China Dolls

GRACE: Once a Chorus Girl

I take a look in the mirror. Makeup: perfect and modest. Hair: cut in what the women at the beauty parlor call an auntie bob and dyed exactly the right color for a Chinese woman of my age and station. Pantsuit: red, never wrinkles, and shows off my still-slim figure. Jewelry: three bracelets and a fun necklace I picked up last year on a trip to Bali. I give myself an encouraging nod and go out to the living room. Joe sits at the computer, a slight frown crinkling his brow. I put a hand on his shoulder. He gazes up at me.

“You don’t have to go,” he says for what feels like the hundredth time this week. He’s worried, but I know him very well. He’ll be disappointed in me if I chicken out now.

“It will be strange if I don’t make an appearance. It’s for Eddie, after all. Everyone wants to help out.”

“Try to have fun then.”

“Yes, of course. It’s bound to be fun…”

Joe covers my hand with his own, pressing it into his shoulder.

“Won’t you come with me?” I ask. “You knew everyone too…”

“I’ll come to the actual show,” he promises.

“I told you I don’t want to do that part of it. I’ll sell tickets or whatever.”

“Now, Grace, stop with that-”

I pull my fingers out from under his hand and give him a kiss on the top of his head. He turns back to his keyboard, and I head for the garage. I pull out the car and make my way down the tree-lined streets of the Berkeley Hills. When I reach the freeway, I steer toward the Bay Bridge. They’ll see me, and they’ll know my life is perfect. And it’s true. My life does look perfect: the nice house, the practical blue Volvo, two professional sons, their perfectly adequate wives, the adorable grandchildren, and the pleasant retirement days of tending my rose garden, teaching Jazzercise to seniors at the local sports club, taking walks with the wives of other retired partners from Joe’s firm, and reading books and listening to music at night with him in the den. My mother’s recitation comes into my mind like a dark vapor: When fortune comes, do not enjoy all of it; when advantage comes, do not take all of it. Except I had wanted all of it, and I got most of it.

For ten years, Helen, Ruby, and I had shared our dreams, successes, and failures-as women, friends, daughters, and performers. As long as I live, I’ll never forget that night in the dressing room at the China Doll or our performance on Toast of the Town the very next day. Two weeks later, Joe and I got married. I didn’t invite Ruby and Helen to my wedding. My emotions were still too raw. I’m sure that hurt them, but I wasn’t ready yet, and I doubt they were either. Our act had gone over big, nonetheless, and lots of fabulous offers came our way. We didn’t take them. No one in the world knew me like Ruby and Helen did and we would be forever invisibly linked, but we all still needed a break from each other to mend and to heal.

Mr. Sullivan made good on his promise, though, to invite us back on the show. Ruby wanted to parlay the Swing Sisters into “Occidental stardom”; Helen still wanted to make up for what she’d done to both of us; I was the holdout. I just couldn’t do it. After that, we had no contact, although messages were passed through our agent and our circus of mutual friends. The thought that I might never see Ruby or Helen again felt devastating, inevitable, and insurmountable.

Two years passed in a flash, and we were still standing. The three of us had always shown resilience and the courage it took to keep moving forward. And now we did it again. Toast of the Town became popularly known as The Ed Sullivan Show. He was a persistent so-and-so. Eventually, I caved. The Swing Sisters ended up performing on the show five times. We also did three appearances on Texaco Star Theater, which was hosted by Milton Berle, followed by one-shots on Your Show of Shows, The Lawrence Welk Show, Broadway Open House, and some other variety programs. While colleagues we knew got parts in Flower Drum Song (the Broadway show and later the movie), and Goro Suzuki, Ruby’s friend, got rich as Jack Soo, playing Detective Nick Yemana on Barney Miller, Ruby, Helen, and I picked up occasional guest spots-together and separately-doing character roles on shows with tropical locations like I Spy, Hawaii Five-O, and Magnum, P.I. Joe had been fine with it. He always said, “As long as there’s a beach and golf and someone else is paying, I’ll come with you, baby. We’ll bring the kids too!” Occidentals may not remember us today, but we were-and still are-big in the Chinese-American community. I mean, big. We made everyone proud. They even love Ruby, who, by now, is accepted as being more “Chinese” than most Chinese.

That doesn’t mean we were all buddy-buddy. No touring for us ever again, but we got together to rehearse our television appearances as the Swing Sisters, ran into each other on sets, and gabbed like old friends on special occasions. Helen came and stayed with me when I had my babies. I also saw her when she visited San Francisco for what she called compound business-funerals, weddings, and one-month birthdays for that extended family of hers. She became a real estate tycoon, just as I predicted, first selling houses to veterans, then building tracts, then developing condo complexes. She’s a seriously wealthy woman. Together we went to all five of Ruby’s weddings. (So much for Ruby not being the marrying kind! Her most recent hubby is twenty years her junior. I’ll bet any and all takers a hundred bucks he won’t be able to keep up with her.) Ruby is the only one of us who never retired from show business. She’s followed every wave: she had her Dancing Chopstix drop their pasties when the topless fad came in, she put them in white go-go boots in the sixties, and taught them to gyrate to a disco beat in the seventies. Journalists still like to interview her, and she’s as vivacious and naughty as she was when that reporter from the Associated Press interviewed us in our beds. She’s had staying power, our Ruby.

I exit the freeway and maneuver up Nob Hill to the Mark Hopkins Hotel. After leaving the car with the valet, I take a deep breath to steel myself, construct a pleasant expression on my face, and enter the lobby. Eddie spots me right away. Even though he’s considerably older than I am, he’s as handsome as ever-tall, graceful, nattily dressed, still and forever the Chinese Fred Astaire-but the gauntness around his eyes, the sores on his neck, and the hollowness to his cheeks let me know just how sick he is with this new disease that’s taken so many men in the city the last few years.

“You look exactly the same,” he whispers softly in my ear as he wraps his arms around me.

“How many others have you said that to already today?” I tease him.

“Oh, plenty. You know me.” He chuckles. “Come on. Everyone’s asking for you.” He loops his arm through mine and sweeps me down a hallway and into the Room of the Dons, with its murals of early California painted in sumptuous earth tones against a background of gold leaf. Almost as one-and before I have a chance to search for Ruby or Helen-my old cohorts glance in my direction to see who’s come through the door. It looks to be about fifty people so far. Some sit at tables. Others mill around a buffet, where coffee and some treats have been laid out. Those closest to me hurry over. Well, they hurry as fast as anyone who is fit and in his or her sixties, seventies, or eighties can. Once a chorus girl, always a chorus girl! (I’m not sure of the male equivalent. Once a show boy, always a show boy?) And they all talk at once.

“You look great.”

“Where have you been hiding?”

“Are you going to join us for our follies?”

“You look great too. I’d know you anywhere,” I answer Chan-chan. “I’ve been where I’ve always been, just over the bridge,” I inform Bernice Chow, who was once billed as the Chinese Ethel Merman. “I don’t think so. I’m pretty busy at home. I have grandchildren now,” I say, offering my regrets to Irene. I take in the disappointed faces and add a small salve. “But I’m sure there’ll be other ways I can help.”

The Lim Sisters elbow their way through the little crowd.

“Hi, Grace. What’s cooking?” Bessie, the eldest, has to be something like eighty-five, but to my eyes she hasn’t changed one bit. Ella and Dolores stand on either side of her, and one foot back as always. They wear matching kelly-green polyester jumpers over cream-colored turtlenecks. I bump into the sisters occasionally-in the Chinese markets in Oakland, at funerals, or at the Chinese Historical Society’s annual banquet. Sometimes I see only two of the sisters, which makes me wonder if one of them is on the outs or dead. Then I’ll see a different pair, or just one Lim sister out on her own, and it’s all so confusing. But all three are still alive, still connected, and still living just one mile apart from one another.

A man-middle-aged, with a bit of a paunch, and a young woman in tow-approaches. It’s Tommy. I remember how comfortable Helen had been holding him as a newborn, and the ways she’d both smothered him and let him have his way-out of love and fear. I never thought he had much of a future, but he grew up to be a doctor, just like Eddie’s father, and married a woman not unlike Helen. Go figure.

“Auntie Grace,” Tommy says, “I’d like you to meet my daughter, Annie. She’s a graduate student at Cal. She’s living in the compound with Dad, my aunts and uncles, and the rest of the family while she’s in school.”

Annie is pretty-long, silky black hair, and high cheekbones.

“You look a lot like your grandmother,” I say.

“I’ve heard that before,” Annie answers in a voice that mysteriously combines petulance, challenge, and pride. She reaches into her bag, pulls out a pen and a notebook, and rattles off a string of questions. “When did you first know you wanted to dance? What was your first break? When did you meet my grandmother? How did you feel being billed as an Oriental performer, dancing in an Oriental club?”

I’ve heard this accusation-or is it criticism?-from my sons and my grandchildren too, and I answer Annie the same way I answer them. “Oriental, that’s what we were called back then. And whites were called Occidentals.” I leave out that in my head I still say Oriental and Occidental. I’m stubborn and set in my ways, and I think, What’s the big deal? Why do these young people make such a fuss about this? It’s not like saying Jap-like Helen and Joe always said-or colored or something even worse. Or is it?

Annie peppers me with more questions. “Did you know you were perpetuating Asian stereotypes? How could you dance at a place called the China Doll or even tolerate being called a China doll?”

That smarts, and I glance at Tommy. I want to ask, “Have you not taught this girl any manners?” In response to my unspoken question, he says, “Annie’s doing research on the Forbidden City and the different clubs where you all performed.” He gestures to the others in the room. “She wants to capture this history before it’s lost.”

My eyes drift back to Annie. “We aren’t that old.”

“Things happen. People die,” Annie replies, and it seems pretty callous, given that the reason for today’s reunion is to help raise money for her ailing grandfather. “What you did was extraordinary for your time. Don’t you want there to be a record? Will you let me interview you? Wouldn’t you like to share your stories?”

Hell, no! Instead, I ask, “Is your grandmother here?”

“Not yet. She’s flying in from Miami.”

I’m saved from having to continue the conversation by Charlie Low, who claps his hands to get everyone’s attention. After I sit down, I notice a small dance floor and a piano, which give my heart a little hiccup. I shift my focus to Charlie-shrunken and frail now-to calm myself. If only he’d used his noodle, he would have been a rich man at the end of his life. Instead, he spent it all on wine, women, and song. Women, especially, were his downfall. Too many wives. (Fortunately, he still owns the Low Apartments, which continue to stand as a gleaming gem on the edge of Chinatown.) I peer around the room and spy Walton Biggerstaff, who taught me so much and choreographed our shows. Jack Mak and George Louie are gone, though. So many men have passed already, and that knowledge feels like a heavy weight.

“You all know why we’re here,” Charlie begins. “We’re going to raise money for our old friend, but no bake sales for us! I’ve come up with a better idea. The Forbidden City opened on December 22, 1938. Here we are in 1988. We’re going to put on a revue for the fiftieth anniversary. We’re going to re-create the Forbidden City and all our best acts. We’re going to put on a show!”

“Put on a show?” Bessie Lim drawls languidly. “Take a look around. We aren’t young Mickey Rooneys and Judy Garlands anymore.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten how to sing,” Charlie responds. “I know you girls. No one can keep the Lim Sisters from making harmonies as sweet as honey.”

“I wasn’t there the night the Forbidden City opened,” someone else calls out. “I didn’t work there until close to the end.”

“That’s all right,” Charlie says so quickly that I realize he’s come fully prepared to deal with all complaints and whiners. “We’re taking a broad approach. We’re going to use everyone we can, whether from the Forbidden City, the China Doll, or any of the other clubs some of you played in for one- and two-night stands out there on the road.”

“I haven’t performed in front of an audience in years,” Irene says, speaking for all of us. “I can’t do it.”

“Performed in front of an audience?” Charlie snorts. “What do you call all the magic shows you and Jack did at our kids’ and grandkids’ parties?” He then addresses the whole room. “Don’t be such a bunch of old ladies… and men. I know what Irene and the rest of you have been up to. You’ve been taking ukulele lessons, traditional Chinese dance, tai chi, yoga, maybe even learning how to moonwalk. So don’t tell me you can’t perform. We’re going to put on a show. We’re going to invite our friends and the press. We’re going to get even more people-old customers and total strangers-to come. And we’re going to raise money for our dear friend, like I said.”

“But what’s the show? Who’s going to write it? Who’s going to choreograph it?” a former chorus girl asks, and the ponies she sits with nod in agreement.

“We don’t need new material,” he answers. “We’re going to do the routines you were famous for-”

“I’m not going to work with any kittens!” a woman’s voice sirens through the air.

Everyone laughs. Charlie goes on: “Can’t you see it? Nostalgia! We’re going for an era that’s disappeared, see?”

I hear this with a good deal of anxiety. I want to help Eddie, and I’m perfectly willing to make a donation to his health fund, but dance? (And honestly, why do we have to do this at all? Helen and Eddie stayed married. He’s on her insurance policy, and she’s as rich as Croesus to boot. All right, I know the answer. We’re show kids. We want Eddie to know we’re with him 100 percent, even if we don’t understand this new disease.)

“There’s Ruby Tom!” Charlie suddenly exclaims.

So she came. I process that information before glancing over to where Charlie points. Ruby sits at a table on the far side of the room. She still has her figure, and her skin looks great. She wears a sequined gown… in the middle of the day… with sparkling clips in her hair… and diamond and ruby bracelets climbing her arm. What a spectacle. Even at-what?-seventy?-Ruby has to show off. But damn, she looks good-still seeking the spotlight, still addicted to glitter, and still sly as ever. I notice that my old pal is peeking at me out of the corners of her eyes. I keep my face bland.

I’ve had other friends-mothers to be when I was pregnant with Ben and Stephen, moms of the other boys in my sons’ schools, and the gals I played tennis with over the years-but none of those women knew me as a girl. None of them could ever really know me, not like Ruby and Helen know me. I’m convinced this is so, because I’m staring at Ruby and seeing not the sexed-up old woman who is just this side of grotesque, if I’m honest, but the girl who loved to laugh with her two best friends.

“And, of course, our beloved Grace Lee,” Charlie barrels along. “Still famous. Still a lady.”

I nod politely at the acknowledgment, but inside I’m gloating like I’m seventeen, because I received more applause than Ruby. If Helen were here, I think, she might be smiling too.

Right then I see Helen, standing in the doorway, wearing a Chanel suit, with matching purse and shoes. She somehow manages to appear bemused, critical, and bitter. With another of those hiccups in my heart, I remember when Helen and I were the very best of friends, sure that no one could come between us, and then later when the deepest friendship was between Ruby and Helen, and how much that hurt me. I loved those two, but together and separately, they caused me some of the worst pain of my life.

Charlie, in the astute way he handled a room in the old days, has noticed Helen too. “Ruby Tom, Grace Lee, and Helen Fong! Come up here! Let’s see if you three still have it.”

Ruby is first on the dance floor, naturally. More applause as Helen comes to stand next to Ruby. Now everyone stares at me. I don’t want to get up, but how can I not? It would be rude not to participate. So I find myself joining Ruby and Helen. Goose bumps rise on my arms from the pleasure of having so many pairs of eyes on the three of us.

“Shall I do my Princess Tai act?” Ruby asks. Yes, she still plays clubs way off the Strip and senior centers, where, as I’ve heard her say, “I put a little bump in those old geezers.” But the idea that she might take off all her clothes is horrifying.

“I don’t want to be seen in a show with a stringy and naked old bird,” Helen states, half in jest, half on the square. She’s probably thinking of her political ambitions. She’s put together an exploratory committee to look at the feasibility of running for an open congressional seat in Florida. She won’t win, but I’m proud to say I was the first person to write a check.

“I have a different idea,” Charlie says diplomatically. “Will my glamour girls do me the honor of performing ‘Let Me Play with It’?”

It would have to be that. If I first became famous for the dance I did in Aloha, Boys!, then the Swing Sisters became even more renowned for the routine we did for Ed Sullivan. Best known for singing and dancing to “Let Me Play with It” will be in each of our obituaries and probably end up on our tombstones as well.

Someone starts to pluck the piano keys. At the sound of the opening bars of “Let Me Play with It,” something we’ve danced to maybe ten thousand times, the three of us arrange ourselves in the proper order. How can my feet know what to do? How can my hips sway and my shoulders shimmy? I can feel that I’m clumsy and stiff, but I don’t seem any worse than the two women who dance beside me. Like I’ve always said, friends are better than sisters and three are stronger than one.

Beyond Ruby and Helen, I see the faces of people I’ve admired, envied, and maybe even hated on occasion in a fractured kaleidoscope of images. They’re smiling at me, and I decide against everything that tells me this is a terrible mistake that I’ll be a part of this revue or follies or whatever they want to call this reunion show we’re going to mount. I wonder if Joe will still be awake when I get home. Will he run his hand through his hair, throw his head back, and laugh when I tell him how I stumbled through the old routine? When I announce that I’ve decided to be in this performance thing for Eddie after all, will he say “I told you so”? Of course, because Joe loves me, I am his China doll, and he knows that Helen and Ruby will be the sisters of my heart for all eternity. In my mind, I count. One, two, three, four. As I make the slow turn that initiates the break, I glimpse Ruby and Helen making their turns as well. After all this time-despite the secrets revealed and the hearts broken-we are still in sync on the dance floor. Love envelops us, and we dance and dance and dance.