China Dolls (6 page)

“You don’t use chopsticks?” The idea was astounding.

“I’ve never seen them before, so how could I know how to use them? Plain City …” Grace hunched her shoulders, humbled, embarrassed. “How do you eat soup with sticks?”

“Cripes!” Ruby exclaimed again.

We showed Grace how to pick up the noodles with the chopsticks and dangle them over her porcelain soupspoon before lifting them to her mouth. She was beyond hopeless, but she ate like she hadn’t had a meal in a year.

“You’ll get better,” I promised. “If you can teach me how to tap, then I can certainly teach you how to eat like a proper Chinese.”

After dinner, we walked back to the telephone exchange, where we spotted Monroe waiting for us. “If you were going to have noodles here in Chinatown, you should have told me,” he said, proving what I’d said about Chinatown’s gossip mill to be true. “Next time, we’ll all meet there. Okay?”

Grace, excited, grabbed Ruby’s and my hands. What was it about these girls and all their touching? Didn’t they have
any
manners?

“Thank you,” Grace said to Monroe, whose cheeks went crimson. “Thank you so much for letting us see each other again.”

I waved goodbye to my new friends and let Monroe escort me home. Most people rented apartments, but not my family. Our home took up nearly a whole block. We occupied an American version of a Chinese compound, with four sides, each with two stories, surrounding an interior courtyard. My six oldest brothers, already married with wives and children, inhabited the side wings. Monroe and I lived with our parents in the back of the compound, where we also had the public rooms. The laundry-supply business faced the street.

Monroe opened the gate, and we walked across the inner courtyard, which was littered with tricycles, balls, and other toys. Suddenly, he stopped and turned to me.

“What are you doing?” he asked gently.

“I’m trying to start my life again—”

“After everything our family has been through, especially you … I’m worried you’re going to get hurt.”

A lot of responses ran through my head, but I wisely didn’t speak them.

“You’re only just beginning to recover,” he went on. “You have a good job. I come and get you every day. Let things return to normal—”

“Nothing will ever be normal again.”

“Helen—”

“Don’t worry about me. This gets me out of the compound. That’s what you all want, isn’t it?”

Monroe stared hard at me. I loved him best of all my brothers, but his concern wouldn’t help me or change my fate. He sighed. Then he continued to the back of the courtyard and entered a door that led to the dining room. Everyone would just be gathering for dinner, but I didn’t want to see all those babies and small children. I also wanted to avoid the kitchen, where my sisters-in-law would ignore me and my mother would struggle for something to say as though anything she could utter could possibly change my status in the household or the world. How could I live in a compound with three generations of my relatives—all so alive with all their breathing, eating, and siring—and still be so lonely?

I ducked through a side entrance, went upstairs, threaded my way along the deserted hallway to my room, and shut the door behind me, but I could still hear the bustle and noise of the family. On a small table next to the window was a plate of oranges—neatly stacked—unlit candles set in pewter dishes, an incense burner, and a photograph. I began to weep.

RUBY

A Real Chinese Girl

On Saturday morning, I left my aunt and uncle’s house, took a ferry from Alameda to San Francisco, and walked to the Chinatown playground. Grace and Helen were already there. Sitting on a bench. Talking. Time for work! Grace and I taught Helen steps with one sound—the ball tap, heel tap, brush, and scuff. Every so often, mothers entered the park with their strollers, whispered when they saw us, and then rolled right back out.

“What are they saying?” Grace asked.

“They’re calling us no-no girls,” Helen answered.

No kidding. But Grace didn’t get it. She was a great dancer, better than me by far, which was downright irksome, but she truly acted like she’d just fallen off the turnip truck. I liked her even so. I saw in her what she probably saw in me—that we’d been hit by hard times, that we’d put cardboard in our shoes when the soles had worn out, and that we were on the thin side from too many dinners of watery soup.

On Sunday, same travel time to get to the Chinatown playground. I arrived first. Then Grace. We got to watch Monroe drop off his sister.

“This is the busiest day of the week in Chinatown,” he yakked, kicking and complaining, “and you’re in the playground!” He gestured to the apartment buildings that surrounded the park. “Lots of eyes up there … and everywhere. Ba’s going to find out.”

He was right, but either Helen wasn’t able to think of a better
place to go or she was choosing to be deliberately defiant. I couldn’t get a read on her. Monroe beat it to the library, reminding Helen with a call over his shoulder that he’d “fetch” her at Fong Fong Chinese Tea Pavilion at five. Then Grace and I spent the morning showing Helen taps with two sounds—the shuffle, scuffle, slap, and flap. She was pretty, which was hard for me to admit, but, man, she was a real cement mixer. By noon, it was clear she simply wasn’t catching on.

“It’s hard to learn to move well without music,” Grace said. “What if I show you something my dance instructor choreographed back home? Every so often, she’d bring out a record of novelty songs. Our favorite was ‘Let Me Play with It.’ ” She started to sing and do the simple routine her teacher had put to the tune. “You let me play with your little yo-yo. I’ll let you play with mine.”

I grinned at the lyrics, but Helen and Grace seemed to take them at face value. The song was about as easy as could be, though, with those two cracked lines repeated again and again. Helen practiced with steely determination. Aided by the melody, she followed along, pointing her right index finger at an imaginary audience and then at herself at the appropriate spots, putting a little enthusiasm into her footwork, even smiling. And she had a swell voice. In fact, we harmonized quite well together. By four, we’d reached the end of the song—“I’ll let you play with mine. I mean it! I’ll let you play with mine”—and Helen had learned a passable three-sound tap called the riffle and slurp. And still the mothers who came through the park turned away, muttering under their breath. So what? I was used to that kind of thing.

We sat on a bench and changed out of our taps. Through the open windows around us came the clatter of dinners being prepared, the whines of musical instruments being practiced—badly—and squalls of colicky babies. Men sat on their haunches on fire-escape landings—drinking tea from used jelly jars, smoking cigarettes, and watching us with expressions that combined disdain and desire. I was used to that too.

After Helen fixed my collar—“so you look nicer”—she led the way to Fong Fong. The streets were lively. Laundry workers and waiters, dressed in their Sunday best, took advantage of their one night off, strutting to poolrooms, burlesque shows, and dime-a-dance halls. Helen said some of those men visited the open-air herb shop to buy deer antler, bear gall, and shaved rhinoceros horn to improve and prolong their potency in case good fortune—in the form of a woman—should shine on them in the coming hours. Other men, in business suits, gathered to blab about politics on corners. Women roamed the shops.

Helen pulled us into Fong Fong and bought three Coca-Colas.

“You two have helped me so much,” she said. “Thank you—”

Grace and I spoke over each other.

“No thanks are necessary—”

“We were happy to help—”

Helen held up a hand. “Listen.” She leaned forward conspiratorially. “I’ve heard of an apartment close to here. It’s not too big or too expensive. If you two become roommates, the rent won’t be bad, especially if I negotiate it for you.”

“An apartment?” I squinted, doubtful. Hanging around with girls wasn’t my idea of a clambake. Especially with either of these two. Grace was a knockout, but so sweet and innocent she hadn’t yet kenned onto using what she had. And Helen? She was pretty, like I said, but something was off with her. How could she be so swift on the effect Chinese herbs had on men when she supposedly lived such a sheltered life with her family? Beyond that, I wasn’t sure I liked the way she stared at me.

“It’s not the cleanest,” Helen went on, “but it’s not the dirtiest either.”

“In Chinatown?” Grace asked nervously.

“Of course it’s in Chinatown.” Helen sure could be bossy—a regular Miss Know-it-all. “You two need a place to live. The YWCA is full. Cameron House is right around the corner, but that’s not right
for you. Donaldina Cameron rescues
bad
girls.” She lowered her voice. “If you become roommates, you’ll be close to where I live, and you’ll be even closer to the telephone exchange.”

“You won’t be working there much longer,” I said, confident.

“What if we aren’t hired? How will we pay the rent?” People could probably smell Grace’s fear all the way in Timbuktu.

“You’ll be hired,” Helen told her. “You’ll be hired before I am!”

Helen didn’t mention me, but I had to be a sure thing after the little visit I’d paid to Charlie Low in his office. Nothing happened, and he did a bang-up job of acting like he wasn’t thrilled—not with his wife in the building, but she wouldn’t always be there. A man is a man is a man. Yeah, I’d wised up after not getting hired at the other auditions. This time I’d get the gig and the dough.

“Do you want to share an apartment?” Grace asked me.

My mother always said it was rude for someone to be so direct, but I answered anyway. “Why not?” Because, really,
why not?
There had to be a first time for everything. “Anyplace would be better than staying with my aunt and uncle in Alameda. It’ll be good to get away from my little cousins too.”

I watched as they took in those nuggets of information. We’d bumped gums some, talking a bit about this and that. Nothing serious. Nothing too revealing. It was fine by me if we practiced “Oriental silence”—hanging on to information that was no one else’s business—but things were bound to leak out.

“You’re sure you want to do it?” Grace’s voice rose with expectation.

“I’d love to,” I answered. “And thank you, Helen. Thank you so much.”

“I’m happy to help,” she responded. “It will be good to have you nearby.”

T
HE NEXT DAY
, Grace and I met Helen at the Forbidden City, where we big-eyed the new girls who’d made it through the weekend auditions. We were back up to forty or so girls for the eight spots, which
knocked some of the wind out of my panties. We auditioned in groups of six, and we sang something we’d all learned in elementary school—“Oh My Darling Clementine”—which put us on equal footing and made it instantly clear who could carry a tune. A quarter of the girls were gone by noon. Then Walton—no man was a mister to me—introduced us to the tap routine, which was a lot easier than anything we’d shown Helen over the weekend. He wanted to see how we moved onstage. Did we have presence? Could we hit our marks? Did our simple taps sound crisp or muddled? Did we have nice smiles?

“You, you, and you are in.”

Helen, Grace, and I made it through to the next round.

At the end of the day, we found Monroe on the sidewalk. We were physically tired but also exhilarated. We were so close to getting chosen as the Forbidden City’s first ponies … and now the apartment. Monroe walked with us to a run-down building on Waverly, a block from the playground where Grace and I had taught Helen to tap. Mrs. Hua, the elderly manager, showed us the tiny two-room furnished flat, which had a hot plate and a sink. If we got the place, we’d have to take turns sleeping on the sofa and the bed. Showers would be courtesy of the YWCA. We searched the cupboards and found four plates, three cups, a frying pan, and a wok. It all looked good to me.

I was grateful when Helen took charge. She knew the ins and outs of Chinatown—a place where Grace and I were total strangers. And it turned out she was great at bargaining.

“You want to charge ten dollars a week? For this?” Helen asked Mrs. Hua. “Impossible!”

“Nine dollars,” Mrs. Hua countered in heavily accented English.

“It isn’t worth five.”

“Eight fifty.”

“Five. Take it or leave it.”

Monroe regarded his sister with embarrassment tinged with grudging admiration. Grace seemed eager for Helen to accept the asking price.

“Eight dollars. No lower,” Mrs. Hua came back.

Helen shook her head. “Let’s go.”

Monroe, Grace, and I started for the door. Mrs. Hua grabbed Helen’s sleeve. “Six dollars. Okay?”

Helen pursed her lips as she thought about it. Finally, she said, “All right. Six dollars a week. But I’m not going anywhere until I see the contract. I don’t want you changing things after I leave, Mrs. Hua.”

As soon as the manager left to get the paperwork, Grace squealed and jumped up and down. “Helen! I can’t believe you just did that! My hotel room costs a dollar a day. This is a lot better and for a lot less money.”