“Do you have other girlfriends who’d like to tag along?”
I did my best to be entertaining and polite, but inside I was swooning through the ether of happiness. Then Charlie announced that the second show would start momentarily. I wasn’t close to being ready!
I hurried back through the tables but was slowed again and again by admirers. Panic began to well in me. If I didn’t get back in time… Once backstage, I ran to the dressing room. “Fiedee, fiedee, fiedee.” Grace glared at me as a praying mantis would eye a cricket, but she didn’t have time to scold me, not when she had to worry about her own performance, her own position, her own life. As Grace and the others filed out of the dressing room, I peeled off my cheongsam and threw on my Gay Nineties costume. I went backstage, desperate to join the number. Suddenly, surprisingly, someone yanked my shoulder. It was Eddie-dressed in his tails and top hat. He was furious.
“You stupid bitch!” he hissed. “Are you trying to jam this up for all of us?”
He went on to curse me with words I’d never before heard. When the ponies whisked through the curtain, they ducked their heads and edged around Eddie and me, up the stairs, and into the dressing room. They had to change and be ready for the next routine no matter what happened to me. Only Grace stayed by my side.
“I’m sorry, Eddie.” My voice trembled. “This is my first show. I didn’t pay attention-”
“Jesus Christ.” He drawled out the syllables to emphasize his disgust.
Tears rolled down my cheeks, prompting Eddie to throw up his hands in frustration. Then he gestured to Grace. “Clean her up, for God’s sake. We’re on in a couple of minutes.”
Grace pulled me into the dressing room, where it felt like we were in the middle of a tornado. Girls pitched aside their skimpy undercostumes from the Gay Nineties number and pulled on their black-sequined tuxedo corsets for the routine with Eddie as fast as possible.
“Zip me up, will ya?”
“Is my top hat cocked at a good angle?”
“Do I look fat in this?”
“I’ve got a run!”
“A seam just split. What am I going to do now?”
Small dramas happened all around us, but not a single pony wasn’t aware of my lapse-my irresponsibility-when this job was so precious. But if I got fired, they’d follow the old saying: Step on her bones to climb the ladder. And I would just be a lonely girl ignored by the wives and mothers at the Chinese Telephone Exchange.
Grace hastily slipped out of her costume and into her tuxedo outfit. I sat on a bench, weeping. Once Grace was ready, she shooed Ida and the other girls out of the room and kneeled before me.
“You’ve got to pull yourself together.”
That Grace was upset with me was almost more than I could bear. I fought my tears, sucking in my upper lip and biting down hard enough that I tasted blood. Grace grabbed a tissue, and I watched in the mirror as she wiped away the worst of the streaks down my cheeks.
“You need to have a sense of humor about these things,” Grace counseled, even as she tried to erase the irritation that chewed at the edges of her voice. “If you don’t, you’ll never survive in show business. If you miss a step, fall down, or get yelled at, you’ve got to”-here she began to sing-“pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again.”
I didn’t know what in the world she was singing, and it must have showed on my face.
“It’s from Swing Time,” Grace explained. “The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movie?”
I stared at her blankly.
Grace attempted a new approach, reminding me that she was the head of the line and needed to get me out on the floor or her job was in jeopardy.
“Stop crying right now,” she ordered. Then she pinched my thigh as hard as she could.
“Oow!” I rubbed my leg. Grace blotted my cheeks with foundation and then used the powder puff so enthusiastically that little clouds of white dust swirled around us. Once my face looked passable, she brought me to my feet to undress and then dress me like I was a small child. Her eyes briefly rested on my scar. Daring for a Chinese girl to stare at another girl’s naked breast that way; immodest for a Chinese girl to let another girl so closely examine something so private.
“This isn’t just a scar, is it? A whole piece was gouged out.” Her eyes met mine. “I feel so bad for you. It must have been a rough time.”
“It was, but I don’t like to talk about it.” I hoped that would put an end to any other questions.
The call came for Eddie’s number. I quickly wiggled into my sequined corset, tipped my top hat at a jaunty angle, and started for the door. “You coming?”
This time all eight girls were at one or the other velvet curtain. I spread my mouth into what I’d created to serve as my performance smile and tapped my way through the curtain.
The rest of the second show ran perfectly, as did the third. At close to four in the morning, the last customer disappeared into the night. Charlie met us on the landing between the dressing rooms, where an air of jubilation filled the cramped space.
“Good job, everyone,” he said. “But we learned some things tonight. You girls are going to need long gowns or cheongsams like the one Helen wore tonight. I want to see all my glamour girls on the floor between shows. Let the customers buy you drinks. Have dinner with them. Dance with them. Make them happy.”
The other ponies and I heard this with mixed emotions: I wouldn’t be fired (a disappointment to some, a huge relief to me); a lot of us, including Grace and me, were not old enough to drink (Charlie told us not to worry about that); and we were all going to join the party that happened in the club every night. I had forgotten myself for a minute, true. But my few moments of enjoyment-for which I could have paid a terrible price-clarified that it wasn’t right for me to put happiness first. What had I gotten myself into?
Later, when Grace and I exited onto Sutter, we discovered that the evening wasn’t quite over. Ruby waited for us, but there were also men-stage-door Johnnies-making their first appearances to invite ponies out for coffee, breakfast, a hotel room. We weren’t about to take them up on any of those propositions.
It was either too late or too early for sleep, so we found a place to get bowls of jook and wait for the sun to come up. Ruby bubbled, but I couldn’t tell if she was truly excited for us or just wanted to show she hadn’t fallen behind. Grace wasn’t nearly as thrilled as I’d expected her to be. She’d dreamed of having an opening night…
“I need to spend some of my salary to buy a gown,” she confessed when prodded.
“Don’t worry about that,” I said. “I have a closet full of them. I’ll give you one of mine.”
Grace’s shoulders tightened, and she looked away. My offer had made her lose face. Better to die a beggar than to live as a beggar. But weren’t we supposed to be friends? Didn’t friends help each other? Beyond that, we were in the chorus line together. She’d saved me tonight. Lending her a dress was the least I could do.
“Will you give me one too?” Ruby piped up eagerly.
Ruby’s reminder that she was in worse shape-without a permanent job-snapped Grace out of her gloom.
RUBY: A Lone Wolf
Two weeks after the Forbidden City’s bang-up opening, the three of us were in the apartment, spending Monday, the only day Grace and Helen had off, painting each other’s toenails, pinning new hairstyles, and trying on each other’s clothes, while I entertained them with my oh-so-humorous Adventures in Unemployment. I was good at getting jobs but not at keeping them.
“So he tells me, ‘You move like an angel, but I need an angel who can shine a floor. I said to use elbow grease, not grease!’ You can guess the end. Fired!”