China Dolls

by Lisa See

  I turned to Grace. “I wrote to Helen when I was released from Topaz and asked her to be my dresser,” I bragged.

  Grace’s mood changed in an instant. “How can you afford it?” she asked, competitive as ever.

  I blurted the answer. “I’m making four hundred big ones a week.”

  Grace frowned. She might have had top billing and a suite, but I was making more money than she was!

  “Who’s your agent?” she asked.

  “Sam Bernstein. He’s in New York,” I answered, one-upping her again.

  “How nice for you,” Grace said. “Well, look, I should be getting to bed. I hope you don’t mind …”

  I was glad to be free of the camp, but the idea of spending the next month—and however many shows—with these two was about as tantalizing as being tied in a burlap sack with a bunch of wailing cats. Then Grace did something that really yanked my knickers. She opened her makeup case, rummaged around, pulled out an envelope, and tossed it in my lap.

  “Your savings,” she said. “I’ve kept them for you all this time. Now good night.”

  WOULDN’T YOU KNOW it, a week later Grace dumped Max and got Sam to take her on as a client. Cutthroat bitch. Her fee jumped above mine, to which Helen commented, “It doesn’t surprise me. Does it surprise you?” Not one bit, but it didn’t jibe with her taking care of my money or putting my things in storage either.

  Sam called to ask if I’d like to be booked on a whole new way-down-south production with the Oriental Danseuse, Ming and Ling, and Jack and Irene Mak’s magic show for an Oriental Fantasy Revue, “singing, dancing, laughing, and magic in one fun-packed hour.”

  “Don’t do it,” Helen advised when I told her about the offer. “Grace acts like she’s taken the ladder to the clouds, but I have her letters. She can’t get any other work.”

  But when I called Sam back, he laid it out for me straight. “So? Grace has a problem up north. You have a problem too, but not in the south—at least I’m hoping that’s the case. Besides, you’re new to the road. The Oriental Danseuse and the others have recognizable names. You’ll do more shows and get more fans if I book you together. Neither of you is in a position to be choosy.”

  “Are you sure Grace wants to do it?”

  “She’s the one who suggested it!”

  So she was giving me a hand like I did for her when she came back from Los Angeles, but I wasn’t sure I wanted it. I told Sam I needed to talk to Grace before I made my decision. After I hung up, I waited until Helen took Tommy downstairs to the hotel coffee shop for lunch, then I changed into a day dress of blood-red crepe, pinned a pair of gardenias above my ear, and went to Grace’s room. She answered wearing a towel around her dripping body.

  “I’m taking a bath,” she said, waving me in.

  I followed her to the bathroom and watched as she slipped back into the bubbles.

  “Do you mind if I open the window? I get claustrophobic nowadays.” I shrugged, embarrassed. “Ever since the camp.”

  Grace let that sink in. Then she asked, “Will you tell me what happened after those men came for you at Paramount?”

  My eyes narrowed.

  “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” Grace added.

  “Will you tell me about Joe?” A challenge. “Helen tells me the two of you became an item.”

  Grace shifted in the bath, and water sloshed over the edge. I tossed a towel on the spill and dabbed at it with the tip of my shoe.

  “You don’t have to talk about him if you don’t want to.” I mimicked her perfectly.

  Her eyes darkened. “All right. Tit for tat,” she said. “What happened after those men took you away?”

  “You got my job.”

  A tiny muscle under Grace’s right eye twitched. “I don’t know how many ways I can say this or how I can make you believe me, but I didn’t report you.”

  I held her gaze, considering. Aw, what the hell. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to have everything gorgeous and perfect, and then suddenly have it all taken from you? That’s what Topaz was like.”

  I told her some details about life in the camp and how ashamed I was to be there; she murmured sympathies. When I came to the end, she pulled the plug and stepped out of the tub. Not a wrinkle. Not a bump. Not an ounce of unwanted fat. Not an inch of skin that wasn’t the color of cream. She was still flawless, but then she hadn’t been through what I’d been through. I handed her a towel. As we were about to leave the bathroom, she put a hand on my arm and asked, “What about your parents?”

  “I honestly can’t say what they did or didn’t do. I want to believe they’re innocent—”

  “What I meant was, have you been in contact with them?”

  “It’s not like I can call them.”

  “You could write,” she suggested.

  “I don’t want to remind them”—and it didn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out I was talking about the FBI and the WRA—“I exist. I don’t want to risk being sent to Leupp to join my parents. I want to forget all that. You left your mother behind. Now I’ve left mine.”

  “These aren’t the same things.”

  “Aren’t they? You want an American life. I want an American life. Even Helen wants an American life.”

  And all of us, in our own ways, were doing the best we could to erase who we were.

  We went to the bedroom. I perched on the edge of her bed. Once Grace was dressed, she sat next to me and told me about Joe. Just when I thought she’d reached the end, she went on: “I’m following my mother’s advice. I’ve been writing a letter or postcard to him every few days with messages like ‘Never forget I love you’ and ‘When I did my routine, I thought of you.’ His replies have been halfhearted at best.”

  I’d asked her to tell me about him, but now I wasn’t so happy she was doing it.

  She went to the dresser and returned with a bundle of letters and postcards. “Listen to what he wrote two weeks ago,” she said. “ ‘By now I’ve seen every kind of death imaginable. All death is bad. Being shot down over the big briny and being lost in the sea is terrible, but the worst are the guys whose planes catch fire.’ ” As she spoke, I could practically hear Joe’s college-boy voice. “ ‘Some pilots manage to fly their planes and their crews, if they have them, back to base, but the agony and destruction onboard is bad. Lost limbs. Faces gone. Flesh burned. No one wants to go on living looking like that. Better to check out fast.’ ” She stopped reading and met my eyes. “I wrote back to say that wasn’t going to happen to him and asked him to promise me that he’d stay safe and come home to me.” She handed me a postcard. “Here’s what he sent.”

  I turned over the postcard. It read: I’ll never make a promise to you that I can’t keep. Goodbye, Grace.

  “I love him,” Grace said when I gave her back the postcard. “And I’m not going to give up.”

  I wasn’t particularly busted up about losing Joe as a lover, but my heart ached anyway. Was there no end to what Grace had stolen from me? And yet, if Sam was right, I needed to find a way to spend time with her. What she next said gave me an opening.

  “I didn’t go into entertainment for job security or to make friends, for heaven’s sake,” Grace went on, going right back to acting like the big noise she thought she’d become. “I am the Oriental Danseuse. I’m giving you an opportunity. Take it or leave it.”

  “Thanks for laying your cards on the table,” I said, rising to leave. “Now we can go on the road together with nothing between us.”

  THE ORIENTAL FANTASY Revue hit the road at the beginning of 1945. I’d been in San Francisco and then Topaz for most of the war, so traveling from town to town to places I’d never been before was new to me. Servicemen were everywhere. Military convoys created endless columns on the roads. We were asked to lead our audiences in “The Star-Spangled Banner” and the Pledge of Allegiance before our shows. Sometimes women’s organizations invited us to visit their victory gardens. The mood in the so
uth: we’re gonna win this thing. The news from overseas seemed positive for the most part. In Europe, American troops had repelled German forces at Bastogne in Belgium. Allied forces were advancing from Paris to the Rhine. In the Pacific, tens of thousands of imperial Japanese soldiers had been killed in the battle of Leyte. But for every positive development, there were sad news items. A month earlier, right in the midst of our holiday performances in Atlanta, Glenn Miller’s plane had disappeared in the English Channel. He was declared missing in action. How many times had I been swung around a dance floor to “In the Mood” and “Moonlight Serenade”? How many times had I listened to the radio at Topaz and chimed in to “Pennsylvania 6-5000” and sung “Chattanooga Choo Choo” with the kids? His death—because what else could have happened to him?—was tragic and hit us all hard, because if a star like him could die, then it could happen to anyone. All three of us had people to lose and that colored every moment of the day, but then there wasn’t a woman in America who didn’t fear the arrival of a telegram or a knock at the door.

  Our revue brought cheer to every town we visited. Grace sang, emceed, and appeared as the Oriental Danseuse. She always opened the show with “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. You’re my kind of people … all drunks.” Har, har, har. The Maks pulled out all the tricks and illusions, ending with shooting the dove in the box. I did my bubble routine and my fan dance—above Ming and Ling. Helen and Tommy tagged along too, of course. Helen, business-minded like her father, fell into the job of handling our logistics, telling us where and when to show up, checking us in and out of hotels, and getting us to and from train and bus stations. Tommy was as spoiled as they come, whiny and impossible, but Helen loved the kid. I’ll admit, though, that he and the Mak imps looked precious, and they learned fast how to ham it up as adorable mascots, sometimes attracting more attention than the rest of us. (Although Helen took a different view: “The five fingers are not the same.” Yes! We get it! Your kid is better than the rest!) If people hadn’t seen a Chinese man or woman before, they certainly hadn’t encountered darling Chinese kids. Of course, you had to be the kind of person who liked kids …

  When we got off a train, people walked blocks to stare at us. Sometimes they called us Chinks. On a few occasions ruffians threw stones and taunted Grace for being a Jap, which secretly made me laugh my insides out. In any event, she didn’t seem to mind. She was more worried about being picked up in one of the sweeps of Victory Girls, because women with no families, who appeared to be strangers in town, were automatically suspect. Once, on a day off in Mobile—a port town known for building Liberty ships for the war effort—we took a stroll and saw two white women dressed in shiny satin get arrested by a pair of policemen and put in the back of their cruiser. Those women had been walking along just like we were. They hadn’t looked all that different from Grace and me, since we were performers and made sure we “dressed” no matter where we went. What saved our cans that day was Helen and little Tommy. Grace and I just seemed like two friends keeping a well-dressed mother, whose husband must be overseas doing his duty, and her child company.

  “Sure, I’m scared,” Grace confessed when we got back to the hotel, not that anyone asked her. “Sometimes I’m scared to death, but what am I going to do? Stop touring? If I’d allowed myself to become paralyzed every time I felt fear I wouldn’t have left Plain City when I was seventeen. I wouldn’t have done a single thing.”

  She wouldn’t have either, just like I wouldn’t have. I didn’t need to like Grace, but I could admire her. In her own way, she had as much guts as I had.

  So there we were—four women, three men, three small children, cages filled with cooing doves, and trunks loaded with costumes, toys, and Jack’s props and other magic paraphernalia—traveling through the south from booking to booking. Irene was pregnant with her third child. Helen, Grace, and I often had to share a room—with a double bed for Helen, Tommy, and me, and a double bed for Grace. One of the best things about being in show business is staying up all night, having drinks, laughing, dancing, but we practically lived like nuns. We had dinner at four o’clock, two hours before we had to arrive at the theater or club, because Tommy was much better behaved if he had a full stomach. And we went to bed early, because if Grace and I didn’t get enough sleep, we made mistakes and we looked terrible. We’d all done some hard living, and some days it showed.

  “If you’re a stenographer, and your work is good, you don’t have to prove yourself every day,” Helen chided us. “But as performers, your bodies have to be maintained at all times. If a secretary gains ten pounds, so what? If she gets wrinkles, who cares? But for an entertainer, these things can mark the end. Lotions, potions, and creams won’t return youth.”

  Thank you, Helen, for reminding us.

  HELEN

  V for Victory

  Often, when I waited in the dressing room for Ruby to come offstage, I daydreamed about my beloved Lai Kai. If he were still alive, we would have had many children by now and lived in our own compound, always together under the full moon, always bathing in a river of love. But if he were alive, I never would have met Grace or Ruby. I never would have danced in clubs. I never would have gone to Hollywood with Eddie. I never would have seen so many American cities. I would have traded all those experiences to be still married to Lai Kai. I didn’t deserve to be either happy or alive, but a silkworm will only stop providing silk when it dies and a candle will only stop crying when it turns to ash. I could live as a chaste widow, who happened to be married to another man, as long as I had Tommy. If Chinese people could have seen us together, they would have offered the supreme compliment for motherhood—that I loved my son like a cow licking her calf—but we never encountered proper Chinese. Just Chinese hillbillies!

  The Oriental Fantasy Revue played Corpus Christi, Houston, and Memphis. We did shows at the Baker Hotel in Dallas and the Washington-Youree Hotel in Shreveport. All the while, the war raged on. We did our best to help, even on the road. When the Navy issued an urgent plea for type O blood, I arranged for the entire troupe to go to the local Red Cross in Birmingham to donate. When we were in Montgomery, I spotted a booth selling war bonds and volunteered the troupe to sing and dance on the sidewalk to attract buyers.

  In March, we traveled with the Ink Spots. When our bus stopped for gasoline, I’d go to the coffee shop and pick up sodas and sandwiches for Hoppy, Deek, and the other Spots, because they couldn’t get served. A lot of states had curfews for Negroes, and the guys couldn’t cross a certain line after midnight. Can you imagine the irony of headlining in a town and not being able to get a meal or take a stroll after dinner? But once we played a black venue, and Ruby and Grace were assigned the smallest dressing room on the third floor, where all the heat collected. It was only fair. But I told Grace she’d have to help Ruby with her makeup that night so I could take Tommy outside for some fresh air.

  What a mistake! After everything I’d done for Ruby, she started speaking to Grace. Jealousy skulked from its hiding place, but how could I be jealous, truly? Except that Ruby was more of an equal to Grace, while I was like a road manager … or a maid.

  “Maybe we should put together an act for the three of us,” I suggested one night in the dining car as our train chugged from Jacksonville to Savannah.

  “I don’t think so, Helen,” Ruby said. “We already have our own acts.”

  A bramble finch can never understand the lofty ambitions of snow geese.

  ON APRIL 13, WE woke in Charleston to the sound of church bells. We hoped the war might be over. Instead, we heard President Roosevelt had died. We could hardly believe it. He’d only just been elected for a fourth term. He had brought us out of the Depression and now was our leader in wartime. The realization that we would no longer have him to guide us was crushingly sad. Our show was canceled that night. The next day we moved on, doing one-nighters as the Oriental Fantasy Revue’s tour began to wind down, but our audiences were slight and the mood somber. It felt like the entire
country was in mourning.

  On April 30, we arrived in Norfolk for a five-night run at a club called Pieces O’Eight. Soon we’d need to decide what to do next: keep the revue together, find others to travel with, or go our separate ways. I spoke directly to Sam Bernstein now, and he warned me that Norfolk was a rowdy port town—or, as he put it more directly, “the worst war town”—with a volatile mixture of military bases, plenty of liquor, and an abundance of vice, but it didn’t seem so bad in the light of day as we were driven from the train station to our accommodations.

  I checked us in to the hotel, where I had to accept a two-bedroom suite with a shared bathroom. Once we unpacked, we put on clean clothes—Grace in her skirt with the Morse code pattern that spelled V for victory, Ruby in a blood-red dress that looked stunning against her hair, and me in a simple skirt and blouse—and then went downstairs for a late lunch. The Maks were already there, and they waved us over to join them. After we ordered, Jack announced, “Irene and I have been discussing things. We’re going back to San Francisco after this gig.”

  “What about the revue?” I asked, the practical one, running the show with no thanks from anyone.

  “You’ll find someone else to fill in for the rest of the tour,” Jack said. “What about the Lim Sisters—”

  “They don’t do magic,” I protested. “Please don’t leave us!”

  “Helen, look at me. I’m as big as a house,” Irene pointed out.

  I couldn’t deny it. At our last one-nighter, I’d tried to zip Irene into her costume and the whole thing had split apart. I’d rigged together a replacement out of a kimono and a Spanish shawl, which made her resemble a gigantic fringed lampshade.

  “I can’t go onstage like this,” she went on, rubbing her belly. “Besides, our elder boy will be starting kindergarten next year.”

  “I’ve agreed to be the house magician at the Forbidden City,” Jack informed us.