Songs of Willow Frost (26 page)

William knew from reading
The Seattle Star
that his ah-ma would be in town for at least another week. But he didn’t know where she’d be staying, or who she was with, if anyone, though
there was always the theater and the alley and the stage door. If not, there was Chinatown. That’s where he hoped he’d find her. Like Charlotte’s grave, he knew that neighborhood was where old bones, old skeletons were buried. He suspected that his ah-ma would be drawn there as well, to wallow in the memories, to drown in nostalgia.

His mother’s stories had conjured dark thoughts of being seven years old again and waking up in the middle of the night to an empty apartment. He remembered how he used to open the window and sit on the cold iron grating of the fire escape, the breeze chilling his ankles where the feet of his footie pajamas had been cut off as he outgrew them. Back then he would wrap himself in a blanket to ward off the wintery Seattle night, when the wet air permeated brick and mortar, tile and wood, until his fingers and toes looked pale and grayish, translucent in the moonlight. He recalled those nights after the Crash, looking down into the alley and seeing hobos buried beneath piles of coats—reeking men, huddled together, burning garbage for warmth.

Strangely, he never felt alone on those nights, always confident that his mother would return. He’d sit and listen to beats wafting from the clubs and cabaret theaters below. He didn’t know what to call that kind of music back then, but he later learned that joyful noise was a piano and a scratchy trombone playing cakewalk and ragtime, and a local version of Tin Pan Alley. The songs would blare and whisper, crashing and receding, coming and going, reminding him of the sound from a Philco radio on a stormy night. As he grew older he realized that the strange rhythm was merely the doorman letting patrons in and out, releasing music into the night like smoke signals. Despite Prohibition, William would watch as men and women staggered into waiting cabs or ambled down the street, straightening their ties and hemlines, stepping to the beat with all the composure of Sunday churchgoers, but listing to the left or right as though the sidewalk were slowly shifting beneath their feet.

He wondered if the clubs were still there. So many things had changed since then. So many places had been boarded up. Fortunes came and fortunes went. William couldn’t grasp the concept of health, good or bad, but fortune—that was easy to comprehend. He’d noticed their luck changing as his ah-ma began to receive gifts—bouquets of purple and blue flowers, potted plants, and baskets of ripe fruit. And pink boxes of food—oh, the delicious food. His mouth watered as he remembered the savory, chewy sweetness of wind-dried duck sausage, which to this day was the best thing he’d ever tasted.

And his ah-ma’s clothing began to change.

He remembered her blue dress, the one she used to wash in the sink and hang in the bathroom to dry every night—the one she wore every day—was suddenly replaced by a floral number with a lace collar. Then another. And another. And new hatboxes began to stack up in the corner, so high they seemed mountainous. So William would do what any sensible young boy would do; he’d climb them until they tumbled to the floor, then he’d turn them over and beat on them like drums, using his chopsticks.

His ah-ma would scold him, snatching the utensils from his hands. He’d sit down and start to cry until she made funny faces that made him laugh, then handed him a shoe box of empty spools that he used as building blocks.

Then there was the strange man. William vaguely remembered Colin. He recalled, years ago, thinking he must have been his father, or at least a kind fatherly figure. Colin was always smiling and gracious—he never raised his voice, was always joking and laughing. Through the prism of memory, he seemed the perfect gentleman, with a spectrum of manners, decorum, and wealth. William remembered going for rides in Colin’s fancy car. William used to sit in the back and watch his mother’s scarf whip in the wind. Colin seemed to have been there from the beginning, but William had eventually guessed—by the way this man came and went—that he
was not his father, not his true parent. But he was there, just out of frame, in William’s earliest childhood memories. And he remained for years. His ah-ma and he seemed to have it all—health, happiness, a sense of belonging.

But then their fortunes changed again. The first thing William noticed was the emptiness in his stomach when their food began to spoil and eventually treats in neatly wrapped boxes stopped showing up and more often than not he went to bed hungry. The flowers had stopped coming as well, and the ones in their vases began to wilt and die; dried petals scattered on the table and blew on the floor when he opened the window. That was when he noticed that his clothes always seemed to be too small—his shoes too. But in retrospect, his ah-ma rarely let on that anything was wrong. Their austerity became a matriarch’s virtue, one he had gradually understood. That loving mothers quietly sacrificed their flesh for their children, like ritual suicide, but slowly, one day, one hour, one meal at a time. Which is why he dutifully nodded whenever his ah-ma insisted how full she was—that she wasn’t hungry—as he swallowed his guilt each night and ate her portion of the modest dinners she’d prepared.

And he remembered the caustic smell of mothballs as his ah-ma tried to preserve their clothing, which eventually wore thin. She’d patch the knees of his trousers and darn the holes in his socks. He didn’t know what bad luck was until their apartment grew colder, even with the windows shut. He remembered sleeping in his mother’s bed, huddled against her for warmth. And on nights when she worked, which as he grew older seemed like all nights, he’d take his blanket and pillow and set them on the radiator, which was merely warm instead of hot to the touch. He’d shiver, bouncing back and forth between his feet, waiting for the blanket to heat up. Then he’d wrap the musty fabric around his shoulders and lie on the wooden floor like a caterpillar in a silken cocoon, his back to the bare metal of the radiator, feeling snug and safe once again.

William remembered that when he pressed his ear to the floor, he could hear music playing in the next building—a piano, drums, even a horn section, and people making all kinds of noise, some laughing, some fighting.

Then his ah-ma would return, sometimes sniffling from the cold.

“How was work at the club?” he’d ask. “Or were you onstage this time?”

William remembered her shaking her head and frowning, “It was just a party,” she said as she curled up on the floor next to him. “With someone I used to know.”

William felt her wrap the blanket around the two of them as he moved so she could share his pillow. She smelled strange, like smoke and sweat and old perfume.

“I’d like to go to a party,” he said, thinking of birthday parties, dinner parties in the neighborhood. He’d never been to one of the big fancy ones, but he’d seen people celebrating in the restaurants and clubs. “I’ll be good …”

“It’s not a party for little boys,” she said, tearing up.

What’s the matter, Ah-ma?
He remembered thinking those words, but he had been too afraid to ask. Sometimes he made her cry when he spoke, especially when he asked too many questions. He didn’t know why.

“It’s just the weather, it’s just a cold,” she said, as though reading his troubled mind. “It’s nothing. Everything will be okay.” But as she wrapped her arms around him, he could feel her sobs. It was the first time he remembered ever feeling scared.

“W
AITING FOR
L
AZARUS
?”

William opened his eyes, looked up, and saw Sunny blocking his view of the sky, which was now streaked with orange and pink.
I must have dozed off
, he realized as his friend lowered himself to the ground and lay perpendicular to William.

“I didn’t know her as well as you, but I miss her too,” Sunny
said, nodding toward the plank of wood that rested in the dirt. The fresh paint bore Charlotte’s name.

William didn’t say anything. He knew the grave marker was intended to be only temporary, until a family member or a kindly benefactor would pay for a granite slab. But as he looked around the burial ground and counted dozens of similar wooden signs, most of them faded and rotting, he knew those hopes had also been laid to rest.

“You skipped out on Saturday chores,” Sunny said. “But I doubt Sister Briganti noticed. She’s been in reconciliation all afternoon with Father Bartholomew.”

We all have atoning to do
, William thought. He felt guilty for leaving Charlotte alone. He regretted his lack of conviction and was prone to fits of guilt and paralyzing bouts of regret. He wasn’t certain Sister Briganti felt such emotions.

“You missed supper.”

“Not hungry,” William said as his stomach grumbled ever so slightly, a faint reminder that he was capable of feeling something other than sadness. He hadn’t eaten since before the funeral. And he’d lost what remained of his appetite when he learned that Charlotte’s father hadn’t bothered to take any of her belongings when he left Sacred Heart. The sisters, in their strange, generous wisdom, had scattered her possessions among the orphans like birdseed. William bit his tongue as he imagined spiteful girls pecking at the remaining bits of Charlotte’s existence until there was nothing left.

“I’m sorry, Willie,” Sunny said, tearing blades of grass and scattering them in the warm autumn breeze. “But your mother is out there—you don’t belong here. I don’t want you to leave again and I’ll miss having you around. But you need to go. You need to find your mom while you still can. That’s what I would do.”

William didn’t need the reminder, though he wasn’t sure how he’d go about leaving again. He’d already spent what little money he had, and without Charlotte’s help he wouldn’t get far. He’d heard
about street kids earning pennies by helping ferry passengers with their luggage at Colman Dock, or standing in line for rich people at movie theaters or the opera. The notion seemed bleak, but possible.

Then he noticed Sister Briganti walking slowly, solemnly across the mossy courtyard toward the grotto. She palmed her rosary.

“Did you hear what I said, Willie? You don’t belong here.”

William stood, dusted off his trousers, and then helped Sunny to his feet. William stared at the place where he and Charlotte used to meet. The trees were swaying gently in the wind, brown leaves tumbling from the outstretched branches like thistledown.

William walked toward the main gate. “None of us belong here.”

W
ILLIAM SAT ON
a bench at the nearest streetcar landing. He had enough money to make it halfway to downtown, but not enough for a transfer. He didn’t care. He was done with this place. His mother, his beloved ah-ma, was out there—somewhere. If she wanted him, if she missed him, if she only vaguely remembered the sweet times with him, amid the cameras and glitter and stage lights of her world, none of it seemed to matter. All he knew was that he needed something to fill the pit of emptiness, the cavity that served as a gateway to nothing but raw, exposed nerve—where warmth and cold hurt him in equal proportions.

As he looked back at the school, his residence for these past five years, he saw the stout figure of Sister Briganti walking toward him. He didn’t feel like running, or arguing, or supplicating—all he felt was gravity pulling him homeward, to his ah-ma, the person he’d orbited his entire childhood, until she’d given him up. He shrugged and turned his back to Sister Briganti, hoping she’d leave him alone but expecting to feel her wrenching his ear and dragging him back to the orphanage. He listened for the clanging bell of a coachman, the crackle of sparks from the wires overhead, the shimmy of wheels on tarnished rails. But all he heard were footsteps and words in Italian that he recognized as a prayer.

Amen
, he thought as he waited. He tensed, his stomach in knots, his heart beating frantically. He remembered the words
Run away, Liu Song. Run away!
And she had. His mother had run away from everything.
She had run away from me
.

Then William heard the flutter of wings as a flock of birds vacated their perch atop the trolley line. The wire shook with the approach of a streetcar. He turned around, and Sister Briganti was staring down at him, her lips pursed. She handed him an envelope containing streetcar tokens and a note.

“The note is from your mother. I debated whether or not to give it to you, but after what happened … with Charlotte …” She glanced toward the cemetery. “Save a token for the return trip.” She turned and walked away. “You can thank me when you come back.”

I’ll never thank you. And I’m not ever coming back
. William swallowed his words and unfolded the note, which read:
Waiting at the Bush Hotel
.

Home

(1934)

William felt reborn to walk the streets of Chinatown again. In his imagination every face was a long-lost relative, every city block was a welcome mat. He relished each sensation, each rediscovered memory, from the sweet, tangy smell of fresh oyster sauce to the magical way fish scales shimmered like flecks of glitter in the gutter as old men in bloodstained aprons hosed down the sidewalks. And King Street had hardly changed in his absence. There was still the familiar yelling and laughing from the alleys, the distant wail of a saxophone, the songs the Japanese Baptist Sunday school children sang as they collected money for the poor, and the splashing of ivory mah-jongg tiles that sounded so much like rain. The only aspect missing was the grip of his mother’s gloved hand as they used to walk to the Atlas Theatre. The click-clack of her heels as they stepped around mud puddles dotted with cigarette butts and pigeon feathers.