“Hem.” The voice behind them was gruff, male and speaking words Mary didn’t recognize.
Susanna did, though. She broke apart from Mary at once and dropped into a deep curtsy. “Your Majesty.”
The king! Mary dropped to a curtsy, too, but not before she caught a glimpse of King George, the curls of his wig cascading down over his embroidered waistcoat, his jeweled shoe buckles gleaming in the dim light.
He said something else Mary did not understand, but which drew a light giggle from Susanna. Then he turned and began to climb the stairs behind them, his heavy footfalls clumping on each step.
The girls turned when he did, ensuring they faced him until he was out of their presence. They did not rise until they heard a door slam on the floor above them. Nor did they speak for some moments after that, until they could be quite certain he was gone.
Then their laughter spilled out, despite their attempts to contain it.
“Shh. His mistress’s rooms are just above,” Susanna gasped out in a whisper. “I tried to warn you. He’s often been known to take the back stairs to visit her.”
“What did he say to us?” Mary whispered when she finally regained the breath to speak. “German, was it?”
Susanna nodded, gulping through her laughter. Of course the servants here spoke German, like the royal family themselves. Mary would need to learn it, too, now that she was to stay among them.
“He said—” Susanna choked “—he said, ‘Right then, girls. Carry on.’”
Mary lost her composure all over again, collapsing against Susanna in a heap. They laughed and laughed as quietly as they could, holding each other through their tears.
“Well, then,” Mary said. “We ought to follow the royal command, should we not?”
And that was precisely what they did.
* * * * *
NEW YEAR
BY
MALINDA LO
San Francisco—January 21, 1955
Lily Ma notices his hair first: parted on the left, slicked back on the sides, with a swell of dark waves on top. He has a smooth face with high cheekbones and a plump lower lip. Lily is almost positive she’s seen him somewhere before, but she can’t remember where. It’s strangely unsettling.
The red paper lanterns hanging from the ceiling of the Eastern Pearl Restaurant shed a warm glow over the table in the alcove where he sits with three women. One of them is wearing trousers. Another is a redhead with bangs cut straight across her forehead. The third woman is seated to the man’s left, and she’s wearing a royal blue dress and a neat pearl choker. She smiles at him with a glint in her eye that Lily doesn’t quite understand.
It’s late for dinner—nearly nine thirty—but the restaurant is almost full. On a Friday night, the Eastern Pearl mainly attracts tourists seeking out a taste of the exotic Orient, as advertised by tour companies who bring them in by the busload to gawk at the neighborhood Lily grew up in. They’re always given the American menu, decorated with gold dragons on the cover and filled with a dozen kinds of chop suey, food that Lily herself would never order.
Lily’s friend Shirley Lum nudges her with her elbow. “You’re making a mess of those,” Shirley says, eyeing the loose, haphazard stack of napkins in front of Lily. They’ll never pass muster with Shirley’s mother, who is only letting them linger in the family restaurant because it’s Friday night and they need the help.
“Sorry,” Lily says. She notes the precisely pleated napkins stacked in front of Shirley. “I’m no good at this.”
“Here, I’ll redo yours.” Shirley pulls Lily’s napkins toward her. “And stop mooning over that man. He’ll catch you staring.”
Lily shoots an indignant glance at her friend. “I’m not mooning. I think I’ve seen him somewhere.”
Shirley’s eyes flicker toward the table that Lily has been watching. “He’s handsome,” Shirley says.
Lily pushes her chair back and jumps up, running behind the counter, where the cash register is located. She returns with several old issues of the San Francisco Chronicle in hand. “I know where I’ve seen him,” Lily says.
Shirley’s mother uses the Chronicle to wrap up leftovers, and sometimes Lily reads them while she’s at the restaurant, lingering over the film reviews and society columns, imagining a life outside the boundaries of Chinatown. Lily shuffles through the papers, searching for something that she hopes she’ll recognize on sight.
“What are you looking for?” Shirley asks.
“It might have been an ad,” Lily answers. The rustling newspaper is a whisper, barely audible over the sound of conversation and laughter in the warm restaurant. It smells of fried dumplings and hot and sour soup. Outside on the street, firecrackers are going off again, even though it’s too early. Chinese New Year’s Eve is tomorrow, and it’ll be launched with a fusillade of firecrackers right after midnight, but the Chinatown boys can never resist exploding a few in advance.
Lily keeps an eye on the foursome as the man gestures to their waiter, holding his hand up to ask for the check. The woman in the royal blue dress has a black patent leather purse with a white scallop on the top. From within it she takes out a gold compact; it glitters like a Hollywood star.
That’s when Lily remembers the section she saw him in. She flips through the newspaper with rising excitement, finally pausing on the After Night Falls column, which reviews nightclub entertainment. She scans the page, looking for the ad she vaguely recalls—but it wasn’t an ad after all. Four photos are prominently featured with the column itself: three women, including Mae West, and one man. Lily surreptitiously compares the man in the restaurant to the person in the photo. The same shiny, short hair, the same nose and cheeks. The caption reads “Tommy Andrews: Club Chi-Chi Performer.”
“Is that him?” Shirley asks, leaning over Lily’s shoulder.
Lily scans the column until she finds the brief mention. “Tommy Andrews, the male impersonator, brings something different in nightclub entertainment to Club Chi-Chi.”
Something goes still inside Lily, as if her heart took a breath before it continued beating. Shirley has gone silent. Her eyes dart back and forth from the photograph to the man at the table with the three women.
“Tommy Andrews,” Lily whispers.
Shirley is a little pale.
Lily looks back at the newspaper, scanning the ads beneath the column, and there’s Tommy Andrews’s name again. Tommy Andrews Male Impersonator. Club Chi-Chi. 462 Broadway. That’s only a few blocks from the Eastern Pearl.
The bars and clubs are packed in close beside each other on Broadway. Lily’s parents always tell her to avoid those blocks; they’re for adults, they say, and tourists. Not for good Chinese girls. Not for girls at all.
But Lily has walked along Broadway before. It’s scarcely five minutes from her home, yet it always feels a world away. She likes the gaily painted awnings and tall neon signs; the music leaking out from behind closed doors; the ladies in smart hats and high heels, with their stocking seams neat up the back of their silk-sheathed legs. There’s something vivid about those blocks that lights a secret flame inside her.
“It’s not natural, you know,” Shirley says softly. “Ladies shouldn’t look like men.”
Lily looks up from the newspaper. “It’s for show, Shirley. Entertainment.”
Shirley shakes her head reproachfully. “This is the Eastern Pearl, not a nightclub.”
Lily rolls her eyes. “Oh, please. There are always dancers from the Forbidden City here. Doesn’t your father say all money is equal at the Eastern Pearl?”
Across the restaurant, Tommy Andrews is paying for the meal, but the other women at the table also drop dollars onto the tray—even the woman with the scallop purse.
Shirley sighs. “Let’s not argue, Lily. It’s almost the New Year. We should be friendly and peaceful.” She is as prim as one of the St. Mary
’s nuns, but her jaw clenches.
Lily bites her tongue with some effort, but can’t resist snapping the newspaper closed with a showy gesture. On the back page there’s an article about the upcoming New Year parade, along with a photo of Miss Chinatown smiling delightedly at the camera.
“You should’ve entered the Miss Chinatown pageant,” Shirley says abruptly.
Lily is surprised. “Why?”
The foursome Lily has been watching are standing now, putting on their coats. Tommy Andrews helps the woman in the blue dress with her coat, holding it open for her like a gentleman.
“Your father is a doctor, and he’s on the parade committee. You could have won,” Shirley says.
Miss Chinatown was ostensibly a beauty pageant, but the winner was determined by the number of raffle tickets she sold. Everyone knew it was about connections, not beauty.
“I don’t want to be in a beauty pageant,” Lily says.
“Why not? I would.”
“I don’t want people staring at me.”
“You should be in the pageant next year,” Shirley says. “And I’ll help you sell raffle tickets.”
“If you’re so jazzed about it, why don’t you enter?” Lily asks a bit sharply.
Shirley shakes her head. “I’m the daughter of a restaurant owner. I’m not going to win.”
“Why not? Isn’t this America? You’re much prettier than me. I’ll help you, how about that?”
Shirley seems mollified. “Maybe.”
The bell hanging over the Eastern Pearl’s front door jingles as the foursome leaves. Lily catches one last glimpse of Tommy Andrews pulling the door shut.
Behind Lily and Shirley, the swinging door to the kitchen opens. Shirley’s mother pokes her head out. “Shirley, come help me for a minute,” she says.
“Yes, Ma,” Shirley answers. “Leave the napkins,” she says to Lily. “I’ll finish them when I get back.”
Once Lily is alone at the table, she carefully opens the newspaper again and tears out the After Night Falls column. She folds it into a small neat square and tucks it deep into the pocket of her skirt.
* * *
Sunday morning, Lily wakes up to the voices of Aunt Judy and Uncle Francis in the living room. Luggage thumps onto the floor, and her brothers’ footsteps pound down the long hallway from their room at the back of the flat to the front door.
Lily climbs out of bed and pushes open the pocket doors that close off her tiny bedroom from the living room, and Aunt Judy and Uncle Francis are laughing, hugging Eddie and ruffling Dickie’s hair. When Judy notices her standing in the doorway, she comes across the room and folds her into a hug. She smells like fog mixed with firecrackers, the scent of New Year’s Eve in Chinatown.
“You’re so tall!” Judy says, her eyes crinkling at the corners as she smiles. “And half-asleep I think.”
“Did you have a good trip?” Lily asks.
“We took the overnight train from Los Angeles,” her aunt says. “I slept the whole way.”
Lily’s mother herds everyone into the small dining room off the kitchen, where she sets out a pot of jasmine tea, fried dough and steamed buns from the bakery on the corner. Judy pulls out a bag of Southern California oranges from her suitcase, and Lily’s mother slices them into wedges. Her brothers shove whole wedges into their mouths and deliver wide orange smiles that inspire Uncle Francis to copy them.
The whole day is full of cooking in preparation for the Chinese New Year’s Eve dinner. While Francis takes the boys out to buy a Cantonese roast duck, Lily helps her mother and Judy prepare the rest of the food. They make stir-fried rice cakes with napa cabbage and minced pork, and fish braised in a sweet soy sauce. They roll rice balls around sesame paste, cooking them in a clear broth. And for dessert, there is babaofan, or steamed eight-treasure sticky rice, which is filled with red bean paste and candied fruits. When it is unmolded from the bowl after Mama pulls it from the steamer, the sticky rice glistens, the candied fruits shining like jewels. Dad has to hold Eddie back from digging in to it immediately.
After dinner, Mama scoops out servings of babaofan and passes the small plates around the table. “We only need one more to make a lucky eight,” she says.
“Seven is a lucky number here,” Francis says.
Mama ignores him and gives Judy a pointed look. “Any chance we’ll be welcoming a little one this year? He would be lucky number eight.”
Judy laughs. “I just started my new job. I think I’d better put some time into that first.”
“How is that going?” Lily’s father asks. She can easily see the family resemblance between her father and Aunt Judy, even though Judy is nearly fourteen years younger than him. They have the same eyes and chin. They have the same stubborn streak that pushed Dad through medical school and kept Judy up late studying math, despite being thousands of miles away from their family in China.
“It’s going well,” Judy responds, getting up to refill everyone’s tea.
“Aunt Judy,” Lily says, “is it true that you’re helping to send spaceships to the moon?”
Judy looks surprised. “Who told you that?”
“Eddie,” Lily says, gesturing to her fourteen-year-old brother, who is busy shoveling babaofan into his mouth. “I think he was exaggerating. We can’t go to the moon!”
“Not yet, but maybe someday,” Judy says.
Lily’s eyes widen. “Really?”
“Yes, really,” Judy says, smiling.
“We’ll need rockets to go to the moon,” Eddie says. “I’ve read about them before—”
“Those are science fiction books,” Lily says.
“They’re based on real science!” Eddie responds indignantly.
“Are you building rockets, Aunt Judy?” Dickie asks, bouncing in his seat.
“I’m helping to build them,” Judy says. “That’s one of the things we do at the Jet Propulsion Lab. Your uncle Francis helps, too.”
“But what do you do?” Lily asks her aunt.
“I do the math,” Judy says. “I calculate a lot of different things—it’s a little complicated to explain, but in order to figure out where a rocket will go, I have to do a lot of mathematical equations. Well, I and many other computers. Your uncle Francis works with the engineers who use the calculations we do to build the rockets.”
Dickie has picked up one of his chopsticks and is using it to challenge Eddie to a duel. Eddie obliges, but before they get very far into their sword fight, Mama notices. “Stop that, boys. If you’re finished with your dinner, go play in the living room.” She picks up their empty plates and holds them out to Lily. “Lily, will you take these into the kitchen and wash up, please?”
Lily knows it’s her mother’s way of getting her and her brothers out of hearing range—the adults always wait till they’re gone before they say anything really interesting—but Lily stands up and begins stacking the empty dishes. As she clears the table, Dad steers the conversation toward Uncle Francis and Aunt Judy’s new house in Pasadena, which they bought only a few months ago. Lily carries the bowls and plates into the kitchen, piling them into the sink and turning on the water, adding dish soap. It’s her job to clean up after dinner, although sometimes her brothers help dry.
When she turns off the water she hears her mother saying “I wish we could move, but he doesn’t want to.”
Lily wipes her hands on the dish towel and tiptoes to the kitchen door to listen.
“It’s not that,” Dad says. “You know we can’t move. My practice is here in Chinatown. This is our home.”
“Our home,” Mama says derisively. “Last week the immigration service stopped him on the street.”
“It wasn’t so bad,” Dad says mildly.
“What happened?” Judy asks.
Lily can’t follow everything her father says, though the English
words alien registration card are sandwiched between his longer answer in Chinese. Government immigration agents often stopped Chinese to ask for their identification, but Lily didn’t know it had happened to her father.
“They didn’t believe he was a doctor!” Mama says.
“They believed me in the end,” Dad says, sounding tired. “They were doing their jobs.”
“They were bothering you for no reason,” Mama says. “Everyone in Chinatown knows who you are. If those agents don’t believe you from the start, they won’t believe anyone. We should move.”
“Moving isn’t that simple,” Dad says. “There are people who don’t like Chinese everywhere. Think of how difficult it would be to live in a place where there are no other people like us. And how many non-Chinese will go to a Chinese doctor?”
“Judy and Francis had no problem buying their house,” Mama says defensively.
“No,” Francis says. “But we read in the paper that some others have had problems. The Americans in a neighborhood voting that the Chinese should leave, things like that.”
“We’re Americans now, too,” Judy says quietly.
“You know what I mean,” Francis says.
There’s a moment of silence, and then Dad says in a low voice, “I haven’t heard from Didi or Jiejie in over a year.” Didi is Lily’s youngest uncle, and Jiejie is her eldest aunt; both are still in Shanghai.
“I haven’t either, but what can we do?” Judy says. “We can’t try to contact them now. We’ll be seen as Communist sympathizers.”
A chair scrapes across the floor, and Lily’s mother says, “I’ll get more tea.”
“I’ll get it,” Judy says. “You sit.”
Lily scampers back from the door, returning to the sink. She is busily washing up the bowls when Judy enters the kitchen, empty teapot in hand.
“Time for more tea,” Judy says, setting the teapot on the kitchen table. She picks up the empty kettle from the stove and comes over to the sink. Lily moves to the side, and Judy fills the kettle from the faucet.
All Out--The No-Longer-Secret Stories of Queer Teens throughout the Ages Page 10
