China Dolls (23 page)

“
The
Dorothy Toy?” My idol? My inspiration?

“She lives in Apartment Seven,” Ruby went on. “She’s on the road most of the time, so I haven’t met her yet, but once the door to her apartment was open and I saw toe shoes dangling from a curtain rod.” She paused. “If you live with me, you’ll have your own room.”

“I doubt Grace will be able to share the rent,” Helen said.

“She doesn’t need to worry about that. I make plenty of dough. Besides,” Ruby added, pinching my cheek, “I owe you one.”

She let me absorb that, while Helen fidgeted.

“What about Joe?” I asked.

Ruby tapped her nails on the table. “I already told you. There’s not much between us anymore.”

“Much? What’s that supposed to mean?” Helen asked.

“I mean nothing,” Ruby corrected herself in an offhand manner. “There’s nothing between us. We’re just pals.”

An image of the evil triplets came to my mind. Then I thought of the Lim Sisters and how they’d worked together since they were kids. In those sets of three, one girl was always in charge, one was a strict
follower, and one was always a bit outside. But who was the leader among Ruby, Helen, and me? Ruby, because she was Princess Tai? Helen, because in Chinese tradition she had more standing than two unmarried girls? I had nothing and was at what I figured had to be the lowest point in my life, but they were fighting over
me
. In this one way I had power, and it would be my decision that would determine things now.
Think of yourself first
.

“I’d love to live with you, Ruby,” I said. I wanted it to sound casual, like she was doing me a favor, but really I’d be living in the same building with other stars. Wouldn’t that say something to others about who
I
was?

A
MERE FOUR
months later, a reporter and a photographer from the Associated Press were assigned to follow Ruby (a star) and me (her sidekick) for a spread called “Maid ’N’ China.” Ruby and I woke early—around noon—so we could paint our faces and apply false eyelashes. We changed out of our cotton nightgowns and into silk pajamas. We brushed our hair loose around our shoulders and dabbed Prince Matchabelli behind our ears. Then we unlocked the door, returned to our own rooms, climbed back in our beds, and were ready for the promised 2:00
P.M.
knock. Ruby called, “Come in.” Then Princess Tai and I took turns yawning and stretching for the photographer. Next, I sashayed into Ruby’s room—the photographer clicking all the while—and sat on the edge of her mattress. The reporter asked if Ruby and I were best friends, and we answered in unison. “Of course!”

The article would eventually run in newspapers all across the country, including the
Fort Worth Journal Gazette
, the
Oakland Tribune
, and so many more. The caption for the bedroom photograph would read: “Maidens made in China say good night to the nightingale and good morning to the skylark.”

Ruby and I changed into street clothes and led the boys on a walk along Grant. We waved to passersby, who either turned their faces
away from the camera or smiled enthusiastically at the two no-no girls. We entered Shew Chong Tai, an import shop that specialized in toiletries from the old country made for women Helen’s mother’s age.

“We come here for the Chinese cosmetics,” Ruby confided to the reporter. “I put them on my face until my skin looks like snow-white silk.” Although we were already in full makeup, Ruby patted some cream along my jaw with a fingertip to illustrate what she meant. Then she reached for a box of
paw fah
. “We use this gel made from tree bark to glue our spit curls. See, it’s a natural marcel.” She stuck a few strands of my hair to my cheek with the foreign concoction.

In real life, we never went to that store or used those products. We preferred going to Union Square. We wore white gloves and hats to shop. We sat on a sofa in a large room in the store, and a saleswoman would come out and ask us what type of outfit we wanted. A day dress, a cocktail dress, a formal dress? Did we want it in mousseline de soie, panne velvet, or crepe de chine? Did we prefer georgette, poplin, or voile? We’d tell her our sizes—zero or two, depending on our time of month—and she’d go to the stockroom, bring out the clothes, and we’d say yea or nay. If we saw something we liked, we’d be escorted to a dressing room.

The photo caption for our Chinatown shopping expedition read: “Two Chinese dishes—not chop suey, mind you!—stroll along the tong-scarred streets of Chinatown, wearing fur coats over the latest Western fashions. Stylists say that dollar for dollar Oriental beauties dress more smartly than their Occidental sisters.”

When we arrived at the Forbidden City, Charlie bowed to the reporter and photographer, and they found themselves bowing back. Ah, Charlie … On my first payday after I’d returned from Los Angeles, he asked me to close the door to his office so he could speak to me privately. I remembered how he used to run a routine to let him keep my salary or to try to short me, but these days the club was flush. “I promised the Chinese Dancing Sweethearts three hundred a week,” he said. “That was supposed to be divvied up three ways, but that
didn’t turn out the way we planned, did it? I owe you fifty dollars, but … well … here.” He pushed three fifties across the table—the same amount that Helen and Eddie were now each making.

“Is this for powdering Ruby?” I asked.

“If it will keep her happy, then I’m happy.”

“Did you pay this much to Ida?”

“Hardly, but Ruby wants you. If you don’t want to help her, that’s your decision. But a word of advice. She brought you here. She can get rid of you just as easily. Divas, you know … Now take the money.”

His gesture, which he continued to do weekly, changed my life. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to afford to patronize shops with Ruby, buy a three-quarter-length seal coat on layaway, use Western Union to start sending money once a month to Miss Miller to slip to my mother, and still have enough left over to save twenty dollars a week. (I still abided by my mother’s wish that we have no actual contact. Wiring money through Western Union also protected my privacy. I didn’t want my father to come looking for me.) Charlie paid Princess Tai a lot more than either the Chinese Dancing Sweethearts or me. Ruby earned five hundred dollars a week at a time when office workers were lucky to make forty. Eddie would have gone out of his gourd if he’d caught wind of that. But he didn’t hear, because I didn’t tell Helen. As for the news that Ruby had brought me here and had control over me … I couldn’t exactly hold my nose in the air and act all hoity-toity, because my intention had been to use her too. But something unexpected happened along the way. Ruby courted me with her generosity, her humor, and her giddiness. She reminded me how to have fun. She forced me to remember why we’d liked each other in the first place. The makeup job was still pretty unpleasant from my perspective, but what’s ten minutes out of twenty-four hours for one hundred and fifty bucks a week? Besides, she’d tell jokes and keep me amused while I dabbed, dabbed, dabbed, and tried not to stare at what was in front of my face. And she continued to help me in other ways, like insisting I be part of this interview.

The reporter and photographer remained outside the dressing room while Ruby slipped into a kimono. I let the men in and watched as they tried to keep their eyeballs in their sockets. Sitting before them was a stunningly beautiful woman with just the thinnest silk between them and her naked flesh. Funny, isn’t it? Men see us every day. They see us in our clothes every day. We’re naked under our clothes every day. But present them with a different picture—a girl wearing nothing beneath her kimono—and they can think about only one thing. And in her own way, Ruby was shrewd. As soon as she came offstage, she covered up. She never paraded around so the guys in the band could see her, but, boy, did they ever try. All anyone actually
saw
was her twitching derriere as she ducked through the velvet curtain at the end of her act.

“I started out using fans, just like Sally Rand taught me,” Ruby chirred. “But using fans is hard work. Each one weighs twenty-five pounds and—”

“They keep more of you covered,” the reporter finished for her, his voice predictably gruff.

“Do I look like I could heft all that weight?” Ruby asked, oblivious to his tone. “I still dance with the fans, but I much prefer my bubble.”

“What advice would you give to our female readers to attract a man?”

“A woman should always look elegant,” she answered.

“What’s the fun in that?” he asked.

“Not everything is about fun.” A tiny frown crinkled the space between her eyebrows. When I first met her, she’d said she wanted glitter in her life. Since then, she’d figured out not only how to have glitter but also how to “sell” glitter and glamour to an audience. “Grace, the other performers, and I do all sorts of things to help our community,” she continued. “We’ve performed at charity shows in Santa Cruz, Salinas, and San Jose to benefit the Rice Bowl Campaign. None of us Chinese like what the Japanese are doing in China.” This was her story, and she was sticking to it! “And once a year, before the
big game, Cal alumni rent the Forbidden City for a night to raise funds. Charlie stacks five hundred people in here. We’ve got the Cal band and Cal glee club, but we give them our regular show too. Go Cal!”

The reporter scribbled all this in his notebook. Then he glanced up, serious. “Our readers would like to know if you’re truly naked behind your bubble.”

Ruby’s laugh filled the room like tinkling crystals. “That’s for me to know and you to find out! You boys need to go to your table now. The other girls have to get ready and”—she leaned forward and caressed the reporter’s knee with a red-lacquered fingernail—“so do I.”

After the show, the boys from the Associated Press wanted to see what we did next.

“I’m not the kind of girl who
needs
to be taken to expensive joints, but I sure like them,” Ruby confessed.

Actually, if Ruby and I had been alone, we probably would have gone somewhere for noodles. Or, if we wanted to spend a little more money, we would have joined up with a group of show kids to go to other clubs.

“What’s happening tonight at Bimbo’s 365?” someone might ask.

“Shall we go to Finocchio’s? Or would you prefer the Italian Village?”

“How about Andy Pond’s Breakfast Club on Kearny? We can eat bacon and eggs and listen to jazz at the same time.”

“If we’re having breakfast, let’s go to Coffee Dan’s.” (The café was open twenty-four hours a day, and you could get a shot of bourbon in your cup of joe.)

Or the kids at the Sky Room might throw a party, and we’d all go to that. (No one brewed bad blood about which club was more popular or classier.) Some nights everyone came over to Ruby’s and my apartment. Oh, maybe fifty people in the living room, sometimes more. I played an upright piano while others sang. Pretty soon, the guys were bringing their ukuleles and their guitars. Or we’d put on a record and dance until we couldn’t breathe.

We took the newspaper boys to an all-night coffee shop that served Chinese dishes and American food like custard pie.

“What about stage-door Johnnies?” the reporter asked Ruby as the photographer snapped a few more shots. “Are they a nuisance?”

Ruby laughed so long that I stepped in.

“You’ve got it wrong, mister,” I said. “They bring her flowers and chocolates. They write fan letters—”

“And love letters,” Ruby added. “Those boys are so sweet. I treasure them all.”

Yes, Princess Tai had plenty of beaus, and she enjoyed their company. All except for one fella named Ray Boiler, an Occidental short-order cook twice her age, from Visalia, who visited once a month after he received his paycheck. “Something isn’t right about him,” she told me one night after he’d followed us home. “He gives me a bad feeling even when he smiles at me. Especially when he smiles at me!” But, as she pointed out, we worked in a nightclub, where the mix of men like Ray Boiler, booze, and scantily clad women was inherently dangerous. She didn’t tell any of that to the Associated Press fellas. She just smiled and laughed and flirted. That’s what made her Princess Tai.

N
OTHING WITH
R
UBY
would have worked if things hadn’t gone well between Joe and me. He didn’t come back to the club for a month after my return to San Francisco. By then, I’d stopped searching for him in the audience. I was on my way to have drinks between shows with a couple of cattle brokers from Omaha when I bumped into him. He blushed, sheepish. No wonder. The last time I’d seen him, I’d seen
a lot
of him. Only I could put that behind us. I gave him a friendly hug, and he instantly began to loosen up. He pulled out a chair and I sat down. (So much for the cattle brokers.) He talked at me a mile a minute—still nervous, of course. I looked great … I was still the best dancer in the line … He’d missed me … He had so much he wanted to tell me … When his speech finally slowed and he gave me that lopsided grin I so loved, I was relieved. It seemed he could forget that
embarrassing night, if I could, and be the person he’d always been. When he invited me to lunch, I readily accepted.

The following Sunday, he took me to a little Italian place in North Beach. “I hope we can take walks together, like we used to,” he told me, and we did. “We’ll talk, like we used to,” he said, and we did. He said he was sorry that I’d seen him making love to Ruby, because I was “just a kid” and shouldn’t have had to see something like that. I reminded him that on Treasure Island he’d told me I was too young for him; now I saw that he was too young for
me
. He laughed and laughed. He apologized for running out that night instead of sticking around and explaining things to me. “Water under the bridge,” I said, and we made it so.

He started coming to the club on weekends regularly again, and we fell into a pattern—one almost identical to what we’d followed on Treasure Island: I kept Joe amused, while Ruby—naked—entertained other men. He still liked her, and she kept him on a string—meeting with him sometimes before the club opened, dancing close to his table, even having an after-hours meal with him on occasion. They were strangely locked together, but from day one I’d been the third corner of the triangle. Many nights, as soon as I finished putting on my makeup and applying Ruby’s powder, I’d go out front and talk to him. Or later—after the last show—I’d quickly change and go sit with him. But I wasn’t some stray pup nosing around for attention anymore. We spent time together because we liked each other’s company. I often told him things I’d never tell the girls, and he confided in me. He’d graduated the previous year and was now at Boalt Hall at Cal, studying law. His dad had offered him a job once he passed the bar, but Joe wasn’t sure he wanted to go back to Illinois or be a lawyer. Flying was still his passion, he said, and he’d talked to the folks at Pan American to see what it would take to fly a Clipper ship. Mainly, though, I listened when he got wistful about Ruby.