The Better Mother

THE ALLEY

1958


He meant to stay awake, to wait up until his parents and sister went to bed and the house hushed under the weight of nighttime, when the sounds were restricted to cars driving down the street and the neighbour’s cat crying from its post on the lid of a garbage can. Danny imagined that the outside world after dark was full of skittering creatures brushing past and faraway laughter rolling through the air, thick with black. He squirmed in his bed and tried to ignore the urge to burst through the back door so that he could run and run and run, down the alley, around the corner and away, to New Brighton Park perhaps, or toward downtown, where the neon lights buzzed and men whispered to each other, the brims of their hats touching. Danny turned over and listened.

His mother was still padding down the hallway, her slippers simultaneously dragging and thumping on the scarred wooden floor. He could hear her walking from closet to back porch to closet again, the squeak of the rusty hinges on the folding doors. From the living room, the crack and hiss of his father opening another can of beer, and the fuzzy sounds of the late-night news. Even Cindy was tossing and turning in her bed on the other side of his bedroom wall, her small feet kicking the spot right by his head.

He waited and waited, but it was no use. He thought that he may as well rest his eyes until the low noise settled (his father burped, his mother dragged a chair across the kitchen floor), perhaps sleep—just a little—until the quiet finally came.

He stood in the middle of a ballroom, illuminated by one enormous chandelier that was the size of his father’s Oldsmobile. Danny looked down. He was wearing brown corduroys with knees worn smooth, and his brown shoes, so small that he could feel his toes scrunching up under the leather. How on earth had he arrived in this place, with its mirrored walls and parquet floor, looking like this? He wiped his clammy hands on the seat of his pants.

In one of the mirrors, he could see a door (a fabulous door, decorated with stars made of glitter) opening and closing, and a slip of something green slid into the room. He turned around and Miss Val, the Siamese Kitten herself, stood in front of him, both her hands on her hips. She smiled and the painted beauty mark on her cheek lifted and then fell.

“My little Danny,” she said, “what are you doing here?”

He felt himself blushing. “I guess I was waiting for you.”

Miss Val laughed. “In those clothes? Honey, we have a ball to get ready for!”

Danny crossed his arms over his chest. “I don’t have anything else.”

“Well, we’ll fix that, won’t we?”

Miss Val opened the lid of a fantastically bejewelled chest in the corner. She rummaged through piles of silk and satin and muttered to herself, “I can never find anything in here.” After a few minutes, she drew out a small black tuxedo on a hanger, complete with red bow tie and cummerbund. “There, you see? Now, put this on before anyone arrives.”

As Miss Val was tying his bow tie into a fat knot, the double doors at the end of the room opened and a line of finely dressed men and women entered, their arms linked in couples, the women’s skirts brushing the floor. Miss Val placed a hand on Danny’s head and whispered, “Be yourself, sweetie, and everybody will love you.”

While Miss Val chatted with the people in the crowd, Danny stayed as close to her as he dared, his nose on level with her gloved elbow. He stared at her green strapless dress, at the ruching on its sides and the slit up the thigh. How wonderful.

The music started and couples floated out into the middle of the room, the women with their necks held gracefully, like porcelain figures, the men smiling, close-lipped, over their partners’ shoulders. It was all so flawless, without dust or pickles or the smell of bubble gum. Danny heard Miss Val laugh and he looked up at her clear, white face.

Gently, he tugged on her hand.

“Yes, honey?”

Danny bowed his head and, in as low a voice as he could manage, said, “Would you care to dance?”

Miss Val smiled and took his hand in hers. “Why, of course.”

They spun out onto the dance floor, his left arm clutching the fabric around her waist, his right holding her hand. He peered down at his own feet, careful not to step on her toes. Gently, she said to him, “Look up. Only a fellow with something to hide doesn’t look into the eyes of his partner.”

And so they danced, slipping through gaps in the crowd, skimming over the floor as if they weighed no more than feathers. He could see their bodies in the mirrors, the whirl of movement that meant they were fast and smooth, like the wind Danny felt when he stood at the top of the hill in the school playground. When the music stopped, Miss Val embraced him and his face was crushed against the smooth satin of her dress. He put his arms around her and closed his eyes, wondering if he could somehow make this moment last and last, preserve it with perfume or shellac it with hairspray. He sighed, because he knew that this was impossible and he would have to return to his real life.

He said, “There’s something I want to tell you.” There was nothing she couldn’t understand. She would know how it was to feel like a Martian. She would help him figure out why he always stood apart from the other boys as they played in the schoolyard. She would never look at him with disappointment or confusion. Or sound like she was sorry whenever she spoke. Or plod down the street in tan walking shoes when all Danny ever wanted was to see her in a pair of high heels.

Val knelt in front of him and touched his cheek with her cool hand. “I have a secret too.”

And he leaned forward, his ear practically touching her red lips. She breathed in and he shivered, knowing the words were coming very soon. She would know everything about him and he would know everything about her.

Danny woke with a start, rubbed his eyes in the grey light of early morning. He stood and pressed his nose to the window. Even though his small room looked out at the house beside theirs (a newer, taller house, covered not in wooden siding, but in a fine layer of beige gravel with bits of granite that winked in the sunlight and grew shiny in the rain), Danny could see the reflection of the sky in the neighbour’s window. Usually, in this small square of glass, he tracked the speed of the clouds, the magical break in the mist when the sun shone for one second, long enough to illuminate everything and remind him that it couldn’t possibly rain all the time. But now he squinted at the barely blue sky and listened, hearing nothing but the two-note song of the bird that lived in the scrawny birch tree across the street. He must have slept through the night, but it was just as well, because the house was still and he was sure everyone was sleeping.

He crawled under his bed and pulled out the pile of department store catalogues from its hiding place behind two shoeboxes in the far right-hand corner. Sitting on the floor, he opened the newest one—the one his mother saved for him two months ago by pinching it from the morning mail before his father saw. He traced his sticky finger along the lines of the long dresses, the dangling strands of imitation pearls, the gloved hands of the one lucky little girl modelling her white, rabbit fur coat. The thin, glossy pages were dotted with his fingerprints, and small clumps of dust had collected in the spine. He lingered on his favourite page, the one with the teen-aged boy wearing a navy-blue sweater vest and white shorts, his hair parted on the side. Like a real movie star stepping out to play tennis in a city with palm trees swaying in the warm breeze. Someplace far from here. He wondered if any of the boys he knew saved catalogues like he did, but of course no one else did. Of course he was the only one.

Outside, he heard Mr. Murray open his front door for his morning newspaper and Danny knew he had only a few minutes before his mother woke up and began gathering the dirty sheets for laundry day. He reached inside his pillowcase and unravelled a long, emerald-green silk sash. He folded it over and over again, pressing down each fold with his small hand until the creases were sharp and the belt was flat and no bigger than a handkerchief. He slipped it between two catalogues, Winter 1957 and Spring 1958, and pushed the whole pile back under his bed, careful to slide his two shoeboxes into place again. Even in the middle of summer, the mornings were cold, and the floor beneath Danny’s bare feet bit into his soles. He climbed back into bed and waited for his mother to knock on his door, whispering in Chinese, in that apologetic way of hers that he hated most, “Time to get up, Danny. Breakfast is ready.”


The summer days began to blend together. Danny had forgotten how long it had been since he and Cindy walked to school in the cool mornings and pressed their shoes into the thick frost blanketing Mrs. Fratelli’s lawn. He lay on the folding lounge chair on the back porch, the flesh on the backs of his legs oozing through the holes in the woven plastic cover. A cloud like a spooked horse and another in the shape of a feather duster passed overhead.

Cindy’s face hovered above him. Her thick bangs were held back with a yellow plastic barrette and she shaded her eyes with her left hand. Her right hand held an old cookie tin.

“It’s time for paper dolls, Danny,” she said, shaking the tin so that they could both hear the scissors and coloured pencils bouncing around inside.

“Can’t you play with Jeannie next door?” he asked, drowsy from the sunshine.

“She’s at camp. And no one draws better than you. Please, Danny?”

He blinked against the harsh light and tried to remember the last time he rode his bike to Marcello’s house two blocks away. Yesterday? It was too hot to play outside and, besides, Danny was never convinced Marcello really wanted to play with him. He was just too polite to say otherwise. Maybe it was time for paper dolls.

In Cindy’s bedroom, they drew and cut out paper dolls from their father’s used and carefully refolded brown wrapping paper. They giggled, marched their dolls across Cindy’s bed, changing the dolls’ clothes for brunch, drinks at the club, or a dinner date with a dashing young doctor. Through the thin walls, they could hear their mother wringing out the wet laundry in the bathtub and cleaning the floors with the grey, stringy mop that, when propped in the corner of the bathroom, looked like a skinny, dishevelled old man, the kind who insisted on holding your hand while he was telling your parents what a fine little boy you had become.

“They should go to a party, I think. Maybe Anastasia will wear the pink dress with the white bow. Glamorous, right, Danny?”

But Danny was busy making a new paper doll, one with black bobbed hair like midnight, and a green robe. Cindy, looking up from Anastasia’s honey-blond head, wrinkled her nose and said, “She doesn’t look like any paper doll I’ve ever seen.” But Danny took no notice (little sisters, what do they know?) and propped up his new creation on a tissue box. He tried to remember what Marcello’s teenaged brother told him about the women who danced at the Shanghai Junk. Danny wiggled the paper doll’s bum and sashayed her around the stage while Cindy laughed and laughed, her chubby hands held up to her mouth. Finally, Danny pulled the doll’s clothes off, piece by piece. He poked Cindy in the leg and whispered, “You have to clap, dummy. It’s almost the end of her act.”

And the doll bowed to thundering, appreciative applause before sauntering off, obscured from the crowd by one white tissue standing up in the box, in folds like a stage curtain.

As Danny was carefully re-dressing his paper dancer, their mother hurried into the bedroom. “Baba doesn’t like to see the mess. Put the dolls away,” she said, her eyes wide open and searching the room for any stray paper clothes. “Cindy, take them to your room. You shouldn’t play like this with your brother anyway.”

Generally, their father hardly noticed the house at all or most of the objects inside it. But Danny knew that the paper dolls were the one thing that might rouse his father out of his television, beer and armchair stupor, so he helped Cindy pile them into the box as quickly as his small hands allowed.

“Summertime,” Danny heard his father mutter as he walked through the front door. “Nothing but tourists.”


After dinner, Danny sat in the bathtub while his mother washed his hair, her thick fingers massaging his scalp. He closed his eyes, breathed in the steam rising from the water and the smell of soap and shampoo and his own wet skin.

“Wake up, Danny. It’s very dangerous to fall asleep in the bath.” She tapped his shoulder with a sudsy hand.

He turned his head and looked at her face. Small round eyes. Cheeks like brown apples. A wide mouth that smiled and opened for whispers and quiet complaints, but never for laughter that caught you off balance or blew through the house like a cedar-scented windstorm. He saw that her sleeves, once pushed up but now falling, were soaked. What if we just curled her hair? he thought. She could wear real stockings and not those dumb white socks. Maybe she wasn’t always like this.

“Tell me a story, Mama. About you and Ba when you were young.”

She clucked and poured water from an ancient, cracked rice bowl over his head. “Those old stories. I don’t know why you love them so much.”

“Please, Mama.”

It was the same story every time, told in the same way, in his mother’s soft voice. Doug Lim was a fast-talking Chinatown boy, one of the few born in Canada back then. He was the undisputed king of gin rummy and, many times, she saw him slam his fist on the table in victory as the cards flew up into the air and the glasses rattled. “Not everyone liked him, you know,” she said frowning. “Young men don’t like to lose all the time.”

During the long evenings of summer, Doug used to race his father’s produce delivery truck against the other boys’ faster, newer Chryslers and Fords, the cars bought by the fathers who had managed to finish school and worked as notaries or salesmen or hospital technicians. Doug didn’t win, of course, but the truck held up, never once spinning out of control or overheating in the sunshine.

“After I met him,” Danny’s mother whispered, scrubbing his back with a damp cloth, “I would tie my scarf around his arm and he would tell everyone, ‘This race is for Betty.’ Your father was very sweet then. He really wanted to marry me and have a son and daughter.” She tilted up Danny’s chin and said, “You should remember that and try to get along better.”

He saw his mother in a red circle skirt, hair combed up into a bouncing ponytail. He wanted to ask if she had ever looked like that, but was afraid that she never had, and he would be left with an image of a less wrinkled, slightly thinner version of the woman she was now. Danny tried to imagine his father walking down the street with his hands in his pockets, his hips tilted forward in a teenaged boy’s swagger, but all he saw was the same rounded, cranky man who ended up running a curio shop for the tourists he sneered at when they weren’t watching.

Maybe everything changed when he decided to marry Betty, who had arrived in Vancouver from Hong Kong at sixteen to join her father. Maybe Doug fell in love with her quietness, with her wide mouth and round, sad eyes. Maybe he wanted this life, and hadn’t fallen into it. Maybe, as a young man, he dreamed of having a little house like this one on Dundas, and maybe he didn’t mind saving eggshells for fertilizing the garden, or layering sweaters to save on the heat in winter.

She dried Danny off with a large blue towel, mercilessly rubbing under his armpits and around his ears. The mirror above the sink was fogged over and Danny thought he might choke on the heavy dampness in the air. He looked at his mother’s blurry reflection and imagined how beautiful she could look if she tried. She could wear some blush on her brown cheeks, even put on something with a low neck to show that she really was a woman underneath the shapeless cardigans and wool slacks. But he knew that if he even suggested it to her, she would knit her ungroomed eyebrows together and stare at him like she might stare at a two-headed cat.

“Have you heard enough for tonight?” Betty smiled, but her eyes didn’t change, didn’t crinkle up in mirth the way Cindy’s did when Danny made a funny face. “Was that a good story?”

As he pulled on his pyjamas, he nodded and said what he always did: “Yes, Mama. The greatest.”


The morning light hurt Danny’s eyes and he curled up in bed, the covers pulled over his face. He could hear Cindy’s voice, clear and shrill. “It’s Thursday, right? We’re going to help Ba at the shop today, right?”

The walls shook with his father’s shout. “Don’t you ever shut up? Every Thursday, it’s the same thing. Mama goes to clean the big house and you and your brother come to the shop with me. You know how it works, so stop talking. All I want is a little quiet to eat my goddamned toast.”

Then, silence. Danny felt sleep dragging him down, felt the warmth of his blankets pooling around his body.

His mother opened the door to his bedroom and put a hand on his forehead. “Are you feeling all right, Danny? It’s not like you to be late for breakfast.”

He peered up at her, his eyes rolling slowly underneath hot lids.

Doug’s face peered around the door frame. “Is he sick? I can’t have him spreading germs all over the shop.”

Betty turned and said, “But I have to go to work. He can’t stay home by himself.”

His father began walking away, toward the kitchen. “Then take him with you. It’s a big house. There has to be some place he can hide.”

His mother pulled the blankets down and helped Danny get dressed. Even the act of stepping into his pants pained him, made his joints shudder with the effort. She rummaged in the cupboards for some crackers and an apple and packed them in her purse. Holding hands, they hurried down the street toward the bus stop, where the sun pushed on Danny’s head and he shivered in the heat.

When they stepped off the bus, all Danny could see were the tall trees lining King Edward Avenue and the boulevard in the middle covered with grass. He stared, searching for one stray brown blade, but found only an even, unblemished green carpet.

As Danny and Betty walked up the street, they could see the house through gaps in the shrubbery. First the stone facade and double, panelled front door, then the high, peaked roof with the spinning, wrought-iron weathervane. By the time they reached the circular driveway, Danny’s hands had grown cold, and his mother folded the one she was holding into the pocket of her skirt.

He saw dark shadows moving behind the windows, changing shape as they flitted past each diamond-shaped, narrow pane. The stones flanking the front door seemed obscenely alive—bulging, round, pushing out of the walls before receding again.

They knocked on the side door and a broad woman with blond hair fading to white answered. She nodded at Betty before glaring at Danny, who peeked around his mother’s body.

“Why is he here?” she asked, in an accent Danny was sure he’d heard before, maybe in a movie.

Betty bowed her head before speaking. “He’s sick today, Mrs. Lehmann, and can’t stay at home by himself. I thought he could sit in the kitchen.”

Mrs. Lehmann wiped her hands on her apron. “Well, he can’t. What if he sneezes on the food? Better take him with you. The family won’t be home until suppertime.” And she walked away, her hips falling heavily as she stepped across the room.

Danny followed his mother from room to room, carrying her rags as she hauled the domed, shiny metal vacuum up the stairs. The children’s rooms were first, and Danny, careful not to touch anything, sat at their desks, his eyes wandering over model airplanes, a silver tray covered with hair ribbons and barrettes, stuffed animals arranged precisely at the foot of each bed. When his mother wasn’t looking, he traced his fingers over the wallpaper, the lions and tigers in the boy’s room, and Little Bo Peep with her herd of fat, fleecy sheep in the other.

The master bedroom was dark; all four of its windows were covered in thick purple curtains. When Betty pulled them open, Danny could see the mess: the unmade bed with sheets wrinkled and twisted, the water glass overturned on the nightstand, the clothes all over the floor, sleeves reaching limply out like empty skin. And the smell. Even Danny, with his stuffed nose, could detect that tang of bodies, of wine gone sweet as it slowly evaporated into the air, of expensive, ethereal perfume wasted on the stale, motionless air in this silent room.

His mother, her face screwed up, opened the windows before she began to clean, pausing long enough to pat Danny on the head and whisper in Chinese, “My boy would never be this messy. You’ll be the good kind of husband, won’t you? You’ll help your wife clean and not shout or argue. You’ll be the nicest man, Danny. I just know it.”

When they had gone upstairs to clean, Mrs. Lehmann had been kneading bread dough and listening to the radio. But in this bedroom, he couldn’t hear anything that would suggest there was another living creature inside this house; only the swish and thump of his own mother as she cleaned, and the shiver of leaves outside in the wind.

“Almost done, Danny,” Betty said, straightening up with her hand resting in the small of her back. “And then we’ll go home, have some cool noodles with cucumber.” She walked to the door beside the carved wood headboard and opened it.

Clothes hanging from racks on all four walls. Shoes arranged in rows on the floor, in shelves, even in drawers. A three-sided, full-length mirror and a hanging chandelier, the crystals sending out fragments of light, tiny rainbows that danced around the room.

“The lady’s dressing room,” Betty whispered as she pointed Danny toward a silk-covered stool in front of the mirror. “Pretty, don’t you think? All these clothes though. I have to put mothballs everywhere.” She smiled as she looked at Danny’s reflection. “I know what you’re thinking. So impractical. So silly. Right?” She paused as she looked at his wide-open eyes. “Don’t tell your father you were in here.”

He nodded absentmindedly as he stared at a row of evening gowns, the deep colours like jewels. Black, green, red, gold and silver. Danny wanted to bury his face in the skirts, tear the dresses off the hangers and jump into the silken pile on the floor. How would it feel if those long skirts were tangled around his legs, if he could run his finger along an expertly sewn seam? He could take one of these dresses home and keep it in his bed, where he could lie with it every night and dream that he was dancing in a ballroom, leading one of his paper dolls come to life. Afraid that he couldn’t control his own fingers, he sat on his hands and kept his eyes on his dull brown shoes, the laces knotted over and over again because his parents couldn’t afford to buy new ones. He told himself that he would be willing to miss out on another breakfast of congee instead if that would help save money.

As they were leaving, Mrs. Lehmann handed him a cookie in a paper napkin. “He looks pale, Betty. He’d better have something for the trip home. You were so quiet, Danny. I hardly even knew you were here.” She smiled down at him, showing the silver caps on her teeth and the deep wrinkles around her mouth. Danny smiled back, and wondered what the lady of the house looked like, whether she wore silk every day and how she arranged her hair. He bit into the cookie—thick, dense and gingery—and Mrs. Lehmann nodded kindly.

He fell asleep on the bus ride home, his fists covered by the sleeves of his thin jacket, his head resting on his mother’s arm. He dreamed that he was walking back toward the house and could see in the window the outline of a woman—curled hair, sharp shoulders protruding from a well-tailored dress. He called to her from the lawn and he swore that he saw the glint of her green eyes as she glanced at him through those tiny panes that distorted everything. Her shadow paused, as if considering this grubby little boy with the uncombed hair. He woke up to the bump of the bus and the odour of his mother, a smell like Comet and cooking oil, comforting but oh, so ordinary.


The last days of summer had crept up. Danny felt that autumn might arrive any minute and the long evenings would then recede, leaving the burning of leaves in backyards and the wearing of woolly socks in bed. Next week, school would start again.

On the way to the shop, Danny looked up through the open car window at the power lines, the crows sitting in a line, unruffled by the electricity pulsing under their feet or the wind blowing in from the west.

By ten o’clock, Cindy was dusting the shelves, carefully lifting and replacing the ceramic lucky cats, the small brass buddhas and the tea sets painted with cherry blossoms and bamboo. Danny saw her press her index finger to her upper lip, and knew that she was trying to contain a sneeze. Once, she coughed on a box of folded-paper fans and their father locked her in the storage closet for two full hours for contaminating the merchandise. “If you’re going to cough, you run outside first,” he shouted at her through the closet door. Danny could hear her sniffling (quietly, so Doug wouldn’t notice from his perch behind the front counter), but didn’t dare say anything. When she was let out, she simply sat on a stool at the back, rolling two metal worry balls in her hands.

Now, Danny unpacked a box of silk placemats, black with red Chinese characters that he couldn’t read. As he was pulling out the paper stuffing, his father snapped, “Stop throwing that on the floor. The garbage can is right there. Lazy.” Danny froze then hastily gathered up his mess.

The high, narrow windows in the backroom were open and he could hear the trucks that sped down the alleys, the sounds of men unloading crates of produce and pushing them along the concrete toward the back doors of the shops. He heard the cries of a colony of seagulls and, when he looked up, he watched the grey and white of their wings, the rapid flapping that meant they were fighting for the same piece of food, perhaps a glob of sticky rice or a squished banana. A conversation between two men floated in on the air and Danny, bored with the emptiness filling the shop, strained to listen.

“My wife wants to start her own produce store. Outside of Chinatown, she says, where people have money.”

“Yeah? What does she know? Does she know how to run a business?”

“That’s what I was thinking, but you can’t say those things to your wife. She might clamp those legs shut for a month.” Danny winced, but kept listening.

“You know, you can fix that sort of problem. Lots of girls around here willing to do what you need for a little bit of cash.” Both men laughed and the sound was distorted and ugly, like a radio whining between stations.

“I feel guilty enough going to see the strippers. But boy, some of those ladies can dance.”

“Have you seen the one they call the Siamese Kitten? Some legs on her. And she dresses up Chinese, so, really, it’s no different than being with your wife.”

“I wonder what she’d do for a little extra cash on the side?”

They laughed again and Danny stared at the empty placemat box. He wanted to run out the back door and throw garbage at these two men. Miss Val commanded a stage and wore satin. She could have been a movie star. What had they ever done? Slowly, as his anger cleared, he began to feel sorry for those men who spent most of their days staring at apples and wilted greens. They would never know the touch of Miss Val’s hand on their hair, never see her red lips break into a smile that, to Danny, meant love and caring and held a little bit of weariness. After lunch, the shop filled with tourists and he saw that his father was busy juggling three white families who all wanted to buy the last jade monkey on the shelf. Danny tiptoed through the store, careful to duck so that he was obscured by the shelves and customers, and hurried out the front door.

He knew where he was going; there was no question, really. He didn’t even look at the jars of candy in the newsagent’s window, or stop to say hello to Clarence, Mr. Ng’s son who helped his father change and clean the tanks in the fish shop. He headed a few blocks west, turned right and then right again into a familiar alley.

He stopped at a partially open grey door. He could see nothing from where he was standing, so he stepped closer until he could smell the cigarette smoke and hear, faintly, the tinny sounds of a piano being played with more force than finesse. Silently, he reached out and pulled the door open wide enough for him to slip through.

This had to be back stage; it was just like the auditorium at school. Danny could make out shapes hanging from the ceiling and stacks of boxes piled against the walls. He inched forward, his hands stretched in front of him until his eyes adjusted. Wires on the floor, coiling and stretching in all different directions. Sandbags weighing down ropes that hung from a catwalk above. To his left, a crack in the darkness. It took a few seconds until Danny realized that the sliver of light he was seeing was the narrow meeting place between two curtains. The stage curtains.

He desperately hoped that his shoes wouldn’t squeak on the floor as he walked toward the gap. His heart was beating like a rabbit’s, and his skin felt no thicker than a tissue. Every sound made him jump, but he kept walking. He stopped when he was behind the curtains at centre stage. The Siamese Kitten must be dancing steps away.

Taking a deep breath, he leaned forward and peered through the curtains. At first, all he saw were the lights—the bright spotlight, the other smaller lights in different colours suspended from the catwalk. But soon enough, he caught a glimpse of skin, the long, extended flesh of an arm, a glove being peeled off slowly, but not so slowly that the audience lost interest. He heard men whistling, could see one or two of them leaning forward in their chairs, their hands cupped around their mouths as they shouted toward the stage. “We want to see your fanny! Come on, give us a little bump and grind!” Danny was appalled. How could these men shout at Miss Val like that? Treating her like the bearded lady in a circus. How rude!

He pulled open the right curtain an inch so he could see Miss Val’s costume. He wondered if she wore the same clothes at every performance, or if she rotated, pulling out a blue gown for Tuesdays and a red cape for Fridays. He tilted his head until he could see her clearly.

But it wasn’t Miss Val. No, this was a different woman altogether, a woman with curly blond hair like Shirley Temple, a woman in a short, white dress with ruffles on the skirt and ankle socks and shiny black Mary Janes. In his surprise, Danny let go of the curtain and stumbled forward, just a step and a half, but it was enough.

The blond dancer’s head whipped around and her eyes narrowed as she spied Danny. He stepped behind the curtain, his breath coming sharply, his head turning left and right, his eyes looking for the quickest way out. As he was about to run off the way he had come, he heard her voice through the curtains.

“Kid, you’d best get out of here. The manager won’t like the looks of you.” She spun on her toes and glared through the crack before turning back to the audience with a wink and a smile.

The wisest thing, of course, would be for Danny to slip away as fast as he could, but he couldn’t resist leaning toward the curtain and whispering, “Where is the Siamese Kitten?”

The piano player pounded on the keys and, by the rise in volume, Danny knew this must be the climax of the act. He heard her shoes tapping on the floor.

“Val? I don’t know, kid. She stopped dancing at least a month ago, at the start of the summer. I heard she’s retired. Now scram before anyone catches on that I’m talking to someone back there.”

“But I wanted to tell her something,” he insisted.

The dancer pushed her hand through the curtains and waved him away, her fingernails—painted lavender and chipped on the sides—flicking the air. Danny stepped backward, then peered past her arm and into the crowd, hoping to catch a glimpse of Miss Val in the balcony or maybe walking up the aisle. The theatre was partially full and only the first eight rows were occupied. An old man, bald except for a tuft of white hair that stood up straight from the back of his head, leaned forward in his front-row seat, elbows on his knees, his face empty, his cheeks hollow like those of the toothless men who continuously drank coffee in Mr. Gin’s café. Behind him, a younger man with black hair combed away from his forehead tapped his fingers on the back of a seat. He seemed to be vibrating from head to toe while his squirrel-like amber eyes remained locked on the dancer. His nostrils flared a bit when she shimmied to centre stage and her skirt twirled upward. Danny shivered because he was watching a man watching a near-naked woman, which seemed naughtier than watching a naked woman all alone.

In the back, underneath the protruding balcony, a lone figure sat, half in and half out of the heavy dark. Danny squinted. There was something familiar in the way the head was tilted to the side, in the line of the shoulders leaning back in the red upholstered seat. An usherette in a red and gold hat shone a flashlight into the rows and the shadows disappeared for one second, long enough for him to see that the figure in the back with the small eyes wide open was someone he knew. His mother.

He opened his mouth to call out to her, but clamped it shut in anger instead. How could his practical, workaday mother be sitting here, in this place, where women were supposed to shine like stars or comets? What did she care for fancy clothes and fast music? He had come here to find Miss Val, to be dazzled and awestruck, and to be somewhere else besides the shop or their sad little house. He should run at his mother right now and tell her to get out. But then he remembered that he was supposed to be at the shop, counting his father’s inventory of teacups. If she saw him, she might tell his father and Danny didn’t need to hear any more shouting. He punched his right fist into his left hand and stomped into the darkness, shoulders quivering.

When he was past the sandbags, he stopped. Which way should he turn? A cool breeze blew past his left ear and he turned toward it, thinking he could smell the garbage cans in the alley outside. With every step, he felt the floor with the toe of his shoes, afraid there might be stairs or even a trap door that might drop him into the tunnels his father once claimed ran like rivers underneath the whole city. He shivered.

He was in a narrow hallway with a line of doors on each side. He looked up, down, in front and behind and still nothing looked familiar, only cramped and dim and strange. A triangle of light appeared at the end of the hall and Danny hurried in its direction, thinking it was sunshine. As he squinted through the dark he saw the light shimmer and gain shape, and he thought he saw a flash of green fabric and a sliver of cigarette smoke spill out into the hall. He heard high-pitched laughter and a crowd of ladies’ voices, each layered on top of another. “Miss Val,” he half called, “is that you?”

In the open doorway he stopped. Five heads turned and looked directly at him.

He stared at the women, at their bare legs and stockinged ones, the flesh spilling out over the tops of corsets, the shoulders sloped forward and criss-crossed with straps. He took a step forward and whispered, “Miss Val,” without really knowing which of the dancers he was talking to. He was sure he had seen her while he was running through the hall. Was that the Siamese Kitten’s dark hair? Or was it the bobbed head of his mother, shining in this room like it never had before?

The room was full, stuffed like the stockings that hung in the Woodward’s display windows every December. Elvis Presley blared out of a radio set on the concrete floor. To the right, pink, blue, striped and sequined costumes dangled from a wheeled rack. Two brassieres and one stocking were draped over a pipe heater. To the left, a table was piled with lipsticks and creams, perfumes and hairbrushes. And directly opposite hung six mirrors, each lit by one bare light bulb. Danny counted six chairs.

All Danny could hear was his mother’s voice, that singsong tone she used whenever she was trying to tell him something very important. “Remember,” she said to him yesterday, as she hurried him up the street on the way home from grocery shopping, “you must never wander off by yourself. Evil woman-demons are always looking for sweet little boys like you.” He frowned. He was quite sure no woman-demon ever put this much effort into making herself look pretty.

One of the women stood up. A black feather escaped from her headdress and floated through the air, catching the draft from the ceiling vent. Danny remembered how cold he was and rubbed his left arm with his right hand.

“What are you doing here?” asked the woman with the heavily lined eyes and Cleopatra wig.

“The Siamese Kitten,” he said, in a voice barely above a whisper.

“Are you looking for Val?”

Danny nodded. This dancer towered in her high heels, far taller than any woman he had ever seen. He could not see her face; instead, he stared at her black stockings and the feathers sewn into her romper.

“She left without much notice and didn’t say where she was going. Sorry, kid.”

He closed his eyes against the mirrors, the reflections that turned the five dancers into ten and then twenty and beyond.

“Did you come here all by yourself?” Danny felt the weight of her hand on his shoulder as he leaned against the door frame.

When he opened his eyes again, the women were crouching around him in a half-circle, so close that he could smell their skin, the dampness that collected in their belly buttons or under their arms. A ring with a purple stone flashed and he saw long fingers topped with bare ragged nails, the kind that have been chewed and chewed, the kind that picked dried food off dishes in scalding hot water.

He was silent.

“I don’t think he speaks much English,” one of the dancers said.

“He’s clearly lost,” said another.

Danny heard a giggle. “He’s cute as a button though. I could use him in the act. He could carry my train for me.”

“Watch out, that might be a hit. Some of those old guys out there like little boys more than they should.”

A storm of laughter erupted around him and he turned and ran out of the room, down the hallway, behind the stage and out the grey door.

Danny blinked at the bright afternoon light. He walked through the alley and around the corner, his head down so that all he saw were the colourless sidewalks, filmed with fine dirt brought in on the dry wind. He had to go back to the shop—there was no question of that—but he wanted to sit on the curb and feel the sun soak into his black hair until he couldn’t stand it any longer, feel the sweat that would inevitably drip down his spine and collect behind his knees.

He wanted to tell Miss Val all the things he had never told anyone else, about the secrets he had hidden under his bed, how his father was pleased with nothing, the time at school when he was picked last for the T-ball team and the other boys didn’t even look him in the eye, the way his mother smiled as if she had never learned what smiling actually meant. Once upon a time, he thought he could tell rich and jolly Uncle Kwan a secret or two, but after letting it slip that he would rather take tap dance lessons than play basketball, Uncle Kwan started to ignore him, and simply nodded curtly in greeting when they met. Danny ached when he thought of Miss Val. He wanted to burrow his head into her stomach, listen to the blood pumping through her body and twist his small fingers into the satin of her robe.

“It’s okay if no one understands you,” she might have said. “I do.”

After he nodded, she would continue, “We’re the same, you know. We grow up wanting something different, something beautiful and glamorous. Who cares about mops and peeling potatoes? Everyone else, they’re boring. We’re the fascinating ones. You’ll see.”

And he would know she was right. They were the exception, the two huddled in the corner when everyone else crowded into the middle. Maybe if he had found her, he could have gone home feeling newly empty and free. Another person would know his secrets and he could look at his soggy house and sullen family without feeling that he was brimming over with dangerous, hidden things. Then his father might love him and his mother could be happier.

Maybe she would have told him all about her own secrets too. He could grasp her hand and listen to the flash and bang and buzz of her life story, one that he imagined was filled with lights and clothes that shimmered in the dark. And he would try to learn from what she said, because she was the one person he had ever met who smelled and looked real but whose whole self was dripping with star quality. She was impeccable, but not so much that he couldn’t throw his arms around her waist and close his eyes against her belly. Maybe one day, he thought, I’ll be lovely and famous too.

But it was one foot in front of the other on these streets he knew so well that he could close his eyes and feel his way back to the shop through the soles of his shoes. He would never find Miss Val now. In an hour and a half, he would see his mother at home, trimming the ends off bok choy and slicing chicken into thin strips. He wanted to rush into the house and beat his fists into her stomach. He had been looking for Miss Val, not her. She was there when he woke up in the mornings, there as he fell asleep at night, shuffling down the hallway and cleaning the floors. Even now, she was there, sitting like a brown lump in a club that should have been full of women who were glittering and colourful. But as he came closer to the shop, he knew he wouldn’t say or do anything to betray where he had been. The truth meant trouble, so it would probably be an evening like any other: she would cook, they would eat and he would fall asleep. Except tonight, with his face turned toward his open window, his mind would churn because he knew Miss Val and his mother had set foot in the same place. His head ached with the strangeness of it all.