China Dolls

  “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?”

  Actually, I hadn’t. And, as much as I hated to admit it, what she’d said about Grace’s ambition could just as easily have been addressed to me.

  “Everything you say is accurate,” Grace also agreed, “except that I didn’t report Ruby.”

  “Ha!” I exclaimed, like I was a five-year-old.

  The room went quiet again, but it practically vibrated from the intense emotions. I’ll admit it. Right that second, a part of me wanted to laugh. The three of us in such a crazy fight. My blowing my top—so not my usual style. Helen going all samurai on Grace, who, in turn, was suddenly acting the part of placating queen. Toss a little Joe into the mix for fun. Ridiculous.

  Oh, and Tommy, too. Where was he? Over there in the corner. He’d been hearing all this, but Helen hadn’t done a single thing to protect him. She hadn’t covered his ears or rushed him out of the room. She’d temporarily forgotten about him. That was so singularly shocking that my thoughts suddenly shifted in a frighteningly new direction. I blinked several times as memories skimmed across my mind: how Helen had reacted after the attack on
Pearl Harbor, the way she wouldn’t meet my eyes when she repeated George Louie’s gossip about Grace, the way she instinctively clutched at her breast when the subject of Japan or the Japanese entered the conversation, and, farther back, the way she’d said that Charlie hadn’t hired me because I was Jap (when actually he didn’t like that I’d made a pass at him), and the way she’d always called attention to my race when I could so thoroughly pass that no one had suspected until …

  I backed away. My spine hit the wall. “You reported me, Helen,” I said from a place so deep inside that my words came out a bare whisper.

  The accusation shuddered in the air. Helen stared up at me. Cornered … Then, accepting … Then, proud …

  “Yes, I did.” Helen owned up in a chillingly matter-of-fact tone.

  Grace shook her head like some disbelieving cartoon character. “What?”

  Helen remained utterly still, except for her eyes, which moved to Grace. “I did it for you. Ruby broke your heart first by sleeping with Joe and then by saying yes to his marriage proposal. Getting rid of her gave you a chance to be with him.”

  I could see Grace struggling to catch up as she seemed to replay those days in her mind. Then she said, “That doesn’t make sense. I accepted that Ruby and Joe were going to be married. I didn’t do a single thing to slow or stop it.”

  Helen’s lips quivered as her reason instantly fell apart. She tried another excuse. “You can’t tell me you didn’t want to be in Aloha, Boys! I gave you what you wanted.”

  But we’d already covered that territory.

  Helen’s eyes now searched the room until they came to her son. She reached out to him, beckoning. He ran across the room and put his arms around her neck.

  Take pity on me.

  Maybe her ploy worked, because my anger was gone and I was weirdly back in my body. Of course, all this was a lot more self-awareness than I was used to, which meant I was unnerved as hell. Still, I needed to know why Helen had turned me in. With some effort, I pushed myself away from the wall, moved to Helen, and put a finger under her chin to lift it. “During the war, it was our national job to hate the Japs,” I said, trying to speak her language. “We wouldn’t have been Americans if we hadn’t hated them. They attacked us, and we dropped atomic bombs on their country. But why hurt me, Helen? What did I ever do to deserve what you did to me?”

  Helen suddenly jerked her body and pushed Tommy away from her. He scrambled to a corner. She sat as still as death, her head hung low. I don’t know about Grace, but I felt like my heart was in my mouth.

  “They killed my baby,” Helen murmured.

  “Baby? Honey, Tommy’s right here,” Grace said.

  Helen’s head moved from side to side—no, no, no—as she slowly rose to her feet. “I knew love once.”

  “Yes, your husband,” Grace prompted softly.

  “Lai Kai,” Helen said. “We were so happy. I got pregnant. I had a son. His name was Dajun.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” Grace rasped.

  “Dajun was three months old when the Japs invaded.” Helen’s eyes seemed to focus on a scene about a foot before her face that only she could see. “Like everyone else, we ran. The whole family. We couldn’t believe that the soldiers would kill civilians, but we passed bodies everywhere—women with their pants pulled off and sticks shoved up inside them, babies tossed in ditches, men with bullets in their heads, people burned and still smoldering, limbs blown from torsos. We heard gunfire and screams.”

  I covered my mouth with my hands. Next to me, Grace shut her eyes and held her two closed fists against her cheeks. Tommy whimpered in the corner. In a way, Helen was like I was earlier—unleashed. She didn’t need us to ask questions. Her secret was out, and she was going to tell the whole story. Another one of those godforsaken dams broken. Shit.

  “We saw smoke billowing from a village and the bodies of its inhabitants—shot and bayoneted—dumped in an open trench for dogs to eat,” Helen intoned relentlessly. “Beneath our feet, the ground shook with thousands of boots pounding the earth. We dropped down into a rice paddy. After the soldiers killed Lai Kai, they found the others one by one. They used bayonets and swords to slash and stab. They killed my mother-in-law and father-in-law. They killed my sisters-in-law, brothers-in-law, and all their children.”

  I listened in horror as the enormity of what had happened to Helen ruptured for good the silly way I’d chosen to the view the world, even when “bad” things happened to me.

  Helen sucked in a breath in an attempt to steady herself. “I tried to run, but I tripped over bodies. One of the soldiers … He held his bayonet before him … Blood covered his face … His mouth was open wide … I could see the white of his teeth. I held Dajun to my heart. I could do nothing to save my son, but at least we would die together.”

  Tears streaked down her face as she opened her blouse to expose the scar on her breast.

  “The blade went through my son and into me. The soldier yanked his bayonet back. He took Dajun on the blade.” She collapsed to her knees. “My baby died to save me, and I failed as a mother. After that … The soldiers ruined me … One after the other … They left me for dead. Except I wasn’t dead. I had to live with what had happened.”

  Grace and I stared at each other—mute, paralyzed. She moved first, putting a hand on Helen’s shoulder. I felt soul-sick.

  “You are so courageous, Helen,” Grace said. “I don’t think I could have survived what you went through.”

  “Me either,” I said gently. “I probably would have killed myself. But I hope you realize none of that was my fault. And I wish more than anything that I could have done something to make you hate me less.”

  “I don’t hate you,” Helen said, and I thought that despite the terrible—and unwarranted—punishment she’d inflicted on me, I could forgive her because she’d suffered the worst losses a woman can endure and in the most horrific and terrifying ways. Then she went on. “Being around you was like picking at a scab and sucking the blood.”

  Jeez. But I could see it. She’d taken perverse pleasure—from the first moment we met—in attaching herself to me.

  “I never had much in the way of inner strength.” Helen wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “I didn’t need it. I was raised to be cared for by my husband and his family. I was taught that my son would look after me when I became a widow. All that changed the night my husband and baby were killed. After that, I had no family protection and no purpose. I was lucky Mama and Baba allowed me to come home, but I was an embarrassment to them. When you are held under water, you only think of air. I needed air, and you gave it to me. I needed help, and you took me in. But I also wanted to destroy you as my husband and son were destroyed.”

  “You did a pretty good job,” I said, attempting buoyancy, trying now to find a path back into the light for her.

  “When Grace came back alone from Hollywood, I didn’t feel one drop of guilt,” Helen went on. “And I now had Grace to myself.”

  I know Grace had been devastated by all we’d just heard. Nevertheless, the comment sent her, with unexpected speed, straight up onto her high horse. But then none of us was acting normally. “Me? Don’t throw me in with what you did to Ruby!”

  Did this mean she might be able to forgive me for accusing her?

  “I love you, Grace,” Helen said. “You are my true-heart friend.”

  “I love you too—at least I thought I did,” Grace replied. “And I’m sorry about what happened to you. I really am. But what does any of that have to do with what you did to Ruby … and to me?”

  “I loved you, but you always preferred her,” Helen said, going back in time. “We’d all barely met when the two of you got an apartment together …”

  “You found the apartment for us. You orchestrated that.” Grace shook with anger and frustration. “And that was ten years ago.”

  I’d flipped and shown my true emotions, and look what it had let loose. Alliances were shifting and battle lines were b
eing redrawn. But what else could have happened? I mean, this was Grace, Helen, and me. Had it ever been otherwise between us? Still, now that I was back to myself, it was startling to see Grace get het up on my behalf when only a few minutes ago I’d been accusing her of such terrible things.

  “I saw you, Grace.” Something ravenous scuttled below the surface of Helen’s skin. “I picked you. Yes, I found the apartment for the two of you. I knew it would only be a matter of time before you’d see Ruby for what she is. So again, yes, I figured out about Ruby and Joe and what it would do to you if you discovered the truth about them. But I didn’t guess that you’d run away and leave me. I went to Los Angeles with Eddie to find you. And later, when Ruby was sent away, you still thought about her.”

  “How could I not?” Grace asked. “She’d disappeared and—”

  “But we were supposed to be true-heart friends at last—just you and me.”

  “True-heart friends?” Grace repeated the words like they were poison in her mouth. “Did you start the rumors about me?”

  “You were right about George Louie,” Helen answered. “He’s a bad man, but the more those rumors damaged you, the more you needed me. Then you deserted me again by running away to the Chop-Suey Circuit. In your own way, you hurt me as deeply as Ruby did.”

  As I listened, I understood at last that the dark shadow side of love had been much stronger among the three of us than it had ever been among Joe, Grace, and me.

  “But what about later?” Grace asked. “When we were all together again, you ganged up with Ruby against me.”

  “I couldn’t let Ruby learn what I’d done.” Each word Helen spoke came out a jagged shard. She had planned and plotted from a place of such misery that looking at her was like looking at a mortally wounded animal.

  I’d never been one to put the welfare of kids at the top of my list, but I glanced over at Tommy. He’d coiled his arms around his calves and pulled his knees under his chin. His eyes were twin black pools.

  Helen now appealed to me. “It wasn’t until you wrote from Topaz that it finally sunk in what I’d done to you. I felt guilty and knew I had to atone. Once I joined you on the road, I arranged your travel and your hotel rooms.” Her voice darkened. “I’m from a good family—one of the best in Chinatown—and yet I lugged your suitcases, cleaned your bubble, and served as your maid. Every night I stared into your private parts to glue on your patch.”