China Dolls Read online

  Tim got dressed and drove me back to my apartment, even though I said it was unnecessary. He offered to come up and sit with me until I felt better. I said no. He asked if he could bring me anything. I said no to that too.

  I told Grace what I’d done, and she was about as shocked as a country-bumpkin virgin could be.

  “At least he’s nice,” she said, acting like she knew all about it. “That’s how it’s supposed to be, right? You do it with someone nice? Are you going to see him again?”

  “We both have work tomorrow, so I guess so.”

  But it was hard making hot fudge sundaes with Tim coming up to me and whispering, “Are we square? I’m so sorry you’re taking it this way. Can we go out later and talk about it? Oh, Helen, I thought you enjoyed it.”

  I wanted to stick it out, but I quit at the end of my shift. I had lasted as a sundae-maker exactly one week and a day.

  “Okay,” Grace said, “we’ll find other jobs.”

  “You don’t have to leave—”

  “Of course I do! We’re sticking together!”

  We went to Sam Yuen in Chinatown that night. When the owner made his customary offer of employment, Grace and I accepted. If my father saw me, he would have died from shame.

  A COUPLE OF days later, Eddie banged on Grace’s and my door. When I let him in, he threw the new issue of Life magazine on the coffee table. The cover showed a pair of long legs that went up, up, up until they reached a giant bubble that covered … well, what it covered was left to the imagination. The woman’s face was obscured—turned alluringly away from the camera lens—but the headline billed her as PRINCESS TAI—STAR OF SAN FRANCISCO’S HOT SPOT—THE FORBIDDEN CITY. The three of us squeezed together on the love seat and pored over the pages, looking first at the photographs.

  “Hey! Irene and Jack!” Eddie’s breath told me he’d been drinking. “I bet she’s learned all his tricks by now.”

  “Seems like Ida’s put on a few pounds,” I observed.

  “Charlie and Bob Hope?” Grace exclaimed.

  The writer labeled Princess Tai the world’s only Chinese bubble dancer. “She’s straight from China,” Eddie read, his words slurring. “When she moves that pale orb just so, visitors imagine they can see all the way to China. They don’t, but the looking sure is fun.”

  “Everyone reads Life,” Grace said, “which means everyone is going to see this, which means everyone is going to visit the Forbidden City, which means Charlie’s troubles are over—”

  “Do you think we could go back?” I asked, hopeful.

  But Eddie was like a frog at the bottom of a well, limited in his perspective and seeing only what he wanted to see. “Max is working on things,” he said. “He’ll get us something.”

  But even with all the holiday shows, Max couldn’t get us a single booking. No one wanted Chinese faces ruining their holiday tableaux.

  ON CHRISTMAS DAY, the weather was perfect—warm and sunny—but little cheer brightened Grace’s and my room. We had a tree eighteen inches high, which we’d decorated with homemade popcorn strings, a box of miniature red balls the size of holly berries, and the cheapest tinsel we could buy. Eddie arrived with a pot of winter melon soup he’d thrown together on his burner. I gave Grace some rouge; she gave me a hat she’d knitted. I gave Eddie a necktie; Grace gave him a scarf she’d knitted. Eddie gave Grace and me a one-pound box of See’s Candies to share.

  It all felt bleak, but not as bleak as New Year’s Eve. Eddie made plans of his own, so Grace and I got dressed up and spent the evening walking along Hollywood Boulevard. We saw happy couples swirling into the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel for a night of dancing, drinking, and entertainment. We saw revelers weaving along the sidewalks. When midnight came, we made rosy predictions for the new year. After that, we had nothing to do but go back to the boardinghouse. When we turned onto Ivar, we came upon two policemen roughing up a man in evening dress—Eddie—while another ran down the street.

  “This may be New Year’s Eve, but we won’t stand for any basketeers on our beat,” a cop the size of an ox growled as he shoved Eddie against a fence.

  Eddie started to say something, but the second cop cut him off. “You’ll keep your yap buttoned if you know what’s good for you.” Then he balled his fist and slammed it into Eddie’s stomach. Eddie doubled over and fell to the ground.

  “Brownie!”

  “Fairy!”

  I rushed forward, kneeled next to Eddie, searched his face, and then turned to glare up at the cops.

  “What are you doing?” I demanded. “Who do you think you are?”

  The ox smirked at us. “And who do you think you are? A pair of buttered beards?”

  Grace looked thoroughly confused—like the cop was speaking in a foreign tongue.

  “They’re the anchors around my neck,” Eddie moaned from the ground. Then, from somewhere deep within him, he managed to chuckle.

  “He’s with us,” I said. “He had too much to drink, and we got separated. New Year’s …”

  The cops hassled us a bit more—talking way over Grace’s head—before finally letting us go. Grace and I helped Eddie to his feet. We each took one of his arms and proceeded up Ivar to where we lived. I went through Eddie’s pockets, found his key, and opened his door.

  “Helen, you sure saved my bacon,” he mumbled, thankful, as we laid him on his bed.

  I left his key on the nightstand.

  When Grace and I got to our room, I was scared and mad. “How dare they talk to Eddie like that! And did you see the way that one cop slugged him! We should report him.”

  “How would we go about reporting him? And what was that all about anyway? What’s a basketeer?”

  I cleared my throat and said what needed to be said. “Eddie doesn’t like girls.”

  Grace shook her head, confounded.

  “You know what I mean,” I said. “He’s a momma’s boy.”

  Grace still didn’t get it.

  “He’s swishy,” I explained. “A fruit. A lavender.” I used American slang, hoping it might help her catch on.

  Grace looked like her eyes were going to pop out of her head and hop down Hollywood Boulevard, as Ruby might say, but that doesn’t mean she believed me. She listed the proof I was wrong: “He went out with the ponies at the Forbidden City. He danced with our female customers. He has you as his partner. He kisses us in our routine.”

  “He’s the Chinese Fred Astaire, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t a basketeer.”

  “What is that anyway?”

  I sighed. “A basketeer is a man who likes to stare at other men’s … baskets. They like to look at the outline of—”

  Grace put up a hand to keep me from saying any more. “How do you know?”

  “I grew up in San Francisco. A city. Maybe that’s why I always knew what Eddie was.” As an afterthought, I added, “Who doesn’t have a funny uncle?”

  “A funny uncle? We didn’t have anyone like that in Plain City.” Grace considered. “Well, maybe the man who ran the hamburger stand … Helen! Are you sure?”

  I nodded.

  “And you like Eddie anyway?”

  “He’s my friend and my dance partner. I respect him and he brought me here. And, Grace, remember all the things he’s done for you. He’s not any different than he was this morning when we woke up.”

  Grace scrunched her face like a hedgehog. Finally, she shook her shoulders, letting all the tension go. Then she gave me a frank stare. “Do you think all men in this business are basketeers or fairies or whatever? Because that would explain a lot.”

  THE FIRST TWO months of 1941 were desolate, unpromising, and endless. I felt forlorn and hopeless, taking the bus back and forth from Chinatown to work, going out for auditions that went nowhere, and worrying about money. Grace wasn’t a bowlful of peonies either. “How many plates of rice and pork chops can you serve when your dreams are limitless?” she asked one day.

  The longer the night lasts, the more capricious
our dreams will be.

  At the end of February, I was laid low by a stomach bug. I curled up on the love seat, slept, couldn’t go out. After a couple of days, Grace began to study me the way she used to scrutinize the ponies at the Forbidden City.

  “What?” I asked. “Why are you staring at me like that?”

  “Helen,” she said as she sat on the floor next to the love seat. “You know what’s wrong with you? You’re pregnant.”

  “Pregnant?”

  “Think about it. Have you had your period?”

  I made the calculations. I hadn’t had a visit from the little red sister in … I tallied my other symptoms … “Aiya!” I dug my nails into my palms, fighting the impulse to cry.

  Grace took me to a doctor, who confirmed the diagnosis. I was with child. A tide of emotions sucked me up, spinning and tossing me until I could barely think.

  “You’ve got to tell Tim,” Grace said, although I don’t know what she thought that would accomplish. Still, I allowed myself to be taken to C. C. Brown’s. Grace waited at the counter while Tim and I talked in the storage room.

  “I can’t marry you,” he said. “It’s against the law. I’m sorry.”

  “That’s all you have to say?”

  “Look, it’s clear you had experience in this. I hate to say it out loud, but I know I wasn’t your first.”

  I guess bailing and not taking responsibility—no matter what the circumstances—was to be expected from a lo fan.

  Eddie offered to beat up Tim, which gave us a good laugh. Eddie said he’d find someone who could “help” me, but my soul screamed at the idea.

  “I can’t have a back-alley abortion,” I said. “I just can’t.”

  Grace suggested I go to an unwed mothers’ home, have the baby, give it up for adoption, and then resume my life.

  “Even girls in Plain City had to do that sometimes,” she said.

  “But did you have half-breeds back there?” I asked. Grace’s eyes widened as that sank in. “The baby’s going to be a mongrel. Half and half.” Just saying the words made me sick to my stomach.

  “What will it look like?” Grace inquired, horribly boorish.

  “I have no idea. Ugly?”

  Grace and Eddie stayed with me. They gave me tissues when I cried. They brought me soup and soda crackers. Despair paralyzed me. I couldn’t have an abortion. I couldn’t give away the baby. And I couldn’t go home to the compound with an illegitimate half-breed. When Grace went to work, I unwrapped the framed photo that was folded inside the sweater I’d tucked in the middle drawer on my first day here and took it back to the love seat. I stretched out with my feet on the armrest and the photo propped on my stomach and resting against my thighs. I was alone and scared, but deep inside I felt life—a tiny dot, scratching, grating, growing, needing me, needing love. I enveloped that tiny dot in layers of imaginary wool, straightened my shoulders, and took a deep breath. I knew what I could do. I just needed my friends to go along with it.

  A WEEK LATER, the three of us went to the courthouse so Eddie and I could get married. I wore a nice dress. Eddie looked suave in his fawn-colored sports jacket and chestnut-brown wool trousers. Grace was our witness. The ceremony was over in five minutes. When we got back to Grace’s and my apartment, Eddie sat next to me on the love seat. My tiny bouquet lay on the cushion between us. None of us had much to say. It wasn’t exactly wedding bells and tulle. Eddie was helping me out of a jam, and I could be a cover for his “interests.”

  Finally, he slapped his thighs. “I guess it’s time for me to go.” He stood. “We don’t want to push you out, Grace. I’ll sleep in my apartment for now.”

  “I wish this were more joyous for you, Helen,” Grace said once Eddie closed the door behind him.

  I jutted my chin. “It’s all right.”

  “When you’re thirty,” she went on glumly, “he’s going to be nearing fifty. When you’re fifty, he’s going to be—”

  “My baba’s a lot older than my mama. That’s how it’s supposed to be—”

  “In the Chinese tradition,” Grace finished for me. Then, “It’s not even his child.”

  “That doesn’t matter to me.”

  “Won’t your parents figure out the baby is”—she struggled for a polite way to say what was impolite in any circumstance—“half and half? Your father has an eye for these things.”

  “Maybe he’ll just see a grandson.”

  LITTLE CHANGED IN our lives. I wrote to Mama and Baba about my marriage; two weeks later, a boxed set of Canton ware with twelve place settings was delivered to our door. I let a proper interval elapse before I sent a telegram announcing my pregnancy; in the return mail I received from my mother a crisp twenty-dollar bill to use to buy maternity smocks and a note advising me to suck on salted preserved plums to settle any morning sickness I might experience.

  Eddie and Grace switched rooms, but we still ate our meals together. Eddie went out for auditions and drank alone. After the lunch shift at Sam Yuen, I’d walk to the Kong Chow Temple to pray, make offerings, and beg for a son.

  “But girls are so adorable!” Grace squawked.

  “Every Chinese woman wants a son,” I explained. “What is a daughter but a disappointment?”

  “You don’t mean that,” Grace chided, but I meant exactly what I’d said.

  “A fact is a fact.” I sighed, trying to sound Chinese-practical when inside I was desperate. “A girl is a worthless branch on the family tree.”

  Grace listened and did her best to sympathize. “You should be happy. You have a husband. You’re going to have a baby. Can’t you see how lucky you are?”

  We made some halfhearted attempts to revive our spirits, but the heaviness of sorrow, anger, and failure had overwhelmed us. There were things I wanted to tell Grace, but I didn’t know where to begin. She wanted to run away again—I could tell—but she had nowhere to go. And Eddie? Perhaps we all wanted to go our separate ways, but as Grace put it one night—rather sullenly, I might add—“We’re locked together as so many entertainers get stuck with bandmates, dance partners, and costars.” As though we were nothing more than that.

  AT THE END of April, a telegram arrived for Eddie from Charlie Low, whose fortunes truly had changed thanks to that Life cover story. He offered the Chinese Dancing Sweethearts three hundred dollars a week as headliners. It was still nothing compared to what Bill Robinson earned, but three hundred dollars a week for our trio was huge money.

  “I’d give anything to return to San Francisco,” Grace implored. (Unspoken: “to get away from this misery.”)

  “We’ll never get in the movies if we go back to the Forbidden City,” Eddie said weakly.

  “Movies?” I scoffed, and I hoped this wasn’t a sign that I was going to turn into one of those wives who belittled her husband for not planting the rice in even rows. “We have a baby coming. I want to go home. If you won’t take the job at the Forbidden City, then we’ll work at a different club in Chinatown.”

  “If I have to work at a Chinese club, then I want it to be the best.” Eddie surrendered, bowing to my wishes.

  Two days later, we packed our bags, took a bus to Union Station, and boarded a train to Oakland. Naturally, I worried about how Baba would react to Eddie, but I was even more anxious about how my husband would fit into the household. When we reached my family compound, we walked together through the interior courtyard to the back building. I opened the door. Baba, wearing his usual suit, sat in an overstuffed chair, reading the Chinese newspaper. Mama perched on a window seat, her bound feet resting on a small footstool. A cluster of my nieces and nephews played jacks in a corner.

  “Helen’s here!” one of them squealed.

  Then they were all up and rushing at us from this and other rooms, proving the saying: The house is like a marketplace.

  “Let me see this husband,” Baba ordered, but fortunately his demand was lost in the whirlwind.

  “You’re not showing yet,” Mama said, barely
audible above the din.

  “Did you bring presents?” one of the children asked.

  “Did you meet any movie stars?” a sister-in-law inquired shyly.

  “Have you eaten yet?” Mama beckoned me farther into the room with the traditional greeting. “Does your husband drink tea?”

  “Will you name the baby after Ahpaw or Yeye?” my oldest brother’s little boy asked.

  “I doubt Helen will name her baby after your grandma or grandpa,” Washington informed his son. “Just like I didn’t name you after your yeye. Would you rather be called Jack or Do Keung?”

  “Jack,” the boy admitted and ran to his mother.

  Monroe drifted up to Grace. I heard him whisper, “No hard feelings, I hope.”

  What could she possibly say to that except “None whatsoever”?

  He picked up Grace’s suitcase, and we went to my room, where a cot had been wedged between my bed and the window.

  “The cot’s for Grace,” Monroe explained, “until she can find a place of her own.”

  With all the rooms in the compound they couldn’t find a spot for my friend?

  Everyone jammed around us to take stock of the new brother-in-law and inspect the girl who’d tagged along with the newlyweds.

  Washington took charge. “Take a few minutes to freshen up, then please return to the living room. Dinner will be served shortly.” Not much of a warm welcome—perfunctory at best—but I guess that was to be expected.

  After everyone filed out, Eddie went in the bathroom to change. When he came out, he sat on the bed, pulled out a flask, and took two deep swigs.

  “I don’t want to go out there by myself,” I said to him.

  He gave me a steady look and then swiped another gulp from the flask.

  “I’ll go with you,” Grace volunteered.

  But when we got to the living room, Washington gestured to the kitchen door. I expected this too, and automatically obeyed. Grace followed me into the kitchen, where Mama directed all the activity. My sisters-in-law chopped, peeled, and obediently obeyed orders, while little kids ran in and out between their legs. Mama asked me to set the table—in Chinese so Grace wouldn’t understand. Rude. But I guided Grace to the compound’s dining room, which had one long table to accommodate thirty relatives plus guests. We set the table. People found their seats, and dishes started to stream out of the kitchen: almond chicken, roast duck, scrambled eggs with char siu, minced pork with pickled vegetables, tofu with black mushrooms, steamed fish with ginger, scallions, and cilantro. It wasn’t a fancy meal—just home cooking—but the clatter of chopsticks on the sides of rice bowls, the noisy slurping of tea, and the spitting out of bones and inedible bits all made me very happy.