The evil triplets left me feeling isolated and alone, but they weren’t as bad as my dad. He’d beaten my mom and me for as long as I could remember. But when I started to fill out he focused his anger entirely on yours truly, and Mom could do nothing to stop it. I never could tell what would set him off. Did I happen to glance out the laundry’s plate-glass window when a man walked by? Did I spend too much time talking to a customer when he came to pick up his shirts? Did I turn up the radio when the song “Love Walked In” came on? Was my sweater too tight? I don’t recall how young I was-young, though-when Mom told me another future lay ahead of me. “You’re going to leave here one day, Grace,” she’d said. “Look around church on Sunday. You’ll see that all the best people have left. For you to do that, you’ll need to work hard and save money.”
So I did. I labored in the laundry, sorting, marking, folding, wrapping clothes in blue paper and tying the package with string, and waiting on customers. For this, my father paid me two dollars a week. “A lot of money,” he griped, “when I still have to wash, dry, starch, and iron everything.” At Miss Miller’s studio, I earned five cents for each student I taught in my Tuesday and Thursday classes for girls from the elementary grades. When my mom was laid low with the flu, I took over selling her rice wine out our back door. The customers liked me, so I pocketed large tips. In the summer, the Methodist church ladies hired Mom and me to make paper cups for two cents a dozen for the lemonade that would be sold at the Plain City Fair. It was boring, tedious work, but I saved and saved.
I’d always planned on leaving, but that final beating was too much. Dad called me “a whore, just like your mother,” which was about the worst thing he could have said. He would have killed me too, if Mr. Tubbs hadn’t stopped by for a pint when he did and pulled my father off me. That night I waited until my parents were asleep and then packed a bag by the illumination of the laundry sign outside my window. Then I quietly made my way to the door that led down to the street. When I stepped onto the landing, I heard my mom’s voice.
“Grace.”
She sat on a riser halfway down the stairs. I was caught. My stomach clenched.
“You’re leaving,” she said, rising to her feet. “I knew it was coming.”
“How?”
“I’m your mother. You’re the breath of my lungs and the beat of my heart. I know you very well.”
“I can’t stay here-”
“I understand. It’s not safe for you any longer.” She paused, then hurried on. “You should try San Francisco.” I swallowed. Miss Miller had given me that idea when she’d shown me the advertisement for the Golden Gate International Exposition. “It’s time you know the truth. I came to this country when I was five years old. I met your father in San Francisco when he was on his way to China to get a traditional wife. I was twenty-five-a spinster. I told him I wasn’t familiar with Chinese beliefs or customs. He took my hand anyway. We went to the lumber camp, where I had you the next year.”
I loved her, and a part of me wanted to learn more, but she was talking too long when I needed to get going. I started again down the stairs. When I reached her, she grabbed my arm.
“Wait!” she begged. “Oh, Grace, there’s so much I want to tell you.”
I hesitated again. If Dad heard us…
“Grace, always remember that a woman must take care of herself. Don’t depend on a man.” (Now, when I thought about what she’d said, I cursed myself for not listening or obeying.) “Never rely on a husband. You need to run away now, but I hope that one day you’ll find a way to stop running.”
Tears had blurred my vision. My mother was not only letting me go but giving me instructions for a lifetime.
“You’d better hurry,” she advised. With that, she reached into her pocket, pulled out a wad of bills neatly folded in half, and pressed it into my hand. “It’s seventy-two dollars.”
Together with what I’d saved, I had one hundred and five dollars.
“Come with me,” I said urgently.
Tears filled my mother’s eyes. “I can’t.”
“You’ll be free of him. We’ll have each other-”
Mom shook her head. “It won’t work. You barely have enough money for yourself.” Her fingers caressed my wet cheek. “Now go, and don’t ever look back. Don’t write to me either. We don’t want him to find out where you’ve gone.” Then she walked up the stairs. She stopped at the door and turned to gaze down at me. “I barely remember my mother, but the last thing she said to me I’ll say to you. When fortune comes, do not enjoy all of it; when advantage comes, do not take all of it.” Then she entered the apartment and quietly shut the door.
I hurried down the stairs and onto the deserted street, carrying my suitcase in one hand and cupping my sore ribs with the other. After a few minutes, I arrived at Miss Miller’s studio. It was the middle of the night, and her lights were off. I went upstairs, knocked, and waited. She wasn’t all that surprised to see me. I nervously stood with my back against the wall as she got dressed and grabbed her car keys. She drove us the twenty-four miles to Columbus. We sat together on a bench at the Trail-ways station until it was time for the first bus heading west to depart.
“Take care of yourself,” she said. “Send me a postcard from the exposition.”
We hugged, and she cried. She’d been so much more to me than just a dance teacher. She’d also trained me to focus, to think beyond Plain City, and to believe in myself. As the bus pulled out, I peered through the window, craning my neck, until she disappeared from sight. Then I turned in my seat and folded my hands tightly in my lap. I’d promised my mother I’d never look back, but I wouldn’t forget a single kindness or moment of love that she’d shown me. Her courage and sacrifice were what sustained and nourished me-first in San Francisco and now here in Los Angeles.
I NEEDED TO be seen, so sometimes I tap-danced on the street outside the Brown Derby or Musso & Frank. A couple of men approached me to offer jobs in the movies. I realized right quick that they were just Hollywood smarties, trying to take advantage. I even had a couple of men saunter up to me and say things like “I have a Chrysler, cream-white, with red seats. Want to come to my place and read for me?” Ruby would have jumped at the chance to go to some man’s bungalow in the hills, but not me.
At auditions, I overheard girls talk about the classes they were taking-dance, acting, singing, and locution to erase traces of accents so that they’d sound Hollywood bland. I used up the money in my wallet on four hours of classes a day. I got locked out of my room because I didn’t pay the rent on time. I told the manager that if he let me in, then I could pay in full. I had the money so I shouldn’t have let things get that bad, right? Except I’d vowed I wouldn’t go into my envelope. Once I opened it, I easily returned to it a second, third, fourth time. I was crushed by my failure.
Twice a week, I rode the bus to Chinatown, where I could buy a bowl of soup, a salad, three pork chops, rice, vegetables, a big piece of apple pie, and a glass of milk for twenty cents at the Sam Yuen Café on Alameda. That meal could last in my stomach a day or two. (The rest of the time I ate mayonnaise sandwiches.) I learned that anti-Japanese sentiment was as strong here as it was in San Francisco Chinatown. Every time I was asked to give money to support Chinese war orphans, Ruby flooded my mind. Because no matter how much I fought it and no matter how many pliés I did, I couldn’t stop myself from replaying that night again and again and again.