“I’m sorry,” I said. “But I can’t do what you ask.”
With nothing left to add, I got up to leave. In just these few minutes I’d learned two things about myself: I would never lower myself by faking an accent like my dad did (or Charlie Chan did in the movies), nor would I work naked as a hoochie-coochie dancer. All right, so I had pride. But what price would I have to pay for it? I felt sick with fear and despair.
“Hey, kid, wait a sec.” The man reached into a drawer, pulled out a brown paper bag, and then met me at the door. “A ham sandwich and an apple.”
Heat crept up my face. I already hadn’t gotten the job. Did he have to humiliate me further? Did I appear that down at the heels?
“Take it,” he said, pressing the bag into my hands. “From the wife and me.”
“Thank you.” It would be my first real meal since leaving home.
He gave me a last pitying look. “Have you tried the new nightclubs in Chinatown? I hear they’re looking for ponies and canaries.” Seeing my confused expression, he explained, “I’m talking about dancers and singers-ponies and canaries. Aw, don’t worry about it. You’ll learn soon enough. Now head on back to your side of town. Ask anyone. They’ll tell you where to go to find an audition.” He gave me a gentle push out the door and called, “Next.”
On my way back to the dock, I conjured a nightclub in my mind. Top Hat, Swing Time, and A Star Is Born all had nightclubs, so I knew just what they looked like: white banquettes, hatcheck and cigarette girls, champagne bubbling in thin-stemmed glasses, men wearing top hats, white ties, and tails, and women swanning about in satin slip gowns cut on the bias that draped over their bodies like whispered kisses. My heart had been set on getting a job at the exposition, but working in a nightclub would be even better. A dollop of confidence: I will succeed.
But I still didn’t have an inkling about where Chinatown was or where to look once I got there, and that knowledge brought on a horrible wave of anxiety that all but drowned my momentary optimism. For now, I had nowhere to go except back to my hotel room. I already hated that place, with its cockroaches, women with their too-rouged cheeks, and men in their dirty undershirts who came and went, but I wouldn’t give up. I couldn’t give up, because that would mean going home to my father.
THE NEXT DAY, I put on my same rose-colored dress, bought a map, and followed its lines toward Chinatown. The clammy air was depressing. Passing all the soup lines and people-Okies, I guessed-dressed in tattered clothes, gaunt, just standing around, didn’t help either. I could end up like them if I wasn’t careful. And my body ached from the damp. My ribs and shoulder throbbed when I breathed or raised my arms, but I reminded myself that I’d danced through pain more times than I could count. I swallowed three aspirin dry and silently prayed that I wouldn’t have to do a ton of turns if I got an audition, which would be nearly impossible with my lingering vertigo.
At the corner of California Street and Grant Avenue, two peculiar-looking multiple-storied edifices with green-glazed tile roofs sat like guards: Sing Chong Bazaar and Sing Fat Bazaar. What crazy names! Behind the big plate-glass windows were things I’d never seen before: Chinese furniture, silks, and vases. Then I turned onto Grant and into another world. Coiling dragons painted in bright green, red, and gold decorated the streetlamps. Eaves curled skyward. I passed markets with produce stacked in baskets right on the sidewalk and restaurants advertising chop suey-whatever that was. And the smells! I couldn’t tell if they were good or bad-just odd.
But nothing unnerved me more than encountering so many Chinese eyes, mouths, noses, arms, and legs. Here were hundreds-maybe thousands-of Chinese men. They were tall and short, fat and thin, some light-skinned and some very dark. None of them looked like my father. I spotted a couple of older women, moving furtively along the sidewalk, doing their best to be invisible. Farther along, I saw five high school girls, wearing matching uniforms and carrying books. My knowledge of Chinese hair was limited to three examples: my mother’s tresses, which she kept in a bun; my father’s close-shaved head; and my own manufactured curls. So even the hair was different-long and silky, short bobs, permanent waves, marcels, spiky, wispy, balding, and in so many variations of black. Everything was as foreign and strange as if I’d just disembarked from a boat in Hong Kong, Canton, or Shanghai-not that I’d been to any of those places-making me both elated and petrified. Chinatown felt frighteningly enchanted in the way certain fairy tales had once left me unable to sleep. Was that why my parents had insisted on living so far from all this?
I needed help.
“Can you direct me to a nightclub?” I asked a woman wearing what looked like black pajamas and carrying two bags overflowing with onion greens. She refused to acknowledge me. Next I tried to stop a newspaper boy, but he ignored me too. I gazed up the street: so many men here-some dressed as laborers, others as businessmen. Everyone seemed to be in a hurry, moving much faster than folks ever did back home, except for that time the Smith house caught fire and we all rushed to watch the volunteer fire department try to put it out. Now that was a night.
At the corner of Grant and Washington, I found three boys I guessed to be between ten and twelve years old playing in a sandpile dumped in the middle of the intersection. Their pants were rolled up to their knees, their sleeves smashed to their elbows, and their caps askew from roughhousing. Workmen shoveled the perimeter of the pile as cars and trucks honked at the traffic obstacle as though the added noise would cure the problem. I watched it all from the curb for a few minutes. Finally, I stepped into the street. My shoes sank into the sand as I delicately made my way to the little trio, who stopped their horseplay to watch me approach. The oldest boy grabbed two handfuls of sand and let the grains flow through his fingers.
“No one said we couldn’t be out here,” he said by way of greeting.
“I didn’t say they did,” I replied.
“Then what do you want, lady?”
My face crinkled. I’d never been called lady before. Measly girl. Hog face. Chink. Chinaman. Little one. Apple-pie winner. Heart dumpling. Kid and China doll just yesterday, but never lady. Act the part!
“I’m hoping you can assist me,” I said.
“What’s in it for us?” the oldest boy asked impudently.
“A nickel each, if you help me.” I pulled out my coin purse, picked through it for three nickels, and held them in my palm. “I’m looking for a nightclub-”
“Oh,” he said, his voice rising and falling knowingly. “Won’t you get in trouble?”
I dropped one of the nickels back into the coin purse.
“So you’re familiar with the clubs,” I said. Every boy was curious about the forbidden, and my comment set off all three boys.
“They’re barely better than bars-”