China Dolls

by Lisa See

  “I have news.” She nudged me again. “I finally have a job.”

  That got me to sit up. “You what?”

  “I’m working at the Golden Gate International Exposition.” She gave a high, melodious giggle. “The exposition opened last night. I was there!”

  “Is that so?” When I’d gotten home at three in the morning, Ruby was still out, but that wasn’t unusual. Ruby and her boys … Those relationships weren’t serious, so Helen and I never had to worry that there might be someone who would try to horn in on our friendship with her. “But how? And what are you doing?” How did she get hired at the fair when I couldn’t?

  “Being Oriental counted in my favor this time. The fair is all about Pacific harmony—”

  “Are you in the Japanese Pavilion?” I remembered that it was supposed to be the biggest and best of the country-sponsored pavilions.

  Ruby shook her head. “Not there.”

  “The Cavalcade of the Golden West?”

  “The big pageant? Nah, not that either.”

  Finally, it hit me. “Are you working in the Gayway?”

  Ruby wrinkled her nose. “Don’t be upset.”

  “But, Ruby, the Gayway?”

  “It’s an amusement park.” She let that rattle around in her noggin before changing her mind. “Or maybe a carnival.”

  “The man who interviewed me when I went there for a job said the Gayway wasn’t a place for a girl like me. If it isn’t right for a girl like me, then it can’t be right for a girl like you—”

  She waved that off. “It’s Helen I’m worried about,” she said. “I know this will be a problem for her.”

  “For her? I don’t like it!”

  “Grace, be a sport, will ya? I needed a job. You understand that.” She stared at me earnestly. “Will you please help me with Helen?”

  I put my hands on my head. “Oh, brother!”

  “Tomorrow’s your day off. Come to Treasure Island and bring Helen. You’ll see it’s not so bad.”

  I swallowed hard and agreed.

  “Let’s go to Chinatown and see the festivities. I’ve got money now. The day will be on me! Happy New Year!”

  “I’ve never celebrated Chinese New Year,” I admitted.

  Ruby glowed, triumphant. “Now’s your chance. Get dressed.”

  We spent the morning pushing through crowds, getting a good spot to watch the dragon dance, sampling treats sold from vendor carts, covering our ears when strings of firecrackers crackled and popped on corners. A little before two, Ruby headed to her new job. I continued to explore. At the corner of Grant and Commercial, I saw Helen’s family coming toward me on the sidewalk. Mr. Fong strode a yard ahead of the rest of the family, and his demeanor—his importance—sent other pedestrians scurrying out of the way. His seven sons followed behind him. I spotted Monroe and waved. He nodded but didn’t wave back. Helen came next, wearing a lavender silk cheongsam embroidered with white peonies. A tiny woman, dressed in a navy blue tunic over black pants, with her hair pulled back into a severe bun at the nape of her neck, hung on to Helen’s arm for support. She had to be Helen’s mother. A group of young women, some carrying babies and others with small children clustered around their legs, brought up the rear. I’d learned a lot in my few months in Chinatown, and I recognized Helen’s sisters-in-law as FOBs—fresh off the boat. They were dressed up like Helen, but the way they’d styled their hair and left their skin unembellished by lipstick or rouge made them seem foreign. They kept their eyes modestly downcast and maintained a respectful distance not only behind their husbands but also behind their mother- and sister-in-law.

  When the group reached me, I saw why Helen’s mother was having such a hard time walking. She had bound feet! I’d heard about bound feet from my dad. He said they were a sign of status. (Whenever he said that, my mom lowered her head.) What I saw looked like deformed stumps. Just then, Helen caught my eyes. The two of us held steady for a fraction of a second, and then she glanced away. Was she embarrassed that I saw the prosperity and status (but also the backwardness) of her family or that she saw me, a common chorus girl? She passed me, didn’t say a word, and proceeded on with her kin, with the sisters-in-law and their children trailing behind—squeaking and peeping like chickens with their just-hatched chicks.

  THE NEXT DAY, Helen and I met at 3:00, walked down to the Ferry Building, and paid twenty cents each for round-trip tickets on a Key System ferry to the Golden Gate International Exposition. I figured if I worked up to the Gayway after Helen and I saw a few attractions—the place was huge—she’d be a lot less judgmental. I hoped she’d be able to weave the Gayway and whatever Ruby was doing there into a bigger vision of the world’s fair.

  When we got to Treasure Island, we investigated the idea of riding on one of the trams, the fronts of which had been decorated to look like elephants, or hiring one of the rolling chairs, which looked like oversize wheelchairs that were pushed by handsome young men, but Helen was too excited to sit. We hurried from attraction to attraction, from pavilion to pavilion, exhibit to exhibit. We ate hot dogs, bags of popcorn, cotton candy, and drank five-cent Coca-Colas. Finally, Helen began to complain about her feet. We collapsed on a bench next to a lagoon, too exhausted to walk another step. It was after 11:00, and the place was lit with beautiful colored lights. I was just about to spill the beans about Ruby when a sandy-haired young man pushing a rolling chair came to a stop before us.

  “I recognize you.” His smile tweaked up on the left. His eyes were the same bachelor-button blue I remembered, and, of course, he was still tall and fit.

  “Joe?”

  His lopsided smile spread wider. He nodded at the rolling chair. “I got the job!”

  “I didn’t.”

  Joe and I laughed. Helen looked at me questioningly.

  “We met four months ago, on my first day in San Francisco,” I explained after I introduced them.

  “The exhibits are going to close soon.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Do you girls want a ride back to the ferry dock?”

  I tipped my head slightly to stare at him. “Actually, I was just about to tell Helen about another friend of ours who works in the Gayway.”

  Helen raised her eyebrows. “What’s this all about?” she asked suspiciously.

  “Ruby has a job here,” I went on. “I thought we could see her together.”

  “There’s only one Oriental girl in the Gayway,” Joe interjected helpfully. “I hoped it might be you, Grace, when I first heard about her. It sure wasn’t!”

  As soon as he said that, I realized I hadn’t asked Ruby exactly where she worked. This was going to be a surprise for me too. I noticed that Helen’s eyes had narrowed. As happy as I was to see Joe again, introducing Helen to the idea of Ruby working on the Gayway wasn’t going quite as I’d hoped.

  “How much will it cost if you take us to her?” Helen asked.

  “Ordinarily fifty cents each for a half hour,” he answered, “but it’s on the house for you two.”

  We settled into the chair. I twisted around in my seat to look up and back at Joe. He gave me that crooked grin again. “Gayway, here we come.” He took us past the Columbian, Netherlands East Indies, and Argentine pavilions and straight into the Gayway. Here was a man with rubber arms. There was a sword swallower. Just around the bend: a glass eater, a snake charmer, and a fellow who swallowed a neon tube that lit up his innards; a fat lady, a bearded lady, and a lady with no arms, who did everything with her feet, even play instruments! There were arcades, shooting galleries, a flea circus, carnival rides, and a racetrack for monkeys. If the main part of the exposition portrayed the elegant and tasteful, then the Gayway appealed to baser instincts—vulgar, but so much fun.

  Joe pulled to a stop in front of what looked like a western saloon with a hitching post. He pointed to a sign that ran across the width of the building: SALLY RAND’S NUDE RANCH.

  Oh, God. This was worse than I’d imagined. Why hadn’t I asked Ruby what she was
doing out here?

  “Ruby won’t be in there,” Helen stated with certainty.

  “An Oriental girl works inside,” Joe said. “You’ll see.”

  “Not Ruby,” Helen insisted. “Besides, I doubt we’d be allowed in there.”

  “This is for families, I swear,” Joe vowed.

  “But it says ‘nude.’ ”

  “It’s not that nude,” Joe said. “Sally Rand was one of the most famous performers at the Chicago World’s Fair. Now she’s here.”

  “Have you been inside?” I asked.

  “You bet!” he answered a bit too enthusiastically.

  Helen and I paid twenty-five cents apiece and then waited in a line that moved very slowly. Joe was right. There were people of all ages—even little kids—in the line, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say that the majority were men on their own. Joe said he’d made enough money for the day, so he stayed with us. Finally, we entered the building, following the people herded ahead and shoved by those behind. Gene Autry’s “Back in the Saddle Again” blared from speakers attached to the ceiling. We peered to our right through plate-glass windows and into a large room. Inside, about twenty girls—wearing cowboy boots, holsters with fake pistols (one in front and one in back, placed at strategic places), bandannas tied around their breasts (or no bandannas at all—just hair taped, glued, or swinging long and loose to meet the decency codes), Stetsons, and nothing else—paraded back and forth in front of the window, posed with a hand behind an ear, whispered to each other. Some of them played badminton, which caused their breasts to jump and wiggle. They may have called this a place for families, but I hadn’t seen anything like it in Plain City. I caught sight of a little boy with his eyes bugged out to here. Boing!—like in a cartoon. His mother finally noticed and dragged him out.

  Helen grabbed my arm. “Look!”

  One girl behind the window had set her cowboy hat on the floor so she could swing a lariat above her head. Her black hair swished back and forth across her breasts, concealing her nipples but shimmering like satin against her pale skin. It was Ruby. Our Ruby. We gripped the handrail, trying to maintain our position in front of the window as new visitors pushed against us. From where we stood, Helen and I could hear a woman’s voice calling orders: “Get off your duff, Betty. Jump a little higher, Sue. Keep that rump up when you bend down to get the ball, Alice.”

  I rapped on the glass with my knuckles. A girl with curly red hair looked toward the sound. I pointed to Ruby, sending a message that I wanted her attention.

  “Hey, Ruby. You have visitors!”

  Ruby dropped the lariat—and let’s just say she’d never be a whiz at rope tricks—came to the window, and put her hands on the glass. “Helen! Grace! I have a break in ten minutes. When you exit, come around to the side door. I’ll meet you there.”

  Even through my shock, I perceived the energy coming off Joe. I saw the way he stared at Ruby. At first I thought he was embarrassed, but then I realized he couldn’t take his eyes off her. His desire jarred open something startling in me. My yearning for him was so deep I could barely breathe. Not once had I felt that way with Monroe. I didn’t want to be Ruby, but I wanted Joe to want me like that.

  The crowd surged against us, and we were pushed back outside and into the night. The lights teased my eyes. The cold air nipped my face, but with so many people crowded together it felt as though a thousand hands caressed me.

  “I wouldn’t call that appropriate for children!” Helen declared. “How could she?”

  I shrugged, striving to appear responsive. I stood so close to Joe his clothes brushed against mine and his breath warmed my cheek.

  “Will you introduce me to your friend?” he asked.

  “Of course,” I said.

  Helen blinked. Had both her friends gone crazy?

  A few minutes later, Ruby—dressed in slacks and a sweater—oozed through a door and onto the Gayway. “You found me!”

  Helen started in with a thousand questions: “Do you realize you’re practically naked in there? And in front of all those people? What will your parents say if they find out?”

  “You looked beautiful,” I said. Did I mean it? Not a word, but I was trying to show Joe I could be adult about such things. I took his hand. I’d never behaved so boldly in my life. My fingers lay cold in his palm, but he didn’t pull away.

  “Ruby, I want you to meet my friend, Joe … Joe …”

  “Joe Mitchell,” he said. “I’m a big fan.”

  “I’ve only got twenty minutes,” Ruby said, not bothering to acknowledge him. I was relieved he hadn’t caught her interest. “Forty minutes on, twenty minutes off, from three in the afternoon until two in the morning. Here, let me show you around.”

  “You three are so tiny,” Joe inserted hopefully. “I bet you can all fit on my rolling chair.”

  Ruby sized him up. “Sure. Take us for a spin.”

  Joe pushed us hither, thither, and yon, denying Helen and me the chance to grill our friend. The twenty minutes went by quickly. We dropped Ruby back at Sally Rand’s and decided to wait for her set to be over. Helen remained quiet, hiding her thoughts, while I gave Joe the third degree. What was his full name? Joseph Eldon Mitchell. How old was he? Twenty. (That’s what I’d guessed when I first met him.) His openness encouraged me to ask more questions.

  “Are you still going to Cal?”

  “Yep! I’m studying political science,” he answered. “I want to go to law school eventually and become a lawyer like my dad.”

  “Do you like California?”

  “You bet! I don’t miss the seasons in Winnetka one bit.” And flying was still his favorite thing in the world. “I’ll love it forever.” His voice had an endearing way of rising at the end of a sentence as though asking a question. “Not that I’ve been able to fly since coming to California—”

  A little more than forty minutes later, Ruby opened the side door and held it ajar. She wore a kimono. Her nipples pushed against the thin silk. “Sally got mad at me for being late last time. I can’t go out with you again. I don’t have time to get out of my costume, get dressed, then undressed, and back into my costume again.” She laughed at the absurdity of what she’d just said. “It takes time to get those pistols just right! Will you come and get me later? We can go home together on the ferry.” Without waiting for an answer, she gave a wave and closed the door.

  Joe said, “I’ve got to leave you too. I need to turn in the rolling chair. But will you come again? We could all meet after Ruby and I get off. I could even come out here one day when I don’t have classes or work. Would you like that?”

  “I’d love it,” I answered, because I really wanted to see him again.

  After he pushed off, we found a spot to wait for Ruby near the Headless Woman display. Helen had already spoken her mind, but what was I going to say to Ruby?

  I shouldn’t have worried, because she started talking as soon as we boarded the ferry to cross the bay back to the city.

  “I don’t want you girls to zing me from two sides,” she began. “I needed a job, and this was the best I could get.”

  “But how can you be—” I didn’t want to say the word naked. “You had to have known about this job for a while.”

  “Ummm.” A confirmation of sorts.

  “Those nights you were out late the last couple of weeks—”

  “Ummm.”

  “Were you rehearsing?”

  “Not a lot to rehearse,” Helen quipped.

  “We’re supposed to be friends,” I said, “and you didn’t tell us.”

  “Of course I didn’t!” Ruby flared. “Look how you’re taking it!”

  I peered at her, disbelieving.

  “It’s not a big deal,” she insisted.

  “Ruby!” I exclaimed. “You’re n-k-d in there!”

  “I’m not naked-naked. Sally is very careful about what we show. Besides, we aren’t the only nudes on the Gayway. Go to that studio where girls pose without a sti
tch on, and people can sketch or photograph them for a fee. Go to the movie house that plays reels of nudists playing volleyball. Or go to the Palace of Fine Arts in the main part of the fair, and you’ll find a naked woman re-creating a painting by Manet.”

  “Manet?” Helen burst out, indignant. “Who in the hell is Manet?”

  Ruby’s and my eyes widened. It was the first time we’d heard Helen curse.

  “Well?” she demanded.

  “I don’t know,” Ruby answered with a pixie shrug. “We were told to say that.”

  She started to giggle, I joined in, and Helen covered her mouth. But what were we thinking? There are consequences to everything.

  CONSEQUENCE ONE OF visiting Treasure Island: I now had an honest-to-goodness crush on someone … and it absolutely wasn’t Monroe. I needed to do the right thing and tell him, even if it disappointed Helen. He picked me up the following Sunday, took me to the Eastern Bakery, and ordered me an ice cream soda I didn’t want. I was just getting up my nerve when, surprise! The tables were turned—but definitely!

  “I had once hoped my father might approve of you, even though you’re a dancer,” he began. “But when I saw you on New Year’s Day, I realized he never would.” Monroe then spent the next half hour telling me why he could never marry me: that I didn’t cook Chinese food, that I was an only child so I hadn’t learned to care for children, that I didn’t embroider, darn, or tat. I wasn’t sufficiently political either. I didn’t show enough sympathy for what our people in China were enduring at the hands of the Japanese, I didn’t appreciate the deprivations of Chinese in this country, and I hadn’t been through Angel Island, so I would never understand the terrible things that happened to our people there.

  “And you’re American-born,” he said, as he came to the end of his list. “You’ll never act like a proper Chinese wife. You’re too lo fan for me to marry.”

  “Have you considered that you might be too Chinese for me to marry?” I asked, but inside I smarted at being called a white ghost like any tourist who entered Chinatown.