China Dolls (26 page)

We had no answers, so Helen resumed her story: “Lai Kai took me with him everywhere, even though it wasn’t traditional for me to be
out
like that. He said, ‘You have learned a lot from watching your father and brothers. You have a good business mind. You can help me with my clients. You can negotiate with contractors, gardeners, and artisans. You can balance our books and make sure we don’t waste anything on our projects.’ ”

“He sounds perfect,” Ruby said.

“He was. We were like a pair of chopsticks—always in harmony. I expected we would be like that forever, even if chaff-eating days should come upon us. We were that happy. But you know what they say.
Extreme joy begets sorrow
.”

They went back and forth, sharing their sadness. It felt like they were behind a wall and nothing I could say or do could reach them.

Helen told us about the invasion itself. Four years ago, Japanese troops landed on the shores of Hangchow Bay for the march to Nanking. They killed everyone and everything they saw. At the same time, other Japanese—supposedly living peacefully in China—launched
balloons in Shanghai and other cities around the country emblazoned with Chinese characters which read:
ONE MILLION JAPANESE TROOPS LAND NORTH OF HANGCHOW
.

“We heard the message was designed to ruin the morale of the Chinese troops,” Helen said. “But what if it was true?”

Separately, another Japanese force entered Soochow. Helen put a hand over her breast. “The scar you’ve seen. That didn’t happen in a car accident. It was made by a bayonet. I wish I’d died.”

“But you didn’t,” Ruby said. “You lived, and you got out.”

“They left me for dead. I stayed in the rice paddy until night, then I slipped from one paddy to the next, slithering through the muck like a water snake. I slept during the day. I lost track of time. I was a walking corpse. I had to get to Shanghai, where I’d be safe in the International Settlement. I don’t know how long it took to cover the seventy-five miles or so. I went to the American Embassy. At first they wouldn’t let me through the gate. You can imagine how I looked. But when I spoke, they heard I was an American.”

She was put on a boat and sent to her family in the south.

“A Chinese widow is at the mercy of her husband’s family,” Helen continued. “They can care for her, or they can throw her in the street. But my husband’s family was gone, so they couldn’t determine my future. My parents took me in and brought me back to San Francisco. I was shunned by everyone—girls I’d gone to school with and the women at the Chinese Telephone Exchange—because no one wanted my bad fate to leave dust on them. All because of the Japs. They did this to me.” She paused before adding, “That day, Grace, when you asked me to go upstairs with you into the Forbidden City, I went because I had nothing to lose. You rescued me from decades as a proper Chinese widow—”

“I had nothing to do with what happened to you, but how could you ever tolerate being around
me
?” Ruby asked. “You must see me and—”

“What about your family? Your father?” I cut in before Helen could respond to Ruby’s worries. This wasn’t about
her
.

“Since Lai Kai’s death, my life has been an abyss of suffering, filled with deep water and hot fire. I became a pariah even in my own family. They all ignored me. My parents, my brothers. Everyone except Monroe. Baba believes that a wife
belongs
to her husband, even in death.
Marrying out a daughter is like tossing out a cup of water
,” Helen repeated bitterly. “No life lay ahead of me, because no proper Chinese man would ever marry me. I truly was a worthless branch on the family tree and a reminder to all those in the compound that I’d survived while so many others had died. Baba said that, as a widow, my only purpose in life was to linger on before dying. Back then I thought—I
hoped
—there would be something I could do that would make him acknowledge my existence again. But after he found us that day outside the club … well, you saw what happened. He didn’t care enough about me to stop me from working there, although later he said I had no bottom to the depths I would go to embarrass and humiliate the family. I had disgraced myself as a widow, who would have been better off committing suicide. If I couldn’t do that, then I should live as a chaste widow. I slipped just once. I thought Tim would be a comfort. He wasn’t, and now I have Tommy.” Her eyes glistened wet again. “Eddie gave me a way to be a chaste widow for real.”

It was close to one in the morning when Helen got up to leave. Such sad things had happened to her, but it seemed she wouldn’t let them, or even this crisis, rupture our relationship. We had to go on.

“I’m sorry about your brother,” she said to Ruby.

“I’m sorry about your husband,” Ruby replied.

Helen gave Ruby a hug and departed, with barely a word to me. I wanted to talk to Ruby—about the terrible tragedy of everything Helen had experienced and the emotional consequences that had so affected our friend—but her face was set in grim determination.

“You’ll want me to move out,” she said. “I’ll start to pack—”

“No.” I shook my head, adamant.

“Grace, I’m the enemy now.” She stared at her feet. “The FBI has to come for me after what they think my parents … I don’t want you to get in trouble for harboring an outlaw.”

I reminded her of what she’d said to Helen earlier: she was innocent of what had happened to Helen, her husband, his family, and their retainers. And she was certainly innocent of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

“You’re not an outlaw. You’re my friend.”

Ruby looked up, unsure but hopeful.

I reflected for a moment before going on. “I’ve run away from a lot of things, so I’m telling you this from experience. Don’t do anything hasty. Let’s wait and see what unfolds.”

With that, Ruby sank to her knees and covered her face with her hands.

T
HREE DAYS AFTER
the bombing of Pearl Harbor, a China Clipper landed at Treasure Island pocked with bullet holes from a strafing at Wake Island. The day after that, San Francisco and the West Coast were named the Western Theater of Operations. Lieutenant General DeWitt was put in charge. The city became a citadel with antiaircraft guns, searchlights, and radar receivers dotting the tops of the hills overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge. China Clippers were given new duties: flying military personnel and medical supplies between San Francisco and Pearl Harbor. Treasure Island became a docking station for special blimps, which went on antisubmarine patrols along the coast. Over four hundred mines were placed in the waters around San Francisco. A special net was extended from the marina in San Francisco to Sausalito, which was opened and closed by a heavy-duty tugboat to allow friendly ships and subs in and out of the bay. Ruby and I made blackout curtains and tacked them over our windows. A midnight curfew was instituted, which cut into business not only at the Forbidden City but at every club and bar on all sides of the bay. Helen used one of her many proverbs to tell us what we all felt:
Every bush and tree looks like the enemy
.

Persons of Japanese descent living in the city were asked to turn in their flashlights, cameras, and knives from their kitchens—just in case. The Native Sons—and Daughters—of the Golden West launched
a campaign: “Get rid of the Japs! They’re all spies!” At the club, Charlie handed out pins that read
I AM CHINESE
to all his employees to wear. “I want everyone to be safe,” he explained. “If any of you is Japanese, who cares? You’re my glamour girls. You work for me.” He wasn’t the only club owner to take this approach. Most of the proprietors who had Japanese dancers and musicians decided to turn a blind eye for the time being, because there were customers to entertain and money to be made. The audience accepted those pins and that willful blindness. They applauded when Charlie started and ended each show with “Let’s nip the Nips.” As for Ruby, she performed—enticingly lit by her blue spotlight—laughed and joked with the boys, and generally kept up her Princess Tai façade, but she was inconsolable at home. She hadn’t heard from Yori, yet she resisted trying to track what had happened to him or her parents.

“The Japanese share something with the Chinese,” she announced one night. “My face is my family’s face. Whatever I do is a reflection on them. But whatever they do is a reflection on me too. If I disgrace myself, I also disgrace my family. If my family is disgraced, then I am also disgraced.”

I hated to see her so frightened and sad, but I didn’t know how to handle the shame and embarrassment she felt about her own family. Confused, I went back to my room and shut the door. After that, when I heard her crying, I stayed put. Perhaps I should have gone to her, but I didn’t want her to lose even more face by seeing me.

And Helen? She’d kept the secret of her husband a long time, and that story got sucked right back inside to where it had been hiding. “I don’t want to rehash all that,” she’d say if I tried to get her to talk about her husband. “You’re getting so nosy, you’re worse than Ida.” Helen brought Tommy to work, but she’d nearly have a fit every time she had to leave him to perform. In other words, she could shift from cool as a cucumber to jittery wreck in minutes. She wasn’t the only one to run cold and hot.

Passions were wild and immediate. A sense of we’re-going-to-get-them filled the air. Several Forbidden City busboys, janitors, dishwashers,
and second cooks, who’d long harbored bitterness against Japan for invading China, quit their jobs and enlisted. Not long after, more men in the kitchen received their greetings from Uncle Sam and were called up.

Ten days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Joe brought issues of
Time
and
Life
to our apartment. Here, at last, was information we believed we could trust, but, oh, brother. The magazines offered diagrams and photos titled “How to Tell Japs from the Chinese” and “How to Tell Your Friends from the Japs.”
Life
encouraged its readers to overcome their “distressing ignorance” on this “delicate question.” So … Chinese were tall, averaging five feet five, while Japs topped out at five two and a half. Chinese tended to put on weight to show they were prosperous, while Japs were seldom fat (except for sumo wrestlers). Chinese were not hairy, while Japs could grow mustaches. After decades of being labeled inscrutable, suddenly Chinese could be identified by their placid, kindly, and open expressions, while anyone—armed with the information provided in the magazines’ pages—should be able to spot a Jap by his dogmatic assertions, his insistence on pushing his arrogance in your face, and the way he could be counted on to laugh loudly at the wrong time.

“It says here that Chinese have parchment yellow complexions,” Ruby relayed to Joe, “while Japs have earthy yellow complexions. Japs also have flat noses, massive cheek and jawbones, and short faces.”

That stuff was nonsense, but to hear Ruby read those things aloud? It was chilling. I caught her eye. When I saw
nothing
there, I understood the absolute terror she must have been feeling. It all made me ill—the lie itself, the disquieting apprehension of what would happen if her secret was revealed, and the concern over what Joe—our
friend
, for heaven’s sake—would do if, and when, he found out.

As Christmas approached, the phone company ran ads—“Long distance helps unite the nation”—and promised to use every circuit and every operator on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I wanted Mom to know I was safe. I wanted to hear her say, “We’re fine too.
We love you, honey.” But a part of me was so terrified my father might answer the phone—what if he didn’t let me speak to her?—that I didn’t even try to put through a call: I hated myself for being such a coward, so some nights I, too, cried alone in my room.

At the end of January, the Justice Department announced that all strategic locations, which included San Francisco, needed to be cleared of enemy aliens. On February 2, registration would begin.

Ruby didn’t seem concerned. “I’m not an enemy alien. I was born here, and I’m an American citizen.”

I was scared for her.

GRACE

Dancing on the Edge

Our lives changed quickly in those first few months of the war. We still had air-raid sirens and blackouts, but the curfew was abolished and the immediate danger dissipated. San Francisco became a liberty port, and the whole city buzzed with activity. In Chinatown, the world rushed in. Servicemen moseyed up and down the streets, going from bar to bar. They jammed nightclubs. They spent money like there was no tomorrow, and for some maybe there wasn’t. No one wanted to stay home—although business at the Forbidden City went up and down, as it did in nightclubs across the nation, depending on news from the war front, whether in Europe or the Pacific. A writer for
Variety
called this phenomenon “escapology.” Clubs like the Forbidden City gave people a place to blow off steam, celebrate, share experiences and trade stories, and laugh away their staggering dread of what might come. Charlie had a hard time keeping ponies, because soldier boys—total strangers—married our girls on what seemed a lark. The fear of death is a powerful aphrodisiac.