China Dolls

by Lisa See

  My parents cut themselves off from their culture and replaced it with the reddest, whitest, and bluest. Some of my earliest memories were of playing with Velma, going to church on Sundays, and dancing at Miss Miller’s dance studio. My life changed when I started school. It didn’t happen all at once. It takes training to learn how to be a bigot. Velma dropped me and adopted Ilsa and Maude as her friends. Slowly I began to understand why they hung out together and why they always picked on me. The evil triplets were beyond beautiful with their blond hair and perfect skin, but they were just as much outsiders as I was even though they looked like they belonged. But how could they belong with their strange holidays—Pikkujoulu and Laskiaistiistai—and their stranger foods—Janssonin kiusaus and kylmäsavu stettu lohi? That Ilsa, for example, assumed she was going to marry Henry Billups. Didn’t she understand that the minute a young man dated someone like her, his parents would become agitated?

  Sometimes when I was waiting to go in for an audition, I’d run through the events of one day in particular. In seventh grade—a normal day, I’d thought at the time—I went to school and discovered Velma at the entrance, saying loud enough for everyone to hear, “Grace Lee thinks she’s gonna be a movie star.” Word circulated fast, and soon every kid who thought he or she was better than me, which is to say every kid from kindergarten all the way through twelfth grade, found the idea hilarious. Henry Billups pantomimed a buck-toothed, cross-eyed Chinese laundryman he’d seen in a movie … or maybe he was just making fun of my dad. Harold Jones followed me around for days, chanting, “Take a look in the mirror, take a look in the mirror, take a look in the mirror,” and laughing cruelly. After a while, the craze faded and my classmates fell back on the tried and true: “Chinky, chinky China. Chinky, chinky China.”

  The evil triplets left me feeling isolated and alone, but they weren’t as bad as my dad. He’d beaten my mom and me for as long as I could remember. But when I started to fill out he focused his anger entirely on yours truly, and Mom could do nothing to stop it. I never could tell what would set him off. Did I happen to glance out the laundry’s plate-glass window when a man walked by? Did I spend too much time talking to a customer when he came to pick up his shirts? Did I turn up the radio when the song “Love Walked In” came on? Was my sweater too tight? I don’t recall how young I was—young, though—when Mom told me another future lay ahead of me. “You’re going to leave here one day, Grace,” she’d said. “Look around church on Sunday. You’ll see that all the best people have left. For you to do that, you’ll need to work hard and save money.”

  So I did. I labored in the laundry, sorting, marking, folding, wrapping clothes in blue paper and tying the package with string, and waiting on customers. For this, my father paid me two dollars a week. “A lot of money,” he griped, “when I still have to wash, dry, starch, and iron everything.” At Miss Miller’s studio, I earned five cents for each student I taught in my Tuesday and Thursday classes for girls from the elementary grades. When my mom was laid low with the flu, I took over selling her rice wine out our back door. The customers liked me, so I pocketed large tips. In the summer, the Methodist church ladies hired Mom and me to make paper cups for two cents a dozen for the lemonade that would be sold at the Plain City Fair. It was boring, tedious work, but I saved and saved.

  I’d always planned on leaving, but that final beating was too much. Dad called me “a whore, just like your mother,” which was about the worst thing he could have said. He would have killed me too, if Mr. Tubbs hadn’t stopped by for a pint when he did and pulled my father off me. That night I waited until my parents were asleep and then packed a bag by the illumination of the laundry sign outside my window. Then I quietly made my way to the door that led down to the street. When I stepped onto the landing, I heard my mom’s voice.

  “Grace.”

  She sat on a riser halfway down the stairs. I was caught. My stomach clenched.

  “You’re leaving,” she said, rising to her feet. “I knew it was coming.”

  “How?”

  “I’m your mother. You’re the breath of my lungs and the beat of my heart. I know you very well.”

  “I can’t stay here—”

  “I understand. It’s not safe for you any longer.” She paused, then hurried on. “You should try San Francisco.” I swallowed. Miss Miller had given me that idea when she’d shown me the advertisement for the Golden Gate International Exposition. “It’s time you know the truth. I came to this country when I was five years old. I met your father in San Francisco when he was on his way to China to get a traditional wife. I was twenty-five—a spinster. I told him I wasn’t familiar with Chinese beliefs or customs. He took my hand anyway. We went to the lumber camp, where I had you the next year.”

  I loved her, and a part of me wanted to learn more, but she was talking too long when I needed to get going. I started again down the stairs. When I reached her, she grabbed my arm.

  “Wait!” she begged. “Oh, Grace, there’s so much I want to tell you.”

  I hesitated again. If Dad heard us …

  “Grace, always remember that a woman must take care of herself. Don’t depend on a man.” (Now, when I thought about what she’d said, I cursed myself for not listening or obeying.) “Never rely on a husband. You need to run away now, but I hope that one day you’ll find a way to stop running.”

  Tears had blurred my vision. My mother was not only letting me go but giving me instructions for a lifetime.

  “You’d better hurry,” she advised. With that, she reached into her pocket, pulled out a wad of bills neatly folded in half, and pressed it into my hand. “It’s seventy-two dollars.”

  Together with what I’d saved, I had one hundred and five dollars.

  “Come with me,” I said urgently.

  Tears filled my mother’s eyes. “I can’t.”

  “You’ll be free of him. We’ll have each other—”

  Mom shook her head. “It won’t work. You barely have enough money for yourself.” Her fingers caressed my wet cheek. “Now go, and don’t ever look back. Don’t write to me either. We don’t want him to find out where you’ve gone.” Then she walked up the stairs. She stopped at the door and turned to gaze down at me. “I barely remember my mother, but the last thing she said to me I’ll say to you. When fortune comes, do not enjoy all of it; when advantage comes, do not take all of it.” Then she entered the apartment and quietly shut the door.

  I hurried down the stairs and onto the deserted street, carrying my suitcase in one hand and cupping my sore ribs with the other. After a few minutes, I arrived at Miss Miller’s studio. It was the middle of the night, and her lights were off. I went upstairs, knocked, and waited. She wasn’t all that surprised to see me. I nervously stood with my back against the wall as she got dressed and grabbed her car keys. She drove us the twenty-four miles to Columbus. We sat together on a bench at the Trail-ways station until it was time for the first bus heading west to depart.

  “Take care of yourself,” she said. “Send me a postcard from the exposition.”

  We hugged, and she cried. She’d been so much more to me than just a dance teacher. She’d also trained me to focus, to think beyond Plain City, and to believe in myself. As the bus pulled out, I peered through the window, craning my neck, until she disappeared from sight. Then I turned in my seat and folded my hands tightly in my lap. I’d promised my mother I’d never look back, but I wouldn’t forget a single kindness or moment of love that she’d shown me. Her courage and sacrifice were what sustained and nourished me—first in San Francisco and now here in Los Angeles.

  I NEEDED TO be seen, so sometimes I tap-danced on the street outside the Brown Derby or Musso & Frank. A couple of men approached me to offer jobs in the movies. I realized right quick that they were just Hollywood smarties, trying to take advantage. I even had a couple of men saunter up to me and say things like “I have a Chrysler, cream-white, with red seats. Want to come to my place and read for me?” Ruby would h
ave jumped at the chance to go to some man’s bungalow in the hills, but not me.

  At auditions, I overheard girls talk about the classes they were taking—dance, acting, singing, and locution to erase traces of accents so that they’d sound Hollywood bland. I used up the money in my wallet on four hours of classes a day. I got locked out of my room because I didn’t pay the rent on time. I told the manager that if he let me in, then I could pay in full. I had the money so I shouldn’t have let things get that bad, right? Except I’d vowed I wouldn’t go into my envelope. Once I opened it, I easily returned to it a second, third, fourth time. I was crushed by my failure.

  Twice a week, I rode the bus to Chinatown, where I could buy a bowl of soup, a salad, three pork chops, rice, vegetables, a big piece of apple pie, and a glass of milk for twenty cents at the Sam Yuen Café on Alameda. That meal could last in my stomach a day or two. (The rest of the time I ate mayonnaise sandwiches.) I learned that anti-Japanese sentiment was as strong here as it was in San Francisco Chinatown. Every time I was asked to give money to support Chinese war orphans, Ruby flooded my mind. Because no matter how much I fought it and no matter how many pliés I did, I couldn’t stop myself from replaying that night again and again and again.

  The worse I felt about the situation I’d put myself in here in Los Angeles, the more I held myself accountable for what had happened with Joe. He’d never seen me the way I’d seen him. He must have thought of me as Ruby’s kid sister, which is why he’d taken me to see The Wizard of Oz. Weren’t boys supposed to be nice to a little sister—buy her treats, take her to a fair, show interest in her activities—to impress the girls they were sweet on? Even at the time, I saw it, but I didn’t let what was right in front of me sink in: the way Joe always stared at Ruby, the slightly weary tone in which he said, “You again. Great!” whenever I surprised him at Treasure Island, the way they sat together for three shows back to back at the Forbidden City. I thought he’d come to the club because of me, when it was all about her. I was still hurt, but the blame I put on myself was crushing, because Ruby had been right that night. They hadn’t set out to hurt me. I’d acted like a dopey, lovesick kid and they’d both been trying to protect me, hoping I’d grow up enough so they could tell me the truth, like Ruby had said. I’d sure been unsuccessful in that department. Now I was friendless and failing—in a new city. Helen was right. Consequences. I never should have left San Francisco, but I was too ashamed to go back or even write to Helen. I was horribly lonely, but I refused to make new friends. When you’re so poor you don’t know where your next meal is coming from, I told myself in my fuzziness of hunger and disappointment, you can’t afford to have friends.

  In July—after I’d been in Los Angeles for five months—I fainted in ballet class. “I’m just tired,” I explained to Maestro Kolmakov when I opened my eyes and found him hovering over me. When you’re poor, you don’t tell anyone.

  “You’re a good dancer,” the maestro said as he helped me to a sitting position, “but your body is your instrument. You must take care of it. If you have a beautiful car and you don’t put gas in it, it won’t run. If you have a Lincoln Zepher convertible coupe and you put inferior gas in it, you’ll ruin the engine. I live four blocks from here with my wife and sons. Have dinner with us tonight or you can’t come to class tomorrow.” He didn’t want anything in return. I was reminded, once again, of human kindness.

  HELEN

  Carried by the Wind

  Things happened fast after Grace left. I’d always been second in the line, but Ida got promoted over me. That was all right. I couldn’t see myself bringing pots of tea and kowtowing to the Lim Sisters every night as part of a five-dollar raise. And Ruby? Unemployed, and without Grace to help with the rent, she gave up her apartment and went back to live with her aunt and uncle in Alameda. We met once for tea, but it was awkward. I’d recognized what was going on between her and Joe months ago. Anyone could see—if they’d chosen to look—that they weren’t exactly “in love.” What they had was irresistible, wet, and uncontrollable. And fffft. Over. A raging fire doused. It wasn’t personal or deep to Ruby, and maybe not even to Joe.

  “I’m not seeing him anymore,” Ruby told me, as though that would make her any less guilty in my eyes. “It burned us up to see Grace hurt like that.”

  I’d always been wary of Ruby. The reports coming out of China were worse every day. The barbarian monkey-people were burning, looting, and raping their way across my ancestral homeland. Maybe brutality was in the nature of all Japanese and therefore in Ruby’s. Monroe had cautioned me: “You’re going to get hurt.” That it ended up being Grace instead of me made me feel like a sea slug on the ocean floor. I should have done a better job protecting her.

  “Have you heard from Grace?” Ruby asked.

  “No, and I don’t have a way to reach her.”

  Grace and Ruby were like blossoms blown from a tree—carried by the wind, relying on goodness in Grace’s case and wiles in Ruby’s. They insisted that they’d endured so much, but I interpreted their tragedies differently. Grace’s father had beat her; there were worse things in the world. Ruby’s parents had wanted to return to Japan; good riddance. Grace went to seek her dream in Hollywood, Ruby would glitter wherever she was, while I had scars I would take to my grave.

  “I miss the three of us being together,” Ruby said.

  A part of me enjoyed seeing her suffer, but later, as I watched her retreating, I was reminded just how fleeting life is. Love disappears. Friendships dissolve. I was alone once again.

  IN AUGUST, SIX months after Grace left, business at the Forbidden City slowed even more. Charlie was so broke, he couldn’t even change a twenty for a customer. Many of our acts moved to jobs either at other clubs in Chinatown or out on the road on what the show kids called the Chop-Suey Circuit. When Eddie got an offer to dance at the Club Casa del Mar—a private beach club and hotel in Santa Monica—he jumped at the chance. One problem: the run was for a duo.

  “They want a Chinese Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers,” Eddie explained. “Now who wants to be my Ginger?”

  I was quick to sign up for auditions because, first, I was looking at going back to work at the Chinese Telephone Exchange, and, second, if I got the job with Eddie, then I could search for Grace. (Ida laughed at me. “That will be like looking for a needle in a haystack.”) Every girl saw this as an opportunity not just to go to Hollywood but to be with Eddie. You could practically hear the wedding gongs, cymbals, and firecrackers. Finally, he got around to me. All right, so I was last on his list, but when he took me in his arms I was able to follow the subtle pressure of his hand on my back, the way he leaned in to me, or he pulled me toward him. Afterward, he sat me down.

  “You’ve changed a lot since you first started at the Forbidden City,” he said. “You used to be so shy, and you talked like you’d been raised in a moon-viewing pavilion overlooking a lake. I don’t mean to insult you.”

  “You haven’t.” Because I had changed in the nearly two years since I’d first auditioned and Mr. Biggerstaff asked me to lift my skirt to see my legs. At the very least, I could now speak the lingo, so I sounded like I belonged in a nightclub.

  “If you come with me,” Eddie went on, “I won’t have to deal with any goo-goo eyes coming from you, will I?”

  “No goo-goo eyes,” I promised.

  Eddie still wasn’t sure. He wanted to see if I could learn a complicated routine. “Even metal and stone can be pierced by hard work,” he recited, which reinforced my knowledge that he’d been raised by good and proper Chinese parents. We practiced in the afternoons before the Forbidden City opened for business. We worked on a ballroom number to “Night and Day”—a song I remembered Grace singing to herself. I soaked into my body every turn, every flick of the wrist, and every lift Eddie showed me. He wanted the dance to end with my back bent over his thigh and his head on my chest. It was a romantic and beautiful move, and it would look gorgeous when I wore a gown, which would drape on t
he floor around me. When we perfected the maneuver, he pulled me back to my feet, and then brought me into his arms. He stared into my face for a long moment, and then he kissed me. His lips were soft and delicate on mine. His mouth tasted like bourbon.

  “You’re doing a fabulous job,” he said. “You look good.”

  “Thanks,” I said, “but please don’t do that again.”

  He hired me right then and there.

  Baba made a stink, but I did my part by falling back on my tried-and-true helping-Monroe-with-his-tuition routine, which allowed us both to save face.

  OUR CLUB CASA del Mar show went over big. Eddie was marvelous—his surprising height making his long lines seem even longer—and I made a solid partner, swaying around the floor by myself while he performed showy antics. The Los Angeles Times wrote: “Audiences were spellbound by Eddie Wu and Helen Fong’s Oriental stylings. How long before we see this terpsichorean duo on the silver screen?”

  A few nights into the run, I was in my dressing room pulling a stocking up my leg when I heard a knock at the door.

  “Come in,” I called.

  The door opened, and there was Grace, holding the L.A. Times clipping in her hand like an offering. She’d lost a lot of weight and was now so thin that her hip bones protruded like twin ledges against the fabric of her tired evening gown. Her cheeks were hollow, and her complexion was pale and waxy. We may have been Chinese, but we were theater people now. I allowed myself to be hugged and kissed. Then we babbled about what a surprise this was, that the show was terrific, and wasn’t it great to be together again? But it didn’t take a diviner to see that Grace’s spunk had been drawn from her.