“That’s right. You’re exactly like Ida. She has Ray Boiler, and all the boys on the side. You have Joe Mitchell, and…” I raised my eyebrows. “Grace, he could never think of you that way. To him, you’ll always be that sweet kid he met on Treasure Island.”
“I don’t want him to think of me like that either!”
That sent us into another spasm of laughter.
We spent the rest of the afternoon playing with Tommy. There is only one perfect child in the world and every mother has him. He was as precious to me as the underfur of a fox. His hair was the softest brown with just a hint of a curl, so there was no getting around the fact that he looked different than the other kids on the playground and in the compound. Baba had noticed, of course, but Eddie insisted that he had a grandmother with brown hair.
“A carrot of a different color,” Baba had responded. “What else could I expect from a son-in-law like you?”
When Baba said things like that, I understood that our time in Chinatown was limited. Eventually, he’d put it all together. I’d have to protect my son from his grandfather’s disdain-and the dirty leers and taunting Tommy would receive from our neighbors-but not yet…
At 4:00, we walked to the Forbidden City. Servicemen wandered Chinatown’s streets in undulating herds. Already a line-populated with boys eager to meet the Celestial maidens of their dreams-snaked from the club’s entrance down the street. When we got to the dressing room, Tommy went to his corner-where I’d set up a child-size cot-lay down, and began humming to himself, while I oiled my midriff.
Ponies billowed in. Many of them had babies, toddlers, and little kids in tow. The older boys were lucky little monkeys, getting to hang out in the dressing room, zipping girls into their costumes. I’ll say this for Charlie: he loved kids. He was patient with them too, as long as they kept quiet. Quiet? What a joke!
“Fiedee, fiedee, fiedee.”
Charlie had perfected the art of “dressing the room” by putting celebrities, movie stars, and beautiful women in long gowns accompanied by the most successful men at ringside. I’d met and had my photo taken with lots of movie stars, and I now could recognize most of them. That night, we had Captain Ronald Reagan and his wife, Jane Wyman, as well as Errol Flynn, in the audience. My husband, who’d gotten into the habit of drinking a martini before the first show, bought one for Mr. Flynn as well.
Charlie opened with his usual patter. “My mother is half-Indian. Fortunately, I didn’t come out orange!” The soldier boys guffawed. Charlie went on, recounting that he was only eight years old when his father died. “I received an eighth-grade education in a one-room schoolhouse with Indian kids from the nearby reservation. You’d have to say I’ve done pretty well for myself.”
He was hugely successful given his background. Sometimes customers would say to me, “Look what Charlie Low has done for Oriental performers.” But I’d picked up enough about business from Baba to recognize that Charlie hadn’t given us a chance for altruistic reasons. He did it because he believed he would make a killing. And he did. Eddie Pond, Andy Wong, and the other club owners who’d come out of the Depression lived like the boom was going to last forever. They all went as wild as mandarins, Charlie especially.
“Have you heard the one about the three sisters? Tu Yun Tu, Tu Dum Tu, and No Yen Tu…”
The soldier boys loved that one, no matter how many times they heard it, but they were easy to please. They needed to forget about the things that had already happened to them and bury the dread of the unknown that lay ahead. Tomorrow or the day after, they’d ship out to do their own brand of business with Hitler, Hirohito, and a whole shooting match of international gangsters.
The floor show began. The ponies still carried “kitten” muffs, but kittens grow up, and those cats sure didn’t like being confined. In the middle of the number, Ida’s cat clawed out of his muff prison and hit the floor. He arched his back, hissed, and scrammed for the Catskills. The boys hooted and yuk-yukked.
Next up: Eddie and I did our routine, but the minute we came offstage we were at each other’s throats. I complained to him about drinking before our act; he snarled at me to stop nagging. Then the girl we’d hired to be the new Chinese Sally Rand had a hard time with her fans. She lost her balance, dropped a fan, and ended up with her fingers in a G.I.’s chow mein. After that, Mabel, one of the ponies, caught her son behind the stage, peeking through the curtain to catch the back side-the naked side-of that fan dancer. Mabel yanked her boy back to the dressing room by the ear, and I’m sure customers could hear him yowling-even worse than the cat-all the way out front.
“What the hell’s going on tonight?” Charlie asked, irritated, as we went out to talk with customers during the first break.
Our boys wanted to dance with Chinese girls, and we did because it was part of our jobs, but plenty of women-fabulous and rich, with orchids splayed on their shoulders-in the audience wanted to dance with our Chinese men. But Eddie didn’t feel like it that night. Instead, he collared Jack Mak, and together they made a beeline for the bar. Jack threw down a hundred-dollar bill and asked the bartender to pour as many drinks as he could for the customers around them, including Errol Flynn. One drink too many prompted the star to eat the orchids off women’s shoulders-one by one throughout the club.
Charlie started the second show with one of the stalest jokes in the book: “Have you heard that Kotex paid Maxwell House for their slogan? Good to the last drop.”
It went downhill from there. Eddie’s hands slipped on my midriff. It wasn’t any worse than usual, but I bet there wasn’t a single person ringside who didn’t hear Eddie muttering to me through clenched teeth: “You’re suffocating the kid. Give him a chance.”
And me, biting back, “He’s only thirty-one months old. I’m his mother.”
“And I’m his dad! Let the kid breathe.”
George Louie tried to turn the tide with “I’ll Be Seeing You.” He circulated around the edges of the floor, sometimes kneeling before a woman so he could sing directly into her eyes, when one-and I can only call her this-dame threw her skirt over his head and held him between her knees to show him what was under there. George kept singing, though. “I’ll be seeing you in all the old familiar places.” Our boys in uniform laughed so hard they barely managed to stay in their chairs. When that dame finally let George out, his face was as red and shiny as a Christmas ribbon.
After the second show, Eddie and Jack returned to the bar. “I want to buy everyone a drink.” Eddie brought out two hundred-dollar bills and slapped them on the bar, outdoing his pal. “Let’s see how far this will go.”
When the third show started, Eddie and Jack were pickled. From opening night, Jack had done a trick in which he shot into a box, opened the lid, and a dove would fly out. Only tonight he opened the box and feathers flew out. He’d actually shot the bird!
Then Eddie and I returned to the stage. As he lifted me to spin me over his head, his hands slipped-once again-on my oiled midriff. This time, he dumped me on my rear end, and I skidded across the floor. People shrieked in surprise, and then howled until they held their sides. They thought it was part of the act, but Eddie was in no shape to be laughed at. When we came backstage, he leapt up the stairs toward the dressing rooms. I followed right behind him. When I reached the landing, he turned and bumped into me. I tumbled back down the stairs. Eddie fell too-sprawled out, drunk as a skunk. Was it an accident? Or had Eddie pushed me?
“He’s my son!” he screamed at me.
The ponies averted their eyes. Mabel put her palms over her boy’s ears. Grace was so much stronger now, but she stood stock-still. A deer confronted by a hunter, or a warrior on alert? Charlie swung through the curtain, furious, bouncing his open hands up and down, trying to calm the situation. “Pull yourself together,” he said to Eddie. “Get some coffee. Are you going to make me fire you? Is that what it will take to get you to stop drinking?”