* * *
—
“Let’s go up on the stage,” Shirley said conspiratorially, taking Lily’s hand to pull her across the lawn.
“We shouldn’t—”
“Don’t you want to see what it’s like?”
It felt dangerous, rebellious—but only moderately so. The afternoon sunlight was golden and heavy now; the show was over; and the spectators were packing up and preparing to go home.
“All right,” Lily agreed, and Shirley squealed in response.
They almost ran the last few yards, and then they were at the bottom of the steps and Shirley came to an abrupt stop. Lily bumped into her.
“Just imagine,” Shirley said dreamily, “what it must be like to be Miss Chinatown.”
There had been controversy when the judges declared the winner today. Lily had heard a faint chorus of boos amid the applause, and she saw the winning girl’s face go pink with both pride and dismay. A man had shouted at the stage in English: “She looks like a pinup, not like a Chinese girl!”
Lily had eyed him surreptitiously; he was sitting near the man who had made the lewd gesture, who then leaned toward him and slapped him on the shoulder. They had begun an animated conversation that Lily couldn’t quite understand—they were speaking Toishanese—though she made out the words for beauty and woman.
“Lily, aren’t you coming?”
Shirley had bounded up the steps, and Lily realized she had fallen behind. She put a hand on the railing—it wobbled—and quickly went up the stairs. The microphone and its stand had been removed, leaving the stage entirely bare. Shirley walked toward the center, sashaying like the contestants as she pretended to be a beauty queen.
Lily hesitated, watching her friend turn to face the broad, emptying lawn. Someone whistled, and Shirley flushed with pleasure as she bobbed a curtsy.
“Next time it’ll be you!” a disembodied voice called out.
Shirley giggled and glanced over her shoulder at Lily. “Come on! Come and see the view.”
Lily joined Shirley at the front of the stage just as a raft of firecrackers popped in the distance. The afternoon sun was behind them, casting their shadows across the ground, and as Shirley raised her hand to wave, queenlike, Lily watched her shadow stretch dark and thin over the grass. The ground was dotted with empty glass bottles and crumpled paper sacks, and the grass was flattened into the irregular impressions of blankets and bodies.
“Lily!”
The voice came from the left, slightly behind the stage. She stepped back to get a better look and saw Aunt Judy coming up the path from the parking lot, waving at her.
“It’s time to go!” her aunt called.
Lily waved in response and tugged at Shirley’s arm. “We should go.”
“Just a minute,” Shirley insisted.
Lily retreated to the stairs, then turned back to see Shirley still standing at the edge, gazing out over the lawn. The back of her head was crowned in sunlight, casting her face in shadow. The profile of her nose and mouth was still sweet and girlish. But there was a modest swell to her breast, and she had cinched in the waist of her dress to emphasize the slight curve of her hips. Lily wondered if this was what a Chinese girl should look like.
PART I
I Can Dream, Can’t I?
August–September 1954
1
That woman is so glamorous,” Shirley said, nudging Lily to look. Two Caucasian women were seated across the restaurant at the table in the alcove. “I wonder if she’s going to a show.”
It was Friday night in the middle of the dinner rush, and the Eastern Pearl was almost full, but Lily knew immediately who Shirley was talking about. The red paper lanterns hanging overhead shed a warm glow over the woman’s blond hair; it was pulled up in a twist and pinned with something glittering that matched the droplets in her ears. She wore a royal-blue satin sleeveless dress with a scoop neckline, which showed off her creamy skin, and a matching blue bolero jacket hung over the back of her seat. Her companion was dressed much less glamorously. In fact, she wore trousers—gray flannel ones, with a soft-collared white blouse tucked in at the waist. Her hair was cut short in the current style, but on her it looked a bit less gamine than mannish, which drew Lily’s attention. There was something about her posture that felt subtly masculine. Lily couldn’t put her finger on it, but it intrigued her.
Lily realized she was staring and turned her attention back to the messy pile of napkins in front of her. Beside her, Shirley was moving rapidly through her own stack, transforming them into crisp swans. Lily had spent countless hours in the restaurant with Shirley since they were little, and over the years she’d helped out with various small tasks as needed. Now they were about to start their senior year in high school, but she still couldn’t fold a napkin into a decent swan. She picked apart the one she had been working on and started over.
On weekend nights, the Eastern Pearl mainly attracted tourists rather than local Chinese. Shirley said it was because one of the tour companies that brought people to Chinatown recommended it, which led to good business for the restaurant. Lily wondered if the women in the alcove were tourists, and she snuck another glance at them.
The blonde was removing a silver cigarette case from her handbag, and her companion pulled a matchbook from her trouser pocket, leaning toward her as she struck a match. The blonde cupped her hand around the flame, drawing her friend’s hand close to her face as she inhaled. Afterward, she sat back and offered the case to her friend, who removed a cigarette and lit it quickly, pulling the cigarette away from her mouth with her thumb and index finger. Smoke curled up into the red-lit ceiling.
“You’re making a mess of those,” Shirley said, glancing at Lily’s poorly folded swans. “Ma won’t like them.”
“Sorry,” Lily said. “I’m no good at this.”
Shirley shook her head, but she wasn’t annoyed. This was the way it always was. “I’ll redo yours,” Shirley said as she pulled Lily’s napkins toward her.
Lily sat there for a moment, watching Shirley shake out her messy swan, and then she reached for the Chronicle. She always enjoyed the theater and film reviews and society columns, with their photographs of women in furs and diamonds, and she wondered idly if the blonde had ever been in the paper.
“Maybe she’s an heiress,” Lily said to Shirley. “The blonde over there.”
Shirley glanced across the restaurant again, briefly. “An heiress to a gold mine?”
“Yes. And her father recently died and left her with a fortune—”