The Better Mother

by Jen Sookfong Lee

  “The lady’s dressing room,” Betty whispered as she pointed Danny toward a silk-covered stool in front of the mirror. “Pretty, don’t you think? All these clothes though. I have to put mothballs everywhere.” She smiled as she looked at Danny’s reflection. “I know what you’re thinking. So impractical. So silly. Right?” She paused as she looked at his wide-open eyes. “Don’t tell your father you were in here.”

  He nodded absentmindedly as he stared at a row of evening gowns, the deep colours like jewels. Black, green, red, gold and silver. Danny wanted to bury his face in the skirts, tear the dresses off the hangers and jump into the silken pile on the floor. How would it feel if those long skirts were tangled around his legs, if he could run his finger along an expertly sewn seam? He could take one of these dresses home and keep it in his bed, where he could lie with it every night and dream that he was dancing in a ballroom, leading one of his paper dolls come to life. Afraid that he couldn’t control his own fingers, he sat on his hands and kept his eyes on his dull brown shoes, the laces knotted over and over again because his parents couldn’t afford to buy new ones. He told himself that he would be willing to miss out on another breakfast of congee instead if that would help save money.

  As they were leaving, Mrs. Lehmann handed him a cookie in a paper napkin. “He looks pale, Betty. He’d better have something for the trip home. You were so quiet, Danny. I hardly even knew you were here.” She smiled down at him, showing the silver caps on her teeth and the deep wrinkles around her mouth. Danny smiled back, and wondered what the lady of the house looked like, whether she wore silk every day and how she arranged her hair. He bit into the cookie—thick, dense and gingery—and Mrs. Lehmann nodded kindly.

  He fell asleep on the bus ride home, his fists covered by the sleeves of his thin jacket, his head resting on his mother’s arm. He dreamed that he was walking back toward the house and could see in the window the outline of a woman—curled hair, sharp shoulders protruding from a well-tailored dress. He called to her from the lawn and he swore that he saw the glint of her green eyes as she glanced at him through those tiny panes that distorted everything. Her shadow paused, as if considering this grubby little boy with the uncombed hair. He woke up to the bump of the bus and the odour of his mother, a smell like Comet and cooking oil, comforting but oh, so ordinary.

  The last days of summer had crept up. Danny felt that autumn might arrive any minute and the long evenings would then recede, leaving the burning of leaves in backyards and the wearing of woolly socks in bed. Next week, school would start again.

  On the way to the shop, Danny looked up through the open car window at the power lines, the crows sitting in a line, unruffled by the electricity pulsing under their feet or the wind blowing in from the west.

  By ten o’clock, Cindy was dusting the shelves, carefully lifting and replacing the ceramic lucky cats, the small brass buddhas and the tea sets painted with cherry blossoms and bamboo. Danny saw her press her index finger to her upper lip, and knew that she was trying to contain a sneeze. Once, she coughed on a box of folded-paper fans and their father locked her in the storage closet for two full hours for contaminating the merchandise. “If you’re going to cough, you run outside first,” he shouted at her through the closet door. Danny could hear her sniffling (quietly, so Doug wouldn’t notice from his perch behind the front counter), but didn’t dare say anything. When she was let out, she simply sat on a stool at the back, rolling two metal worry balls in her hands.

  Now, Danny unpacked a box of silk placemats, black with red Chinese characters that he couldn’t read. As he was pulling out the paper stuffing, his father snapped, “Stop throwing that on the floor. The garbage can is right there. Lazy.” Danny froze then hastily gathered up his mess.

  The high, narrow windows in the backroom were open and he could hear the trucks that sped down the alleys, the sounds of men unloading crates of produce and pushing them along the concrete toward the back doors of the shops. He heard the cries of a colony of seagulls and, when he looked up, he watched the grey and white of their wings, the rapid flapping that meant they were fighting for the same piece of food, perhaps a glob of sticky rice or a squished banana. A conversation between two men floated in on the air and Danny, bored with the emptiness filling the shop, strained to listen.

  “My wife wants to start her own produce store. Outside of Chinatown, she says, where people have money.”

  “Yeah? What does she know? Does she know how to run a business?”

  “That’s what I was thinking, but you can’t say those things to your wife. She might clamp those legs shut for a month.” Danny winced, but kept listening.

  “You know, you can fix that sort of problem. Lots of girls around here willing to do what you need for a little bit of cash.” Both men laughed and the sound was distorted and ugly, like a radio whining between stations.

  “I feel guilty enough going to see the strippers. But boy, some of those ladies can dance.”

  “Have you seen the one they call the Siamese Kitten? Some legs on her. And she dresses up Chinese, so, really, it’s no different than being with your wife.”

  “I wonder what she’d do for a little extra cash on the side?”

  They laughed again and Danny stared at the empty placemat box. He wanted to run out the back door and throw garbage at these two men. Miss Val commanded a stage and wore satin. She could have been a movie star. What had they ever done? Slowly, as his anger cleared, he began to feel sorry for those men who spent most of their days staring at apples and wilted greens. They would never know the touch of Miss Val’s hand on their hair, never see her red lips break into a smile that, to Danny, meant love and caring and held a little bit of weariness. After lunch, the shop filled with tourists and he saw that his father was busy juggling three white families who all wanted to buy the last jade monkey on the shelf. Danny tiptoed through the store, careful to duck so that he was obscured by the shelves and customers, and hurried out the front door.

  He knew where he was going; there was no question, really. He didn’t even look at the jars of candy in the newsagent’s window, or stop to say hello to Clarence, Mr. Ng’s son who helped his father change and clean the tanks in the fish shop. He headed a few blocks west, turned right and then right again into a familiar alley.

  He stopped at a partially open grey door. He could see nothing from where he was standing, so he stepped closer until he could smell the cigarette smoke and hear, faintly, the tinny sounds of a piano being played with more force than finesse. Silently, he reached out and pulled the door open wide enough for him to slip through.

  This had to be back stage; it was just like the auditorium at school. Danny could make out shapes hanging from the ceiling and stacks of boxes piled against the walls. He inched forward, his hands stretched in front of him until his eyes adjusted. Wires on the floor, coiling and stretching in all different directions. Sandbags weighing down ropes that hung from a catwalk above. To his left, a crack in the darkness. It took a few seconds until Danny realized that the sliver of light he was seeing was the narrow meeting place between two curtains. The stage curtains.

  He desperately hoped that his shoes wouldn’t squeak on the floor as he walked toward the gap. His heart was beating like a rabbit’s, and his skin felt no thicker than a tissue. Every sound made him jump, but he kept walking. He stopped when he was behind the curtains at centre stage. The Siamese Kitten must be dancing steps away.

  Taking a deep breath, he leaned forward and peered through the curtains. At first, all he saw were the lights—the bright spotlight, the other smaller lights in different colours suspended from the catwalk. But soon enough, he caught a glimpse of skin, the long, extended flesh of an arm, a glove being peeled off slowly, but not so slowly that the audience lost interest. He heard men whistling, could see one or two of them leaning forward in their chairs, their hands cupped around their mouths as they shouted toward the stage. “We want to see your fanny! Come on, give us a little bump
and grind!” Danny was appalled. How could these men shout at Miss Val like that? Treating her like the bearded lady in a circus. How rude!

  He pulled open the right curtain an inch so he could see Miss Val’s costume. He wondered if she wore the same clothes at every performance, or if she rotated, pulling out a blue gown for Tuesdays and a red cape for Fridays. He tilted his head until he could see her clearly.

  But it wasn’t Miss Val. No, this was a different woman altogether, a woman with curly blond hair like Shirley Temple, a woman in a short, white dress with ruffles on the skirt and ankle socks and shiny black Mary Janes. In his surprise, Danny let go of the curtain and stumbled forward, just a step and a half, but it was enough.

  The blond dancer’s head whipped around and her eyes narrowed as she spied Danny. He stepped behind the curtain, his breath coming sharply, his head turning left and right, his eyes looking for the quickest way out. As he was about to run off the way he had come, he heard her voice through the curtains.

  “Kid, you’d best get out of here. The manager won’t like the looks of you.” She spun on her toes and glared through the crack before turning back to the audience with a wink and a smile.

  The wisest thing, of course, would be for Danny to slip away as fast as he could, but he couldn’t resist leaning toward the curtain and whispering, “Where is the Siamese Kitten?”

  The piano player pounded on the keys and, by the rise in volume, Danny knew this must be the climax of the act. He heard her shoes tapping on the floor.

  “Val? I don’t know, kid. She stopped dancing at least a month ago, at the start of the summer. I heard she’s retired. Now scram before anyone catches on that I’m talking to someone back there.”

  “But I wanted to tell her something,” he insisted.

  The dancer pushed her hand through the curtains and waved him away, her fingernails—painted lavender and chipped on the sides—flicking the air. Danny stepped backward, then peered past her arm and into the crowd, hoping to catch a glimpse of Miss Val in the balcony or maybe walking up the aisle. The theatre was partially full and only the first eight rows were occupied. An old man, bald except for a tuft of white hair that stood up straight from the back of his head, leaned forward in his front-row seat, elbows on his knees, his face empty, his cheeks hollow like those of the toothless men who continuously drank coffee in Mr. Gin’s café. Behind him, a younger man with black hair combed away from his forehead tapped his fingers on the back of a seat. He seemed to be vibrating from head to toe while his squirrel-like amber eyes remained locked on the dancer. His nostrils flared a bit when she shimmied to centre stage and her skirt twirled upward. Danny shivered because he was watching a man watching a near-naked woman, which seemed naughtier than watching a naked woman all alone.

  In the back, underneath the protruding balcony, a lone figure sat, half in and half out of the heavy dark. Danny squinted. There was something familiar in the way the head was tilted to the side, in the line of the shoulders leaning back in the red upholstered seat. An usherette in a red and gold hat shone a flashlight into the rows and the shadows disappeared for one second, long enough for him to see that the figure in the back with the small eyes wide open was someone he knew. His mother.

  He opened his mouth to call out to her, but clamped it shut in anger instead. How could his practical, workaday mother be sitting here, in this place, where women were supposed to shine like stars or comets? What did she care for fancy clothes and fast music? He had come here to find Miss Val, to be dazzled and awestruck, and to be somewhere else besides the shop or their sad little house. He should run at his mother right now and tell her to get out. But then he remembered that he was supposed to be at the shop, counting his father’s inventory of teacups. If she saw him, she might tell his father and Danny didn’t need to hear any more shouting. He punched his right fist into his left hand and stomped into the darkness, shoulders quivering.

  When he was past the sandbags, he stopped. Which way should he turn? A cool breeze blew past his left ear and he turned toward it, thinking he could smell the garbage cans in the alley outside. With every step, he felt the floor with the toe of his shoes, afraid there might be stairs or even a trap door that might drop him into the tunnels his father once claimed ran like rivers underneath the whole city. He shivered.

  He was in a narrow hallway with a line of doors on each side. He looked up, down, in front and behind and still nothing looked familiar, only cramped and dim and strange. A triangle of light appeared at the end of the hall and Danny hurried in its direction, thinking it was sunshine. As he squinted through the dark he saw the light shimmer and gain shape, and he thought he saw a flash of green fabric and a sliver of cigarette smoke spill out into the hall. He heard high-pitched laughter and a crowd of ladies’ voices, each layered on top of another. “Miss Val,” he half called, “is that you?”

  In the open doorway he stopped. Five heads turned and looked directly at him.

  He stared at the women, at their bare legs and stockinged ones, the flesh spilling out over the tops of corsets, the shoulders sloped forward and criss-crossed with straps. He took a step forward and whispered, “Miss Val,” without really knowing which of the dancers he was talking to. He was sure he had seen her while he was running through the hall. Was that the Siamese Kitten’s dark hair? Or was it the bobbed head of his mother, shining in this room like it never had before?

  The room was full, stuffed like the stockings that hung in the Woodward’s display windows every December. Elvis Presley blared out of a radio set on the concrete floor. To the right, pink, blue, striped and sequined costumes dangled from a wheeled rack. Two brassieres and one stocking were draped over a pipe heater. To the left, a table was piled with lipsticks and creams, perfumes and hairbrushes. And directly opposite hung six mirrors, each lit by one bare light bulb. Danny counted six chairs.

  All Danny could hear was his mother’s voice, that singsong tone she used whenever she was trying to tell him something very important. “Remember,” she said to him yesterday, as she hurried him up the street on the way home from grocery shopping, “you must never wander off by yourself. Evil woman-demons are always looking for sweet little boys like you.” He frowned. He was quite sure no woman-demon ever put this much effort into making herself look pretty.

  One of the women stood up. A black feather escaped from her headdress and floated through the air, catching the draft from the ceiling vent. Danny remembered how cold he was and rubbed his left arm with his right hand.

  “What are you doing here?” asked the woman with the heavily lined eyes and Cleopatra wig.

  “The Siamese Kitten,” he said, in a voice barely above a whisper.

  “Are you looking for Val?”

  Danny nodded. This dancer towered in her high heels, far taller than any woman he had ever seen. He could not see her face; instead, he stared at her black stockings and the feathers sewn into her romper.

  “She left without much notice and didn’t say where she was going. Sorry, kid.”

  He closed his eyes against the mirrors, the reflections that turned the five dancers into ten and then twenty and beyond.

  “Did you come here all by yourself?” Danny felt the weight of her hand on his shoulder as he leaned against the door frame.

  When he opened his eyes again, the women were crouching around him in a half-circle, so close that he could smell their skin, the dampness that collected in their belly buttons or under their arms. A ring with a purple stone flashed and he saw long fingers topped with bare ragged nails, the kind that have been chewed and chewed, the kind that picked dried food off dishes in scalding hot water.

  He was silent.

  “I don’t think he speaks much English,” one of the dancers said.

  “He’s clearly lost,” said another.

  Danny heard a giggle. “He’s cute as a button though. I could use him in the act. He could carry my train for me.”

  “Watch out, that might be a hit. Some o
f those old guys out there like little boys more than they should.”

  A storm of laughter erupted around him and he turned and ran out of the room, down the hallway, behind the stage and out the grey door.

  Danny blinked at the bright afternoon light. He walked through the alley and around the corner, his head down so that all he saw were the colourless sidewalks, filmed with fine dirt brought in on the dry wind. He had to go back to the shop—there was no question of that—but he wanted to sit on the curb and feel the sun soak into his black hair until he couldn’t stand it any longer, feel the sweat that would inevitably drip down his spine and collect behind his knees.

  He wanted to tell Miss Val all the things he had never told anyone else, about the secrets he had hidden under his bed, how his father was pleased with nothing, the time at school when he was picked last for the T-ball team and the other boys didn’t even look him in the eye, the way his mother smiled as if she had never learned what smiling actually meant. Once upon a time, he thought he could tell rich and jolly Uncle Kwan a secret or two, but after letting it slip that he would rather take tap dance lessons than play basketball, Uncle Kwan started to ignore him, and simply nodded curtly in greeting when they met. Danny ached when he thought of Miss Val. He wanted to burrow his head into her stomach, listen to the blood pumping through her body and twist his small fingers into the satin of her robe.

  “It’s okay if no one understands you,” she might have said. “I do.”

  After he nodded, she would continue, “We’re the same, you know. We grow up wanting something different, something beautiful and glamorous. Who cares about mops and peeling potatoes? Everyone else, they’re boring. We’re the fascinating ones. You’ll see.”

  And he would know she was right. They were the exception, the two huddled in the corner when everyone else crowded into the middle. Maybe if he had found her, he could have gone home feeling newly empty and free. Another person would know his secrets and he could look at his soggy house and sullen family without feeling that he was brimming over with dangerous, hidden things. Then his father might love him and his mother could be happier.