by Sky Lee
The waitress married the gambler. Mui Lan got deposed. And Choy Fuk kept his mouth shut. So, one could say that life marched on. But what about all the hidden entanglements—the corrosive mess underneath, which eventually would make the bottom fall out? Well, except for one little story that happened right after my grandmother had my mother, the rest may be just embellished speculation.
This story was told to me by Morgan Wong. How he came to know it, and why this particular incident endured, I don’t know. But I believe it is true, because my mother still has the teak chest—not very good quality—decorated with plum blossoms and phoenixes, a romantic scene of a scholar with his maiden-love carved in relief, except the maiden’s face is a bit lopsided.
STORY
1926
Fong Mei needed more room for the baby’s clothes and things, so she had a dresser moved upstairs from the basement. Mui Lan objected, mainly out of contrariness, muttering about “wind and water” and whatever village superstitions she could excavate out of memory, but she grumpily accepted the change in situation.
When Fong Mei came to put the baby’s things away, she felt the dresser was not good enough for them. She said that the wood stank, and she found mice droppings in the bottom corner. The baby’s clothes had to be put in the cleanest place possible, so she started to empty her teak hope chest of the last remnants of the silks and brocades and fancy embroidered pillowcases that were a part of her dowry. When Mui Lan realized what she was doing, she attacked her daughter-in-law, drowning her in a deluge of putrid accusations. Everything from her unlucky eye brows, to her laziness, to her failure to produce a boy—all of which was contributing to the ruin of the Wong clan—was mentioned at a very high-pitched shriek. Mui Lan became so overwrought that she came to blows.
Fong Mei doggedly kept on emptying the hope chest, dropping its contents on the floor, out the window, until she reached the bottom. There, she found a pair of brand-new scissors, which she had bought in Canton City. All these long years, she had totally forgotten about them, and they were still wrapped in paper with the shop’s name on it, as if waiting for this precise moment when she would finally need them. These she picked up with a rather deliberate gesture, then turned threateningly to her torturer. Mui Lan took fright and flight. She almost made it out of the bedroom, but Fong Mei dragged her back with the strength of ten madwomen.
Realizing that she had made herself very vulnerable, Mui Lan took refuge in a corner while Fong Mei fingered the sharp, pointed blades like a well-fed cat toying with a cornered mouse. An intense pressure surrounded them and made the room expand and shrink wildly. Fong Mei got up and sliced her and her husband’s bed quilt neatly in half. At this bit of profanity, her mother-in-law said not one word. They stayed in this position until the baby started to cry, wanting to be fed. Then Fong Mei dropped the scissors with a heavy thud and went to her child.
Poor Fong Mei! For her, it was very poetic and very true that
Yesterday’s dreams are empty drawers,
littered with mice turds!
HERMIA
1971
My face was a little lopsided after I bounced my head off the wall. I was amazed but not amused. The noise of the impact was so loud it echoed down the vast empty halls of the An Men district middle school, which I was visiting with a group of twenty-five foreign students who would spend their summer touring and working in the countryside. For a long, dangling moment, Hermia thought I had really hurt myself. Our official chinese hosts immediately crowded around me to fuss and show their concern. Hermia started to giggle, and so did I.
Could I have been not concentrating that much as to walk into the underside of a huge staircase? Hermia teased me by saying that life was like that. One had to have the presence of mind to negotiate unfamiliar pathways. So, where was I?
I was thinking about something else, obviously. I had been saying to Hermia, “I know I love melodramas, but this is beginning to sound like nonstop hysteria.”
Then Hermia said something that sent me into total introspection. She said, “If you were a little child, desperately trying to cling to somebody who refuses to nurture you, you would get quite hysterical too.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked. “I’m talking about my grandmother and great-grandmother at each other’s throats. They were grown women.” I rubbed the tender new egg on my forehead.
“Grown women are orphan children, are we not? We have been broken from our mothers’ arms too soon and made to cling to a man’s world—which refuses to accept us—as best we can, any how we can. And of course, let me tell you, many of us are just barely hanging on by the skin of our teeth.”
Hermia eyed the commune leader, whose village we had been assigned to. Comrade Zhou had already singled us out, as though he could spot the troublemakers a mile away. She turned back to me and added, “I don’t have to tell you this. Kae, your chinamen stories are about, how shall I say—trying to fit in any way we can.”
Next, Hermia’s pretty eyes settled on Bo Ming, who was an overgrown, overseas chinese boy from Japan, intent on watching females. He was obviously very taken with Hermia. He grinned from ear to ear.
“Sweetie, why don’t you write about women trying to fit in any how they can do it?”
“Who? Me? Why me?” I replied. “I’m going into economics. Why don’t you?”
“Because, chérie,” drawled Hermia, “I am not the one who walks into walls.”
That night, at the commune, we could not sleep because of the sweltering heat. Hermia and I had been relegated to an airless room with one door facing a tiny, boxed-in courtyard. Because the chinese tend to play favouritism despite other claims, Bo Ming got lovely, breezy sleeping quarters, facing the western plains, probably because his father was an important dignitary. Hermia simply decided that Bo Ming’s room was big enough for three of us; it being after liberation and all. We didn’t mean to oust him, as we were trying to explain to Comrade Zhou the next morning. I guess we did embarrass Bo Ming a little. He didn’t want to leave his spacious room for a closet full of mosquitoes, but he knew he couldn’t sleep with us unless he could produce a marriage certificate or something like that. He did mumble something about keeping (did he say his or our) reputation. But, as we emphatically told Comrade Zhou, he wanted to go. Bo Ming came to our rescue by stating that he did indeed want the smaller room. Of course, Hermia and I were ever so solicitous of Bo Ming after that, looking after his every little whim whenever we could.
Comrade Zhou very patiently told us that our thinking was not right. I think he was trying to tell us to be more patient and more loyal, although I wasn’t sure to what! He couldn’t complain about our work though. Being young and strong, Hermia and I both got something out of our re-education-through-labour program, although I’m quite sure it wasn’t more loyalty.
BEATRICE LI YING WONG
1939
In 1938, my mother, Beatrice, was sent to one of the best British-run young ladies’ finishing academies in Hong Kong. She and her younger brother, John Soon Him, went to stay with Ai Goo Mah, her great auntie, Gwei Chang’s elder sister. At the time my mother was barely thirteen, but my grandmother doted on her and was quite unabashedly preparing her for a prestigious marriage. By then Fong Mei had money and a very fine sense of herself; listening to her talk, anyone of the great Shanghai banking or textile “hundred surnames” would have done. So what if they didn’t speak the same village dialect! She used to say that there was absolutely no future for Beatrice, John and Suzanne in Vancouver, growing up dark-skinned and as wild as indians in this backwater settlement. She herself was too busy with business to tend to them. And, of course, who could argue that there were few opportunities at all for chinese here? However, the truth was that Fong Mei had always been ten-parts nervous about the smallness and the intimacy of Tang People’s Street. Her plan was to eventually transplant Beatrice, John and Suzanne back into China.
Unluckily, even before a year had passed, Beatrice a
nd John were back in Vancouver. Beatrice was once again the undisputed belle of Chinatown. In fact, she hadn’t even missed one Chinatown Freemasons’ picnic, held every summer at Lumberman’s Arch in Stanley Park.
“Those pesky, troublesome little japanese ‘turnip heads’ have been making so much trouble in northern China,” Fong Mei explained at the picnic, her leaf-shaped fan flapping. “Now they’ve gotten so far south they’re starting to make the Hong Kong business cliques nervous.”
Actually, China, including many loyal overseas chinese, had already declared full-fledged war on Japan in 1937. Fong Mei, having participated in enough auxiliary women’s volunteer war efforts, should have realized this.
“But who would have thought they’d get so far south?” exclaimed my mother’s mother, whose singular pursuit of happiness for her three children had left her perception of history in the making somewhat distorted. However, she had money to hide behind, and often that was what really counted. The women around her in their flowered dresses nodded sympathetically.
Suddenly, her fan stopped. Fong Mei’s eyes darkened, although she was careful to keep her face smooth and smiling for the sake of the ladies in the shade of the bushes. She reached into her straw bag for her sunglasses; these she put on the high bridge of her nose with such elegance that it must have been a pleasure for her companions to behold. Stretching her slim neck, she asked, “Isn’t that the Woo boy that Beatrice is with?”
All of the women’s faces turned to trace her gaze. Far away in the shimmering heat, on the far side of the green expanse, two figures broke away from the tight huddle of their children.
A tiny speck of a white dress followed close behind a boy in dark clothes—too dark for the glaring heat really!
“Ahh yes, that’s Keeman all right. I can tell by that pair of hand-me-down pants,” someone confirmed.
“He’s a smart boy! Came in first in his class again. Won that ten-dollar prize that people made such a fuss about.” The conversation veered so easily.
“Isn’t that a shame! Some people are so mean. Imagine trying to keep the prize away from the boy when he earned it fair and square. And such a poor boy too—patched knees, mended elbows.”
“This is it. They don’t like to treat tang people like human beings.”
“Well, they say his teacher put her job on the line for him.” People kept crowding into the conversation.
“I’m not saying they’re all like that but . . .”
“Keeman delivers groceries for me. When he’s working, there’s never any trouble with the customers.”
People soon lost sight of the two children, but sharp-eyed Fong Mei never did. She remained silent, brooding. She had hoped that Beatrice would have matured more, but obviously not enough. A year abroad was not enough, especially when Fong Mei had been hoping for a whole lifetime.
Oh, that stupid war, she thought. And that stupid boy, her afterthought.
Keeman Woo finally stopped at a small tree where he had parked his bicycle, but he didn’t turn around because he knew Beatrice would be right behind. He stared over Burrard Inlet at the smoky blue mountains north of Vancouver. The green sea rested his eyes.
Beatrice had a chance to catch up to him. She looked hot and flustered. With a dramatic sigh, she brushed her hot-iron curls to one side. They relaxed from the moisture on her forehead.
“Why are you mad at me?” asked Beatrice.
“You’ve changed since you’ve come back. Who wants to hear about servants and dumb stuff like how rich your relatives are? I’m going swimming . . . by myself!” retorted her friend since Mon Keang kindergarten.
“They haven’t even gotten to the ice cream yet,” offered Beatrice.
“Naw, don’t want any!”
“Want me to save you some?”
“You can’t save ice cream!” he said wryly.
“Can I come? You can double me?” she asked hopefully.
“What about your mom? She’ll get mad as a hornet!” Keeman watched as she clasped her hands behind her back, a worried look on her face. The soft material of her dress drew back with her arms and delineated the pair of small buds on her chest. She had changed in more than one way, and these changes confused him; he felt torn between wanting to stay and wanting to run as far away as he could. They both glanced nervously over her shoulder at the group of pastel ladies watching them from a great distance.
“Yes, I guess . . .” Bea had to agree, but she looked so crushed that Keeman relented a little.
“Well, I’ll probably be back in time for some ice cream.”
“Will you run the three-legged relay with me too?”
“Nope, don’t want to lose!”
“Please!”
“Maybe.” The boy rode away on his old bicycle, hopefully outfitted with new white-walled balloon tires. It was really too tall for him, and he had to lean his body dangerously far over both sides of the crossbar in order to ride it.
Beatrice watched Keeman acrobatically swerve onto the sea-walk and disappear behind the granite wall. Behind her, she could hear high-pitched baby shrieks gaining on her. She turned and saw a troupe of little girl messengers racing towards her, their crinolines flashing, pink bows bouncing, baby blue sashes trailing.
“Bea Bea,” they mimicked. Beatrice hated it when her mother called her Bea Bea in front of others. It sounded like “baby” in chinese.
“Bea Bea,” they squealed with delight, “your mommy’s calling you, Bea Bea.” They yanked at her hands, all wanting to be twirled around and around on the grassy slopes, until they dizzied, tottered and fell.
With Keeman off pouting, Beatrice had no other choice but to wander back to her mother and sit with the other ladies. There, she was so beautifully demure when they plied her with compliments and attention that Fong Mei herself almost squirmed with admiration.
“A Bea-ah, we’ve heard that you’ve become quite the lady since you’ve come back from Hong Kong.”
Beatrice smiled as politely as she could, knowing her mother would soon take over the reins of the conversation. Sure enough!
“Well, if there weren’t all this trouble,” her mother stepped in, “we would have all gone back to the village for a visit. I haven’t seen my elder sister in so long. And it’s getting more difficult to go back these days. All that talk of bandits and soldiers roaming the countryside! Have you been finding it more difficult to send money home? I find myself having to bother Lo Yeh more and more about it these days . . .”
Left to herself in the middle of a crowd, Beatrice wondered how Keeman could have thought she had changed. In fact, she had changed little. Instead of cultivating sociability, she had only solidified her inborn solitude. She’d always had this dreamy quality about her and maintained as thin a relationship to the world around her as she could get away with. In Hong Kong, this had been even easier for young Beatrice to do. Away from her overbearing mother and grandmother for the first time, in her great aunt’s prim house on “the hilltop,” as they say in Hong Kong, she had been more or less on her own. Her great auntie was the export half of her grandfather’s flourishing import business across the ocean; Beatrice and John were pampered like royal offspring.
In the mornings, when Beatrice awoke, a tiny porcelain teacup of fragrant tea stood waiting on a lacquered tray beside her bed. Slippers miraculously appeared before her feet. Polished shoes whenever she expressed a wish to go outside. Pretty umbrellas to keep her skin pale. Curtains and blinds drawn by unseen forces. Dirty towels left in a heap no longer drew criticism but were simply replaced by clean on the rack. Fresh linen every day. White cotton blouses starched and ready for school. Food in bowls came; dirty empties went. How long could it be before the inevitable happened?
One night, she dreamt that her hands and feet dissolved; the next night, her arms and legs as well. Then her trunk. Finally, everything, until she was nothing more substantial than a puff of smoke. Instead of running up and down the halls and stairs whose black lacquered f
loors, glossed with a purplish undertone, stretched into a gleaming infinity, she floated. She was not awed by this alteration. She felt comforted and happy that this world had especially opened up for her. Around her, the woodwork glowed, the glass shone, the mirrors reflected lightness. She played in a courtyard so cared-for that not one dead leaf dared to rear its ugly, parched self on any rim of the ceramic planters neatly displayed row upon row. The floor tiles, symmetrical perfection, sent her into a mesmeric trance. Bird cages glittered in the sunlight, their kaleidoscopic coloured contents fat and happily chirping, well-loved, innocent of the ways of a harsher life. In this museumlike poignancy, she could have stood forever. Her legs never tired because she had none.
Versions of this dream kept repeating, until one day she awoke and realized that this was the home she was destined to escape to. No, not an oriental palace filled with antiques and baubles! Material concerns could not have mattered to Beatrice. Big house, small, here or there; these details were incidental. Her house had to be an ethereal realm; she needed to build spiritual perfection around herself.
Beatrice came from a home where two incredibly strong-willed women had fought over her since the day she was conceived. While the two battling titans trampled the household to pieces, Beatrice got used to doing things quietly, her own way. As soon as she became illuminated in Hong Kong, she turned towards the clear blue horizon and never looked back. With her usual elegance, she let her mind simply float away. She forgot there was anything else, like a stroke victim whose left side of the brain forgets that the right side ever existed. Oh, but the goddesses were good to her! They gave her lots of wind to fly by. Privilege would always be Beatrice’s divine right because she had no concept of mediocrity, neither her own nor the rest of the world’s.
