I WENT OUT with Monroe a few more times. He took me to see Chinese opera. (I can’t say I enjoyed the caterwauling, but I did like the acrobatics and the way performers seemed to float across the stage like ghosts or butterflies.) Another time he picked me up in one of the family cars and drove me to Mount Tamalpais for a picnic. On our way back, we stopped at the wharf in Tiburon so he could show me Angel Island just offshore-a place he told me was like an Ellis Island for this side of the country.
“People come to America from all over the world,” he explained, “but our government is trying to keep all Chinese from entering the country.” We couldn’t see the immigration station from our vantage point, but he told me about it. “They asked us all sorts of questions when we passed through on our way home from China. They treated my brothers, Helen, and me like foreigners, but we were born here.”
We hadn’t learned about Angel Island at my school in Plain City, and my mom and dad had never mentioned it, but Monroe spoke with such passion that I could envision every detail. He made the place sound like a jail.
“People accept the humiliation because they desperately want to be in America and they want to be American,” he said. “You and I are lucky. We don’t have a desire to be American. We are American.”
I stared out at the island and felt sad-for the secrets my parents had apparently kept from me and for the folks on the island right then who, Monroe said, sometimes were held as long as two years before they were deported back to China or were finally allowed to land in San Francisco-if they hadn’t already committed suicide. He must have sensed my melancholy, because he pulled me to him.
Things had “progressed.” We’d kissed-and we’d both gotten better at it-but never in Chinatown, not even on my apartment building’s stoop when we said good night. Monroe said it was because he didn’t want to ruin my reputation. Even so, I could tell he liked kissing me. I wanted to enjoy it more, but all the time his lips were on mine I was thinking about how I should be acting. He was rich, cute, and my friend’s brother, but I felt nervous and insecure around him, like I wasn’t good enough.
One day he drove me through Golden Gate Park straight to the ocean. I’d never seen anything so open or so beautiful or so wild. Monroe parked by the side of the road.
“I thought you might like to see this,” he said, “being from Ohio and all.”
I’d seen enough movies to know I was supposed to wait until he came around to my side and opened my door. He held out his hand, and I took it. The wind cut through my clothes, but I didn’t care. We walked down to the water, where the waves crashed, sending up frothy foam and icy mist. He took off his jacket for us to sit on. He started kissing me. The more insistent he got, the more resistant I became. When he started to put a hand up my skirt, I pushed him away. His fumbling was doing nothing to open my heart.
All the way home, he lectured me on rules about Chinese family life that I’d never heard before and concluded were awful. He recited the Three Obediences-When a girl, obey your father; when a wife, obey your husband; when a widow, obey your son-and said that he’d expect that from his wife and daughters. Ruby got huffy when I told her about it: “He’s trying to get in your pants one minute and bossing you around the next? What a hypocrite!”
I kept going out with him anyway, because I didn’t want to hurt Helen’s feelings, and, if I’m honest, because he took me places I couldn’t afford on my own. The next time I went out with him, he praised me: “You’re as American as pink lemonade at a Kansas fair.” Then he went on, proving Ruby right. “But, Grace, you’ll be better off behaving like a proper Chinese girl.”
Helen heard what her brother said very differently than Ruby. “Wear a cheongsam the next time you see him, and he’ll sing a different tune,” Helen counseled. “And it’s true. If you want to be a proper Chinese wife, you’ll follow the Three Obediences.”
Monroe and I went dancing down by the Embarcadero, because at the parties he usually went to all the Chinese girls sat on one side of the room and all the boys sat on the other. “No one would be so brazen as to dance with the opposite sex in public,” he said. “If I’m in Chinatown and I see a girl I grew up with,” he confided on another occasion, “I have to cross the street so I don’t have to tip my hat or say hello. If I went out with her three times, her parents would ask me how much I expect to earn. I have to play for keeps. No fooling around.”
What a butt. He was as rigid and disapproving as my father, except he didn’t hit me. Helen, again, had a polar opposite interpretation. “A proposal has to be in the air,” she proclaimed. “He’ll be such a good catch for you. And the best part? If you marry Monroe, you’ll be my sister-in-law, and we’ll live together in the compound.”
But no matter what she said, Monroe and I weren’t right for each other. I allowed Helen to indulge in her fantasy, because I was happy she wanted me with her that much. Eventually, though, I’d have to get up the courage to tell her the truth. In the meantime, I was seeing the city on the arm of a respectable young man and getting plenty of free meals. Not true love, but not bad either.
“HAPPY CHINESE NEW Year!” Ruby prodded me awake.
I didn’t bother to open my eyes. “Happy New Year to you too,” I mumbled. “Now let me sleep.” I rolled over and pulled the pillow over my head.
“I have news.” She nudged me again. “I finally have a job.”
That got me to sit up. “You what?”
“I’m working at the Golden Gate International Exposition.” She gave a high, melodious giggle. “The exposition opened last night. I was there!”
“Is that so?” When I’d gotten home at three in the morning, Ruby was still out, but that wasn’t unusual. Ruby and her boys… Those relationships weren’t serious, so Helen and I never had to worry that there might be someone who would try to horn in on our friendship with her. “But how? And what are you doing?” How did she get hired at the fair when I couldn’t?
“Being Oriental counted in my favor this time. The fair is all about Pacific harmony-”
“Are you in the Japanese Pavilion?” I remembered that it was supposed to be the biggest and best of the country-sponsored pavilions.
Ruby shook her head. “Not there.”
“The Cavalcade of the Golden West?”
“The big pageant? Nah, not that either.”
Finally, it hit me. “Are you working in the Gayway?”
Ruby wrinkled her nose. “Don’t be upset.”
“But, Ruby, the Gayway?”
“It’s an amusement park.” She let that rattle around in her noggin before changing her mind. “Or maybe a carnival.”
“The man who interviewed me when I went there for a job said the Gayway wasn’t a place for a girl like me. If it isn’t right for a girl like me, then it can’t be right for a girl like you-”
She waved that off. “It’s Helen I’m worried about,” she said. “I know this will be a problem for her.”
“For her? I don’t like it!”
“Grace, be a sport, will ya? I needed a job. You understand that.” She stared at me earnestly. “Will you please help me with Helen?”