by Jamie Ford
“Are you ready?” she teased Colin as he slicked his hair back and buttoned his suit jacket. She noticed him looking nervous for the first time as he glanced at the clock.
“He’ll be here,” Liu Song said. “He’s probably here already, out in the crowd …”
“You don’t know my father,” Colin said. “He’d be early to his own funeral.”
Liu Song touched his arm as she looked into his eyes and then toward the camera, where she saw a strange, upside-down figure reflected in the lens. Then she noted that the director, the cinematographer, the bulk of the crew were all looking toward the entrance, wide-eyed. Liu Song glanced up at Colin and saw him grow pale. She turned around and saw a beautiful Chinese girl, not much older than herself. The girl wore a tight-fitting cheongsam made of shimmering red silk. She appeared nervous and strangely out of place. Liu Song presumed the girl to be an extra, lost in the confusion. Until she saw the way the girl looked at Colin—searching, recognizing. Her eyes were filled with something Liu Song knew all too well—longing.
“This is a closed set,” a producer snapped. “Miss, you can’t be here. Somebody get her out of frame. If we need more Chinese extras, honey, I’ll let you know.”
“Colin.” Liu Song looked up, not wanting to ask.
“I can’t believe she’s here,” he whispered. “I can’t believe he sent her.”
Liu Song felt a crushing weight on her heart as the director shouted, “Places!”
She stood before him, listening to the clatter and din of cast and crew.
“It was … an arranged … marriage,” Colin muttered, distant, as though he were speaking to himself, reminding his conscience of forgotten labors.
Liu Song felt her heart bend across the anvil of his words. The blows of the hammer kept coming, kept pounding.
“Arranged … by my father. I haven’t seen her since she was maybe fourteen years old—so long ago. I thought that she would be married by now—that my father would have released me from that obligation. That everyone had just moved on without me.”
Obligation. Liu Song thought she knew the meaning of the word. She looked down, not wanting to see the girl, or the regret—the guilt in Colin’s eyes.
“She’s my … fiancée,” she heard him whisper. The words were ice.
Liu Song felt his hands on her shoulders. He was speaking, but she didn’t hear a word as his lips moved like an actor’s in a silent film. Then he let go and she watched the scene unfold from the inside out. She watched Colin walk toward the comely visitor as crew members threw up their hands in frustration. Liu Song blinked as he touched his fiancée’s hand, exchanged words, and then the girl left. By the look on Colin’s face as he returned, Liu Song knew that something terrible had happened, and not just to her.
Colin looked horrified, fearful—the way Liu Song felt. “My father is on his deathbed,” he said. “And my brother has become a drunk and a gambler. My mother sent my fiancée here to bring me back. I’m so sorry, Liu Song. I have to go home. I have to leave tomorrow. I’ll return if I can. I promise. This isn’t how I planned to …”
“Quiet on the set!” the director yelled. “We’ve got a movie to shoot.”
As the camera rolled, Liu Song looked at the stranger Colin had become beneath the halcyon lights. And in her place, Willow made her appearance. Her ears were numb, ringing, silencing his dialogue—his heartfelt gestures that he somehow managed to perform. Willow stared up at him, her eyes welling with hot tears, her lower lip trembling as she tried to patch the cracks in the emotional dam that was bursting with each of Colin’s gestures, with each silent soliloquy. She struggled with how she’d explain this to William. He was little, he would adjust, but he’d feel Colin’s absence. Perhaps more keenly, more completely than she’d feel the emptiness in her own heart as she cried helplessly for the first time in years.
Colin kissed the tears on her cheeks, then he touched his lips. He looked at the wetness on his fingertips as if the warm residue were blood from a weapon. Then he kissed her lips, gently, before exhaling, catching his breath, and walking out of the scene as Liu Song heard the director mumble something about keeping the camera rolling—that this was a golden moment. She heard the flickering of the shutter, the hum of the lights, and the silence punctuated by the sound of Colin’s footsteps, fading.
Lullaby
(1924)
Liu Song paid sixty cents for a return ticket and sat by herself in the back of the 525 Limited, bound for Seattle with short stops in Kent and Auburn. She didn’t wait for Colin, nor did she bother to look for him. She didn’t know if he had another scene or another unscheduled performance with his long-lost fiancée—she chose not to linger and find out. All she wanted now was her son and the comfort of her tiny home.
As she sat in the near-empty railcar, watching the gray-green blur of another train zoom past the arched windows, she tried to think of nothing but William, but she couldn’t forget the look on Colin’s face or the tears that finally caught up to her. She could have cried for hours. All of her pain and struggles and loneliness had overwhelmed her the way Colin’s fiancée—his past—had caught up to him, crashing his big night. Liu Song struggled to reconcile the secret he’d kept, the growing list of commitments he’d run away from—his father, his family’s business, the responsibilities of a firstborn son, and a betrothal. That was the worst. But the girl in the red cheongsam, his fiancée—none of this was her fault. He’d been unfair to that poor girl as well. She was merely an innocent bystander, but now Colin was standing by her, leaving with her, conscripted into marrying her. Where does this leave me? Liu Song anguished. I’m alone at the bottom of a deep well of doubt. And at the murky bottom of that cold spring, Liu Song realized that it wasn’t just Colin who had misled her—she had betrayed herself. She’d followed her heart, her hopes, without questioning him. Now those hopes were tangled. She remembered learning about the Greeks back at Franklin High—about the Gordian knot. That was her heart, a thicket of longing, misgiving, rejection, and disbelief. There was no way to untie so many twists and coils. The only solution was to do what Alexander the Great had done, and cut through the mess, severing all ties—all but William.
He said he’d come back for me. Liu Song was haunted by his words. He said he’d come back for me if he could. Not when. Reality stripped of the armor of optimism was nothing but naked truth—pale and weak.
Liu Song cursed herself for needing someone. She hated herself for introducing William to a man who had run away from his family. Her hopes were an emotional mistake, burdened with a heavy price, one that she couldn’t afford to pay again.
As she gazed despondently out the window, she saw the moon’s reflection ripple across the Duwamish River and felt the train begin to slow. She heard the coachman ringing the bell at each street crossing, warning pedestrians and drivers alike. Liu Song stared through the glass at the blinking radio towers that seemed to be everywhere, the sparkling marquees. The city had been reborn during her short lifetime as streetlights and electricity transformed each block into a carnival of neon. Men walked the streets with purpose, with lacquered canes and polished shoes, and women crossed the streets in bobbed hair and sequined gowns that shone pink, lilac, and periwinkle beneath gas lamps and the sweeping headlights of shiny automobiles. The city had grown up around her; she was a mother, but she still felt like a lost little girl.
As she walked from the train station, her heels clicked on polished marble. She passed wives who threw their arms around their husbands, but all she embraced was the creeping loneliness of tomorrow. Her only comfort was in knowing who waited for her—her baby boy, who would always wait for her, always welcome her with outstretched arms that reached beyond petty judgment and unmet expectations. As she waved to the manager at the Bush Hotel, she thought she detected something strange in the man’s eyes. Was it surprise, or sorrow? She felt her cheeks, where her tears had long since dried, realizing that her makeup—her mascara-streaked face—must be
the calling card of the newly brokenhearted.
When she reached her door, she fumbled in her purse for the key, stopping as she heard Mildred slide back the dead bolt.
When the door opened, her friend nearly jumped. “It’s you,” she exclaimed in Chinese. “You’re back early. I wasn’t expecting you for hours …”
“I told you,” Liu Song huffed as she saw Mildred’s guilty expression. “I don’t want you bringing any boyfriends over while I’m away. It’s not just for William’s sake. The man downstairs is always giving me sideways looks—I can’t chance …”
“There’s no one here but me.”
“And William,” Liu Song said with a weary, accusatory tone. I just want to curl up with my boy and sleep for a million years, Liu Song thought. “I’m too tired to argue …” She looked in the mirror near the door. Her mascara wasn’t too bad.
“No,” Mildred said as she fidgeted with her tiny wristwatch. “It’s just me. William isn’t here. Your uncle came by for a visit—he offered to take William out for ice cream. He was dressed nice and seemed like such a likable fellow …”
Liu Song dropped her purse and hurried to the room she shared with her son. His crib was empty. His carriage was gone. She felt light-headed and held on to the doorjamb. She’d never told Mildred who William’s father was—just that he was a married man, out of reach and beyond her reckoning. And she’d never shared the details of how she and her stepparents had parted ways.
“I’m so sorry, Liu Song.” Mildred grew pale as she gushed her apology in English and Chinese, as though for emphasis of her sincerity—her anguish. “I didn’t see the harm. He said he was just going down to the soda counter at Owl Drug. But …”
Liu Song noticed the kerchief in Mildred’s hands—the linen was a damp clump of worry. “How long ago—when did he leave?” Liu Song was practically shouting. She was standing on the precipice of panic, trying not to look into the abyss.
Mildred’s eyes glossed over. Her mouth began to tremor, but the words wouldn’t come. Liu Song held her friend’s hands, which were cold and shaking. She spoke slowly, acting as calm as she could. “Mildred. This man, when did he leave … with my son? How long ago?”
“I’m so sorry.” Mildred shook her head. “It was four hours ago. I’m so sorry, Liu Song. I’m so sorry. I didn’t think anything bad would happen. He said he’d be right back, but when he didn’t come back I ran up and down the street looking for them. I even went to the drugstore and asked the clerk and the soda jerk, but they hadn’t seen them. I don’t know where they went, or why he’d take your boy. You’re family …”
Liu Song’s estrangement from Uncle Leo must have weighed upon Mildred more with each passing hour. The discord of strained familial relations—of things left unspoken—must have been blaring like a police siren by the time Liu Song had returned. Stepparents were often the villains in fairy tales, and Liu Song had rarely mentioned Uncle Leo or Auntie Eng. Now she wished she had, as a warning.
“Please, don’t tell my mother,” Mildred pleaded. “Please …”
“Go,” Liu Song said. “Go and look everywhere you can. If you find them call for the police until I get there. Do you understand? Look as long as you can.” She watched as Mildred nodded through her tears and ran out the door. Then she noticed her mother’s opera mask hanging on the wall. The painted heirloom had been moved, slightly.
IN THE HOTEL lobby Liu Song begged to use the telephone. She spoke with the local operator and asked to be connected to Leo Eng, but no one picked up on the other end. So she ran out the door and into the darkness in the direction of the Jefferson Laundry on South Jackson, a place she’d avoided for two years. Leo’s father had lost the original business when the white unions boycotted all of the Chinese laundries twenty years ago. And if that wasn’t enough, the Knights of Labor ran everyone else out of town. But like a cockroach, Leo had returned ten years later with fifty cents in his pocket and won a two-thousand-dollar lottery, enough money to reopen the laundry. This time he named it after an American president. Now he made a handsome living taking in the sheets and the towels of the local workingman’s hotels—the Northern, the Panama, the Milwaukee, and the Ace. Liu Song knew the laundry would be open until at least midnight—she’d start there. Then visit the gaming parlors, one by one, until she found her stepfather. She doubted William would be with him, but finding Uncle Leo was the key to finding where he lived; then she’d deal with Auntie Eng if she had to. Liu Song pictured blood dripping in the alley, but there would be no feathers this time.
Liu Song found her uncle at the laundry, smoking and chatting with a handful of workers. He didn’t seem surprised to see her. In fact, she detected a wry smile as he stubbed out his cigarette and cleared his throat. She winced as he spat on a brick wall in the alley. His excrement slowly crawled down the side of the building. He shooed away his employees and removed the white laundryman’s cap he wore. He tossed it in a bin.
“Where’s my son! Where is William! You had no right to take …”
“He’s not here,” Uncle Leo said. He spoke in a casual tone—as though this were a poker game and he already had the winning hand. “But I do have every right to take my son. When I got the letter from the Peterson woman, I just had to see for myself. I saw you parading that carriage up and down the street months ago—little did I know you had a surprise in there for me. I didn’t believe it at first. But then I saw him, so handsome, so strong—he takes after your mother and me. I even went to the King County Clerk’s Office, just to be certain. When I saw my name on the birth certificate …”
“What do you want?” Liu Song said. “You can have anything I have—anything but him. He’s my son. I gave birth to him. I nursed him. He will never know who you are—he’ll have nothing to do with you—I promise …”
“You have nothing to give but the boy, well, almost nothing,” he said. “You can keep wet-nursing my son for a few months. And then I’m sure we can work out some arrangement where we both get what we want. But know this—I can take him from you anytime I wish. A son belongs to his father and the law is on my side. If you do your job well, I’ll keep you around. I might even let him live with you.”
“I’m his mother, he’s only two years old …”
“No, you’re his nanny. And if you leave town, I will come for you and take him away and you will never see him again. I promise you this.”
Liu Song drifted between the shores of relief and horror. I can keep him for now. She watched as her stepfather lit another cigarette, blowing smoke.
“Your auntie Eng is walking him back to the Bush Hotel right now. You should run along. He’ll need his diaper changed.” As he spoke he unconsciously scratched himself inside the waistline of his trousers.
Liu Song slipped away, rubbing her arms for warmth. She wanted to take William and run—despite Uncle Leo’s warnings. But she had nowhere to run to.
When she arrived back at her apartment, she found the place eerily quiet. Auntie Eng was nowhere to be seen, a stubbed-out cigarette on the floor outside her door and the accompanying smell were the only evidence of her having been there.
Liu Song trembled with relief when she found the carriage parked in the middle of her apartment, William inside, fast asleep. He looked so still, she worried that something was amiss—she couldn’t help but lift him from the carriage and clutch him to her chest, feeling his warmth, his breathing, his moment of joyful, satisfied, comforted wakefulness as he smiled and touched her face. Then she smelled tobacco in his hair and on his clothing. She undressed him and drew a hot bath, wanting to scrub away every fingerprint, every odor, every taint Uncle Leo and Auntie Eng had left on her precious child.
As she dried him off, William looked up at her and smiled. Her heart was awash in hurt and anger, disappointment and fear. She wanted to take him and disappear, run away. Instead she smiled through her tears and sang a lullaby. She tickled his belly button, pretending everything would be okay.
Parting
(1925)
When Liu Song woke in the morning, she lit an old candle for her parents and solemnly placed a tea offering in her family shrine, next to the statue of Ho Hsien-ku, the only woman among the eight Chinese Immortals. Liu Song understood that kind of isolation, that loneliness. She couldn’t bear to sing or act or perform or even smile. Just putting on a brave face for William when he woke up took all the emotional energy she had left from a hollow, empty, sleepless night. She’d called Mr. Butterfield from a pay phone and told him she was ill and couldn’t string two notes together, and it wasn’t far from the truth. As she watched William in his high chair, eating mashed carrots and taro root, she wondered what kind of life she could provide him without Colin’s help, material and emotional. Her answer came with a knock on the door.
She knew it would be Colin. She’d run off, half-hoping he would go without saying goodbye but half-dreaming he’d come back and never leave.
His expression as he stood spoke his heart even before he opened his mouth. He looked like he hadn’t slept, and he was still wearing the same clothes he’d had on the day before. He didn’t come bearing flowers. The only thing he held in his hand was his hat.
“Cowin,” William said, as he smiled with a mouth full of carrots.
Liu Song invited Colin in, but he hesitated, absently waving at her son.
“I’m sorry, Liu Song.” He cleared his throat. “I had no idea that would happen last night. I knew my father was ill. My mother had sent a telegram months ago, but my mother worries too much. And they’ve been begging me to come home, offering any excuse for me to give up my dreams. I’ve ignored them for so long—too long, I guess. I didn’t know my father was near death—I’m told he may not even live long enough to see me return. But I have to go.”