China Dolls

by Lisa See

  “I paid you to do that,” I said, as though that would make a difference. I glanced at Grace. She’d gone pale. Yes, I’d made Helen and Grace share the same indignities—the puffs, the powder, and my vagina just inches from their faces. My shoulders slumped.

  “I thought all that was finally over,” Helen stammered mournfully. “I was going to find Grace the perfect house in Miami. We were going to be neighbors. We were going be together. Now what am I supposed to do?”

  “You can still come with me to Vegas,” I offered in a true display of friendship … or did I just want to prove once and for all I was the best and most desirable?

  “I don’t want you,” Helen said, which had a deflating effect on me, as you might imagine. She appealed to Grace. “Even after everything I’ve done for you, you never once saw me. I only wanted a true-heart friend, who would be all mine. I didn’t want to share you.” Her voice cracked as she began to weep again. “But how could I have a best friend when there was someone like her”—she inclined her head toward me—“who was funny, beautiful, talented, and always trying to keep you for herself? You two always left me out.”

  Helen stared at us so piteously that Grace sunk to the floor and embraced her. There were no secrets left between us. Despair over the terrible mistakes each of us had made and the cruelties we’d inflicted on each other swam through my body. Tommy finally got up his courage to approach his mother—tears rolling down her cheeks, her entire body emanating sorrow, grief, and guilt. I reached out, grabbed him by the shoulders, and held him to me.

  THE NEXT AFTERNOON, a car picked us up at the Victoria to take us to the Maxine Elliott Theatre at Broadway and Thirty-Ninth, where Toast of the Town would be filmed live. We sat together in the backseat, staring straight ahead, our arms and thighs touching, Tommy on Helen’s lap. None of us spoke. I’d lived much of my life by my mother’s saying: The crow that was crying a few minutes ago is already laughing now. Not this time. We were exhausted from restless sleep, nervous about how the day would unfold, and still undone by last night’s revelations. The car pulled to the curb in front of the theater. Helen cracked open the door. Without looking at us, she said, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything.” Then, she swung the door wide, set Tommy on the sidewalk, and slid out behind him. They headed for the entrance. Grace scooted across the seat, hesitated, and turned to me.

  “Are we really going to do this?” she asked.

  “Of course, we are. We’d better catch up, or she’ll go on without us,” I said, trying for a joke. Could Grace hear the depth of my remorse for suspecting and disbelieving her? Please, but begging wasn’t my way.

  Once inside, we were taken to a dressing room, where we wordlessly changed into our costumes. I glimpsed Helen’s scar, and my entire body ached for her.

  Someone knocked on the door.

  “Come in,” I called, using my lilting professional voice.

  Ed Sullivan entered and closed the door behind him. For someone who was so powerful through his writing he didn’t seem to have much personality. He scanned us up and down, nodding approvingly at our satin shoes, our fuchsia-colored costumes that showed plenty of thigh, and our hair and makeup that made us look simultaneously American healthy and accessible and Chinese exquisite and alluring.

  “Do this right, young ladies,” he said, his voice toneless, “and I’ll have you back plenty of times.”

  We may have been hurt and disheartened, but when a man like that presents you with the world, you get swept up in the possibilities. Grace put a hand on the small of my back, where it met Helen’s hand.

  “Would you consider returning next month to do an Indian number?” Ed asked. “I’m imagining something to Artie Shaw’s rendition of ‘Indian Love Call.’ Viewers will get a bang out of seeing three girls come out dressed as squaws and then turn into little Chinese dancers with pretty American voices. Hilarious!”

  “Anything for you, Ed, darling,” I cooed. But could I work with Helen again? And what about Grace? Ha! What was I thinking? Maybe they wouldn’t want to work with me.

  “No question about it,” he went on in his monotone, “I’m going to make the Swing Sisters a household name.”

  After he left, the hands that had been holding the three of us together behind my back loosened and dropped as Grace and Helen twisted away. How many times over the years had we been in a dressing room together? Too many to count. How many times had an opportunity like this come along? Never. Adrenaline pulsed through me. I was sure that a similar buzz surged through Helen and Grace too. I motioned for them to come close, then solemnly pinned white gardenias over each of our left ears. Something flickered in the air around us as ambition and hope tried to push away blame and self-reproach.

  “We truly are going to be famous now,” I declared. “All across the country, like Ed said.”

  “What about Joe?” Grace asked.

  “If he can keep flying for pleasure, won’t he want you to keep performing?” I replied. “If he can do what he loves, won’t he want you to do what you love too? Do you think he really wants his very own China doll at home with a new vacuum cleaner, washing machine, and dryer—”

  “Five minutes! Five minutes!”

  We hurriedly made last checks in the mirror. Then we left the dressing room, went stage right as we’d been instructed, and waited as a man spinning plates finished his routine. I peered around the curtain to the audience and spotted Joe. Man, talk about looking like something the cat dragged in. The expression on his face, however, painted a very different picture. He seemed excited and proud. That’s my future wife and the mother of my children up there. Joe, what a boob, but he’d probably make a great husband and father. Tommy sat next to him, dressed in a seersucker suit. It was hard to imagine what was going to happen to him in the future. But this wasn’t the time for me to start getting maudlin! I needed the Swing Sisters to be fantastic, which meant putting last night—and many more months and years before that—behind me, behind us all.

  “We owe it to ourselves and those who sacrificed for us not to have regrets,” I whispered to the others. “That’s what I feel in my heart. This is what we always wanted.”

  “What we all wanted,” Grace murmured in a vague, distracted manner.

  I took Helen’s hand. I could forgive her all she’d done if she repaid me by going out there and dancing and singing her drawers off. Helen nodded. Together, we each clasped Grace’s hands.

  “Friends?” I asked, because I was the only one who could speak the word and have it be meaningful.

  “Forever,” Helen and Grace answered together. What passed between us—as we stood there with our hands linked—wasn’t just a matter of the-show-must-go-on or personal ambition. After everything that had happened, we needed to make this moment perfect—perhaps even make it the beginning of Heaven and Earth, epoch-making, as Helen hoped.

  Ed Sullivan began to speak. “I have three little gals I’d love for you to meet. Ruby, Helen, Grace, come on out here and say hello to the folks.”

  I went first. My smile was warm and enveloped everyone in the studio. I extended my fingers like the undulating tentacles of a sea anemone, luring Helen to come to me. More applause. Wouldn’t you know it, but Ed gave Grace special preference. “I bring you the toast of New York for Toast of the Town. Miss Grace Lee.”

  The three of us chatted with our host, following our script perfectly. Then he stiffly raised his arm, awkwardly lurched back, and announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, please give a hand for the Swing Sisters …”

  GRACE

  Once a Chorus Girl

  I take a look in the mirror. Makeup: perfect and modest. Hair: cut in what the women at the beauty parlor call an auntie bob and dyed exactly the right color for a Chinese woman of my age and station. Pantsuit: red, never wrinkles, and shows off my still-slim figure. Jewelry: three bracelets and a fun necklace I picked up last year on a trip to Bali. I give myself an encouraging nod and go out to the living room. Joe sits a
t the computer, a slight frown crinkling his brow. I put a hand on his shoulder. He gazes up at me.

  “You don’t have to go,” he says for what feels like the hundredth time this week. He’s worried, but I know him very well. He’ll be disappointed in me if I chicken out now.

  “It will be strange if I don’t make an appearance. It’s for Eddie, after all. Everyone wants to help out.”

  “Try to have fun then.”

  “Yes, of course. It’s bound to be fun …”

  Joe covers my hand with his own, pressing it into his shoulder.

  “Won’t you come with me?” I ask. “You knew everyone too …”

  “I’ll come to the actual show,” he promises.

  “I told you I don’t want to do that part of it. I’ll sell tickets or whatever.”

  “Now, Grace, stop with that—”

  I pull my fingers out from under his hand and give him a kiss on the top of his head. He turns back to his keyboard, and I head for the garage. I pull out the car and make my way down the tree-lined streets of the Berkeley Hills. When I reach the freeway, I steer toward the Bay Bridge. They’ll see me, and they’ll know my life is perfect. And it’s true. My life does look perfect: the nice house, the practical blue Volvo, two professional sons, their perfectly adequate wives, the adorable grandchildren, and the pleasant retirement days of tending my rose garden, teaching Jazzercise to seniors at the local sports club, taking walks with the wives of other retired partners from Joe’s firm, and reading books and listening to music at night with him in the den. My mother’s recitation comes into my mind like a dark vapor: When fortune comes, do not enjoy all of it; when advantage comes, do not take all of it. Except I had wanted all of it, and I got most of it.

  For ten years, Helen, Ruby, and I had shared our dreams, successes, and failures—as women, friends, daughters, and performers. As long as I live, I’ll never forget that night in the dressing room at the China Doll or our performance on Toast of the Town the very next day. Two weeks later, Joe and I got married. I didn’t invite Ruby and Helen to my wedding. My emotions were still too raw. I’m sure that hurt them, but I wasn’t ready yet, and I doubt they were either. Our act had gone over big, nonetheless, and lots of fabulous offers came our way. We didn’t take them. No one in the world knew me like Ruby and Helen did and we would be forever invisibly linked, but we all still needed a break from each other to mend and to heal.

  Mr. Sullivan made good on his promise, though, to invite us back on the show. Ruby wanted to parlay the Swing Sisters into “Occidental stardom”; Helen still wanted to make up for what she’d done to both of us; I was the holdout. I just couldn’t do it. After that, we had no contact, although messages were passed through our agent and our circus of mutual friends. The thought that I might never see Ruby or Helen again felt devastating, inevitable, and insurmountable.

  Two years passed in a flash, and we were still standing. The three of us had always shown resilience and the courage it took to keep moving forward. And now we did it again. Toast of the Town became popularly known as The Ed Sullivan Show. He was a persistent so-and-so. Eventually, I caved. The Swing Sisters ended up performing on the show five times. We also did three appearances on Texaco Star Theater, which was hosted by Milton Berle, followed by one-shots on Your Show of Shows, The Lawrence Welk Show, Broadway Open House, and some other variety programs. While colleagues we knew got parts in Flower Drum Song (the Broadway show and later the movie), and Goro Suzuki, Ruby’s friend, got rich as Jack Soo, playing Detective Nick Yemana on Barney Miller, Ruby, Helen, and I picked up occasional guest spots—together and separately—doing character roles on shows with tropical locations like I Spy, Hawaii Five-O, and Magnum, P.I. Joe had been fine with it. He always said, “As long as there’s a beach and golf and someone else is paying, I’ll come with you, baby. We’ll bring the kids too!” Occidentals may not remember us today, but we were—and still are—big in the Chinese-American community. I mean, big. We made everyone proud. They even love Ruby, who, by now, is accepted as being more “Chinese” than most Chinese.

  That doesn’t mean we were all buddy-buddy. No touring for us ever again, but we got together to rehearse our television appearances as the Swing Sisters, ran into each other on sets, and gabbed like old friends on special occasions. Helen came and stayed with me when I had my babies. I also saw her when she visited San Francisco for what she called compound business—funerals, weddings, and one-month birthdays for that extended family of hers. She became a real estate tycoon, just as I predicted, first selling houses to veterans, then building tracts, then developing condo complexes. She’s a seriously wealthy woman. Together we went to all five of Ruby’s weddings. (So much for Ruby not being the marrying kind! Her most recent hubby is twenty years her junior. I’ll bet any and all takers a hundred bucks he won’t be able to keep up with her.) Ruby is the only one of us who never retired from show business. She’s followed every wave: she had her Dancing Chopstix drop their pasties when the topless fad came in, she put them in white go-go boots in the sixties, and taught them to gyrate to a disco beat in the seventies. Journalists still like to interview her, and she’s as vivacious and naughty as she was when that reporter from the Associated Press interviewed us in our beds. She’s had staying power, our Ruby.

  I exit the freeway and maneuver up Nob Hill to the Mark Hopkins Hotel. After leaving the car with the valet, I take a deep breath to steel myself, construct a pleasant expression on my face, and enter the lobby. Eddie spots me right away. Even though he’s considerably older than I am, he’s as handsome as ever—tall, graceful, nattily dressed, still and forever the Chinese Fred Astaire—but the gauntness around his eyes, the sores on his neck, and the hollowness to his cheeks let me know just how sick he is with this new disease that’s taken so many men in the city the last few years.

  “You look exactly the same,” he whispers softly in my ear as he wraps his arms around me.

  “How many others have you said that to already today?” I tease him.

  “Oh, plenty. You know me.” He chuckles. “Come on. Everyone’s asking for you.” He loops his arm through mine and sweeps me down a hallway and into the Room of the Dons, with its murals of early California painted in sumptuous earth tones against a background of gold leaf. Almost as one—and before I have a chance to search for Ruby or Helen—my old cohorts glance in my direction to see who’s come through the door. It looks to be about fifty people so far. Some sit at tables. Others mill around a buffet, where coffee and some treats have been laid out. Those closest to me hurry over. Well, they hurry as fast as anyone who is fit and in his or her sixties, seventies, or eighties can. Once a chorus girl, always a chorus girl! (I’m not sure of the male equivalent. Once a show boy, always a show boy?) And they all talk at once.

  “You look great.”

  “Where have you been hiding?”

  “Are you going to join us for our follies?”

  “You look great too. I’d know you anywhere,” I answer Chan-chan. “I’ve been where I’ve always been, just over the bridge,” I inform Bernice Chow, who was once billed as the Chinese Ethel Merman. “I don’t think so. I’m pretty busy at home. I have grandchildren now,” I say, offering my regrets to Irene. I take in the disappointed faces and add a small salve. “But I’m sure there’ll be other ways I can help.”

  The Lim Sisters elbow their way through the little crowd.

  “Hi, Grace. What’s cooking?” Bessie, the eldest, has to be something like eighty-five, but to my eyes she hasn’t changed one bit. Ella and Dolores stand on either side of her, and one foot back as always. They wear matching kelly-green polyester jumpers over cream-colored turtlenecks. I bump into the sisters occasionally—in the Chinese markets in Oakland, at funerals, or at the Chinese Historical Society’s annual banquet. Sometimes I see only two of the sisters, which makes me wonder if one of them is on the outs or dead. Then I’ll see a different pair, or just one Lim sister out on her own, and it’s all so confusing.
But all three are still alive, still connected, and still living just one mile apart from one another.

  A man—middle-aged, with a bit of a paunch, and a young woman in tow—approaches. It’s Tommy. I remember how comfortable Helen had been holding him as a newborn, and the ways she’d both smothered him and let him have his way—out of love and fear. I never thought he had much of a future, but he grew up to be a doctor, just like Eddie’s father, and married a woman not unlike Helen. Go figure.

  “Auntie Grace,” Tommy says, “I’d like you to meet my daughter, Annie. She’s a graduate student at Cal. She’s living in the compound with Dad, my aunts and uncles, and the rest of the family while she’s in school.”

  Annie is pretty—long, silky black hair, and high cheekbones.

  “You look a lot like your grandmother,” I say.

  “I’ve heard that before,” Annie answers in a voice that mysteriously combines petulance, challenge, and pride. She reaches into her bag, pulls out a pen and a notebook, and rattles off a string of questions. “When did you first know you wanted to dance? What was your first break? When did you meet my grandmother? How did you feel being billed as an Oriental performer, dancing in an Oriental club?”

  I’ve heard this accusation—or is it criticism?—from my sons and my grandchildren too, and I answer Annie the same way I answer them. “Oriental, that’s what we were called back then. And whites were called Occidentals.” I leave out that in my head I still say Oriental and Occidental. I’m stubborn and set in my ways, and I think, What’s the big deal? Why do these young people make such a fuss about this? It’s not like saying Jap—like Helen and Joe always said—or colored or something even worse. Or is it?