GRACE: Every Particle of Happiness
At the end of March-a year after Ruby was picked up-Ida packed a bag and went to stay with one of the ponies. I went downstairs and waited on the street for Joe to arrive. Soon enough, he hopped off a cable car and swept me into his arms. There was nothing brotherly about his kiss, let me tell you. He held me close as we walked to the Mark Hopkins Hotel, where an elevator whisked us to the nineteenth floor. The Top of the Mark had once been an exclusive nightspot for San Francisco’s café society. Now it catered to the elite-of-the-elite servicemen. Since it was wartime, not only was I allowed in but I was permitted to enter on the arm of an Occidental. Joe slipped the maître d’ a tip, and we were shown to a window table, which had a spectacular view of the city, including the Navy base on Treasure Island and the lights in the Berkeley Hills.
After a waiter took our order, Joe and I studied each other. He’d finished his two years of training, and the way he looked in his uniform-with the wings on the flap of his jacket pocket-was very impressive. His face had formed angles. His sandy-colored hair was trimmed and neat. His smile was still a bit crooked, but he was clearly a man now.
“It’s good to see you, Grace-”
And that’s as far as he got before a flyboy with a floppy mess of hair and the radiating energy of a kid on his last night of leave approached our table. “What squadron?”
When Joe answered, “The Flying Knights,” a gang of guys grabbed him and hauled him out of his chair.
“We’re Flying Knights too!”
“Come with us!”
One of the men sized me up. “Don’t forget the little slant-eye!”
Joe put up a hand. “Hang on there, bub. This is Miss Grace Lee, and she’s my girl.”
The flyboys took that in, decided to accept me as Joe’s sweetheart, and herded us to the bar.
“Let me buy the drinks,” Joe offered.
The band of young men hollered and whooped.
“Forget it!” someone brayed.
The man with the floppy hair called to the bartender. “Bring our squadron bottle!”
I was told that anyone in that squadron could come to the Top of the Mark, ask for the squadron bottle, and drink as much as he liked for free. Whoever finished the bottle had to replace it. Joe exchanged vitals with the guys. We drank shots. It was a good way to start our time together, because what were the alternatives? Let’s have a long chat about Ruby? Let’s go over everything that’s gone wrong between us in the past? Let’s talk about the war and where you’ll be going? Instead, we experienced the moments as they came. I was nuts about Joe. He laid on the flattery, but it never got too sticky.
I danced with one after another of his squadron buddies. Latin bands were just coming in big, and I was twirled across the floor for hours to the sounds of Carmen Cavallaro and his orchestra. When Mr. Cavallaro slowed the tempo, Joe cut in with a jolly “Hey, bub, quit bird-dogging my girl.” Joe swung me away, holding me in his arms, bringing me slowly into his rhythm.
When we left the club, a light rain drizzled. Joe offered to hire a taxi, but I wanted the fresh air, some time to find quiet between us, and to prolong the anticipation-even after all my months and years of desire for him-a little longer. As we walked back to my apartment, we encountered some rowdy servicemen, who made the predictable rude remarks about an Occidental being with an Oriental. A fight could have broken out, but Joe pulled me away before things went too far, saying in a husky voice, “We have other things to do.” His doing that made me want him all the more.
We reached my apartment around three in the morning. Both of us had drunk a fair amount, but we knew what we were doing. I took him to my bedroom. Rain pattered against the window, soothing, lulling, beautiful. We were both eager and filled with desire as we tantalized each other with touch: his hand on my naked breast, his fingers slipping into wetness, my tremulous palm around something hard and proud.
“Neither of us wants to get in trouble,” Joe said, pulling away from me.
I promised, “Nothing will happen. It will be all right. Don’t stop.”
I had a sense of my breath being sucked into his lungs and his breath being inhaled back into mine, of his flesh skimming against mine, of him reaching that part of me that so longed for love.
“Grace.” He arched his back and pushed himself up on his hands so he could look down at me. “Grace, baby, I love you.” Then he drove himself into me and let me watch the pleasure I brought him shudder across his face. When it was over, we lay curled together, happy, sated, his finger tracing circles around one of my nipples and my hand resting on his chest. We forgot time. We forgot our responsibilities. We forgot everything except that in that moment we loved each other more than two people had ever loved each other.
The next few days felt leisurely and blissful-with nothing to do except stroll the streets, hold hands, and sneak a bit of time alone to monkey around in my room. But every particle of happiness has a price. All too soon I was at Fort Mason, saying yet another goodbye, begging another young man to write, kill the enemy, be careful, and promise to come home. The difference this time was that I loved this boy with all my heart, and he loved me too.
• • •
HELEN AND I grew closer. She told me she hoped one day to have her own house and garden. She wanted to live a “normal” life with Eddie and Tommy when the war was over. Joe and I hadn’t made plans, but I didn’t want what Helen wanted. I couldn’t imagine not performing. Maybe I would never be a Hollywood star, but I was a star in a jewel of a city. Helen and I comforted each other when news from one or the other front was bad, and together we did what we could to help the war effort.
We read all the pamphlets-“Make It Do Until Victory” and things like that-to teach us how to cut a man’s suit into a smart (if boxy) suit for a woman and how to shop and conserve in our households, but suits wouldn’t work for us and we didn’t have households of our own. We easily accepted the rationing of meat, coffee, and butter, because we didn’t buy meat ourselves, didn’t drink much coffee, and rarely-and in my case, never-cooked. I had my car, which I barely drove because of rubber and gasoline rationing. I suppose we could have gathered newspapers, scrap metal, bacon grease, rubber bands, and milkweed pods, but we didn’t know where to start.
“I don’t even read the paper,” I said one afternoon. I was a long way from writing reports on current events for social studies class in Plain City.
“Where am I supposed to find scrap metal?” Helen wondered. “Hasn’t it all been turned in already?”
We were sitting on Helen’s bed, propped against the wall. Tommy climbed back and forth between our laps.
“Mama’s in charge of all grease in the compound,” Helen went on. “She takes it to the reclamation center herself. It makes her feel like she’s helping Monroe.”
“I have rubber bands,” I said, “but they’re so darn small. It’s hard to imagine they’ll make a difference.”
Helen visibly ransacked her mind. “What do you suppose the government wants with milkweed pods?”
I shrugged. “You got me.”
We volunteered our time to sell bonds, but there were other jobs-more important jobs-women could do to help. After Congress passed a bill establishing women’s corps in the Army, Navy, and Marines, one of the ponies joined the WACs, but Helen couldn’t do that.
“Not with Tommy so young,” she said. “I don’t want you to enlist either. Whatever we do, we’ll do together, like you said.”
All around us, Chinese were getting jobs we never dreamed possible. Even a woman who didn’t speak a word of English could leave the sweatshop, where she’d done piecework, to sweep floors at a shipyard. Mabel’s sisters worked as draftswomen and flangers. Instead of making 25 cents an hour, they were now making $1.25 an hour.