by Sky Lee
And Mui Lan’s nightmare was loneliness. She arrived and found only silence. A stone silence that tripped her up when she tried to reach out. Gold Mountain men were like stone. She looked around for women to tell her what was happening, but there were none. By herself, she lacked the means to know what to do next. Without her society of women, Mui Lan lost substance. Over the years, she became bodiless, or was it soulless, and the only way she could come back was by being noisy and demanding—because if nothing else, she was still the boss’s wife, wasn’t she?
Nowadays, people were just plain malicious! Gossip! Chinatown was always full of gossip. Her own restaurant reeked of it. Too many idle loafers! She of all people should know. They were always there, all too anxious to size her up. She felt pinned to the wall, like the unpaid bills. Frustrated, Mui Lan sighed, not too noticeably, yet the few scattered men sitting at the shiny counter in front of her stopped to stare, their smouldering cigarettes poised in mid-air. They made her feel like squirming, but that would have been very poor behaviour for a woman. She touched her bun again, as if needing reassurance that the knotted silver hairpin holding it in place was still there.
“Back home in the village,” she suddenly heard herself lash out at more than one tired ear, “there were at least customs and traditions which held people in check. There was an established way of life, and one hardly ever heard of a girl going astray, or a boy who didn’t at least know his duty. But here, in this wilderness, even the tang people lose all sense of right from wrong!”
What did it matter whether they listened or understood? She owned the restaurant! She glowered at the patrons who didn’t so much as grunt a response, so used were they to her quarrelsome ways. Mui Lan knew that she wasn’t the easiest person to get along with. Managing a large restaurant such as Disappearing Moon called for a hard nose and a sharp tongue. In fact, she’d be the first to admit that she’d been losing patience too much lately, with customers and workers alike, but if she didn’t keep an eye out, they’d rob the “pea-pods along with the peas,” so to speak.
Her husband certainly couldn’t be relied on. Left to his own devices, Wong Gwei Chang would let his business be eroded in no time into bankruptcy by petty thievery and laziness. Mui Lan often wondered how he’d got along before she came. He was too easygoing.
“Leave it alone!” he’d say when a few bags of rice went missing.
“Never mind!” when waiter number five’s gambling buddies ate a free meal.
They stood together as husband and wife, but they weren’t close. Too many years apart after a brief marriage ceremony in the village between two shy, shuffling strangers who saw more of their new shoes than each other’s faces. After six months, the Gold Mountain guest was gone, and she was pregnant. The next time she saw him, they were both too old to start again.
Secretly, she had hoped for not exactly more love as the years passed but for perhaps more of a mutual understanding. However, nothing turned out as she had hoped. Frankly, even after twenty-eight years of a marriage as hollow as hers, Mui Lan felt she should know a man better than she did him. However, no fancy red wedding bow, no matter how long the ribbon, could stretch over both decades and oceans. She was simply the mother of Gwei Chang’s only son. Stamped on her entry papers: “A merchant’s wife.” A wife in name only, she relied heavily on him for her identity in this land, even though the hard distance remained on her husband’s face. And this she could only bear in silence.
She had Choy Fuk though, and she kept herself busy, adjusting her boy, then sixteen years old, to a new life in this strange outpost community. Before long, she found other interests. She found she was very good at a lot of things, especially good at making money.
At night, after she finally turned off the restaurant’s lights and locked its doors, and even the late-night laggers had reluctantly left to crawl into their dismal bunkbeds, she’d finalize the daily accounts with the old man. She insisted that he be there, to witness. He’d sit across the table from her, waiting, smoking a cigar butt with his eyes half-closed. Mui Lan enjoyed adding up the day’s take, energetically organizing the money into neat rubber-bound bundles. She considered it the most important task of the day. Sometimes, not very often, there would be the odd, slow day and then she wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation to wonder what her husband dreamt about in that semidarkness just beyond the range of the dangling light bulb. She knew it wasn’t money.
If Mui Lan had any message of domestic importance to convey to her husband, she’d choose this moment of quiet privacy to speak to him. A few nights ago, she had suddenly snapped the last rubber band with a loud crack as if to signal the old man to pay attention. Then she had addressed Gwei Chang in a very businesslike manner.
“Husband-ah, we need to have a few words,” she began.
Conversations between the two were both brief and few, so if he was surprised, he didn’t show it. The chair beneath him groaned a little, and he took his cigar out of his mouth. He snorted a weak reply, rather perfunctorily, Mui Lan imagined. She immediately began to feel a little annoyed, although she did not dare show it. She settled her stonelike stare onto his dark silhouette and decided that she would not speak until he at least presented his face to the light.
When he did lean forward, he asked, “Everything at home all right?” He looked at her with a steadfast gaze. At fifty-four years old, Gwei Chang was still a handsome man, the edges of his face smooth and rounded with an easy sense of age and power.
“Fine, fine,” she answered tersely. She found she had to look away. “No, it’s the same concern I’ve had about Choy Fuk and Fong Mei for a long time now.”
“Ahh . . .” Gwei Chang receded into the darkness. This time, she left him there, and went on.
“You and I are getting on in years,” she said. “The longer we wait, the more I worry. Those two married over five years, and still no baby—not even a girl! There’s something dreadfully wrong.”
“You’ve done all you could. What else is there? The rest is up to the young people,” his voice sagging under the weight of all the number of times he’d had to hear about this pesky subject.
“Bah, that’s crazy!” she retorted furiously. “If we left these important matters to young people, there wouldn’t be any results for ten thousand years. The Wong name would be dust. Is that what you want?”
The old man sucked on his cigar butt—short, disconcerting puffs. But he let her go on. Who could do otherwise when Mui Lan spoke so convincingly of the possibility of ten thousand years of desolate wandering for his untended soul? Of course, she was in the right. He’d been feeling far too happy and prosperous these days. A grasping woman, Mui Lan had a way of gripping the life out of happiness. He was always careful not to show her his. But Gwei Chang should have been expecting that her flailing temper would again splay open the flesh of their daughter-in-law, Fong Mei.
“And are we to lose face on account of one no-good female-bag?” Mui Lan’s lower lip jutted across the table, with chin pointed at her shadowy foe. “And how am I to find peace in that stinky she-dog, barren as a dried twig! We spent a fortune to bring her over here! Who’d have thought we’d have such luck! I looked so thoroughly into her family background! Her own sister already had three sons and another on the way. Now, I ask you, where are we to find another woman in this backwash bush? How will we get another through immigration with those devil authorities treading on the tang people’s heads all the time?”
Gwei Chang stopped puffing and began to eye her very suspiciously.
“What are you up to?” he abruptly cut in, with a menacing tone of voice. Mui Lan could not smother the icy scowl in her eyes so she kept them downcast.
“Well . . .” she began to feel the ground crumble beneath her, “if she can’t do justice to our family name, then another woman will . . .”
“There’ll be no more of that kind of talk!” Gwei Chang declared, smacking the back of one hand against the palm of the other for emphasis.
“Our son’s wife has already been chosen! That was your woman’s business! Babies, grandsons—those are your woman’s business too! I try not to interfere with what is woman’s business, but I won’t stand by to watch this one. We’re not in the village any more! Those old-fashioned ideas don’t work here. Take a look around you! All these Gold Mountain men who don’t even have one woman. And now, Choy Fuk can’t get by without two!”
“How do I face people if I let her put on such airs?” There was a slight sneer to his voice. Angered, he brushed her aside by pretending she wasn’t even there. His words were no longer addressed to her.
“After thirteen years in this land, she still doesn’t understand the people here.” Then he paused to let her think about that one. “Bringing in another wife for him is impossible anyway. There’s a new Chinese Exclusion Act. What does she think all that fuss is about? The government is saying no more chinese immigrants! In fact, they’re looking to shovel us all out.” Suddenly, he was calm again. That he had total authority would never be an issue for the patriarch, but he still added meanly, “Open your eyes, old woman. If you’ve made a mistake, don’t embarrass me by flaunting it! ‘The marriage was predestined, no objection can prevail,’” he closed with an ancient quote.
That night, Mui Lan had to turn away to conceal her bitterness. Stupid old man, she thought venomously, cares more for what coolie labourers think than for his own family’s good fortune! If it hadn’t been for me, where would he be?
MY DUMB great-granny! I don’t know why she wasn’t asking more relevant questions, like where does one go for comfort and relief from such a barren life? But there probably were no halfway houses for women, no places to hide out from a rocky marriage. Ejected from a cloister of women into the stony society of Gold Mountain men must have been a bit like being smashed against a brick wall. She wouldn’t have known what had shattered her. It wasn’t just that my great-grandmother was pathetic—she became a tyrant. Having never been in control of her own life, she suddenly found herself in charge of many people’s lives. Frustrated and isolated from the secluded life she understood, Mui Lan had to swallow bitterness, so she made her suffering felt far and wide. I should understand that impulse to splatter pain as far away from oneself as possible; and she didn’t much care whom it soiled either.
Besides, her motives were ordinary enough. She wanted a grandson to fulfill the most fundamental purpose to her life. A baby with a brow as clear and as promising as his future. A little boy who came from her son, who came from her husband, who also came lineally from that golden chain of male to male. The daughters-in-law who bore them were unidentified receptacles. From her husband’s side, Mui Lan would certainly claim a share of that eternal life which came with each new generation of babies. What could be more natural, more ecologically pure?
I should re-examine my own motives. Why do I need to make this ancestress the tip of the funnelling storm, the pinnacle that anchored chaos and destruction close to earth? Why do I need to indict her? Why not my grandmother, say? Both are dead. Actually, both are to blame (if you like that kind of thing), but since I’ve landed up paying dearly for their deeds, and I know of others who’ve paid with their lives, isn’t it my privilege to assign blame, preferably to the one I understand the least, the one farthest away from me and from those I love?
WONG CHOY FUK
1924
When Mui Lan heard, “A Maah,” she was probably comforted enough anyway. Her son, Choy Fuk, now twenty-eight years old, walked through the same doors by which the laundresses had left a few minutes ago. He spied his mother perched on a tall stool behind the till at the front of the cafe, looking much like a ruffled hen, dressed in black wool, bright beads for eyes on a powdery white face. Behind her, the sun shone brilliantly through the window with its painted sign, onto the huge pots of prickly cactus plants displayed on the window shelf.
Disappearing Moon was divided into two front sections, with the kitchen and the storeroom at the back. The dining room was the largest in Chinatown, perhaps the most beautiful in all of Vancouver, with its teak carvings on the pillars and gateways. The rich dark-blood of the rosewood furniture was enhanced by the tangled emerald-green of the ivy foliage. Cultivated jade trees, with leaves like precious stones, overflowed the dragon pots. On the walls, long silk scrolls of calligraphy sang out to those patrons who could read them. It was a nostalgic replica of an old-fashioned chinese teahouse, which accounted for its popularity not only amongst its homesick chinese clientele but also outsiders who came looking for oriental exotica.
However, Choy Fuk liked the more modern counter-and-booth section better. He loved the highly polished chrome and brightly lit glass, the checkerboard tiles on the floor, the marble countertop. And except for the customers, his mother, and perhaps the cacti, there was nothing chinese about it.
Immediately he headed over to the glassed-in icebox for a helping of sweet milk pudding. Unlike his father, whom life in the west had hardened and tanned, Choy Fuk was small of bone and pasty of face. They had the same easygoing personality, although his stemmed more from a lack of need and soon shifted into laziness, whereas his father’s had been tempered by hardship into a tolerant and relaxed way.
Luckily for Choy Fuk, laziness was good for business. His shortcuts saved money. Besides, he could always rely on his best buddy, Ting An, to bail him out whenever necessary, especially where his old man was concerned. Mostly, Choy Fuk and his father got along because Gwei Chang never paid very much attention to his son.
As his mother had said often enough, sixteen was not a good age to disrupt a young man’s life. Had he come here at a younger age, Choy Fuk would have grown to love his father and would have emulated his ways more. Or, at a later age, a lot of his teen-aged tomfoolery would have passed like a light tropical shower, drying up quickly in the more restricted life of the village.
As it was, from the time Choy Fuk stepped off the boat, he felt indifferent to his impenetrable father, who spent his time huddled around the back dining-room tables in a tight clique of old men muttering softly about hard times and the old days. Choy Fuk made lots of friends as well, but his gambling joint buddies were brash and crude, and much less cliquish. The more swearing and cussing, the more disgusting their drunken behaviour, the more Choy Fuk enjoyed his friends’ foul ways.
And he himself was amazingly quick to shed his bumpkin ways in favour of a more cocky western style, complete with sennit straw hats, narrow-shouldered jackets and starched high-collared shirts. These, he felt, were more appropriate for his position as the heir of a well-to-do businessman.
Mui Lan had once hoped that bringing over a wife for Choy Fuk would make him lose interest in his trashy friends. Then what would he have in common with those hooligans? But that hadn’t worked out. She blamed Fong Mei for this, of course. The girl wasn’t devoted enough to her son, even though Choy Fuk seemed quite fond of her—but how could he, the dear boy, be expected to keep track of the real reason for her keep!
“Ahh, you’re back, son!” she greeted him enthusiastically.
“Hai-le, Maah,” he answered her with a milk-filled mouth.
“Did you deal with that no good iceman?”
“He say no candoo, Maah!”
“Paahh!” she spat viciously. “That dead white devil! Cheating us all these years! Selling us tang people the leftover ice for full price. I’m sick of it!”
Sometimes, for Choy Fuk, a simple talk with Mui Lan could turn into a very eerie experience. She was his mother all right, but he could never be sure where exactly he stood with her. Inwardly, he trembled like a leaf in her presence. Like any other village type, she could shriek, cackle and swear with the best of them. In their neighbourly gossip from house to house, across the alleys, over blackberry bushes, up to third-floor windows, they didn’t care how salty their language or who overheard them. Yet, when Mui Lan turned truly angry, her whole demeanour changed. Her face froze like white porcelain. Her voice lowered until it was almos
t inaudible, and she spoke in a slow deliberate monotone, with terrifying conviction.
“If that sonovabitchee,” she continued, “doesn’t want our business, then he doesn’t want any of Chinatown’s business. Yuen Fong, Yip Hay—all those stores. You go to all those places! Go to Japantown even! You and me . . . we’ll figure out a way to bypass that ‘no candoo’ and get more for our money even. There’s that little italian iceman. He can supply all of us if you make a special deal. You go talk english to him!”
As she spoke, Choy Fuk watched her very warily. Her eyes darted from here to there, and he knew they weren’t seeing too clearly.
“Aww Maah, why don’t you send Ting An?” He deliberately broke the spell. From far away in the kitchen he heard the sound of glass shattering. Sure enough, cursing and loud arguing ensued between the cooks, blaming each other for causing such a bad omen, and it still morning.
Mui Lan leaned anxiously over him as he resumed his spooning. “Why do you talk like that? Are you farting through your mouth? Ting An is not the boss! You should be! We’ve spent a lot of money to send you to learn good english . . .”
“A Ting is native-born. He knows how to deal better with ghosts.” Choy Fuk began to wipe his mouth, but his mother automatically grabbed a damp counter-cloth and started dabbing at the pudding that had strayed down the front of his starched shirt.
“No matter,” she snorted in disdain. “This business is your business, not Ting An’s. He’s just another worker . . . Choy Fuk-ah,” his mother’s voice shrank to a murmur, her hand still clutching his shirt, “you must learn to be your father’s right-hand man. A Ting is just a nameless nobody who’s been trying to get in good with your father. I know, I’ve been watching him all these years.”
