The Better Mother

by Jen Sookfong Lee

  Val had walked to the Shangri-La that morning, taking a winding route so she could avoid the café. She wondered if her act might send ripples of electricity down the block and around the corner until Sam looked up and sniffed, the hairs in his nose twitching. Screw him, she thought. If he finds out, so what? I was never going to be his wife anyway.

  She stood in the wings, waiting for her cue, peering out past the edge of the curtain at the rows of plush seats, the empty balconies. This early in the day, most of the men in the audience were loggers on their week off and old men with canes and neatly brushed hats. She had hoped that the theatre would be so dim and the stage lights so bright that she wouldn’t be able to see the faces of anyone in the crowd, but as she stood there, one hand holding tightly to her sash, she could pick out each individual head. A white-haired man in a leather jacket who looked like he might once have been a pilot. A lanky Indian boy who couldn’t be any older than fifteen. The usherette in her red-and-gold jacket in the back of the theatre. She wanted to cry with fear, but she didn’t want her makeup to run.

  She turned away from the crowd and forced herself to watch the stage. A clown with a crooked, painted mouth rode a unicycle, juggling bananas, and she could hear one man laughing, a slow chuckle she was familiar with, thick with rye and barely audible. As the two shabbily costumed clowns bantered back and forth onstage, a man with a dark moustache in the front row nodded off, his chin resting on his chest. One of the clowns spied her in the wings and blew her a kiss before tumbling into a somersault. She suppressed a laugh, closing her eyes so that she didn’t notice when the MC ran past her onto the stage.

  With his tall red hat in his hand, he smirked through his moustache and, with a cocked eyebrow, announced, “How about another round of applause for Jules and Bubbles? I tell you, folks, those two could make a joke out of a pair of old bedroom slippers.” A tepid wave of clapping barely rippled through the seats. “Ah, but we have something coming up that I know you’ll all love. Plucked from the farmlands of the Canadian West, I bring you the prettiest little girl you’ll ever see dancing on a burlesque stage. Gents and gents, put your hands together for Val the Small-town Beauty!”

  She shivered and rubbed her hands together to stop the shaking. Pulling on the ends of her hair (braided in two pigtails, tied with ribbon, the way she thought an innocent girl would fix it), she stepped out into a warm puddle of light.

  The tidal wave of fear pouring out of her skin was so palpable she could smell it, like the odour of horses’ sweat after they have been whipped or shod. When she closed her eyes, she could feel it: the electricity that crackles off you because you are just so damned scared. She swore the audience must be able to see the fear encasing her body. They could get up and leave, or throw their shoes at her, and then this whole experiment would be a failure, a huge disappointment for the younger Val who had only wanted to dance. She would be walking the streets sooner than she had planned, asking every restaurant in this stranger-infested city for work. She tried to repeat to herself, Two weeks, but instead she thought, I hate this place so much. Why did I ever agree to this stupid dancing thing? She suddenly realized that no one had really told her what to do onstage, or even how to dress and make up her face. The manager had simply made her watch two of the more experienced dancers and then vaguely waved his hand. “Do something like that, sweetheart. Don’t strip too fast and make sure you shake what you’ve got.”

  Val walked to the middle of the stage and stood there trying to remember how she had intended to start her act, how she had visualized this first moment. But she froze and the spins she had practised fifteen minutes ago were totally forgotten.

  A piercing whistle sliced through the air. For her. Someone was whistling for her.

  Her arms and legs began to tingle from the heat radiating off the lights. One lone man started to clap, the echo bouncing around the theatre until it sounded like a dozen pairs of hands clapping. Others joined in, and she was cosseted by applause, by how it felt like the crowd was holding her up or patting her on the head, murmuring, “It’ll be fine, Val. Don’t you worry.”

  She heard her own laughter as a little girl, her voice coaching Joan to kick higher, to twirl longer on her toes. She remembered her father taking them to a calm part of the river to learn how to swim, his hands under her arms, holding her up, his whisper in her ear, “You’ll learn. I’ll just let go.” And the water was so cold, but she swam and grew to like the chill.

  With her mouth set, she pulled off her skirt and kicked one leg high into the air.

  The men roared and banged on the wooden backs of the seats in front of them. She smiled widely at the audience, then kicked and twirled to the drums, all her limbs filling in the gaps between beats, her feet pounding the stage in perfect time. She flashed her bum, her breasts, even bumped and ground when the piano trilled the bluegrass tune meant to go with her costume. Her doubts and fears disappeared and she was simply a dancing girl, half naked, hot under the lights, pushing and pulling against the music that drove her. When she left the stage, she clung to the curtains in the wings and peered at the men, still cheering, calling her name.

  She heard the MC’s brassy voice close to her ear. “Listen to that, sweetheart. They love you.” If she wasn’t smiling so hard, she could have wept.

  The two weeks were over, but it hardly mattered. The applause shook between her ears even when she wasn’t performing, and she could hear the men’s voices calling for her or their feet stamping on the floor. The rhythm of the single piano and the thump of her own high-heeled shoes on the floorboards of the stage lulled her to sleep.

  And the money. The paycheque was fine, but men were throwing bills and coins onto the stage as she danced, and they threw more when she bent down, ass out, to pick up the money and stuff it into her panties. When she returned to the boarding house early in the morning, she counted each night’s earnings and packed them in one of Joan’s discarded shoes at the back of the closet. She washed her face while making lists of all the ways she could spend that roll of cash. New clothes. A nice apartment. A meal in a fancy restaurant once a week.

  One night, as she stepped out of the back door of the club, a man in a grey hat emerged from the shadows and gripped her hand. He smiled and his little pointed beard bobbed up and down as he spoke. “Val. Have I got a proposition for you.” He took her to an all-night café and outlined the acts he represented. “I handle all of Ann Corio’s bookings on the West Coast and Yvonne de Carlo—she was one of mine before she went Hollywood. I’ve watched you dance. You’ve got strong legs and a big stage presence, plus that star quality any girl would kill for. You can’t do better than me, little miss. I got girls asking me to represent them every day, but I always say, ‘You have to be picky or else you’re an agent with no credibility.’ You follow?” He ordered another jelly doughnut while he watched her face with his small eyes.

  Val nodded. An agent. She could travel and get out of this city that reminded her of the café and Joan. She saw her two weeks at the club stretch into years at real, respectable theatres, maybe even one of those new supper clubs that were opening in San Francisco or Cincinnati with their velvet curtains and champagne. She took a mouthful of coffee and gazed calmly at the agent before speaking.

  “When can we start?”

  Within the week, she was booked for Los Angeles, Toledo, Des Moines and Chicago, leaving before the end of the month. “New costumes,” her agent told her, “and it’s about time you got yourself a better stage name. Something with a hook. Something that’ll grab ‘em by the balls and never let go.”

  He took her to choreography sessions at a Water Street studio with an ex-dancer named Portia, who had taught himself to strip with his penis tucked between his legs. During rehearsals, he screamed at Val, “This is a striptease, child, not a Halloween dance at an old folks’ home! Step it up before I fall asleep.”

  At first, she had no idea what sort of act she should perform. One girl danced in a costume
strewn with Christmas lights. Another wrapped a white python around her body. When Val asked a dancer at Portia’s studio what made for a successful gimmick, the woman cocked her head to the side and said, “You have to go with what’s natural, sweetie. If you like birds, go with some parrots. If you feel gorgeous with a blond wig, then wear the biggest, baddest blond wig you can find. I’m the Bazoom Girl because of these.” She gestured at her breasts and then moved one independently of the other before laughing out loud. “Figure out what you’re really all about and turn it into an act. It’ll work. You’ll see.”

  That night, Val lay awake in her bed at the boarding house. She saw gold and dragons and long, curling fingernails cupped around painted teacups. She could taste Sam’s food—the sharp, clean ginger, the tooth-coating fermented black beans—but then she focused on the paper lanterns she used to see swinging from the third-floor balconies across the street from the café. They glowed through the dark winter afternoons, exotic pockets of light that dissipated the gloom and the ordinariness of the city around them. In the morning, she walked to the big fabric store on Hastings Street and bought yards of green and black and red satin, packets of sequins, and fishnet stockings. She took the fabric and trimmings to a Chinatown tailor, who nodded and smiled at her instructions and asked her no questions. Red lipstick, tassels, a black wig and nail polish in five different colours. The glossy bottles twinkled and shone in her drawer.

  She told Portia her idea, and he threw back his head and laughed. “Now, that’s a gimmick we can work with! This act will make you more famous than chocolate cake.”

  Two weeks later, an hour and a half before she was expecting her agent for a final inspection, Val carefully painted her face in her boarding-house room, using the brushes exactly the way the girl at the department store told her. Next, she taped the tassels to her nipples and slipped on the black satin corset, the sequined G-string and the fishnet stockings. She attached the green skirt embroidered with lotus blossoms and two swimming, circling goldfish, smoothing it down so that it hugged her hips tightly. Then, the high-heeled shoes. Last, the black bobbed wig with heavy bangs. She looked at herself in the mirror, at the polished sheen of her nails, the length of her legs, the suggestive pull of satin tight over her ass and laughed.

  “Why hello,” she purred. “I am the Siamese Kitten.”

  She heard a knock and arranged herself in the doorway, sweeping the fabric of her skirt to the side so that her agent could get a good look at her stockings. With one hand, she threw the door open and posed, leaning up against the frame, her back arched.

  Joan gaped in the hall.

  “Damn it,” Val whispered.

  Val grabbed Joan’s hand and dragged her inside, wrinkling the sleeve of her sister’s dove-grey suit. She pushed her into the chair by the window and stood, hands on her hips, staring at her suddenly mute sister.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Joan blinked.

  “You have to go. I’m expecting someone.”

  Joan managed to ask, “Who?”

  Val told her everything, about the dancing, the stripping, the gigs in other cities, the agent who said she needed a hook. And, of course, the money.

  “I’m going to save it, Joanie, and then I’ll never have to worry again. I won’t need a man to support me, that’s for sure.”

  Joan nodded, her eyes wandering over Val’s costume, her red, red lips. She touched her own mouth and then patted her blond hair. After a minute, she stopped and dropped her white-gloved hand back into her lap, underneath her handbag.

  After a long pause, Joan said, “Have you written Mum and Dad?”

  Val looked away. “They don’t need to know.”

  “Don’t you think they should know if you’re travelling?”

  “Listen, Joanie, you’d better not say anything to them. I’m going to be doing this for a little while, not forever, so there’s no need to go telling everyone. Don’t tell Peter either.”

  Joan sighed. “Why would I tell him? Do you think the neighbours would believe me if I said, ‘My sister’s a stripper?’ ” She leaned forward. “I just want to know: is the dancing like we imagined?”

  Val looked at Joan’s face, still so pale, with those icy eyes that could burn and burn. She smiled. “Sometimes. I high-kick like we used to. The men like it.”

  “They do? What else do they like?” Joan rubbed her lips together.

  “Lots of things. They like it when I look at them over my shoulder. I don’t know why, really. They like it slow, especially when I take off my stockings and pull off my gloves. It’s not what I expected, you know, not all tits and ass.”

  Joan’s face was flushed. She had taken off her gloves and was wiping her hands on the sides of her skirt.

  Val touched her shoulder. “Is everything all right?”

  “Yes, of course. Why are you asking?”

  “I don’t know. You look like something is upsetting you.”

  Joan uncrossed her legs and stood up. “It’s nothing.” Her voice rose to a high pitch Val had never heard before. “It’s just—He goes at me every night. Hard, like he hates me. He wants children, he keeps telling me, as if I didn’t already know.”

  “Joanie, I’m sorry. You could leave him.” But even before Val said it, she knew her sister never would.

  “I should go. I have a hair appointment.” The expression on Joan’s face had changed, hardened into knife-edged angles.

  “Don’t forget: you can’t tell anyone. You promised.”

  “I didn’t promise anything.”

  Val watched as Joan crossed the room, her black shoes like a new doll’s—shiny and unscratched. When Joan opened the door, Val said, “Remember, Joan, I know exactly why you can’t have children, and I can tell Peter anytime I like.”

  Joan paused in the doorway and half turned. But then she straightened her shoulders and continued out the door, wiping her feet carefully on the rug in the hall.

  THE CIRCUIT

  1947 to 1958

  The act was the main thing. Without it, she was just a girl taking off her clothes to music; with it, she was a star.

  The band began playing and she shuffled through the curtains, her eyes cast down, her hands clasped in front of her. She wavered uncertainly in place and the audience fell silent, perhaps feeling shame that such a shy Oriental girl needed to strip for money. Men cleared their throats, and Val could hear them shifting in their creaky, fold-down seats. Slowly, she lifted her head and looked out over the crowd through her thick black bangs. Here, in a dusty theatre in Chicago, lights were bolted to the walls haphazardly, and, even from the stage, Val could see the electrical cords dangling from the sconces. The wood on the balcony walls was poorly carved, no better than her father’s drunken whittlings on scrap lumber. But no one was there to gaze at the construction of the place.

  The music picked up speed. The drummer played a driving, impossible-to-ignore beat. The piano tinkled. Val began to tap her right foot in time.

  She bowed low to the audience and said, “Hello, I am the Siamese Kitten. Tonight, I dance for you.” And then she smiled, throwing off her red silk robe and purring to the crowd.

  The applause. It came at her suddenly every time, so deafening that she inevitably stepped backward, rippling the curtain as she steadied herself. But she felt the audience was holding her close, buffeting her from the sharp winds that blew in toward the city. In this theatre—the moth-eaten red curtains, the cold dressing room, the candy and cigarettes that littered the makeup table—she was nothing like what she had been before. Not a waitress, not a girl from a thin-walled house on the banks of the Fraser River, not Valerie Nealy, not the mistress of a handsome Chinaman. No, she was the Siamese Kitten, the dancer whose posture never slackened, whose long, lined eyes held the audience in her inscrutable gaze, whose costume fell away so regally that the men who watched her imagined her to be a Chinese princess who had lost her way.

  Eventually, she was left wearing not
hing but her green G-string and red pasties with gold tassels. She held a large fan in front of her, flashing her bum, then her belly button and, finally, the under-curve of her breasts. She finished by pulling her robe back on, one shoulder at a time. When she took her final bow, her hands in front of her chest, palms together, fingers up, she said, “I am the Siamese Kitten. Thank you for watching me. I see you again sometime.” As the spotlight faded, she could feel the collective flutter of disappointment that meant she could have danced forever, and these men, some of them lonely, others unfulfilled, would gladly have watched. Inevitably, one of the other girls or the night’s MC came to her and said, “I’ve never seen a new dancer work up a crowd like that. They couldn’t get enough!” She wondered if it was the gimmick or her choreography or the way she talked to the crowd as she danced. Several times, she stared at herself in the dressing-room mirror and searched her face for that special something. Maybe, she thought, I really am a star.

  Before she left the theatre, she wiped off all her makeup except for her red, shiny lips. She didn’t care that they were shocking when combined with her light brown hair and grey overcoat, that they marked her as a woman different from the wives and daughters of respectable men. Without them, she was no more than a once-rejected waitress, and she could bear anything but that.

  In some cities, it was hotel rooms. Small hotels that had once been run by respectable families but were now staffed by surly men who eyed her bum as she walked up the stairs, carrying her own luggage. Other times, if the run was a long one, she let a room at a boarding house. She arranged her bottles on a chair and propped her makeup mirror against the wall. In these unfamiliar rooms, she sang to herself or read the five-cent magazines that she bought in every city and town. She tried to learn how to knit, but her very first scarf ended up as a confused knot of cheap yarn, and she threw the whole thing, needles included, into the garbage at one of the theatres, maybe the one in Wichita, she couldn’t be sure. The other girls who travelled with her were lonely too, and they sometimes spent early mornings in each other’s rooms.