Joan had returned home late almost every evening since A Woman’s Story began filming. Mah-mee and Auntie Go were just finishing dinner when she entered the dining room.
“You look tired,” Auntie Go said, putting down her bowl.
“What is that director doing making you work so late?” Mah-mee asked, scooping rice into Joan’s bowl. “I have just the thing for those dark circles under your eyes.”
Joan’s eyes burned. Her mouth felt dry and sour. For the past few days she had felt nauseated. “I’m not very hungry,” she managed to say.
“Nonsense! You have to eat. How are you going to complete this film if you don’t keep up your strength?” Mah-mee spooned more chicken into her bowl.
Joan fell into her chair. How was she going to finish making this film? She forced herself to eat what was in her bowl so she wouldn’t have to talk. They couldn’t know that acting was the only thing keeping her going now or else she would simply wilt away.
Foon brought her a bowl of soup made out of astragalus roots and wild berries. “Give you strength,” she whispered, her voice unusually gentle.
Again sleep eluded Joan. At moments it teased her, allowing her to forget, to rest her eyes for a short while. Then, the smallest sound would awaken her—the distant barking of a dog, a door creaking open, a sudden sigh. The less she slept, the more acute her hearing became. After days of not enough sleep, there was a constant dull throbbing at the back of her head. She lay in bed watching the light turn slowly from a soft black to gray, the outlines of her room growing into focus. Her head throbbed with the need to be part of his life, the thought of his touch, his body lying next to her. If I could just sleep, she thought to herself. If I could just close my eyes and forget.
“Drink this,” Foon said as soon as Joan came home the next evening. Her devoted servant took her script, her purse, her sweater, peeling away the layers of her day. “Drink!” she commanded again. Joan drank, tasting the bitterness, then the relief of being guided in a direction, taken care of. She was led to her room by Foon, helped to undress, and laid gently down on her bed. As Joan closed her eyes, her head began to throb and her stomach felt queasy, yet she could feel the unexpected and comforting presence of Foon sitting beside her. She smelled garlic and herbs, heard Foon saying, “Sleep, sleep,” in a light, careful command. Joan tried to say something back, but her voice felt thick and fuzzy. “What would I do without you….” echoed through her head. She wanted to thank Foon, but instead slipped into sleep with such ease, she barely had time to think about wanting it.
Chapter 13
Forever Waiting—1957–58
Emma
Emma sat on the scuffed hardwood floor of her studio apartment on the first weekend in October and tightly bound another orange crate filled with her books. For the past few weeks, she’d been dragging back empty apple, orange, and banana crates and boxes from the Golden Harvest Market around the corner from the Rec Center. After nearly three years at the Bellevue Apartments for Women, Emma was ecstatic to be moving into a larger apartment of her own near Lone Mountain, off of Geary Boulevard.
Wearing an old shirt tied at the waist and a pair of baggy jeans rolled up at the cuffs, Emma forced herself to pack the next shelf of books, which ranged alphabetically from Austen to Wharton, without stopping to examine or flip through each one. She was rarely without a book tucked under her arm or stuffed into her handbag when she rode the bus to and from work in Chinatown. The old childhood habit stayed with her right through college and into her working years. Each story still cast a spell on her, sent Emma soaring through history and countries, fighting wars and falling in love.
Lately, she’d realized more than ever how much she needed these precious books. The pages helped to fill an increasing void in her life. At twenty-six, Emma was still working as a secretary at the Chinese Recreation Center. Not that it wasn’t a good job, mostly due to Wilson Chang, who was not only a wonderful boss but had also become a close friend. But something had changed in the past year, a feeling of stagnation had crept into her bones like a dull ache. Her temporary job had become fixed in cement. Half of the time Emma wondered what difference it made to have a college degree.
Then as summer moved into the bittersweet days of autumn, Emma decided it was time to move. She hoped that if the walls around her changed, her life would too. She wrote Mah-mee…I’ve outgrown the small studio…then could almost hear her mother’s sharp voice asking Auntie Go, “When will she forget all this nonsense and just come home?”
“Is there anything wrong?” Wilson asked, his presence a sudden surprise.
He stood at her open doorway as Emma quickly jumped up amidst her jungle of boxes and crates. She’d forgotten he had volunteered to help her move. As always, Wilson was wonderful, giving her Friday off from the Center to pack, and now arriving bright and early on Saturday morning to help her move. Emma knew that somewhere along the line, he was the brother she had never had.
“No,” Emma said, brushing her hair back with her fingers, hooking it behind her ear. “I was just thinking about the move.”
“I have this theory about thinking too much.” He smiled. “It only gives you a headache.”
Emma smiled back and nodded. Wilson always had kind, comforting words.
“I brought a friend along to help,” Wilson continued. “He’s downstairs waiting with the van.”
“How can I thank you,” Emma said, turning serious. “I don’t know how I would have managed—”
“What’s in these boxes?” Wilson broke in, picking up a crate and straining against its weight.
“The orange crates are my books.” Emma laughed. “I like to read. You haven’t even gotten to my art books yet, just wait till you get to the banana boxes!” She pointed to another stack.
“Ever heard of the library?” He smiled.
“I like to own the books I read. Come on, a big, strong jock like you shouldn’t have any trouble with a few books.”
Wilson laughed, and a boyish grin spread across his face. If not for his thinning hair, it would be hard to guess that he was already thirty-five.
“You owe me,” he said, stacking two boxes next to the door.
“Dinner at Mel’s,” Emma offered.
“I was thinking Ernie’s or Alfred’s.” Wilson stood straight, rubbing his back.
Emma laughed. “Only if my boss gives me a raise.”
“Mel’s it is,” he said, boosting an orange crate to his shoulder and heading downstairs.
Emma returned to packing. The last of her large art books filled a thick, sturdy Chiquita-banana box. Lately, she’d saved money to buy mostly art books—Degas, Klimt, Manet, Matisse. Their glossy pages full of line and color excited and inspired. In her spare time, Emma had begun to draw again, a remnant of her art classes that grew increasingly urgent. It afforded her a sense of freedom her everyday life couldn’t provide. Mostly, she worked in charcoal on cheap paper, shaping and shading the faces of her models—the boys who passed through the Rec Center program.
From memory, Emma also drew her family—Ba ba in a dark business suit, Mah-mee at a mah-jongg table, Auntie Go in front of the Western Wind, Joan reflected in a mirror. Even Foon watched her from the walls of her small room. But when their faces became too oppressive, too much a reminder of how her life had ground to a full stop, Emma carefully took down each drawing, wrapped them in tissue paper, and put them all in the closet. She now laid them on top of her art books and quickly sealed the box.
In the closet Emma found a box of letters from her family and Lia. She fingered the neatly tied stacks, slipped out a few envelopes, and opened them in her lap. Time stopped again as the voices of her family whispered over her, embracing Emma. Ba ba’s words floated back from last winter, brief but haunting…. It seems the days pass by so quickly. My bones grow brittle with the cold. I’ve decided to return to Hong Kong in two years or less. Your mah-mee insists that I slow down. It may be time to listen. Perhaps then we will vi
sit you in San Francisco. Emma stopped reading. It was dated May of this year. With luck, she would still have time to establish a new career before her parents arrived.
Emma smiled at the other letter in her lap. It was Lia’s pink envelope and her large, bold writing, postmarked just a month ago. They’d last seen each other more than ten years ago, but the soothing lilt that sang through Lia’s words never failed to make Emma happy. Lia was married now, with two small children and another on the way. She worked part-time as a nurse’s aide and still hoped to become a full-fledged nurse one day. Emma peeled back the sticky flap of the envelope and glanced at the first page. Joan’s movie A Woman’s Story just opened here. All Macao is excited. I left the boys with Mamae and took the bus downtown to see it. You would have been proud to see the line in front of the Rialto. She is so bonita and is certain to be a big star! Emma stopped reading. Whenever she thought of Joan’s success, a small knot wound tighter in her stomach. She didn’t want to jinx Joan’s good fortune with her unhappy thoughts, but lately her sister’s achievements only emphasized her own deficiencies.
Emma skipped through the rest of Lia’s letter to the last page. After two boys, if this baby is a girl, we’ve settled on naming her Carmelita Emma Alvarez. I’ve decided to face these family superstitions head-on. Mamae says it will bring back bad memories that will haunt her grandchild, but I say, how could anyone hurt her own namesake? Besides, she will be named after two strong women. What better way to enter this world? And maybe it will bring you to Macao again. Emma put down the letter. After so many years, a stabbing ache of homesickness overwhelmed her.
Emma wiped her eyes with the back of her hand when she heard footsteps on the stairs. She didn’t want Wilson to see her upset. Quickly she tucked the letters into an opened box and turned around in surprise. Not Wilson, but a taller, thinner man in jeans and a sweatshirt stood in the doorway. He watched her intently, dark eyed and dark complexioned with diluted features that made him appear both Chinese and Caucasian at the same time.
“Hi. You must be Emma. I’m Jack Leung, a friend of Wilson’s.” His voice, low and soothing, startled her with its warmth and made her flush.
“Yes,” she said, standing up and extending her hand. “Thank you for coming to help. I’m really grateful.”
“You aren’t from San Francisco, are you?”
“Hong Kong.” Even with jeans and a shirt on, she was given away by the trace of her accent.
“I was there for a few days several years ago.” Jack smiled. “Always wanted to go back.”
“You liked Hong Kong then?”
“Yes, very much.” He smiled again, a gleam of straight teeth. “Better get to work before Wilson wonders what happened to me. Are these ready to go?” He pointed at the boxes Wilson had just stacked.
“Yes,” she nodded.
He smiled at her, picked up a box, and moved swiftly out the door and back down the stairs.
By late afternoon, her fruit crates and boxes were correctly stacked in the rooms of her new apartment. The place felt huge and hollow—with one bedroom, a living room, a small kitchen, and a breakfast nook.
In the kitchen, Emma unpacked the boxes she’d filled just that morning. All her kitchen utensils, so cramped in her studio at the Bellevue Apartments, scarcely filled the yellow drawers and cabinets. Emma liked the smell of Mr. Clean, and the walls papered in a pattern of yellow and green squash. The apartment felt lived in and comfortable, but scrubbed clean. She smiled to think that Foon would approve.
Emma could hear Wilson and Jack talking in her living room, waiting for her to find cups for their Coca-Cola. She dug through an apple box and found the two blue plastic tumblers she’d bought at Woolworth. Emma fumbled with the bottle opener, flipping the cap off and across the green linoleum. She dropped ice cubes into the tumblers, poured the fizzy cola, filled a plate with peanuts, and hurried into the living room.
“At last!” Wilson said, sitting on one of her yellow vinyl kitchen chairs in the middle of the room. Jack sat next to him, legs crossed, as if they were waiting at a doctor’s office.
“You’re a slave driver!” Emma laughed, thrilled to be using one of the many slang terms she’d learned since coming to America.
Emma would never forget her early confusion with the English language. It still plagued her, though she understood and spoke as well as most American-born Chinese. She still had some problems with reading the slang-filled, abbreviated newspaper headlines…Elvis Shakes His Pelvis, Freed’s Radio Show Rocks ’n’ Rolls ’em, Troops Flood Little Rock…. During her first year in San Francisco, Emma felt as if she were learning another language.
“Do you have a radio?” Jack asked, his tennis shoes tapping lightly against the muted brown carpet. His dark eyes followed Emma from the moment she entered the room.
“In one of those boxes,” she answered, blushing, careful not to make eye contact with him. She felt hot and slightly uncomfortable.
Emma searched in an apple box in the corner, but Jack lifted her square, brown RCA radio out of a banana box and plugged it in. Static filled the room and grated against their ears.
“Turn it off!” Wilson yelled, laughing.
“Hold on.” Jack sprawled on the rug and played with the knob until Pat Boone’s syrupy voice leaked into the room crooning “Love Letters in the Sand.”
“Please, anything but Pat Boone!” Wilson said, his swirling ice click-clacking against the sides of the tumbler.
Jack spun the dial again through a blur of voices until he found Buddy Holly singing “Peggy Sue.” He turned it lower so they could hear each other talk, only to have them all suddenly grow quiet.
“Peggy Sue, Peggy Sue, I love you.” Jack’s fingers tapped against the top of the radio. Emma couldn’t take her eyes off his ring, gold with some kind of insignia etched on it.
“What do you say I take us all out for dinner?” Wilson suggested. “Chinatown? North Beach? Your choice.”
“It’s my treat, remember?” Emma said, glancing first at Wilson, then at Jack. “You’ve both been so nice to help with the move.”
Jack drank the remainder of his Coke, then raised himself off the rug. “I’d love to, but I’m afraid I’ll have to take a rain check. I’m on duty tonight.”
“Duty?” Emma asked.
Wilson answered, “Jack’s in the army. He’s stationed at the Presidio. A real Korean War hero!”
“Get out of here,” Jack teased back. He arched his back, then stood up straight, tall and square-shouldered.
Emma now wondered how she could have missed all the clues. He even stood like a soldier at ease, feet spread apart and hands clasped behind his back. Standing next to him, Emma felt short, though she reached his shoulder. Wilson, at five feet six, was scarcely an inch taller than she.
“Give me a call,” Jack said to Wilson, who remained seated.
“In a day or two. Thanks, buddy.”
Emma walked Jack to the door, stood in the cool breeze, and pulled her cotton cardigan tightly around her. She extended her hand for him to shake. “Thank you again for all your help.”
He shook her hand, then, still holding it, leaned closer and whispered, “I really mean it about that rain check for dinner. I’ll talk to you soon.”
Jack stepped back and winked, then walked quickly down the concrete steps, the warmth from his hand still tingling in hers.
The weariness pulled at Emma as soon as Wilson brought her home from dinner and left her alone in her new apartment. She walked through each room, trying to dispel the strangeness, the boxes stacked and waiting to be unpacked. She boiled some hot water to make tea and drank it sitting in the living room on the same vinyl kitchen chair Jack had sat on. She wondered what he looked like in his uniform and smiled to herself. A soldier. Emma sipped her tea and thought about the way Jack’s dark eyes followed her around the room, how quickly he moved, working as hard as any of them, though he didn’t even know her. Why hadn’t Wilson ever mentioned this fri
end before?
Just a few hours earlier, she and Wilson had sat in his DeSoto and ate hamburgers and french fries at Mel’s Drive-in. She thought of their easy conversation, the greasy smell of onions and fries, the coolness of the strawberry milk shake sliding down her throat. Emma didn’t want to ask too many questions about Jack, but did manage to nonchalantly inquire, “How long has Jack been in the army?”
Wilson chewed thoughtfully before answering, “Enlisted right out of high school. He was the younger brother of a friend of mine. Half-Chinese, half-Portuguese. Always a good kid. He’s a second lieutenant, career officer. Some kind of sonar specialist now, I think. Good-looking, huh?”
Emma grew warm, began nibbling on a french fry. “It was nice of him to come help move.”
“Jack’s a good guy. We made sure to keep in touch, especially after his brother was killed.”
“In Korea?”
“No. In a Chinatown shooting. Got mixed up with the gangs in high school. One of the reasons I got involved with the Rec Center.” Wilson stuffed the last of his hamburger into his mouth.
Emma remained quiet. She couldn’t begin to count how many different worlds revolved around her. How awful it must have been for Jack to have his brother killed. Even worse than the pain Lia must have felt when her brother died. After all, she didn’t even have the chance to know him. And how important it was to have someone like Wilson to provide programs that kept kids off the streets. He was probably one of the nicest guys she’d ever meet, so different from the Hong King boys who had been weaned on their family’s money.
“I have a friend whose brother choked to death. But he was a baby, and it was an accident. I can’t imagine what I’d do if something happened to my sister, Joan.” A shiver moved up Emma’s spine.
Wilson shook his head. “It’s scary to think how easy it is to lose someone you love.”
Night of Many Dreams Page 21
