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people live there, so I guess so,” she replied.
    “Cripes!” Ruby exclaimed.
    I shook my head in disbelief. The population of San Francisco’s Chinatown was ten times that, and the larger city surrounded it.
    “I’ve never been to a place where you couldn’t get Chinese food.” After a pause, I asked, “Didn’t your mother make it?”
    “No.”
    “That’s shocking!”
    Grace put her purse on the floor.
    “My mother says you must never do that,” Ruby chastised.
    “Mine too,” I agreed. “Do you want all your money to run out of your purse?”
    Grace blushed and quickly set the purse back on her lap. “We don’t have that custom in Plain City,” she said. After an uncomfortable silence, she added, “You haven’t told us anything about you yet, Helen.”
    “I grew up a block from here,” I answered. “Baba’s in the laundry business—”
    Grace brightened. “My family has a laundry too.”
    “My father doesn’t run a laundry.” That came out haughtier than I intended, and I could see the change in Grace’s expression. I tried again, flecking my voice with jasmine petals. “My baba is a merchant.He sells supplies to laundries: claim tickets, washboards, irons. Things like that. Not just to the mom-and-pops in this city, but to laundries all around the country.”
    The whole time I spoke, I searched Grace’s face. She’d pulled away, but the look in her eyes! Her family’s laundry was probably some little hole in the wall in that dinky town of hers.
    “My parents are very traditional,” I continued. “Filial piety begins with serving your parents, which leads to serving the emperor (in our case, the president), which ends in establishing your character.” Apparently, Grace wasn’t familiar with that aphorism either. “I wasn’t allowed to take dance classes, as you know. My brothers and I could speak only Chinese at home. I wasn’t permitted to play on the street or in the park. I’ve never had a girlfriend. I’ve never even had a girl from school come to my house.”
    “I’m practically in the same boat friend-wise,” Grace admitted.
    We glanced at Ruby. She lifted a shoulder. Agreement?
    “I have seven brothers, and my dad wished for an eighth son,” I told them. “He hoped to get the sound ba —for eight , which sounds the same as good luck . He wanted to walk through Chinatown and have everyone recognize him for his successful business and his eight sons. Instead, I came along and ruined everything.”
    The waiter set down three bowls of steaming soup noodles. Ruby and I picked up our chopsticks and used them to bring the long noodles to our lips.
    “Mama had eight children in ten years,” I picked up after the waiter left. “She kept trying for an eighth son, but after me she only had miscarriages and stillborns. It’s hard for girls like us. Boys can go to college, but Baba says, ‘A woman without education is better than a woman with education.’  ” Neither of them seemed to recognize the Confucian saying. “We also aren’t allowed to drive. We shouldn’t show our arms. We can’t show our legs. We’re supposed to learn to cook, clean, sew, embroider—”
    “Then how can you dance now?” Grace asked, fingering herchopsticks. “Didn’t you say you can’t do anything in Chinatown without people finding out about it?”
    “And what about your brother?” Ruby chimed in. “Won’t he tell?”
    I had to think about how to answer them. Today was my first foray into the world of lying. Tell the truth, but not too much of it .
    “If Baba finds out, I’ll be in real hot water,” I answered at last. “But Monroe won’t tell on me, because he wants to change his life too. He’s studying to be an engineer, but he’s worried he’s going to end up working as a janitor or a houseboy. Something like that happened to another of my older brothers. Jackson was the first in our family to go to college. He graduated two years ago—one of twenty-eight