Lisa See
China Dolls
© 2014
For Henry Theodore Kendall
Only three things cannot be long hidden:
the sun,
the moon,
and the truth.
(Attributed to Buddha)
Part One – The Sun: October 1938-July 1940
GRACE: A Measly Girl
I traveled west-alone-on the cheapest bus routes I could find. Every mile took me farther from Plain City, Ohio, where I’d been a flyspeck on the wallpaper of small-town life. Each new state I passed through loosened another rope around my heart, my legs, my arms, yet my whole body ached and I couldn’t shake my vertigo. I lived on aspirin, crackers, and soda pop. I cried and cried and cried. On the eighth day, California. Many hours after crossing the boundary, I got off the bus and pulled my sweater a little more tightly around me. I expected sun and warmth, but on that October afternoon, fog hung over San Francisco, damp, and shockingly cold.
Picking up my suitcase, I left the bus station and started to walk. The receptionists at the cheap hotels I visited told me they were full. “Go to Chinatown,” they suggested. “You can get a room there.” I had no idea where Chinatown was, so that didn’t help me. And I’ll say this about San Francisco: lots of hills, water on practically every side, and, it seemed to me, not a single street ran purely in any one direction. Finally, a man at a fleabag took my money-a dollar a day, in advance-and gave me a key to a room.
I washed my hair in the basin and put it up in pin curls, then leaned in to the mirror to examine what remained of my injuries. My forehead had healed completely, but the inside of my skull continued to swim from being banged against the kitchen floor. The skin over my ribs was mottled green, gray, and purple. My shoulder still felt swollen and stiff from being dislocated and then jammed back into place, but the cut on my lip had nearly disappeared. I turned away and sat on the edge of the bed, hungry but too frightened to go out, and listening to the sound of God knows what coming through the walls.
I opened my purse and pulled out the magazine clipping Miss Miller, who’d taught me dance from the age of four, had torn from a magazine and given to me a few months earlier. I smoothed the advertisement with my palm so I could study the artist’s sketch of the Golden Gate International Exposition. Even its location on Treasure Island seemed to beckon. “See, Grace, they’re looking for six thousand workers,” Miss Miller had said. “Dancers, singers, welders, carpenters. The whole works.” She’d sighed then. “I wanted to go so many places when I was young, but it takes guts-and talent-to leave everything and everyone you know. You could do it, though.” Her few words and that slip of paper had given me the courage to believe I actually could. After all, I’d won first prize at the Plain City Fair for my tap dancing and singing when I was seven and had held the title ever since.
You always planned to leave home, I told myself. Just because you had to escape sooner than expected doesn’t mean you can’t still fly to the stars.
But my pep talk-in a scary hotel room, in a strange city, in the middle of the night-did little to ease my fears. Once in bed, I could practically see the walls closing in around me. To calm myself, I began a routine I’d invented as a small child, running my hands the length of my arms (a broken tibia when I was three; my mom told Doc Haverford I fell down the stairs), slipping along my sides (several broken and fractured ribs over the years), and then lifting each leg and squeezing all the way to my feet (my legs had been a frequent target until I started dancing). The ritual both strengthened and soothed me. I was now alone in the world, with no home to return to and no one to rely on, but if I could survive my father’s beatings and the petty prejudices of my hometown, then I could triumph over whatever obstacles the future threw my way. Maybe. Hopefully.
THE NEXT MORNING, I combed out my hair, sweeping up the sides and letting the curls billow below, the way Carole Lombard did in My Man Godfrey. I put on the dress my dad bought for me when he took us to Cincinnati to buy supplies for the laundry. I’d chosen a dusty-rose-colored cotton frock, with a geometric print composed of interlocking mustard-yellow and steel-gray squares. Mom said the pattern of the fabric and cut of the dress looked too mature for me-and maybe that was so-but now I considered myself lucky to be wearing something so sophisticated.
Filled with a sense of determination, I went downstairs and onto the street. I asked directions on nearly every corner and managed to find my way to the Ferry Building, where I boarded the boat to Treasure Island, about halfway across the bay and just under the Bay Bridge. I imagined everyone onboard was seeking a job at the Golden Gate International Exposition. As excited as I was, the pulse of the ferry through the choppy water roused my vertigo and my hunger until I felt, once again, dizzy and sick. Once we reached the dock, everyone walked fast, wanting to be first in line for interviews. Me too. I spotted my first palm trees, which was thrilling because they meant I surely was in California. I’d never seen anything like the fair’s entrance. Giant towers composed of stacked cubes crowned by stylized elephants bookended the gate. Beyond, I glimpsed spires still clothed in scaffolding. My ears pounded from the sounds of hammers, the buzz of electric saws, the rumble of tractors, bulldozers, and flatbed trucks, and the shouts of men calling out orders and cursing the way they do on construction sites.
“Will they be done on time?” a man’s voice asked very close to my ear.
I jumped, spiraling into the terror I experienced around my dad. I swung around to find a young Occidental man about six feet tall, with broad shoulders and sandy-colored hair. He put up his hands in surrender.
“I’m sorry I scared you.” His mouth spread into a contrite smile as I met his deep blue eyes. He looked older than I-maybe around twenty. He extended his hand. “My name’s Joe.”
“I’m Grace.” No last names. I liked that.
“I’m looking for a job as a rolling-chair boy.” He didn’t bother to explain what that was. “But the real reason I’m here is that I love planes, and I love to fly.”
Up ahead, the others from the ferry disappeared through the gate.
“I love planes so much that my parents told me if I got straight As in high school they’d let me take flying lessons,” Joe continued, sure of my interest. “I trained in a Piper Cub. I learned how to take off, land, what to do in a stall, and how to pull out of a spin. Now I have my pilot’s license.”
This told me, among other things, that his family had to be pretty well-off.
“What does that have to do with rolling chairs?”
He laughed and ran a hand through his hair. “Pan Am’s Clipper ships are going to be taking off and landing right here at Treasure Island!”
I nodded, pretending interest when I didn’t know what in the heck he was talking about.
“I’ve been chewing your ear off,” Joe acknowledged. “Sorry about that. What are you doing here?”
“I’m a dancer.”
“Neat.” He pointed his chin toward the gate. “We’d better catch up.”
When I stumbled a bit in my low-slung heels, he grabbed my arm to steady me, and I instinctively pulled away. His eyes went banjo big. I could tell he was about to apologize again.
“Where are you from?” I blurted, hoping to shift his attention.
“Winnetka, Illinois. I’m going to Cal.” Seeing my confusion, he explained, “The University of California. It’s over there.” He pointed east. “In Berkeley. I live in a fraternity house. How about you?”