes, the joke sure was on me. “Fired again!” the three of us sang out in harmony. I laughed as hard as they did. The blues were not in my repertoire.

I didn’t want to put the bite on my roommate and ask her for money, but when I couldn’t chip in my share of the rent, Grace voluntarily made up the extra amount. “That’s what friends do for each other,” she said, which was pretty funny given how bent out of shape she’d gotten when Helen offered to give her a dress to wear between shows at the Forbidden City. I didn’t see the big deal about taking Grace’s money or wearing Helen’s castoffs. A girl needs a place to sleep and something snazzy to wear, after all.

O
N THE WEEKEND
, I visited Aunt Haru and Uncle Junji in Alameda. They filled me with soba and
natto
—sticky fermented soybeans—slivers of
toro
, and cups of
matcha
. They asked me questions:

“Have you heard from your mother and father?”

“Are you eating enough?”

“Won’t you come back and stay with us? We can give you a job in the grocery.”

They were the nicest people. They had a small shop not far from the Alameda naval air station. Their customers were lookers, as you might imagine, so working there wouldn’t be the worst thing that could happen. But I didn’t want to spend my life drinking beer and necking with servicemen—I’d already done a fair amount of that in Hawaii—and even earlier when we lived on Terminal Island not far from the naval reserve, so I turned down Aunt Haru’s offer, bowing deeply and repeatedly as my mother would have wanted me to do to show proper respect and humility.

“
Doumo arigatou gozaimasu
, Auntie,” I said, using the most polite form of Japanese. “You honor me with your kindness. I’m forever grateful.”

My aunt and uncle—as I hoped they would—sent me home with a basket filled with fresh fruits, vegetables, and a five-pound sack of rice, which was a start toward repaying Grace.

And I thought coming here would be a breeze.

I hadn’t won any apple-pie prizes or ribbons like Grace had, but even as a little girl I could attract a crowd. That first day at the auditions for the Forbidden City, I told Grace and Helen that I’d always been a dancer, but it was more like I was born to be famous. People
saw
something in me. They were attracted to me. They came to me like bees to a flower or moths to a flame. I’m not exaggerating. I didn’t have a lot of talent, but I had plenty of ba-zing.

Way back, when we still lived in Los Angeles, a dancer from the Orpheum Theater came across the street to visit our family’s curio shop. She wanted to buy a black lacquer box decorated with flying cranes, but she didn’t have enough money, so my mother said, “If you give my girl dance lessons, I’ll give you the box.” People told my mother that our family had gone to the dogs. Mom, who was about as traditional and strict a woman as you could find on either side of the Pacific, shot them down.

“It’s better to be a lone wolf with talent than a monkey dancing for an organ-grinder,” she said. “Better to be independent than bow to the Occidental.”

But I had to be a proper Japanese girl too. She showed me how to mince when I walked so I’d look delicate and smile behind pressed fingers so I’d look more alluring. She taught me to speak in a high voice, making sure no air—no
life
—came out of my throat. She instructed me to begin each sentence as though everything were my fault:
sumimasenga—I’m sorry but
, or
osoremasuga—I fear offending you but
.

Naturally, I attended my mother’s Japanese-language classes. Japanese was of no interest to me, whether at home or in school, and I wished I had a nickel for every time she criticized my use of prepositions. (My pop always said her voice was as beautiful as cherry blossoms floating through the air on a perfect spring morning. On this one thing I couldn’t argue. Her voice was beautiful … for a nag.) My mother drilled me on honorifics and declensions. I learned the difference between what a woman could say and what a man could say.
Shizukani—quiet
—could politely come from a woman’s mouth. But a man could be more forceful:
Damare! Shut up!
I listened when people spoke the common name for a wife
—ka-nai
—which literally meant
house inside
. A husband was called the
shu-jin—person in charge
. But I wanted to be in charge of my own life.