They filed out, leaving behind their gifts. Wu Chun-mei was the last to go. As she passed the stairway, she suddenly shouted upwards, ‘This is unfair! You are cruel and barbaric! I’ll tell my father.’
I collected my presents and mounted the stairs. Their bedroom door was wide open. Father summoned me in and ordered me to close the door. We three were alone.
‘Your Niang and I,’ Father began, ‘are very upset at your behaviour and your attitude. You invited your little friends here this afternoon, didn’t you?’
I silently shook my head from side to side in denial.
Father looked at my armful of gifts, some of them wrapped festively in brightly coloured paper and ribbons.
‘Put them on the bed,’ he ordered. ‘Open them.’
I hastily complied. We gazed at the motley collection: a Kung Fu novel, some comics, a Chinese chess set, packages of treats: beef jerky, preserved plums, watermelon seeds, sweet ginger slices, salted limes, peanuts, a sheet of calligraphy paper with the word ‘victory’ boldly and childishly stroked out with brush and ink, a skipping rope.
‘Pick up the whole lot and throw them in the wastepaper basket.’
I hurriedly carried out his command.
‘Why should your friends come here and give you gifts?’ Niang asked.
‘I suppose it was because we won the election today. I’m now class president. We worked hard at it…’
‘Stop bragging!’ Niang screamed. ‘How dare you! No matter what a big shot you think you are at school, you are nothing without your father. Nothing! Nothing! Nothing!’
Father said quietly, ‘Your Niang and I are specially upset that you tried to turn all your friends against us and plotted for them to come here to insult us.’
‘But I did nothing of the sort.’
‘Stop contradicting your father! You’re getting altogether too conceited! What are you? A princess of some sort that all your classmates should come here to pay you tribute?’
‘! Wu mei! (Fifth Younger Daughter!)’, Father added sadly, ‘we really have no choice. Jia chou bu ke wai yang (Family ugliness should never be aired in public). You’ve violated the trust we placed in you when you asked your friends to insult us.’
‘What’s going to happen to me?’ I asked fearfully.
‘We’re not sure,’ was Father’s cruel reply. ‘Since you’re not happy here, you must go somewhere else.’
‘But where can I go?’ I asked. I saw myself wandering aimlessly along the streets of Shanghai. I had seen abandoned babies wrapped in newspapers lying on the roadside and children in rags searching for food scraps in garbage cans. Some of the poor foraged the streets of our neighbourhood, the elegant Avenue Joffre, and were reduced to eating the bark stripped off the sycamore trees lining the boulevards. I was terrified.
I dropped to my knees in front of them, hoping to soften Father and mollify Niang. Instead, he said, ‘In these uncertain times, you should be grateful you have a home to return to and rice in your bowl every night.’
‘I am, Father.’
‘Apologize to your Niang.’
‘I apologize, Niang.’
‘You don’t know how lucky you are,’ Niang said. ‘You will move out of Aunt Baba’s room. You really should not speak to her again. She is an evil influence. She has spoiled you and nourished your arrogance and taught you to lie and cheat by giving you money behind our backs. Meanwhile, we will find you an orphanage until you are old enough to go to work and earn your own living. Your father has enough to worry about without bothering with the likes of you. That’s all.’
‘Thank you, Father. Thank you, Niang.’
I got up from my knees, cast a long glance at the wastepaper basket and went up to the room I shared with Aunt Baba, perhaps for the last time.
My eyes fell on the textbooks which I had laid out on my desk before I was summoned by the maid. There were compositions, history, maths, English and calligraphy to be done. With great determination, I set to work… and began to escape into my school world where the rules were simple. unchanging and fair, and Niang was not there to lord it over me.
My anguish subsided as I began to write. My nose stopped bleeding. My face no longer hurt. I saw only black words and numbers on white sheets of paper. The problems challenged and beckoned. The solutions soothed and gratified. I was in control of my own destiny. The completion of each assignment satisfied an emptiness within.
That night, after a dinner filled with foreboding and during which Father and Niang neither glanced at nor spoke to me, I went straight up to my room. Aunt Baba was out playing mah-jong. My homework was finished and I could think of nothing else to do. Despair began to creep in. Niang was about to wrench me away from the only person who loved me.
Hour after hour went by. I could not sleep. I crawled out of bed and sat on the top stair in the dark, listening for Aunt Baba’s footsteps. It was after eleven. Surely she would be home soon? I thought of running away and taking a train to the distant Sichuan Province, on the borders of Tibet. From my Kung Fu novels I had learned of Buddhist monasteries in the fabled E May mountains where monks prayed and practised the martial arts. Perhaps one of them would take me as an apprentice. I saw myself suddenly skilled in wu-shu, judo and karate, jumping over rooftops with ease, avenging the wrongs dealt out to those without hope…
I must have dozed off in the darkness, huddled against the banisters. I awoke in pain. The hall light was on. The hulking shape of Edgar towered over me. On his way to the bathroom, he had stumbled over my sleeping body. He was very angry.
‘What are you doing here in the middle of the night?’ he demanded. ‘You almost made me fall! You idiot! You’re always getting in my way.’
Sleepily, I rubbed my eyes. I thought safety lay in silence.
‘Hey, stupid! Answer me!’
Still I said nothing. Slowly, I started to get up. Viciously, he bent down, grabbed my arm and twisted it fiercely. I bit my lip to keep myself from crying. I stared at him defiantly, determined not to make a sound. ‘Answer me!’ he repeated as he twisted my arm even harder.
At that moment, James emerged from their room. Silently, looking straight ahead as if he had neither seen nor heard, he rushed past us into the bathroom; relieved himself without fully closing the door and went back to bed.
Edgar pushed me on to the floor and kicked me again and again. After he swaggered off, I ran into the bathroom and locked the door. One of his kicks had landed on my nose which was haemorrhaging briskly. I stared at my bruised and bloody face in the mirror, and suddenly began weeping uncontrollably while trying desperately to stifle my sobs so Edgar would not have the satisfaction of knowing that he had made me cry. Gradually the injustice of it all took hold and an all-consuming fury seized me. Finally, I heard Aunt Baba’s footsteps. It was almost one in the morning.
She only had to glance at me to understand everything. As I poured out my tale of woe, I could see from her expression that the evening had not gone well for her either. She was in a mildly depressed mood, usually brought on by an evening of steady losses at the mah-jong table. I told her I was planning to take the train to Sichuan Province and asked her to lend me money for the journey.
‘What a mixture of sense and nonsense! Sometimes I forget how young you are.’
I was in deadly earnest. ‘Trust me!’ I told her. ‘I won’t waste your money! I’ll learn everything and come back and make everything right. I’ll look after you and Ye Ye.’
‘Stop dreaming! You’ve been reading far too many Kung Fu novels. If you board that train you’ll most likely be kidnapped and sold as a ya tou (girl slave). Ye Ye and I will never be able to find you. Even here in Shanghai the police once found thirty missing children chained to the wall of a tin factory, half-starved and almost beaten to death. If they survived their childhood, they would be sold to brothels. Wu mei (Fifth Younger Daughter), you have to separate fact from fiction. Concentrate on the things you’re really good at. Get yourself the best educ
ation you can. Forget the Kung Fu masters and martial arts and all that foolishness.
‘As for your Niang, go to her tomorrow and swallow your bitterness. Knock on her door. Beg for her mercy. Tell her everything she wishes to hear. You know as well as I what you should say. What can we do? She has the money and the power. If necessary kneel on the floor and kowtow to her. Humbly beg her for your tram fare. If you do that, everything will be all right, you’ll see. Now get under the covers and go to sleep. You’ve got school tomorrow.’
I went under the covers but did not sleep. I could not bring myself even to think of surrendering. I soon heard Aunt Baba snoring gently. As the night wore on I became more and more determined not to give in, no matter how cruel the torture. Defenceless and armed with nothing but my resolve, I knew only that I had to do it this way while hoping that Niang would possess no weapon powerful enough to vanquish me.
CHAPTER 7
Yuan Mu Qiu Yu
Climbing a Tree to Seek for Fish
At the age of sixty-five, Ye Ye found himself without a penny to his name. Father made it clear that Ye Ye and Baba were to negotiate with Niang for their allowance. This was unheard of in a society where fathers-in-law hardly deigned to speak to their sons’ wives, let alone ask them for money. Besides breaking the Confucian bond of filial piety, Father was undermining Ye Ye’s self-respect. Gently but firmly, Ye Ye declined, telling Baba he had no intention of yuan mu qiu yu (climbing a tree to seek for fish).
Instead, father and daughter visited Grand Aunt at the Women’s Bank and Aunt Baba asked for her old job back. In the formal dining-room of Grand Aunt’s sixth-floor flat, they were treated to a scrumptious dinner featuring Ye Ye’s preferred Ningpo delicacies. The menu included steamed crabs and yellow fish noodles, shark’s fin dumplings and fresh shrimps with peas, tender bamboo shoots and anise-flavoured pork. This was followed by three well-loved desserts: glutinous rice balls with sesame paste, ‘eight precious’ pudding and crabapple mousse. Mellowed by cups of warm rice wine, brother and sister sang some arias together from their favourite operas. Since escaping from Tianjin twenty months earlier, Father had been hiding out from the Japanese by secretly ensconcing himself in Grand Aunt’s penthouse during office hours. Many of his financial coups were carried out through her bank in her name. She knew better than anyone else how much money Father was making. She now extolled his accomplishments to Ye Ye and Aunt Baba. Fearing a loss of face, Baba did not mention the true reason behind her request. To protect his son from public censure, Ye Ye had bidden Aunt Baba never to reveal the truth.
Between father and son, the subject of money was never discussed again. Aunt Baba returned to work. On pay days, she took her salary in cash and placed half the bank notes in the upper left drawer of Ye Ye’s writing desk. This was the only money Ye Ye had at his disposal to make his modest purchases of candies, tobacco and Chinese herbs, to visit a doctor, have a haircut, eat at a restaurant or buy his grandchildren an occasional toy.
They lived in an atmosphere of constant uneasiness. Niang made it all too clear that they were there on sufferance. For the sake of appearance she always showed them a smiling face but they sensed the contempt beneath the mask. Far from enjoying a dignified and peaceful retirement, Ye Ye was given a roof over his head, three meals a day and nothing else. Father never visited the second floor. When Niang entertained at home, Aunt Baba and Ye Ye were expected to stay upstairs in their rooms, just like the rest of us stepchildren. The servants took their cues from the mistress of the house: those favoured by Niang turned bold and insolent.
For Ye Ye, life became increasingly lonely. Although visits from friends were not forbidden, Niang succeeded in making them feel so uncomfortable behind a veneer of politeness that they gradually ceased coming altogether.
He spent his time reading and practising calligraphy. Once he wrote the character ren (endure). He instructed Aunt Baba to study the word. ‘Divide ren (endure) into its two components, top and bottom. The top component, dao, means knife, but it has a sheath in the centre of the rapier . The bottom component, xin means heart. Combined together, the word is telling us a story. Though my son is wounding my heart, I shall ensheath the pain and live through it. To me, the word ren (endure) represents the epitome of Chinese culture and civilization.’ Aunt Baba looked at the word and saw the pain and fury evident in each stroke of the brush. Ye Ye did not display his beautiful calligraphy on the wall for fear of offending Niang.
My elder sister Lydia did not excel in school. With her handicapped left arm, her prospects were not promising. Father and Niang feared for her future. They decided to arrange an early marriage. On their next visit to Tianjin they took Lydia and introduced her to Samuel Sung.
Samuel was the younger son of our family doctor in Tianjin. He was a graduate of the University of Tianjin with a degree in engineering. He taught for a few years and then obtained a master’s degree from Purdue University in Indiana. In 1948, he returned from America and was looking for a wife. He was already thirty-one years old, three years older than Niang. He was five feet three inches tall, had a large, rapidly balding head, small, shifty eyes and eyebrows that pointed upwards, giving him a somewhat sinister appearance. His lips were tilted lopsidedly in a perpetual half grin. Though not exactly an oil painting, he was soft-spoken and well educated.
I remember Lydia talking happily about her impending marriage to Samuel and doodling her future married name of Mrs Samuel Sung over and over on a sheet of paper, in English and Chinese.
Many years later, Lydia gave this version of events leading to her engagement which painted a very different picture.
When I was seventeen Father called me to their bedroom to have a long talk with me. They told me to go in front of the mirror and look at myself. When I did not understand what they meant (because I looked every day at the mirror and did not find anything unusual), they asked me to look closely at my left hand, which was deformed due to Erb’s palsy and which I thought was not my fault.
Father said, ‘You are now reaching the age of marriage and we have found a very good man for you. It is really for your own benefit for the future, because now is a good chance, and if you do not get married when you are still young, you will certainly be another spinster in the family and we will not let such a thing happen. And this is final.’
Their words were like a thunderbolt to me and I felt terrified, miserable and at a loss as to what to do or think. For I had never even thought of marriage at seventeen. Instead, I admired some of my classmates who were going for further studies abroad. I could do well because my English was good. Nobody ever told me anything about sex or love. But I was to do what I was told or else I would be sent to a convent to become a nun for the rest of my life. I can still remember Niang’s cold voice in my ears: ‘I’m not going to keep another old maid in my house! What do you expect? We’ll certainly send you behind closed doors in a convent if you do not act as you’re told. And we’ll be good to you if you obey!’ This made me realize that I was really surplus and unwanted. When I looked in the mirror I saw that I was truly not very good-looking with a handicapped hand. Though I was then unaware that every child has rights which include that of education and the choice of her own spouse, still I had a strong impulse to rebel against their selfish tyranny. I went to Ye Ye and Aunt Baba for help. They told me they could do nothing because first of all I was Father’s child and secondly they themselves were dependent on Father for a living.
At the age of seventeen, I was naive and puerile and trusted Father entirely, thinking that his decisions must be best for my future. Only later when he sent all my brothers to England to study did I realize that I had been a fool. I felt so wretched and depressed for having submitted to their mean plot of shifting their burden to someone else. I hated them for discriminating against me when all the time I had trusted Father completely. Looking back, I think Father had the feudal idea of male supremacy.
According to Lydia, Niang practically forced her to m
arry Samuel by reminding her that Father had seven children to support and she was the oldest. Since it would be difficult to get a job with her crippled left arm, there was no point in wasting money on a college education. ‘If you marry Samuel,’ Niang told her, ‘Father will give you a dowry.’ Under this pressure, Lydia gave in.
They had a big wedding in 1948 with over five hundred guests, all Chinese. Two popular radio comedians were engaged as masters of ceremony. Months before the wedding, gifts arrived at our house and were carefully sorted out. The best ones were kept by Niang.
My three brothers were ordered to have their heads cleanly shaven for the occasion. They were dressed in long, traditional Chinese gowns. Franklin wore a well cut, tailor-made western suit and his hair was fashionably styled and waved. Susan attended in a frilly lacy satin dress.
During the ceremony and for days afterwards my brothers, the three light bulbs, were mercilessly teased by their peers. Father’s friends remarked on the unequal treatment of the two sets of children by his two wives.
As promised, Lydia was given a dowry of 20,000 US dollars, an enormous sum in those days. She and Samuel moved directly to Tianjin after the wedding and lived with Samuel’s parents. I was not to see them again for thirty-one years.
After Japan lost the war, Father reclaimed his businesses and properties in Tianjin. He and Niang were frequently away visiting them. The boys increasingly asserted themselves during our parents’ absences. I remember them flirting with some girls who lived immediately behind us across the alleyway, using rubber-banded slings to catapult ‘airmail letters’ wrapped around hard candies from the rear window of their bedroom.
Gregory was tired of his daily breakfast of congee and preserved vegetables. One Sunday morning, when Father and Niang were away, he strode purposefully into the kitchen. As shao ye (young master) of the house, he demanded eggs for breakfast. Cook demurred, protesting that there were not enough eggs. Whereupon a determined Gregory searched the larder for himself. He found sixteen eggs which he deliberately and systematically broke, one by one, into a large bowl. He then made himself a giant sixteen-egg omelette for breakfast, relishing every bite until his plate was empty.
Falling Leaves Return to Their Roots Page 8
