China Dolls (14 page)

Helen started in with a thousand questions: “Do you realize you’re practically naked in there? And in front of all those people? What will your parents say if they find out?”

“You looked beautiful,” I said. Did I mean it? Not a word, but I was trying to show Joe I could be adult about such things. I took his
hand. I’d never behaved so boldly in my life. My fingers lay cold in his palm, but he didn’t pull away.

“Ruby, I want you to meet my friend, Joe … Joe …”

“Joe Mitchell,” he said. “I’m a big fan.”

“I’ve only got twenty minutes,” Ruby said, not bothering to acknowledge him. I was relieved he hadn’t caught her interest. “Forty minutes on, twenty minutes off, from three in the afternoon until two in the morning. Here, let me show you around.”

“You three are so tiny,” Joe inserted hopefully. “I bet you can all fit on my rolling chair.”

Ruby sized him up. “Sure. Take us for a spin.”

Joe pushed us hither, thither, and yon, denying Helen and me the chance to grill our friend. The twenty minutes went by quickly. We dropped Ruby back at Sally Rand’s and decided to wait for her set to be over. Helen remained quiet, hiding her thoughts, while I gave Joe the third degree. What was his full name? Joseph Eldon Mitchell. How old was he? Twenty. (That’s what I’d guessed when I first met him.) His openness encouraged me to ask more questions.

“Are you still going to Cal?”

“Yep! I’m studying political science,” he answered. “I want to go to law school eventually and become a lawyer like my dad.”

“Do you like California?”

“You bet! I don’t miss the seasons in Winnetka one bit.” And flying was still his favorite thing in the world. “I’ll love it forever.” His voice had an endearing way of rising at the end of a sentence as though asking a question. “Not that I’ve been able to fly since coming to California—”

A little more than forty minutes later, Ruby opened the side door and held it ajar. She wore a kimono. Her nipples pushed against the thin silk. “Sally got mad at me for being late last time. I can’t go out with you again. I don’t have time to get out of my costume, get dressed, then undressed, and back into my costume again.” She laughed at the absurdity of what she’d just said. “It takes time to get those pistols just right! Will you come and get me later? We can go
home together on the ferry.” Without waiting for an answer, she gave a wave and closed the door.

Joe said, “I’ve got to leave you too. I need to turn in the rolling chair. But will you come again? We could all meet after Ruby and I get off. I could even come out here one day when I don’t have classes or work. Would you like that?”

“I’d love it,” I answered, because I really wanted to see him again.

After he pushed off, we found a spot to wait for Ruby near the Headless Woman display. Helen had already spoken her mind, but what was I going to say to Ruby?

I shouldn’t have worried, because she started talking as soon as we boarded the ferry to cross the bay back to the city.

“I don’t want you girls to zing me from two sides,” she began. “I needed a job, and this was the best I could get.”

“But how can you be—” I didn’t want to say the word
naked
. “You had to have known about this job for a while.”

“Ummm.” A confirmation of sorts.

“Those nights you were out late the last couple of weeks—”

“Ummm.”

“Were you rehearsing?”

“Not a lot to rehearse,” Helen quipped.

“We’re supposed to be friends,” I said, “and you didn’t tell us.”

“Of course I didn’t!” Ruby flared. “Look how you’re taking it!”

I peered at her, disbelieving.

“It’s not a big deal,” she insisted.

“Ruby!” I exclaimed. “You’re n-k-d in there!”

“I’m not naked-naked. Sally is very careful about what we show. Besides, we aren’t the only nudes on the Gayway. Go to that studio where girls pose without a stitch on, and people can sketch or photograph them for a fee. Go to the movie house that plays reels of nudists playing volleyball. Or go to the Palace of Fine Arts in the main part of the fair, and you’ll find a naked woman re-creating a painting by Manet.”

“Manet?” Helen burst out, indignant. “Who in the hell is Manet?”

Ruby’s and my eyes widened. It was the first time we’d heard Helen curse.

“Well?” she demanded.

“I don’t know,” Ruby answered with a pixie shrug. “We were told to say that.”

She started to giggle, I joined in, and Helen covered her mouth. But what were we thinking? There are consequences to everything.

C
ONSEQUENCE ONE OF
visiting Treasure Island: I now had an honest-to-goodness crush on someone … and it absolutely wasn’t Monroe. I needed to do the right thing and tell him, even if it disappointed Helen. He picked me up the following Sunday, took me to the Eastern Bakery, and ordered me an ice cream soda I didn’t want. I was just getting up my nerve when, surprise! The tables were turned—but definitely!

“I had once hoped my father might approve of you, even though you’re a dancer,” he began. “But when I saw you on New Year’s Day, I realized he never would.” Monroe then spent the next half hour telling me why he could never marry me: that I didn’t cook Chinese food, that I was an only child so I hadn’t learned to care for children, that I didn’t embroider, darn, or tat. I wasn’t sufficiently political either. I didn’t show enough sympathy for what our people in China were enduring at the hands of the Japanese, I didn’t appreciate the deprivations of Chinese in this country, and I hadn’t been through Angel Island, so I would never understand the terrible things that happened to our people there.

“And you’re American-born,” he said, as he came to the end of his list. “You’ll never act like a proper Chinese wife. You’re too
lo fan
for me to marry.”

“Have you considered that
you
might be too Chinese for
me
to marry?” I asked, but inside I smarted at being called a white ghost like any tourist who entered Chinatown.

“My father will find a proper girl in China to be my wife. He says he’ll take me there to pick her out as soon as the Japanese are vanquished.”

“You mean like buying the right apple?” I could barely get out the words.

“If you mean no blemishes, then yes.” His eyes narrowed as he appraised me. “You’ll never be more than a big-thigh girl.”

And that was that. Whether he was dropping me or I was dropping him no longer mattered. I pushed myself away from the table.

“Thank you for the ice cream soda.”

“I’ll walk you to your apartment. Only prostitutes walk through Chinatown by themselves. I don’t want you to be branded a no-no girl. No man in his right senses would want to marry you then.”

I thanked him again but turned down his offer. “I’ll walk where I want to walk,” I said stiffly. “I’ll be fine.”

As I headed back to my apartment, I felt lucky. I loved Helen, but I could never live in that family, in that compound, and in constant subservience to Monroe with his Three Obediences and all.

“I thought he was American like me,” I told my friends later. “But he’s much too Chinese. My mom married someone like that—American on the outside but traditional on the inside—and look how it turned out for her.”

Ruby agreed, but Helen was very disappointed. She even cried.

Consequences everywhere.

GRACE

Let the Boy Talk

All through the spring, Helen and I went to the exposition whenever possible. We loved the bustle and jumble, the shills and their ballyhoo. Once we got over the shock of seeing Ruby that first time, we saw that, in fact, she wasn’t entirely naked. We still didn’t “approve” of what she was doing, but she was our friend, and we wanted to show our support, so we always visited her at Sally Rand’s. The girls inside the window were constantly doing new things. One time they took turns riding a burro, while the barker called, “Come and see Sally Rand’s ass.” Joe often came along. Ruby, Helen, and I loved to dance, and he jitterbugged with us to the royalty of the radio “live and in person”: Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Kay Kyser, and the Dorseys. You haven’t lived until you’ve been in front of bands like those and danced all out, and Joe and I outshone every couple on the dance floor, cutting loose with our spins, flips, and other tricks. Surprising he could dance so well? Nope. He’d learned his social moves at debutante balls in and around Chicago and the fancier combos at the hotter gatherings that took place late at night after the girls had been presented.

The more I learned about Joe, the more I adored him. He was smart, with all his classes. He pushed a rolling chair from noon to midnight on weekends, and on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from four until midnight, or later if he picked up a good fare. He’d been raised in Winnetka, which was only about three hundred miles
from Plain City. The geographic proximity of our hometowns had to mean something about our values and about who we were as people, didn’t it?

“We’re a little more open about Orientals in Illinois,” he told me one day. “An Oriental and an Occidental can even get married where I live, not like here in California, where it’s against the law.”

I had no idea laws existed
anywhere
that barred Chinese and Caucasians from marrying. That was rotten news. Seeing my expression, Joe reached over and ruffled the hair on the top of my head.

“Don’t worry, squirt,” he said. “If you ever decide to hitch your wagon to someone like me, he’ll figure it out. Where there’s a will there’s a way. He might even take you to Mexico to tie the knot … Now let’s check to see if Ruby’s in the window. That Sally Rand sure is something, but it’s fun to see your friend too.”

I went with Joe, and he still stared at Ruby the way he had that first time, so I also invited him to the Forbidden City to watch
me
dance.

“When that Li Tei Ming started to sing, I couldn’t believe it,” he said after the first time he came. “She’s Oriental, but when she opens her mouth she sounds just like my aunt Myrtle.”

How many times had I heard lines like those from customers, who were trying to be polite and complimentary but were really showing their ignorance and prejudice?

“Li Tei was born here,” I responded. “Just like I was born here.”

“I guess that’s what makes you all novelty acts,” he said. “Just like Ruby is a novelty—being Oriental and all—over at Sally Rand’s.”

His comment hurt down to my bones. “We aren’t novelties,” I said as I bristled. “We’re just American girls who like to sing and dance.”

“It’s true,” he agreed. “You’re a real hoofer. You’re better than the rest of them. You should have your own act. You should be a headliner.”

When he said that, I forgave all the other things he’d said and knew that in his eyes, I was special—Oriental or not.

•   •   •

I
N
M
AY
’39, Sally Rand’s place got raided, and the headlines splashed across newspapers. That didn’t keep people away, however. Everyone wanted to see what the hullabaloo was all about. Ruby gobbled up the attention. But the raid was the last straw for Helen, and she began to stay away. She claimed to be a homebody, and maybe she was, because she never dated, and didn’t wear lipstick or makeup except onstage. Ruby attracted men like ants to spilled Coca-Cola. Her attitude: “Men are nothing to get het up about as long as you don’t get in trouble.” I was saving myself for someone special. That someone was Joe.

My days started to revolve around him. I went to the exposition before I had to be at work, and he joined me before his shift. I dragged him to see special dance performances hosted by countries that didn’t have their own pavilions: Cambodia, Siam, and Burma. He took me to see new inventions: electric razors, nylon hosiery, and a television.

“Grace, soon these products will be in our homes. We’ll sit on the couch and watch television all night instead of going to a nightclub or the picture show. Entertainment will come to us—all at once, all across the country. Think of the reach that will have. Think of the fame it will bring to the entertainers. And the wealth …”

He may have been a college boy, and I loved him, but in some ways, his head was in the clouds. Those DuPont nylon stockings looked neat, though.

I learned the supreme lesson: let the boy talk. Within a few weeks, I knew everything about Joe. He believed in the tooth fairy until he was eight; he hated algebra almost as much as I did; he played football in high school; he couldn’t stand lima beans but he loved his mom’s rhubarb pie. Blue was his favorite color. He had diphtheria when he was three, and his mom stayed up with him every night until he was out of the woods. His favorite hobby when he was a boy was making model airplanes. He loved his mom and dad, but he wanted to stay in California for the rest of his life. He didn’t like taking visitors in his rolling chair to the Japanese Pavilion, because he didn’t approve of
what that nation was doing in China—which made me glad that we’d decided to keep Ruby’s background a secret. She could pass, and I didn’t want Joe to hate my best friend. He was moral and concerned about politics—but not a stuffed shirt about it like Monroe.