RUBY: The Dark Shadow Side
“Joe is here,” Grace announced as she entered the room.
My neck stiffened. Below me, on the floor, Helen sighed.
“He’s asked me to marry him,” Grace went on, “and I’ve said yes. We’re moving to San Francisco-”
“What about the Swing Sisters?” I asked with seemingly dead calm, calling on all the rules my mother had taught me about not showing my emotions.
“I’m staying for the show,” she answered breezily.
“Great, but what about the Swing Sisters?” I repeated.
“The Swing Sisters?” Grace looked confused. “I was worried you’d be upset about Joe.”
Joe, Joe, Joe. She’d always been stuck on that guy-like I cared. Joe was one thing; my career was quite another. “What about our plans?” I persisted. “What about our new lives?”
“What about your revue?” Grace asked unperturbed. “What about Helen taking Tommy to Miami?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” I put my hands on my hips. “Toast of the Town changed all that. This is our gold ring.”
When Helen cut in to say, “Besides, we said we’d never let a man come between us,” I knew this was going to be a two-against-one disagreement that Helen and I would win.
“I’m sorry,” Grace said. “I love him.”
We’d gotten along pretty well since Yori died, but this news and her attitude about it caused something to rise up inside me. I’d thought I’d done a pretty good job burying my anger and suspicions about her these past years. Turned out they were right below the surface of my skin, ready to pop, all along. As that stupid dam people are always going on about burst, I was shaken by the rush of my emotions. Didn’t stop me, though.
“How can you do this to me?”
“To you?” Grace asked, taken aback.
“You owe me.”
At which Helen sat down fully on the floor and muttered one of her idiotic Chinese sayings. “Predestined enemies are fated to meet in a narrow alleyway.”
“This isn’t about fate,” I said to Helen. “It’s about loyalty and friendship.” I turned back to Grace. “You’ve never honored either.”
Grace feigned lightness. “What is this? Target practice?”
“You didn’t comfort me when Hideo was killed or when my parents were detained,” I began, as all the injustices she’d inflicted on me began to flash through my mind.
“Of course I did-”
“You let me cry alone in my room-”
“That was seven years ago!”
“I needed a friend, but you liked hearing me suffer.”
“I didn’t want you to lose face,” Grace explained, still trying to remain unruffled. “And you didn’t want to talk about it. You wanted to make believe nothing had happened. You wanted to pretend you weren’t Japanese-”
“You showed who you were even then.” Anger was not my deal-e-o. I knew I had to try to pull myself together, but I just couldn’t. “Later, you stabbed me in the back by stealing my part in Aloha, Boys! But that still wasn’t enough for you. You had to steal my fiancé too.”
“How can you possibly say that?” Grace now visibly struggled to stay cool. “You invited me to go to Hollywood with you. How was I to know that people would come and take you away or that the director would ask me to fill in for you? If you knew how painful all that was for me, you never would accuse me. And do you really believe I stole Joe? I understand you’re upset, but you aren’t remembering things correctly.”
“Oh, I remember. You pinched my part, then you became the Oriental Danseuse.”
“Is this about fame?” Grace asked. “Why me and not you?”
“Stop acting so coy,” I shot back.
Helen put a hand on her forehead and closed her eyes.
“I don’t see why you’re so mad,” Grace said.
“You don’t? Well, try this on for size. Why did you turn me in?”
“I didn’t turn you in,” Grace said placidly. “I’ve told you that before.”
“Admit it.” I prickled.
“I won’t. Because I didn’t.”
“Helen told me all about it.” It felt surprisingly good to be confronting Grace, but why had I waited so long? “She said everyone at the Forbidden City looked at the clues and figured out it was you. You were the one who sent Western Union telegrams all the time. You were my friend and you reported me, so you’d get my part in the film.”
Grace’s brow furrowed. “Why did you tell Ruby that?” she asked Helen. “Why would you say those things about me… ever?”
From the floor, Helen regarded Grace. “You’ve never accepted responsibility for what you did.”
“If you really thought that… In all these years, you never told me…”
“Has your conscience been eaten by a dog?” Helen asked.
Grace returned her gaze to me. “Is this what you truly think?”
I held my ground. “I said it, didn’t I?”
“But all this time we’ve been together-traveling, sharing clothes, sometimes sleeping in the same bed… If you thought I’d betrayed you, how could you have stood to be near me at all?”
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, I’d said something similar to Helen, but Grace had cut me off. Now I did the same.
“Helen said it was best to keep an eye on you. Keep your enemies close-”
“The direct translation is Know the other, know the self, hundred battles without danger,” Helen murmured.
I liked Helen all right, but she was bugging my teeth right out of my gums. Why didn’t she stand up and fight at my side? Maybe it wouldn’t matter anyway, because Helen was so easy to ignore. Sure enough, Grace spoke directly to me.
“I didn’t report you. You’re my friend-”
“You would have done anything to take my part.” My eyes bored into her. “Can you deny it?”
“That doesn’t mean I reported you.”
“Then who did?” I demanded.
“It could have been anyone,” she answered. “Maybe it was Ida.”
“Yeah, blame it on a dead Japanese girl.” I jutted my chin. “I’m not a fool.”
“Charlie,” she tried again, her voice cracking. “Maybe it was Charlie-”
“Right. Charlie would report his number one moneymaker.”
“What do you want me to do? Make a list of everyone we knew back then? It could have been anyone-”
“It was you!”
An intense silence fell over us. I wasn’t going to budge, and neither was she. Then, a small but authoritatively businesslike voice spoke.
“You’re not a loyal person, Grace,” Helen said from her spot on the floor. “I went to look for you in Los Angeles. I lived with you in that horrid little rooming house. But when we went back to San Francisco, you moved in with Ruby.”
This accusation Grace willingly accepted. “I wanted to get ahead.”
“You chose Ruby. You cut me out entirely. I had a baby, but you didn’t even visit.”
Grace glanced from Helen to me and then back to Helen. “You didn’t want visitors. You were obsessed with Tommy.”
Wow. Another truth from Grace. Maybe Helen was getting somewhere.
“You dumped me when I was no longer useful to you,” Helen went on. “You got rid of Ruby when she stood in your way. You did your best to have George Louie blackballed-”
“He lied about me!”
“Sounds like he was saying things you didn’t want to hear,” I had to throw in.
But Helen continued, as persistent as my FBI interrogators. “You even fired Max Field when you saw Sam Bernstein could get you up the ladder faster. You did whatever you could to have your name in bigger lights. You’d do anything to get to the top. And now we have this opportunity. Have you-either of you-imagined for just one moment what this means to me?”