I barely took in his words. “Where is she?” I asked.
Henry jerked his thumb again-this time to the ceiling.
I thanked him, and then went upstairs and knocked on the door. I was excited to see my mother, but a knot of terror gripped my guts when I contemplated coming face-to-face with my father. The door opened. My mom looked… younger.
“Grace, dear. I always hoped you’d come home, but I never expected it.”
When I heard her wind-chime voice I burst into tears. She drew me to her and hugged me tight. Finally, she released me, held me at arm’s length, and searched my face. I scrutinized hers too. She wore a gingham blouse tucked into trousers. Her hair was tied up in a bandanna. She appeared strong, healthy-like one of those Rosie the Riveters back in San Francisco-and, again, so much younger. Happier, I realized.
I peered over her shoulder and into the main room. It looked exactly the same, except my dad wasn’t sitting at the table, his anger ready to fly at me.
“He’s not here,” Mom said. “He passed away. Come in. We have so much to talk about.”
She pulled me into the room, gestured for me to sit, and poured us cups of coffee into which she stirred fresh cream and sugar-treats, when everything was inhibited by the austerity of rationing. She sat across from me, and we stared at each other again, soaking in every change.
“I want to ask you so many things,” she said.
“I have questions for you too.” I bit my lip. “I guess you’d better tell me about Dad first.”
“We had dinner right here a little over a year ago,” she recounted in a steady voice. “He said he was tired and went to the bedroom. By the time I got there, he was gone. Doc Haverford said his heart gave out.”
The news left me confused. Dad was the biological vessel who helped put my soul into this body, but he’d hurt me so many times.
Mom’s hand covered mine. “The doctor said I should be grateful he didn’t suffer.”
I pondered that, then I said, “I’m sorry, Mom, but I can’t forgive him.”
She withdrew her hand, sliding her fingers back across the surface of the table and spidering them into her lap. “You never understood your father. You never knew how much he loved you or how proud he was of you.”
“How can you say that? You were here.” I gestured around the room. Memories of being bashed into furniture and walls battered my mind. It still deeply hurt that my mother couldn’t or wouldn’t defend me.
“I want to show you something,” Mom said. She went to a cabinet, pulled out an album, and brought it back to the table. “It’s a scrapbook. Your father put it together after you left.”
I opened the cover. On the first page was a photograph of the ponies at the Forbidden City on opening night. I quickly flipped through the book. Somehow my father had found almost every review and notice that had been printed about me.
“How?” I asked.
“We saw you in the newsreel,” Mom answered. “Your dad made sure everyone in town knew that you’d gotten out of here and that your dreams had come true.”
I cast my mind back to that day on the beach when the other ponies and I had danced in the sand, and tried to imagine my father seeing it in the darkness of the Rialto.
“No.” I shook my head, refusing to accept what she was telling me. “You’re wrong. Dad couldn’t have been proud of me. I became exactly what he hated.”
“Do you remember the night you left?”
“I’ll never forget it. He called me a whore… ‘just like your mother.’ ”
Mom’s gaze was steady and her eyes clear. “He told you the truth. A long time ago, I was a willow flower-a prostitute. Once those words came out of his mouth, I realized he couldn’t keep them buried any longer. We never wanted you to learn about all that and, of course, he worried that somehow you would follow my path.”
Nothing she could have said would have stunned me more.
“There’s no point in keeping the secret any longer,” Mom continued matter-of-factly. “I was born in China, like I always told you. My parents sold me when I was five. Maybe younger, maybe a little older.”
“Did you come through Angel Island?” That was my first question? I blame it on shock.
“I came before Angel Island opened.” Her eyes darted to the ceiling as if the past were projected there. “Back then, no one paid much attention to who was coming in, but I have a vague memory of some kind of interview. Then I was sent to Idaho, where I worked for a shopkeeper and his wife. They were Americans, which is why I speak the way I do. Like you, I didn’t see another Chinese until I was older. The Johnsons were like parents to me, but they died of typhus when I was twelve. The townsfolk sent me to San Francisco, because no one wanted a Chinese orphan.”
“I was scared when I went to San Francisco,” I said, still trying to absorb what she was telling me. “And I was a lot older. Where did you go? The YWCA?”
“They didn’t have that then. This was just one year after the earthquake and fire. A gang swept me up. I was put in a crib on Bartlett Alley.”
“Oh, Mom. I’m so sorry.”
“It was a hard life.” She angled her head and smiled wanly.
“How did you escape?”
“The man in charge of the brothel said I could buy my freedom for five thousand dollars, or he could sell me to a tong gunman or professional gambler. But I knew I’d be dead from a willow-flower disease long before either of those things happened.” She saw the look of horror on my face. “It could have been worse. I could have been working in that life since I was five. I met other girls, little girls, who had that fate.” She paused and took a breath. “I was rescued by Donaldina Cameron.”
Donaldina Cameron? Incredible. I knew from Helen that she worked out of the building right around the corner from the YWCA. She’d rescued hundreds, maybe thousands, of Chinese slave girls and prostitutes. My mother had been through hell and yet she’d suggested I go to the very city where she’d suffered.
“How could you encourage me to try San Francisco after everything you’d been through?” I asked.
“I couldn’t see him hurt you again. Letting you leave was the only way I had to save you… I paged through your magazines. I saw Treasure Island, and I saw the city. San Francisco-the world-had to be different.”
I reflected on all the stage-door Johnnies I’d met over the years; the ponies who’d gotten in trouble after nights of goodbyes to servicemen only to be labeled Victory Girls; Helen, who was left high and dry by Tommy’s father; the way Joe dumped Ruby when he found out her background, and now had dropped me. Men weren’t perfect and what they did to us could be thoughtless and cruel, but none of that compared to what my mother had experienced. I ached for her.
“I lived with a lot of shame,” Mom admitted. “Miss Cameron took care of me for many years. I changed back to the girl I had once been. She promised to help me get a husband, but nothing could erase the black mark against me. No good man would take me.”
“Is that why Dad married you? Because he was a bad man? And he saw you as a bad girl?” I didn’t mean to sound unkind, but I needed to know.
Mom sighed. “You still don’t understand.”
“Is his story different too?” I asked. “Was he actually born here?”
“Yes. I’m sure of it. He lived with his father in a mining camp-”
“Why did he always say it was a lumber camp?”
Mom shrugged. “What does it matter now? He did laundry and cooked for miners. He was on his way to China to find a wife when Miss Cameron introduced us. She sold him on the idea that I was reformed and a good Christian woman. He convinced her that he could make an honest and righteous life for me. Miss Cameron consented to his proposal. Your father and I were married. He took me back to the mining camp-”