Authors: Jen Sookfong Lee
The note, written on the back of a circular that had come in the mail, sat on the kitchen table, propped up against the sugar bowl.
Dear Mum and Dad
,
We’ve gone to Vancouver to look for work. We’ll write when we get settled. Don’t worry and take care
.
With lots of love, Val and Joan
Joan quietly slid a cracked soup tureen from the top shelf in the hall closet. Inside was a small roll of bills, which she stuffed into a brown leather pouch that Val held open. Along with the money they’d made selling eggs, it was all they had.
As they walked down River Road, glancing behind them for a car, any car, to flag down, Val’s stomach contracted with a rush of guilt as her mother’s money grew hot in her dress pocket. She knew that, without them, the house would be perennially silent, filled with only the sounds of eating, defecating or working. She tried to imagine the rooms without Joan or herself and saw nothing to take their place, just bare walls and limp linens, a smear in the air that could be the ghost of baby Warren. If left to its own devices, the bush would creep slowly toward the house, eating up the garden, then the dingy, muddy lawn and finally, the back porch. Soon, no one passing would even know that a house and a little boy’s grave existed under the thorns and dead leaves and birds’ nests. And inside, her parents would suffocate, helpless to do anything about their darkening lives. Her parents rarely talked to each other, and she couldn’t remember the last time she saw them touch
or smile across the table. How could she leave like that, sneaking away with the household money?
At least
, she thought,
they no longer have to feed us
.
She looked at Joan’s small body trudging beside her, her right shoulder drooping under the weight of her carpet bag. When Val saw Joan’s face, she stopped thinking about her parents altogether. There was Joan: bright and smiling and so glitteringly happy that Val was afraid anything doubtful she might say would shatter this thin veneer of joy, and Joan would be nothing more than tiny shards of brittle skin and bone and hair.
The road twisted around a corner and, finally, their old house was hidden by a group of thin black cottonwoods leaning dangerously over the embankment, their branches almost grazing the surface of the river. She could hear the clang and hum of the canneries to the southwest and the distant horn of a tugboat, sounds that receded as they walked inland. Val took Joan’s free hand and squeezed it. Behind them, she heard the faint growl of a car. Val turned and waved. The faster they were gone, the better.
In Vancouver, soldiers who had returned from the war wandered the streets, differing levels of trauma on their faces and in the way they held their bodies. Some were straight and tall and so, so thin. Others wilted under the weight of normal life: their almost-forgotten livelihoods, girlfriends who were no longer girls but women grown tough with waiting. Some drank in the pubs all day and then spilled onto the sidewalks at night, where they seemed to carouse only with one another. The well-adjusted ones offered their services to shops and
businesses or allowed their families to lead them around to see all the changes in the city—the new mall across the inlet, even the new supper club downtown.
“They’re everywhere,” said one waitress they met at a diner. “If you’re looking for a husband, you’re in the right place at the right time.”
The soldiers reminded Val of her father, with his ill-fitting pants, the expression on his face that was half empty, half lost. She wondered if the Depression might return now that the war was over. Perhaps a new generation of children would have to wear underwear sewn from old flour and sugar sacks, as Joan and Val had done, the fabric scratching and scratching until they cried.
The girls found a boarding house not far from the water, on the south side of the Burrard Bridge. They shared one room, with one bed, but they loved it all anyway. The carpeted floors were clean and dry and the hallway smelled like cinnamon and Sunday roasts. Through their window, they could see the lights of downtown winking at them. From here, the aimless soldiers were too small and too far away to be seen.
On their first full day in the city, they ventured across the bridge, writing down the names and addresses of the top theatres, taking note of the kinds of shows they were playing, examining the posters glued to the windows. They ate in a café, carefully counting out the coins from Val’s leather pouch. Joan had coffee and a glazed doughnut, while Val limited herself to a bacon sandwich. After lunch it rained, and the people around them hurried from awning to awning, ducking into buildings with their dripping umbrellas and hats. Val and Joan continued to walk the streets with their faces turned up, their
eyes fixed on the limestone lions perched on the tops of buildings, the street lamps with their carved iron bases, even the streetcars that snapped and rumbled as they sped past. The ghostly soldiers faded into the shadows.
They spent their whole second day trying to decide what to wear and how they should fix their hair. The next morning, they walked into the Orpheum, the most important theatre on their list, and asked to audition.
A man emerged from a back office and looked them over, head to toe. “Do you girls have an agent?”
“No,” Joan said. “We moved here a few days ago. But we can dance really well. You just need to see us.”
The man smiled and stroked his moustache with one hand. “I’d love to see both of you, sweetheart, but the shows aren’t doing so well. In case you haven’t noticed, it’s all movies these days. No one cares about live entertainment anymore.”
Joan stared, wide-eyed, at the manager’s face. He looked away and bent down to tighten his shoelace as her chin trembled.
Val stammered, “So you won’t even let us audition?”
“Listen, I’ve got plenty of experienced dancers coming by every day looking for work. I’ve got agents calling me every other minute, begging for a show, any show. To be honest, even if I did have a spot for you two, which I don’t, there are lots of other dancers I would choose first.” He reached past them and opened the door to the street. “Thanks for stopping by, ladies. Good luck.”
As the girls walked past him, he whispered in Val’s ear, “Burlesque is still going strong, I hear, especially now that the soldiers are back. You look like you’ve got good legs and a
strong stomach, so if you’re willing to show a little skin, you can try the Shangri-La in Chinatown.” She gasped and stared at the man’s round, red face. “It’s a suggestion, honey, that’s all. You don’t have to take it if you don’t like it.” He nodded at Joan’s retreating body; her arms were wrapped around her chest. “Don’t take her along with you, though. Stripping can kill a girl who isn’t cut out for it.”
They tried every respectable theatre in town. Each manager said the same thing. Shows were closing; the theatres were converting their stages to movie screens. When Val looked into the managers’ faces, she saw limited sympathy. They would continue to have jobs, even if all they did was screen movies. Dancers and comics were the ones who would have to find other ways to pay the bills. It was too bad, but what could the managers do about it?
One evening before dinnertime, they walked by the Palomar Supper Club. They saw through the open door that it was full and that couples and single men waited in the lobby to sit at the bar. Val heard the music—clear and fine with a pitch like ice cubes rattling in a glass—and thought that dancing to that backdrop would be magical. If she could just keep her clothes on. She glanced at Joan’s body, which seemed even thinner in the city, and kept her mouth shut.
Joan cried when they got back to their room, her shaking hands fingering the blisters on her feet. When their landlady called them for supper, Joan refused to go, even though Val reminded her that they were paying for the food as part of the rent, and she should eat it. Val went to the dining room alone and sat in the only empty seat, between two young men. They said they were students at the university, and brushed
her breasts with their hands while passing the dishes. She forced herself to eat the roast potatoes and ham, the soup with crackers, even the sponge cake—as much as she could. Later, she lay on her side of the bed, her hands cupped around her too-full and distended belly.
The day before their weekly rent was due, Val walked through downtown, stopping at every restaurant, shop and hotel to see if they had any work for her. Nothing. The managers and shopkeepers looked at her faded, floral-print dress and her scuffed shoes and simply said, “No.” As she walked down street after street, she thought of Joan, lying in bed in her nightgown, refusing to move even when Val grabbed her ankle and tried to pull her to the floor. Despite the February drizzle, Val began to sweat, and her face flushed with hot, angry blood. She kept blindly walking, bumping into men and children as she went. When they first arrived, both she and Joan had examined the face of every stranger they passed. Now, Val didn’t want to look.
Maybe they should have never left their parents’ house. At least there they didn’t have to pay the rent.
The streets began to change around her. Buildings were narrower, with balconies on the second and third floors. Red- and green-painted pillars rose from the street. Val, her eyes misted over with anxiety and rage, noticed none of it and plowed forward. When she spotted another restaurant, she took a deep breath and plunged inside.
In the dim, she saw vinyl booths, a few loose tables and chairs and a lunch counter. The smell of coffee and frying pork surrounded her and she felt hollow. They had run out of money for breakfast and lunch two days ago and had been
eating only the supper that their landlady prepared. She put her hand to her stomach and heard it rumble. Embarrassed, she looked around at the customers to see if anyone noticed.
Chinamen. Sitting in almost every booth, at the counter, in the chairs. Some methodically ate their food, while others chatted to men at their tables or yelled across the room.
So angry
, thought Val.
Why are they shouting like this?
A man wrapped in a white apron stood behind the counter, wiping it with a damp cloth. Through a window in the kitchen door, Val could see more men cooking in the back. She looked behind her at the rainy street, at the purposeless soldiers huddled under awnings and in doorways, wearing coats inadequate for this biting late winter.
A girl, a few years older than Val, with tightly curled red hair, walked toward her, a tray in her hand. “Here for something to eat?” she asked, her head cocked to the side.
“I came in to see if you need any help. Maybe you need another waitress?” Val stumbled over the words, unsure if this was appropriate, if a restaurant run by Chinamen expected different things from girls and women.
“Well, as a matter of fact, Marge quit this morning. Mr. Chow,” she shouted to the man behind the counter, “this girl’s looking for a waitress job. You want to talk to her?” The man nodded and the girl pointed to a table by the window. “Sit over there. He’ll be with you in a minute.”
Val rubbed her hands together under the table. She sniffed deeply, smelled butter and eggs, toast and doughnuts. How could a place like this smell so familiar? Her stomach rumbled again.
Mr. Chow wiped his hands on his apron before sitting in
the chair across the table. “What’s your name?” he asked.
Val was confused; she had expected this man would barely be able to speak English. But he sounded like everyone she had ever known, like her father, like the young men at the boarding house. “I’m Valerie.”
“Do you have any waitressing experience?” He looked over her face, narrowing his eyes to a squint. His thick black hair was brushed away from his forehead and neatly parted on the side.
“No,” she said, “but I can do the job. I used to help out a lot at home, you know, with the dishes and getting meals.”
“Hmm,” he said, rubbing his chin. “I don’t know. A lot of girls have more experience than you.”
Val’s eyes started to water, but she took a deep breath and forced herself to answer calmly. “I know that. But I really need this job, Mr. Chow. My rent is due and my sister isn’t feeling well and,” she paused, “it smells really good in here.” She blushed and looked down at her lap, readying herself for the rejection.
Mr. Chow stood up, pushing his chair backward. “You look hungry.”
Val stared. “I’m sorry?”
“You need something to eat, don’t you? I’ll get you something right now and a bag for you to take home to your sister.” He disappeared into the kitchen.
The waitress put her hand on Val’s shoulder. She was covered with freckles, all the way down her arm to her fingers. She nodded and shifted her tray so that its edge was balanced on her hip. “He’ll hire you, don’t worry. He only feeds people for free if he likes them.”
Val smiled and held out her hand. “I’m Val.”
“My name’s Suzanne. Welcome to the Chow family.” She patted Val on the head and walked off, swinging her tray in time to the music coming from the radio behind the counter.
Mr. Chow brought her an egg salad sandwich, brown beans and a small bowl of carrot soup. He set a paper bag on the table. “This is for your sister.”
“Thank you,” she whispered, staring at the food.
“When you’re done, I’ll take you around and introduce you to everybody. You’ll start tomorrow morning at seven thirty, for breakfast. We’ll see how it goes from there.” He looked at her hesitating, his brown eyes (lighter than Val would have thought; everything here was a surprise) lingering over her hands as they lay on the table, waiting. “Go ahead, eat. I’ll come back when you’re done.”
When Val returned to the boarding house, Joan was sitting at their small table, looking out the window at the boats on the inlet, some simply floating in place, some sailing through the rain as white-crested waves tossed them back and forth. Silently, Val set out the food and watched as Joan, with her thin, pale hands, brought the sandwich to her mouth and ate, faster than Val had ever seen her.