by Sky Lee
Yesterday, you two got too involved with little things. Tell her to quickly check over all the big items on the invoices first. Go into detail later. That way, we know right away if things don’t add up.”
At the mere mention of Fong Mei’s name, Ting An’s empty stomach growled.
The boss shuffled him into a quieter corner of the kitchen and lowered his voice further. “Of course, I’d like to send Nye Nye out there with her, but I’ve already taken away so much manpower from Disappearing Moon she probably won’t be able to get away until after the lunchtime rush. This afternoon earliest!”
A nauseating wave of guilt threatened to eject the coffee grounds from Ting An’s stomach. By now, he wondered how the old man could not know. Wasn’t deceit written all over his face? But even if it were, how would Gwei Chang know if he never looked? This thought snuck up on Ting An and gave him an unexpected jolt.
“Of course, the old lady’ll grumble about it, but we’re just too busy these days to think about any of this-and-that female reputation business. She’s just nervous with all this going on. You know how women are. A Fong Mei Sow does the books just as well and just as fast as you. She’s one of the few people I know I can trust too. Without someone to keep track of the bills and invoices, we’d get clogged up with a backlog that’ll cost me hundreds of dollars. You understand, Ting An. I know I can rely on you to handle the old lady gingerly.”
With that remark, Gwei Chang strolled briskly over to a group of men awaiting their orders. Every day, the old man told Ting An what to think and do, and any other day, Ting An did it without thinking. But today, he felt severed. Today, he stared after Gwei Chang’s receding back as if he were seeing a stranger for the first time. He thinks he knows me, thought Ting An. It’s always a big mistake, his face turned a dark, angry red, when you think you know somebody. Why the hell, he suddenly flashed, does everyone have the notion that I can always handle people?
Loongan pulled the wagon up to the front of the threestorey brown frame house on the hill and stopped automatically. The day was already quite light, the shadows erased by the high clouds. Ting An hopped off and hesitated for a few seconds, blinking up at the last few vaporous streaks of fog flitting about in the air like shredded souls. Then, as if some unknown force had grabbed him by the front of his shirt, pulling him through the gate and around the side of the house, he found himself on the back porch, cringing, at the screen door. He knocked, removed his slouch hat, and stepped back down the steps, not relishing an encounter with Mui Lan.
Mui Lan hated him. And the reason had always been a bit obscure. When Choy Fuk and Mui Lan had first arrived in Salt Water City, she had persevered at establishing a friendship between the two teen-aged boys. She had fed Ting An beside her own boy, dressed him in Choy Fuk’s old clothes, and treated him like a long lost son. Ting An, who had never before been the object of such maternal love, couldn’t have been more fascinated than if she had suddenly begun to chew his food for him. Some mothers love their babies so much, they lick the snot out of their noses. Of course by the time young Ting An fell for it, Mui Lan had very mysteriously cooled in her exaggerated affections for him. Then one day, she swept him out with the debris.
He started thinking about her talonlike eyes piercing into him. She’d stand there, lizard lips tightly set, silent except for the disdain screaming out her every pore. Under any other circumstances, he’d play a cocky role in front of her. Cigarette stuck to his lips, flapping as he answered back with something like, “Lo Yeh’s say-so.” Usually that was enough to make her comply, but today, he was fully prepared to lose the battle. If she yelled out, “You go die! What, you trying to catch a pig? I’m not going to fall for that!” he’d probably turn around and leave quietly.
However, instead of Mui Lan’s dour face staring at him as he had expected, Ting An looked up to find Fong Mei’s comely smile beaming down on him. She opened the screen door with a delighted squeal, stretched out her arms, and threw herself at him. Caught by surprise, he toppled back onto the dew-drenched grass and rolled into the raspberry canes denuded by winter. She on top of him, smothering him with her soap-scented kisses.
Ting An was too overwhelmed to move, but Fong Mei sprang to her feet and pulled him into the Wongs’ kitchen with surprising strength. She backed him up against the wall and held him hostage, eagerly pressing against him. His head still reeling from the shock of this welcome, he fell back onto a calendar tacked to the wall with a nail. Everybody had apparently been too busy to tear off the previous month, already long passed. It still decorated the household with a maudlin image of a ghost-boy beneath a huge, resplendent umbrella, mooning in total adoration of his ghost-girl love. On top, fat winged cherubs danced, floating in the air, cheekily testing for raindrops. The curly, golden-haired girl looked out at the prosperous kitchen with its ultramodern refrigerator, and half-smiled knowingly.
“You’ve been hiding from me. You haven’t changed your mind since the last time we met, have you?” Fong Mei asked, unable to contain the eagerness of the question.
“Where’s the old lady?” Ting An managed to puff out, his breath locked within his chest.
“Gone already!” Fong Mei snuggled closer to him. She started to unbutton his jacket, hoping to slip her arms completely around him. He knew he would have no more resistance left if she succeeded. He took hold of each slim wrist and held her back. Persisting, she stood on her tiptoes and rubbed her soft lips against the nape of his neck. With his head thrown back, he closed his eyes to enjoy the sensation of her velvety tongue roaming over his stretched neck. She was ravenous, wanting to touch everything at once. Caught up in her frenzy, he felt every pore in his body wanting to open up to her, his soul to be laid bare. Then, in spite of the hazards everywhere, he let himself sink, his wobbly knees opening up to her, and they both slid to the floor together.
IV
TIES TO THE LAND—A TICKET OUT
KAE
1986
Ever since I can remember, I’ve been plagued with the feeling that something was going on that I didn’t know about. It drove me a little crazy! Now I wonder if that was what drove me, period! When I was little, I refused to go to sleep because I had to stay up to wait for . . . it, I guess! An event or whatever! A visitation? Oh please, yes—just a few words, and things around us would become clear. Why be so stingy! There could be a definite purpose to human existence. We could have meaning to our lives. What good is a soul, without gods and goddesses hovering about us?
As often as I could, I remained vigilant, curled up very small on our chesterfield, hoping that I’d be overlooked by Bo Mo at bedtime. I watched my father prepare his lectures for the next day as he did every evening. And my mother composed her music and played the piano as she did every evening, until I got very sleepy!
Now at thirty-six, I’m still waiting. In fact, the feeling is even stronger. I am obsessed by it. “It” makes me restless. I roam around my house and peer out of windows. I am quite uncertain as to what I need to see between the blind slats which hide and hold me in. Obviously not a visitation! I know that, but why is it so hard to get answers to questions I’ve been asking all my life?
The street scene in front of our house is clean and green. The occasional little old lady with a walking stick strolls by, but this doesn’t placate me. I also know by now that people are almost never what they seem. Some take longer than others to reveal themselves; some a whole lifetime; some never—they have that much to hide.
My arms fold across my chest. My toes dig into my hand-knotted carpet. And my mind stretches over our little city lot, fifty feet wide, one hundred and forty feet long, from corner to corner to corner to corner. I build a mental fence around it, visualizing the high-voltage electricity fairly crackling off it, not just to ward off evil but to fry it dead.
I switch on the TV and plow through the channels. When I do not find what I want to find, I meander through the house until I find myself in the nursery where my three-week-o
ld infant lies sleeping, his tiny mouth sucking continuously on sweet dreams of my milk. Only the odd, very rare person will expose herself, and only when she’s become totally vulnerable, backed against a corner. What’s the point of hiding herself then? She’d only look childish hiding under a chair, hoping people wouldn’t be able to see her.
I stand beside the crib and watch my baby breathe. This morning, his father finally had to go back to the office. Why, I interrogated him, was he so anxious to go back to work at this crucial time in our son’s life? Henry, my husband, peered at me over the metal rims of his glasses as he drank tap water and ate Oreo cookies for his breakfast. Why didn’t I agree to some hired help, he asked. Was I sure I could handle everything by myself? He doubted me. I flew into a livid snit. What would I need with hired help, I insisted. I was not totally witless, was I? Then, I went back to bed in a huff. There, I worried endlessly. After I heard the door slam, I nearly panicked and called him back. I was truly alone for the first time in three weeks, perhaps for the first time in my entire life.
I am so afraid of being found out for the coward I am. All my life, I’ve managed to mask it with ambition and diligence. Making it as an investment research analyst for a small though influential canadian holding firm was easy. As long as I guessed right, I was in; if not, out! Read a lot! Know what to do with what you’ve read! And never, never reveal your “in” in the market. And I have made it. My newest job offer waiting for me proves that I am no flash in the pan. A prestigious research position with the Howe Institute would mean no more scrambling. No more cocktail chitchat, which I despise! I’ve always preferred the basic things in life. Wear navy maternity business suits to shove and bull and bear in. Wool-silk, tailored; be self-conscious! Be the token, pregnant, ethnic woman; act cool, powdered, inhuman. I never lost my perspective in the business world. It was as two-dimensional as a computer print-out.
My private life is what I find confusing. At home, I must work at unravelling knots—knots in my hair, knots in my stomach. Knots of guilt; knots of indecision. Knots in our dainty gold chains. Figurative knots in our children’s shoelaces. Do not panic lest we get more tangled! We must pick, trace, coax and cajole each knot out. One at a time, even when we know there are hundreds more.
I realize I am very hungry, so I go to the kitchen and make myself a peanut butter sandwich, because it is the only thing I crave. I open a bottle of beer. My aunties told me that while I’m breast-feeding I should consume as much alcohol as I can stand, implying that most women sip their drinks with their noses scrinched up and leave most of it behind. I, on the other hand, am glad of a prim excuse for drinking. However, I do microwave the beer to warm it up. They told me never to drink cold. And not to even put my hands in cold water while establishing my milk! In the old days, chinese women and their babies weren’t allowed to take a bath or leave the house until after the full-month celebrations.
“So what if they got a little fishy smelling,” my aunt exclaimed when I deprecated her story with my western attitudes, “that’s the way they healed.”
They were right! I tried to go out for a walk. And I stuck my hands in cold water. These sent raw chills and shivers right through me to the tips of my nipples, and left me so full of wind that I had to chase it away with another thick, black, brewed helping of raw vinegar, sweet chinese cooking wine and pickled pigs’ feet. I haven’t challenged any more traditions since.
The baby squawks. I drop crumbs running to his side. He is about to rouse. Although it takes him five full minutes, I stand and watch it all, the soft mews to begin with, the restless squirming. I am fascinated by the rabid intensity of his rage and passion. Before all else, human beings have rage. Heart-piercing screams! Little red face knotted up with pain and anguish. I pick him up by his armpits and dangle him at eye level. His bullet-shaped head shrivels into his tiny body like a spent penis.
Lo and behold, wet yellow stains between his stubby legs. And in his crib, the brand new balloon-print sheets, with matching shams and bumper pads, are full of babyshit, painted on by restless knee strokes. I freeze. With Henry at home, this would be a major emergency that keeps the both of us running. Now, I am on my own, facing a true test of matter over mind, no matter how toilet-trained the mind.
In my vocation, one tends to accrue the most ridiculous of vanities like Hong Kong business luncheons (known to last three days and three nights) and leather limousine seats (cushioning against harsher realities). I remember not long after I started with Peters, Harley and Miika Investments, they landed a really big asian account. Naturally, my bosses figured out that it would be comely if a nice-looking chinese junior sat beside one of the senior partners at the meeting. I arrived in Hong Kong, lagging a modest number of steps behind my boss and discreetly sizing up the racially integrated sea of male faces, when who should I spot but Hermia Chow draped over a chair, against the sky-scraping window which swept around one side of the room like an IMAX movie screen. Her slim legs intertwined; her luscious lips pressed against one long finger in a gesture that suggested silence on my part would clearly be in order. And that was how the Hong Kong market opened up for me. Hermia set me up. I could have been a senior partner in a matter of a few years. I could have become an overseas consultant, cavorting about, in and out of Asia.
In any case, I walked out of that meeting, flirting with the boys, a couple of steps ahead of Harley himself. And oh, the good times with Hermia! She took us to a private club in a garden so lush and luxurious that they drove guests to their tables in vintage cars—ours being a 1959 Porsche Speedster. Hermia’s a riot!
Now imagine giving up this kind of thing to face one little bare bottom out of that neverending swarm of humanity being born every day; I must have either been crazy or hoping to attain more enlightenment or something. I think back now and wonder why I never did totally succumb to Hermia’s very enticing lure.
However, I now know just how it feels to sit with the new mumsies in the hospital, slurping up a baby bath demonstration. They perched tenderly on their chairs in a polite semicircle, with their full-length velour housecoats and acrylic mules. They all beamed with confidence and seemed to know something spiritually uplifting. I would flap around in mules too, but those answers, I found out, don’t come easy.
However, back to the poop! I spin around, looking for something to wrap Bobby in. There is nothing except a fine, hand-stitched satin coverlet in his crib. This I grab and recklessly wrap him in it, clinging onto him as tightly as I can, but his froglike legs wildly kick and can’t be contained. By now he is screaming so piercingly neither my heart nor my ears can take any more. I have no choice except to put him down and close the door.
Bringing up baby is not as easy as I thought, and I head to the telephone. Before I dial, I test my voice out loud against any indications of distress, any hints of quavering. I guess if one translates literally, what the old-timers called the telephone in their village dialect is “crying line.” Their lives full of misadventure, they only used the telephone to declare tragedy or blight.
“Good morning, Mother!” Cheerful! The message would be that everything is normal. “So glad to catch you home . . .” I would affect a slightly bored, arrogant note, “Oh, baby’s fine. He’s so cute and adorable.” Then a casual aside, “Coming to see him?”
Instead, my fingers are so shaky I have to dial three times, and then, I practically sing out, “Hi Mom. I’m glad you’re still home . . .”
“We’re coming right over,” my mother cuts in, then she hangs up. My life is rosy again, my heart opening like a thirsty flower to the soothing rain. How my mother evokes this in me, I will probably never know.
I watch my mother’s Buick sedan pull up beside the boulevard in front of my house. As the daughter of a rich man, my mother, Beatrice Li Ying Wong, was once described as “a clever girl who’s sharp enough to see the other three corners as soon as you describe the first to her.”
Today, she regally glides into my home and pecks me
lightly on the cheek. She smells like new clothes. Her generation of women still wear wool skirts, classic George Straith cardigans and the humble two-inch pump. They still show a bit of calf. And they still like to distinguish themselves in front of the counter at pâtisseries, or in grey Mercedes purring in front of stoplights just off Point Grey Road. This elusive sisterhood of those who have made it, usually by marrying into it. And the more money, the more righteous!
When my mother stands by me, things begin to happen. The baby becomes sweet and small and darling again, instead of something which looms large and threatening. My muscles, tense from what seems to be yet another never-ending marathon of life, smooth out under her artistic hands.
“All I want to do is cuddle a baby,” says Beatrice right away. This I must interpret too. She means I need you as much as you need me, my darling daughter. By her clothes, I know she’s in a modern mood today, and jaunty too. I like my mother. And I’ve often wondered if this means I am like my mother, elegantly restrained, capable, thick peppery hair, quick lithe walk, expressive face, easily taken aback. She has this defensive habit of carrying her head too high, thus her eyes tend to look down on whomever she is talking to. I notice she will do this subtly, even if she has to strain her neck backwards to accommodate a person taller than herself. And not many people are not taller than her, so there’s a certain vulnerability displayed here. Today, I am so grateful for her presence that for a change I find this a charming trait.
She was once Miss Chinatown, 1942. I used to think much of this and kept pressing her for information until she became annoyed. Finally, she blasted me with the truth. She was chosen because of patronage, because she was the granddaughter of Wong Gwei Chang. Besides, how many chinese girls could afford piano lessons in those days? I remember how indignant I became, not at the iniquity of the patronage but at her for telling me this. Ten years old is not a good age to dash a young girl’s dreams of becoming a publicly acclaimed beauty. It never made me any less superficial, just more cynical.
