Songs of Willow Frost

by Jamie Ford

  As he sat back in the theater, he looked at the stage. The tiny venue had once hosted vaudeville comedians. The lobby was filled with signed posters featuring Fay Tincher, Buster Keaton, and Charlie Chaplin, from their days as traveling performers. William had plenty of answers, but he still felt empty; the joke was on him it seemed. He wished he could have seen his grandparents, wished he had known them, before those days surrendered to silent films and the talkies that were now everywhere.

  He didn’t know why he sat there until the film was over. He knew his mother was dead on-screen, he wasn’t hoping to catch another glimmer of the only true family he’d ever known, but maybe it was simply because he had a single streetcar token left to his name and nowhere else to go. So he sat, in darkness, while the audience clapped politely and the organist played a happy waltz as patrons drifted to the exits. William was the last to leave the empty theater as an usher began to sweep up.

  Outside, the air had a bite to it that hadn’t been there before. He pulled his collar up to ward off the chill, thinking of where he could go at this late hour. He knew the train station would be open—and warm. He headed back in that direction, but even from a block away he could see police officers dragging homeless men and squatters out of the station, tossing them into the streets along with their belongings. The officers were yelling at the men and pointing in the direction of Hooverville. William considered flowing south with the rising tide of misery until his curiosity got the better of him—up the street, one block away, sat the Jefferson Laundry.

  William couldn’t bring himself to look away. His cold feet seemed to move on their own as he found his way past street musicians and fruit vendors packing up for the day and to the window of the laundry, where a faded picture of Zhong Kui hung in a golden frame. William recognized the demon slayer from childhood stories—fairy tales to him, but revered superstitions to Uncle Leo, his father. William peeked inside and saw a lumpy old woman taking in bundles of sheets and passing out claim tickets. Auntie Eng, he thought. Not his real aunt. Not his real anything. She was hardly family. Sunny is more family than that old woman.

  Then William glimpsed a strange yet familiar face as it emerged from the back room. The stern-looking man had lost more hair since the last time William had seen him. But his clothes looked the same, just older and more out of fashion. He’d gained weight too, which William found odd, considering the city was filled with so many hungry mouths. The man looked to be twenty, maybe thirty years older than Willow. William gritted his teeth at the thought.

  What you did, Ah-ma, you did for me. William understood why Willow never came back for all those years. She was helpless here, laden with too many bad memories. He wondered when Uncle Leo had finally seen his ah-ma, in the newspaper, or on-screen, or heard her familiar voice on the radio. Did he recognize her right away? And was he more interested in Willow now, or in Liu Song? Would he have some claim to her? And if he did, William realized, the only way to collect on that debt would be through me.

  Then the man looked up, directly at William. He glanced at his watch and came around the counter. He untied his apron, tossed the dirty linen in a bin, and opened the door. William was overwhelmed by the smell of detergent and a wave of moist heat that steamed into the frigid air.

  “No jobs today. Come back next week,” Leo said in Cantonese.

  William stared back at him.

  “Do I know you?” Leo asked.

  William kept staring, examining the man’s face, his nose, his receding hairline. William shook his head slowly. No. And you never will.

  Prodigal

  (1934)

  Despite his daydreams, William was no character in a Horatio Alger story. He wasn’t Ragged Dick or Ben, the Luggage Boy. Nor did he envision being rescued from the street by Daddy War-bucks and transported to a mansion on Capitol Hill, where he’d spend the waning years of his childhood with tuxedoed servants and a scruffy dog.

  Gee whiskers, he thought sadly. He gave up on those dreams and accepted all the reality that a streetcar token could afford. He picked up the broken pieces of his childhood and carried them inside him all the way back to the gates of Sacred Heart.

  When he entered the main school building, he went to Sister Briganti’s office. She was there, smoking, drinking black coffee, and reviewing a ledger.

  “I’m back” was all he could say.

  “Welcome home, William,” the nun replied, hardly looking up. She didn’t say I told you so. She didn’t say anything at all. She just turned the page. And so did William.

  When he wandered back into the dorm he shared with the other boys, there was a rousing cheer, as though he had left like Pinocchio, ventured to Pleasure Island, and returned home as a real boy. He didn’t feel like a boy. He still felt like an orphan, but he no longer ached for what he’d lost; now he ached for what he’d never have.

  “I didn’t want to see you again,” Sunny said. “But I’m really glad you’re back.”

  William knew what he meant. Orphans didn’t regard each other as family, they could never be that close, but they shared each other’s pain, each other’s loneliness. There was small comfort in just knowing that someone else understood.

  “I saved you something,” Sunny said. “Just in case.” He reached under his mattress and pulled out a newspaper. He unfolded it, turned to the back, and handed it to William, who looked at a full broadside of Seattle’s finest.

  “Why are you giving me the Society Page?”

  “Look closely,” Sunny said, pointing with his chin.

  The page was covered with dozens of dolled-up portraits of Seattle’s cultured women, in satin tennis dresses and floral gowns. They seemed gaudy considering the poverty on the streets. In the lower right-hand corner was a tiny photo, the smallest on the page, no bigger than his palm. The image was his ah-ma. The caption read: “Weepin’ Willow Frost returns to Seattle. Is she the latest member of Hollywood’s sewing circles?”

  “A Chinese woman on the Society Page,” Sunny gushed. “Can you believe it?”

  I don’t know what to believe anymore. Just that I’ll spend a few more years here, and then become another vagrant on the street.

  “Thank you,” William said.

  At dinner the food tasted the same—stale bread with the tiny divots where the mold had been cut out, and turnips. But there was a benign comfort in blandness. The voices were the same too. The jokes were the same. Everything was the same except for the warm place in his life that had previously been filled with the glow from Charlotte. Now that emptiness felt cavernous, without her, without Willow—without his ah-ma. William tried not to dwell in that sad place. He tried his best.

  After dinner, when the other boys were studying or horsing around playing Broadsides with pad and pencil, the girls knitting or roller-skating outside, William fished out the old, dog-eared photo of his mother, the one he’d carried around like a holy relic. He took that scrap of smelly, tattered, faded yellow paper and the newspaper Sunny had given him, and walked out into the creeping darkness of the evening. The new moon lit his way to the cemetery where Charlotte lay buried. He brushed fallen pine needles from her wooden marker and dug a small hole next to her resting place with his bare hands. The ground was cold and wet and smelled of rotting leaves. When the hole was large enough, deep enough, William gently placed the images of his mother at the bottom. He regarded her Hollywood smile for a quiet moment and then covered her glamorous, wrinkled, longing face with handfuls of dirt until the hole was filled. He wished the same could be said of the one in his chest. As he smoothed the dirt above his mother’s makeshift grave, he said, “I forgive you.” Then he walked back to the dorm, crawled beneath his covers with his muddy hands and dirty fingers, his clothes still on, and buried his head beneath the pillow.

  The Actress

  (1934)

  Willow hated airplanes. She wasn’t afraid of flying and the noise didn’t bother her. What she loathed was the tedium. Her last flight from Los Angeles t
o New York City had taken fifty-six hours, not counting an extended stop in Kansas City. But as much as she disliked the miracle and modern convenience of air travel, trains were worse. Even the fastest passenger trains were burdened with freight—bags, cargo, and memories. Because she had grown up near a train station, their comings and goings reminded her of the person she used to be.

  During the last four months she’d arrived in each new city to a throng of reporters, theater and movie columnists, cameramen, and even autograph-seeking fans—she had actual fans, which always surprised her. Most were Caucasian men, older than she was—much older. They brought flowers and gifts, always more lavish than what she would have chosen for herself. No Chinese people came, which didn’t surprise her. Few things had changed in that regard. She was still a female performer, unmarried. Being in movies didn’t mollify that shame. It only put her seemingly tawdry career under a spotlight for all to see. Most Western moviegoers saw a glamorous Oriental delight. Her former neighbors in Chinatown, however, saw a corrupted woman, exploiting their sacred traditions for gain—for filthy lucre. In Willow’s mind, both were right. But still, the crowds came and showered her with unfiltered adoration. One well-meaning man even gave her a basket filled with pomegranates. He seemed offended when she refused to accept it. But she couldn’t bear to explain that his gift symbolized the bearing of many children. For Willow, the sweet-sour fruit would always taste bitter.

  But leaving by train was the hardest part of traveling. Leaving was different. Arriving to a new crowd was a heralded event. But leaving was like becoming yesterday’s news—no one cared. Is that how we’ll all leave this business? she wondered. She didn’t like the answer that came to her. Even Stepin and Asa felt the discord—the emptiness of rising on a tide so high that when it ebbs everything of value is sucked away. From the loving eyes of thousands to the confused stares of a few.

  Willow stayed close to the rest of the performers who would be making the trip on the Empire Builder to Spokane, then on to Minneapolis, and Chicago—another city, another venue, another puppet show where her strings were golden shackles.

  “That was your boy, wasn’t it?” Stepin asked. He was the only one who knew. Asa might have suspected, but he’d been so drunk he hardly remembered what day it was. He’d already missed the train twice on this leg of the tour.

  Stepin put his arm around her shoulder. “The things that we do, that make us so black, and leave us feeling so blue.” He hummed a sad tune.

  Willow couldn’t bear to speak of the boy she’d left behind, again. She merely nodded and looked away, hoping not to cry. She’d been teased on many occasions about her weeping moniker. Some said it was because she was a woman, that she played it up for dramatic effect—her one trick, used over and over to melt the hearts of stubborn men. But the truth was, Willow did it because she had to. If she didn’t, something inside her would burst.

  Willow checked her ticket as the train chugged into the terminal. She stood back watching stewards and handlers load their luggage. All she kept with her was her mother’s valise. Willow left Stepin and Asa to find a bench and sat, the old case in her lap. She stared at her empty hands. The lines on her palms had always been her road map, leading her far away, in her mind and eventually in the flesh. She’d followed that lonely path because she had lost her family, everyone dear to her, and had nowhere else to go. Now that road had brought her full circle. She did have someone. She always had.

  “That’s our train, Frosty,” Stepin said as he adjusted his hat. He signed an autograph for the train’s purser and shook hands with other passengers in line.

  Willow didn’t answer.

  “You gonna catch the next one, maybe?” He didn’t press the issue. There would be other trains carrying crew and wardrobe carts and musical instruments and the rest of the traveling road show that her life had become. The moviemaking was pleasant, shallow work. But traveling, performing, the ups and downs, had taken their toll.

  Willow watched as Stepin and Asa and the ladies of the Ingénues boarded one by one. The purser punched their tickets and tucked them into their seatbacks as stewards helped the women with the cases that contained their musical instruments. Most of the cast and crew ignored her. But Stepin knew. He tipped his hat and waved goodbye. She wondered if she’d ever see him again, perhaps on-screen in some first-run theater.

  While she still sat in the station, the final bell rang and the train pulled away. She’d never felt more alone, even as hundreds of people walked by. No one recognized her, and she began to treasure her anonymity like a gift. She certainly didn’t feel like anyone special. Far from extraordinary. She sat and thought about her parents taking these same trains. She thought about all the years she wanted to take William and run away. But she’d been young and scared. Now she was older and frightened—of the person she’d allowed herself to become. She’d become her mother’s daughter, the compromised woman with a crushing sadness, and the brave performer—all of it. But now she would try to be someone else. The mother to a son.

  As she left the train station she wasn’t sure if going back for William would make things better or worse. She would be giving up everything to be with him. And whatever attention or publicity that came with it, good or bad, she was ready to embrace it all. And there was still the chance that Leo would swoop down like a vulture and take him away. Let him try, she thought. She would throw kai ching in his path. She would distract him with devil money. She wouldn’t give up so easily this time. She wouldn’t tell herself stories. She would fight if she had to. She wouldn’t compromise. She couldn’t anymore.

  Five years ago Liu Song had given up her son, her beautiful boy.

  Today, as she stepped off the Laurelhurst trolley and strode through the cold iron gates of Sacred Heart, she didn’t know if it was even possible for Willow Frost to adopt a child, but she would give anything in the world to find out.

  As she walked past the offices, searching, she saw the teachers, cooks, custodians, and sisters—the surrogates she’d allowed to look after her son. They didn’t appear to be bad people, though they didn’t look like family. The children, they looked like family. As she searched, Willow knew she must have stood out at Sacred Heart, not because she was a Chinese movie star but because she was a living, breathing parent. The orphans stared at her as though she were some strange apparition from a hopeful dream. They whispered among themselves and looked around, searching.

  Willow turned and followed the smell of boiled cabbage and powdered milk to the crowded lunchroom, where she saw a woman in charge. Willow recognized the nun as a figure of authority by the deference shown to her by the other teachers. And the way the orphans stood aside as the woman roamed, ruler in hand. When Willow’s eyes met hers, they exchanged startled, knowing glances. The sister nodded and pointed to the courtyard past the window, where Willow saw dozens of excited children surrounding a truck that was open on one side, carrying racks of books.

  Outside, Willow could smell the diesel fumes from the truck and hear the chatter of happy, hopeful children as each ran off, a book in hand. She didn’t see the boy she was looking for, but a few of the older kids noticed.

  “You must be Willow,” a boy said, unblinking.

  “And who would you be?” she asked.

  “I’m a friend of William’s. I’m Sunny,” he said. Then he pointed up the hill, toward a knot of pine trees. “If you’re looking for him, you’ll find him there.”

  She thanked him and waved to the children whose sad, curious eyes were all now on her. As she turned and walked past the trees, she saw a clearing filled with old stone pillars—headstones. She noticed the dates that had been etched into granite and painted on stone, calculating the ages of those buried there. Some had lived well into their teens, but just as many had died at three, four, most before their tenth birthdays.

  She searched for her son and sighed with relief as she saw William sitting in the grass next to a wooden marker. He’d arranged a cup of tea,
an orange, an apple, and two sticks of incense. Curlicues of agar wood smoke rose above his makeshift funeral offering. He sat with his back to her, reading out loud from a book called Cast upon the Breakers, pausing to engage in conversation with a girl named Charlotte. Willow watched as he paused as though sensing the presence of another, or perhaps he caught her perfume on the breeze. He closed the book and rose to his feet, turning toward her.

  “William …” Liu Song was barely able to speak his name.

  He stared back incredulously. “Ah-ma?”

  She nodded and drew a deep breath. “Your friend told me where to find you.”

  William glanced at his offering, then rubbed smoke from his eyes. He looked back up at Willow, wide-eyed. “Charlotte told you?”

  She shook her head. “The boy down the hill. Your friend …”

  “You mean Sunny.”

  Willow nodded again.

  William stepped toward his ah-ma. He paused and regarded her, hesitant, as if he were unsure she was really there, then threw himself into her open, waiting arms. He looked down the hill toward the orphanage and then off toward the horizon. “His name is Sunny.” William smiled. “Sunny Dreams Come True.”

  Willow held her son close. She touched his cold cheek, ran her fingers through his hair, felt happiness welling up in her eyes as she softly whispered, “In your dreams whatever they be, dream a little dream of me.”

  Author’s Note

  My writing career began when I wrote my parents’ eulogies. I was an aspiring writer, fumbling for years with this thing called fiction, but too often I had nothing of substance to write about. It was only after I’d collected enough scars that I found the expository canvas on which to paint my stories, like the one of Willow Frost.