The club was rocking, though, jammed wall-to-wall with customers. The line to get in went around the corner. We hummed with one-shot business as servicemen, many of whom had first been enchanted by the charms of Oriental girls in Japan, the Philippines, and China, returned to the States and sought out those same beauties before going back to Florida, Kentucky, or Maine. Even the Smart Set got a kick out of seeing Oriental girls swinging, shaking, and jiggling to Latin rhythms-so much so that some wags began calling the club “El Chino Doll.” And Ed Sullivan? Like most Americans, he put his suspicions about Japanese Americans behind him and became a reliable chronicler of Ruby’s every move.
And I was living the life I’d dreamed of in Plain City. When I stepped onstage, everyone in the club stopped to watch me. I demanded attention, and I got it. I had lots of admirers. They sent so many flowers that sometimes my dressing room smelled like a florist shop. I shunned the special house drinks for champagne and developed a love of caviar. I went to parties until the sun came up. I slept most of the day. The next two years were a helluva ride, but it can be lonely at the top without someone special to love you.
HELEN: A Camellia Drops
It was 1948, and the China Doll had been open twenty-six months. On the surface, things still seemed to be clicking, but champagne living had lost its fizz. The China Doll-“New York’s Favorite Rumba-vous”-and other nightclubs were drying up, because people stopped spending money like there was no tomorrow. Our boys had come home, married their sweethearts, gotten jobs, and moved to the suburbs, where they drank martinis, bounced children on their laps, and watched television. Those people were mortgage poor-and they had to save for washers, dryers, lawn mowers, and power tools-so some nights we performed our hearts out, giving everything we had, to a half-filled house.
Reporters began to ask our ages. We always gave the same rehearsed reply: “Age is a number, and I have an unlisted one.” In truth, Grace was twenty-seven, Ruby was twenty-nine, and I was thirty. A female performer is a lot like a camellia, which doesn’t fade, wilt, drop petal by petal, or brown on the stem. At the height of its beauty, a camellia drops whole from the bush. You can’t escape aging no matter how talented you are. We still looked beautiful-perfectly ripe-but after ten years as entertainers, we weren’t young or naïve anymore. We were like carps stuck in a dry rut-or, as lo fan might say, world-weary showbiz broads.
You cannot wait to sink a well until you’re thirsty nor can you wait to make a cloak until it starts to rain. When Mr. Arden announced he was leaving New York for Las Vegas, where he promised to stage the splashiest productions in that town’s history, he asked us to join him. Mr. Ball, not to be one-upped and possibly taking advantage of his rumored “connections,” proposed taking the China Doll floor show to Las Vegas too. That gave Ruby the idea of putting together her own small Oriental revue and trying the gambling city as well. “I’ll call it Ruby and the Dancing Chopstix,” she said. I’d always seen her as birdlike, but by now I understood she was more like a hawk than a skylark. I couldn’t imagine her ever slowing down or retiring. As for Grace… Mario, the pineapple prince, had recently come up from Miami, bearing a thirty-thousand-dollar platina fox fur and an engagement ring. She’d never been all that faithful to him-and, let’s be honest, she didn’t love him-but after all this time, she considered his offer.
“Beggars can’t be choosers,” she said, which made me sad for her. The burdens of her mother and father had been lifted from her and she’d achieved great success, but she was still missing the one thing she’d longed for since the day I met her: romantic love. It seemed all her hopes for a true happily-ever-after had faded after Joe broke up with her. “I sure don’t want to be alone down there with just Mario,” she said. “Why don’t you and Tommy come too? You could go into real estate,” and it seemed like a great idea, because I had long handled our living arrangements and could spot a defect a mile away. “I bet in six months you’ll be riding around in your own Rolls-Royce.”
Ruby enticed me with a different plan. “The Mahjongs have agreed to be in my revue. Wouldn’t you rather keep dancing with Chan-chan than go to Miami?”
“I love you both,” I said, “and I want to be with both of you, but I need to think about what will be best for Eddie and Tommy.”
At the beginning of June, my parents came to New York to meet up with Monroe, who’d finally been released from Walter Reed, and to see Tommy, Eddie, and me. Through the miracle of penicillin, my brother had survived his lobar pneumonia. However, he’d been sick a long time-so long that he’d fallen in love with and married his nurse, a girl from Indiana, who happened to be an Occidental. Aiya!
Mama, Baba, and the newlyweds reserved a table for the show. They ordered dinner and clapped at all the right places. Grace, Ruby, Tommy, and I peeked out of the curtain to stare at the bride, who was as white as white on rice, or however that American saying goes. My parents did their Chinese best to pretend she wasn’t at their table. My marrying Eddie-who also sat with my relations-was nothing compared to marrying a lo fan.
When the first show ended, Ruby and Grace changed into gowns and came to my dressing room. They’d promised to stand by me when I met the family. Baba entered, followed by the others until the room was jammed. Eddie pulled the bench out from under my makeup table, took Mama’s elbow, and helped her to the bench, where she sat down and tucked her bound feet out of view. Baba congratulated us on the show, but mainly he gushed over me, telling me what a great performer I was. Maybe I truly had risen above my brother!
Then Baba spotted my son. He stiffened as he took in Tommy’s hair and complexion. He went on to handle the introductions anyway, ending with “And this is Maryanne Lively-”
“Baba, her name is Maryanne Fong now,” Monroe cut in good-naturedly. He put a protective arm around his pretty wife’s waist and pulled her close. He was corpse-thin but so happy. “She’s your daughter-in-law now.”
Into the subsequent silence, Mama finally spoke. “We want you to come home, Helen. We want to reunite with Eddie and our grandson too.”
“Yes, it’s time for you to quit this life,” Baba agreed. “A man does not travel to distant places if his parents are still alive.”
He may have been trying to display generosity and forgiveness, but his words were like nails in my eyes. “I’m not a man. I’m only a daughter-and worse, a widow-as you’ve forever made very clear.”
“Considering you’re a daughter, you should be grateful we want you to come home.” Baba bristled. “This is an opportunity for us to be a family again. To live in the compound-”
“I agree with your father,” Mama picked up. “You can’t spend your life powdering some woman’s rear end and dancing around. When you have a child, you can’t live like a vagabond.”
Mama had a point, but then Baba went on. “You need to be a proper mother to Tommy. It’s true, he might be more comfortable in another family. He’s a mongrel, but at least he’s a son.”
Baba had made a tactical error. He could treat me as a worthless daughter for all eternity, but I’d never allow him to hurt my son. Always place righteousness above family loyalty.
I turned to Eddie. “Let’s go to Miami and buy a house through the G.I. Bill.”
Grace smirked (she’d won), Ruby looked peeved, but Eddie shook his head no.
“I want to go to San Francisco,” he said. “Charlie will take me back. Maybe I’ll be fine at the Forbidden City.” He paused to let me digest the idea. Then, “I saw too many people die to be anything other than who I am. I can be myself in San Francisco.”