“Can I ask you something?” Lily says.
Judy puts the kettle on the stove, lighting the burner beneath it. She leans against the counter as Lily continues washing. “Of course.”
“Are you the only Chinese girl at your job?”
“So far,” Judy says. “But not the only Chinese. There’s Francis, too, although I don’t see him much during the day.”
“Do you like your job?”
“Yes. I do. All the women I work with are wonderful. You know why?” Judy puts her hands on Lily’s shoulders and steers her toward the small kitchen window. “Look out there. Look up.”
Lily’s soapy hands drip onto the counter. “I can’t see anything. It’s dark.”
Judy chuckles. “Yes. But in that darkness, behind those clouds are stars. It’s not really dark, Lily. That’s space. There is so much light there—all those stars. You just have to know how to see it. That’s where we’re going, and I’m going to help us get there. All the women I work with—did you know all the computers are women? We’re working together to get there.”
Lily peers out the window, but above the city lights there is only the smudge of black night sky. “How? Are you going to send people to space? Like in those books that Eddie reads?”
“Maybe someday. Can you imagine?” Judy’s voice swells with emotion, but as hard as Lily tries, she can’t imagine what it could be like to leave planet Earth. She can’t even imagine what it would be like to leave San Francisco. Her whole life has been bound by this city, except for a few weekend trips with her parents to Carmel or Half Moon Bay, where they watched the Pacific crash against the shore and ate a picnic of cold Chinese buns on the beach. On those trips, she did her best to imagine China on the other side of that vast stretch of blue, but even with Chinese words tumbling in her head, it was hard to envision the land her parents once called home.
“What do you want to do when you graduate high school?” Judy asks unexpectedly.
“I don’t know.” Lily adds impulsively, “But I don’t want to stay here in Chinatown forever.”
The kettle is beginning to hum as the water heats up. From the living room, Lily hears her brothers’ voices chattering as more firecrackers pop on the street.
“You don’t have to stay in Chinatown. There are so many things you could do,” Judy says.
“Like what?” Lily says skeptically. “I heard what Dad said. It’s hard for Chinese here. What if they deport him? Or all of us, and we have to go back to China?”
“That won’t happen,” Judy says decisively, shaking her head. “You are an American citizen. You were born here, and they can’t force you to leave. You have all the rights and opportunities of every American.” Judy takes a breath. “As a girl in China I never imagined I could have the job I do now. I’m helping to build rockets to space. Anything is possible here, especially for you.”
Lily meets her aunt’s eyes. “Anything?”
Judy looks determined. “Yes.”
The kettle begins to whistle, and Judy squeezes Lily’s shoulder before she goes to pour the boiling water into the teapot. Lily continues to wash the dishes, but after her aunt leaves the kitchen, Lily pauses. She dries her hands and turns off the overhead light before going back to the small window. The kitchen is in the top rear corner of the flat, the only room with a view down the streets away from Chinatown, toward Market Street.
Lily thinks about the newspaper article she took from the Eastern Pearl. Tommy Andrews’s face is as exotic to her as the idea of rockets launching into space, but Tommy Andrews is real. Tommy walks the streets of San Francisco, just like her.
Lily doesn’t look up at the dark night sky. She gazes at the city lights, glowing through the fog like stars on earth.
* * *
There’s a cramped little bookstore on Columbus between Chinatown and North Beach. The first time Lily went into it, she was with her brother Eddie, who was looking for more science fiction novels. While he pored over Mission to Mars and Sentinels from Space, she picked her way through the packed bookshelves to the back of the shop, where she found a spinning rack full of dime novels. The covers were lurid, with half-clad women and swarthy, looming men, and titles like The Devil on the Mountain or The Castle of Blood.
There were also books with two women on the cover. On one, a girl in a negligee knelt demurely on the ground, eyes cast up over her shoulder at the slightly menacing woman behind her. The Sappho Sisters the title read. “This sorority is like no other.” On the cover of Strange Lovers, the tagline declared, “She couldn’t escape the unnatural desires of her heart.” The cover showed one woman, the strap of her dress slipping off one bare shoulder, swooning in the arms of another woman.
Lily flipped through the pages with her heart in her mouth, keeping an ear out for Eddie. She skimmed the story, her face creeping with heat, until she came across a scene that riveted her in place, half-hidden behind the rack of paperbacks. She went back to that bookstore three times to keep reading Strange Lovers, but on her third visit the book was gone, and the bookseller gave her a queer look and she realized she couldn’t go back.
She remembered that one scene from the novel as if it were a movie she’d watched in the theater. In the dark corner of a studio apartment in New York, a girl named Patrice tried to resist her feelings for an older woman named Maxine, but Maxine had seen through her subterfuge and told her, “You’re like me, Patrice. Stop fighting the possibility.” Then Maxine had kissed her, and the words on the page were imprinted in Lily’s mind like a sailor’s tattoo. The sensation of Maxine’s mouth against hers was a delight far beyond shame.
* * *
Rain slicks the streets the morning of the Chinese New Year parade, but as crowds gather in the early evening to watch the procession up Grant Avenue, the drizzle dries up, leaving a cloudy sky and damp pavements that cause the firecrackers to fizzle on contact. Lily’s family has prime seats in the grandstand, and Eddie is one of fifty boys who will carry the fire-breathing dragon up the streets. As the St. Mary’s Chinese Girls’ Drum Corps stops in front of the grandstand to perform “Chinatown, My Chinatown,” Lily says to her mother, “I’m going to meet Shirley by the bakery.”
“Bring her back here,” Mama responds. “Don’t go anywhere else.”
“I won’t,” Lily says. She picks her way down the grandstand seats to the street. Mama forced her to wear a qipao—all the Chinese girls are wearing them today—and the dress’s tight skirt makes climbing down the steps difficult. She passes a little boy about Dickie’s age, clutching his burning sparkler a moment too long. He yelps as it singes his fingertips, dropping it onto the wet street, where it hisses out.
Although the audience in the grandstand is mostly Chinese, the crowds along the sidewalks are not. There seem to be thousands of people lining Grant Avenue, and Lily finds the raucous throng exhilarating as she swims through the crowd. The chattering conversation, the cheers as the marching bands go by and the cacophonous beating of drums break against her in waves, as if she is being tumbled about in the Pacific itself.
Lily finds Shirley in front of the bakery just as the float bearing Miss Chinatown comes up the street. Shirley drags Lily to the front of the sidewalk to watch Carolyn Lim, seated on her throne and surrounded by the runners-up, tossing confetti into the masses. She is dressed in a gold-embroidered red qipao almost exactly like Lily’s.
“You should be up there!” Shirley cries.
“No, you should be,” Lily responds, and Shirley giggles happily.
The climax of the parade is the twenty-five-foot-long dragon that slinks its way up Grant Street, its gold silken back undulating and its electric eyes flashing through the twilight. The children nearby shriek in mingled terror and excitement at the sight of the creature. Lily cheers, clapping for her brother Eddie even though she can’t see him. The dragon is trailed by a truck bearing a generator t
o keep the eyes lit, the noise of the engine a dull growl beneath the cheering.
After the dragon passes, Lily and Shirley head back to the grandstand to meet Lily’s family. Lily’s mother has an extra ticket to the Miss Chinatown coronation ball for Shirley, who is beside herself with excitement. They are almost at the grandstand when Lily sees Tommy Andrews turning away from the spectacle on Grant, one hand on the elbow of his companion. Lily recognizes the handbag the woman is carrying—that distinctive white scallop on the glossy black patent leather. She’s wearing a belted black raincoat and a cocked hat with a little net, and as she and Tommy leave the parade, something white flutters from her pocket onto the sidewalk.
Shirley is far ahead now. Lily darts toward the spot where the couple turned off Grant and finds the item that fell to the ground. It’s a handkerchief, and its tumble to the street has left the white cloth stained with a few dark wet patches. In one corner, the handkerchief is embroidered with a cursive letter L.
Lily runs after them, following them up Pacific Avenue. “Miss!” Lily calls. “Miss, you dropped your handkerchief!” The woman with the handbag doesn’t seem to hear her, so Lily puts on a burst of speed and reaches out to tap the woman’s arm. “Miss? Your handkerchief?”
The woman halts and glances over her shoulder. Her face is lit by the edge of the streetlight; she looks surprised. “Oh! Thank you.”
Tommy Andrews turns back, too. Lily wants to look, but she tries to keep her gaze on the woman with the handbag. She holds out the handkerchief. “My name starts with L, too,” Lily says breathlessly, and immediately feels like a fool.
“What’s your name? Ling? Isn’t that a Chinese name?”
Lily flushes. “My name is Lillian.”
“Lillian,” the woman says. “What a lovely name. I’m Lana. What do your people say, gong hay fat something?”
“Gong xi fa cai,” Lily says, her heart sinking with embarrassment. “Happy New Year.”
“Happy New Year,” Lana responds. “That’s a beautiful dress you have on.”
“Thank you,” Lily says. She should turn away and go back to her family, but she says, “Can I—May I ask, were you at the—the Eastern Pearl last week?”
Lana’s eyebrows lift. “The Eastern Pearl? That restaurant over on Kearney?”
“Yes.” Lily hears the last bits of the parade, the crowd laughing and clapping, but this stretch of Pacific feels like a quiet little cocoon. Behind Tommy, the street goes uphill, and the damp pavement sparkles in the streetlight.
“Is that where you took us?” Lana asks Tommy.
“I think so. Is that your family’s restaurant?”
Lily has to look at Tommy to answer. Tommy’s face is shadowed by the building looming over them, and Lily wishes she could see more clearly. “No,” Lily answers. “I was there with my friend. I—I’ve seen your picture in the paper.”
“Have you?” The tone of Tommy’s voice is sly as a secret.
Lily trembles. “Yes.”
“You ever been to the Chi-Chi Club?” Lana asks.
Lily shakes her head. “No, miss.” She adds boldly, “But I’d like to go.”
Lana gives Lily a slow, deliberate smile. “If you ever stop by, you tell them I sent you, all right? Tell them Lana Jackson sent you.”
“I—I will. Thank you, Miss—Miss Jackson.”
Tommy says, “We’d better get going. The others are waiting.”
“Thank you for bringing me my handkerchief,” Lana says.
“You’re welcome.”
“Maybe we’ll see you again some time,” Lana says. She resumes her trek uphill, tucking her handkerchief into her coat pocket.
Lily turns away, but at the corner she glances back. Tommy and Lana are walking side by side. They’re not touching, but the careful distance between them makes Lily almost certain that they’re together. Strange Lovers. The thought sends a quick thrill through her, like a firecracker sparking in her veins.
She forces herself to go back to the grandstand, back to the lights and the crowd and her family. She sees Mama scanning the crowd for her, relief breaking over her face when she finally spots Lily. “Where have you been?” Mama demands. “Shirley came back without you.”
Shirley looks at Lily curiously, and Lily says, “I saw a lady drop her handkerchief so I went to give it back to her.” Mama’s forehead furrows critically, but before she can say anything, Lily continues, “Aren’t we supposed to be helpful and be good American citizens? Isn’t that what this parade is about? Showing everyone that we’re trustworthy and honest?”
Mama looks dubious, while Aunt Judy, who is standing nearby, swallows a smile.
“Already practicing your speech for next year’s Miss Chinatown pageant?” Shirley teases her.
Lily says tartly, “Anything is possible.”
* * * * *
Author’s Note
Although all the characters in “New Year” are fictional, two of them are inspired by real people. Lily’s aunt Judy is inspired by Helen Ling, who was one of the first (if not the first) Chinese American women to work at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory as a computer. Helen became a supervisor and hired many more women, including other Asian Americans. You can read about Helen and the other women computers of JPL in Nathalia Holt’s book Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us, From Missiles to the Moon to Mars.
The character of Tommy Andrews is inspired by the male impersonators who performed in San Francisco’s nightclubs—including many that catered specifically to lesbians—in the 1940s and 1950s. The Chi-Chi Club was real, and performers like Tommy were featured in the San Francisco Chronicle as male impersonators. For more about San Francisco’s lesbian and gay communities, read Nan Alamilla Boyd’s Wide Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965.
Finally, San Francisco’s Chinese New Year parade was modernized in the 1950s by Chinatown leaders partly as a way to destigmatize Chinese Americans during the Cold War. The Chinese in San Francisco deliberately used Western stereotypes about Asia to render Chinese Americans as peaceful and nonthreatening, which was imperative during an era when Chinese were routinely harassed due to American fears of Communist China. I am grateful to Chiou-Ling Yeh’s paper, “‘In the Traditions of China and in the Freedom of America’: The Making of San Francisco’s Chinese New Year Festivals,” in the June 2004 issue of American Quarterly, for many of these insights.
MOLLY’S LIPS
BY
DAHLIA ADLER
Seattle—April 10, 1994
My parents love to talk about where they were when Kennedy was shot. They love it in particular because the answer is that they were making out in a closet at school when they were supposed to be watching the parade on TV with their classmates, but I’ve heard their friends get swept up in it, too. It’s a marker for their generation, I guess—even bigger than John Lennon, though they’ll also happily tell you where they were for that (reading me my favorite bedtime story—Frog and Toad Together). I always thought this was a particularly morbid way to remember things.
Now I get it. I know I’ll always remember where I was when I heard Kurt Cobain killed himself. It’s been only two days, but I just know I’ll recall every microscopic detail with brutal precision.
Because it’s the moment I realized I was in love with my best friend, Annabelle.
She’s the one who told me, because of course she was. I was lying on my bedroom floor and blasting music—Pearl Jam’s “Black,” specifically, which feels like an extrashitty betrayal in retrospect. If I’d known she was coming, I would’ve had on Nirvana or the Vaselines or the Melvins or even Mother Love Bone.
I knew it was bad when she didn’t even comment.
“He’s gone, Molly” was all A.B. said, and her voice was vapor and then so was she. I don’t even know how she found her way into my arms, how long it took my T-
shirt to get drenched with her tears. I didn’t need to ask who “he” was; I’d been preparing myself for this inevitability since news broke of his overdose in Rome last month. My brother, Ben, had said, “Watch this, Mol. Next member of the 27 Club. I’ll put money on it.”
I hated him for saying it and told him to fuck off, but the truth was, I knew not to take that bet—and not just because Annabelle would’ve abandoned me for life if I had.
She, unfortunately, did not share the vision of Kurt’s imminent doomsday. “He has a daughter now,” she’d said so many times, tracing glossy magazine photos of Frances Bean with her finger and a wistful sigh that told me she would’ve given anything to trade places with the blond infant. “He’ll fix himself for her. Watch.”
I watched. It broke my fucking heart.
I love Nirvana, too, in case that isn’t clear, but not the way Annabelle does. I don’t have plans to tattoo their logo over my heart when I turn eighteen, or their lyrics around my arm and on my foot. But I can list you every drummer they’ve ever had, in order, and sing you anything by heart, including the songs I never heard until Annabelle and I parked ourselves in front of the TV to watch their Unplugged performance on MTV last fall. I can tell you which of their songs is a Shocking Blue cover and what inspired “Polly,” and probably reenact the entire video for “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”
Would I be at Seattle Center right now if Annabelle hadn’t begged me, though? Would I be standing here in my flannel shirt and knit cap, surrounded by a crush of grieving bodies and the scent of wax, my heart thudding in my chest every time Annabelle squeezes my hand or lets out a sniffle or smiles despite herself at the sight of all the different Nirvana T-shirts and signs?
Probably not.
But here we are, surrounded by hundreds or thousands of other fans in Nirvana tees and flannel, some bawling their eyes out, some howling to no one and some too stunned to react at all. There are mini vigils everywhere, little crowds sitting around candles and signs and flowers.
All Out--The No-Longer-Secret Stories of Queer Teens throughout the Ages Page 11