China Dolls Read Free Page A

right on the sidewalk and restaurants advertising chop suey—whatever that was. And the smells! I couldn’t tell if they were good or bad—just odd.
    But nothing unnerved me more than encountering so many Chinese eyes, mouths, noses, arms, and legs. Here were hundreds—maybe thousands—of Chinese men. They were tall and short, fat and thin, some light-skinned and some very dark. None of them looked like my father. I spotted a couple of older women, moving furtively along the sidewalk, doing their best to be invisible. Farther along, I saw five high school girls, wearing matching uniforms and carrying books. My knowledge of Chinese hair was limited to three examples: my mother’s tresses, which she kept in a bun; my father’s close-shaved head; and my own manufactured curls. So even the hair was different—long and silky, short bobs, permanent waves, marcels, spiky, wispy, balding, and in so many variations of black. Everything was as foreign and strange as if I’d just disembarked from a boat in Hong Kong, Canton, or Shanghai—not that I’d been to any of those places—making me both elated and petrified. Chinatown felt frighteningly enchanted in the way certain fairy tales had once left me unable to sleep. Was that why my parents had insisted on living so far from all this?
    I needed help.
    “Can you direct me to a nightclub?” I asked a woman wearing what looked like black pajamas and carrying two bags overflowing with onion greens. She refused to acknowledge me. Next I tried to stop a newspaper boy, but he ignored me too. I gazed up the street: so many men here—some dressed as laborers, others as businessmen. Everyone seemed to be in a hurry, moving much faster than folks ever did back home, except for that time the Smith house caught fire and we all rushed to watch the volunteer fire department try to put it out. Now that was a night.
    At the corner of Grant and Washington, I found three boys I guessed to be between ten and twelve years old playing in a sandpile dumped in the middle of the intersection. Their pants were rolled up to their knees, their sleeves smashed to their elbows, and their caps askew from roughhousing. Workmen shoveled the perimeter of the pile as cars and trucks honked at the traffic obstacle as though the added noise would cure the problem. I watched it all from the curb for a few minutes. Finally, I stepped into the street. My shoes sank into the sand as I delicately made my way to the little trio, who stopped their horseplay to watch me approach. The oldest boy grabbed two handfuls of sand and let the grains flow through his fingers.
    “No one said we couldn’t be out here,” he said by way of greeting.
    “I didn’t say they did,” I replied.
    “Then what do you want, lady?”
    My face crinkled. I’d never been called lady before. Measly girl. Hog face. Chink. Chinaman. Little one. Apple-pie winner. Heart dumpling. Kid and China doll just yesterday, but never lady. Act the part!
    “I’m hoping you can assist me,” I said.
    “What’s in it for us?” the oldest boy asked impudently.
    “A nickel each, if you help me.” I pulled out my coin purse, picked through it for three nickels, and held them in my palm. “I’m looking for a nightclub—”
    “Oh,” he said, his voice rising and falling knowingly. “Won’t you get in trouble?”
    I dropped one of the nickels back into the coin purse.
    “So you’re familiar with the clubs,” I said. Every boy was curious about the forbidden, and my comment set off all three boys.
    “They’re barely better than bars—”
    “No one wants them in the neighborhood—”
    “My dad says they’re just a rat’s hair above a speakeasy—”
    I dropped another nickel into my coin purse.
    “You win, lady,” the ringleader conceded. “You want to work in a big-thigh show, that’s your headache.”
    “Big-thigh show?”
    “Don’t you know anything?” he asked. “You really want to let people see your legs?”
    As long as