China Dolls by Lisa See Page B

girl, and I held hands.
    “Grace Lee, you’re in—”
    She made it after freezing, then lucking in to Eddie helping her?
    “You’re our best dancer,” Walton added as she walked offstage to where the other new hires clustered together. “Today your nerves showed. Never let anyone see you’re scared. Never let anyone guess you’ve messed up the dance or forgotten the lyrics. You have the potential to be a star, Grace. Act that way, and it will come true.”
    Only two of us were left standing.
    “Ida Wong, step forward please.” Walton looked at his clipboard. “Congratulations—”
    My stomach lurched, and the room whooshed with shocked exhales. How could Ida have been chosen over me? No one could believe it, not even Ida, who was pretty in that cute-as-a-button kind of way. I glanced at Charlie out of the corner of my eye. He lifted a shoulder in halfhearted acknowledgment. My attempt to cozy up to him—a married man—had completely backfired. He must have seen me as trouble. Well, nothing to do about it now. I hopped down off the stage, packed my things, and beat it for the door.
    “Abyssinia!” I called to Helen and Grace. Silence. “I’ll be seeing ya,” I translated.
    Grace started to come toward me, but she was stopped by Charlie’s call. “You’re my glamour girls now. Please gather around …”
    My eyes swept across the room one last time, and then I left the Forbidden City. I waited for Grace and Helen on the sidewalk, wonderingwhat in the hell I was going to do now. And I’ll be honest. I hurt like mad, and I was scared.
    Soon enough, Grace and Helen came down the stairs.
    “It doesn’t make sense,” Grace said when she saw me. “You should have gotten hired too.”
    I looked away. I wasn’t about to start busting out the waterworks. I had a little money, but when that ran out and I couldn’t pay the rent on my new apartment, then what? Stand in a soup line? Sleep on the street? Beg? Go back to my aunt and uncle’s place with all their bawling brats? “It’s all right. I’ll try at one of the other clubs—”
    “Finally,” Helen muttered, interrupting me.
    It took me a moment to realize she wasn’t speaking to me. I followed her gaze and saw a middle-aged Chinese man approaching. He wore a well-tailored suit and carried a copy of The Chinese Digest folded and tucked under his arm. He reminded me a bit of Charlie, actually. Black hair, neatly trimmed. Well fed. An air of importance.
    “So what the gossips say is true,” he said, stopping before Helen. “My daughter has disgraced me.”
    “I haven’t disgraced you, Ba—”
    “No? Then what do you call not showing up to work at a job I arranged for you? What do you call dancing in the playground? And then there’s this!” He pointed at the entrance to the Forbidden City.
    “It’s a better job. Besides, how can I disgrace you any more than I have already?”
    Next to me, Grace looked frightened, like she thought he was going to wallop her . I sensed she might bolt, so I grabbed her arm and held her in place. Helen’s father stood there—dignified, his hands clasped before him, aware that people— white pedestrians—watched us. And the way he stared at me? I understood it right away, because he wasn’t the first person to see me for what I was, even if it was rare. The disgust in his eyes made me want to push right back. I struck apose—a hip thrust forward, my eyes staring defiantly into his face, the fingers of my left hand barely caressing the petals of my gardenias. Grace was a quivering mess, but I wasn’t afraid or intimidated at all. And Helen?
    “I’ll still put my earnings in the family pot,” she said matter-of-factly, as if her disobedience and lying would mean nothing to her father. “Now I can give more toward Monroe’s tuition.”
    “If you dance here, you will be one notch above a prostitute,” he proclaimed. “Is that how you want people to regard me in Chinatown—as the father of a no-no