by Sky Lee
(The letter, carefully preserved all the years, is unmistakably tear-stained.)
“Now, I wouldn’t be able to claw my way home as a beggar. I’m lost among strangers, with ‘no road and no destination.’ There’s no one to turn to, and I think of home constantly. I’ve forgotten why I ever wanted to come to this forsaken place . . .
“There, I’ve cried my unhappiness out. I’ll continue with this letter and follow the advice of this poem:
I will swallow my tears,
and pretend to be happy.
Deceit. Deceit. Deceit.
“The marriage ceremony was western style, and so incredibly opulent. The gold I received weighed so heavily on my chest that I could barely catch my breath. And so many guests—forty tables if I remember right. People told me it was one of the largest ever on Tang People’s Street. So many people staring and staring at me. They watched me and talked about me. ‘Look,’ they’d say loud enough for me to hear, ‘look at the beautiful bride!’
“Everyone was in fact being formal and polite. Remember at home the grownups used to really tease the bride, embarrassing her with lewd comments until she broke down in tears? Girls can’t bear to hear such talk, yet it’s more bearable when it’s just our own close kin, don’t you think? Here, everyone was full of compliments, but this made me even more uncomfortable, as though I was being scrutinized all the more severely. At first, I couldn’t understand why I could hardly bear to be standing before these strangely aloof people. Each moment seemed endless. I thought it was the white bridal gown, with its flimsy veil. I couldn’t hide my face, so now I know the embarrassment in being a ‘barefaced bride.’ In that way, the old-fashioned red silk veil had more compassion for us. I tried to be modern. I smiled and I tried to be brave, until I slowly realized that except for the pitiful handful of women who attended me, all the rest of the guests were men.
“I tried so hard, but my dearest love, it was the most terrifying night in my entire life. Tell me, Sister, why did I have to marry at all? What is a husband to me? Why did I have to come to this place full of risks and dangers? Oh, why couldn’t I have stayed with you forever? Have pity on me, dearest! I am so miserable that as soon as I’m alone in the toilet chamber, my tears flow endlessly. My new family must wonder why I spend so much time in there. But you see, even at night and in my sleep, I must be on my guard. There’s a strange man in my bed now . . .” (The letter dissolved.)
My great auntie became extremely concerned. She wrote back immediately, on the twenty-first day of the third month of the lunar calendar, in the ninth year of the Republic.
“A woman,” she wrote, “whether married in the next village five li away, or across the ocean ten thousand li away, is just as foreign to her maiden family. This is the way of women. She doesn’t retain ties to her childhood past. Your own mother would be shamed and laughed at if she lifted a finger to care for her own daughter’s children. People would say, ‘What, feeding the children of strangers!’ Our lives belong to strangers. Eventually, we must all learn to accept our fates. For instance, you and I who are loving sisters, must accept that we may never meet face to face in this life again. Women who don’t, their souls will be pulled apart; they will meet their end at the bottom of a well, mark my words!
“Little Sister, you are still young and unaware. And I must confess I have been guilty of harbouring rather than hardening you. You being so pretty, and favoured even beside your brothers. I too couldn’t bear to be separated when I was wed, so I brought you along with me. Eventually, however, our venerable parents had to arrange your marriage too, which they did with concern and affection for you in their hearts. Don’t bring shame onto them!
“Remember, a good wife must be chillingly correct. You must dress modestly. Even the way you walk must be subdued. Keep your eyes to yourself! It is entirely up to you to beat down even the faintest suspicions of scandal. Also, a good wife is useful. You are both young and strong. Work at your husband’s side! Cater to your new parents, Nye Nye and Lo Yeh! When you have sons, cherish them! Your hard work will convince others of your righteousness as a woman. If, however, you’re a no-good wife, even the ancestors will curse you! And future generations will abandon you!
“This letter also brings salutations to your honourable Lo Yeh and Nye Nye. There isn’t a sufficient way to express our parents’ immense gratitude for the gifts and generous allotments paid by your new father. Please convey this to your Lo Yeh. Of course, our parents hosted a huge feast right here in the village in honour of your new family. With eighty tables of guests, this one matched the wedding feast of Auntie Hwa, forty years ago. They say that she married an american Gold Mountain sojourner, who came back to sire a son. Unlike you though, she never saw or heard from her husband ever again after he left.
“Also, tell your Lo Yeh that with the money, our parents purchased one hundred barrels of store-bought brides’ cakes, twenty roasted pigs, sixty catties of liquor—all parcelled out in the good wax-brown paper to friends and even the least related of our clan. You should have seen the house, full of visitors and festivity! Laughter every night for a week! All the customs and traditions fulfilled even in these hard times; no propriety omitted, giving our parents great face!
“Perhaps you can keep this to yourself as you see fit, Little Sister, but Eldest Brother finally bought that plot of land too. You remember, the one on the northeast corner behind his house which Father and he have been eyeing for years.
“So, while our little community was still humming from the celebrations, more gifts from A Lo Yeh. There hasn’t been a neighbour within ten li who hasn’t stopped by and commented on your Yeh’s generosity. They’re full of big-shot words about how well-respected and well-received you were by this rich family. Father is just full of himself these days.
“Among the gifts, we received the western-style album of wedding photographs. I still trudge the distance from my house to A Mah’s house just to gaze at those photographs. My old man slapped me and scolded me for going out to visit too much. He said I was neglecting my work, but I don’t care. With little Poy on my back and A Buck in my arms, I go. Those pictures are fabulous visions, like magazine pictures of film stars or emperors. I can’t bring myself to think it’s you—my very own sister, beautiful as a fairy, in a long flowing gown and veil.
“Like you, my tears flow endlessly from missing you, my little sister. You were my heart and liver! Yet I see very clearly the advancements bought with this marriage, not only for you but for our parents as well. So, isn’t the pain of separation a very small price to pay after all?
“From the photographs, I say that those are real pearls embroidered all over your bodice. Your father-in-law is obviously not a man to scrimp on expenses. But someone said that they can make imitation pearls nowadays, especially for westerners’ dresses. Others said that those were just buttons specially made to look like pearls in photographs. What do these ignorant village females know? Why don’t you tell us?
“In fact, you hardly told us anything about your wedding. In the photographs, the banquet hall seemed to be filled with huge sculpted garlands and bouquets of flowers for as far as we can see. Were they very fragrant? Canada must be a land of flowers, although the men deny it. I don’t think men notice things like flowers. What did your guests eat? Was a photograph specialist hired to follow the wedding party and take pictures wherever you went? In a garden! This is unheard of! Your new family must be so rich and so broad-minded too!
“Little Sister Mei Mei, you are so lucky to have entered lofty doors! How hard can it be to perform your duties as daughter-in-law, when your new family welcomes you with such fanfare? Every new bride feels awkward and alien. However, this will pass. Enjoy your first year of being a new bride. It’ll be over sooner than you think! When the first-born comes, you’ll be too busy to even eat. Then, you won’t even give your big sister another thought, will you? If it is a boy, your status in this great family will be assured. Then, how you’ll laugh at
yourself for behaving peevishly. Listen to your elder sister teach!”
FONG MEI
1924
Fong Mei withdrew as quickly as she could from the front booth section, knowing that her only defence against her mother-in-law and husband was to be silent and invisible. Although Mui Lan would certainly never embroil her in a family quarrel in front of customers, Fong Mei was too afraid of her explosive temperament to stay one second longer.
Fong Mei retreated to her desk at the back of the storeroom. There, she picked up her fountain pen, fully intending to resume her desk work as if the unpleasant incident at the front of the restaurant had never happened, as if she had never left this desk, thirsty for a simple drink of boiled water. She took a long, hard suck of air deep into her lungs and poised the pen, but the raging demon within let fly before she realized that she had lost control. Hurtled against the white pages, black ink from the stubby pen exploded over her neat ledger accounts and trickled into the centre-fold binding of the book, where it threatened many painstaking hours of columnaded figuring. However, Fong Mei didn’t seem to notice the hazard. She was too busy considering her own botched-up life.
“Will there ever be an end to my humiliation?” she lamented to herself, her head suddenly too heavy a burden to hold up. She started to push away the abacus, which would have held up her head’s descent towards the table. But her fingers were smeared with ink, so she was forced to sit upright in spite of her dejection.
“I can’t face any more. She wants me dead so badly, I may as well go and drown myself then!” Fong Mei stared at her hands in horror as if they were dripping with fresh blood.
“That old she-dog won’t stop until she sees me bloated with sewer water! No one would miss a slave anyway! Go ahead, do it!” she muttered to herself, wanting to summon change and at the same time fearing it. Her hands poised feebly, in a rather touching gesture, as if to ward off some dread.
It was very true that Fong Mei’s situation seemed hopeless. And against such a mother-in-law, she hadn’t any defence at all. In fact, although she didn’t realize it, Fong Mei had not stopped being terrified since the night of her wedding banquet. There’s a proven logic to marrying them off at a very early age; seventeen-year-old girls are like mush. Impress upon them their worthlessness, and what was once firm, young backbone will shrivel with eternal shame! They will become genuinely stupid, unable to take a step forward, or backward, or sideways, for fear of treading on the very feet that trammel them relentlessly.
What with Mui Lan so very busy baby-bashing, Fong Mei totally forgot that having a baby had once been her own childish dream. There had been a time when unguarded thoughts of babies brought playful smiles about her mouth. A perfect baby had been her one desire—something for which one’s body had to be bartered away in marriage. But recently, the idea of a baby swelling her stomach had seemed grotesque, a symbol of her enslavement. She had nightmares of a baby with Mui Lan’s face leeched onto her breasts, draining her dry.
“Why not?” came another soft hiss. “I’m just a dead girl-bag anyway, useless to everyone. Let them stomp on me! Dead ghosts!”
Without other young women to compare herself to, Fong Mei couldn’t have realized how feisty her words proved her to be. A less stalwart woman would have knuckled under long ago. In spite of the smothering self-pity, she was young. And even after five years of exile and drudgery, she was still only twenty-two and resilient. Nor could she have known that her time would soon be up, that she was on the verge of breaking out.
As she pondered her prison term, Fong Mei’s face hung in the air like a sad wooden mask suspended on a hook. A hand suddenly loomed in front of her and hit the ledger book on the desk with a resounding slap. Fong Mei sprang from her chair, her face tingling hot as if she had been the one smitten.
“Little Auntie Fong,” drawled a familiar voice, “are you so clouded up that you can’t see what a fine mess you have made here?”
She barely glanced at the cheerful face hovering above her as she resettled back onto her seat. The keen hands mopping up the ink with a rag hardly placated her growing anger at this heavy-handed intrusion.
“Here, A Ting, you take this and clean it up! Somewhere else!” She scooped book, rag and pen off the table top, and shoved them at him roughly. She was not in the mood for Ting An’s roguish ways. And she was sick of him popping up at her at anytime, anywhere. Who did he think he was? Just because he had worked for her father-in-law so long, he seemed to think that he was part of the family.
“Hey, hey, watch the white uniform!” he warned. “Ink won’t come off, you know. And I’m waiter today, for the lunchtime rush.”
“Don’t bother me!” she pouted, turning away and trying to hide behind her thick, shoulder-length hair.
“There, there, you can’t fool Big Brother Ting. I know something’s up . . .” the young man crooned, ducking this way and that, trying to poke his big nose in front of her face. “Let me guess, a smart fellow like me can tell chop chop! It . . . it couldn’t be that nasty Nye Nye again, could it . . . with the big, long whip? You look whipped, he, he, he!”
“Don’t you have work to do somewhere else?” The same remark that earlier had wounded her like a blade. She waited for Ting An to be stopped dead in his tracks, just as she had been. But why should he be as sensitive as she? He wasn’t the one who’d had his skin rubbed thin and raw year after year until he felt himself screaming a stuck-pig scream!
“Looks like I have my work cut out for me right here,” he answered, undaunted by her black mood, “teaching you how not to treat the accounts book.” He paused, waiting for a response. “And here I thought you were smart.” When it still didn’t come, he continued to chatter idly, filling up air. “After all, if the boss lady Nye Nye should happen to see this, you’re not going to earn any more blessings from her today, are you?”
“Wait a minute here, Big Brother Ting! What makes you think that Nye Nye is bothering me? Who’s been filling your ears with stories?” Fong Mei demanded, staring piercingly hard at him.
Hah, he thought, her response was even better than he had hoped. He looked at her, liking the full attention he was getting from her large, startling light-brown eyes, her face so earnest and full of candour. He liked the way she didn’t wind her hair tightly into those strange, thick sausages that dangled and bounced so comically. Instead, she kept it sleek and straight, and blunt. Teasingly, he slowly stretched his face into a patronizing grin, noting with deep affection her two bird-winged eyebrows creep ever closer to each other in consternation.
“Well,” Ting An sounded pretty cocksure of himself, “you tell me, Auntie, what troubles could a young bride have in the world, except for mother-in-law troubles. Not that a vulgar bachelor like me, who has never set foot anywhere near the Middle Kingdom, would know much about these matters, but I certainly know your Nye Nye, and I don’t blame you for shrivelling every time you set eyes on her. She scares me too . . .”
“Don’t call me a bride, you turtle!” Fong Mei blew up unexpectedly. “I’ve been married five long years. And if you can’t answer me honestly, then get out of here! I don’t want to look at your face!”
Her face crumpled, this time with genuine suffering. Tears glazed her eyes. Wah! Ting An was completely taken aback. Her situation must be even worse than he had suspected. This was obviously not a time for pestering. As she wept, he hung his head in shame and tried to sneak his hands into some pockets, except in the waiter’s chinese-style uniform he got lost.
“I can’t face you, Auntie Fong,” he said solemnly. “I see now that you’re upset. Has there been trouble? Your elder sister, everyone at home O.K.?”
Silence. Yet he persevered, coaxing gently, “And don’t bother to tell me to go die! I’ll not be put off so easily. Hey . . . I’m very sorry I upset you so much! We’re still good friends, right?”
Fong Mei relented a little. Glancing up at him, she barely answered, “Yes, we’re still friends.”
She thought, he makes me laugh—the only times I ever laugh any more. Then, it occurred to her that he was in fact her only friend too, and he a man at that. Men and women can’t be friends, she thought, recalling an edict of the Great Philosopher: “The hands of men and women must never touch!”
“Aie, it’s not you, Elder Brother. It’s my fault. I’m not feeling . . . I don’t even know what’s bothering me. Too much yang—I mean yin . . . maybe!” Suddenly, she felt so self-conscious that she flushed with embarrassment. She gave a nervous little giggle and tried to cover up. “Silly of me . . .”
Ting An was puzzled. In all the years that he’d known her, she had always been a plain-dealing person, perhaps a bit too animated for all of the time, but what did he know of women. For instance, after a year or so of being an “idle bride,” she had wanted to learn bookkeeping, and she had asked very straightforwardly, “Big Brother, would you be kind enough to teach this stupid Auntie some simple bookkeeping so she can make herself useful?”
She had never giggled or acted rabbity until now. She was a resolute kind of person, eager to learn, and never forgot what she had been taught. She would ask to learn english like this: “How do you tell the delivery ghosts to not knock over the garbage cans at the back when they park too close to the back door?” Always businesslike and specific. And she had an ostentatious way of being secretive. Once she told Ting An, “Of course I’m not sick! I just need to rest. Please don’t make a fuss! Nye Nye certainly doesn’t need to know. I’m sure I’ll feel better this afternoon, but perhaps you could do me the favour of quietly helping me out for a few days.”
