Songs of Willow Frost

by Jamie Ford

  William nodded but didn’t understand until he glanced up and saw that the balcony was filled with colored boys and a few Indian kids like Sunny. There must have been a separate entrance in the alley. Am I colored? William wondered. And if so, what color am I? They shared the popcorn and he sat lower, sinking into the purple velvet.

  As the footlights dimmed and the plush curtains were drawn, a player piano came to life, accompanying black-and-white cartoons with Betty Boop and Barnacle Bill. William knew that, for the little boys, this was the best part. Some would barely make it through the previews, or the Movietone Follies. They’d end up sleeping through most of the feature film, dreaming in Technicolor.

  When the Follies reel finally began, William managed to sing along with the rest, to musical numbers by Jackie Cooper and the Lane Sisters, and he laughed at the antics of Stepin Fetchit, who had everyone in stitches. He laughed even harder than the kids in the balcony. But silence swept the audience as a new performer crooned “Dream a Little Dream of Me”—staring wistfully into the camera. At first William thought, She looks like Myrna Loy in The Black Watch. But she wasn’t just wearing makeup, she was Chinese like Anna May Wong, the only Oriental star he’d ever seen. Her distinctive looks and honeyed voice drew wolf whistles from the older boys, which drew reprimands from Sister Briganti, who cursed in Latin and Italian. But as William stared at the flickering screen, he was stunned silent, mouth agape, popcorn spilling. The singer was introduced as Willow Frost—a stage name, William almost said out loud, it had to be. And best of all, Willow and Stepin and a host of Movietone performers would be appearing LIVE AT A THEATRE NEAR YOU, in VANCOUVER, PORTLAND, SPOKANE, and SEATTLE. Tickets available NOW! GET ’EM BEFORE THEY’RE ALL SOLD OUT!

  Sunny elbowed William and said, “Boy, I’d do anything to see that show.”

  “I … have to go” was all William could manage to say, still staring at the afterimage on the dark screen while listening to the opening score of Cimarron, which sounded farther and farther away, like Oklahoma.

  “Keep on wishing, Willie.”

  Maybe it was his imagination. Or perhaps he was daydreaming once again. But William knew he had to meet her in person, because he had once known her by another name—he was sure of it. With his next-door neighbors in Chinatown, she went by Liu Song, but he’d simply called her Ah-ma. He had to say those words again. He had to know if she’d hear his voice—if she’d recognize him from five long years away.

  Because Willow Frost is a lot of things, William thought, a singer, a dancer, a movie star, but most of all, Willow Frost is my mother.

  Feeling Is Believing

  (1934)

  When the movie ended William clapped politely; everyone did—all but the little boys who startled awake, blinking and rubbing their eyes as the houselights flickered. Sunshine spilled in as ushers opened the double doors. William and Sunny followed the rest as they wandered out, two by two, huddling on a nearby streetcar platform, beneath a rare blue Seattle sky. The temperature had dropped, and clouds drifted over the Olympic Mountains on the horizon. William laughed as Sunny found an old cigarette butt and pretended to puff away, trying to blow smoke rings with his breath as older kids squeezed into the middle of the pack, hoping to find shelter from the wind that blew discarded leaflets and handbills down the street like tumbleweeds and thistledown.

  William could smell seaweed drying on the mudflats of Puget Sound, but he also detected the aroma of shellfish and broth. His mouth watered as he looked around, noticing Sister Briganti arguing with a bootblack across the street who was passing out newspapers to men who stood in line for free bread and soup. William counted at least eighty souls before the line reached the corner and snaked around the building. The silent men looked as though they were dressed for church, in wool suits and knit ties, but beneath their hats and scarves he could see that most hadn’t shaved in days, or weeks. I wonder if any of our fathers are in that line, William thought.

  “That was the best movie ever,” Sunny said, looking up at the lighted marquee, calling William’s attention away from Sister Briganti’s polite bickering.

  Aside from the prairie scenes with thousands of men on horseback, he’d been utterly bored with the movie, distracted by thoughts of Willow and his ah-ma. He struggled to remember her face, sleeping in the bathtub, or singing on the silver screen, fearful that he’d forget one or the other. His mother was like a ghost, like Sunny’s water-vapor smoke. William could see her clearly, but there was nothing to grasp.

  “It was okay, I guess,” he mumbled, then recalled that Sunny had once mentioned that he was part Cherokee, like some of the characters in the film. But how could he like a movie in which Irene Dunne called the Indians “dirty, filthy savages”? Then William vaguely remembered the movie’s hero, Yancey, defending the tribe and their stolen land.

  “I’m glad you found something you liked,” William told him and nodded absently as a piece of yellow paper stuck to his shoe. The handbill was for the Movietone Follies and featured pictures of Stepin, Willow, and some comedian, Asa Berger, with dates for their northwest road show, including Seattle appearances in two weeks. Since both of his coat pockets had holes in them, William folded the paper and tucked it into a rip in the lining of his coat. He remembered his mother’s cheerful voice, the sound of her heels on the wooden floor, the sweet-smelling perfume his ah-ma used to wear. His memories were suddenly present and alive, and if this were a dream, he mused, he didn’t want to wake up.

  William blinked when he heard a trolley bell ringing somewhere down the hill. He watched as Sister Briganti tromped back across the street, newspaper in hand. She slapped the cigarette butt from Sunny’s mouth and swore, shaking her head, glaring at the newspaper as though she were witnessing some mortal sin. She tore the newspaper in half again and again, then tossed the scraps into an overflowing garbage can. “Judas Priest!” she snapped. “First the unions, now the communists—I never thought things would get this ba—”

  William turned to follow Sister Briganti’s line of sight as she looked past him toward a paperhanger in tattered coveralls. The workman had unrolled a huge four-sheet poster of Willow and Stepin and was gluing the panels with wheat paste to the side of a boarded-up brick building. The two of them stared at the man and the giant advertisement featuring a Negro and a Chinese woman. Then William turned, his eyes met hers, and she looked away, as though embarrassed. She quickly clapped her hands and snapped her fingers, ordering everyone to line up single file to board the streetcar.

  On the ride home, William watched Seattle roll by, house by house, block by block. He ignored the vacant buildings and the squatters in the park. Instead he longed for his mother, he longed for Willow, as he noted all of the movie houses and storefront theaters along the way—counting sixteen before they left downtown proper. The marquees were so inviting, so majestic, so dazzlingly colorful, like gateways to magical worlds, where the flicker of a cinema projector had brought the spirit of his mother back to life. He was so captivated, so lost in the neon reverie, that he hardly noticed all the shantytowns, the billboards calling for strikes and protests, or the missionary kitchens in between, handing out free bread to bearded skeletons.

  “WELCOME HOME, BOYS,” the motorman said as he slowed to drop everyone off near the end of the North Seattle Interurban Line. He rang a brass bell, eliciting a palpable groan from nearly everyone onboard, drowning out the whir of the electric motor and the crackle of blue sparks that flickered from the trolley pole overhead.

  As William descended the muddy steps of the streetcar, he joined Sunny and the others and glumly walked past the convent and the sacred grotto, up the lane toward the five-story brick-clad villa of Sacred Heart. He trudged along with everyone else, knowing that the best part of his birthday was officially over. But something else, something new, was just beginning.

  “Back to the Villa on the Hilla,” Sunny joked.

  William didn’t laugh, still lost in his thoughts. In reality he
knew that his stately home was a kindly, loving, flower-adorned prison even though there were no guard towers—no barbed wire or barking dogs at Sacred Heart. Some of the older kids even lived on their own in quaint rows of Craftsman-style cottages with porch swings and hummingbird feeders. From atop Scottish Heights, he could smell the coal fires to the south, he could hear the boat horns and train whistles, see the city, appearing through the morning fog and disappearing in the moorish twilight. But on any given day, the panoramic views of Puget Sound and Lake Washington were William’s only access to Seattle. And if Sister Briganti has her way, he thought, it will be another year before we set foot outside of these wooded acres.

  As William walked past the hedgerow and white picket fence that was all that separated him from the outside world, from Willow, he couldn’t help but notice how scalable the palings were, even for the scrawniest of boys. But the gates were never locked. It was the words of parents that kept most of the orphans here—the silken bondage of a mother’s promise, “I’ll be back by Christmas, if you’re a good boy.” Those mythic words, laced with happy-ever-afters, became millstones come January, when ice deckled the windows and the new boys stopped counting the days and began crying themselves to sleep, once again. After five winters at Sacred Heart, he’d learned not to hope for Christmas miracles—at least for nothing greater than a pair of hand-me-down shoes, a book of catechism, and a stocking filled with peanuts and a ripe tangerine.

  As he approached the villa, the girls of Sacred Heart came pouring out of their cottages and barracks to greet them. They’d spent the afternoon decorating the common areas with crepe paper and hand-painted signs, and he could see (and smell) fresh angel food cakes cooling on the windowsills. The boys would do the same for them on July 15, when the girls all celebrated their collective birthday in honor of Mother Francesca Cabrini. The intrepid nun who founded the orphanage had once longed to serve a mission in the Orient. But she died somewhere in the Midwest, almost twenty years ago, long before William had even been born.

  Following them in a wheelchair was the one boy who’d been left behind. His name was Mark something, but everyone called him Marco Polio, even though his matchstick legs had been malformed by rickets.

  Marco and the girls all wanted to know what the movie was like—many had never been to one. They wanted to know about everything out there.

  “Did you go to the Curiosity Shop at Colman Dock and see the jawbone of a whale?” a girl with long braids asked.

  “Did you see the window displays at Frederick and Nelson?” Marco chimed in, “Did you try a Frango milk shake?” The question drew excited oohs and aahs from the girls, who’d been given Frangos last year from a kindly docent who always came bearing chocolate and flowers.

  “What about the totem pole in Pioneer Square?” a girl in the back asked while waving her hand, prompting Sunny to frown and retell the story of the stolen icon, though no one cared to listen.

  William noticed that everyone continued asking questions except for Charlotte, who stood on the porch of her cottage and held on to the banister. In her other hand was a white cane she’d been given by the Seattle Lions Club. She cocked her head toward the setting sun, her ear turned to the chatter of boys and girls mingling on the wet, grassy courtyard.

  “I wish I could have been there,” she said, still looking at the sun as William approached, her freckled cheeks turning pink in the cool breeze. “I’d do anything to get out of this place—to feel the city up close.”

  William stared at the faded blue of her milky eyes as her hair swept back and forth. “There was a player piano that worked like magic and a huge Wurlitzer organ—the music was tops,” he said. “You’d have liked it.”

  He watched as she smiled and nodded in agreement. How Charlotte always recognized him was something of a mystery. He wore shoes virtually identical to those of the other boys, bathed with the same soap, but perhaps something about his walk, his gait, gave him away. William had even tried sneaking up on her once in the grotto, but she called his name before he got close. Maybe it was because the other boys were so hesitant—her damaged eyes spooked most of them. Or maybe it was because the other boys rarely spoke to her at all.

  “I brought you something.”

  She turned to the sound of his voice, holding out her hand as he placed a bag of fresh saltwater taffy in her grasp, folding her fingers around it. She crinkled the bag, brought it to her nose. “Peppermint,” she said.

  William smiled and nodded. “It’s your favorite.” He’d played jingles with the other boys last week and had won enough pennies to buy her a small taste of the outside world.

  “Happy birthday,” she said, shrugging. “You know what I mean …”

  “I don’t even remember when my real birthday is anymore,” William confessed, remembering a party with his mother, long ago. “Sister Briganti won’t tell—she says that when I’m adopted, I’ll want to celebrate that day as my new birthday.”

  “You don’t sound like you believe her,” Charlotte said. “She’s a holy vessel, she’s not supposed to lie.” Charlotte unwrapped a piece of taffy and offered it to him.

  He thanked her and popped it into his mouth, tasting the sweet, chewy mint, feeling guilty for having already eaten three pieces in a fit of nervous tension on the ride back from Second Avenue. He’d spent the last few years resigned to the fact that he would never be adopted. A white family would never have me, William almost said. And it’s doubtful that a Chinese family would adopt a child so unlucky. No one is coming for me.

  “How was your birthday visit with Mother Angelini?” Charlotte blinked as she asked him.

  William looked up, noticing that the blue sky had turned into a mash of thick, gray rain clouds. “No letters,” he sighed, but Charlotte knew he wasn’t expecting one. “Though I did hear a story about my mother.”

  Neither of them spoke for a moment as a whistle blew from the steam plant next door. Charlotte paused, and he knew she was giving him an out—an opportunity to change the subject or to speak about something more pleasant.

  “She means well,” William said.

  Charlotte frowned wearily. “This year she told me how I lost my eyesight.” She shook her head slowly and tucked her hair behind each ear. “I always thought I’d been born this way, but Mother Angelini told me about how the nurses accidentally put fifty-one-percent silver nitrate into my eyes after my mother gave birth to me, instead of the normal one percent. They were trying to prevent some kind of illness, I guess, but instead they burned my eyes. But at least that explains why I dream of colors, and light, and tears. It’s weird to know that I saw the world once, if only for a few minutes, then shadows for a few years, before everything went dark. That also explains why I can never cry, no matter how sad I feel. Because my tear ducts were seared shut.”

  William knew that Charlotte and he had both been here for more than five years and both lived with similar expectations—that is to say, neither of them had any. They’d been pinned down with thumbscrews of truth, preferring the monotony of melancholy to the nauseating highs and lows of hope and inevitable disappointment.

  “Mother Angelini told me my mom was taken to a sanitarium—an asylum. She didn’t come out and say it, but I guess that’s where she’s supposed to have died.”

  Charlotte stopped chewing for a moment. For a girl without the benefit of eyesight, she was terribly perceptive.

  “But … you don’t believe her, do you?”

  How can I? William scratched his head and furrowed his brow. “I … I saw her today—well, not in person, but I saw someone at the movie—on the screen, that looked just like her,” he said. “I know how it sounds—totally crazy. I wanted to tell Sunny, anyone—even Sister Briganti. But no one would ever believe me.”

  “I believe you, William.”

  “How can you?”

  “Seeing isn’t believing. Feeling is believing.”

  She reached out and patted his coat, finding the space above hi
s heart, where the handbill was safely tucked away. “I feel you.”

  One Man’s Family

  (1934)

  Because it was still the boys’ birthday, the orphans were given the night off—no chores, no cleanup duty, nothing but free time in the parlor, where the Philco was tuned in to Amos ’n Andy on Portland’s KGW, instead of Father Coughlin’s show on CBS, which was Sister Briganti’s favorite. William thought it was nice (though mildly alarming) to hear their headmistress chortle and laugh as she listened to the show, instead of watching her frown and scowl, nodding as Father Coughlin railed against the communists and socialists, who he said were ruining the country and prolonging economic hardships. He watched as she sat back and closed her eyes, smiling, even though she had a copy of Coughlin’s newspaper, Social Justice, folded in her lap. On the table next to her sat two empty bottles of Rainier beer. Farewell, Prohibition, William thought. Even though during the Noble Experiment, everyone knew she had a secret stash that she enjoyed on special occasions. Seattle was always a foggy, rainy city, but during the temperance movement the county had remained especially wet.

  Wind and rain pelted the windows as William sat on the wooden floor with Charlotte, working on a simple jigsaw puzzle of the Holy Family. He listened to the comforting crackle and pop of the fireplace and the soft tumblers of dice as other kids played Parcheesi. Charlotte had found the all-important edge pieces and had successfully completed the border, leaving William to work his way into the center. Looking at the stained-glass scene depicted on the box top, he could already tell that they were missing a handful of important pieces. But he kept working anyway, toward an incomplete picture. As he stared at the empty space he allowed himself to wonder—Why did you leave me? Why didn’t you write? The lonely years had been easier to endure when he’d imagined his mother dead. He hurt and he grieved, but that sorrow was less heartbreaking than the thought of his ah-ma alive and well, leaving him behind like a stray dog.