Last Night at the Telegraph Club(91)

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Lily went to the trash can and retrieved the crumpled-up newspaper. She brought it over to the kitchen table and spread it out, smoothing down the wrinkled, wet corners. The right half of the front page was ripped, and the letters of the headline were smeared, but the story was still readable.

“What is this?” her mother asked.

“I was there last night. At the Telegraph Club. Shirley came over to tell me that someone saw me.” Lily sat down again and waited, lowering her gaze to her hands. The ink from the newspaper had stained her fingertips gray.

“I don’t understand. This story has nothing to do with you.”

“I was there,” she repeated. “I don’t know how else to tell you,” she added a little desperately.

Her mother pulled the newspaper toward her and leaned closer to read it. When she turned the page to read the second half of the story, Lily closed her eyes. The ticking of the clock over the stove sounded like a countdown. She felt almost as if she were floating untethered from her body. She wasn’t all here—she couldn’t be.

“You’re not in the story,” her mother said, sounding very far away.

“No, but I was at the club,” Lily said. “Wallace Lai saw me outside.”

Where had he seen her? She remembered the men on that side street, their glowing cigarettes.

“You couldn’t have been anywhere near that place,” her mother said. “You were at home last night, asleep!”

Lily opened her eyes. Her mother’s face was pale beneath her powder; she looked unnaturally white.

“I went out,” Lily said. She was sure her own face was bright red; she felt the blood rushing to her head as she spoke. “I went to that club. Wallace Lai saw me there, and Shirley came to tell me. Everyone’s going to know soon. I thought I should tell you first.”

Her mother’s gaze dropped down to the newspaper again. There was an ad for ladies’ hosiery on the page next to the second half of the story, with an illustration of a woman’s legs dressed in sheer nylons. The ad seemed deliberately obscene to Lily, and as if her mother agreed, she closed the newspaper and flipped it over.

“It must have been a mistake,” her mother said tightly. “You’re a good Chinese girl. Whoever Wallace Lai saw—it wasn’t you.”

Lily felt as if she were stuck on a broken track in a diorama, as if she were not herself but merely the figurine of a Chinese girl that kept jerking back to the beginning rather than continuing through her miniature world. It was clear that if she agreed with her mother—and Shirley—if she would only tell them what they wanted to hear, then she could move forward on her prescribed path. But that would mean erasing all her trips to the Telegraph Club; it would mean denying her desire to go at all. It meant suppressing her feelings for Kath, and at that moment, her feelings seemed to swell inside her so painfully that she was terrified she might burst. Was this what it felt like to love someone? She wished she could ask Shirley how she had known.

Her mother was waiting for her to say it had been a mistake, but Lily couldn’t do it. “No,” she said. Her voice sounded ugly to her ears, but it relieved some of the pressure building inside her. “He didn’t make a mistake,” she insisted. “I was there.”

“Lily, you don’t know what you’re saying.”

“I know exactly what I’m saying,” she said, frustrated.

“You’re saying you were at this—this club for homosexuals?”

Her mother’s voice rose on the last, shocking word. Lily had never heard her mother say it before. All she could do was nod, and her mother’s face went even paler.

“Why?” her mother demanded.

“I wanted to go,” Lily said. It felt like making an obscene confession.

Her mother shook her head. “You’ve been influenced by someone—who? It can’t be Shirley. You wouldn’t do this on your own.”

“I did,” Lily said. Her eyes grew hot.

“You’re a good Chinese girl, Lily. I don’t understand. What would make you go somewhere like this?” Her mother looked so confused.

Lily took a trembling breath. “I—I think I’m like them.”

Her mother’s eyes widened. “You think— No. You’re not. You’ve never even had a boyfriend! You’ll grow up and marry and realize that this was all a mistake, a temporary—”

“It’s not a mistake,” she protested.

“Lily. 胡麗麗!”* her mother cried, saying her full name in Mandarin the way her father did. “What has gotten into you? If only one person saw you outside this club—we can deal with it. You’re young. You’ll find a boyfriend in college. You won’t go to that place again, and you’ll forget about it right away. Do you hear me?”

“You’re not listening to me!” Lily cried. “I’m like them.”

It wasn’t Lily who was the figurine in a diorama; it was her mother. Her mother was going round and round on that track, hearing only what she wanted to hear.

Her mother stood up, snatching the newspaper off the table and crumpling it in her hands. She threw it into the trash again. “There are no homosexuals in this family,” she said, the words thick with disgust.