Songs of Willow Frost (20 page)

B
EING
C
HINESE
, L
IU
Song thought she had eaten her share of exotic food—compared to the Western palate, at least. She’d grown up on black pickled eggs, on spicy marinated chicken feet, salty dried cuttlefish, and an assortment of dried fungus. But what the waiters at the Stacy Mansion offered on domed silver platters was a continual surprise—one gastronomical dare after another. They dined on green turtle steaks, eel, frog legs, and Liu Song even tried the escargot, which tasted rich, buttery, and delicious until Colin told her what it actually was. She was certain that she must have turned as green as the dish, which was covered in garlic and fresh parsley. She held her napkin to her mouth, trying not to think of the fat banana slugs that left sticky trails of mucus along the alley near her apartment. She felt so ill she hardly touched the thick slice of ginger cream pie that was served for dessert.

Though it was probably just nerves, the thought of performing in such a formal, decadent place, for such seemingly important people, made her palms sweat. She tried not to think of her barren alleyway apartment, where she’d sleep that night beneath a secondhand blanket she’d purchased from a thrift store. A sad, worried, neglected part of her heart feared that this was all just some cruel parlor
game—bring in the poor Chinese girl, expose her to such finery, and then laugh over snifters of brandy and glasses of tawny port as she wilted in the spotlight.

“You’ll be fine,” Colin said. He must have seen her chewing her lip. “You are your mother’s daughter. It’s your job to set the room on fire.”

She felt invigorated at the mention of her mother. She envisioned herself in her mother’s gown, with the Widow’s mask. Then she felt butterflies in her stomach as she heard a parlor bell ringing down the hall and the muffled sounds of conversation began to settle down. She heard Mr. Stacy speaking to his guests, who were clapping and laughing with excitement.

The waiter returned with a glass of sparkling mineral water. “It’s that time,” he said.

Liu Song rose to her feet, ran her tongue across the front of her teeth, checked her appearance with Colin, who nodded graciously. She sipped the water and was led down a hallway to the back of the mansion, where the servants’ stairs were located. She went up one flight, passed the colored help, who smoked hand-rolled cigarettes and stared at her. Then she came around to make a solo entrance, descending the mansion’s ornate formal staircase. There must have been fifty pairs of eyes staring up at her—members, guests, escorts, and assorted relations, all of them sparkling in their formal attire, beaming with the oblivious confidence that comes only from old, gilded wealth. She saw Colin in the back of the room, smiling and waving encouragingly.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Mr. Stacy announced, “all the way from the mystical, magical Orient, Miss Liu Song Eng.”

She curtsied and waved, though she was quietly blanching at not only her uncle’s surname but also her mistaken homeland. She’d never taken the steamship journey to the Orient, or even been out of the country. She’d barely traveled the West Coast. She noticed Colin, who shrugged and raised his eyebrows as she remembered
her father talking of the illusory presence of the stage. Where the unreal becomes real. She smiled, even as the women in the crowd whispered to one another and pointed in her direction.

She drew a deep breath while the audience quieted. Mr. Stacy winked at her, cigar in hand, then walked past an old pump organ and unveiled the grand pianola to the delight of the audience. Liu Song could smell fresh wood soap and see her reflection along the top of the keyless reproducing piano. And Mr. Stacy didn’t even need someone to work the pedals. He merely pushed a button and the bellows inflated, moving the cylinder inside as the pianola began playing “A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody.” Liu Song started singing softly but quickly elevated to the top of her range, growing more confident with each chorus. She followed that with “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” staring at Colin as she crooned, “My heart is sad and I’m all alone …”

The crowd marveled at her voice and her young age. They begged for one more song, and after a cylinder change, she favored them with a sad, soulful rendition of “Till We Meet Again.” She wailed the high notes of each bar as though squeezing every remaining drop of sorrow out of her ruined heart—from the loss of her father through the loss of her mother, and even her innocence. She stared longingly at Colin, so close but so impossibly far away. He was within her reach but seemed forever beyond her grasp.

Afterward she collected praise and compliments, which she modestly received, doubting the authenticity of such kind words
—too much wine
, she thought. They probably had a hogshead hidden somewhere about. Then she remembered Prohibition and found some small validation. Even Mr. Stacy’s wife made a point to shake her hand and invited her back to perform anytime—a rhetorical gesture; she didn’t really mean it. Then again, she didn’t not mean it either. The whole thing left Liu Song happy but confused, accepted but still so alone—the much-adored center of attention while onstage, but a soloist in life.

She rested her voice as she and Colin rode back to King Street Station beneath a cloudy, starless sky. She was unsure of what to make of the whole evening. Did he really want to be with her? Or was this a debt to her father, some strange, forced social obligation? She wanted to ask but was afraid of the answer.

He shared his umbrella as he walked her back to her apartment, past the old Hip Sing Tong building and the new Eastern Hotel. He stopped where the alley met the street. She heard a tomcat wailing in the distance, and a ship’s foghorn echoed from somewhere out on the murky blue-green waters of Puget Sound. He lowered the umbrella so they could see each other beneath the flickering streetlights. The rain had let up, dampening their cheeks, their hair, and their eyelashes with a fine mist.

“You are a natural,” he said. “I have to study. I have to work at it, but you—it’s who you really are. You’re like a sunflower. You come alive when you step into that spotlight.” He looked at her as though waiting for a reaction. “Did you see the looks on their faces? I think they saw you as a novelty at first—an
amuse-bouche
, but by the end of the night, every man wanted you—and every woman wanted to
be
you.”

She looked up into the drizzly night sky, embarrassed that she didn’t understand his French but equally charmed by his words. “I didn’t really notice all that.”

He shook water from his umbrella. “Well, I noticed. Believe me …”

She watched as he loosened his tie and stepped aside while a black couple walked by followed by a group of drunken old Chinese men heading back from some gambling den.

“Now I’m frightfully embarrassed to ask you this, especially after the way you wowed everyone tonight.” He tipped his hat back with the point of his bumbershoot. “Well, I’m a member of Seattle’s Chinese Opera Company, and I love the work there, but I’ve been trying to find bigger roles, in front of a wider audience. And as luck
would have it, I landed a part in a musical at the Empress Theatre. It would mean the world to me if you came and returned the favor—watched me for good luck.” He looked at her sheepishly and then handed her a card with his phone number and address. “Maybe you can give me a few pointers afterward.”

“I can do that,” she teased. “I can watch.”

“Liu Song.” As he spoke his breath turned to vapor. “I know we didn’t meet under the most auspicious of circumstances. And … I don’t want to overstep my boundaries in any way. It’s … just that …”

That you want to kiss me?
She tried to project her thoughts directly into the center of his brain—or his heart, whichever got the message first. Her face felt flushed, and her stomach tightened. It was more than just the cool air that made her hands cold and clammy. She looked up at him hoping, expectant. She felt his hand gently on her arm as he removed his hat with the other hand, leaning in. She could smell his nervousness and feel the welcoming warmth of his skin. Her ears were ringing.

Then he stopped. “Are you all right?”

She felt faint and stepped back. She muttered an apology as she turned, embarrassed. She walked down the alley toward her apartment in such a hurry she nearly broke a heel. She didn’t look back as she unlocked the door and slammed it shut behind her, kicking off her shoes. She didn’t bother to turn on the lights. She removed her coat and dropped it on the floor en route to the kitchen, where she froze, her muscles tightening violently as she vomited into the sink—the eel, the turtle, the one bite of ginger cream pie. She smelled it all come back up, and she retched again until she was left gagging up nothing but water and stomach acid. She opened the faucet and then melted onto the floor, resting her forehead on the cool piping beneath the sink. She sat in the dark, wiping her chin, staring at the thinly curtained windows, wondering what Colin must be thinking, wondering what in the world had just happened.

A Chinese Honeymoon

(1921)

“Pregnant?”
Mr. Butterfield asked. “Are you sure?”

Liu Song had been sick for weeks. At first she thought it had been the food or that the sour stomach she suffered through every morning and into the afternoon was because of her infatuation with Colin. She’d kissed his card and slept with it beneath her pillow every night, hoping it would sweeten her dreams. But as the days passed into weeks, she realized her sickness was much more than that. She felt different, dizzy and fatigued. She was sore in places. And her bleeding had stopped. If her mother were alive, she might have burned a strip of urine-soaked paper, sniffing the fumes for the strange telltale signs of a baby. Liu Song didn’t bother. She knew.

She didn’t know why she decided to tell Mr. Butterfield, of all people. Maybe it was due to the queasiness she felt while riding on the streetcar to his store every morning. Or perhaps it was because he was the only person who saw her on a daily basis. She knew that at some point she wouldn’t be able to fit into her mother’s dress—she couldn’t hide the truth forever. In the end she realized she just needed to break the news, confess, to tell
someone
—he happened to be there when the dam burst.

Mr. Butterfield sat down on a stool, rubbed his balding pate, and took out a flask of sweet-smelling brandy. He poured the brown liquor into a small cup, and for a moment Liu Song thought he might
offer a toast. Then he found his three-finger cigar case, slipped out a Corona, and dipped it into the cup. He cut the tip off, sniffed the wet, rolled tobacco, and then discarded the stub in the trash. “Honestly, I expected better things from you. You didn’t strike me as that kind of girl—why would you do an impetuous, careless thing like that? You had such a promising future.” He sounded stunned but also saddened. He groaned but more in disappointment than in anger.

The word
had
stung her, reminding her of so many other things in life she had to do—she had to feel regret and embarrassment, she had to pretend she was strong, she had to accept the loss of her parents, her brothers, she had to keep breathing, had to come up for air—because she had her uncle’s baby inside her.

You’ve had me standing in the rain, working for nickels
, Liu Song thought. She grew defensive but knew any frustration toward Mr. Butterfield was misplaced. She was his employee, a partner even, if only in a token way. But now she felt small, as though she were shrinking, withering in front of him. She felt used up. She felt like nothing.

“I’m sorry …” She wanted to tell him about Uncle Leo but didn’t know how. She sank deeper into the pit of shame she had fallen into. “It was only a few times.”

Mr. Butterfield grumbled and rolled his eyes. “That’s what girls always say.” He shook his head and lit his cigar. “And who is this beau of yours? Is he going to do right by you or what? Or is he the kind of lout that skips town as soon as he finds out? You’re how old—sixteen? Seventeen? Half the girls in the city are married off at fifteen, dear; there’s no shame in the two of you taking care of this down at the courthouse …”

“I can’t,” Liu Song said as she stared at her feet.

“And why is that, pray tell?”

She looked up at Mr. Butterfield’s curious, gossipy stare and then looked away. She found the clock on the wall and watched each
second slowly tick away. Her face felt hot and her lip trembled. She wanted to cry, but as always, the tears didn’t come.

“He’s already married,” she whispered. Leo’s shame was now her shame.

Liu Song watched as her boss stubbed out his cigar, wide-eyed, and shook his head. He leaned forward and said, “I’m just flabbergasted. I did not see
that
coming. Liu Song, sweetheart, you never cease to shock and amaze …”

“I’m so, so sorry …”

“Young lady, for a lifelong bachelor I consider myself an expert on judging women
—believe me
, but … I didn’t think you had this kind of moxie in you.” He picked flecks of tobacco off the tip of his tongue and then spat into the nearest waste bin. “I just can’t believe it. If I were anyone else I’d have to fire you right now, you know that? That’s what a practical businessman would—and
should
—do in a situation like this. That’s all I need is for the gossips to descend on my store like flies on a dung heap.”