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- Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
Twelve-year-old William Eng, a Chinese-American, has lived at Seattle's Sacred Heart Orphanage since his mother disappeared five years ago. During a trip to the movie theatre, William glimpses an actress on the silver screen who goes by the name of Willow Frost. Struck by her features, William is convinced that the movie star is his mother.
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Seitenzahl: 509
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013
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Songs of Willow Frost
A Novel
JAMIE FORD
This book is for my mother, whom I used to call every Sunday night
Map
I lost the angel who gave me summer
the whole winter through.
I lost the gladness that turned into sadness,
When I lost you.
– Irving Berlin, 1912
Contents
Sacred Hearts
(1934)
William Eng woke to the sound of a snapping leather belt and the shrieking of rusty springs that supported the threadbare mattress of his army surplus bed. He kept his eyes closed as he listened to the bare feet of children, shuffling nervously on the cold wooden floor. He heard the popping and billowing of sheets being pulled back, like trade winds filling a canvas sail. And so he drifted, on the favoring currents of his imagination, as he always did, to someplace else – anywhere but the Sacred Heart Orphanage, where the sisters inspected the linens every morning and began whipping the bed-wetters.
He would have sat up if he could, stood at attention at the foot of his bunk, like the others, but his hands were tied – literally – to the bed frame.
‘I told you it would work,’ Sister Briganti said to a pair of orderlies whose dark skin looked even darker against their starched white uniforms.
Sister Briganti’s theory was that bed-wetting was caused by boys illicitly touching themselves. So at bedtime she began tying the boys’ shoes to their wrists. When that failed, she tied their wrists to their beds.
‘It’s a miracle,’ she said as she poked and prodded the dry sheets between William’s legs. He watched as she crossed herself, then paused, sniffing her fingers, as though seeking evidence her eyes and hands might not reveal. Amen, William thought when he realized his bedding was dry. He knew that, like an orphaned child, Sister Briganti had learned to expect the worst. And she was rarely, if ever, disappointed.
After the boys were untied, the last offending child punished, and the crying abated, William was finally allowed to wash before breakfast. He stared at the long row of identical toothbrushes and washcloths that hung from matching hooks. Last night there had been forty, but now one set was missing and rumors immediately spread among the boys as to who the runaway might be.
Tommy Yuen. William knew the answer as he scanned the washroom and didn’t see another matching face. Tommy must have fled in the night. That makes me the only Chinese boy left at Sacred Heart.
The sadness and isolation he might have felt was muted by a morning free from the belt, replaced by the hopeful smiles the other boys made as they washed their faces.
‘Happy birthday, Willie,’ a freckle-faced boy said as he passed by. Others sang or whistled the birthday song. It was September 28, 1934, William’s twelfth birthday – everyone’s birthday, in fact – apparently it was much easier to keep track of this way.
Armistice Day might be more fitting, William thought. Since some of the older kids at Sacred Heart had lost their fathers in the Great War, or October 29 – Black Tuesday, when the entire country had fallen on hard times. Since the Crash, the number of orphans had tripled. But Sister Briganti had chosen the coronation of Venerable Pope Leo XII as everyone’s new day of celebration – a collective birthday, which meant a trolley ride from Laurelhurst to downtown, where the boys would be given buffalo nickels to spend at the candy butcher before being treated to a talking picture at the Moore Theatre.
But best of all, William thought, on our birthdays, and only on our birthdays, are we allowed to ask about our mothers.
Birthday mass was always the longest of the year, even longer than the Christmas Vigil – for the boys anyway. William sat trying not to fidget, listening to Father Bartholomew go on and on and on and on and on about the Blessed Virgin, as if she could distract the boys from their big day. The girls sat on their side of the church, either oblivious to the boys’ one day out each year or achingly jealous. But either way, talks about the Holy Mother only confused the younger, newer residents, most of whom weren’t real orphans – at least not in the way Little Orphan Annie was depicted on the radio or in the Sunday funnies. Unlike the little mop-haired girl who gleefully squealed ‘Gee whiskers!’ at any calamity, most of the boys and girls at Sacred Heart still had parents out there – somewhere – but wherever they were, they’d been unable to put food in their children’s mouths or shoes on their feet. That’s how Dante Grimaldi came to us, William reflected as he looked around the chapel. After Dante’s father was killed in a logging accident, his mother had let him play in the toy department of the Wonder Store – the big Woolworths on Third Avenue – and she never came back. Sunny Sixkiller last saw his ma in the children’s section of the new Carnegie Library in Snohomish, while Charlotte Rigg was found sitting in the rain on the marble steps of St James Cathedral. Rumor was that her grandmother had lit a candle for her and even went to confession before slipping out a side door. Then there were others – the fortunate ones. Their mothers came and signed manifolds of carbon paper, entrusting their children to the sisters of Sacred Heart, or St Paul Infants’ Home next door. There were always promises to come back in a week for a visit, and sometimes they did, but more often than not, that week stretched into a month, sometimes a year, sometimes forever. And yet, all of their moms had pledged (in front of Sister Briganti and God) to return one day.
After communion William stood with a tasteless wafer still stuck to the roof of his mouth, waiting in line with the other boys outside the school office. Each year, Mother Angelini, the prioress of Sacred Heart, would assess the boys physically and spiritually. If they passed muster, they’d be allowed out in public. William tried not to twitch or act too anxious. He attempted to look happy and presentable, mimicking the hopeful, joyful smiles of the others. But then he remembered the last time he saw his mother. She was in the bathtub of their apartment in the old Bush Hotel. William had woken up, wandered down the hall for a glass of water, and realized that she’d been in there for hours. He waited a few minutes more, but then at 12:01 a.m. he finally peeked through the rusty keyhole. It looked as though she were sleeping in the claw-foot tub, her face tilted toward the door; a strand of wet black hair clung to her pale cheek, the curl of a question mark. One arm lazily dangled over the edge, water slowly dripping from her fingertip. A single lightbulb hung from the ceiling, flickering on and off as the wind blew. After shouting and pounding on the door to no avail, William ran across the street to Dr Luke, who lived above his office. The doctor jimmied the lock and wrapped towels around William’s mother, carrying her down two flights of stairs and into a waiting taxi, bound for Providence Hospital.
He left me alone, William thought, remembering the pinkish bathwater that gurgled and swirled down the drain. On the bottom of the tub he’d found a bar of Ivory soap and a single lacquered chopstick. The wide end had been inlaid with shimmering layers of abalone. But the pointed end looked sharp, and he wondered what it was doing there.
‘You can go in now, Willie,’ Sister Briganti said, snapping her fingers.
William held the door as Sunny walked out; his cheeks were cherry red and his sleeves were wet and shiny from wiping his nose. ‘Your turn, Will,’ he half-sniffled, half-grumbled. He gripped a letter in his hand, then crumpled the envelope as if to throw it away, then paused, stuffing the letter in his back pocket.
‘What’d it say?’ another boy asked, but Sunny shook his head and walked down the hallway, staring at the floor. Letters from parents were rare, not because they didn’t come – they did – but because the sisters didn’t let the boys have them. They were saved and doled out as rewards for good behavior or as precious gifts on birthdays and religious holidays, though some gifts were better than others. Some were hopeful reminders of a family that still wanted them. Others were written confirmations of another lonely year.
Mother Angelini was all smiles as William walked in and sat down, but the stained-glass window behind her oaken desk was open and the room felt cold and drafty. The only warmth that William felt came from the seat of the padded leather chair that had moments before been occupied, weighed down by the expectations of another boy.
‘Happy birthday,’ she said as her spidery, wrinkled fingers paged through a thick ledger as though searching for his name. ‘How are you today … William?’ She looked up, over her dusty spectacles. ‘This is your fifth birthday with us, isn’t it? Which makes you how old in the canon?’
Mother Angelini always asked the boys’ ages in relation to books from the Septuagint. William quickly rattled off, ‘Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus …’ on up to Second Kings. He’d memorized his way only to the Book of Judith, when he’d turn eighteen and take his leave from the orphanage. Because the Book of Judith represented his own personal exodus, he’d read it over and over, until he imagined Judith as his forebear – a heroic, tragic widow, courted by many, who remained unmarried for the rest of her life. But he also read it because that particular book was semiofficial, semicanonical – more parable than truth, like the stories he’d heard about his own, long-lost parent.
‘Well done, Master William,’ Mother Angelini said. ‘Well done. Twelve is a marvelous age – the precipice of adult responsibility. Don’t think of yourself as a teenager. Think of yourself as a young man. That’s more fitting, don’t you think?’
He nodded, inhaling the smell of rain-soaked wool and Mentholatum, trying not to hope for a letter or even a lousy postcard. He failed miserably in the attempt.
‘Well, I know that most of you are anxious for word from the outside – that God’s mysteries have blessed your parents with work, and a roof, and bread, and a warm fire, and that someone might come back for you,’ the old nun said with a delicate voice, shaking her head as the skin beneath her chin shook like a turkey’s wattle. ‘But …’ She glanced at her ledger. ‘We know that’s not possible in your situation, don’t we, dear?’
It seems that’s all I know. ‘Yes, Mother Angelini.’ William swallowed hard, nodding. ‘I suppose, since this is my birthday, I’d just like to know more. I have so many memories from when I was little, but no one’s ever told me what happened to her.’
The last time he saw her he’d been seven years old. His mother had half-whispered, half-slurred, ‘I’ll be right back,’ as she had been carried out the door, though he might have imagined this. But he didn’t imagine the police officer, an enormous mountain of a man who showed up the next day. William remembered him eating a handful of his mother’s butter-almond cookies and being very patient while he packed. Then William had climbed into the sidecar of the policeman’s motorcycle and they drove to a receiving home. William had waved to his old friends, like he was riding a float in Seattle’s Golden Potlatch Parade, not realizing that he was waving goodbye. A week later the sisters came and took him in. If I had known I’d never see my apartment again, I’d have taken some of my toys, or at least a photo.
William tried not to stare as Mother Angelini’s tongue darted at the corner of her mouth. She read the ledger and a note card with an official-looking seal that had been glued to the page. ‘William, because you are old enough, I will tell you what I can, even though it pains me to do so.’
That my mother is dead, William thought, absently. He’d accepted that as a likely outcome years ago, when they told him her condition had worsened and that she was never coming back. Just as he accepted that his father would always be unknown. In fact, William had been forbidden to ever speak of him.
‘From what we know, your mother was a dancer at the Wah Mee Club – and quite popular. But one day she made herself sick with bitter melon and carrot-seed soup. When that didn’t work, she retired to the bath and tried performing …’
Performing? His mother had been a singer and a dancer. ‘I don’t understand,’ he whispered, unsure if he wanted to know more.
‘William, your dear mother was rushed to the hospital, but she had to wait for hours and, when they did get around to her, the admitting physician wasn’t entirely comfortable treating an Oriental woman, especially one with her reputation. So he had her remanded to the old Perry Hotel.’
William blinked and vaguely understood. He knew the location. In fact he used to play kick the can on the corner of Boren and Madison. He remembered being frightened by the ominous-looking building, even before bars were added to the windows and the place was renamed the Cabrini Sanitarium.
Mother Angelini closed her ledger. ‘I’m afraid she never left.’
When William finally arrived at the Moore Theatre on Second Avenue, the younger boys had forgotten about their mothers and fathers in the rush to spend their nickels on Clark bars or handfuls of Mary Janes. Within minutes their lips were smeared and they were licking melted chocolate off their fingertips, one by one.
Meanwhile, William struggled to shake the thought of his mother spending her final years locked away in a nuthouse – a laughing academy, a funny farm. Sister Briganti had once said that if he daydreamed too much he’d end up in a place like that. Maybe that’s what happened to her. He missed his mother as he wandered the lobby, looking at the movie posters, remembering her taking him to old photoplays and silent films in tiny second-run theaters. He recalled her arm around him, as she’d whisper in his ear, regaling him with tales of his grandparents, who were stars in Chinese operas.
As he lingered near the marble columns in the lobby, he tried to enjoy the moment, greedily palming the silver coin he’d been given. He’d learned from previous years to save it and follow the smell of melting butter and the sound of popcorn popping. He found Sunny, and they put their money together, splitting a large tub and an Orange Crush. As William waited to be seated, he noticed hundreds of other boys from various mission homes, institutions, and reformatories. In their dingy, graying uniforms they looked shrunken and sallow, frozen in line, a fresco of ragpickers. The prisonlike uniforms the other boys wore made William feel awkward and overdressed, even in his ill-fitting jacket and hand-me-down knickerbockers that hung eight inches past his knees. And as he sipped his drink his gullet pressed against the knot of black silk that barely passed for a bow tie. But despite their differences, they all had the same expectant look in their eyes as they crowded the entrance, buzzing with excitement. Like most of the boys at Sacred Heart, William had been hoping to see Animal Crackers or a scary movie like White Zombie – especially after he heard that the Broadway Theatre had offered ten dollars to any woman who could sit through a midnight showing without screaming. Unfortunately, the sisters had decided that Cimarron was better fodder for their impressionable young minds.
Gee whiskers, William thought. I’m just happy to get away, happy to see anything, even a silent two-reeler. But Sunny was less enthusiastic.
When the bright red doors finally swept open, Sister Briganti put her hand on his shoulder and rushed Sunny and him to their seats.
‘Be good boys and whatever you do be quiet, keep to yourselves, and don’t make eye contact with the ushers,’ she whispered.
William nodded but didn’t understand until he glanced up and saw that the balcony was filled with colored boys and a few Indian kids like Sunny. There must have been a separate entrance in the alley. Am I colored? William wondered. And if so, what color am I? They shared the popcorn and he sat lower, sinking into the purple velvet.
As the footlights dimmed and the plush curtains were drawn, a player piano came to life, accompanying black-and-white cartoons with Betty Boop and Barnacle Bill. William knew that, for the little boys, this was the best part. Some would barely make it through the previews, or the Movietone Follies. They’d end up sleeping through most of the feature film, dreaming in Technicolor.
When the Follies reel finally began, William managed to sing along with the rest, to musical numbers by Jackie Cooper and the Lane Sisters, and he laughed at the antics of Stepin Fetchit, who had everyone in stitches. He laughed even harder than the kids in the balcony. But silence swept the audience as a new performer crooned ‘Dream a Little Dream of Me’ – staring wistfully into the camera. At first William thought, She looks like Myrna Loy in The Black Watch. But she wasn’t just wearing makeup, she was Chinese like Anna May Wong, the only Oriental star he’d ever seen. Her distinctive looks and honeyed voice drew wolf whistles from the older boys, which drew reprimands from Sister Briganti, who cursed in Latin and Italian. But as William stared at the flickering screen, he was stunned silent, mouth agape, popcorn spilling. The singer was introduced as Willow Frost – a stage name, William almost said out loud, it had to be. And best of all, Willow and Stepin and a host of Movietone performers would be appearing LIVE AT A THEATRE NEAR YOU, in VANCOUVER, PORTLAND, SPOKANE, and SEATTLE. Tickets available NOW! GET ’EM BEFORE THEY’RE ALL SOLD OUT!
Sunny elbowed William and said, ‘Boy, I’d do anything to see that show.’
‘I … have to go’ was all William could manage to say, still staring at the afterimage on the dark screen while listening to the opening score of Cimarron, which sounded farther and farther away, like Oklahoma.
‘Keep on wishing, Willie.’
Maybe it was his imagination. Or perhaps he was daydreaming once again. But William knew he had to meet her in person, because he had once known her by another name – he was sure of it. With his next-door neighbors in Chinatown, she went by Liu Song, but he’d simply called her Ah-ma. He had to say those words again. He had to know if she’d hear his voice – if she’d recognize him from five long years away.
Because Willow Frost is a lot of things, William thought, a singer, a dancer, a movie star, but most of all, Willow Frost is my mother.
Feeling Is Believing
(1934)
When the movie ended William clapped politely; everyone did – all but the little boys who startled awake, blinking and rubbing their eyes as the houselights flickered. Sunshine spilled in as ushers opened the double doors. William and Sunny followed the rest as they wandered out, two by two, huddling on a nearby streetcar platform, beneath a rare blue Seattle sky. The temperature had dropped, and clouds drifted over the Olympic Mountains on the horizon. William laughed as Sunny found an old cigarette butt and pretended to puff away, trying to blow smoke rings with his breath as older kids squeezed into the middle of the pack, hoping to find shelter from the wind that blew discarded leaflets and handbills down the street like tumbleweeds and thistledown.
William could smell seaweed drying on the mudflats of Puget Sound, but he also detected the aroma of shellfish and broth. His mouth watered as he looked around, noticing Sister Briganti arguing with a bootblack across the street who was passing out newspapers to men who stood in line for free bread and soup. William counted at least eighty souls before the line reached the corner and snaked around the building. The silent men looked as though they were dressed for church, in wool suits and knit ties, but beneath their hats and scarves he could see that most hadn’t shaved in days, or weeks. I wonder if any of our fathers are in that line, William thought.
‘That was the best movie ever,’ Sunny said, looking up at the lighted marquee, calling William’s attention away from Sister Briganti’s polite bickering.
Aside from the prairie scenes with thousands of men on horseback, he’d been utterly bored with the movie, distracted by thoughts of Willow and his ah-ma. He struggled to remember her face, sleeping in the bathtub, or singing on the silver screen, fearful that he’d forget one or the other. His mother was like a ghost, like Sunny’s water-vapor smoke. William could see her clearly, but there was nothing to grasp.
‘It was okay, I guess,’ he mumbled, then recalled that Sunny had once mentioned that he was part Cherokee, like some of the characters in the film. But how could he like a movie in which Irene Dunne called the Indians ‘dirty, filthy savages’? Then William vaguely remembered the movie’s hero, Yancey, defending the tribe and their stolen land.
‘I’m glad you found something you liked,’ William told him and nodded absently as a piece of yellow paper stuck to his shoe. The handbill was for the Movietone Follies and featured pictures of Stepin, Willow, and some comedian, Asa Berger, with dates for their northwest road show, including Seattle appearances in two weeks. Since both of his coat pockets had holes in them, William folded the paper and tucked it into a rip in the lining of his coat. He remembered his mother’s cheerful voice, the sound of her heels on the wooden floor, the sweet-smelling perfume his ah-ma used to wear. His memories were suddenly present and alive, and if this were a dream, he mused, he didn’t want to wake up.
William blinked when he heard a trolley bell ringing somewhere down the hill. He watched as Sister Briganti tromped back across the street, newspaper in hand. She slapped the cigarette butt from Sunny’s mouth and swore, shaking her head, glaring at the newspaper as though she were witnessing some mortal sin. She tore the newspaper in half again and again, then tossed the scraps into an overflowing garbage can. ‘Judas Priest!’ she snapped. ‘First the unions, now the communists – I never thought things would get this ba—’
William turned to follow Sister Briganti’s line of sight as she looked past him toward a paperhanger in tattered coveralls. The workman had unrolled a huge four-sheet poster of Willow and Stepin and was gluing the panels with wheat paste to the side of a boarded-up brick building. The two of them stared at the man and the giant advertisement featuring a Negro and a Chinese woman. Then William turned, his eyes met hers, and she looked away, as though embarrassed. She quickly clapped her hands and snapped her fingers, ordering everyone to line up single file to board the streetcar.
On the ride home, William watched Seattle roll by, house by house, block by block. He ignored the vacant buildings and the squatters in the park. Instead he longed for his mother, he longed for Willow, as he noted all of the movie houses and storefront theaters along the way – counting sixteen before they left downtown proper. The marquees were so inviting, so majestic, so dazzlingly colorful, like gateways to magical worlds, where the flicker of a cinema projector had brought the spirit of his mother back to life. He was so captivated, so lost in the neon reverie, that he hardly noticed all the shantytowns, the billboards calling for strikes and protests, or the missionary kitchens in between, handing out free bread to bearded skeletons.
‘Welcome home, boys,’ the motorman said as he slowed to drop everyone off near the end of the North Seattle Interurban Line. He rang a brass bell, eliciting a palpable groan from nearly everyone onboard, drowning out the whir of the electric motor and the crackle of blue sparks that flickered from the trolley pole overhead.
As William descended the muddy steps of the streetcar, he joined Sunny and the others and glumly walked past the convent and the sacred grotto, up the lane toward the five-story brick-clad villa of Sacred Heart. He trudged along with everyone else, knowing that the best part of his birthday was officially over. But something else, something new, was just beginning.
‘Back to the Villa on the Hilla,’ Sunny joked.
William didn’t laugh, still lost in his thoughts. In reality he knew that his stately home was a kindly, loving, flower-adorned prison even though there were no guard towers – no barbed wire or barking dogs at Sacred Heart. Some of the older kids even lived on their own in quaint rows of Craftsman-style cottages with porch swings and hummingbird feeders. From atop Scottish Heights, he could smell the coal fires to the south, he could hear the boat horns and train whistles, see the city, appearing through the morning fog and disappearing in the moorish twilight. But on any given day, the panoramic views of Puget Sound and Lake Washington were William’s only access to Seattle. And if Sister Briganti has her way, he thought, it will beanother year before we set foot outside of these wooded acres.
As William walked past the hedgerow and white picket fence that was all that separated him from the outside world, from Willow, he couldn’t help but notice how scalable the palings were, even for the scrawniest of boys. But the gates were never locked. It was the words of parents that kept most of the orphans here – the silken bondage of a mother’s promise, ‘I’ll be back by Christmas, if you’re a good boy.’ Those mythic words, laced with happy-ever-afters, became millstones come January, when ice deckled the windows and the new boys stopped counting the days and began crying themselves to sleep, once again. After five winters at Sacred Heart, he’d learned not to hope for Christmas miracles – at least for nothing greater than a pair of hand-me-down shoes, a book of catechism, and a stocking filled with peanuts and a ripe tangerine.
As he approached the villa, the girls of Sacred Heart came pouring out of their cottages and barracks to greet them. They’d spent the afternoon decorating the common areas with crepe paper and hand-painted signs, and he could see (and smell) fresh angel food cakes cooling on the windowsills. The boys would do the same for them on July 15, when the girls all celebrated their collective birthday in honor of Mother Francesca Cabrini. The intrepid nun who founded the orphanage had once longed to serve a mission in the Orient. But she died somewhere in the Midwest, almost twenty years ago, long before William had even been born.
Following them in a wheelchair was the one boy who’d been left behind. His name was Mark something, but everyone called him Marco Polio, even though his matchstick legs had been malformed by rickets.
Marco and the girls all wanted to know what the movie was like – many had never been to one. They wanted to know about everything out there.
‘Did you go to the Curiosity Shop at Colman Dock and see the jawbone of a whale?’ a girl with long braids asked.
‘Did you see the window displays at Frederick and Nelson?’ Marco chimed in, ‘Did you try a Frango milk shake?’ The question drew excited oohs and aahs from the girls, who’d been given Frangos last year from a kindly docent who always came bearing chocolate and flowers.
‘What about the totem pole in Pioneer Square?’ a girl in the back asked while waving her hand, prompting Sunny to frown and retell the story of the stolen icon, though no one cared to listen.
William noticed that everyone continued asking questions except for Charlotte, who stood on the porch of her cottage and held on to the banister. In her other hand was a white cane she’d been given by the Seattle Lions Club. She cocked her head toward the setting sun, her ear turned to the chatter of boys and girls mingling on the wet, grassy courtyard.
‘I wish I could have been there,’ she said, still looking at the sun as William approached, her freckled cheeks turning pink in the cool breeze. ‘I’d do anything to get out of this place – to feel the city up close.’
William stared at the faded blue of her milky eyes as her hair swept back and forth. ‘There was a player piano that worked like magic and a huge Wurlitzer organ – the music was tops,’ he said. ‘You’d have liked it.’
He watched as she smiled and nodded in agreement. How Charlotte always recognized him was something of a mystery. He wore shoes virtually identical to those of the other boys, bathed with the same soap, but perhaps something about his walk, his gait, gave him away. William had even tried sneaking up on her once in the grotto, but she called his name before he got close. Maybe it was because the other boys were so hesitant – her damaged eyes spooked most of them. Or maybe it was because the other boys rarely spoke to her at all.
‘I brought you something.’
She turned to the sound of his voice, holding out her hand as he placed a bag of fresh saltwater taffy in her grasp, folding her fingers around it. She crinkled the bag, brought it to her nose. ‘Peppermint,’ she said.
William smiled and nodded. ‘It’s your favorite.’ He’d played jingles with the other boys last week and had won enough pennies to buy her a small taste of the outside world.
‘Happy birthday,’ she said, shrugging. ‘You know what I mean …’
‘I don’t even remember when my real birthday is anymore,’ William confessed, remembering a party with his mother, long ago. ‘Sister Briganti won’t tell – she says that when I’m adopted, I’ll want to celebrate that day as my new birthday.’
‘You don’t sound like you believe her,’ Charlotte said. ‘She’s a holy vessel, she’s not supposed to lie.’ Charlotte unwrapped a piece of taffy and offered it to him.
He thanked her and popped it into his mouth, tasting the sweet, chewy mint, feeling guilty for having already eaten three pieces in a fit of nervous tension on the ride back from Second Avenue. He’d spent the last few years resigned to the fact that he would never be adopted. A white family would never have me, William almost said. And it’s doubtful that a Chinese family would adopt a child so unlucky. No one is coming for me.
‘How was your birthday visit with Mother Angelini?’ Charlotte blinked as she asked him.
William looked up, noticing that the blue sky had turned into a mash of thick, gray rain clouds. ‘No letters,’ he sighed, but Charlotte knew he wasn’t expecting one. ‘Though I did hear a story about my mother.’
Neither of them spoke for a moment as a whistle blew from the steam plant next door. Charlotte paused, and he knew she was giving him an out – an opportunity to change the subject or to speak about something more pleasant.
‘She means well,’ William said.
Charlotte frowned wearily. ‘This year she told me how I lost my eyesight.’ She shook her head slowly and tucked her hair behind each ear. ‘I always thought I’d been born this way, but Mother Angelini told me about how the nurses accidentally put fifty-one-percent silver nitrate into my eyes after my mother gave birth to me, instead of the normal one percent. They were trying to prevent some kind of illness, I guess, but instead they burned my eyes. But at least that explains why I dream of colors, and light, and tears. It’s weird to know that I saw the world once, if only for a few minutes, then shadows for a few years, before everything went dark. That also explains why I can never cry, no matter how sad I feel. Because my tear ducts were seared shut.’
William knew that Charlotte and he had both been here for more than five years and both lived with similar expectations – that is to say, neither of them had any. They’d been pinned down with thumbscrews of truth, preferring the monotony of melancholy to the nauseating highs and lows of hope and inevitable disappointment.
‘Mother Angelini told me my mom was taken to a sanitarium – an asylum. She didn’t come out and say it, but I guess that’s where she’s supposed to have died.’
Charlotte stopped chewing for a moment. For a girl without the benefit of eyesight, she was terribly perceptive.
‘But … you don’t believe her, do you?’
How can I? William scratched his head and furrowed his brow. ‘I … I saw her today – well, not in person, but I saw someone at the movie – on the screen, that looked just like her,’ he said. ‘I know how it sounds – totally crazy. I wanted to tell Sunny, anyone – even Sister Briganti. But no one would ever believe me.’
‘I believe you, William.’
‘How can you?’
‘Seeing isn’t believing. Feeling is believing.’
She reached out and patted his coat, finding the space above his heart, where the handbill was safely tucked away. ‘I feel you.’
One Man’s Family
(1934)
Because it was still the boys’ birthday, the orphans were given the night off – no chores, no cleanup duty, nothing but free time in the parlor, where the Philco was tuned in to Amos ’n Andy on Portland’s KGW, instead of Father Coughlin’s show on CBS, which was Sister Briganti’s favorite. William thought it was nice (though mildly alarming) to hear their headmistress chortle and laugh as she listened to the show, instead of watching her frown and scowl, nodding as Father Coughlin railed against the communists and socialists, who he said were ruining the country and prolonging economic hardships. He watched as she sat back and closed her eyes, smiling, even though she had a copy of Coughlin’s newspaper, Social Justice, folded in her lap. On the table next to her sat two empty bottles of Rainier beer. Farewell, Prohibition, William thought. Even though during the Noble Experiment, everyone knew she had a secret stash that she enjoyed on special occasions. Seattle was always a foggy, rainy city, but during the temperance movement the county had remained especially wet.
Wind and rain pelted the windows as William sat on the wooden floor with Charlotte, working on a simple jigsaw puzzle of the Holy Family. He listened to the comforting crackle and pop of the fireplace and the soft tumblers of dice as other kids played Parcheesi. Charlotte had found the all-important edge pieces and had successfully completed the border, leaving William to work his way into the center. Looking at the stained-glass scene depicted on the box top, he could already tell that they were missing a handful of important pieces. But he kept working anyway, toward an incomplete picture. As he stared at the empty space he allowed himself to wonder – Why did you leave me? Why didn’t you write? The lonely years had been easier to endure when he’d imagined his mother dead. He hurt and he grieved, but that sorrow was less heartbreaking than the thought of his ah-ma alive and well, leaving him behind like a stray dog.
‘What did she look like?’ Charlotte asked. She sat back and crossed her legs, covering them with her dress, dusting off her hands. ‘The woman you saw on the movie screen. What did she look like? I mean, how did you know it was her? Was she stunning, like you?’ she joked.
William shrugged, oblivious to Charlotte’s flirtations, and pawed through the loose pieces. ‘She looked … Chinese.’ Then he realized that Charlotte had no idea what a Chinese person looked like, or a black person, or Indian, or Italian – she didn’t even know her own skin color.
‘She had bright eyes, with long eyelashes and shoulder-length hair that was curled at the ends. And she looked … rich. But my mother was poor.’ We were poor, William recalled, even before the Crash and all the jobs went away. ‘My own mother had … long fingers, with wrinkly knuckles that made her hands look much older than the rest of her.’ He looked at his own fingers, which were the same way. ‘And when she’d fall asleep on the sofa, I used to sit and watch her breathe, her chest rising and falling – just to make sure she was still alive. She looked so peaceful, but she was the only family I had. I was always afraid of losing her. I hated the thought of being alone. But the lady today, it was her voice that I recognized most. Her singing voice.’
‘Did your mother sing to you?’
William nodded, slowly. ‘Sometimes. At bedtime she’d sing Chinese lullabies that I barely understood, or a British tune that went: “Isn’t this precious darling of ours / Sweeter than dates and cinnamon flowers.” I can hum the rest, but I don’t remember the words. It was a long, long time ago …’
‘You’re lucky. I hardly remember my mother at all. I used to try and remember what her voice sounded like. Like mine, I guess, but wiser.’
He knew that Charlotte’s mother had died a few years after she’d been born. And like William, she never mentioned her father. He wanted to ask more, but he’d learned that, in the orphanage, it was better not to pry about things not freely spoken.
As Amos ’n Andy ended, he looked up at Sister Briganti, expecting her to begin shooing them off to bed, but she’d fallen asleep. Her head slumped back and her Franciscan habit draped over the chair like a pile of brown laundry. As he exchanged glances with Sunny, who was in the corner playing tiddlywinks with Dante Grimaldi, and the other kids in the room, the unspoken sentiment was Play on.
William continued to sort puzzle pieces as the radio announcer introduced the local businesses that would be sponsoring tonight’s episode of One Man’s Family.
Sister Briganti snorted twice but didn’t wake up, even as thunder rolled in the distance and the electricity flickered off and on, causing a few of the kids to gasp and squeal, while Sunny made ghostly booing sounds.
‘But before we begin’ – the announcer spoke in a droll, monotone voice, fading in and out with the encroaching storm – ‘I’d like to introduce tonight’s very special in-studio guest, an up-and-comer who’s come home to the Great Northwest with Hollywood glitter on her shoes. Not since Bing Crosby and the Rhythm Boys left Tacoma have we had such local talent hit the big time.’
William froze, staring at the radio, a puzzle piece dangling from his fingertips.
‘And now she’s back for a limited series of engagements, on loan to us from the Fox Movietone Follies. Ladies and gentlemen, here’s the China doll to top them all, the Asian sensation from Seattle, Weepin’ Willow Frost.’
I don’t believe it, William thought, as he sat spellbound while Willow and the announcer exchanged pleasantries.
‘Now, Miss Frost …’
‘Please, just call me Willow.’
‘Ah, Willow it is,’ the announcer said. ‘I’m curious about your “Weeping” moniker. I wonder if you might be able to share with us the story behind that.’
‘Oh, I dread that nickname,’ she said in a modest, polite way that barely masked how tired she seemed of this question. ‘It makes me sound like such a sorrowful person all the time. But the truth is, an old friend …’ She hesitated. ‘An acquaintance of mine gave me that name after a walk-on appearance. I had just learned some unpleasant news and forgot my lines for a moment. My eyes welled up, and by the time I remembered my part, I was crying. I sobbed my way through the script – luckily, it was a sad scene. I ended up getting discovered afterward – that was my first film.’
‘Some would call that fate,’ the announcer said. ‘Or was it just good acting?’
There was an awkward pause. William wasn’t sure if the weather was affecting the broadcast or if she really was uncomfortable talking about her big break.
‘It was just luck. Pure and simple,’ she said quietly. ‘A year later I was on a set in Studio City trading lines with Ronald Colman and Tetsu Komai in Bulldog Drummond. And here I am now …’
‘And here you are, and we are delighted to have you.’ The announcer brightened and introduced Willow and the station’s call letters once again.
‘That’s her,’ William whispered to Charlotte. Then he looked across the room to Sunny, who stared back and gave him a thumbs-up as a piano played on the radio and Willow began singing ‘Dream a Little Dream of Me’.
‘This is so booooring,’ a boy said from across the room. ‘Somebody get up and change the station to KJR.’
‘Yeah, let’s listen to The Shadow,’ someone else chimed.
‘The Shadow knows this is boring,’ another boy teased.
‘Don’t touch the radio,’ William blurted. ‘Please!’
‘Hey, you heard this already this afternoon …’
‘I want to hear her too,’ Charlotte said, waving her cane.
Dante was about to touch the dial when William leapt to his feet, his heart racing as he shoved him out of the way. Dante tripped over a footstool and tumbled noisily to the floor. Some of the boys laughed, a few of the girls too.
‘Hey!’ Dante wailed as tears welled in his eyes. ‘What’d’cha do that for?’
William stood in front of the speaker, listening intently, his heart pounding.
‘William Eng!’
He didn’t need to turn around. He recognized Sister Briganti’s voice immediately. She must have stirred awake in all the commotion. William glanced over his shoulder and saw her looking at her wristwatch, then at everyone who hadn’t yet gone to bed.
‘William – come here!’ she snapped. ‘The rest of you – upstairs.’
He felt her pinch his elbow as she dragged him away from Charlotte, away from the radio to the foyer. Sister Briganti opened the door to the cloakroom, smacked him on the head, and shoved him inside.
‘If you can’t behave, we’ll have to separate you from the rest …’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it,’ he protested. ‘I just wanted to listen to the radio a little bit longer – you have to let me hear the radio.’ I need to hear Willow Frost.
Sister Briganti paused and rubbed her forehead as though considering his plea, but then she slammed the door. William stared down at the sliver of light beneath the door and at the glimmer from the keyhole. It too went dark as he heard a key being inserted and turned, locking him in for the night. He felt for the back wall, found it, and slumped down, coming to rest on a pile of old shoes and galoshes. The entire closet smelled of wool coats, wet leather, and mothballs. He banged his head against the wall until he heard the radio fading in and out as the announcer was interviewing Willow again.
‘And so you grew up just north of here,’ the announcer said.
‘I did, I grew up in Washington – in Seattle’s Chinatown, but I left years ago,’ she said. ‘I never thought I’d go back, not in a million years.’
‘And why is that?’
William strained to listen as she paused. He waited in the darkness, eyes wide open, his ear to the door, hearing the tatter of rain lashing the building.
‘I … I didn’t have any reason to, I guess. I didn’t have a reason to stay.’
The volume faded as Sister Briganti turned the radio off with a disappointing click, then the lights. William heard footsteps in the dark as she trudged upstairs.
Alone Together
(1934)
Like most of the boys, William had spent a night or two in the cloakroom. Sometimes it was warranted, like the time Sister Briganti caught him pitching pennies in the chapel. Other times it was merely a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But as far as punishments went, spending a night in the closet wasn’t as bad as being locked in the boiler room, which was hot, even in winter, and redolent of the fiery, sulfuric Hell the sisters warned everyone about. And the place was so noisy that no one could hear you cry or scream. William remembered that Sunny had once been caught fighting and spent three days locked up down there. Sunny never threw another punch, not even when the two boys were working on an old crystal radio kit donated by the Boy Scouts and Dante walked by, flipped the box over, and said, ‘I’ve got a new name for you: Sunny Mess-maker.’ Dante laughed as the pieces – wires, tuning knobs – scattered and the delicate cat’s-whisker receiver was broken. Without that fine-tipped wire, the homemade radio would never work. One of the girls expected a fight and ran to get a teacher, but Sunny didn’t say a cross word, he just stared out the window as black coal smoke belched into the sky.
But like so many orphans, William most feared being alone. It’s just one night, he reasoned. After five years of sleeping in the same room with two dozen other boys, the absence of snoring, giggling, whispering, even the squeaking of old bedsprings, left nothing but the sound of the timbers shifting, pipes groaning, and the storm winds rattling the windowpanes. The unsettling sounds of emptiness, the chords of solitude, caused William to feel a rise of panic as the echoes of a grandfather clock chiming somewhere two stories above reminded him just how long that night would be.
I didn’t have a reason to stay. Willow’s words echoed in his mind.
In the darkness he shoved aside the shoes and boots. He pulled down two woolen coats and, like some feral creature, tried to create a makeshift bed. But the tinkling of metal hangers and the swaying shapes in the dark kept him awake. Plus he thought he heard footsteps, or light tapping. It’s just the creaking of floorboards, William thought. This building is new and still settling. He knew it was doubtful that Sister Briganti had changed her mind about his punishment – if anything, she’d forget about him until someone needed a raincoat or until he wet the floor, whichever came first the next day.
He pulled down another coat and was using it as a blanket when he heard the unmistakable sound of a key rattling in the lock. He reached up and felt the doorknob turn, then jumped back.
‘William,’ a girl’s voice whispered as the door cracked open.
‘Charlotte?’ he asked the shape in the dark. Then he felt her hand touch his arm as she crawled in next to him, sitting with her back against the wall, her knees up, her cane in front of her. He poked his head out into the blackened hallway. A faint glow came from down the corridor. A nightlight flickered off and on as the rain pounded and lightning flashed. He heard a loud rumble in the distance as he closed the door. ‘What are you doing here? How did you …?’
‘Sister B leaves the key in the candle drawer in the hallway, I always hear her put it away,’ Charlotte said, her voice quavering. ‘I … I don’t like nights like this, especially in my cottage. Sometimes I come down here and hide when the weather is this bad.’ She sniffled and wiped her nose on the sleeve of her long flannel nightgown.
‘It’s … just a thunderstorm,’ William said. ‘We’re in a big building. It’s completely safe. Even if the power goes out …’
Lightning flashed beneath the door, illuminating Charlotte as she pulled her knees tighter against her chest and thunder rattled the building. He wrapped a coat around her even as she flinched.
‘Would it be better if I left you alone?’ he asked, unsure of where he might go.
She shook her head. ‘Please stay.’
‘Are you afraid of the dark? It’s okay if you are …’ As soon as he said it he realized what a ridiculous statement that was. He was about to apologize …
‘I’m not afraid of the dark.’
‘The storm will pass, I promise …’
‘I’m not afraid of the storm either.’
William sat in the darkness, confused, but relieved to have her company – anyone’s company. Charlotte had been his best friend and, until Sunny arrived, his only friend. He scooted over and sat next to her. She leaned into him, resting her head on his shoulder. Then she reached up, hung her cane from the rack overhead, and offered him part of the coat. He wrapped it around the two of them as her shoulders shook. She was wet, trembling and shivering.
‘What are you so afraid of?’ Besides the storm, the teachers, the whippings …
Silence. He felt her slowly shake her head and inhale deeply, exhaling as though she were completely fatigued, exhausted.
‘My mother used to light candles and sing whenever the power went out,’ he said. ‘She told me the thunder was applause, the lightning, Heaven’s spotlight. I would climb into bed next to her and she’d wrap her arms around me until I fell asleep.’
‘You’re so lucky, William.’
For a moment he actually felt that way, then, and now, to no longer be so alone.
‘After my mother died,’ Charlotte whispered, ‘it was just my father – he always came into my room on stormy nights – “just to make sure I was okay”. He hardly said a word. I couldn’t see him, of course, but I knew who it was.’
William paused, not fully comprehending what she was saying. He had always wondered what happened to her father. Before he could ask, she changed the subject.
‘I have to leave this place – soon.’
‘Why? You’ve been here longer than I have …’ And who would take you?
‘They’re going to send me away,’ she said. ‘They say I don’t belong here anymore. They’re going to send me to a special school for people like me. Sister B says it’s time I was with my own kind.’
William swallowed and chewed his lip. He remembered the past few summers, when farmers from the Yakima Valley would come to Sacred Heart and adopt the strongest boys or, occasionally, the prettiest girls. William knew then that no one would ever adopt a blind girl, no matter how comely she might be.
‘But, where would you go?’ he asked. ‘Maybe the special school isn’t so bad. They could teach you how to read with your fingers …’
He felt her shaking her head.
‘I know all about that place. My father used to threaten to send me there if I didn’t do as I was told or if I said anything bad about him. They have you sit in a room and make brooms all day. That’s all they ever do, until you’re too old to do anything else. And if you refuse or complain they send you to a lockup.’
That was the one good thing about Sacred Heart. Despite children’s worst indiscretions, Sister Briganti would rarely cast them out. William had heard rumors that the state paid the school a fixed amount per child, so to the sisters a crowded orphanage wasn’t a complete tragedy.
William didn’t know what words he could offer that might comfort Charlotte. If the sisters thought that a special school would be better for her, their decision would be irrefutable. And where else could she go? She didn’t have any other options.
Charlotte drew a deep breath and let it out slowly.
‘I want to go with you,’ she said.
‘And where am I going?’ he asked, though he had a vague idea – a wistful dream, a hope, an unmade plan.
‘I want to go with you to find her.’
‘Willow?’ William asked as he caught the scent of Charlotte’s floral shampoo, a welcome respite from the dank-smelling closet. After living in the boys’ sweaty dormitory for so long, he was suddenly aware of how much he missed the comforting smell of perfume, the fragrances of home.
‘Your mother.’
‘I don’t even know who that woman really is. Sister Briganti might be right, I could just be letting my imagination get the better of me.’ This mirage probably happens to everyone at some point, William thought. The joyful dreams of sad, lonely children are difficult to wake up from.
Charlotte pulled down another coat and draped it over them. She leaned into him as he listened to the rain and her breathing until he thought she’d drifted to sleep.
Then she stirred, just for a moment. ‘Think about it, Willie. We both have nothing, and nobody wants us,’ she murmured. ‘So that just means we have nothing to lose.’
William stared into the darkness, wondering if this was how Charlotte perceived the world. Then he realized she probably didn’t see anything. So instead, she saw the world through her imagination – which had to be better than real life.
He listened to her breathing until she fell into a restless sleep, twitching and occasionally crying out, softly.
Pigs Get Fed
(1934)
When William woke, Charlotte was gone, like his mother, leaving him to wonder if she’d ever been there at all. A janitor let him out, and William stretched his tired legs, then limped back to his dormitory, his back aching as he went about his day.
That night he was grateful to sleep once again in his own bed, where all week long he dreamt of the Movietone Follies and each sunrise he woke up, torpidly searching for the sad melodies of songs with long-forgotten lyrics. As he counted the rain-soaked days and his mornings with dry sheets, inching closer on the calendar to when Willow Frost (he couldn’t quite call her his mother) would be performing, he thought about Charlotte’s desire to run away. There is nothing here. And no one is coming for us, no one at all. He knew she was right, but still, he hesitated.
When he rolled over in bed he stared at Willow’s picture; then he sat upright, scratching his head as the others brushed their teeth and got dressed. Some of the boys had regal, sepia-toned portraits of themselves with their parents displayed prominently on their nightstands. But all William had was the dog-eared photo from the handbill that he’d placed near his bed in a frame crafted from Popsicle sticks and rubber cement. Looking at the photo, he was convinced they had the same eyes, the same chin. In his memory, his ah-ma’s nose had rounded slightly to the left. He couldn’t tell from the headshot because Willow was showing her good side, backlit Hollywood-style, but he remembered that unmistakable bend. And in turn, he wondered what she would remember about him. He was little and remembered less. She was a mother. How could a mother forget? he wondered. How could a mother leave her child behind?
After breakfast he grabbed his books and hurried upstairs to his classroom, where thirty-five children crowded into neat rows, boys on the left, girls on the right, two to each desk – all but Marco, who seemed to relish having his own space, even if it was a wheelchair in a corner at the front of the room.
William wedged himself into a wooden seat in the back, next to Dante, who was twice his size but clumsy and loping like a big dog that didn’t know how enormous he really was. ‘Sorry about the other night,’ William whispered. ‘You can punch me in the arm if you wanna get even.’
‘No need.’ Dante shook his head. ‘A night in the cloakroom is punishment enough. Too much if you ask me.’
Dante had grown tired of the sisters calling him Danny. ‘Too Irish,’ he’d said, and now he wanted to be called Sawyer, in homage to his late lumberjack father. For a big son of a lumberjack, Sawyer cried an awful lot.
Instead of listening to Sister Seeley go on about arithmetic, William stared out the window, watching autumn settle upon Sacred Heart like a blanket of wet magnolia leaves. He calculated how he and Charlotte could get away to the 5th Avenue Theatre, the Pantages, or the Palace Hippodrome – wherever Willow would soon be appearing. He’d never been inside any of those venues but had always marveled at the posters on the street; even the old ones that were faded and peeling still thrilled him with images of ice-skating couples, animal acts, magicians with spangled waistcoats, and child performers like Dainty June Hovick – the Darling of Vaudeville. Admission is usually twenty-five cents, William thought. But Willow’s show might cost a bit more. He had a whole dollar in coins, hidden beneath a rock in the grotto, but with four-penny flophouses now advertised as two bits a night, plus trolley fare and transfer on top of that, they wouldn’t last a week in the city. And winter is just around the corner.
‘You’re still thinking about that show, aren’t you?’ Sunny whispered from his desk across the aisle. William shook his head. ‘You get caught, they’ll kick you out for sure. They’ll sell you to a poor farm that’ll make this place look like Heaven on Earth.’
Heaven, William realized, some kids actually love this place
