China Dolls (29 page)

He laughed. “Don’t worry about a thing. You’ll be plenty decent.”

He asked Betty to escort us to Ruby’s dressing room. We went back outside and strolled down a path lined with perfectly cut box hedges. When Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman walked past us, I practically had to pinch myself. Ruby fluttered her eyelids at me, delighted. It felt like we’d arrived in heaven. Joe beamed too. He’d have plenty of stories to tell when he returned to Minter Field.

The dressing room was small but elegant. Betty pointed to a carton that protected a pair of flawless gardenias for Ruby to wear. Then Betty whisked us to Hair and Makeup, and we watched as folks painted Ruby’s face and squeezed a wig over her head with hair that came down past her rear end.

“They must be going for a Godiva look,” Ruby commented.

Betty shrugged. Apparently no one had bothered to inform her.

“We’ll have the body makeup girl take care of you in your dressing room,” Betty said. “Can you two make it back by yourselves? I’ve arranged for someone to take Joe on a tour of the studio.”

Joe docilely allowed himself to be led away by Betty, and Ruby and I wandered back to her dressing room. A few minutes later, the makeup girl arrived, and I showed her how Ruby liked her powder applied. After the girl left, I helped Ruby into a silk robe and pinned the gardenias over her left ear. Then we stood—because Ruby didn’t want to smudge her makeup—and waited. Finally, we heard a knock
at the door. I answered it to find Betty nervously scrutinizing her clipboard. Two men in dark suits with gray felt fedoras pulled low over their foreheads loomed behind her. Mr. Butler had tagged along too.

“These men are from the FBI. They’re searching for …” Betty glanced at her clipboard then back at me. “They’re calling her Kimiko Fukutomi.”

The men impatiently pushed Betty aside. One of them put his meaty palm on the door and shoved it open against my pathetic resistance. What did I think holding it closed would accomplish? That I’d give Ruby a chance to climb out the window in her robe? Where could she possibly have escaped to?

The FBI agents planted themselves in the middle of the room, their legs spread to hold them solidly to the ground, their fists clasped in front of their privates. Betty and Mr. Butler crowded into the dressing room too and positioned themselves a little to the side. Ruby’s gardenias, warmed by the presence of so many bodies, sent forth their stiflingly sweet scent.

“Are you Kimiko Fukutomi?” the taller of the two men asked.

Ruby stared ahead, her eyes seeing nothing. I held my breath as terror welled inside me.

“Ma’am?”

Ruby blinked and looked at the man. “I’m Ruby Tom,” she answered, her voice even. “My professional name is Princess Tai.”

The man pulled a telegram from his inside breast pocket. He glanced at it and then back at Ruby. “We received word from San Francisco yesterday. It says here you’re Japanese. My partner and I did a little digging and, ma’am, your family—”

With that, Ruby’s composure crumbled.
Caught, caught, caught
.

He turned his attention to me. “What about you, miss? Are you a Jap too?”

I shook my head no. Actually, my whole body shook. He was more than a foot taller than I was, so just his physical presence was menacing.

“Were you aware she’s a Jap?”

I opened my mouth.

“No!” Ruby’s voice was knife sharp. “Miss Lee is not Japanese. That will be easy to prove. And she doesn’t know anything about me.” She shifted her focus to me. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I’m sorry for any trouble that you might be in because of me—”

“Hey, we can’t have any Japs in our film,” Mr. Butler cut in, stating what must have been to him the most important issue.

“Kimiko Fukutomi won’t be in any films,” the second agent added. “Not where she’s going.”

“You need to come with us.” The first man rolled his neck as though he had a pinched nerve.

“May I put on some clothes first?” Ruby asked in a small voice.

“Five minutes. We’ll be right outside the door.”

As soon as the two men, Mr. Butler, and Betty left and the door closed behind them, Ruby dropped her robe. I needed to thank her for protecting me, but we had so little time. I hurried to rub off as much makeup as I could.

“Someone ratted me out.” The words came out of Ruby’s mouth, but somehow they didn’t sound as though they’d emanated from her. She stood there like a child as I lifted her left foot and put it through the leg opening of her step-ins. I repeated this action with her right foot and then pulled the fabric up her legs.

“Hey, fellas, what’s the dope?” A cheerful voice came through the walls.

“Joe …” Ruby breathed.

From outside the dressing room we began to hear the mumbling of three men in intense conversation. I slipped Ruby’s dress over her head and zipped up the back. Already she moved like an echo.

“Draw your own conclusions, pal” came through loud and clear. The door opened. “It’s your headache.”

Joe looked like a kid who’d had his ball taken from him. No. That’s wrong. He looked more like Freddie Thompson back in Plain
City when the kids teased him after they discovered I was wearing his hand-me-downs—hurt and more than a little disgusted. If an eight-year-old can feel like that, imagine those emotions multiplied in a young man, who’s been trained to kill someone of your race and has not only slept with you but proposed to you as well.

“Is it true?” The words seemed to hitch in his throat.

“I’m not ashamed of who I am,” Ruby stated flatly.

“You aren’t?” he asked. “Then why didn’t you tell me you’re Japanese?”

“You wanted a China doll. I gave you a China doll,” Ruby said with a toss of her head.

I knew she was trying to protect herself from her own emotions and failures, as well as Joe’s reaction, but the impact of her mocking words on him was brutal. Color sped up his neck—anger … and humiliation. He clenched and unclenched his fists until his knuckles shone like ivory. He suddenly looked like he did the day he almost got into the fight on Treasure Island—out of control. Everything that had happened to the country was focused into hate for one person—Ruby, the woman who’d led him on, lied to him, betrayed him, and made him a sucker. He drew back his arm. Without thinking, I jumped in front of Ruby. Joe’s fist hit me square in the jaw. I felt the familiar lift into the air, but Joe was a lot bigger and stronger than my father, so I was thrown up and back with tremendous force. I slammed against the wall. My rib cage cracked on a table edge on the way down. Searing pain shot through me when I hit the floor.

Ruby remained as beautiful and still as a statue—the long hair of her wig trailing down her back, her skin as pale as the gardenia petals, her eyes set like stone. I whimpered in the corner, tentatively touching the places where I hurt as I had so many times when my father beat me, but I wasn’t paralyzed by fear. I’d learned how to act in a crisis, and I felt all my senses sharpen to be ready for what might happen next.

Joe’s eyes widened with the horror of what he’d done. He looked frantically from me to Ruby and then back at me again. He shook his
head. No to hitting me? No to Ruby? He loosened his fists, tightened them again when his eyes met Ruby’s, and then he bolted from the room.

Ruby rushed to my side. “I can’t believe you did that for me. Are you all right?”

I bit my lips to hold back the pain. Ruby helped me into a chair then kneeled before me.

“We don’t have much time,” she whispered urgently.

I took a breath to speak and winced as my lungs pushed against my ribs.

“Go after him,” she implored as the FBI agents entered. “Please go after him.
Please …
He’s going to need someone …”

She squeezed my knees then rose to face the agents. I got up and lurched toward the door.

“Goodbye, Grace,” I heard her say.

“Goodbye, Ruby.” The words felt like dust in my mouth.

With my right arm cradling my throbbing left side, I limped down the pretty little pathway outside the dressing room. I found Joe next to a fountain, doubled over, his hands on his thighs, his whole body shaking.

“I was a prize sap.” He spat out the words, disgusted with himself. “I guess I had that coming.”

I was in such physical agony that it was hard for me to speak. “You aren’t a sap, and you didn’t deserve that.”

“Did you know?” He pulled himself up to face me. He sighed. “Of course you did. Helen too, I’ll bet. You three—”

“We begged her to tell you.”

He stared at me, weighing what I’d said. He didn’t apologize for hitting me, and he didn’t ask if I was in pain. He was so blindsided by Ruby’s lies—and mine too, I guess—that he wasn’t thinking straight. When he came to himself again he’d feel dreadful remorse. For now, though …

“A woman can tell a lie a mile long, and a man will believe it’s the truth.”

There was nothing I could say. Ruby had lied to him, and he
had
believed it. I’d kept her secret, knowing it would devastate him if he ever found out. I’d protected him and her. Now I was seeing the painful results.

He then made a crisp turn on his heel and strutted in the direction of the gate. Hurt radiated from his shoulders. I could tell that he
still
hadn’t registered that he’d hit me.

My jaw burned. It was going to swell if I didn’t get some ice on it quick. I’d also landed on some old injuries. I’d either fractured or broken a couple of ribs on my left side, so every breath burned like a hot poker twisting between my bones. When I got back to the dressing room, the two FBI agents were gone and so was Ruby, but David Butler was waiting for me. He held Ruby’s wig in his hands. The gardenias lay crumpled on the floor.

“I’ve got a scene to shoot, and I need an Oriental dancer,” he said. “Can you do it?”

“Absolutely!” I rubbed my jaw. It hurt like hell, and my side was killing me. Too much was happening for me to process my feelings—I was worried spitless about Ruby, sad for Joe, and sick with guilt that my opportunity had come at such a terrible price—but this was my chance. I had to embrace and accept it, didn’t I? “But we’d better hurry. I’m going to bruise up pretty soon.”

“Don’t worry about a thing,” he said, repeating what he’d told Ruby earlier. “This is Hollywood. We’ve got makeup for that, and with the right lighting I can make anyone look good.”

“I’m feeling pretty woozy too. Do you think I could have a couple of aspirin?”

“Aspirin? Betty will get you something a lot stronger than that.”

Mr. Butler handed me Ruby’s wig and robe, and sent me to Hair and Makeup. When I got there, I put in a quick call to Max Field, the agent Helen, Eddie, and I had used when we were in Los Angeles. He agreed to reschedule his day, come to Paramount, work out a quick contract, and watch the filming so he could book me elsewhere. I forced myself to push away thoughts of Ruby and Joe and handed
myself over to the nice ladies. They began by pulling apart my hairdo and then pinning the strands as close to my head as possible to fit the wig over my skull. When they were done with me, I was transformed. For the first time, I wasn’t just a China doll. I was an extraordinarily beautiful woman. Mr. Butler studied me and decided against new gardenias.

“You don’t need them,” he pronounced. “You’re exquisite as you are.”

With that compliment lifting my spirit, I found my mark. This was my dream, but working on a soundstage is not the same as working in a club. You don’t have an audience, wanting to be entertained. You don’t have the feeling that people are
with
you. You want to express yourself and sell the number, but you’re basically playing to an empty room—with cameras aimed at you—and it’s very, very difficult. No matter what I did, Mr. Butler didn’t like it. He asked me to use Ruby’s fans. She’d always said that what she did was a lot harder than it looked, and she was right. I was naked except for a patch, and I had to walk around for three choruses, which is a long time in music. At least one rib was broken or fractured, and those feathered fans were heavy. I was also scared silly, because I’d never done anything like that. I lost my balance and heard a couple of men on the crew snicker.

“Let’s try the bubble,” Mr. Butler suggested.

But it wasn’t easy to turn with the bubble and not have my fanny flash in front of the camera. I heard “Cut! Cut! Cut!” too many times to count. I was humiliated and ashamed of my poor performance.

“Do you have anything else?” Mr. Butler asked in frustration.

“I might,” I said. “Give me ten minutes and I’ll come up with something that will work with your music. I can show your audience the world,” I promised.

I went to a corner of the soundstage and began to count in my head.
One, two, three, four. Five, six, seven, eight
. Mr. Butler had just made his first Road picture, which probably meant he wanted something “exotic,” so I took hand gestures from Siamese and Burmese dance routines I’d encountered at the exposition on Treasure Island,
hula I’d learned from Ruby, and bits of Chinese opera movements I’d seen with Monroe, and then brought them into ballroom styling. When I showed the dance to Mr. Butler, he said, “Perfect! I love it! Let’s shoot it!”

Someone slapped some very long false fingernails on me, powdered me for shine, and blotted my lipstick. Since I needed a last-minute costume, they tied me into a sarong like Dorothy Lamour and had me take off my shoes so I could dance barefoot. I performed the routine several times as Deanna Durbin and another actor wisecracked their way through a scene in the foreground.

I was going to be a motion-picture star.

RUBY