Last Night at the Telegraph Club(2)

“I think the girl in the black bathing suit is a little too flashy,” Shirley said.

“What do you mean?” Lily asked.

“Look at her! She’s acting like she’s a Hollywood star or something. The way she’s standing.”

“But they’re all standing like that.”

“No, she’s doing it more, as if she thinks she’s perfect.”

The girl in black didn’t look any different from the others to Lily, but she remembered the sight of her naked foot in the air, and she was strangely embarrassed for her. The contestants were all smiling, hands cocked on their hips, shoulders proudly held back. The emcee explained that they had to circle the stage again for the judges to assess their face and figure, and the audience clapped some more.

The judges were seated at a table on the ground in front of the stage. Lily couldn’t see them, but she had heard all about them. Two were Chinatown leaders, one was a prominent local Caucasian businessman, and one was a woman—the Narcissus Queen from Honolulu, Hawaii. Lily had seen her taking photographs with fans earlier; she was wearing a pretty floral-print dress and a big pink flower in her hair.

“Look—my favorite’s going around now,” Shirley said.

The girl in the yellow two-piece was taller than the others, and her figure was curvier. She had wavy black hair pulled back with combs, revealing sparkling drop earrings. As she crossed the front of the stage, whistles rose from the audience. When she reached the far side she paused, bending one knee and glancing back over her shoulder coquettishly. The audience erupted in applause, and Shirley joined in enthusiastically.

Lily, still holding her half-eaten drumstick, looked away from the stage uncomfortably. She didn’t understand the shrinking feeling inside her, as if she shouldn’t be caught looking at those girls. She saw a group of older Chinatown men nearby, sitting casually and smoking as they studied the contestants. One grinned at another, and there was something off-putting about the expression on his face. He made an odd gesture with his left hand, as if he were squeezing something, and the other man chuckled. Lily dropped her gaze to her fried chicken, and the bone of the drumstick reminded her of the girl in black’s Achilles tendon, rubbed red from the hard edge of her shoe.



* * *



—

“Let’s go up on the stage,” Shirley said conspiratorially, taking Lily’s hand to pull her across the lawn.

“We shouldn’t—”

“Don’t you want to see what it’s like?”

It felt dangerous, rebellious—but only moderately so. The afternoon sunlight was golden and heavy now; the show was over; and the spectators were packing up and preparing to go home.

“All right,” Lily agreed, and Shirley squealed in response.

They almost ran the last few yards, and then they were at the bottom of the steps and Shirley came to an abrupt stop. Lily bumped into her.

“Just imagine,” Shirley said dreamily, “what it must be like to be Miss Chinatown.”

There had been controversy when the judges declared the winner today. Lily had heard a faint chorus of boos amid the applause, and she saw the winning girl’s face go pink with both pride and dismay. A man had shouted at the stage in English: “She looks like a pinup, not like a Chinese girl!”

Lily had eyed him surreptitiously; he was sitting near the man who had made the lewd gesture, who then leaned toward him and slapped him on the shoulder. They had begun an animated conversation that Lily couldn’t quite understand—they were speaking Toishanese—though she made out the words for beauty and woman.

“Lily, aren’t you coming?”

Shirley had bounded up the steps, and Lily realized she had fallen behind. She put a hand on the railing—it wobbled—and quickly went up the stairs. The microphone and its stand had been removed, leaving the stage entirely bare. Shirley walked toward the center, sashaying like the contestants as she pretended to be a beauty queen.

Lily hesitated, watching her friend turn to face the broad, emptying lawn. Someone whistled, and Shirley flushed with pleasure as she bobbed a curtsy.

“Next time it’ll be you!” a disembodied voice called out.

Shirley giggled and glanced over her shoulder at Lily. “Come on! Come and see the view.”

Lily joined Shirley at the front of the stage just as a raft of firecrackers popped in the distance. The afternoon sun was behind them, casting their shadows across the ground, and as Shirley raised her hand to wave, queenlike, Lily watched her shadow stretch dark and thin over the grass. The ground was dotted with empty glass bottles and crumpled paper sacks, and the grass was flattened into the irregular impressions of blankets and bodies.

“Lily!”

The voice came from the left, slightly behind the stage. She stepped back to get a better look and saw Aunt Judy coming up the path from the parking lot, waving at her.

“It’s time to go!” her aunt called.

Lily waved in response and tugged at Shirley’s arm. “We should go.”

“Just a minute,” Shirley insisted.

Lily retreated to the stairs, then turned back to see Shirley still standing at the edge, gazing out over the lawn. The back of her head was crowned in sunlight, casting her face in shadow. The profile of her nose and mouth was still sweet and girlish. But there was a modest swell to her breast, and she had cinched in the waist of her dress to emphasize the slight curve of her hips. Lily wondered if this was what a Chinese girl should look like.