China Dolls

by Lisa See

  Please give my best to your mother and father and tell them that I’m praying for Monroe. Kisses and hugs to Tommy.

  Your gal pal, Grace

  Somewhere in the Pacific

  August 20, 1944

  Dear Grace,

  Sorry I haven’t written in a while. The other pilots have gotten a kick out of the photos and clippings you send. “You’ve got the most famous doll in the squadron, you lucky stiff.” They’ve decided you’re something you’re not, and they won’t stop rubbing my nose in it.

  I’m an ace now. I shot down my fifth Jap plane a couple of days ago, and today I knocked another out of the sky. I saw the pilot’s face when he realized he wouldn’t be able to bail out. The other day bullets ripped through the right wing of a B-17 a pal of mine was flying. It caught on fire. He crashed in the jungle not far from here. No one made it. Good guys, all of them.

  I’ve been thinking about it, Grace. I love you, but I need to concentrate on getting the job done out here.

  Sincerely, Joe

  Train to Altoona

  August 30, 1944

  Darling Joe,

  Are you embarrassed by me? What we have is special. Don’t let the guys tease you. I know it’s tough out there and things are hard, but always remember that I’m right here—waiting for you. So please write. You’re scaring me.

  I’ll love you forever, Grace

  Somewhere in the Pacific

  September 15, 1944

  Postcard:

  Just shot down number seven. You’re a good egg, Grace, and you always will be. I look forward to seeing you when the war’s over.

  Train to Fort Wayne

  October 1, 1944

  Dear Helen,

  I’m sobbing as I write this. Joe sent me a Dear Jane postcard, and he didn’t even bother to sign it! Oh, Helen, I love him so much. What should I do?

  Grace

  New York

  October 2, 1944

  Helen!

  Nothing ever turns out like I hope it will. I beat it to New York, and it was great. Lee Mortimer was grand too. Sam Bernstein, my new agent, booked me in a club, where I did my bubble routine. I must be rusty, though. I didn’t measure up against the other performers. I can’t believe how much I lost of myself in the camp. And those New Yorkers? I guess they’ve seen everything— Or think they have, because what a bunch of boobs, drinking their martinis and not even looking at me. Sam and Lee want me to hit the Chop-Suey Circuit to get back in the swing of things. I can’t go out west, for obvious reasons. They say I’ll be safest in the south, where few people have seen a Japanese. I’ll be making $400 a week! Not half bad for someone who’s been out of sight as long as I’ve been. I promised that we’d be together once I left Topaz. How about coming on the road with me as my dresser?

  Tipity tops, Ruby

  Train to Flint

  October 3, 1944

  Dear Helen,

  Life sure throws some curveballs. Max called yesterday with an offer to join George Louie and a comedy duo called Ming and Ling for an all-Chinese holiday revue in Atlanta. I automatically thought of Eddie—east, west, north, and up the hill. He always left out the south, admitting it made him nervous. He’d say—I’m not black, but I’m not white either. Same here! So I told Max no, but he just kept talking. He said they’ll call it something like the Chinese Follies or Chinese Extravaganza. The club owners will run ads along the lines of—It’s Oriental! Gay and exciting! Spiced with song, comedy, and dance thrills! I said no, no, no, no. I told him I won’t work with George Louie. I don’t want to hear his snotty comments about me. He must be as hard up as I am if he’s willing to work together—thrown together by necessity is how Max put it. I still said no.

  Then Max bowled me over. Guess who else is going to be on the bill. Ruby! She’s out of the camp! I’m so relieved. She’s going to be performing as Princess Tai. I guess they figure she’s an actual Chinese princess. It’ll be great to see Ruby, and teaming up with her will also be a way for me to start clearing my name.

  Any good news about Monroe? Any news, period? Now that I’m going to be in one place for a while you can finally write me back.

  I haven’t heard one word from Joe, in case you’re interested. I can’t believe I let him break my heart again.

  Your gal pal, Grace

  P.S. I almost forgot. The club has offered to drop George from the bill if I’ll take the top spot. Hmm— Hard decision— Take that, George!

  Western Union Telegram. October 5, 1944.

  Max, I’ll do it. Stop. Can you do me a favor first? Stop. Book me something near my hometown. Stop. I want to see my mother. Stop.

  Grace

  GRACE

  A Wind-Chime Voice

  The best Max could find for me was three weeks playing programmers before film showings in Cincinnati. After that, he sent me to Columbus, where he booked a one-nighter for my solo act. “Enjoy it,” Max said. “Because I don’t see much for you after the Atlanta holiday run.” The news was so scary, I didn’t know how to begin to process it. Once I reached Columbus, I was only twenty-four miles from home. I hired a car and driver to take me to Plain City. I’d been gone for six years. I’d wired money to my mother, but I’d kept my promise never to write. I’d never corresponded directly with Miss Miller either. Here was my chance to show them that I’d made something of myself, even if Atlanta might be my last hurrah. I was terrified, however, about seeing my father. The years hadn’t changed my feelings about him.

  The land—at that time of year—was still as flat, empty, and brown as ever. Piles of dirty snow edged the highway or lay in shady spots created by low berms and wedges of earth. I passed through towns—each looking much like the last—with clapboard houses, dignified churches, and predictable shops. I’d forgotten the echoing loneliness of deserted central squares and empty sidewalks. I sat in the backseat of the car, wearing my fur, my makeup perfect, and so, so nervous. Railroad tracks, a grain elevator, a service station, and signs advertising Orange Crush, Quaker State motor oil, and a trailer camp marked the outskirts of Plain City. I sat up and clenched my hands in my lap.

  “Pull up over there by the bank,” I told the driver. “I’ll walk the last couple of blocks.”

  He parked, came around to the passenger side, and opened my door. Things like this don’t happen in Plain City, and I felt eyes peering out of windows. My breath came out in billowy clouds. My fur shielded me from the wind, but my shoes were slippery on the snow and ice. Snow and ice—I hadn’t missed those for one second. I put my head down and pushed onward. I passed the Ford dealership, still in business. I saw Thanksgiving decorations in store windows: cornucopias overflowing with autumnal vegetables, a sign to “order your turkey now” in the butcher’s window, and a poster advertising Miss Miller’s winter recital.

  Up ahead, the neon sign for Mr. Lee’s Laundry glowed in the twilight. I glanced over my shoulder and saw the car, creeping along the road, following me. Then I took the final steps and positioned myself directly in front of the laundry’s window. I expected to see Dad pushing an eight-pound hand iron across a shirt. Instead, I saw a strange man—an Occidental—working a steam presser and singing with great animation. He pulled the presser’s head down, locked it in place with his foot, steam swirled around him, and then he lifted the head again, bobbing in time to “The G.I. Jive.” The place was completely different—updated. My parents must have sold the laundry. But if they’d sold the place, why hadn’t the sign been changed?

  I took a deep breath and entered. The radio blared. The man caroled along at the top of his lungs. “Roodley-toot. Jump in your suit. Make a salute.” When he saw me, he broke into a grin. He reached over and turned down the radio. As he came around the presser, I saw he was an amputee—probably a veteran.

  “Grace?” His grin broadened. “Grace!”

  I nodded, unsure.

  “I’m Henry Billups. Remember me? From school?”

  Ah, Henry Billups. Ilsa, one of the
evil triplets, had once been sweet on Henry. Now look at him—minus an arm and working a presser in a laundry. So sad.

  “Of course I remember you!” I said, always the cheerful performer. “But what are you doing here? You own the place now?”

  He gave a good-natured snort. “You’re quite the joker, Grace. You always were.” He paused. “I’m not much good to my dad out on the farm these days. Your mom hired me.”

  My mom hired him?

  “All this”—Henry gestured around him—“is because of her. Right after Pearl Harbor, your mom donated most of her irons during our first scrap-metal drive. She could have gone out of business, but she squeaked through. Then she gave me a job when no one else would. The whole town was grateful. Now business is growing. Who has time to do their wash these days?” He stared at me, waiting for a reaction, but my mind was so muddled I didn’t know what to say. “But you’re the real kicker. Quite apart from the money you send, you’ve helped the business more than anything your mom or I could ever have done.”

  “Me?” How did he know so much about my family? How did he know I’d sent money? How did he know anything about anything? Creepy.

  He jerked a thumb to the wall behind the cash register to where a poster for the show I’d be doing in Columbus hung. The image was of me in my Javanese-inspired costume with the wacky headdress: THE ORIENTAL DANSEUSE—STAR OF STAGE AND SCREEN. I was astonished.

  “We’re set to see your show on Saturday night. Your mom planned the whole thing. Practically everyone in town is going. Reverend Reynolds got folks to donate their gas coupons so we can all ride in buses together. Your mom wanted to surprise you. I guess you’ll surprise her instead.”

  I barely took in his words. “Where is she?” I asked.

  Henry jerked his thumb again—this time to the ceiling.

  I thanked him, and then went upstairs and knocked on the door. I was excited to see my mother, but a knot of terror gripped my guts when I contemplated coming face-to-face with my father. The door opened. My mom looked … younger.

  “Grace, dear. I always hoped you’d come home, but I never expected it.”

  When I heard her wind-chime voice I burst into tears. She drew me to her and hugged me tight. Finally, she released me, held me at arm’s length, and searched my face. I scrutinized hers too. She wore a gingham blouse tucked into trousers. Her hair was tied up in a bandanna. She appeared strong, healthy—like one of those Rosie the Riveters back in San Francisco—and, again, so much younger. Happier, I realized.

  I peered over her shoulder and into the main room. It looked exactly the same, except my dad wasn’t sitting at the table, his anger ready to fly at me.

  “He’s not here,” Mom said. “He passed away. Come in. We have so much to talk about.”

  She pulled me into the room, gestured for me to sit, and poured us cups of coffee into which she stirred fresh cream and sugar—treats, when everything was inhibited by the austerity of rationing. She sat across from me, and we stared at each other again, soaking in every change.

  “I want to ask you so many things,” she said.

  “I have questions for you too.” I bit my lip. “I guess you’d better tell me about Dad first.”

  “We had dinner right here a little over a year ago,” she recounted in a steady voice. “He said he was tired and went to the bedroom. By the time I got there, he was gone. Doc Haverford said his heart gave out.”

  The news left me confused. Dad was the biological vessel who helped put my soul into this body, but he’d hurt me so many times.

  Mom’s hand covered mine. “The doctor said I should be grateful he didn’t suffer.”

  I pondered that, then I said, “I’m sorry, Mom, but I can’t forgive him.”

  She withdrew her hand, sliding her fingers back across the surface of the table and spidering them into her lap. “You never understood your father. You never knew how much he loved you or how proud he was of you.”

  “How can you say that? You were here.” I gestured around the room. Memories of being bashed into furniture and walls battered my mind. It still deeply hurt that my mother couldn’t or wouldn’t defend me.

  “I want to show you something,” Mom said. She went to a cabinet, pulled out an album, and brought it back to the table. “It’s a scrapbook. Your father put it together after you left.”

  I opened the cover. On the first page was a photograph of the ponies at the Forbidden City on opening night. I quickly flipped through the book. Somehow my father had found almost every review and notice that had been printed about me.

  “How?” I asked.

  “We saw you in the newsreel,” Mom answered. “Your dad made sure everyone in town knew that you’d gotten out of here and that your dreams had come true.”

  I cast my mind back to that day on the beach when the other ponies and I had danced in the sand, and tried to imagine my father seeing it in the darkness of the Rialto.

  “No.” I shook my head, refusing to accept what she was telling me. “You’re wrong. Dad couldn’t have been proud of me. I became exactly what he hated.”

  “Do you remember the night you left?”

  “I’ll never forget it. He called me a whore … ‘just like your mother.’ ”

  Mom’s gaze was steady and her eyes clear. “He told you the truth. A long time ago, I was a willow flower—a prostitute. Once those words came out of his mouth, I realized he couldn’t keep them buried any longer. We never wanted you to learn about all that and, of course, he worried that somehow you would follow my path.”

  Nothing she could have said would have stunned me more.

  “There’s no point in keeping the secret any longer,” Mom continued matter-of-factly. “I was born in China, like I always told you. My parents sold me when I was five. Maybe younger, maybe a little older.”

  “Did you come through Angel Island?” That was my first question? I blame it on shock.

  “I came before Angel Island opened.” Her eyes darted to the ceiling as if the past were projected there. “Back then, no one paid much attention to who was coming in, but I have a vague memory of some kind of interview. Then I was sent to Idaho, where I worked for a shopkeeper and his wife. They were Americans, which is why I speak the way I do. Like you, I didn’t see another Chinese until I was older. The Johnsons were like parents to me, but they died of typhus when I was twelve. The townsfolk sent me to San Francisco, because no one wanted a Chinese orphan.”

  “I was scared when I went to San Francisco,” I said, still trying to absorb what she was telling me. “And I was a lot older. Where did you go? The YWCA?”

  “They didn’t have that then. This was just one year after the earthquake and fire. A gang swept me up. I was put in a crib on Bartlett Alley.”

  “Oh, Mom. I’m so sorry.”

  “It was a hard life.” She angled her head and smiled wanly.

  “How did you escape?”

  “The man in charge of the brothel said I could buy my freedom for five thousand dollars, or he could sell me to a tong gunman or professional gambler. But I knew I’d be dead from a willow-flower disease long before either of those things happened.” She saw the look of horror on my face. “It could have been worse. I could have been working in that life since I was five. I met other girls, little girls, who had that fate.” She paused and took a breath. “I was rescued by Donaldina Cameron.”

  Donaldina Cameron? Incredible. I knew from Helen that she worked out of the building right around the corner from the YWCA. She’d rescued hundreds, maybe thousands, of Chinese slave girls and prostitutes. My mother had been through hell and yet she’d suggested I go to the very city where she’d suffered.

  “How could you encourage me to try San Francisco after everything you’d been through?” I asked.

  “I couldn’t see him hurt you again. Letting you leave was the only way I had to save you … I paged through your magazines. I saw Treasure Island, and I saw the city. San Francisco—the world—had to b
e different.”

  I reflected on all the stage-door Johnnies I’d met over the years; the ponies who’d gotten in trouble after nights of goodbyes to servicemen only to be labeled Victory Girls; Helen, who was left high and dry by Tommy’s father; the way Joe dumped Ruby when he found out her background, and now had dropped me. Men weren’t perfect and what they did to us could be thoughtless and cruel, but none of that compared to what my mother had experienced. I ached for her.

  “I lived with a lot of shame,” Mom admitted. “Miss Cameron took care of me for many years. I changed back to the girl I had once been. She promised to help me get a husband, but nothing could erase the black mark against me. No good man would take me.”

  “Is that why Dad married you? Because he was a bad man? And he saw you as a bad girl?” I didn’t mean to sound unkind, but I needed to know.

  Mom sighed. “You still don’t understand.”

  “Is his story different too?” I asked. “Was he actually born here?”

  “Yes. I’m sure of it. He lived with his father in a mining camp—”

  “Why did he always say it was a lumber camp?”

  Mom shrugged. “What does it matter now? He did laundry and cooked for miners. He was on his way to China to find a wife when Miss Cameron introduced us. She sold him on the idea that I was reformed and a good Christian woman. He convinced her that he could make an honest and righteous life for me. Miss Cameron consented to his proposal. Your father and I were married. He took me back to the mining camp—”

  “But the two of you lived in San Francisco—”

  Irritation flitted across Mom’s face. “Will you listen? We were in the mining camp. I got pregnant. We had a car. We drove to Sebastopol to pick apples …”

  I recognized this part. Mom went into labor, was turned away from the hospital, and I was born by the side of the road.