Chapter Text
Hoboken, New Jersey - 1969
“Hurry up! Hurry up!” Mrs. Mei Valentine called after her daughter, pushing through the crowded Hoboken Terminal towards the boarding PATH train. “ Aiya! We’re going to miss it!”
Mei Valentine was an expert at running in heels, Tiffany believed and was just as an expert at dodging crowds. She managed to wind her way through with such ease and urgency. Dressed in her starched, white nurse’s uniform and bright red overcoat, the one that made her look like Jackie Kennedy, she was a dash through the grey and dark coats of New Jersey residents returning from or heading to New York.
In one hand, Tiffany held onto the cherry danish her mother had bought for her, in the other Tiffany gripped her rubber book strap harder, praying to God that the buckle wouldn’t come loose and her school books would tumble through the station, trampled on and lost among work boots and high heels. It had happened before, and it could happen again.
“Watch it!” a woman exclaimed as the pile of books slapped against her thigh. Tiffany mumbled an “‘Cuse me” before she finally managed to catch up with her mother, who couldn’t grab her hand due to the cherry danish.
The mother and daughter managed to be the last two people to board the train before it rumbled out of the station towards Manhattan. By some luck, there had been two seats left open for them to sit down for the twenty-minute ride over the river from New Jersey.
“Today is our lucky day, huh?” Mrs. Valentine said, sitting down on the bench and motioning for Tiffany to follow suit. Tiffany pulled herself up onto the seat, setting her books next to her. It was early morning, but it had to be, to get through the hour commute from Hoboken to the Upper East Side, where Mama worked at a clinic and where Tiffany attended school.
The PATH train was the shortest part of their journey, around twenty minutes, but during that time, Tiffany made quick work of finishing her breakfast. They both had woken up much later than expected, and as a result, they barely had time to grab something to eat in the kitchen.
“Mama, do you want some danish?” Tiffany asked, holding up the half-finished pastry and thrusting it towards her mother.
“Careful, bao bao ,” Mama said. “You’re going to get cherry all over my uniform.”
“You’d look all bloody before you even do anything,” Tiffany understood, nodding. Mrs. Valentine ignored her daughter’s comment; Tiffany always would say off-kilter things. But she had a mother who was a nurse at an emergency care clinic and a father who enjoyed taxidermy - she was bound to have interesting things on her mind.
“You should eat. I’ll grab something during my break,” Mama said. She sighed and fetched her lipstick and mirror from within her handbag. Her gloved fingers made sure her updo had managed the sprint to the train before she did damage control on her lips.
Tiffany continued to eat the danish as she watched the train barreled through the tunnel, surrounded by brick walls. She knew that when they emerged from the train, that the sun would finally be rising, shining down on them as they hustled to catch the half-hour bus ride up Madison Avenue.
She wasn’t wearing any makeup, so after she had brushed off the crumbs of the pastry, she checked for orderliness in her circle plaid skirt and crinoline, made sure her bobby socks matched, and her Peter Pan collar set evenly. As she did so, even with the hum of the train, she sang softly to herself to her favorite song she had heard on the radio. “ I say a little prayer for youuuu . Forever, forever, you’ll stay in my heart. And I will love you, forever and ever, we never will part- ” She looked up to the advertisement plastered on the train.
“Mama?”
“Yes, my diamond?” Tiffany, of course, had been named for the jewelry store where Mei was employed as a maid while she was attending nursing school.
“Do you think we could go see Hello, Dolly this weekend?” It was the week before Christmas, and it was the one movie Tiffany had wanted to see.
It was their mother-daughter outing. Every Saturday, the two would walk the five blocks to the local cinema, and they’d see the matinee. They didn’t discriminate - romantic films to thrillers, lavishly costumed dramas, and big, sweeping musicals. Sometimes, they would share a bag of popcorn, and in the darkened movie theatre they’d lose themselves, taken far away from the trappings of Hoboken, New Jersey.
“Did you forget that your father and I have still grounded you?” Mama said, capping her lipstick and tucking it and the compact back in her purse. “After how you behaved at your birthday party?”
Tiffany had turned seven years old two weeks prior, and her parents had thrown her a birthday party with several of the neighbor kids who lived in the same apartment complex. She had received a bounty of toys and gifts - mostly dolls - but when another little girl had taken a turn with Tiffany’s new Chatty Cathy, dressed in Mod fashion, Tiffany lost it and bit the girl and pulled her pigtails. After Tiffany had been made to apologize and her mother-daughter Saturday outing had been canceled until further notice.
“I said I was sorry,” Tiffany mumbled, fidgeting with her petticoat underneath the edge of her skirt. The pair sat quietly as Tiffany peered around at the people on the train. She watched another mother-daughter pair from across the way, both with red hair and green eyes. Nobody on the train looked like Tiffany or her mother, but neither did anyone attending her public school in the Upper East Side.
Mama replied after a moment. “I’ll consider, if you don’t get yourself in any more trouble this week at school, then we can go to the movies.” It was Tuesday, so Tiffany had to be well-behaved for another three days.
“Next stop, 33rd Street,” the train conductor’s voice crackled through the speaker. Tiffany and her mother stood up, approaching the door for the train.
New York City at Christmas was something, and as Mei and her daughter journeyed through the streets to the bus. They passed by countless Christmas displays of department stories, lavishly filled with fake snow and glittery stars. Wreaths decked doors and the outline of lights clung to the frames.
Tiffany hoped there would be a New ‘N Groovy Talking PJ doll under the tree for her; it was what she had asked for, just as much as she had wanted the new Chatty Cathy. There was something so cool about dolls that talked, their articulation and phrases fascinating. Plus, Tiffany had several Barbies and while she liked how glamorous she was, there was something unique and well, groovy about PJ.
They walked efficiently to the bus, but they had to wait for their route. In the few minutes, they could stand, Mrs. Valentine, lit a cigarette. It was a cold day, so she shrugged her overcoat closer, but looked to her daughter, who hopped around, trying to keep warm.
“You should have worn tights,” Mrs. Valentine remarked, taking a drag of the cigarette.
“But they didn’t go with the outfit and they had a big hole in them,” Tiffany complained, continuing her hopping. “I thought you would understand.”
Thankfully, she didn’t have to keep hopping for very long before the bus pulled along the side of the road. Mrs. Valentine reached for Tiffany’s hand and they boarded the bus.
***
Because her mother worked, Tiffany arrived at school early and took part in the before-school program in the basement. But thankfully, she didn’t have to take part in the after-school program, spending more time with the other odd assortment of children whose both parents worked. Mama’s coworker, Isabel, got off early and picked Tiffany up to take her to the clinic’s office.
Isabel O’Sullivan was Tiffany’s favorite nurse who worked at the clinic, and she often was the one who was able to pick Tiffany up from school and walk her back to the clinic’s office to sit for a few hours before Mama was able to go home. She and Mama were kindred spirits, both immigrants who had married American men and had a love for fashion. Their friendship had been formed by the common language of admiring their overcoats and handbags and passing copies of Vogue between them.
Isabel had immigrated from San Juan, Puerto Rico when she was eighteen, meeting her older sister who had been in New York for five years. From there, Isabel was able to train as a nurse while her sister cooked for a restaurant that she eventually came to own in the Upper West Side. Tiffany had been there before, a few times after Mama’s shift, served savory arroz con gandules and perfectly flakey empanadas. Isabel eventually met her husband, Alfred, an Irishman who taught mathematics at Columbia, at a party. Despite this, she kept her job at the clinic because it filled her hours.
“Tiffany, mija !” Isabel called her name as the kids at P.S. 267 shuffled out for the day. Her voice was sweet as platanos maduros . She was wearing her heavy deep navy overcoat and black leather gloves with a matching pillbox hat pinned to her curly sandy hair. She was naturally blonde, or so she said, but the dreary days in New York had taken what the sun of San Juan gave her.
Tiffany skipped down the stairs. Isabel asked as she extended her hand so they could walk through the school rush and the regular New York buzz, “How did school go today?”
“Okay,” Tiffany breathed as she reached for Isabel’s gloved hand.
“No more trouble?” Isabel asked, looking seriously at her. Isabel had often had to stay outside the school up to half an hour, waiting for Tiffany to write something on the board, often for tussles with kids on the playground or for playing with a dead bird at recess.
“No!” Tiffany sang. And this time, it was honest. She had every intention to see Hello, Dolly! And even if she wanted to break David MacDonell’s pinch pot for scuffing her new shoes the other day, she simmered in anger and planned to find a better way to get even. “I was a good girl today.”
Isabel nodded as they began their walk to the clinic. As they walked, at a much slower pace than the hurry that Tiffany and her mother had to take, they could admire the shop windows. Between the school and clinic, there was a department store that boasted its homeware. The display was themed to Christmas, with an extravagant Christmas dinner set on the table and the mannequin wore a flashy green-and-red house dress as she held a holly-topped bundt cake. Tiffany pressed her hand against the glass as they stopped to look, staring intently at how the mannequin looked just about to set the cake down for her adoring mannequin family - a chiseled husband, and a freckled son and daughter.
***
The bus and train ride back to Hoboken was not as adventurous as it had been this morning, and Mama was mostly quiet, as she usually was after her long shifts, but she did respond when Tiffany asked her questions about her day at the clinic.
Tiffany always asked if there was anything that happened. She liked when her mother described the people who came in who had burned themselves or nailed their hands. Mei indulged her daughter in these stories. The girl was interested in her work and didn’t seem to flinch at the gory details of trauma medicine. Maybe she would follow her steps and become a nurse.
“I want to work with babies,” Tiffany would say. It made sense, since she always adored her dolls and, for all of her hostility towards classmates and friends who crossed her, she seemed to be very caring.
At dusk, the pair walked home from the train station, through the broad streets of Hoboken, to a corner apartment building, where the rooms were fairly cheap and the hallways always smelled of oregano and simmering tomato sauce, the comforts of Italian-American cooking. As much as Tiffany liked the hearty smell, the smell of home was unique to her, of brewing tea, the sweetness of ginger, of her mother’s herbal cigarettes.
On the stairwell, they found Tiffany’s father, sorting through the mail.
Tiffany’s father, George Valentine, was a man of little words. He was a tall man, with high cheeks and a strong nose. He worked as an auto mechanic at a little shop near the river, and always came home covered in oil and grease on his coveralls. He would come home at the same time as the rest of the family, but he always insisted, first thing after leaving his heavy work boots by the door and kissing both Tiffany and his wife, on taking a nap on the chair in front of the evening news.
In the background, Cronkhite repeated President Nixon’s plan to withdraw 50,000 soldiers from Vietnam. As Mama cooked, she put on the records of Teresa Teng in the kitchen and sang along to the bright and moody sounds of her pop music. Tiffany’s Mandarin was only adequate, so she would often hum along as she helped her mother measure things.
Dinner that night, as tired as her mother was, was Swedish meatballs with egg noodles. Not Mama’s specialty - that was always her dumplings and duck blood soup, the recipes of her Mama - but something Daddy liked and was right out of the Betty Crocker cookbook. But Mei always added a little something extra to the pork and the gravy that made the recipe used by all the other mothers in the apartment building her own.
After dinner, Mama smoked a cigarette as she watched Daddy grab the dishes and dump them into the sink. He’d come by and kiss her forehead before he went to work at cleaning everything up.
“Do you have a preference, mahjong or poker tonight?” Mama asked finally, extinguishing her cigarette. She dug through the bottom counter for either the chipped set of tiles or the worn-down poker chips and cards.
Mei was a prolific player of both, as well as bridge, going every Sunday into the city to Chinatown where she met her old friends from nursing school to play. Just as she was hoping her daughter would become a nurse, she was hoping that she would also pick up her favorite hobbies.
“Poker!” Tiffany exclaimed. They could get more games in playing cards, then having to set up the tiles properly for mahjong. She sat on her knees at the kitchen table, pressed against the plastic-covered cushion.
She looked up to across the tight kitchen and saw her father, working hard at scrubbing pots, listening to the mini radio as he worked. There was always a feeling that she should be doing it. “Daddy?” Tiffany asked. “Do you want help?”
“A woman spends all day over a hot stove, slaving away for her man. The least he can do is the dishes,” Mama said. She motioned to the bent pack of cards in front of her. “Come now, shuffle the cards.”