Last Night at the Telegraph Club

by Malinda Lo

  Today Shirley led Lily, Flora, and Mary into the living room on the third floor. Its windows overlooked Sacramento Street, and Lily and Shirley had spent many an hour leaning out those windows, surveying the activity on the street below and keeping an eye on who came to the restaurant. It was too chilly for the windows to be open today, though, and Shirley had to turn on the lamps for light. It was a formal room, outfitted with a set of rosewood Chinese furniture and a trio of Ch’ing dynasty vases on the mantel over the cold fireplace. A family altar was set up in one corner, with small black-and-white photos taped to the wall above the bowl of half-burned incense sticks. The faint, sweet scent of incense lingered in the room, above the aroma of fried noodles that always clung to the Eastern Pearl.

  Today’s task was to work together on Shirley’s speech. Mary shuffled through her notes while Flora proudly reported that her father was going to buy a couple of hundred raffle tickets.

  “That’s wonderful,” Shirley gushed. “You have some competition, Lily.”

  Lily was startled. “I do?”

  “I’m sure the hospital board will buy a thousand tickets,” Flora said smoothly.

  Mary almost smiled, but hid it by reaching for some of the dried cuttlefish that Shirley had poured into a bowl on the coffee table.

  Shirley opened her notebook. “All right. What should I say in my speech to the judges? It’s supposed to be about why I’m the right candidate to be Miss Chinatown.”

  “Well, why do you want to be Miss Chinatown?” Mary asked.

  “Because you’re ambitious?” Lily suggested.

  “She can’t say that,” Flora objected. “She has to be modest.”

  “Because you’re beautiful,” Mary said.

  “She can’t say that either,” Lily said. “What did they say last year? Miss Chinatown has to be good, serene, and industrious. Well, you are industrious.” She popped a strand of cuttlefish in her mouth; it was chewy and salty and fishy, with a slight spicy bite.

  Shirley batted her eyelashes. “I’m serene as well!”

  “Then you’ll just have to lie about the good part,” Lily said.

  “I’m perfectly good!” Shirley said.

  “Depends on what you mean by good,” Mary joked.

  Lily laughed while Shirley pretended to be hurt. Flora held a hand over her mouth as she giggled.

  “I heard that Donna Ng is dancing at the Forbidden City now,” Mary said, eyes wide to show she was scandalized by the rumor. Donna Ng had been last year’s runner-up.

  “I heard Miss Chinatown Los Angeles is auditioning for movies,” Flora said.

  Shirley struck a pose in her chair, head tilted back as if she were gazing into the distance. “Do you think I should audition for a movie?” she asked.

  “Yes!” Mary said.

  “There aren’t very many movies with Chinese girls in them,” Lily said. “Not here anyway.”

  “You could go to Hong Kong,” Flora suggested.

  “Well, first I’ll try Hollywood,” Shirley said confidently. “I bet they would cast me.”

  The light from the standing lamp was perfectly positioned to shine directly onto Shirley’s face, almost like a spotlight. And Lily found it quite easy to imagine her on the silver screen. Shirley relished attention, but she also knew how to turn that desire to be looked at into something coquettish and somehow flattering to the person who was looking.

  Then Shirley broke the pose and crossed one leg over the other, bobbing one slippered foot up and down in the air. “Come on, girls, what should I say?” she asked, leaning over to grab several strings of cuttlefish. She chewed on them like an old Chinese woman who didn’t mind the fishy stink that would cling to her afterward.

  “I know,” Lily said, and everyone turned to look at her. “You want to be Miss Chinatown because this is your home. You grew up here, you love this place, and you want to help represent it to the rest of America.”

  Shirley was scribbling down what Lily said. “Yes, exactly. That’s perfect.” She smiled at Lily and added, “I’m so glad you’re here.”

  It was the first time anyone had acknowledged, even obliquely, that for a little while, Lily had been gone. Flora and Mary looked at her a bit guiltily. Lily took some more cuttlefish.

  * * *

  —

  On Christmas Eve, Frankie played a shepherd in the Christmas Nativity tableau at church. He had acquired a fake brown beard and tied it around his head with kitchen twine. Due to his role, Lily and her family had to arrive at church early. While she waited outside the sanctuary with Eddie and her father—her mother had gone off with Frankie—she wondered whether Kath was attending a mass at Saints Peter and Paul. She wondered if Kath was thinking about her. What if they were thinking of each other at the same time? The idea made her pulse quicken.

  It wasn’t long before friends began to arrive, and she had to pretend she was glad to see them. First, her father’s colleagues from the Chinese Hospital and their families, and then a group of students from China who were studying at Cal and wanted to be introduced to her father. She had to shake their hands and speak to them in her terrible Mandarin. At last, everyone dispersed among the pews: Lily with her father and Eddie; Shirley with her family across the aisle; the Chinese students at the back. Her mother slid in next to Lily a moment before the choir began to sing, and Lily raised her eyes to the altar to watch.

  She fidgeted as young Joseph and Mary took their places. Her coat was laid over her knees and it was too much like a blanket. She tried to fold it up, but she elbowed her mother in the process. “Sorry,” she whispered, and her mother frowned as she took the coat and folded it for her as if she were a little girl.

  Lily glanced across the church at Shirley, who was watching the tableau with a blank expression on her face, as if her mind was elsewhere too. Lily realized that Shirley had changed her hair. She had done it subtly, but somehow she had combed it back and pinned it in a way that made her look older, more sophisticated. There was something in Shirley’s posture—shoulders back, head lifted—that reminded Lily of Lana Jackson.

  Instantly Lily remembered the smell of the Telegraph Club, the sound of the piano and glasses knocking against the table. Her thoughts turned to Kath and the last time she’d seen her; the feel of their hands twined together; their promise to meet on the night before New Year’s Eve.

  No one in this church knew she had been to the Telegraph Club or that she would go again. No one. The thought was disorienting, as if she had lived a second life in a separate dimension, and she had to curl her fingers over the hard wooden edge of the pew in order to remind herself of where she was.

  One of the children was reading from the book of Luke in a high, childish voice: “And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.” Young Mary—a Chinese girl in a brown peasant-style dress with a blue cloth over her hair—carefully set a swaddled baby doll inside a wooden manger lined with hay. Someone had built that manger years ago; Lily recognized it from Christmases past.

  Lily had played the part of a shepherd once in the Christmas tableau, when she was about nine or ten. She had been the only girl to play a shepherd, and in fact she had argued her way into the role, because Shirley had been cast as Mary and that was the only role for a girl. She remembered saying to the Sunday school teacher: “It’s not fair if Shirley’s the only girl in the play!” The teacher relented and told her that she could be a shepherdess, but Lily insisted that she was a shepherd, just like the boys. She had been so proud.

  Now she wondered, a bit tensely, if it had meant something. Had Kath also played a shepherd in her church’s pageant? She suddenly envisioned all the women she had met at the Telegraph Club as little girls, every one of them dressed up as a shepherd boy or even a wise king, boys’ robes hiding their dress
es, false beards covering their girlish faces.

  The shepherds were moving across the front of the sanctuary, surrounding Mary and Joseph and the baby doll Jesus. Frankie was gripping his shepherd’s crook fiercely, completely invested in his role. Lily noticed that none of the shepherds were girls this year; they were all boys.

  —1937

  Japan invades China.

  —1940

  Edward Chen-te Hu (胡振德) is born.

  —1941

  United States enters World War II.

  —1942

  Joseph joins the U.S. Army and becomes a naturalized U.S. citizen.

  —1943

  The Chinese Exclusion Act is repealed.

  —Mar. 25, 1943

  GRACE and her family attend the parades in honor of Madame Chiang Kai-shek’s visit to San Francisco.

  —1944

  The “Suicide Squad” is formalized as the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, operating under the Army.

  —1945

  World War II ends.

  GRACE

  Eleven Years Earlier

  Chinatown was thick with flags and streamers and flowers: red, white, and blue American and Chinese flags; long red ribbons fluttering from lampposts; white-petaled apricot blossoms with their soft pink hearts blushing in polished windows. Madame Chiang Kai-shek was visiting San Francisco, and the sun itself seemed to glow with particular warmth to mark her arrival, slanting between the buildings to gild every flag and streamer in golden light.

  Grace Hu had caught the fever that gripped the entire city. Earlier that morning she staked out a spot on Grant Avenue between a corner kiosk and a lamppost to watch China’s first lady process through Chinatown. Grace’s mother had dragged an empty crate onto the curb and sat there with two-year-old Eddie perched on her lap, miraculously calm for the moment. Lily, who was six, leaned back against Grace as they waited. That afternoon, Lily would join thousands of Chinatown’s children in a parade through Civic Center, and Grace would march with her, one of dozens of volunteer mothers who would corral the children through the city. Now, Grace imagined, was the calm before that storm.

  “佢話佢好虚弱,” Grace’s mother said. “無論佢走到邊度, 都有白車跟住佢.”*

  “但佢一定要好堅強先可以橫跨美國演講,”* Grace said.

  “為中國佢會忍受一切.”*

  Grace’s knowledge of her mother’s Cantonese dialect was limited to what was spoken at home. She couldn’t always fully understand when her mother talked about politics, but she knew her mother well enough to hear the cynicism in her tone. She was about to ask her what exactly she meant when Lily interrupted.

  “Mama, when will she get here?” Lily asked.

  “Soon,” Grace said.

  “But you said that a long time ago,” Lily complained.

  Grace laughed and squeezed her daughter close, and as Lily squealed half in protest, half in laughter, Grace bent down and said, “Any minute now. Any minute!”

  Eddie heard the anticipation in her voice and reached for her, his little fingers spreading wide. She tickled his pink palm with the tip of her finger and smiled as he giggled. Watching her son laughing on her mother’s lap made her realize she didn’t want to squabble with her mother about Madame Chiang. She wanted to enjoy the day.

  Her husband had joined the U.S. Army a year ago, and today was the first day she had felt optimistic about the war. She was sure that Madame Chiang’s tour of America could only bring greater American support to China in its struggle against imperial Japan. She felt a distinct pride that her husband was part of the effort. Though he couldn’t tell her much about what he was actually doing, she knew that he had been sent to China, and that he was working to save the lives of men from both of his countries: his homeland and his new, adopted nation.

  At last Grace heard the rising roar of the crowd heralding Madame Chiang’s arrival at the gates of Chinatown. Grace’s mother stood, lifting Eddie in her arms so that he too could see the approaching motorcade. Those in the crowd were waving their flags excitedly. Their cheers drowned out the sound of the motorcade’s engines, and everyone leaned forward in unison, yearning to catch a glimpse of the one woman who had come to embody all of China.

  It was rumored that Madame Chiang might get out of her limousine and walk along Grant Avenue, and as the car rolled up the street, everyone waited for her to do just that, but she didn’t stop. The dark-suited secret service men walking alongside the motorcade only gazed grimly back at the spectators from beneath the brims of their fedoras. But finally there it was—the limousine bedecked with flags, the polished fenders and windows gleaming in the sunlight. Grace urged her daughter to stand on the wooden crate so she could see China’s first lady.

  Grace spotted the flutter of a white handkerchief from the back seat—Madame Chiang was waving at them, but she didn’t get out of the car. Everyone was saying that she must be too exhausted; and besides, she was about to go visit the leaders of Chinatown at the Six Companies headquarters. There was no time to linger here, greeting the ordinary Chinese of America. They should cheer louder, so she would know that the American Chinese supported her. Grace reminded herself, not for the first time, that Madame Chiang was practically half American, having been educated in the United States. She clung to this idea as the motorcade disappeared and was followed by the St. Mary’s drum corps, beating a merry rhythm just as if it were Chinese New Year.

  “Mama, I thought the parade was this afternoon,” Lily said.

  “There is another one this afternoon. This one is to welcome Madame Chiang to Chinatown.”

  “Two parades! In one day?”

  “Yes, two parades.”

  “This madame must be very important.”

  Grace smiled at her daughter. “Yes. She is a very important Chinese woman, indeed.”

  * * *

  —

  The disadvantage of being part of a parade, Grace realized, was that one didn’t get to see the rest of it. But the historic moment must be appreciated, she told herself, as she marched back and forth to keep an eye on the twenty restless children she had been charged with supervising. Her group was but one of dozens, adding up to what she had heard was thousands of children. They were all dressed in traditional Chinese clothes, ranging from colorful caps tasseled in gold to white silk pajamas embroidered with pink flowers. Lily and her friend Shirley wore matching sky-blue silk trousers and mandarin-collared jackets with yellow frog buttons. They were as enraptured with their costumes as they were with the importance of their endeavor: representing the young Chinese in America. The responsibility, imparted to them by Grace and the other mothers, seemed to rest lightly on their slim shoulders. They were simply thrilled to be gathered together with their friends beneath a clear afternoon sky on what should have been a school day.

  When it was finally their time to join the parade, Grace lined up her charges and led them toward Civic Center. The crowds that lined Polk Street were thirty, forty people deep; Grace couldn’t see where they ended. As they neared City Hall, the cheering became thunderous, and she could feel the excitement rattling her bones, as if an earthquake were shaking the confetti-covered streets.

  They said that Madame Chiang was watching the parade from the balcony above the entrance to City Hall. Grace gazed up between the columns and saw tiny people there, but she couldn’t recognize anyone. She didn’t even see the white flash of Madame Chiang’s handkerchief, which she must surely be waving at the masses gathered below her.

  Grace noticed a plane flying overhead, the groan of its engine swallowed by the cheering crowd. It pulled a wide white banner painted with a dark circle. The sight of it caused a sudden drop in her mood. It was a warplane towing a target sleeve out to the ocean, where it would be used for machine gun practice by navy pilots rehearsing their attacks against the Japanese. She wondered if Madame Chiang saw it, t
oo.

  * * *

  —

  When the Lums invited the Hus to join them for dinner at their home after the parade, Grace was grateful to accept. The day had been exhilarating but exhausting, and she didn’t want it to end by taking the children home to their small, dark apartment.

  Grace had often secretly envied the Lums. There was something very appealing to her about their large, boisterous family, with many generations and cousins all living together above their restaurant. And she admired the ease with which Ruby Lum, Shirley’s mother, managed the entire household. There was a time, before Lily was born, when Grace had thought she would move to China with Joseph and be part of his family, as was proper for a Chinese wife, but the Japanese invasion of Shanghai had scuttled those plans. Sometimes she was still resentful about it. Instead of taking her rightful position in Joseph’s family as the wife of the eldest son, she had been relegated to this faraway city alone. She knew she should be grateful to her mother for moving in with her to help with the children while Joseph was in the army, but she struggled to find her gratitude. She felt as if she had somehow moved home again, like a penniless widowed daughter, even though the situation was the opposite.

  She could never let Joseph know she felt this way. To think that she would envy the wife of a restaurant owner—even a successful one!—over her own position as the wife of a Stanford-educated doctor. In China, Joseph’s family would outrank the Lums, but here in America, Grace wasn’t sure the same social stratification applied. People treated Joseph with respect to his face, but Grace knew that to many of Chinatown’s residents—all those old bachelors crowded six to a room—Dr. Joseph Hu was an uppity Shanghainese who didn’t speak their language.