“You coming too or what?” Ruby asked me.
“You’d better believe it.” Again, I wasn’t going to be left out.
Once we were seated at our old table at Sam Wo and had ordered bowls of noodles, Ruby peppered Helen with questions. I listened in wonder as Helen let out everything about Tim and her marriage to Eddie. When she said she was content to live with her parents, at least for now, Ruby turned to me.
“How about you?” she asked.
“I’m staying with Helen and Eddie, but I need to get a place of my own.”
“A place of your own?” Ruby’s eyebrows shot up. “Forget that! You’re going to bunk with me.”
“I want you to stay with me,” Helen said. “There’s plenty of room.”
She stared at me confidently, seeming sure of a positive answer, while I considered her offer. The compound? Monroe? Her baby coming? Not one of those things appealed to me, nor did they fit with my plan to put myself first.
“I’ve got a two-bedroom apartment on Powell,” Ruby continued, “with the works: a telephone, a radio, a full bathroom, and a kitchen, not that I use it. A lot of entertainers live in the building-Jack and Irene Mak, George Louie, and the Merry Mahjongs. They’re playing over at the Sky Room. Oh, and Dorothy Toy-”
“The Dorothy Toy?” My idol? My inspiration?
“She lives in Apartment Seven,” Ruby went on. “She’s on the road most of the time, so I haven’t met her yet, but once the door to her apartment was open and I saw toe shoes dangling from a curtain rod.” She paused. “If you live with me, you’ll have your own room.”
“I doubt Grace will be able to share the rent,” Helen said.
“She doesn’t need to worry about that. I make plenty of dough. Besides,” Ruby added, pinching my cheek, “I owe you one.”
She let me absorb that, while Helen fidgeted.
“What about Joe?” I asked.
Ruby tapped her nails on the table. “I already told you. There’s not much between us anymore.”
“Much? What’s that supposed to mean?” Helen asked.
“I mean nothing,” Ruby corrected herself in an offhand manner. “There’s nothing between us. We’re just pals.”
An image of the evil triplets came to my mind. Then I thought of the Lim Sisters and how they’d worked together since they were kids. In those sets of three, one girl was always in charge, one was a strict follower, and one was always a bit outside. But who was the leader among Ruby, Helen, and me? Ruby, because she was Princess Tai? Helen, because in Chinese tradition she had more standing than two unmarried girls? I had nothing and was at what I figured had to be the lowest point in my life, but they were fighting over me. In this one way I had power, and it would be my decision that would determine things now. Think of yourself first.
“I’d love to live with you, Ruby,” I said. I wanted it to sound casual, like she was doing me a favor, but really I’d be living in the same building with other stars. Wouldn’t that say something to others about who I was?
A MERE FOUR months later, a reporter and a photographer from the Associated Press were assigned to follow Ruby (a star) and me (her sidekick) for a spread called “Maid ’N’ China.” Ruby and I woke early-around noon-so we could paint our faces and apply false eyelashes. We changed out of our cotton nightgowns and into silk pajamas. We brushed our hair loose around our shoulders and dabbed Prince Matchabelli behind our ears. Then we unlocked the door, returned to our own rooms, climbed back in our beds, and were ready for the promised 2:00 P.M. knock. Ruby called, “Come in.” Then Princess Tai and I took turns yawning and stretching for the photographer. Next, I sashayed into Ruby’s room-the photographer clicking all the while-and sat on the edge of her mattress. The reporter asked if Ruby and I were best friends, and we answered in unison. “Of course!”
The article would eventually run in newspapers all across the country, including the Fort Worth Journal Gazette, the Oakland Tribune, and so many more. The caption for the bedroom photograph would read: “Maidens made in China say good night to the nightingale and good morning to the skylark.”
Ruby and I changed into street clothes and led the boys on a walk along Grant. We waved to passersby, who either turned their faces away from the camera or smiled enthusiastically at the two no-no girls. We entered Shew Chong Tai, an import shop that specialized in toiletries from the old country made for women Helen’s mother’s age.
“We come here for the Chinese cosmetics,” Ruby confided to the reporter. “I put them on my face until my skin looks like snow-white silk.” Although we were already in full makeup, Ruby patted some cream along my jaw with a fingertip to illustrate what she meant. Then she reached for a box of paw fah. “We use this gel made from tree bark to glue our spit curls. See, it’s a natural marcel.” She stuck a few strands of my hair to my cheek with the foreign concoction.
In real life, we never went to that store or used those products. We preferred going to Union Square. We wore white gloves and hats to shop. We sat on a sofa in a large room in the store, and a saleswoman would come out and ask us what type of outfit we wanted. A day dress, a cocktail dress, a formal dress? Did we want it in mousseline de soie, panne velvet, or crepe de chine? Did we prefer georgette, poplin, or voile? We’d tell her our sizes-zero or two, depending on our time of month-and she’d go to the stockroom, bring out the clothes, and we’d say yea or nay. If we saw something we liked, we’d be escorted to a dressing room.
The photo caption for our Chinatown shopping expedition read: “Two Chinese dishes-not chop suey, mind you!-stroll along the tong-scarred streets of Chinatown, wearing fur coats over the latest Western fashions. Stylists say that dollar for dollar Oriental beauties dress more smartly than their Occidental sisters.”
When we arrived at the Forbidden City, Charlie bowed to the reporter and photographer, and they found themselves bowing back. Ah, Charlie… On my first payday after I’d returned from Los Angeles, he asked me to close the door to his office so he could speak to me privately. I remembered how he used to run a routine to let him keep my salary or to try to short me, but these days the club was flush. “I promised the Chinese Dancing Sweethearts three hundred a week,” he said. “That was supposed to be divvied up three ways, but that didn’t turn out the way we planned, did it? I owe you fifty dollars, but… well… here.” He pushed three fifties across the table-the same amount that Helen and Eddie were now each making.
“Is this for powdering Ruby?” I asked.
“If it will keep her happy, then I’m happy.”
“Did you pay this much to Ida?”
“Hardly, but Ruby wants you. If you don’t want to help her, that’s your decision. But a word of advice. She brought you here. She can get rid of you just as easily. Divas, you know… Now take the money.”
His gesture, which he continued to do weekly, changed my life. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to afford to patronize shops with Ruby, buy a three-quarter-length seal coat on layaway, use Western Union to start sending money once a month to Miss Miller to slip to my mother, and still have enough left over to save twenty dollars a week. (I still abided by my mother’s wish that we have no actual contact. Wiring money through Western Union also protected my privacy. I didn’t want my father to come looking for me.) Charlie paid Princess Tai a lot more than either the Chinese Dancing Sweethearts or me. Ruby earned five hundred dollars a week at a time when office workers were lucky to make forty. Eddie would have gone out of his gourd if he’d caught wind of that. But he didn’t hear, because I didn’t tell Helen. As for the news that Ruby had brought me here and had control over me… I couldn’t exactly hold my nose in the air and act all hoity-toity, because my intention had been to use her too. But something unexpected happened along the way. Ruby courted me with her generosity, her humor, and her giddiness. She reminded me how to have fun. She forced me to remember why we’d liked each other in the first place. The makeup job was still pretty unpleasant from my perspective, but what’s ten minutes out of twenty-four hours for one hundred and fifty bucks a week? Besides, she’d tell jokes and keep me amused while I dabbed, dabbed, dabbed, and tried not to stare at what was in front of my face. And she continued to help me in other ways, like insisting I be part of this interview.