Songs of Willow Frost: A Novel

by Jamie Ford

  Mercifully, she hadn’t seen Uncle Leo in weeks. It took months for the Crash to reach Seattle, but when it did everyone, including her former stepfather, felt its arrival. When regular orders at the laundry had disappeared in a wave of cancellations, he’d fired all of his longtime workers and replaced them with cheaper labor, which in Chinatown was saying something. And as she had watched some of those workers move out of the Bush, American, and Northern hotels and into flophouses, she wondered how long it might be before she was out on the street as well. Would he force us to move in with him? she wondered. Or will I work folding sheets and duvet covers instead of accompanying him to the horse races and the Wah Mee on Saturday nights? If only she could be that fortunate. The end of Prohibition was nowhere in sight, but even if it was, there wasn’t enough gin and whiskey in the world to make her forget the price she’d paid for the sordid life she’d created for herself.

  Liu Song tried to read the newspaper. She didn’t know much about the stock market, or speculating, or buying on margin, or any of the complicated terms that headlined The Seattle Star these days. But she knew what dying slowly was all about, and everyone was struggling to hang on, each neighborhood was slipping away bit by bit as each new bank would fail to open its doors. The runs on the banks got so bad that People’s North End Bank equipped their storefront with tear-gas nozzles. And when the sawmills began to lay off leathernecks by the thousand, the world of workingmen toppled to the ground like falling timber. Liu Song tried to be grateful for her gilded cage, but the bars were everywhere she looked.

  “I’m going to school now,” William said from somewhere in the kitchen. He was so much older now, a bit taller, more adventurous. Ready for school.

  Liu Song closed her robe and tied it around her waist. She wandered to the front door, where William was ready for another week as a first grader at the Pacific School on Twelfth and Jefferson. “Don’t forget you have Chinese school today.” She handed him a wooden writing slate with Cantonese characters etched into the frame.

  She raised an eyebrow as he frowned. “Yes, you have to go. I know it means you’re going to two schools, working twice as hard—that just means you’ll be twice as rich. Don’t be late—for either school.” William had been learning city Cantonese at the new Chong Wa building, but he preferred English to Chinese. As a boy of seven years, he spoke English almost as well as she did.

  “Do you have another date this weekend?” William asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Liu Song lied. She had hidden most of her dates with Uncle Leo from William, including the one this weekend. But she wasn’t sure how much longer she could maintain that charade. She’d taken William out with them on occasion, to the Jun-bo Seafood Restaurant, the Sunken Garden in Lakewood, and the Coal Miners’ Picnic, but he was older now and they were more discreet. Years had passed since the last time Uncle Leo visited her apartment, and even then they’d had a terrible argument about him showing up unexpectedly. Her shame, her sacrifice, couldn’t remain hidden forever. And perhaps she wouldn’t have to hide anymore.

  Liu Song looked at the clock and then slipped to the bedroom as excited as a child before the Lunar New Year celebration. She peeked beneath her bed and found her mother’s valise—a familial treasure chest with all that remained of the person she used to be and might still be again.

  As she opened the valise, she regarded the slip of yellow paper that sat atop her keepsakes. She touched the telegram that had come the week before—it was real. She sighed with relief. She wasn’t dreaming. The message sent via Western Union hadn’t vanished in the night along with her hopes. She read the telegram again; it was unbelievably long. At twenty-five cents a word, it must have cost a small fortune to send, so she savored each letter, each punctuation mark. The sender had never been one to spare any expense. Even during times of hardship. He poured out his heart, laced with apologies for being gone so long.

  Liu Song lay on the floor, clutching the note to her chest. Today was the day. Today, Colin was coming back for her.

  Seconds

  (1929)

  Liu Song stood apart from the crowd that waited at Pier 36. She heard seabirds and wrinkled her nose as murky green seawater lapped at the pilings, which were crusted with barnacles, tube worms, and the occasional fat, purple starfish. The waterfront normally smelled its best when the tide was high, even if those smells were laced with diesel fumes or reeked of old nets filled with Dungeness crab. But as Liu Song looked southward, to where the Skinner & Eddy shipyard lay eerily quiet, she noticed squatters in tents and cardboard shacks dumping pails of yesterday’s night soil into the Puget Sound. Her stomach turned as she watched seagulls swoop down into the muck, until the blast of a horn scared them away, if only for the moment.

  She watched as the steamship Tantalus edged along the pier with the help of a tugboat. The ship’s towering blue smokestacks blasted billowing clouds of white steam that swirled and eventually became one with the overcast sky. She remembered her parents mentioning the Blue Funnel Line, speaking of the China Mutual Steamship Company with affection. It was the same way she felt as she watched passengers descend the gangplank after pursers punched their tickets.

  Liu Song hardly recognized Colin, even as he waved and smiled. He’d gained weight, especially around the middle, and wore a dark suit that made him look more serious than she remembered. She expected him to hold her, to hug her neck, or kiss her on the mouth as the Caucasian travelers did, but he merely shook her hand, though he didn’t seem to want to let go.

  “You look exactly as I remember.” He spoke in Chinese with a thicker accent than before. His English had faltered during his absence.

  “You look … better,” Liu Song said sweetly.

  They had lunch at the elegant King Fur Cafe even though Liu Song could hardly eat. Colin was quick to complain about the food and the service. “The waiters are so much better in Hong Kong—much more efficient. They dress nicer and can ladle your soup and light your cigarette at the same time.”

  Liu Song thanked him as he paid the bill. “You must be tired,” she said. “I’m still at the old place. Come over and relax. You can take your shoes off—” Liu Song caught herself. She didn’t want to appear too forward—too desperate.

  As Colin walked her back to the Bush Hotel, both of them relaxed and Liu Song found herself swept away all over again, even as his belongings were taken to the Sorrento, a fine hotel she’d only seen from the outside. It didn’t matter; Chinatown was their city—it was where they belonged. Though she wished so much time hadn’t passed.

  He sat on her new sofa while she made oolong tea and put fresh almond cookies on a small ceramic dish. “You must be doing well despite these times of strife,” Colin said, but the words came out as more of a question. “You have many nice things. New couch. New carpets, I see.”

  Liu Song explained how the music store had gone out of business and how she’d picked up a few jobs here and there that paid the bills. She nibbled on a semiburnt cookie as she fought a wave of nausea and tried to sit so her stomach didn’t show. Colin’s last few letters had mentioned that his father’s bank had struggled like everywhere else, but that he thought the worst of it was over. He’d found new investors, who were buying lumber equipment and shipping it back to China. He’d come to close the deal, but most of all, he wanted to see her.

  Liu Song didn’t want to ask, but the question lingered between them like a ghost. “And how is your … wife?” In the few letters she’d written she’d never once asked about his fiancée and he’d never surrendered that information. She assumed the subject was settled and wasn’t worth talking about.

  Colin loosened his tie ever so slightly. He looked at Liu Song and half-smiled, half-frowned. “Good Chinese wife, made me nice and round.” He patted his stomach. “And she’s given me two children, a boy and a girl—both healthy and strong. I named my daughter after you. I named her Willow.”

  Liu Song drifted between disappointment and denial, bu
t still managed to smile and laugh, not quite believing him about the name. “Does she know about me?” Do I still mean anything to you, and should she worry—should I? “Does she know that you’re here with me right now?” Considering her arrangement with Uncle Leo, Liu Song felt hypocritical questioning Colin about his intentions, but she had to know.

  “I’ve told her everything.” He hesitated, fidgeting, and then looked into her eyes. “I’ve even told her that I want to marry you.”

  Liu Song almost dropped her teacup.

  “I came here on business,” Colin said, “but I had something else to attend to—a proposal to make, to you, Liu Song. I wouldn’t be so crass as to ask in a letter, or a telegram. I don’t even know about your life now, I may have no right to ask such a thing. But I had to see you, had to see how you’re doing, had to see if you’re still pursuing the dream that I had to give up. And I had to ask if you’d take me as your husband.”

  Liu song’s heart leapt while her stomach turned.

  “I … I don’t know what to say,” she stammered. “All these years I’ve hardly allowed myself to dream such a thing.” The room was spinning. “But what about your wife—you’d leave her behind? You’d leave your children?” The thought was abhorrent to Liu Song. She’d done the worst of things to keep William. She could never envision giving him up, even if Colin offered her the world to return to China, she would not consider that option without her son.

  Colin sat back and rubbed his forehead. “I don’t think you fully understand …”

  “I don’t.” Liu Song felt flattered, but confused more than anything. “What else is there to understand? What aren’t you telling me?” That you love me?

  “I love us,” Colin said as he touched her hand. “I’ve saved my father’s business. I’m a wealthy man. I would split my time between Canton and Seattle. I can afford both families. I gave up my dreams, but that doesn’t mean I have to give you up.”

  Liu Song closed her eyes and tried not to cry. Not this way. Not again. She tried to process what Colin was saying. She opened her eyes and looked at his pained, sincere face. She finally understood. “You would take me as a second wife?”

  He seemed to shrink before her eyes. He looked hurt at the accusation, but the statement was true. “I … already have a second wife—that’s how I’ve always seen her, Liu Song. She’s an obligation, a promise that I had to keep. I do my best by her. But I want you as my first wife. That’s why I’ve come all this way, to ask you this in person.”

  Liu Song stared back in disappointment, in disbelief. She did love him, she wanted to be with him, not just for William’s sake but to satisfy every unfulfilled wish she’d ever had. But he wasn’t the same man as the one who’d left. He’d changed from an actor to a tap dancer. He was Daddy Rice with metal plates on his wingtips. He was Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer.

  Colin kept dancing. “Plenty of businessmen do this, Liu Song. It makes sense. I could provide for you—you could pursue your acting and singing and anything your heart would desire. I can take care of William as well.”

  Compared to the sorry life she had now, his proposal was beyond reasonable. And their marriage wouldn’t be recognized here, so she wouldn’t have to leave with him. Mildred would have leapt at the chance with arms wide open. But Liu Song would be no different than the person she was yesterday, party to another compromised arrangement to another man. You are your mother’s daughter. The words spun in her head.

  Liu Song felt her stomach turn again, this time with cramping instead of nausea. She held her breath and counted until the pain went away, but her thoughts were reeling. She heard small footsteps and saw the door open. She’d forgotten what time it was. William walked in smiling.

  “Hello,” William said as he set down his book bag and asked his mother if he could have a cookie. She gave him hers.

  “This must be William,” Colin gushed. “Look at you—you’ve grown so much!”

  “William,” Liu Song said, “say hello to Mr. Kwan.”

  “You remember me, don’t you?” Colin asked.

  William nodded and smiled politely, but his eyes betrayed his confusion. Colin didn’t seem to notice. He kept complimenting William.

  Liu Song excused herself to the bathroom, unsure if she were going to throw up. Her stomach ached and her forehead was pale and damp. She splashed water on her face and breathed as slowly and deeply as she could until the pain subsided.

  When she returned she asked her son to do his chores and went downstairs with Colin. They chatted about William until they reached the street. She had to see the neighborhood for what it was, poor, broken, and infested with hopelessness. Starving immigrants from barren farms who had arrived years earlier to work in the canneries now sat on the sidewalk banging their chopsticks on empty rice bowls. And there was heavy black smoke billowing into the sky in the distance, in the direction of Hooverville. Liu Song wondered if the army had gone in again and burned everything down. Despite all the hardships, she was grateful to have been born here, but she still had to acknowledge the raw, unvarnished life she had and compare it to the one Colin was offering her. She’d waited five years for him, never truly expecting him to return—it had seemed better that way. To forever be longing was better than to forever be disappointed.

  “Can I take you to dinner? You and …”

  “William.” Have you forgotten his name already?

  “Actually, you and the president of Blanchard Lumber, and perhaps a few others.”

  Liu Song paused. “You want me to join you for a business meeting?”

  “Oh, you make it sound like an execution at dawn. I promise it won’t be that bad. And afterward we can sneak away and talk about our future.”

  I want to be more than a sing-song girl. “I … don’t think we have a future.” Liu Song couldn’t believe what she was saying.

  Colin seemed dumbfounded, as though rejection were a possibility he had never considered. He opened his mouth as if to speak, then closed it again.

  Liu Song looked at Colin and for the first time in her life felt sorry for him. It didn’t diminish what her heart felt, but her head was telling her something else. He’d been headstrong in his pursuit of acting, headstrong in his father’s banking business, headstrong in everything he wanted. He was kind and from a family of means and still so handsome. But he was someone else’s father, someone else’s husband. Liu Song had sacrificed everything for William—everything. Colin had sacrificed nothing for her.

  She watched as the severity of her words found purchase in his heart. He pointed to an old man with one arm, selling bruised apples on the street. “Look around you. You have nothing. I can give you everything. You can pursue your dreams. Why deny yourself what you deserve?”

  What do I deserve? Liu Song thought long and hard as she stared at the despair of the street, the depravity of the laundryman down the avenue. She looked up at Colin and for once wasn’t acting—she was her true self. That person, her mother’s daughter, had been absent a very long time. She welcomed her back.

  “I just realized that I’m perfect for you,” she said as Colin turned to her and smiled with relief. “It’s just that you’re not perfect for me.”

  SHE DIDN’T EXPLAIN to William where Colin had gone and, fortunately, he didn’t ask. He listened to Let’s Pretend on the radio while she heated up a tin of tofu with pimiento and green onions. And while they ate she wondered how much money she had saved up and if it was enough to move to someplace far away from Uncle Leo.

  “How would you like to go to California?” she asked William. “To live.”

  William spoke with his mouth full. “Why? What’s wrong with right here?”

  “I’m serious. They say it’s sunny all the time in California. And there are sandy beaches everywhere. There’s a Chinatown in Los Angeles that’s twice as large as our neighborhood. There’s more acting jobs. More things to do.”

  Liu Song watched her son as he kept eating, sucking on the e
nds of his chopsticks, unsure if he believed that she was serious. She wondered how hard it would be for him to leave his school, his friends, everything he’d known.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Okay what?” she asked.

  William shrugged and kept eating. “I’m okay with moving …”

  “You wouldn’t miss your friends, miss your home?”

  William looked at her and smiled, somewhat confused, as if she’d just asked the most ridiculous question. “Home isn’t my school. Home is wherever you are.”

  Liu Song smiled and gave William her bowl. She couldn’t eat. Her stomach was still aching. But her heart felt full. She realized that she’d been waiting here for Colin, and with that tether gone she was adrift. She was saddened, free, and ready to risk the storm that might follow her if she fled Seattle.

  But first she needed to get through the night, because the sewing needles in her stomach were unrelenting. She tucked William into bed and drew a hot bath. She touched her belly and wondered why this was happening now. Was it Colin? Or was her body merely deciding to leave Uncle Leo, rejecting all that remained of him, of her old, broken life, even before her heart and mind had decided?

  She remembered her mother talking about losing a baby once. She tried to remain calm as she slowly undressed, tied her hair up high with a broken chopstick, and slipped into the tub, feeling the warmth envelop her, soothing the pain, which came in waves, like the backbeat rhythm of a heartbeat. She watched the water turn a ruddy pink and felt hot and light-headed one moment, then so chilly that her teeth were chattering the next. Her cheeks felt cold as warm tears cascaded to her chin and dropped into the bathwater.