by Sky Lee
“Uncles, I don’t need to remind you that the reputation of one man can reflect upon our whole community. So, it is up to this association to keep this dead boy’s stinky reputation at all costs. He’s a dissenter . . .” he paused to spit a scowl of such repugnance at his subject that the spirit of the men in the room again brightened.
“We won’t tolerate dissenters,” Gwei Chang barked, “and he’s going to keep his mouth shut against the authorities if we have to stuff it with his own hot dog.”
The room roared.
“And when we’re finished with him, he’ll understand that we mean business. In the end, this Wong boy will understand that his suffering is not only for his own good but the good of all of Chinatown.”
With this, the patriarch turned to stare out the window at the blue sky, his mandate as clear as the heavens themselves.
Wong Loong, the secretary, stepped in immediately, his manner ingratiating.
“Uncles,” he said, “your attention to this matter is very much appreciated. I know the association has taken up too much of your time already. Many of you have other business to attend to, so we will not impose on you any more. Ah . . . of course, I’m sure I can count on your discretion once you leave. We officers, however, still have much to teach our insignificant little brother. And we will teach him, he, he, right, he, he, even if it takes a few days.”
When Gwei Chang spoke, no explanations were necessary. He didn’t have to take his eyes down from the peaceful clarity of the heavens as he listened to the men reluctantly shuffling down the stairs without a word of protest. Those who dared stay certainly knew that they could.
“Someone should stand guard! Make sure no one is loitering about,” a voice said. “It is essential that this kind of tricky business doesn’t go beyond these four walls.”
After the room was emptied, the doors shut tight, Wong Gwei Chang stepped back to his chair and sat down behind the houseboy in question. There, he wouldn’t have to look at his face.
KAE
1967
Morgan and I didn’t study particularly late that night. Perhaps the thickening snow flurries outside made us a bit restless. It was such unusual weather for Vancouver. I finished my two physics labs, which potentially freed me up for the upcoming weekend. Morgan finished another five pages of frenzied scribbling. I looked up from my slide ruler to find him staring intently at me. I smiled nervously back, but he just maintained his grave face, staring at me as if I were a ghost.
“So Morgan,” I asked in a teasing tone, “do you want to take me for a pizza . . . so you can explain to me why you’re staring at me so strangely?”
It took all my courage to look straight into his eyes. Even then, I had to do it in a smart-alecky way. I was too young to be sensitive to it then, but I have since realized that the pain in his face was extremely daunting. His eyes, brown with a bilious green hint, were always bleak.
“If you want one, I’ll take you,” he replied softly, his eyes never leaving my face. “And I study you because your face is so ‘ching,’ or clear. You look so serene. It’s . . . very nice!”
His compliment made me feel helpless.
“Morgan . . .” my smile faded, and I looked at him very seriously, searching for some kind of crack in his armour. He made it so difficult to get close to him; and I was so inexperienced. Impulsively, I got up and walked around the study table to where he sat. Once behind him, I bent down and put both my arms around his neck.
“What is it that troubles you so much?” I asked, pressing my cheek against his sweet-smelling, brylcreemed hair. Actually, I wasn’t expecting an answer; I was too excited about my daring and our new-found intimacy. For Morgan, the masculine thing to do was not to admit to personal woe, and of course he did not answer. Yet some of his tension did leave him; he stroked my arms gently, and his head drooped against my cheek.
“Well, tell me!” I persisted with a whisper.
He just took one of my arms, led me around, and pulled me down onto his lap. The next few minutes passed like an eternity, because within those few minutes Morgan captivated me probably forever. And all he did was hold me around the waist, squeezing with just enough pressure to be purposeful, and look at me. His face seemed to unfold, and I have never seen such a beautiful look on a man’s face. Slowly, he drew my hands up to his face and pressed his lips into the palms.
This gesture startled me. I don’t know why I had to break the spell. Most likely my own shabby imagination, because I suddenly felt uncomfortable. I sensed an omission. There I was, perched like a bird on this seductively handsome man’s lap, feeling his long, hard muscles on the back of my thighs. He knew he was thrilling to me, and I knew I was alluring to him. I should have let myself be seduced, although I know now it wouldn’t have happened like that.
“You’re driving me crazy,” I protested weakly. I tilted his chin up and forced him to look me in the eyes. “You know you’re driving me crazy! You kind of lead me on up to a point, then you play games with me. Why did you tell me you’re my uncle?”
I watched him grimace as he pulled away from me.
“Don’t you believe me, Kae? Didn’t you verify it with your parents?”
“No I didn’t!” I pouted and lied. That wasn’t exactly the answer I wanted to hear, and I was beginning to get more than a little bit alarmed. I certainly had mentioned Morgan to my parents. I was very close to them, being their only child, and they were great armchair liberals. (Although my mother had more traditional pretensions then, but I’m sure that was more a side effect from raising a teen-aged daughter.) Yet, their pained expressions when I casually mentioned meeting a certain Morgan Keung Chi Wong at the Champagne’s last Christmas party. My father glanced over to my mother, who looked as if she needed to choke. Well, so what was I to think? All along, I’d had Morgan pegged as a big phony, either with his hand out or just fooling around by claiming to be my uncle. But this response, totally out of character for my parents, surprised me. I watched them as they recovered as fast as they could.
When my mother finally managed to look piercingly at my dad, he took a deep breath and said as nonchalantly as he could muster, “Strange that you should remark upon him. He’s so much older than you. Almost thirty-something, I think.”
“Twenty-nine!” I stated confidently. My dad actually sagged, and my mom looked almost panic-stricken. So, they did know of him. And in a big way! I was going to find out all I could about this dreamboat.
My dad said, “He’s not twen—” but he caught himself. I gave him my intensely interested look, and his eyes involuntarily flickered over to my mom again. She, however, had nothing to offer him.
“I guess . . .” my adorable father, never stuck for words before, struggled now “. . . he’s kind of a distant relative . . . you know, in a village sense. Same village, same surname. We consider him a relation.”
He was a terrible liar. For one thing, my father seemed to have forgotten that Morgan was eurasian, which totally occupied my mind. After all, I had understood that kind of thing just wasn’t done in nice families.
“We’re not in close contact now,” he continued bravely. “He’s actually got a terrible name about town! Ruined more than one girl’s reputation. And a good candidate for youngsters like you to stay away from. You certainly understand what I mean.”
That not only signalled the end of the conversation but also the kind of protected girlhood I had. Sex was something that had to remain purely intellectual—understood. And my parents were awfully good at the academics of things. Anyway, they did manage to convey some vague idea that “ruining a girl’s reputation” was possibly the worst stigma one could imagine. It meant getting a girl pregnant out of wedlock, and all sorts of grimly aborted possibilities.
Still on Morgan’s lap, I wondered if this was the fate he meant for me. If it was, he was going about it all wrong. It was hard to imagine a seasoned womanizer who couldn’t come up with a better line than “I’m your uncle. Did you kn
ow that?” when all he meant was that his forefathers came from the same village in China.
“No, Kae,” his voice eased in as if he knew what I was thinking. “I mean that your grandmother had a lover—my father. Your mother and I are half-brother and sister,” Morgan revealed almost apologetically.
“What a filthy, bloody lie!” I bounded off his knee, hissing like an enraged goose. I pulled at my skirt, which had ridden up my thighs beyond any semblance of reserve and good faith. Tears blinded me. I groped my way back to my books and started stuffing them into my bag. I couldn’t think any more. At the time I was not conscious of why I needed to flip off the handle in such an excessive manner. Suddenly, I felt so ashamed for lusting after this incredible creep, this blasphemer who was assaulting the integrity, the sacred legitimacy, of my family origins. The honour of ancestors and descendants was at stake! And the more money, the more righteous!
Stomping out of the library, splashing slush and snow all over the insides of my ill-clad legs; the melting freeze dribbling down my nylons into my white patent boots. I was furious that I could be taken in by someone as vile as this lying pig-cheat! Beside the fountain choked back by ice, I realized Morgan had run after me when a firm hand took my arm and swung me around.
“Kae,” he cried, “you can’t go home by yourself in this weather.”
I despised that guilty look of concern and worry on his face. I felt he was mocking me. The tears of hurt pride again dammed up my vision.
“How dare you . . . presume . . .” I howled against the pelting snow. Continuing the same momentum that he had used to swing me around, I deftly wound up my heavy bag full of math and physics texts, and, with a shriek of rage, butted him full on the chest with it. I shocked even myself!
My granny on my father’s side had always remarked right in front of me that I had a spiteful temper, and it was lucky for my parents that they could afford to give me everything I wanted. I could not believe that I would ever want to hurt another human being like that, but realizing that he wasn’t even winded, I stumbled off to the nearest bus stop.
Completely absorbed in my thoughts, I was oblivious to the wretched, icy dampness which had seeped into my hair and clothes. Maybe he meant the wrong grandmother, I groped in the dark. Did he say his mother . . . or my father was his half-brother? No, he surely meant Poh Poh, my mother’s mother, but that couldn’t be. She was rich and staid, and had a husband who outlived her. Then it had to be my father’s mother, Ngen Ngen. She had been a waitress for many years, and very poor. Also, Lo Yeh was a gambler. Of course, my mind tinkered away. Ngen Ngen never fought with her husband, no matter how poor they got. That was suddenly very suspicious. Wouldn’t any woman hate to be tied to a compulsive gambler who frittered away her children’s daily rice without any forethought or afterthought? Ngen Ngen must have been terribly guilt-ridden, even grateful to him, for letting her stay on after her infidelity. Compared to my prim Poh Poh, she was casual, too easy and sloppy, although I just could not picture her with a secret lover no matter how hard I stretched my imagination. Yet, come to think of it, she did have this sleazy way of walking. It must have been worse in her prime—perm-burnt frizzy hair, rouged lips, bedroom eyes glazed over with indolence. A swaybacked shuffle from booth to booth, slowly swinging her voluptuous hips from side to side. It must have driven those Chinatown bachelors wild with lust.
This last idea suddenly made me blush, since not ten minutes ago hadn’t I been drooling over that rotten-egg bastard? I gnashed my teeth, thinking about how foolish I was. It was too embarrassing to even think about. I blamed myself entirely. My parents had warned me. So how could I have been so taken in? Exposing my most agonizingly secret desires, only to have him humiliate me!
Suddenly, it occurred to me that I was allowing him to soil my Ngen Ngen’s divine memory too. She was a wonderful woman, kind and giving. When I was four years old, I smashed my nose on the sidewalk after being pushed off my tricycle. My granny, yelling at the top of her lungs, her fat hips jiggling, carried me, bleeding profusely, to old Dr. Ng’s office two blocks away. I’m sure she would have gladly died of a heart attack in order to protect me—her only child’s only child! She loved me that much when she was still alive. So why did I let him instill doubt in me? And what was he up to, saying such awful things to me?
I was so preoccupied with my thoughts that I didn’t notice a noisy green Morgan pull up to the bus stop. Before the fact registered in my mind, Morgan jumped out and grabbed me by the arm. He pushed his face up close to mine as if to kiss me, except I twisted away and struggled.
“Come with me!” he hissed, loud enough for the other chilled students waiting for the same bus to hear. “Don’t be such a baby! Or how can you stand to hear the whole story?”
“I don’t want to hear your stupid story!” I snapped back.
Anyway, we made quite the scene—Morgan and I arguing and yelling at each other. He persisted beyond all reason, and my histrionics must have warmed up an otherwise tedious wait for all the bystanders. Finally, when Morgan threatened to beat to a pulp a stout boy with a white furry razor-cut, who had gallantly tried to come to my rescue, I gave up and got into his car. As he drove, he tried to reason with me, but I was completely deaf to anything he had to say. To me, it was all an incredible snow job.
Still, we were both very lucky to be alive. That stormy night, Morgue drove his car under a ’48 Ford pickup which had gone dead at the bottom of the Tenth Avenue hill. All I recall was that I was glowering out my side window at the mist, which I imagined to be a dancing haze of snowflakes against an indigo hue, in order to keep his voice out of my head. Suddenly, the vehicle jerked a little and slipped sideways. I heard Morgan yell something like, “Duck, Sue!” which of course I thoroughly disregarded. Then, about the same time, I heard a muffled metal crunch, and someone tried to yank a handful of hair off my head. My head lopped forward, and my nose hit the dashboard with a sickening thud. I lost consciousness, although I’m sure I regained it soon afterward. When I did, I looked over to Morgan, but the driver’s side seemed to be obliterated. Where Morgan should have been was a rusty fender and a bent tailpipe. Naturally, I panicked, screamed at the top of my lungs, and groped underneath for Morgan’s body. Instead, I grabbed a handful of shattered glass fragments, which pierced a few minor capillaries. The sighting of my blood further escalated my hysteria, until Morgan’s face without a scratch on it finally appeared at my door.
Morgan the man got off a lot better than me. Morgan the car was a total write-off. The whole thing was all very embarrassing: clotted blood all over my white fur, my black hair; snowflakes melting mascara all over my face; my nose tumid like a wet sausage. Carried off on a stretcher by goliath firemen and policemen; ambulance screeching and flashing red all the way to the general hospital—I felt a little obscene.
Crouched at the foot of the emergency room stretcher, I could peek through the partially closed curtains, beyond the nurses’ station into the waiting room. My pulse fluttering with dread at the prospect of facing the outrage on my parents’ faces. They probably wouldn’t overreact; still one never knew, since they’d never been tested to such limits.
I saw my parents rush through the double doors on their frantic way to see me. By their wan expressions, I could tell that my injuries had probably been magnified a hundred times in their minds, my parents being so unbearably protective of me.
Morgan stood up as soon as they came through the waiting room. So they both spotted him at the same instant.
I had told them that I was going out to study again, but I had neglected to mention Morgan Wong. Again. Well, I felt it was a minor detail, but a look of such venom and loathing as I could never have pictured on my sweet gentle father reared on his face. It took my breath away, and I stared as if permanently paralyzed from that one particular split-second when one’s body and soul fall apart.
My mother turned her face away abruptly as though she couldn’t bear to look at him, clutching at her th
roat as though she needed to protect it. I couldn’t see Morgan’s face until my mother tried to sweep past him. When he turned, trying to keep up with her in this strange dance, he looked as if he was in the depths of hell! I realized, then, that this was an encounter between longtime, mortal enemies. Everything that Morgan had tried to tell me so far was true then, and whatever he had to tell me yet was going to be excruciating.
As far away as I was, I distinctly heard Morgan speak to my mother in our own village dialect. He said ominously, “You think just because you have money to buy people, you don’t have to face your crimes!”
My father glared at him with snarled lips, his fists clenched. Then my mother blurted something, but bitter tears choked her words back. “Not ours . . .” she said. “You.”
Morgan seemed to want to hold her back, despair and rage crawling all over him like a mass of worms. But he turned sharply on his heels and walked away.
I curled myself into a tight ball and pulled the thin white bed sheet over my head. My mind spun out instant replays over and over again. Like swooning on a merry-go-round gone out of control. Without my realizing, tears had already splattered the hard plastic slab they called a pillow.
III
TRIANGLES
FONG MEI
1925
On a warm evening in late March 1925, Fong Mei hurried down the street on her way home. She didn’t usually walk home alone in the dark, but today had been such an exhausting day at her father-in-law’s new store that she decided not to wait for a ride. The balmy spring weather and the evening walk revived her, and she thought that she should walk home more often now that the days were getting longer and she herself was getting stronger. Actually, there was another more compelling reason as to why she had to get home early. Before running up the front porch, she glanced around the side of the house. There was still a light in the back upstairs bedroom. Tonight, she thought, her husband Choy Fuk would not get away without her seeing him off personally. Both in-laws were still at the Disappearing Moon as they were most nights, so she and her husband would be alone together.
